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.

1931

From the big scrapbook of time, here’s a look at Canada in 1931--

January 1: Only 115 Ford passenger cars will be imported into the Dominion of Newfoundland this calendar year. Throughout the Dominion of Canada, dealers will report deliveries of 16,565 Ford cars, 5,030 Ford trucks, 16 Lincolns and 126 Fordson tractors. 

 January 1: Chrysler Canada will report domestic sales of 3,222 Plymouths, 1,788 Dodge Brothers, 1,231 De Sotos, 2,054 Chrysler and 9,230 trucks this year.

January 12: Now that the track extension from Hythe, Alberta is complete, the first Northern Alberta Railways Company train pulls into its new home east of Dawson Creek, BC. Citizens move their entire town to the railhead site.

January 27: Mordecai Richler is born in Montreal. He will grow up to be one of the nation’s most popular novelists. His works will include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Cocksure, St. Urbain’s Horseman and Joshua Then and Now. Richler will win the Governor General’s Award, the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Prize and receive an honourary doctorate from McGill university before dying of cancer in 2001.

The Romance of Canada is broadcast from CNRV in Vancouver.

January 31: The first broadcast of The Romance of Canada is heard on the CNR radio network. Never before has drama been aired on national airwaves and the series is very popular.

February – The first aircraft to land at the new airstrip in Halifax is a Curtis-Robin, guided by Atlantic Airways pilot, Robin Kent.

February 27:  It becomes illegal to import goods from the Soviet Union. This is Ottawa’s protest against the repressive Communist form of government.

Therese Casgrain has worked tirelessly for women's rights in Quebec.

March 11: The times they are a-changing. Members of the National Assembly vote to give the women of Quebec the same civil rights as men though they will not be allowed to vote in elections until 1940.

March 13: The Durant Company of Canada Limited is reorganized as Dominion Motors Limited. The automaker will continue to produce the Durant, the Frontenac and Rugby trucks in its Leaside (Toronto) factory.

March 15: Documentary filmmaker Varick Frissel wants more sensational footage of the Newfoundland seal hunt for his film. He sends The SS Viking out to sea with dynamite aboard. The TNT is to be used to “spice things up.” Somehow the wooden whaler explodes near the Horse Islands, killing the filmmaker and 25 crew.

March 22: William Shatner is born in Montreal. He will grow up to be an actor and become famous for his role as Captain Kirk in the Star Trek television show and movies. The two-time Emmy winner will appear regularly as lawyer Denny Crane in television dramas in 2006.

The Memory Board is the touching story of a couple battling Alzheimer's disease.

March 28: Jane Rule is born in New Jersey. She will grow up to teach at the University of British Columbia and write books. She will be best known for her poignant 1987 novel, The Memory Board.

April 13: Clifford Douglas “Cliff” Lumsdon is born in Toronto. He will grow up to become a champion swimmer, winning the world marathon in 1949. In 1955 he will be the first and only competitor to swim the icy 42-kilometre Straits of Juan de Fuca off the coast of British Columbia. He will be inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1976 and become a Member of the Order of Canada in 1982. In March 1988, a park in Toronto will be named Cliff Lumsdon Park in his honour. He will die on August 31, 1991 at the age of 60 after a successful coaching career.

April 14:  The Montreal Canadiens skate to hockey heaven for the second year in a row and earn the Stanley Cup, three games to two. The Chicago Blackhawks are the disappointed losers.

April 15: Some 6,000 hungry and unemployed men gather outside of the Manitoba Legislature while their leaders meet with the premier and demand some kind of relief. Afterwards there is a riot as the men clash with police. Many of the protesters are arrested and six are taken to hospital for injuries.

People blame Prime Minister Bennett for their poverty. When their cars no longer run, they hitch them to horses and derisively refer to them as 'Bennett Buggies.'

April 15: Prime Minister Bennett tells a crowd of unemployed men that they do not deserve “the dole.” He refuses to help them but offers these obvious Communists one-way tickets to the Soviet Union so they can live in paradise.

April 19: It’s a boy for Miller and Margaret Stewart. Son Walter is born in Toronto. He will grow up to be a journalist and broadcaster. Author of more than twenty books, many of them will be best sellers. Stewart will die of cancer in 2001.

May 28: Peter Erasmaus is dead at the age of 97. The Metis trapper and farmer served as interpreter and guide for many explorers, including the three-year loong Palliser Expedition that mapped out much of the country between Lake Superior to the far side of the Rocky Mountains.  

A farmer near Brownlee, Saskatchewan deals with another crop failure as the dust storms roll in for the second year in a row.

June 18: The 'black blizzards' won’t stop. Two of the wild wind tempests deposit more than 5 tonnes of dirt and dust on Winnipeg streets today.

June 27: It is a boy for Sam and Saidye Bronfman of Montreal. Son Charles will grow up to inherit the Seagram’s fortune and be majority owner of the Montreal Expos before selling in 1990. In 2006 Charles will be worth more than $2.5 billion and be listed as the fifth richest person in Canada. 

Soup kitchens spring up all across the land. They are the last resort for desperate people who have lost everything, including hope.

 July 1: The Prime Minister tells the nation he will submit $25 million in relief bills to Parliament. The leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition pledges to speed the bills to passage.

