1953

From the big scrapbook of time, here’s a look at Canada in 1953--

Meteor is slotted between Ford and Mercury in price.

Meteor continues to be popular with the buying public. Workers at Ford turn out 40,115 of the mid-priced beauties for the 1953 model year. It is the fourth best selling car in the Dominion, after Chevrolet, Ford and Pontiac.

January 4: GM announces completion of a sprawling 7-hectare truck factory in Oshawa, Ontario. The price tag is a cool $4.5 million. Colonel Sam and his boys will recoup the expense handily; the new facility can turn out 50,000 vehicles a year.

January 9:  The Chevrolet Bel Air series is unveiled nationally. The snazzy and jazzy top-of-the line bowtie will cost anywhere from $1,954 to $2,204 f.o.b. Oshawa, Ontario.

January 9: Margeurite Pitre is hanged for her role in blowing up a Canadian Pacific Airlines DC-3, killing all 23 on board so she can eliminate her boyfriend's wife. It is the biggest mass murder in North American history. She is the 13^th woman to ever hang and she will be the last because the death penalty will become history in 1976.

January 16: Workers at Ford have done their part to stop the spread of Communism by completing a $4.9 million military order for M-38 four-wheel drive trucks.

January 24: Chrysler Canada is awarded a $3.9 million military contract to build cargo trucks, ambulances and spare parts. Much of what is built will be headed for the conflict in Korea.

January 27: The debate rages on from coast to coast but the Canadian Dental Association and the Canadian Medical Association formally approve of adding fluoride to municipal water in an effort to fight tooth decay.

Crowds throng the fibreglass Chevrolet Corvette.

February 13: General Motors' famed Motorama opens at the Canadian National Motor Show in Toronto. It is the first Motorama exhibit in this country since the end of World War Two.

February 16:  Lanny McDonald is born in Hanna, Alberta. He will lace up his skates for the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Colorado Rockies and lead the Calgary Flames to a Stanley Cup Victory in 1989. When he retires he will have 500 goals, 506 assists and 1,111 regular season games under the belt.

The most enduring of Kraft foods, 2010, we will consume 1.7 million boxes of KD of the 7 million boxes sold globally every week. KD will be the single most popular grocery item across the nation.

February 16: James Lewis Kraft is dead at the age of 78. The Stevensville, Ontario native was founder and president of Kraft Foods. As an inventer, he created products such as Velveeta, Miracle Whip and good ‘ole Kraft Dinner.

Introduced last year, the de Haviland DH-106 is the world's first commercial jetliner.

March 3: A Canadian Pacific Airlines de Haviland DH-106 Comet crashes upon takeoff from the airport in Karachi, Pakistan. All eleven on board are killed. This tragic incident marks the world’s first commercial jet crash.

March 13, 1953: The first domestically-built Hudson Jet rolls off the line in Tilbury, Ontario. The starting price for the pint-sized Hudson is $2,393. Only four-door Jets are produced in Canada and production will reach 1,267 units by the end of the model year.

March 19:  It’s Oscar Night in Hollywood and Neighbours, a National Film Board production, brings home a golden statuette.

Montreal architect Ernest Cormier was chosen in1950 to create our gift to the United Nations.

March 27: The people of Canada give a gift to the United Nations. Our gift is seven majestically sculpted doors that open into the General Assembly. Each door is glass and nickel silver with bas relief sculptures of Peace, Justice, Truth and Brotherhood.

March 30:  Domestic manufacturers used 2 million kilos of natural rubber, 2.4 million kilos of synthetic rubber and 770,000 kilos of recycled rubber in making new tires and tubes this month.

Space Command is the CBC's first dramatic series. It depicted life on space station SXW1. William Shatner was one of the stars.

April 8: The chairman of the CBC reports that it costs up to thirty times as much money to develop a programme for television as it does to buy one ready made from the US or the UK.

The 1953 Hudson exhibit at the London Motor Show in Earl's Court.

