1941

National Snapshot

From the big scrapbook of time, here’s a look at Canada in 1941-

The 1941 Pontiac DeLuxe Torpedo Four-door Sedan rides on a trim 3 022-millimetre (119-inch) wheelbase.

More than half a million Canadian men and women are in uniform, serving King and Country. Doing without meat, coffee or even cars is nothing compared to the heartbreaking sacrifice of saying “good-bye” and sending a loved one off to war. GM Canada builds 7,747 Pontiacs this year. All are sold without spare tires, so that the armed forces can have the rubber.

CBC reporters go to war, reporting from the front lines.

January 1: As of today the CBC has its own full-fledged news department with correspondents in the field. No longer will our public broadcaster depend solely on the Canadian Press wire service for reporting world events. News now accounts for 20 percent of all of the CBC’s broadcast programming.

First Ministers object to the federal government's attempt to grab more power from the provinces.

January 15: The Rowell-Sirois Report is roundly rejected by the premiers at a Dominion-Provincial Conference. Despite the fact that Alberta and Quebec refused to participate and the report was three years in the making, the commission recommends that Ottawa be given more jurisdiction over provincial matters, including the creation and administration of a national unemployment scheme.

February 3: Men who are conscripted for military duty will now train for 120 days, not 30 as they did previously.

The 1941 Studebaker Champion

February 18: Automobile rationing begins. Anyone requiring a new car must fill out paperwork and have it approved by the Federal Motor Vehicle Controller. The applicant must prove that owning a new car is “essential to home front” needs. Fewer than 700 cars will be released to civilians during the year.

February 21: Sir Frederick Grant Banting is dead at the age of 49. The co-inventor of insulin is killed in a plane crash near Musgrave Harbour, Newfoundland.  The pilot reported one engine had gone out some 80 kilometres from shore and the second engine failed as the pilot tried to land on a frozen lake. Banting was a doctor on active military duty when he died. He received the Nobel Peace Prize for his insulin discovery and was knighted by King George V in 1934.

February 25: All Japanese residents and citizens alike must be thumbprinted and show their new identity cards wherever they go.

New Fords come down the assembly line.

March: Ottawa decrees that automobile production must be slashed to 50 percent of 1940 levels. Production in automobile plants is now primarily dedicated to building weapons of war.

March 12: Federal Agriculture Minister James Gardiner slashes wheat quotas to 65 percent of last year’s acreage. Furthermore there will be no price increase on the harvested crop. There will, however, be a subsidy of $9.60 for each hectare diverted to summer fallow and a $4.80 payment for each hectare diverted to hay.

The St. Lawrence Seaway is 3 774 kilometres long.

March 19: There has been talk since 1909 but today Canada and the United States sign an agreement to construct the St. Lawrence Seaway. Highway H-2-0 will open in 1959.

U-boat 552 will be scuttled by its crew on May 2, 1945 to keep it from falling into Allied hands.

April 30: Carrying soldiers to Europe, the SS Nerissa is torpedoed by U-552, nicknamed 'The Red Devil' as it nears the Irish coast. The ship sinks in four minutes. Only 84 of the 290 of those on board the steamer will be rescued.

Conscientious objectors build a road through Banff National Park in Jasper, Alberta. COs are looked down by many on as men who don't love their country.

May 29: Men who refuse to carry arms because they are conscientious objectors will now report to labour camps for Alternative Service. This affects some 10,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Mennonites, Doukhobors, and Seventh-day Adventists.

June -- the National Film Board is just two months old but it is first class when it comes to production. The NFB wins its first Oscar for the documentary Churchill’s Island. It is part of the Canada Carries On series.

The Boblo Island Amusement Park opened in 1898. It will draw millions of tourists until it closes in 1993.

June 9: More than 10,000 Americans have crowded into the Boblo Island Amusement Park in the Detroit River near Amherstburg, Ontario. Many of the visitors are kids and ferries run until three o’clock in the morning, making  panicked parents furious at the long delays.

June 11: Alexander C. Rutherford is dead at the age of 84. He was appointed as the first Premier of Alberta when it joined Confederation in 1905. Rutherford’s government encouraged the railways, promoted immigration and--fed up with poor service from the Alberta Bell Telephone System--put government money into the development of a publicly owned provincial telephone system.

June 11: The Dominion Bureau of Statistics tells us that Canada's population is growing strong. There are 11,506,655 of us stretched out from Cape Breton Island to Vancouver Island and thousands of homes in between.