The yellow, orange and red portions of the map show Palliser's Triangle, the driest and  hardest hit parts of the Prairie Provinces, destroyed by drought, dust storms and grasshopper invasions.

July 5: Norman Sommerville, the Red Cross chairman, admits that the drought in Saskatchewan is “the most serious emergency Canada has ever known.”  He reports that 150,000 citizens are in need of life’s most basic necessities, including heating fuel, clothing and food.

July 10:  Alice Laidlaw is born in Wingham, Ontario. She will grow up, marry James Munro in 1951 and move to Vancouver. Sharpening her pen and, Alice win many prizes--including the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature--for her Gothic Ontario short stories and novels including The Progress of Love and Runaway.

July 14: Ottawa announces the purchase of two million bushels of wheat to feed starving Canadians living in the Prairie Provinces.

July 15: Desperate Indians in Saskatchewan perform the illegal rain dance non-stop for 48 hours. To everyone’s surprise--except for the Indians who live on the File Hills Reserve—rain falls on the parched earth for two days solid.

August 31:  Jean Arthur Beliveau is born in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec. He will grow up to play hockey for 18 years with the Montreal Canadiens and be on ten Stanley Cup winning teams. He will retire in 1971. Jean will turn down the opportunity to be Governor General in 2004 for personal reasons but will be honoured with a stamp by Canada Post.

The 1931 Durant Model 614 Coupe.

September 3: Durant Motors marks its tenth anniversary with a 100-car dealer drive-away from the factory in Leaside, (Toronto).

September 7: The 600 miners who work in Souris Coal Fields in the Bienfait-Estavan district of Saskatchewan have had enough. The dozen companies they work for have slashed their wages. They walk off the job, demanding better working conditions. They make less than half of their counterparts in Alberta and BC.  The men and boys work ten-hour shifts, six days a week and  are paid only 25c for each tonne of coal mined. They often work in 60 centimetres of water, in tunnels so small they cannot stand up and must pay for their own dynamite.

September 23: Forced off their farms, hungry and homeless, 19 desperate families are sleeping in the halls of the Manitoba legislature.

Funeral procession for the three striking miners killed by police during the Black Tuesday Riot.

September 29:  Miners in Estevan, Saskatchewan count three dead and another 14 in jail after a wildcat strike and an attack on police as they attempted to marche to town hall. A total of 23 people were wounded in the 45-minute brawl.

October:  The Bluenose beats the Thebaud for the International Fisherman’s Trophy. This is the eleventh year in a row that the Bluenose has sailed home with the prestigious award home for Canada. The world’s fastest schooner will never lose a race and will be honoured with a place on the backside of our dime in 1937.

In 2012, The Four Seasons will operate fifty luxury hotels on six continents.

October 6: Mine owners in southeastern Saskatchewan agree to give workers and an eight-hour working day, with a minimum wage of $4 a day. Company housing rent is reduced and miners may now shop at any store they wish. Although the miners don't get to form a union, they consider it a good deal for now.

October 8: Millionaire businessman Isadore Sharp is born. He will found the Four Seasons Hotel chain in Toronto in 1960 and be one of the founders of the Terry Fox Run for Cancer.

November 10: The 4^th annual Academy Awards take place in the Sala D’Oro at the posh Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. At the age of 63, film veteran Marie Dressler wins a Best Actress Oscar for her role as Min in MGM’s smash hit Min and Bill. Hailing from Coburg, Ontario, the industry’s top box office draw will be honoured with a stamp by Canada Post in 2008.

Maple Leaf Gardens will be home to the Leafs for 67 years. The last game will be played here on February 13, 1999.

November 12:  A crowd of 13,542 is on hand for the official opening of Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. Ticket holders watch the Blackhawks beat the Leafs 2 to 1.

November 14: A Toronto judge sentences seven Communists to five years behind bars for seditious conspiracy against King and Country as members of an unlawful organization.

December 5:  The Montreal AAA Winged Wheelers whip the Regina Roughriders for Lord Grey’s Cup in front of a hometown crowd of 5,112 at Percival Molson Stadium. The final score for the fall football classic is 22 to zip.

The British Empire is now the British Commonwealth.

December 11: The British Parliament passes the Statute of Westminster giving the dominions within the Empire full legal powers of their own.  Constitutional issues will be dealt with in the UK as Ottawa asks Britain to continue to handle changes to the BNA Act.

The 1931 Greater Hudson Eight Standard Sedan is imported from Detroit, Michigan.

December 30: There’s a new kid on the automotive block as Hudson-Essex Canada Limited receives its incorporation papers. Production will get underway in the Tilbury, Ontario assembly plant early next year.

December 31: GM Canada reports production of 17,866 Chevrolet cars, 3,725 Pontiacs, 1,446 Oldsmobiles, 3,582 McLaughlin-Buicks and 252 Cadillacs. Production of LaSalles is suspended for the year but the Cadillac companion car will return in 1932.

The Northern Electric Art Deco telephone is very popular with consumers in all nine provinces.

December 31: It's a sign of troubled times. The Bell Telephone Company of Canada Limited reports more disconnections than installations for the first time in its history.

The 1931 Durant Model 614.

01: Durant is a steady seller in 1931 with 1,973 sales throughout the Dominion. Built in Leaside, Ontario, the parent company in the United States will fold in 1932.

 This Model 41 Town Car is a fine example of the 270 Pierce-Arrows sold domestically in 1931.