1930

From the big scrapbook of time, here’s a look at Canada in 1930--

The six-cylinder Durant is a decent seller with 5,526 units delivered throughout the Dominion of Canada in 1930.

January 11: Harold Greenberg is born in Montreal. He will become a film producer known for such flicks as Porky’s—the most successful Canadian film ever—and— rich fare as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravits. Greenberg will head Astral Communications, pioneer pay TV and own The Movie Network. He will be made an Officer in the Order of Canada and a Knight in the National Order of Quebec. Greenberg will die in 1996.

January 12:  Tim Horton is born in Cochrane, Ontario. By the time he is five he will be playing hockey. The NHL legend will be killed in a horrible auto accident in 1974 on the QEW but live on forever through his international chain of Tim Horton’s doughnut shops.

Varick Frissell and his dog Cabot.

January 16: Movie director Varick Frissell arrives in St. John’s, Newfoundland to begin filming a motion picture about the famed Newfoundland seal hunt. The movie will be a wrap in May but the 27-year old film genius' quest to make the movie even better will cause his death.

January 29: Because of last year’s drought, it is reported that hundreds of horses are starving to death in Saskatchewan. Desperate farmers are already shooting livestock because there is nothing left to feed the animals.

January 29: Using horses and motorcars, police in Vancouver arrest 29 men for rioting in Stanley Park. Hundreds of men, hungry for jobs, are angered that former city workers are being offered work at $2 a day for married men and single men $1 a day. They should get in line like everyone else.

February 15: Mrs. Cairine Wilson becomes the first woman to be appointed to the Senate. She will be the first woman named as Speaker of the Senate.

February 19: In Quebec City the National Assembly rejects a bill that would allow women to practise law in la belle province.

 February 20: Folks who work at Heinz of Canada can brag a bit because the factory in Leamington, Ontario is now  the world's largest ketchup producer.

March 4: To silence critics that Ottawa is adding to the woes of the people, the federal government hands immigration over to the provinces.

March 11: Claude Jutra is born in Montreal. He will study medicine but give it up for acting and the camera. His passion will earn him international honours for his 1971 film, Mon oncle Antoine. He will die in 1986 and the Prix Jutra will be established to honour the best of Canadian films.

March 12: World War air ace William G. “Billy” Barker is killed in a airplane crash while testing a Fairchild two-seater near Rockcliffe, Ontario. The Dauphin, Manitoba native was a true hero who downed 53 enemy planes during the Great Way and was awarded the Victoria Cross for his valour in the skies.

April 3: Last year’s Stanley Cup winners, the Boston Bruins, give up holy grail of hockey to the Montreal Canadiens who take the trophy home after winning two games in a best of three game series.

May 1:  Montrealers who are getting married this spring can hire a Diamond Taxicab for only $2.50 an hour.

Uranium is the energy source of nuclear medicine, nuclear power and nuclear bombs.

May 16: Gilbert A. Labine has found sufficient radium and uranium deposits to begin construction of a uranium mine on Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories. The intrepid prospector will discover more uranium in northern Saskatchewan in the 1950s—Uranium City will be built there. Gilbert will be inducted into the order of Canada in 1969 and die in 1977.

May 24:  Robert Bateman is born in Toronto. He will be inspired by the Group of Seven and become one of the world’s best-known wildlife artists. In the 21^st Century he will live on an island off the coast of British Columbia.

May 29: Roy Bonisteel is born. He will become a broadcaster in 1951, taking to the airwaves of a radio station in Belleville, Ontario. He will join the CBC as host of Man Alive and spend the next 22 years exploring our relationship with God.

June 10: The Winnipeg Rugby Football Club is chartered as all football teams in the city amalgamate. They will become the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 1936.

Planes will land on grass landing strips at the Halifax Municipal Air Field when it opens next year.

June 16: Halifax city councillors have approved $190,000 to build an airfield. Today construction begins on two landing strips. One will be 549 metres by 182 metres and the other will measure 609 metres by feet by 182 metres.