June 25: Denys Arcand is born in Deschambault, Quebec. He will grow up to be a Genie and Oscar-winning movie maker, known for such films as On est au cotton, The Crime of Ovide Plouffe, Le Declin de l’empire American and Jesus of Montreal.

June 27: Ottawa announces that in September it will begin recruitment of 21,000 women to serve in non-combatant roles in the military.

July 1: Premier MacMillan of Nova Scotia dedicates the nation’s newest national park. Located in Cape Breton, the 949-square kilometre Highlands National Park is also home to a world-class golf course.

July 1: As of today, all unemployed persons are enroled in a new federal scheme called the Unemployment Insurance Act.

July 2: The Royal Canadian Air Force begins recruiting women to serve in uniform.

Ron Turcotte astride Triple Crown winner, Secretariat.

July 22: Ronald Joseph Morel Turcotte is born in Drummond, New Brunswick. He will grow up to become an internationally famed racehorse jockey, riding to the Triple Crown with Secretariat in 1973. A 1978 accident will leave him disabled. He will be inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame and be inducted into the Order of Canada.

July 30: It is the birthdate of Paul Anka, born in Ottawa. He will grow up to croon Top Forty hits that will make girls swoon. City Council will one day name a street in his honour.

The HMCS Arrowhead was built in Sorel, Quebec and commissioned last year.

August: Canadian Corvettes are doing such a good job at hunting down U-Boats in the Battle of the Atlantic that the German press reports submarine captains are “boiling mad.’

August 9: British Prime Minister Churchill and US President Roosevelt meet for the first time on board the USS Augusta in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland for a first summit. Out of these strategic meetings will come the Atlantic Charter, a vision for a post-World War Two world.

September: National Farm Radio Forum adds a new segment to its show. Listeners can now call in to give their opinions on topics. This novel idea makes the CBC programme highly controversial. Two newcomers, Johhny Wayne & Frank Shuster, are first heard on the CBC. The comic duo delivers some very funny sketches as part of the Buckingham Blend Rhythm Show.

September 31: Soldiers riot at an amusement park in Truro, Nova Scotia. Thousands of onlookers watch in fear as the army men utterly trash the place.  Military police are called to subdue the 500 angry men in uniform. The dispute began yesterday when the irate park owner shot and wounded a soldier.

October 18: National price and wage controls take effect today. Everything from salaries to rent is frozen for the duration of the war, in order to prevent inflationary spirals. Inflation is already running at 6 percent.  The Wartime Prices and Trade Board will regulate production of and rationing of all consumer goods.

October 31: An explosion at the Brazeau Collieries in Nordegg, Alberta kills twenty miners. The bodies of the deceased are brought to the surface laid out in the theatre, which has been transformed into a makeshift morgue. The mine will close in 1955 and by the 1980s Nordegg is a ghost town.

November 16: Nearly 2,000 Canadian soldiers arrive in the British Colony of Hong Kong to assist in defense from Japanese attack. Their vehicles never arrive. Some of the men have been whisked off to war so quickly they do not even have basic rifle training.

The USS West Virginia battleship burns and sinks after the Japanese attack the Hawaiian port of Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941. More than 2,400 Americans die in the surprise raid.

December 7: Parliament declares war on Imperial Japan after its navy attacks American military installations in the US Territory of Hawaii.

St. Pierre & Miquelon is the first part of France to be liberated from the pro-Nazi Vichy government.

December 9: The French overseas department of St. Pierre and Miquelon are declared to be part of Free France when three shiploads of French marines under General Charles DeGaulle’s orders step ashore and depose the Governor, who has pledged the colony's allegiance to Marshall Petain. This puts to an end the concerns among  Canada, Newfoundland and the USA as to who should look after the islands located in Cabot Strait between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

December 12:  By order of Parliament rubber tire manufacturing ceases.

This photo shows a few of the more than 1,400 Canadian soldiers who were captured by the Japanese in the Battle of Hong Kong. They will spend four years in miserable conditions before they are liberated.

December 25:  After eighteen days of fierce fighting, the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong falls to the Japanese. Among the Allied losses are 290 Canadian soldiers dead, 493 wounded. They will spend the rest of the war as slave labourers in Japan. Sadly, another 255 will die in Japanese prison camps.