April 13: Hudson lines in Tilbury, Ontario are shut down because of parts shortages. Workers will be called back in two days but everyone will be glad when the war in Korea is over.

April 16: The Habs beat the tar out of the Boston Bruins in four games to win Lord Stanley’s cup.

April 18: Frederick Alan “Rick” Moranis is born in Toronto. He will grow up to become a comedian best known for being Bob—half of the Mackenzie Brothers. His wife will die of liver cancer in 1991 and he will retire from the limelight to raise his children.

May 3: Communist troops attack and defeat the Royal Canadian Regiment on Hill 97 in Korea. The death count is 26. Another 27 soldiers are wounded and seven have been taken prisoner.

Perhaps Pontiac will be assembled in the converted factory.

May 8: GM announces that its new Oshawa truck factory will be converted to auto assembly and expanded immediately to cover 17 hectares.

May 11: The first car rolls out the doors of Ford’s new assembly plant in Oakville, Ontario. The Ford Custom is the 2,794,525^th vehicle built by workers at the Ford Motor Company of Canada, Limited.

May 14: It’s a boy for Violet and Tuck Cochrane, a bush pilot in Lynn Lake, Manitoba. Their son Tom will be inclined to play the guitar and be lead singer for the group Red Rider. The seven-time Juno winner will be inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2003.

May 21: It is a little after 4.30 pm when an F4 tornado rips through Sarnia, Ontario leaving four dead, 40 wounded and 500 people homeless. Damage is estimated at $15 million.

1953 Studebaker Champion four- and two-door sedans.

June 1. The doors are shut at Studebaker’s factory in Hamilton Ontario. Because weapons of war have priority over civilian manufacture, there is not a transmission to be had anywhere in the land. Five hundred workers will wait at home until some can be built and shipped and the other 325 men will inventory the goods. They all go back to work nine days later.

June 2:  Millions stand in a London downpour to watch the coronation of our new monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. Film crews immediately fly the tapes to Canada, courtesy of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Eight hours later we are watching the historic event on the CBC. Even our soldiers fighting in Korea celebrate by firing red, white and blue smoke shells at the enemy.

June 20: The highest temperature ever --with the Humidex calculated into the equation—is recorded in Windsor, Ontario as folks swelter through 52.1C heat.

July 1:  It is Dominion Day throughout the land. Canada is 86 years old. Workers in Toronto build 238 Nash cars this month.

Listeners who wrote to CBW would receive a QSL card like this one, a written confirmation of reception.

July 5: The CBC affiliate CBW opens for business in a new, state-of-the-art $1 million studio complex located at 541 Portage Street in Winnipeg. Broadcasting at 990 on the AM dial, the clear channel, 50,000-watt signal can be heard throughout much of North America.

July 13: The Stratford Shakespearean Festival of Canada opens for the very first time in a large canvas tent erected on the banks of the Avon River. in Stratford, Ontario. Actor Alec Guinness is first to appear on the makeshift stage. The six-week event is a success and will grow into an eight-month long love affair with theatre. Sixty years later the Stratford Shakespeare Festival will draw hundreds of thousand of people the world over.

July 15: It is the birth date of Mila Pivnicki. When she is three, her family will move to Canada from Yugoslavia so that her father can study for a graduate degree in psychiatry at McGill University. Mila will study engineering at McGill but will drop out at nineteen, to marry a lawyer by the name of Brian Mulroney. Mrs. Mulroney will be active in many good causes, including the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

July 22: Paul Quarrington is born. When he grows up he will write quirky novels including Home Game and Hometown Heroes: On the Road with Canada’s National Hockey Team. The Toronto author will win the Stephen Leacock Award in 1987 and the Governor General’s Award for fiction in 1989.

July 27: The war is over. The North Koreans and the United Nations sign a truce to end the three-year long bloodbath. Millions of civilians are dead. Sadly, 314 Canadians were killed and 1,211 more injured. The troops can come home and life will get back to normal for all of us but Korea will still be divided sixty years later.

