1967

From the big scrapbook of time, here’s a look at Canada in 1967--

A total of 21,191 Meteors will be built in the 1967 model year. The Rideau four-door sedan is the least expensive of the tribe, listing for $2,978 f.o.b. Oakville, Ontario. 

The Centennial Train in Montreal.

January 9:  The Centennial Train starts its cross-country tour in Victoria, British Columbia. The travelling museum celebrates the 100 years since Confederation. The exhibits showcase some of the most amazing artifacts from our nation’s past. Millions will visit before the tour is over.

Founded in 1786 in Montreal, Molson is Canada's oldest brewer of suds.

January 10: Queen’s Park announces the Sunday sale of liquor will be permitted throughout Ontario as long as the alcoholic beverage is served with a meal. A special “Sabbath Serving” permit will be required.

January 25: George “Mooney” Gibson is dead in his hometown of London, Ontario at the age of 42. He was a Major League catcher for 12 seasons and then manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Chicago Cubs. He will be the first person to be inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame when it opens in 1987.

January 27: It is the birth date of Susan Aglukark. Born in Churchill, Manitoba, her unique blend of Inuit songs married to pop music will take her to the top of the charts, go triple platinum. Aglukark will be made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2005.

March 5: The nation is in mourning and flags fly at half-mast. The Governor General dies of a heart attack this morning at the age of 79. Georges Vanier was the first Francophone to be appointed as head of state. His body will lie in state and tens of thousands will pay their respects to the great dignitary. He will be buried in Quebec City.

March 16: Quebec raises the provincial sales tax from 6 to eight percent, making it the highest sales tax in the country.

March 20: Bryan Genesse is born in Hamilton, Ontario. He will grow up to be a TV and movie actor best known for his role as Rocco Carner on the soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful.

City Hall in Montreal was built in 1878.

March 4: Clerical workers who work for the City of Montreal end their 34-day strike as the majority of the 4,500 employees vote to return to the job.

March 26: Skier Nancy Greene of Rossland, British Columbia is the winner of the World Cup.

March 27: The USSR whips Canada two games to one to win the world hockey championship.

April 3: An explosion rips through the Balmer North coal mine in Natal, British Columbia, minutes after 4 pm, killing 15 miners and wounding ten. The coal dust explosion was initiated by a spark from a rock fall in an unused part of the mine that had been closed off. Fatalities would have been much higher but the tragedy happened during afternoon shift change.

April 1: Robert Gauchie is found after a 58-day search. The experienced bush pilot left Cambridge Bay, NWT and intended to be in Yellowknife in six hours. A fierce spring blizzard forced his single-engine Beaver down on a frozen lake off the beaten track. He survived -60C temperatures and lived on his emergency rations while waiting to be rescued.

April 12: Parliament votes to make O Canada the national anthem. It will have equal status with God Save the Queen.

April 17: The Order of Canada is created by Queen Elizabeth II to honour “exemplary achievement in major fields of endeavour.”  The first honours will be awarded to citizens on July 6. Among the recipients will be Madame Vanier, widow of the former Governor General.

1867 was the Year of the Rabbit in Chinese astrology.

April 18: Residents of Manitoba will now pay the province 5 cents for every dollar spent. The sales tax will not be popular.

April 19: With all the pomp and ceremony for a royal occasion, Roland Michener is sworn in as the 20th Governor General. The Conservative MP was formerly Speaker of the House and our High Commissioner to India. Michener is informal; he tells folks they need not bow or curtsey, a simple handshake will suffice.

April 24: Bower Edward Featherstone is convicted of breaking the Official Secrets Act by illegally acquiring confidential naval charts. The federal civil servant is sentenced to serve 30 months in prison. He will be released after ten months.

Man and His World/Terre des Hommes is the theme of the world's fair.

April 27: The World’s Fair opens in Montreal. Expo ’67 is a  yearlong birthday party and the whole world will  come to Canada and help us celebrate. Prime Minister Pearson cuts the ribbon. Turnstiles click off 315,000 visitors the first day, triple the amount of visitors estimated.

April 30: There are so many people eager to visit Expo ’67 that the Metro is clogged with would-be fairgoers. The system is so overloaded; the Transit Commission has to shut the doors until the backlog can be cleared up.

April 30: Today is the deadline for filing taxes. H&R Block will calculate your taxes for you—prices start at $5.

May 2: It’s a homegrown playoff this time around. The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Canadiens four games to two to win Lord Stanley’s Cup. The Leafs will not win another Stanley Cup this century.

May 23:  An engineer from the Toronto Transit Authority fires up the first GO Train. The green and white commuter train system runs from Oshawa to Hamilton and will have carried nearly a billion riders in 2005.

May 24: Dr. Wilder Penfield, noted neurologist and founder of the Montreal Neurological Institute, is the first recipient of Royal Bank’s Centennial Medal. He will die in 1976 and a street in Montreal will be named for him in 1978.

Sir John A. MacDonald was Canada's first Prime Minister.

May 24: Sir John A. MacDonald’s home in Kingston, Ontario—Bellevue House--opens its doors as an historic site run by Parks Canada.

May 24: More then 10,000 angry dairy farmers are on Parliament Hill demanding better prices for milk. Security guards shut and lock the doors of the Centre Block—for the first time in history—fearing the farmers may escalate their protest.

May 25: It’s a sign of the times. The Montreal Stock Exchange becomes the first in North America to allow women to participate.

