First World War As First World War military conscription became law on August 29, 1917, protesting rioters in Montreal smashed store windows. Arrests soon followed, including a group charged with attempting to murder Montreal Star publisher Hugh Graham, a strong conscription advocate, and his family, by dynamiting their summer home. The dynamiters also allegedly planned […]
Category: Social History
Christmas in World War I, the saddest of all
World War I December 25, 1917 was the fourth Christmas of World War I, and the war was not going well. “There is no prospect of ending it at any early date,” said the Vancouver Sun. Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II threatened that if peace was not accepted on Germany’s terms, “Then we must bring […]
Busy Bugger Billy Bishop and the air aces who shot down the Red Baron in World War I
World War I “You have been a busy bugger, haven’t you?” King George V, said on awarding the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military award, to Billy (William Avery) Bishop (1894-1956), most famous of Canada’s Wold War I flying aces, July 1917. Canada’s young flying aces, who shot down Germany’s famous Red Baron, almost dominated […]
Flowers for factory girls and street urchins
Toronto’s third Government House, home of Ontario’s lieutenant-governors for 42 years, and the large landscaped grounds, in 1907. Five years later, the gates were opened to hundreds of factory girls and street urchins to pick thousands of flowers. City of Toronto Archives. The expansive grounds of Toronto’s third Government House provided a treasure trove […]
Shotgun wedding of an 80-year-old man
From the Lindsay, Ontario Post, May 20, 1910. “The story of the courtship and marriage of Mr. Michael Fraser, of Midland, a man of 84 years and worth about $100,000 [almost $2 million in 2017], and Miss Hannah Margaret Robertson, aged 30, daughter of the Rev. William Robertson, formerly a Presbyterian minister, now editor of […]
Murder of 120 Chinese foiled
Canada’s festering racism, under which Chinese suffered for decades, came dangerously close to mass murder claiming 120 lives before an attempt to dynamite two railway cars at Vancouver was foiled, Canadian Press reported May 20, 1910. The Chinese had arrived on the SS Empress of China for a scheduled “trip across the continent.” “The plan […]
New Canadians arrive by the shipload
“Seventeen special trains from Halifax and Saint John are due in Montreal” Saturday and Sunday, carrying 6,000 immigrants,” the Halifax Herald reported April 2, 1910. More than 12,000 arrived during the week. It has been “the biggest week in the immigration line that Canada has had for a good many years,” says the Herald. Most […]
Avalanche kills 62 in Rogers Pass railway disaster
On March 4, 1910, a work crew of 63 men, a 91-ton locomotive with a rotary snowplow, and railway cars to house the workers, were dispatched from Revelstoke to clear deep snow from an avalanche that buried a section of the Canadian Pacific Railway at Rogers Pass in the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia. A […]
Life was work and whisky for early B.C. loggers
Work and whisky comprised the cycle of life for many loggers on the coast of British Columbia in the first decade of the twentieth century. Following is one of my early magazine pieces, published in the magazine section of the Vancouver Sun, May 5, 1951. The year was 1906. “As you walk down the […]
Toronto killer slums spur world leading health reform
Chickens in the living room, nine children crowded in a single rag-covered bed, one outdoor water tap for 16 houses were among Toronto 1910 slum housing conditions described by Medical Director Dr. Charles Hasting in a talk to the Irish Benevolent Society. Six months later, Hastings spelled out more excruciating detail in a groundbreaking […]