December 30: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is in Ottawa to address a joint session of Parliament. The House of Commons is filled to overflowing with dignitaries and foreign diplomats. His speech is broadcast nationwide on the CBC.  Churchill tells loyal Canadians how much Britons appreciate their sacrifices on behalf of the mother country. “ We have suffered together and we shall conquer together.” 

1941 Ford C11ADF  started life as a station wagon. It was shipped to Cairo where it was modified for Field Marshall Sir Harold Alexander. It features right-hand drive.

December 31: Ford of Canada closes out the calendar year with production of 13,890 Ford automobiles, 3,676 Mercury passenger cars and 8,826 Ford trucks for civilian uses both here and throughout the Empire. Workers in Windsor have also built 1,311 Ford cars and six Mercurys for the military. The War Department has also purchased 9,593 Ford trucks.

1941 McLaughlin-Buick styling is called 'Mass-Stream' this year.

December 31: GM Canada reports year-end production of 22,502 Chevrolets, 7,747 Pontiacs, 3,098, 3,126 Oldsmobiles and McLaughlin-Buicks. In addition, 67,167 Chevrolet and Maple Leaf trucks were built along with 4,823 GMCs and 101 Pontiac trucks. 

1954

From the big scrapbook of time, here’s a look at Canada in 1954--

Ford is the second best selling car in the Dominion in 1954. The Mainline Tudor Sedan retails for $2,132.

January: The Red Tide is creeping into British Columbia. The Mayor of Victoria, British Columbia tells the press that all Communist books have been removed from the public library system and destroyed.

January 1: The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto is created. Gone are the villages of Long Branch, New Toronto, Mimico, Weston, Forest Hill and Leaside. The Townships of Etobicoke, York, North York, East York and Scarborough are now boroughs. Metro will be dissolved in 1998 in favour of a more cost efficient City of Toronto.

The compact Hudson Jet is built in Tilbury, Ontario.

January 4:  The market for new cars is so weak that Hudson shuts down its Tilbury, Ontario assembly line. It will be closed for 60 days. In Hamilton, Studebaker has been closed since October 9 of last year and Nash turned off the lights in its Toronto plant on December 9.

The 1954 Meteor Ranch Wagon is built in Oakville, Ontario.

January 6: Ford plays host to nearly 1,000 dealers in Toronto to kick off its Golden Jubilee Conference in Toronto.

January 8: The first oil from Alberta arrives in Sarnia, Ontario courtesy of a new pipeline. The Trans-Canada pipeline makes the country more energy self-sufficient.

January 11: In a bid to stimulate sales, executives at Ford of Canada reduce the prices of the Monarch Lucerne and Mercury Monterey by $373.

January 18: Engineers at Chrysler Canada’s powerhouse go on strike. The car lines will be down for five days and the truck lines for seven, idling 6,000 workers.

January 22: The 1954 Mercury trucks are shown off to the public. New this year is the M-700 in the Big Job series.

January 30: A freak, mid-winter tornado hits White Point Beach, Nova Scotia, producing hail and lightning along the Atlantic seaboard before touching down again near Liverpool.

1954 Nash Rambler four-door sedan tipped the scales at 1 195 kilos on a stretched 2 743-millimetre wheelbase.

February 8: Nash calls its 334 employees back to work. Two days later the company cuts prices of its Rambler by $43 and lowers the price of the Statesman by $270 to clear out a backlog of unsold cars.

February 13: Agnes Campbell MacPhail is dead at the age of 63. The first woman to be elected as a Member of Parliament the House of Commons, the Honourable member represented the Bruce-Grey Riding  in Ontario for 14 years as a strong voice for progressive politics and stood strong on rural issues.

Fargo is sold by Chrysler-Plymouth dealers.

February 28: The revamped 1954 Dodge and Fargo trucks are unveiled to the public.

The Oldsmobile 88 is General Motors' mid-priced entry in the domestic market.

March:  Oldsmobile Rocket engines are now being built for GM Canada by McKinnon Industries in Grantham, Ontario.

March 4: Catherine O’Hara is born in Toronto during a winter blizzard so fierce it forces GM and Nash to shut down their factories for the day. O’Hara will star in two dozen flicks, including Home Alone and Beetlejuice.

The Soviet team at opening  ceremonies of the 21st World Hockey Championship.

March 7: The USSR sweeps Canada to win the World Hockey Championship in Stockholm, Sweden. The final score is 7 to 2.