August:  The RCMP begin moving Inuit off their traditional lands and into settlements. The first to move are 53 Inuit who are taken from Inuujuak (Port Harrison), Quebec, and Pond Inlet, Cornwallis Island and Ellesmere Island to new land much farther north. The idea behind this scheme is to establish sovereignty over the Arctic.

The Right Honourable Louis St. Laurent is our 12th Prime Minister. He will serve as PM from 1948 to 1957.

August 9: The federal election is over. Voters have handed “Uncle Louis” and his Grits a commanding majority in the House of Commons. The Tories could only muster enough votes for fifty seats. The CCF takes 23, Social Credit wins 15 seats and six are taken by independent candidates.

August 24: A second heat wave that hits southern Ontario is so fierce that in Hamilton, Studebaker is forced to send the workers home for two days until the weather breaks.

October 7: The war is over but it is virtually impossible to find parts to build cars. GM cuts the workweek to 37 hours while waiting out the misery of parts shortages.

Canadian soldiers in Dieppe, France being marched to prison by their Nazi captors on August 19, 1942.

October 8: The Canadian War Claims Commission releases its shocking report filled with a long list of horrific abuses suffered by the 9,000 Canadian soldiers in Nazi POW camps.

October 16: The Roman Catholic Church issues a statement calling on parents not to allow teens to form romantic attachments. The social custom leads far too frequently to the “occasion of sin.”

October 25: The first privately owned television station in the Dominion takes to the airwaves in Sudbury, Ontario. CKSO will change its call letters to CISI in 1971 but it will still serve the area as a CTV affiliate in the 21^st Century.

November 19: It’s a boy for Robert and Geneva Mays. They will joke that James’ first word will not be “mama” or “dada” it will be “Buick.” He will grow up to become an automotive historian, specializing in documenting stories of the Canadian industry.

November 23:  Built at Vickers shipyard in Sorel, Quebec, the 107-metre long M.V. William Carson is launched today. The 8,300-tonne freight and cargo ferry will sail between North Sydney, Nova Scotia and St. John’s, Newfoundland until the terminal in Port-aux-Basques is upgraded. She will sink in 1977 after striking an iceberg.

November 28: The 41st  Grey Cup match is won by the Hamilton Tiger Cats, having thumped the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 12 to 6 before a crowd of 27,313 fans at Varsity Stadium in Toronto.

December 10: A fire in seat cushion stock at Ford’s trim department does $10,000 worth of damage and causes the entire production line to be stopped for a day-and-a-half in Windsor.

December 10: Canadian Press reports that Manitoba has a total of 2,318 cases of polio, of which 85 have died. Government officials say this incidence exceeds all known Canadian and world figures.

Five-year old Elinor will help raise money for the March of Dimes, an organization that raises money to fight polio.

December 31: The nation reels in fear as 8,734 people have contracted polio this year. It will turn out to be the worst year on record for this horrible disease that cripples and kills.

December 31:  The Top Ten selling cars this year were Chevrolet, Ford, Pontiac, Meteor, Dodge, Plymouth, Buick, Oldsmobile, Studebaker and Monarch.

1958

From the big scrapbook of time, here’s a look at Canada in 1958--

January 1: A cashier at a Dominion Store in Vancouver earns $65.41 a week. Her counterpart at a Safeway supermarket in Winnipeg earns $50.59 a week. A woman cashier at a Miracle Food Mart in Toronto earns $60.59 weekly and a female cashier at a Steinberg store in Montreal earns $50.16 a week.

Dief the Chief on the campaign trail in Quebec City.

January 12: For the second time in two years, Prime Minister Diefenbaker stumps the Dominion, looking for votes. He outlines his dream of a strong Canada before a crowd of 5,000 in Winnipeg. Among his election promises he pledges $175 million to build roads to the Arctic.

