1963

From the big scrapbook of time, here’s a look at Canada in 1963-

January 1: The minimum hourly wage for a factory worker is 95 cents in Charlottetown, 70 cents in Montreal, 75 cents in Winnipeg and $1 in Toronto and Vancouver. In some provinces women are paid less then men, even though they perform the same tasks.

January 14: Planned Parenthood holds its very first meeting in Toronto. Birth control is a grey area in the law; no one knows if the organization is even legal. 

Hercules Missiles can travel at 1,600 kilometres an hour, reach an altitude of 21 kilometres and hit targets within a 40-kilometre range.

February 4: Prime Minister Diefenbaker refuses to permit Americans to place nuclear missiles on Canadian soil. Douglas Harkness, the Minister of Defence, resigns in protest.

February 5: The Tory government collapses over the nuclear missile issue. Parliament is dissolved and a general election is called. 

March 1: Simon Fraser University is founded in Vancouver. 

February 11: Rambler Canada begins exporting right-hand drive passenger cars to Commonwealth countries, including the UK. 

The Eversweet brand of oleomargarine first appeared in stores in 1925.

March 1: Members of the Provincial Parliament in Toronto will consider permitting the sale of coloured margarine. Ontario law requires that margarine be white in order to distinguish it from butter. Little packets of yellow colouring can be added by the homemaker. This is a hot-button issue with housewives and MPPs are demanding a free vote on the issue. 

March 15: The Dominion Bureau of Statistics reports that 868 families in Ontario purchase a new washing machine every week. A new Inglis, with five wash-and-rinse cycles sells for only $269 plus the trade-in of your old wringer washer.

March 18: Grey is the “hot” colour in men’s wear this season. The narrow 41.2-millimetre (1 5/8-inch) brim hat is the fashion leader but teens are wearing an even more daring narrow-brimmed chapeau.

March 21: Woolco offers customers nylon tires for $11.95 each. Shock absorbers sell for $12.45 a pair, mufflers are only $9.98 and seat belts cost $6.96 each. Prices include installation.

March 26: It’s a boy for Real and Zelande Voisine. Joseph Armand Roch Voisine is born in Edmunston, New Brunswick. He will grow up to become an international hot ticket singer with mega hits like Helene and I’ll Be There.

March 28: Willys Canada Limited announces it will begin to manufacture the new Jeep Gladiator trucks and the groundbreaking four-wheel drive Wagoneer station wagons in Windsor, Ontario. Willys has been building Jeeps at its Central Avenue plant in Windsor since 1959.

Tommy Douglas is the father of Medicare. He will be recognized as the most important political figure of the 20th Century.

March 29: More than 15,000 concerned citizens jam Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto to hear charismatic New Democratic Party leader Tommy Douglas speak. It is the largest political rally ever held.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Lester Bowles Pearson will be our 14th Prime Minister.

April 8: The voters have spoken and the Liberals will form a minority government—propped up with the help of Tommy Douglas and the New Democrats.

April 18; The Toronto Maple Leafs take home Lord Stanley’s Cup after beating the Detroit Red Wings four games to one. 

April 18: Eric McCormack is born in Toronto. He will grow up to become an actor best known for his TV role as Will Truman on the hit comedy series Will & Grace.

April 20: The IV Pan American Games open in San Paulo, Brazil. Our athletes will make us proud, coming home with 63 medals—the most we’ve ever won.

April 20: The Front de liberation du Quebec demands independence from Canada.  FLQ members set off bombs in Quebec today—the first of 200 acts of civil disobedience it will unleash on the public in hopes of achieving its goals. 

Prime Minister Pearson and US President John Kennedy.

April 22: Lester Bowles Pearson is sworn in as the nation’s 14^th Prime Minister. The World War Two spy, code named ‘Mike,’ is a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He will be PM until he steps down in 1968. 

April. 27: Cali Timmins is born in Montreal. She will grow up to become a soap opera star with roles on Ryan’s Hope and Another World. 

April 28: Skating legend Lloyd Edgar Eisler is born in Seaforth, Ontario. He will grow up to partner with Isabelle Brasseur and win the bronze medal at the 1992 and 1994 Olympics and be the 1993 World Champion.

May 1: Hydro-Quebec writes cheques for $600 million to purchase the last eleven privately-owned power companies in the province. The Crown corporation now has a complete monopoly in the hydro-electricity market.

May 4: The Hay River floods in the Northwest Territories. Nearly 2,000 people in the communities of Hay River and Fort Simpson are evacuated by air.

May 10: Prime Minister Pearson is in Hyannisport, Massachusetts for talks with US President Kennedy.  He will come home with agreements that give Canada nuclear warheads and Franklin Roosevelt’s summer home on Campobello Island--off the coast of New Brunswick--will become an international park.

May 11: CN-CP Telecommunications inaugurates its new microwave network that connects Montreal with Vancouver instantly. The company will be renamed Unitel in 1988.

