CANADIAN PERSONALITIES
(1885 - 1914)
- describe key characteristics of Canada between 1885 and 1914, including social and economic conditions, the roles and contributions of various people and groups, internal and external pressures for change, and the political responses to these pressures;
- describe the achievements of individuals and groups in Canada who have contributed significantly to the technological development of Canada and the world (e.g., Martha Black, Guglielmo Marconi, Alexander Graham Bell, J.A.D. McCurdy, Samuel McLaughlin, George Ross, Adam Beck) and analyse the impact on society of new technologies (e.g., prospecting, radio, the telephone, the automobile, electricity);
- describe how specific individuals and events helped change the position of women and children in Canada (e.g., Nellie McClung, Emily Carr, Lucy Maud Montgomery, Pauline Johnson; the Temperance Movement, laws establishing compulsory education).
Above excerpted from The Ontario Curriculum: Social Studies, Grades 1-6; History and Geography Grades, 7-8, 2004 (e. and o. e.)
Martha Louise Black (February 24, 1866 – October 31, 1957) was a Canadian politician and the second woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons.
Born Martha Louise Munger in Chicago, Illinois, the daughter of Dawson and Susan Munger, she was educated at Saint Mary's College (Indiana).
In 1904, she married George Black, Commissioner of the Yukon. In 1935, she was elected to the House of Commons for the riding of Yukon as an Independent Conservative taking the place of her ill husband.
She published an autobiography, My Seventy Years, in 1938. In 1946, she was made an Officer of Order of the British Empire for her cultural and social contributions to the Yukon.
In 1917, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society for her series of lectures on the Yukon that she presented in Great Britain.
In 1997, Canada Post issued a $0.45 stamp in her honour.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
In 1898, Martha Purdy turned her back on a suffocating marriage and life of social privilege in Chicago. She headed North, staggering across the Chilkoot Pass while pregnant. She went on to operate a sawmill in Dawson City and married lawyer and politician, George Black. When George became the Commissioner of the Yukon, Martha travelled with him overseas to help in the war effort in London during World War I.
Upon returning, Martha took on the duties of wife of the Speaker of the House of Commons in Ottawa. In 1935 she assumed her husband's seat in Parliament when he was too ill to run for re-election.
Martha Black became known as an expert on Yukon flora and gave extensive lectures about the beauty and history of the territory. She died in Whitehorse at the age of 91 and is remembered and loved across the Yukon.
The above is excerpted from First Lady of the Yukon (e. and o. e.)
Marconi was born near Bologna, Italy, the second son of Giuseppe Marconi, an Italian landowner, and his Irish wife, Annie Jameson, granddaughter of the founder of the Jameson Whiskey distillery. Marconi was educated in Bologna, Florence and, later, in Livorno. As a child Marconi didn't do well in school. Baptized as a Catholic, he was a member of the Anglican Church.
During his early years, Marconi had an interest in science and electricity. One of the scientific developments during this era came from Heinrich Hertz, who, beginning in 1888, demonstrated that one could produce and detect electromagnetic radiation—now generally known as "radio waves", at the time more commonly called "Hertzian waves" or "aetheric waves". Hertz's death in 1894 brought published reviews of his earlier discoveries, and a renewed interest on the part of Marconi. He was permitted to briefly study the subject under Augusto Righi, a University of Bologna physicist who had done research on Hertz's work.
Marconi began to conduct experiments, building much of his own equipment in the attic of his home at the Villa Griffone in Pontecchio, Italy. His goal was to use radio waves to create a practical system of "wireless telegraphy"—i.e. the transmission of telegraph messages without connecting wires as used by the electric telegraph. This was not a new idea—numerous investigators had been exploring wireless telegraph technologies for over 50 years, but none had proven commercially successful. Marconi did not discover any new and revolutionary principle in his wireless-telegraph system, but rather he assembled and improved an array of facts, unified and adapted them to his system.[3] Marconi's system had the following components:[4]
- A relatively simple oscillator, or spark producing radio transmitter, which was closely modeled after one designed by Righi, in turn similar to what Hertz had used;
- A wire or capacity area placed at a height above the ground;
- A coherer receiver, which was a modification of Edouard Branly's original device, with refinements to increase sensitivity and reliability;
- A telegraph key to operate the transmitter to send short and long pulses, corresponding to the dots-and-dashes of Morse code; and
- A telegraph register, activated by the coherer, which recorded the transmitted Morse code dots-and-dashes onto a roll of paper tape.
Similar configurations using spark-gap transmitters plus coherer-receivers had been tried by others, but many were unable to achieve transmission ranges of more than a few hundred metres. This was not the case for all researchers in the field of the wireless arts, though. [5][6]
At first, Marconi could only signal over limited distances. In the summer of 1895 he moved his experimentation outdoors. After increasing the length of the transmitter and receiver antennas, and arranging them vertically, and positioning the antenna so that it touched the ground, the range increased significantly.[7] (Although Marconi may not have understood until later the reason, the "ground connections" allowed the earth to act as a waveguide resonator for the surface wave signal.[8]) Soon he was able to transmit signals over a hill, a distance of approximately 1.5 kilometres (1 mile). By this point he concluded that with additional funding and research, a device could become capable of spanning greater distances and would prove valuable both commercially and militarily.
