An upstairs billiard room is an effective antidote to athletic sports that “disintegrate family life,” says the Toronto Mail and Empire, September 9, 1905. With athletic sports, “The boys are at baseball matches, the gymnasium, on the road bicycling. They are never at home, except to eat and sleep.” If a man installs “a […]
From Dawson City, capital of the Yukon gold fields, 10 men of the Dawson Nuggets hockey team set off on December 19, 1904 on a 4,000-mile, 24-day journey by bicycle, dog sled, train, and ship for Ottawa, in quest of the world hockey championship, the Stanley Cup. They are to pick up one more […]
Many of the more dour of Canada’s early Scottish settlers “scotched” such Sunday activities as cards, games, music and even whistling or singing (except hymns in church). Theatres were shuttered and streetcars and railways came to a stop. Many sports were also prohibited under Lords Day Profanation Acts passed by several provincial and territorial […]
It was the biggest race of his life, and Toronto’s Edward “Ned” Hanlan was hot-dogging it. The single sculls rowing champion of Canada, the United States and Britain, the 5-foot-8-3/4-inch, 150-pound, 25-year-old Hanlan was competing on England’s Thames River for the world title against Edward Trickett, the 6-foot-3-inch, 185-pound, 29-year-old Australia champion on November 15, […]
“Canada is excited by the Boat race which comes off today between the ‘Paris crew’ of Saint John, N.B., and the Tyne crew of England,” says the Nova Scotia, Yarmouth Herald, September 15, 1870. Regarded as country bumpkins—a lighthouse keeper and three fishermen—the Saint John crew won the world rowing title at the […]
There would have been fewer fatal accidents in Upper Canada (Ontario) in 1825 if more people devoted Sunday to worship and rest, as commanded by the “highest authority,” according to the York (now Toronto) Upper Canada Gazette, the voice of colonial authority and the notorious Family Company. The Gazette claimed that two-thirds of the colony’s […]