May 17: Royal Canadian Army engineer Sergeant-Major Walter Leja is seriously injured in Westmount, Quebec when a bomb he is attempting to diffuse goes off. The Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) has planted 16 explosive devices to draw attention to demands for an independent Quebec.

May 18: The Government of Quebec offers a $50,000 reward for information leading to convictions for yesterday’s terrorist acts. The City of Montreal announces a 200-man anti-terrorist unit is being added to the police force.

May 25: Mike Myers is born in Scarborough, Ontario. He will grow up to be a stand-up comic and a movie star best known for his Austin Powers films.

The CCCG Sir Humphrey Gilbert served on the Atlantic coast from 1959 to 1986. Renamed Polar Prince, she will be privately owned and work in the Arctic in 2013.

June 3: Canada declares a 19.3-kilometre-wide economic jurisdiction over the coastline. It will take effect next May.

June 11: The Canadian Medical Association identifies obesity as one of the nation’s largest health issues.

Craven "A" has been popular with smokers since World War Two.

June 11: The Canadian Medical Association releases studies that show smoking to be a direct cause of cancer. The CMA wants Ottawa to require warning labels be placed on cigarette packages.

June 19: The New Brunswick Legislature passes a bill to establish the Universite de Moncton. With campuses in Moncton, Edmunston and Shippagan, the school will become the largest Francophone institution of higher learning outside of Quebec.

June – Mortgage rates drop to 6.25 percent from 6.5 percent. The chartered banks loan $1.3 billion to home buyers, four times more money than they did in 1962.

June 11: Sandra Schmirler is born in Biggar, Saskatchewan. She will grow up to become a triple World Champion curler and bring home Olympic gold in 1998. She will diagnosed with esophageal cancer and die in 2003. More than 15,000 will attend her funeral and the service will be broadcast live on television.

July 12: The three-metre tall bronze statue of Queen Victoria in Montreal’s Victoria Square is blown up. It is believed to be the work of separatistes who resent English domination over a Francophone society.

June 24: Barbara Underhill is born in Oshawa, Ontario. She will grow up to be a five-time national skating champion and bring home the gold—with partner Paul Martini--at the 1984 World Figure Skating Championship.

Dominion Day: The University of Victoria is established in British Columbia's capital city. Previously the school was Victoria College and was associated with McGill University from 1903 to 1915.

Dominion Day: The Neptune Theatre opens in Halifax. Atlantic Canada’s glittering showcase for the performing arts gets off to a good start with a performance of George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara.

July 26: Bluenose II—the schooner on the back of the dime—is launched in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia. A replica of the original Bluenose that sank off the coast of Haiti in 1947, this one cost $208,600 to build. The 246-tonne vessel will become one of Canada’s most loved goodwill ambassadors.  
 

Fluoride

September 4: It may be controversial, but Toronto begins fluoridating its water system in a bid to prevent tooth decay in children.

September 21: Place-des-Arts, Montreal’s premier concert hall, glitters as 3,000 of the nation’s artistic elite attending the opening night gala.

October 17: Norm MacDonald is born in Quebec City. He will grow up to become a comedian, star on Saturday Night Live, make numerous movies and be the voice of Frank the Beaver in Bell Canada’s highly popular commercials in the 2005.

November 2: A CBC-Maclean’s poll reveals that 21 percent of Quebeckers do not know there is an organized movement in the province that demands independence from Canada.

November 19: Gordie How breaks Maurice “Rocket” Richard’s record to become the NHL’s greatest scorer.

November 23: We mourn with our American neighbours when President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

November 25: Holly Cole is born in Halifax.  The girl with the versatile voice will grow up to become a superstar in the world of jazz.

November 29: A Trans-Canada Airline Flight 831 crashes after takeoff from Dorval (Trudeau) International Airport in Montreal. The DC8's impact makes a  crater nearly two metres  deep by 46 metres wide in a muddy field. A total of 118 die in the disaster. A memorial garden will be dedicated to the memory of those whose lives were lost in St-Therese-de-Blainville, Quebec.

The fibreglass-bodied Studebaker Avanti will be discontinued by S-P.

December 9: Officials of  the faltering Studebaker-Packard Corporation announce the closing of the South Bend, Indiana factories. All future Studebakers will be built by Studebaker-Packard Canada Limited in Hamilton, Ontario.

December 31: The auto industry is in good shape. Sales top $2 billion for the first time, as 655,000 vehicles have been sold domestically. General Motors holds almost half the market with 300,288 units. Ford is second with 170,840 units sold. Chrysler sales are nearly double last year's tally with 93,625 units. Rambler moves up by another 8,000 units.  International-Harvester improves its production by 1,000 units. Only Studebaker is down--and only slightly-- from 7,902 units from 7,948 cars sold last year.

The specially trimmed Volvo Canadian is unique--it is called the Amazon or the B-18 in other markets.

This is Volvo’s maiden year to build cars in Canada. The first one off the assembly line in the newly opened Dartmouth, Nova Scotia plant is completed by Sweden's Prince Bertil who tightens the last bolt with a  gold-plated screwdriver. A total of 1,099 Volvos leave the assembly plant during the year.