June 17: Rosemary Brown is born in Kingston, Jamaica. She will come to Canada in 1951 to study at McGill and become a politician. She will become the first African-Canadian to run for the leadership of a federal political party when she takes on Ed Broadbent and the New Democratic Party in 1975. She will teach at Simon Fraser University, be a member of the CSIS spy agency and die of a heart attack in 2003.

June 20: Eight Jesuit martyrs become Canada’s first Roman Catholic saints.

June 28: Lightning strikes the 42.6-metre long wooden drill boat John B. King expanding ‘the narrows’ in the St. Lawrence River, near Brockville, Ontario. The ship is full of dynamite. Lightning strikes and sets off a blast that kills 33 of the 44 crew.

July 1:  Many folks in the very dry United States are not pleased to discover that liquor is even harder to find. As of today the Canada Export Act now forbids shipping alcohol to “countries under prohibition.”

July 1: The Seigniory Club opens in Montebello, Quebec. The elegant log cabin—the largest in the world—with its 168 luxurious rooms will later be renamed the Chateau Montebello. Visitors will include Prime Ministers, Governors General, a raft of royalty from many countries and a host of Hollywood movie stars, too.

July 12: Gordon Edward Pinsent is born in Grand Falls, Newfoundland. He will grow up to become one of the greatest actors ever to appear on radio, television, theatre and the silver screen. Pinsent will be best known for movie roles in  Lydia, The Rowdyman, Who Has Seen the Wind, John and the Missus and The Shipping News. 

July 15: On its 60^th anniversary of entering into Confederation, Manitoba is given responsibility for its natural resources. Ottawa will write a cheque to the Receiver General of Manitoba for $4,584,212.29.

The Right Honourable Richard Bedford Bennett is our 11th Prime Minister.

July 28: The voters have spoken and Richard Bennett and his Conservatives will form a majority government in Ottawa.

August 1: Montrealers are treated to the unforgettable spectacle of watching the R-100, the world’s largest airship, moor at the airport in St. Hubert. The luxurious vessel can sleep 100. It carries 44 passengers and 38 crew on its maiden Trans-Atlantic voyage from the UK. The trip took 78 hours. The dirigible will be in Canada for nearly two weeks. More than a million Canadians will see the vast flying boat. Sister ship R-101 will crash on a flight to India and the R-100 will be dismantled in 1931 and sold for scrap.

August 7: Richard Bedford Bennett is sworn in as the nation’s eleventh prime minister. The New Brunswick native will have a tough row to hoe; millions of Canadians are out of work as the Great Depression continues to worsen.

August 9:  Sprinter Percy Williams sets a world record of 10.33 seconds for the 100-metre dash in Vancouver.

August 9: Jacques Parizeau is born. He will earn a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of London School of Economics and be dedicated to making Quebec an independent country. Entering politics he will become Premier of Quebec in 1994 and step down in 1996.

Immigrants from The Netherlands wait their turn to be processed by Immigration agents at Pier 1 in Halifax.

August 15: The Tory government attempts to stem the flow of immigration into Canada but the new law does not affect British subjects who can travel to Canada for $15 a head, 3^rd Class on the Canada Pacific Steamship Lines. Children under the age of 17 sail for free.

August 16: The British Empire Games open today before an enthusiastic crowd of 17,000 in Hamilton, Ontario. It is the first time the games have ever been held outside of the UK.

September 8: The federal Department of Marine announces that it will establish radio stations in the Arctic communities of Coppermine and Chesterfield Inlet.

A construction crew build a road for the Department of National Defense in Rockliffe, Ontario.

September 20: The House of Commons passes the Unemployment Relief Act. Ottawa will spearhead $20 million worth of projects and hire an estimated 30,000 unemployed men to build large public projects such as highways, wharves and railways.

One of Alberta's best natural resources will be oil.

October 1: Alberta is given control over its natural resources. They have been held in trust by Ottawa since the province joined Confederation in 1905.

October 2: Fed up with criminal activity, a judge in Quebec orders two men convicted of robbing a taxi driver to five years in prison and 18 strokes of the lash.

