1908

From the big scrapbook of time, here’s a look at Canada in 1908-

The Comet is built in Montréal. The Prince of Wales will ride in one when visits Québec City this summer.

January 1: There are 155 automobiles registered in British Columbia, 55 in Alberta and another 55 in Saskatchewan.

January 2: Governor General Lord Grey strikes the first coin to be made at the new mint in Ottawa. The first hard currency is a gold sovereign, worth approximately $7.  Previously coinage had been minted in the UK and shipped here. 

January 19: The first Gurdwara Sahib (Temple) opens in Vancouver to serve the Sikh community. 

January 20: The grand Empress Hotel opens to much fanfare in Victoria, BC. The imposing landmark building is owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway.

January 21: The government of Japan agrees to limit the number of immigrant to Canada to 1,000 a year. People in British Columbia have been worried about their province turning “yellow.”

January 22: James Sinclair Ross is born in Shellbrook, Saskatchewan. He will grow up to be a banker and a noted author, best known for his classic Prairie novel, As For Me and My House. The Order of Canada recipient will die in 1996.

February 4: The public may now make use of the latest in technology as they send telegrams to the UK, courtesy of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company. The price for this service is set at 15 cents a word.

February 7: Lela Brooks is born in Toronto. The speed skater will set 17 world records before her career ends in 1936.

February 25: Residents of Manitoba must register their automobiles and pay a $2 fee.  Vehicle operators must make their own license plates. A total of 418 motor cars are registered by year’s end.

March 7: By an act of the legislature in Victoria, the University of British Columbia is founded.

March 14:  The Montreal Wanderers whip the Toronto Maple Leafs to win the Stanley Cup. The final score is 6 to 4. 

March 26: Members of the legislature in Charlottetown vote unanimously to ban automobiles from Prince Edward Island. Fast and dangerous, horseless carriages are a threat to the Islanders’ bucolic way of life because they frighten horses, women and children. There are nine motor vehicles in the entire province.

March 31: Fed up with poor telephone service, the government of Alberta purchases the Bell for $675,000. The new provincial Crown corporation will be renamed Alberta Government Telephone and promises to serve rural communities where the Bell had refused to go. In 2017 the company will be called Telus.

April 7: Percy Faith is born in Toronto. He will grow up to be a musician. After his hands are burnt in a fire, he will turn to conducting and become a world-renowned orchestra leader. He will win a Grammy for Theme from a Summer Place in 1961. Faith will die of cancer in 1976.

April 13: Clarence Robert Nobles is born in Winnipeg. He will grow up, change his name to Bob Nolan and become a country singer. He will be one of the founders, along with Roy Rogers, of the popular cowboy singing group, Sons of the Pioneers. The group’s 1941 recording of “Cool Water” will earn them a Grammy. Bob will appear in 88 Hollywood flicks before he dies in 1980.

April 18: Boxer Tommy Burns KOs Jewey Smith in the fifth round to retain his World Heavyweight title. The Hanover County, Ontario pugilist will successfully defend his title eleven times. He will die of a heart attack in Vancouver on May 10, 1955.

April 24: The Minister of the Interior meets with a delegation of men from the Six Nations Reserve. They want an elected council instead of one composed of hereditary chiefs. 

April 28: Ethel Catherwood is born in Haldiman County, Ontario.   She will grow up in Saskatoon and represent Canada at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. It is the first time that women are allowed to compete and Ethel will make us all proud by jumping 1.59 metres and bring home the gold medal. She will die in 1987.

April 30: Fredericton’s citizens have had their say in a referendum. By a margin of 178 votes, the capital of New Brunswick remains “dry” despite the hopes of brewers, distillers and Herring Chockers who imbibe spirits and ales.

May 18: The CCM automobile factory in Toronto Junction covers four hectares. Ithe facility is valued at half a million dollars and employs 600 men.

May 19:  Percy Alfred Williams is born in Vancouver. He will represent Canada at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam and bring home two gold medals for the 100- and 200-metre sprints.