May 29: The Armed Forces show off the new integrated-branch uniforms. Dark green in colour, the first soldiers to be issued the uniforms will be the 100-man Honour Guard at Expo ’67.

May 31: The City of Ottawa receives a 100^th birthday present from Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth. The gift is a dozen white swans.

July 1: It’s a girl for Carol and Barry Anderson of Ladysmith, BC. Daughter Pamela will grow up to be Playboy of the Month in 1990 and star in TV shows including Baywatch,  Home Improvement, Stacked and V.I.P.

July 1: Happy Birthday, Canada! Queen Elizabeth II cuts the cake and there is enough for 10,000 who join the party on Parliament Hill. A spectacular display of fireworks takes place at midnight. Folks celebrate right across the country.

July 1: The University of Winnipeg receives its charter. The institution has been around since 1871 and has been called United College since 1938.

July 8: The Canadian Automobile Association sponsors a Centennial Drive as 22 automobiles dip their rear wheels into the Pacific Ocean in Victoria, BC. More than 100 cars will join the tour but only eight will complete the trek to St. John’s, Newfoundland.

July 21: The Gardiner Dam is dedicated and operating on the South Saskatchewan River, 100 kilometres south of Saskatoon. It is five kilometres long and rises 64 metres above the river bed.  The largest earth fill dam in Canada and has a built-in power plant generating 186 MW of hydroelectric power. The 135,500-square kilometre Lake Diefenbaker is the upstream creation.

July 24: French President Charles de Gaulle is in Canada on a state visit. He raises eyebrows by visiting Quebec City before visiting Ottawa. Before a crowd of 10,000 in Montreal he shouts, “Vivre le Quebec libre!” The diplomatic gaffe prompts his trip to be cut short.

Caribana in 2010.

July 30: An estimated crowd of 1,000 Torontonians comes to the first Caribana. The festival thrown by the West Indian community consists of eight bands and floats. With time it will grow to be the third largest carnival in the world, with a million spectators joining the fun.

August 21: The RCMP arrest 21-year old Victor Ernest Hoffman. The voices inside his head told the released mental patient to kill. Entering the James Peterson home in Shell Lake, Saskatchewan on Tuesday night, Hoffman brutally shot nine members of the family with a .22-calibre Browning pump-action repeater rifle while they slept. At the end of the senseless killing spree, only four-year old Phyllis is spared death. Hoffman is the nation’s first mass murderer. He will be diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and sentenced to life in a maximum security hospital prison.

August 6: The closing ceremonies of the Fifth Pan-Am Games take place in Winnipeg. 2,361 athletes from 29 countries in the western hemisphere have competed. Our athletes have earned 92 medals.

September 9:  It is the “Night of Long Knives” as the Progressive Conservatives dump Dief the Chief at the national leadership convention. Out in the cold, Mr. Diefenbaker will need his-um-Stanfields.  Elected on the fifth ballot, the new Tory leader is Robert Stanfield, former Premier of Nova Scotia whose family owns the long john and underwear company of the same name.

Yellowknife will have a population of 19,000 in 2011.

September 18: The capital city of the Northwest Territories was Ottawa until today. Transfer of the territorial government is to Yellowknife, the newly chosen capital.

On the last day, 221,554 visitors came to Man and His World/Terre des Homme.

October 27: The World’s Fair closes. More than 50 million visitors passed through the gates at Expo ’67.  Time calls the fair is “a symbol of the vigour and enthusiasm of the Canadians who conceived an impossible dream and made it come true.”

November 16: The Museum of Science and Technology opens in Ottawa.

November 17: Canadian National Railways officials announce that the Crown Corporation will end all passenger train service in Newfoundland. CN intends replace the Newfie Bullet with buses that will use the new Trans-Canada Highway.

December 3: The Gray Cup belongs to Hamilton as the Tiger Cats demolish the Saskatchewan Rough Riders 24 to 1.

December 5: The report from the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism is tabled in the House of Commons. It recommends that French and English be declared the official languages of the Federal Government. It further recommends that Ontario and New Brunswick declare themselves to be bilingual provinces and ensure that Francophone citizens have the same rights as the Anglophone minority has in Quebec.

December 6: Albertans have something to be extra proud about this Centennial year as the Provincial Museum of Alberta opens. In 2005 Queen Elizabeth will bestow royal patronage on the institution and it will be renamed the Royal Alberta Museum.

December 14: Prime Minister Pearson announces he will step down early next year. He will be replaced by Justice Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau.

December 22: Federal Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau rises in the House of Commons to tell MPs it
is time to decriminalize homosexuality. He says, “There’s no place for the State in the bedrooms of the nation.”

Pontiac Parisienne is a perennial top ten choice of Canadians motorists.

December 31: The Top Ten selling automobile nameplates this calendar year are the Chevrolet Biscayne and Bel Air; the Pontiac Strato-Chief and Laurentian; the Chevrolet Impala and Caprice; the Ford Galaxie 500, XL and LTD; The Pontiac Parisienne and imported full-sized Pontiacs; the Volkswagen Beetle, The Chrysler Newport and 300: the Ford Custom and Custom 500: the Ford Mustang and the Chevrolet Chevelle.

Built in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, the Volvo Canadian sells for $3,150 or $3,305 when equipped with an automatic transmission. Domestic production for the calendar year is 4,351 units; another 902 Volvos are imported from Sweden.