October 9: J. Errol Boyd becomes the first Canadian to fly across the Atlantic. He leaves Harbour Grace, Newfoundland in The Maple Leaf, a Bellanca WB-2 monoplane. He will make an emergency landing on an island just off the coast of England and then continue to London on the 11^th.

October 21: Demanding $1 a day for single men and $2 a day for married men, unemployed men in Port Arthur (Thunder Bay), Ontario grow rowdy. Every policeman in the city, 30 special officers and the RCMP are called into help make arrests of these alleged Communists.

October 30: Timothy Finley is born in Toronto. He will grow up to become one of the nation’s most famous novelists. He will write screenplays, teleplays and pieces for theatre as well. He will win the Governor General’s Award for his book The Wars in 1977. His best-selling novel will be The Piano Man’s Daughter will be published in 1995. Timothy will die in France in 2002.

November 3: The 1 570-metre (5,150 feet) long  Windsor-Detroit Tunnel is officially open. Passengers may ride the Tunnel Bus for 10 cents. It costs 50 cents to drive a car across but a book of 50 tickets—good for one year—can be had for $20. The international roadway lies 25 metres beneath the Detroit River.

November 12: Now our north is more secure as Norway withdraws its claim against the Sverdrup Islands off the coast of Baffin Island.

November 15: Times may be tough but that doesn't stop Eaton's from sponsoring its annual Christmas parade in downtown Toronto.

People call the 25C note 'shinplaster' because of its small size.

November 18: Union leaders demand the minimum wage be raised from 25 cents to 50 cents and hour for en in factories and the workweek be lowered to 40 hours. Ottawa is shocked at this “Communist-inspired” rhetoric.

 

December 6: The Regina Roughriders go down to defeat to the Toronto Balmy Beach who take home the Grey Cup. This is the third year in a row that the Roughriders have made it to the championship match and lost.

December 8: To prevent mix-ups, babies born in the Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario will now be footprinted at birth. Mothers will be fingerprinted as well.

December 31: There are 3,111 vehicles registered in the Dominion of Newfoundland. That is triple the number reported five years ago. 

Essex, the lower-priced companion car to Hudson, sold 4,005 units during the 1930 calendar year.

1962

 From the big scrapbook of time, here’s a look at Canada in 1962--

 The 1962 Cadillac Sedan de Ville six-window sedan retails for $6,687. Folks purchase 2,830 of the GM’s posh flagships during the calendar year. 

Northern Electric began offering telephones in colours other than black in 1956.

January 1: Newfoundland and Labrador now has its own area code for long distance telephone usage. It is assigned area code 709. New Brunswick will become area code 506.

January 17: James Eugene Carrey is born in Newmarket, Ontario. The precocious kid will think he is funny and send his resume to superstar Carol Burnett when he is ten. With acting in his blood, he will drop out of high school at sixteen and try his hand at standup comedy. Hollywood will love him. Wildly successful at his craft, Jim will earn a star on Canada’s Walk of Fame in 1998.

January 27: Ottawa announces that the nation's new federal immigration policy will be broadened to include any person of any race or background as long as he or she has skills needed in this country. The Queen's Loyal Opposition charges that colour barriers are simply being replaced with education barriers.

Stamps and currency are issued in both French and English.

February 6: As of today, all cheques issued by the Federal Government will be bilingual.

March 6: A bomb destroys a huge hydroelectric transmission tower in Kootenay Lake, British Columbia. The RCMP suspect the sabotage is the work of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors.

March 3: Senator Cairine Mackay Wilson is dead at the age of 77. Appointed by Prime Minister Mackenzie King as the first woman to take a seat in the Senate, she was also Canada’s first female delegate to the United Nations.  in 1955 she broke more ground as the first woman to hold the post of Deputy Speaker in the House of Commons.

Thalidomide is prescribed by doctors under the trade names of Kevadon and Talimol.

March 21: Ottawa orders the drug thalidomide be withdrawn from the market. There is proof that the sedative causes women to give birth to severely deformed babies. More than 100 children will be affected but the Federal Government won't compensate them for nearly 30 years.

March 27: Jann Arden is born in Calgary. The singer and songwriter will win two Juno awards for her hit I would Die For You in 1993.