June 11: Imperial Tobacco Limited sets up shop in Montreal. It manufactures Sweet Caporal,  the most popular cigarette brand. It holds 50% of the market. It also makes the highly popular Player's Navy Cut smokes. According to the Dominion Bureau of Statistics some 60 million cigarettes are produced in Canada each year. 

June 12: Saskatchewan Government Telephones is established, inheriting communications responsibilities from the provincial Department of Railways, Telegraphs and Telephones. The Crown corporation will purchase Bell operations next year.  It will change its name to SaskTel in 1986. By 2017 the company will be worth $1.2 billion.

June 23: A fire rages through Trois-Rivieres, Quebec. Half the city is burnt to ashes, leaving more than 1,000 homeless. Damage is estimated at $2 million.

This painting depicts Iroquois Indians greeting Captain Champlain. A replica of the Don de Dieu  has been built this year as part of tercenterial festivities.

July 19: Québec City marks the 300^th anniversary of Samuel de Champlain’s arrival from France.

July 31: The Prince of Wales and the Vice President of the United States have been in town to help Québec City mark its 300^th birthday.The battle on the Plains of Abraham has been re-enacted. There have been parades and concerts. The festivities end today. 

August 1: A fire in Fernie, British Columbia, destroys the entire town in 90 minutes. Damage is pegged at a staggering $5 million.  

August 2: Eileen Vollick is born in Wiarton, Ontario. When she is 19 years old she will take a flying course offered by the Department of National Defense and when she passes the test in the Curtiss “Jenny,” she will be the first woman pilot in Canada.

September:  Classes begin today for the first time at the University of Alberta. 45 students are enroled in the fledgling institution. They study in temporary structures while permanent buildings are being built. 

This Locomobile Racer was built for three years--from 1906 to 1908.

September 26: A crowd of 10,000 Montrealers are gathered in Deslormier Park to cheer on the drivers of the city’s first automobile race.

October 1: Ford’s Model T makes it debut. The ‘Tin Lizzie’ will be loved by millions and change the transportation world. 

October 26: The dust has settled on the federal election and Sir Wilfred Laurier and his Grits have trounced the Tories to return to Ottawa for a fourth consecutive term with yet another majority government.

October 31: Muriel Helena Ball is born in Austin, Québec. She will grow up to become a devout peace advocate, marry Jack Duckworth and have three children. Muriel will be a founding member of the Nova Scotia Voice of Women (VOW) and be involved in other peace movements. She will receive the Order of Canada in 1983 and the Pearson Peace Medal in 1991. Muriel Duckworth will die in Magog, Québec on August 22, 2009 at the age of 100. 

November 3: Fed up with poor treatment from merchants, William Coaker creates the Fishermen’s Protective Union in Herring Neck, Newfoundland. This historic event will set in motion plans for a cooperative, a newspaper and even candidates to stand for the House of Assembly in St. John’s.

December 14: Sir Wilfred Laurier, the first Prime Minister to own an automobile, will have to buy a new set of wheels. The Toronto Globe reports that the PM’s luxurious $8,000 Russell was destroyed in a fire. 

December 23: Yousef Karsh is born in eastern Turkey. At the age of 16 he will be sent to live with a photographer uncle in Sherbrooke, Québec. The talented young man will set up his own studio in Ottawa. Most famous for his 1941 image of Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Karsh will photograph many famous people during his lifetime. The recipient of the Companion of the Order of Canada will die in 2002.

December 25: One of the nicest Christmas presents a girl can receive this Yuletide season is the new book, Anne of Green Gables, published earlier this year. The story revolves around a mischievous red-haired orphan girl who is accidentally sent to live with an elderly couple in Prince Edward Island. 

December 31: The McLaughlin Motor Car Company Limited of Oshawa, Ontario has completed its first year of operations.  A total of 154 McLaughlins have been built. The cars are powered by engines imported from the Buick Division of General Motors in the United States.

