1950

From the big scrapbook of time, here's a look at Canada in 1950--

At $2,251 plus taxes and tags, the 1950 Monarch Sport Sedan was the least expensive model in Ford of Canada's regal family of fine cars.

January 1: Folks in Winnipeg can warm up their Marconis and Northern Electrics and tune in to 580 on their radio dials to hear programmes on the brand new radio station, CKY, "The Voice of Manitoba."  The listening audience can still slide the tuner up the dial in to 990 to the CBC for old favourites on the Trans-Canada network like The Happy Gang, Stage, Hockey Night in Canada and The Craigs, the farm-life drama heard weekdays on the noon-hour Farm Broadcast.

January 15: It is the birth date of Gilles Villeneuve. The racecar hero will become one of the world’s premier Formula 1 drivers before he is killed in a car crash on May 8, 1982.

January 19: Experimental testing begins today on a new fighter jet destined for the Royal Canadian Air Force. The Avro CF-100 is the second fastest aircraft in the world. The homegrown jet fighter programme will be scrubbed in 1959 by the Tory government.

March 16: Patricia Colleen Nelligan is born in London, Ontario. She will grow up and change her name to Kate as tackles stage and television in the UK in 1973. She will take on Broadway in 1981 and then Hollywood, starring in such movies as Eye of the Needle, Cider House Rules and The Prince of Tides.

March 26: Martin Short is born in Hamilton, Ontario. He will graduate with a degree in social work from McMaster University before successfully tackling standup comedy and Hollywood.

March 28: Legend Hank Snow has moved on from his radio show at CHNS in Halifax. The Singing Ranger is in Nashville to record I’m Movin’ On. It will hit Number One on the country charts and stay there for 29 weeks.

April 1: Bluenosers will dig a little deeper in their purses as the price of a driver’s license in Nova Scotia rises to $1.50. Plates are black on white this year.

April 7: Oscar winning actor Walter Huston is dead of an aortic aneurysm at the age of 66. Born in Toronto, he was an engineer but abandoned that career for stage and screen. He starred in more than 30 movies including Abraham Lincoln, The Devil and Daniel Webster, The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He won a best supporting actor Oscar for his role in the latter film.

Mercury is slotted between Meteor and Monarch in this year's Ford family.

April 11: Workers at Ford accept a new contract that includes a company paid pension of up to $55 a month for employees with 30 years’ service. It is the first ever such deal in the industry and the 12,000 workers have voted in favour by a good majority. Ford officials say that the plan will cost the company $1 million a year.

April 18: The world’s first jet airmail delivery is made as letters arrive in New York City from Toronto. Flight time is 59 minutes and 58 seconds.

Cockshutt built tractors in Brantford, Ontario from 1946 to 1962.

April 19: The Town Council in Kentville, Nova Scotia has voted to retire the town’s horses and buy tractors to use in their place.

The original Stanley Cup, awarded in 1893 was made of silver and was only 18.5 centimetres tall.

April 23: The Detroit Red Wings take it to the limit but they beat the New York Rangers in overtime in the seventh game of the series to claim the Stanley Cup.

May 1: Our dollar will continue to be pegged at $1 in US currency.

May 5: The raging Red River has overflowed its banks. It is the worst flooding since 1861. Before the week is up it will force more than 100,000 Winnipeggers out of their homes. Some 15,000 soldiers and civilians work around the clock, filling sandbags to top up makeshift dykes. The crisis will be over after fourteen anxious days and nights but for years to come people will remember Black Friday and the $1 billion of damage it caused.

May 9: Disastrous fires devastate the communities of Cabano and Rimouski, Quebec.

May 14: Nash Motors of Canada, Limited opens its new $1.4 million factory in Toronto. It is located on the Danforth at Victoria Park, near the extreme eastern edge of the city.  Workers will assemble 1,150 Canadian Statesman models and the company will import another 37 Nash Ambassadors from the US.

The St. Roch was launched in 1928 and decomissioned in 1954. Today the schooner is in the Vancouver Maritime Museum.

May 29: The St. Roch docks in Halifax Harbour. Captain Henry Asbjorn Larsen has piloted the RCMP schooner completely around the North American continent. The feat is a world first in maritime history.