April 9: Nearly 1,000 Canadian Pacific Railway employees who work at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto end a bitter 11-month long strike. Hotel & Club Employees Union Local 299 wanted a 15-cent hike over three years. Married men earned $27 a week but women earned only $20. The labour disruption was, by and large, unsuccessful.

March 31: Established in 1857, Newfoundland and Labrador's oldest and most successful financial institution—The Newfoundland Savings Bank— is purchased by the Bank of Montreal.

Macintosh the Cat is the logo for Mac's Milk. He will be replaced by Hibou the Owl in 1999.

 April 4: Mac's Milk Limited is incorporated in  Ontario. The convenience store chain will boast 5,906 stores and 52,000 employees throughout North America in 2014, making it the second largest in the industry. Mac's is known as Couche-Tard (night owl) in Quebec and Circle K in Atlantic Canada and the United States.

April 22: The Stanley Cup goes home with the Toronto Maple Leafs, who beat the Chicago Blackhawks, four games to two. It's the Leafs' first Stanley Cup win since 1951.

May 2: Our dollar continues its free-for-all. Today it slides downward more than two cents, the biggest drop in history. To offset the damage, the Bank of Canada sets our dollar permanently at 92.5 cents on the US dollar.

May 9:  A pair of Studebaker Lark VIIIs take first and second place in the Trans-Canada Rally sponsored by Shell Oil. The 6,400-kilometre race is from Vancouver to Quebec City.

Workers will build 21,852 Ramblers this year, up from 8,606 in 1961.

May 17: Orders for Rambler Classics are piling up faster than snowdrifts in a February blizzard. To meet the backlog, officials announce the Brampton, Ontario plant will be doubled in size at a cost of $2.5 million. The ultra-modern plant was only opened in January of 1961.

May 23: Workers begin drilling the first tunnel for Montreal’s new subway system—to be called le Metro. If all goes well the Metro will open in time for Expo ’67, Canada’s 100^th birthday party, and millions are expected to come. By 2010 the Metro will be the third busiest in North America and will have carried 7 billion passengers--the equivalent of the planet's population.

May 27: Actress Lucille Watson is dead of a heart attack in New York City at the age of 83. Born in Quebec City, the star of stage and the silver screen appeared in more than 40 Broadway productions and more than 40 Hollywood movies. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role as Aunt March in Little Women.

Trent University will be built along the Otonabee River.

May 31: The Government of Ontario announces the creation of a new institution of higher learning. Trent University will be located in Peterborough. 

May 31: It is the birth date of Corey Hart who will grow up to be a “bad boy” rocker with his pop hit, Sunglasses at Night.

Hillman will become part of Chrysler UK before the brand is laid to rest in 1970.

June:  Sales of imported cars will drop sharply now that a hefty new tax is imposed by the Federal Government. The tariff is designed to protect the domestic auto industry.

June 4: Ontario Hydro gets its first taste of atomic energy as nuclear power is fed into the grid for the first time from the Rolphton, Ontario generator. The joint effort between Atomic Energy of Canada Limited and Canadian General Electric has been eight years in the making.

June 8: Acting in the belief that God told them to do so, a group of Doukhobor women near Trail, British Columbia set fire to more than fifty of their own homes and allow them to burn to the ground. They throw stones at police and reporters who arrive on the scene.

St. Vincent de Paul Penitentiary opened in 1873. It is the nation's third oldest federal prison. It will close in 1989.

June 17: Convicts set fire to the buildings during a seven-hour riot at the St. Vincent de Paul Prison, north of Montreal. A total of 27 prisoners are injured during the rampage.

The Right Honourable John George Diefenbaker is our 13th Prime Minister.

June 18: The voters have spoken. John Diefenbaker and his Conservatives are returned to power with a severely reduced number of seats in the House of Commons. The minority government will not last long. Eleven months later citizens will line up at the polls to exercise their democratic rights, again. This time, they will turf out the Tories in favour of Mike Pearson’s Grits.