March 8: Prime Minister St. Laurent inspects the 25^th Canadian Brigade, serving in South Korea.

Ford's Plant One in Windsor, Ontario.

March 10: Ford and Meteor assembly is transferred to Oakville from Windsor.

March 26: Figures released today reveal that 8,000 Canadians to have polio and 441 died of the horrible disease last year. It is hoped that a new vaccine currently being tested will stop the epidemic.

This picture was taken on opening day. The 7.4-kilometre long system has 12 stations, stretching from Union Station to Eglinton Avenue.

March 30: The subway system in Toronto opens to the public. Hopefully, the subway will take some of the vehicle traffic off of Yonge Street. By 2010 “The Rocket” will carry 1.5 million commuters daily.

April 8: Trans-Canada Airlines Flight 9 leaves Montreal bound for Vancouver. The pilot of the North Star collides 1,829 metres in mid-air with an RCAF Harvard Mark II training jet that has taken off from Moose Jaw, bound for Saskatoon. All 33 people on board the TCA flight are killed,  the two on board the Mark II and the occupant of a house on which much of the debris fell.

April 16: The Redwings take it to the limit as they trounce the Canadiens in the seventh game to win the Stanley Cup.

April 18: Rick Moranis is born in Toronto. He will become of the world’s funniest people. The TV and Hollywood star will  make many blockbuster movies but he will always be best loved for his role as beer-guzzling host “Bob Mackenzie” in the SCTV comedy sketch, The Great White North.

April 19: Desperate to sell cars, the Chevrolet Bel Air Six convertible’s price tag is slashed by $191.

1954 Fargo YA is built by workers at Chrysler Canada in Windsor, Ontario.

April 23: The last truck built for export rolls out the doors at Chrysler Canada. From now on, all export haulers will be manufactured in the United States.

Joseph R. Smallwood has been Newfoundland and Labrador's only premier since joining Confederation in 1949. He will leave office in 1972.

April 24: The RCMP charges Newfoundland’s former Director General of Economic Development with the crime of extorting money from firms he dealt with. Premier Joey Smallwood is the whistleblower.

The Hudson Hornet and Wasp is imported from the United States. The Jet is built in Tilbury, Ontario.

May 1: Nash and Hudson merge in the US to become American Motors. A de facto merger takes place here but American Motors Canada Limited will not become a legal entity until January 1956.

May 10: The Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway is open for business. The 414-kilometre standard gauge ribbon of steel runs from Sept Isles, Quebec and Schefferville, Newfoundland and Labrador, where there are huge iron ore deposits.

May 12:  Ford’s truck line is closed in Windsor because of slow sales. The 723 men will be called back to work in 24 days.

May 13: American President Eisenhower signs a bill committing the US to spending $103 million on construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway.  Canada’s part of the Seaway project is estimated to cost $300 million.

May 15: GM lays off 1,200 workers until the market strengthens.

People who don't yet have a television set at home can come downtown to Eaton's Department Store on Portage and watch.

May 31: Folks living in Manitoba can warm  up their Electrohomes and tune into CBWT-TV on Channel 4 as the CBC begins television broadcasting in the Keystone Province.  The station will be found on Channel 3 in 1958.

June 3: Daniel Grafton Hill IV is born in Toronto. He will grow up to be a pop singer, best known for his hit songs Sometimes When We Touch and Can’t We Try.

June 4: Some Chevrolet and Pontiac convertibles will no longer be imported. Softtop models 1067D and 2067D are now built in Oshawa.

June 7: At eight pm CHCH TV in Hamilton, Ontario signs on the air for the first time. It will be a CBC affiliate until 1961 when the station becomes an independent broadcaster. CHCH will go national, become a Canadawide superstation on January 1^st, 1982.

June 30: Ford reports that soft market conditions and the move from Windsor to Oakville have forced it to lay off 6,100 workers since March 12.

August 7; At the Fifth Commonwealth Games in Vancouver, Roger Bannister of the UK wins the Miracle Mile with a time of 3:58:8. Some 35,000 spectators at Empire Stadium witness the event.

August 9: Hudson assembly in Tilbury, Ontario is closed forever. The cars will now be built in Toronto on the same lines as Nash in its plant on the Danforth.

August 5: In one of the most controversial trials in history, 43 year old Wilbert Coffin is found guilty of killing three American hunters in the Gaspe. The jury took only 34 minutes to deliberate. Death will be by hanging.