June 2: It’s a girl for TV’s Monty Hall and wife Marilyn in Toronto. Daughter Joanna Gleason will grow up to be a singer and actress on TV, Hollywood and stage. She will win a Tony in 1988 as best actress for her role in the musical, Into the Woods.

June 12: Ottawa and Washington ink two pacts  designed to put an end to double taxation of Americans and Canadians living in each other’s countries and to bring income tax evasion to a halt.

Families being unloaded at a work camp. They were only allowed to bring what they could carry.

June 13: Officials announce that it will pay $1,222,829 to a Japanese-Canadian group representing those who were interned in prison camps during World War Two. The gesture is symbolic; there won’t be any compensation to the more than 20,000 individuals for loss of homes, goods or businesses.

June 25: Backed by Red China, North Korean troops invade the Republic of South Korea. Two days later the United Nations asks member nations to send soldiers under the UN flag to participate in a “Police Action.”

The Toronto Stock Exchange, located at 234 Bay Street was built in 1936 and will be home to the TSE until 1986.

June 26: The news about the Communist invasion of South Korea causes the Toronto Stock Market to hit its lowest level since October 1929.

July 22:  Former Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King has died at his estate in Kingsmere, Quebec. He was 76 years of age. Tens of thousands of Canadians will line the streets to pay their respects to the nation’s longest serving Prime Minister before his State funeral.

June 30: Parliament votes unanimously to send troops to South Korea.

Aug 1: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police take over the police duties in Newfoundland and Labrador. The first of 140 officers are sworn in. They replace the Newfoundland Rangers.

August 7: Scientists have discovered an almost perfectly round, ice-free lake in Arctic Quebec that was created as a result of a meteorite hitting earth. The largest crater of its kind in the world, it is the size of downtown Montreal.

The Canadian National Railways will serve no one until the union members get what they want.

August 22: Employees at the Canadian National Railways and the Canadian Pacific Railway walk out on strike, bringing the nation’s railways to a grinding halt. It is the largest strike in national history. The 130,000 workers at the CNR and the CPR want better working conditions. Parliament will make history when it passes emergency legislation in eight days to force the employees back to work while the dispute is arbitrated.

Chairman Mao became leader of the People's Republic China last year. He will die in office in 1976.

August 26: In light of the aggressive behaviour of Red China, Canada and the US sign a common defense pact to protect each other from Communism and the 500 million Chinese. The agreement takes effect immediately.

The 1950 Studebaker Champion is built in Hamilton, Ontario.

September: The new 1951 automobiles begin to appear in dealers’ showrooms. The top selling automobiles for the 1950 model year were Chevrolet, Ford, Pontiac, Meteor, Dodge, Plymouth, Austin, Studebaker, Morris and British Ford.

October 31: It is the birthday of John Franklin Candy. He will become the king of comedy and a Hollywood star before he dies of a heart attack on March 4, 1994 while filming on location in Mexico.

November 20: The Supreme Court rules that land deeds can not exclude potential purchasers because of their colour, creed or racial origin.

November 21: A train wreck at Canoe River, BC kills twenty soldiers bound for Fort Walsh, Washington for advanced military training before shipping out to serve in Korea. In 2014, this will still be one of the nation's ten worst train accidents.

Snow turned to rain at Varsity Stadium in Toronto. This year's fall classic will be known forever as 'the mud bowl.'

November 25: The Toronto Argonauts face the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for the sixth time. The Argos whip the Blue Bombers 13 to zip and take home the Grey Cup.

December -- The CBC’s International Service begins once-a-week programmes in Finnish. That brings to eleven the number of languages heard on the International Service in addition to transmitting the official daily United Nations broadcasts to millions living behind the Iron Curtain.

December 18: Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry a.k.a. the 2^nd Battalion arrives in Korea.

George VI is the King of Canada.

December 31: The total number of packages and letters delivered by Her Majesty’s Royal Canadian Post Office is 1,362,310,155. It costs 3c to mail a letter anywhere in the country. There is morning and afternoon delivery and Saturday, too.

December 31: A milestone is reached as General Motors builds its 2-millionth automobile in Canada during the calendar year.

A total of 6,056 Monarch passenger cars were built by workers at Ford of Canada during the 1950 model year.