Summer: The curtain rises for the first time on Shaw Festival in the Ontario town of Niagara-on-the-Lake. The eight-week season is held in the Assembly Room in the historic Court House. The event will mushroom beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and in 1973 Queen Elizabeth II will dedicate the Festival Theatre. The popular venue will grow to be eight months long and become one of the largest repertory theatres in the world.

June 22: Nicholas Lea is born in New Westminister, BC. He will grow up to be an actor starring in TV shows like the X Files, Kyle XY and Whistler, star in the spy drama, Arrow, as well as Hollywood movies.

July 30: Fourteen years after Parliament voted to build it, Prime Minister Diefenbaker is in Roger’s Pass to open the Trans-Canada Highway.  Some 3,200 kilometres of the 7,511-kilometre long road are still unpaved but that doesn’t put a damper on anyone’s excitement. For the first time in history one can drive across the Dominion to St. John’s from Victoria without leaving the country.

July 1: The Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Act goes into force today. Unhappy physicians promptly go on strike to protest the law because they do not want to be civil servants and work for the province. Nearly a hundred doctors are brought in from the UK to provide emergency care. The bitter dispute will be resolved on July 23.

August 25: Polar explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson is dead at the age of 82. The Gimli, Manitoba hero conquered the ice caps to make many important contributions to our understanding of the Arctic.

September 13: Place Ville Marie is dedicated and open for business in Montreal.
The magnificent skyscraper is designed in the shape of a cross and takes honours as the tallest building in the British Commonwealth.

Dr. Colin Franklin, Keith Brown and Dr. John Barry (left to right) with the Alouette. Canada is the third country in the world, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to put a satellite into space.

September 29: The 145-kilo satellite Allouette is launched. Once in orbit, it will study the upper surface of the ionosphere. Ottawa intends to use the knowledge gathered to launch a series of domestic communication satellites.

October 22: The RCAF is on high alert and ordinary citizens scramble to prepare for World War Three as the United States and the Soviet Union threaten to duke it out. The flash point is the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuban soil.

October 25: The Bedford Institute of Oceanography is opened in Nova Scotia. The marine research facility is one of the largest in the world. Its 15-hecatare campus is spread out along the north side of Halifax Harbour.

October 31: Federal finance minister George Nowlan rises in the House of Commons to announce that automakers may import engines and transmissions duty free if their export of Canadian-made parts is of equal value.

The Canada-only Acadian will be one of the General Motors family of fine cars to use locally made automatic transmissions.

November 1: The new 25-percent tax federal tax on automatic transmissions prompts GM to announce that it will build them domestically.

September 13: At a cost of $31 million, Toronto’s new City Hall is dedicated by Governor General Georges Vanier. Designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell, his design called for two elegantly curved towers to flank the Council Chambers.

December 2: The Winnipeg Blue Bombers finally whip the Ti-Cats 28 to 27 for the Grey Cup at the CNE Stadium in Toronto. The game takes two days to complete because it is interrupted by dense fog coming from Lake Ontario. History books record this match as “The Fog Bowl.”

Arthur Lucas (left) and Ronald Turpin (right) are the last men to be hanged.

December 11: At 12:02 am, two convicted criminals are hanged until dead at the Don Jail in Toronto. Ronald Turpin, 29, killed a police officer. Arthur Lucas was an American who killed two witnesses scheduled to appear in a trial. They will be the last men to be hanged in this country as capital punishment is soon to be abolished.

 Pontiac is the best selling car in the country. A top-of-the-line Parisienne four-door hardtop is seen here.

December 31: It is the biggest year ever for the automakers as more than 500,000 domestically built cars and trucks roll out the factory doors. The Top Ten selling cars for the calendar year are the full-sized Pontiac, the full-sized Chevrolet, the full-sized Ford, Volkswagen, Ford Fairlane, Rambler, the Chevrolet Chevy II, Ford Falcon, Mercury Meteor and the Valiant.

Studebaker sponsors the popular TV comedy Mr. Ed. The plot line revolves around a talking horse.

02: With a list price of $3,640 f.o.b. Hamilton, Ontario, the Studebaker Cruiser V-8 four-door sedan weighs in at 1,374 kilos (3,030 pounds). The final tally for the calendar year is 7,386 units sold.