August 10: Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, New York Governor Thomas Dewey and Ontario Premier Leslie Frost are on hand in Cornwall, Ontario as construction starts on the St. Lawrence Seaway. Now estimated to cost a cool $1 billion, the first dynamite charge is set off.

August 6: Emilie Dionne is dead of an epileptic seizure at the age of twenty. She is one of the famed Dionne Quintuplets. Made wards of the province, the girls grew up in Quintland where as many as 6,000 tourists a day watched them through one-way mirrors

Workers build 1955 model year Chevs in the new South Plant.

September 8: GM begins operations at its new South Plant in Oshawa, Ontario. Workers will build Pontiac and Chev wagons for the first time in 15 years.

September 9: After 21 hours in the water, 16-year old Marilyn Bell of Toronto reaches the shore of Lake Ontario to the cheers of 250,000 fans who have come to witness her triumph. She tells the press that her 52-kilometre swim is “for the honour of Canada.”

CKLW-TV will become CBET, owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on September 1st, 1975

September 16: CKLW-TV—Channel 9--begins broadcasting at 2.50 pm to the good folks of Windsor, Ontario, Essex County and southeastern Michigan. The station is an affiliate of the CBC and the Dumont Network in the United States.

September 30: As production of the 1955 models gets underway in Hamilton, Studebaker boasts that it has 225 dealerships throughout the country.

The 1955 Buick Super four-door sedan.

October 6: More than 2,000 dealers, managers and salesmen preview the 1955 GM lineup at a week-long extravaganza in Toronto.

October 10: Angry that they have been without a contract since February 19, some 5,200 workers at Ford in Windsor go on strike. Employees in Oakville join their Windsor colleagues on the picket line five days later. They will have to wait until next year for before a new deal is hammered out.

October 15: Hurricane Hazel roars north at the rate of 110 kilometres an hour, killing 81 people in Metro Toronto and leaving 4,000 homeless.

October 29: General Motors introduces the Pontiac Sedan Delivery. It retails for $2,253 with a 4.2-litre six-cylinder mill and $2,373 when an eight-cylinder engine is ordered.

November 9: The government agrees to reduce the cost of GM vehicles shipped to western Canada by 30 cents per hundred pounds. The sweetheart deal will stimulate business and is retroactive to May 7.

The 1955 Studebaker President has a wheelbase of 3 060 millimetres and weighs in at 1 397 kilos. In Regal trim the price is $2,702 f.o.b. Hamilton.

November 24: Despite the strike, Ford of Canada’s stock hits a high of $104 per share. Studebaker shuts down temporarily in order to add the top-of-the-line President to its domestic production mix. Publicity says the President is the style leader with cars “of truly impressive power and superb proportions; each a masterpiece in interior elegance—carrying prestige anywhere in the world.”

The International-Harvester R-Series pickup truck was built from 1952 to 1955.

November 29: International-Harvester officials announce that the company will spend $650,000 to expand its truck plant in Chatham, Ontario. The move will increase domestic content of I-H vehicles.

CKCW will become part of CTV in 1969.

November 30:  Folks in Moncton warm up their Electrohomes and Northern Electric television sets to watch CKCW broadcast for the first time. Part of a regional Lionel Television System, its mascot is Lionel the Lobster. It airs programs from the CBC.

November 30: Chrysler Canada is awarded a $1.3 million defense contract to manufacture practice ammunition.

December 25: It is an uncertain Christmas for the first Newfoundlanders who have been moved from isolated Outports to approved municipal centres. By the time the resettlement scheme is finished in 1975, more than 30,000 people will be relocated and some 300 communities will disappear from the map forever.

The 1955 Packard is imported from Detroit.

December 31: Nash reports it has 117 dealers throughout the Dominion. Studebaker Corporation of Canada, Limited and the Packard Motor Car Company of Canada, Limited merge into a single operation.

The ninth best selling car this year is Monarch. It is slotted between Mercury and Lincoln in the Ford family lineup.

December 31: The Top Ten selling cars for the calendar year are Chevrolet, Ford, Pontiac, Meteor, Dodge, Plymouth, Buick, Oldsmobile, Monarch and Studebaker.

 The imported 1954 Hudson Hollywood Club Coupe sells for $3,697, f.o.b. Tilbury, Ontario. Hudson sold only 842 cars in total during the calendar year, including 211 domestically assembled compact Jets.