© James C. Mays 2011. All rights reserved.

1909

From the big scrapbook of time, here’s a look at Canada in 1909-

January 11: The Anglican Church lobbies Ottawa to crack down on pornography by pressing for laws to make it illegal to sell “immoral literature.” 

January 12: Canada and the United States sign an accord to preserve Niagara Falls. The British Ambassador to the United States signs the Boundary Treaty to preserve shared waters on behalf of Canada since we will not have an ambassador of our own in Washington until 1947.

February 23:  Near Baddeck, Nova Scotia a dumbfounded crowd of onlookers watches in amazement as the Silver-Dart flying machine soars into the air over a frozen lake and sails along in the air for half a mile at 75 kilometres (40 miles per hour). It is the first flight in the British Empire. Douglas McCurdy is at the controls but the credit belongs to Alexander Graham Bell—inventor of the telephone—for being the brains behind the scheme.

March 22: Gabrielle Roy is born in St. Boniface, Manitoba. She will win worldwide acclaim for her 1947 novel, “The Tin Flute.” Though she will die in 1983 her work will live on. In 2004 a quote from her book, “The Hidden Mountain” will be printed on the back of the $20 bill issued by the Bank of Canada. 

A 1909 Tudhope is seen here.

April 11: The Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Limited buys its first automobile. It is a Tudhope, built in Orillia, Ontario. The Tudhope brand will disappear in 1918 but, by 1926, Ma Bell will own 429 motorized vehicles.

April 29: A pickle and vinegar factory opens in Leamington, Ontario on the site of Ward's Tobacco Limited. The new  company's name is H.J. Heinz.   Production of ketchup will start next year.

April 29: Exotic dancer Millie De Leon is arrested by Montréal police for “indecent exposure” while performing. It is the first such arrest in the city in a dozen years.

May 1: Toronto is a little drier than yesterday as city fathers strip may bars and pubs of their liquor licenses. Now there are only 41 establishments in all of Hogtown where one may wet one’s whistle.

May 7: The Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific Railway amalgamates with the Canadian Northern Railway. The new CNoR will now be able to secure government monies in order to extend track from Stony Plains south to the coalfields in the Brazeau River Valley.

May 12: The H. J. Heinz Company of Canada Limited sets up shop on Erie Street in a converted tobacco factory in Leamington, Ontario. There are seven people in the office and 60 on the factory floor. A skilled labourer earns 15 cents an hour, works an honest ten-hour day and takes home an $18 paycheque. 

May 9: Don Messer is born on a farm near Tweedside, York County, New Brunswick. He will learn to play the fiddle when he is five, become a bandleader and host of his own radio show on CFBO in Saint John. Don Messer and the Islanders will be criss-cross the country 30 times, many of them in a capacious 1948 Hudson Hornet. He will be the host of Don Messer’s Jubilee on CBC Radio from 1944 and then on CBC-TV from 1957 to 1969. Don will die of a heart attack in Halifax in 1973.

June 1: The Ministry of External Affairs comes into existence. Its first task will be to sort out free trade with our American neighbours. 

June 3: William Lyon Mackenzie King is sworn in as the country’s first Minister of Labour. 

June 7: Sir William Francis Butler is dead at his residence, Bansha Castle in Ireland. The army commander authored The Great Lone Land, published in 1872, a highly colourful account of his 6,000-kilometre trek across this country’s western wilderness by foot, horseback and dogsled. Butler recommended the establishment of law and order before immigrants arrived. His recommendations prompted the formation of the Northwest Mounted Police.

June 22: The superstructure for the Lethbridge Viaduct is complete. Created for Canadian Pacific Railway, the engineering marvel stands 95.7 metres (314 ft) tall and spans 1.62 kilometres (5,327 feet) in length.

Dominion Day: Captain Joseph-Elzear Bernier unveils a plaque on Melville Island in the Arctic, declaring Canada’s sovereignty over the north. Bernier’s ship, the CGS Arctic, is frozen in ice but the vessel is festooned with Union Jacks to honour the nation’s birthday. 