January 16: Lester B. Pearson replaces Louis St. Laurent as leader of the federal Liberal Party.

February 1: The first Native Canadian is appointed to the Senate. The honour goes to James Gladstone, former president of the Indian Association of Alberta. He is 71.

February 6: Lucie Wheeler becomes the first Canadian to win the World Ski Championship, held in Austria. The 23-year old native of St. Jovite, Quebec modestly tells the press, “My skis carried me in the right direction.”

Countries in red show member states in the British Commonwealth.

March 12: Queen Elizabeth II declares the second Monday in March be observed and marked as Commonwealth Day. This replaces the old name of Empire Day—observed in Canada since 1898--as a day to honour the association and friendship of all the member nations in the British Commonwealth.

March 31: John Diefenbaker leads the Progressive Conservatives to the largest landslide in electoral history.

April 3: An Avro Arrow breaks the sound barrier on a test flight at Malton Airport, west of Toronto. The world’s most advanced fighter jet is capable of travelling 2,400 kilometres an hour. The company has spent $200 million to develop the new plane.

April 5: In North America’s largest non-nuclear explosion, Ripple Rock is blown up with 1 247 Metric tonnes (1,375 short tonnes) of Nitramex 2H explosives. Located between Vancouver Island and Quadra Island, the explosion enlarges Seymour Narrows. The twin-peak mountain lays only three metres below the water’s surface. It had sunk 114 vessels and taken 119 lives. The event is broadcast live on the CBC.

April 15: The Queen Elizabeth Hotel opens in Montreal. The elegant landmark is the flagship of the Canadian National Railway and boasts 1,037 first class rooms. Just a few of the distinguished guests who will check in include Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen Mother, Prince Charles, Fidel Castro, Charles de Gaulle, Princess Grace of Monaco, Indira Gandhi, Jacques Chirac, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, Perry Como, Joan Crawford, John Travolta, Mikhail Baryshnikov, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

April 20: The Montreal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins four games to two. This is the third year in a row that the Habs bring home the Stanley Cup.

May 3: Citizens of Brockville, Ontario are shocked when Giuseppe Cotroni, Rene Martin and Peter Stepanoff drill through the wall of the Brockville Trust and Savings Company Trust in the evening hours to steal $3.75 million worth of cash, bonds and jewellery.

May 4: Famed comedy duo Wayne & Shuster appear on the Ed Sullivan Show in New York City for the first time. The comedians will become one of Ed’s favourites, invited back 66 more times—more than any other act.

May 10: Gaetan Boucher is born in Charlesbourg, Quebec. He will grow up and skate his way to five Olympic medals, setting two world records along the way.

May 12: The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) pact is signed between Canada and the United States. We will come to each other’s defence in time of attack by foreign enemies.

May 22: Lisa Dal Bello is born in Toronto. She will grow up to become a songwriter and recording artist, best known for her single Pretty Girls.

May 25: No longer will a telephone operator say, “Number please” to Torontonians. As of today telephone users may dial direct to long distance locations thanks to a new, state-of-the-art machine called the 4XB that replaces the need for a phone operator.

June 17: Tragedy strikes in Vancouver when the not-quite-completed Second Narrows Bridge collapses, killing 18 workmen and injuring another 20. Design flaw is cited as the reason for the disaster.

June 24: It’s a boy for Claude “Red” Charest and wife Rita. Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, son Jean will grow up to be a politician. He will be leader of the federal Progressive Conservative Party before stepping down to be the Liberal Premier of Quebec.

July 1: The CBC begins coast-to-coast television transmission. From Victoria to Sydney folks can warm up their Electrohomes and Northern Electrics for live homegrown entertainment. Newfoundland and Labrador will be added next year. At the same time the Trans-Canada Telephone System is operational. The microwave relay network is the longest in the world. State-of-the-art technology permits 2,400 phone calls and two television programmes to be carried across the country at the same time.

Dominion Day: The ten Lost Villages, located near Cornwall, Ontario disappear forever, deliberately flooded by engineers at eight o’clock this morning to make way for the new St. Lawrence Seaway. It takes four days for the communities to be completely submerged.

July 10: US President Dwight D. Eisenhower is in Ottawa to discuss a comprehensive joint defense plan with Prime Minister Diefenbaker. The two leaders agree to undertake joint studies for a continental response in the event of nuclear attack from the Soviet Union.

July 16: The Manitoba Theatre Centre opens in Winnipeg. It plays host to the oldest theatre festival in North America and is the third most attended today.

The practical Volvo Amazon will be rebadged as Canadian and carry special design cues.

July 21: Volvo Canada Limited is incorporated. The Swedish automaker will open an assembly plant in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia in June of 1963.

In 1205 The Royal Mint will honour Terry Fox with a loonie to commemorate his heroism.

July 28: Terrance Stanley Fox is born in Winnipeg. When cancer takes a leg, the inspired teenager will raise money for cancer research by attempting to run across the country. He will start in St. John’s, Newfoundland and rack up 5,373 kilometres on the Marathon of Hope before cancer reaches his lungs. He will die at the age of 23. His legacy will be the annual Terry Fox Run, marked throughout the nation. Terry will be voted the most influential Canadian of the 20^th Century.

The Friendly Giant's castle was seen in more than 3,000 episodes of the show. More than 500,000 viewers watch each day.

September 30: Look up. Look w-a-y up! The Friendly Giant debuts on the CBC. Rusty the Rooster and Jerome the Giraffe will help the Friendly Giant entertain generations of kids for more than 3,000 episodes until the show is cancelled in 1985.

September 6: The National Capital Commission is established by the federal government to promote, preserve and protect the land around Ottawa and Hull.

September 11: Poet Robert W. Service is dead at the age of 84. He was world famous for his tales of the Yukon, including his poems the Shooting of Dan McGrew and the Cremation of Sam McGee.

September 16; Jennifer Tilly is born in Los Angeles. She will grow up in British Columbia and become an Oscar-nominated Hollywood star as well as a successful high-stakes poker player.

The PM (third from the right) is in Haines Junction, YT.

September 26: The first Prime Minister to visit the Arctic, John Diefenbaker promises to build roads and infrastructure as he looks for Progressive Conservative votes in Whitehorse.

October 5: The M.V. William Carson docks in Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland for the first time. Having come from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, the enormous icebreaking ferry holds 260 passengers and 60 automobiles. The 107-metre long ship will strike an iceberg off the coast of Battle Harbour and sink 150 metres to the bottom of the ocean on June 3, 1977.

October 23: Yet another coalmine explosion in Springhill, Nova Scotia brings more sorrow and tragedy to this small Maritime town. This time 74 men are killed in the No. 2 Cumberland mine. The shaft will be sealed shut forever.

The 1958 Mercury Park Lane Phaeton Sedan

November 7: The new “super” Mercury lineup is unveiled at Lincoln-Mercury-Meteor dealers across the land. The “Big M” is nine inches longer than last year’s offering.

November 29: Some 33,000 fans watch as the Hamilton Tiger Cats lose the Grey Cup to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in Vancouver. The final score is 35 to 28. This is the first time the teams have played under the banner of the Canadian Football League, even though the Grey Cup has been the ultimate football prize since 1909.

Christmas Day: Alannah Myles is born in Toronto. She will grow up to become a singer-songwriter, whose recordings will include Love Is, Lover Of Mine, Still Got This Thing, as well as her number one smash hit, Black Velvet.

December 31: We’ve got 639,523 kilometres of highways and byways throughout the country and 4,723,825 are vehicles lawfully registered to operate on them. Cops handed out 2.2 million traffic tickets this year. Citizens in Ontario got 52 percent of all tickets issues throughout the Dominion. Statistics show that 85 percent of all women breaking the Federal Liquor Act are arrested while operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.