July 3: Forest fires rip through the Porcupine District of northern Ontario. A third of the people who live in the town of Cobalt—2,000 in total—are homeless as a result of the fires.

July 11: Simon Newcomb is dead today at the age of 85 in Washington, D.C. He was born in Wallace, Nova Scotia in 1835. The astronomer and mathematician is best known for his astronomical tables - ephemerides, or tables of computed places of celestial bodies over a period of time, and for his tables of astronomical constants.

August 13: Martial law is declared in Fort William (Thunder Bay) as His Worship reads the Riot Act publicly after striking CPR dock workers square off against the CPR police. Shot are fired and ten are wounded in the ensuing battle. 

Ten Tudhope motor buggies were lost in the blaze. A 1909 Tudhope electric delivery wagon is seen here.

August 22: At two o’clock a fire starts in the paint room at the Tudhope-McIntyre factory in Orillia, Ontario. Flames reduce the plant to cinders but the owners will rebuild and commence manufacturing automobiles in January of next year.

August 31: Everything is set for tomorrow’s official opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s Spiral Tunnels in British Columbia’s Kicking Horse Pass. It has taken 1,000 workers three years and $1.5 million to blast the twin passageways under Mt. Ogden and Cathedral Mountain. 

September – Ford of Canada opens a wholly owned subsidiary in Australia. Since people buy cars in warm months and September heralds spring down under, the factories in Windsor, Ontario will be humming year round as workers churn out Model Ts. 

September 1: A report released by the Winnipeg City Health Inspector reveals horrific living conditions in the overcrowded capital. There is an acute housing shortage—as many as 12 people are living in a single room. 

Vinegar and pickles are the first products to made at Heinz' Leamington, Ontario factory. Ketchup production will begin next year.

September 9: Heinz Canada employs 75 people in its Leamington, Ontario plant. Everyone works ten hours a day. Women earn $1 to $1.25 a day but men earn anywhere from 15c to 32c an hour.

September 17: The McLaughlin Motor Car Company of Oshawa, Ontario is recapitalized at $1.2 million. The factory will produce 423 automobiles by year’s end. 

October -- The Winnipeg branch of the Ford Motor Company of Canada, Limited is established. It is bold move by Ford—there are only 34 motor cars in the entire province. Serving the eight dealers in Alberta and the 32 dealers in Manitoba, the Winnipeg branch will sell 308 Fords during its first year of operation: 123 in Manitoba, 131 in Saskatchewan and 54 in Alberta.

October 19: It's a bright idea! The Calgary Power Company Limited is formed. The entity will provide hydro for citizens of Cowtown.

October 19: Robert Beatty is born in Hamilton, Ontario. He will grow up to become a star of radio, the silver screen and television, mostly in the UK. He will have roles in such classics as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jesus of Nazareth, Superman III and Superman IV. He will die in 1992.

November 28: A flash flood kills nearly 30 workers of a track repair crew on board a Great Northern train. Those who died were mostly Japanese. 

December 4: The University of Toronto beats the Toronto Parkdale Canoe Club 26 to 6 to win the Grey Cup. There is a slight problem, however. Governor General Lord Grey announced the trophy but forgot to have it made. The silver cup will be presented to the winning team as soon as it is cast. 

December 4: The Montreal Canadiens are founded as part of the original six member clubs of the National Hockey Association. The Habs will go on to become one of the most successful teams in hockey history, winning more Stanley Cups than any other. 

December 25: One of the most popular Christmas presents under the tree this year—for girls anyway--is a new book entitled Anne of Green Gables. Written by Lucy Maude Montgomery, the winsome tale will immortalize the loveable little orphan girl and put tiny Prince Edward Island on the world map. 

December 31: More than 10,000 Quebeckers have bid ‘adieu’ to la belle province this year to seek work elsewhere. Most have moved to the New England States in hopes of making a better life for themselves in the textile mills there.