Finding limited interest in his work in Italy, in early 1896 at the age of 21, Marconi traveled to London, England, accompanied by his mother to seek support for his work. (Marconi spoke fluent English in addition to Italian.) While there, he gained the interest and support of William Preece, the Chief Electrical Engineer of the British Post Office. The apparatus that Marconi possessed at that time was strikingly similar to that of one in 1882 by A. E. Dolbear, of Tufts College, which used a spark coil generator and a carbon granular rectifier for reception.[9][10] A series of demonstrations for the British government followed—by March, 1897, Marconi had transmitted Morse code signals over a distance of about 6 kilometres (4 miles) across the Salisbury Plain. On 13 May 1897, Marconi sent the first ever wireless communication over water. It transversed the Bristol Channel from Lavernock Point (South Wales) to Flat Holm Island, a distance of 14 kilometres (8.7 miles). The message read "Are you ready". [11]
Impressed by these and other demonstrations, Preece introduced Marconi's ongoing work to the general public at two important London lectures: "Telegraphy without Wires", at the Toynbee Hall on 11 December 1896; and "Signalling through Space without Wires", given to the Royal Institute on 4 June 1897.
Numerous additional demonstrations followed, and Marconi began to receive international attention. In July, 1897 he carried out a series of tests at La Spezia in his home country, for the Italian government. A test for Lloyds between Ballycastle and Rathlin Island, Ireland, was conducted on 6 July 1898. The English channel was crossed on 27 March 1899, from Wimereux, France to South Foreland Lighthouse, England, and in the fall of 1899, the first demonstrations in the United States took place, with the reporting of the America's Cup international yacht races at New York. According to the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute by the United States Naval Institute, the Marconi instruments were tested around 1899 and the tests concerning his wireless system found that the "[...] coherer, principle of which was discovered some twenty years ago, [was] the only electrical instrument or device contained in the apparatus that is at all new". [12]
Around the turn of the century, Marconi began investigating the means to signal completely across the Atlantic, in order to compete with the transatlantic telegraph cables. Marconi soon made the announcement that on 12 December 1901, using a 122-metre (400-foot) kite-supported antenna for reception, the message was received at Signal Hill in St John's, Newfoundland (now part of Canada) signals transmitted by the company's new high-power station at Poldhu, Cornwall. The distance between the two points was about 3,500 kilometres (2,100 miles). Heralded as a great scientific advance, there was also some skepticism about this claim, partly because the signals had been heard faintly and sporadically. There was no independent confirmation of the reported reception, and the transmission, consisting of the Morse code letter S sent repeatedly were difficult to discern from atmospheric noise. (A detailed technical review of Marconi's early transatlantic work appears in John S. Belrose's work of 1995.)[14] The Poldhu transmitter was a two-stage circuit.[15][16] The first-stage possessed lower voltage and provided the energy for the second stage in resonance. Nikola Tesla, a rival in transalantic transmission, stated after being told of Marconi's reported transmission that "Marconi [... was] using seventeen of my patents."[17][18]
Feeling challenged by skeptics, Marconi prepared a better organized and documented test. In February, 1902, the SS Philadelphia sailed west from Great Britain with Marconi aboard, carefully recording signals sent daily from the Poldhu station. The test results produced coherer-tape reception up to 2,496 kilometres (1,551 miles), and audio reception up to 3,378 kilometres (2,099 miles). Interestingly, the maximum distances were achieved at night, and these tests were the first to show that for mediumwave and longwave transmissions, radio signals travel much farther at night than in the day. During the daytime, signals had only been received up to about 1,125 kilometres (700 miles), less than half of the distance claimed earlier at Newfoundland, where the transmissions had also taken place during the day. Because of this, Marconi had not fully confirmed the Newfoundland claims, although he did prove that radio signals could be sent for hundreds of kilometres, despite some scientists's belief they were essentially limited to line-of-sight distances.
On 17 December 1902, a transmission from the Marconi station in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada, became the first radio message to cross the Atlantic in an eastward direction. On 18 January 1903, a Marconi station built near Wellfleet, Massachusetts in 1901 sent a message of greetings from Theodore Roosevelt, the President of the United States, to King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, marking the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States. However, consistent transatlantic signalling was difficult to establish.
Marconi began to build high-powered stations on both sides of the Atlantic to communicate with ships at sea, in competition with other inventors. In 1904 a commercial service was established to transmit nightly news summaries to subscribing ships, which could incorporate them into their on-board newspapers. A regular transatlantic radiotelegraph service was finally announced in 1907, but even after this the company struggled for many years to provide reliable communication.
Case for Marconi
Marconi supporters have stated that Marconi was not aware of the works of Nikola Tesla in the United States. It is unlikely, though, that Marconi was unaware of Tesla's presentations. Both On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena (Philadelphia/St. Louis; Franklin Institute in 1893) and Experiments with Alternating Currents of High Potential and High Frequency (London; 1892) were reported on internationally. Tesla's 1893 presentation at the Franklin Institute was reported across America (such as in The Century Magazine) and throughout Europe.[31] Tesla also performed public demonstrations of actual and related work, such as the remote-controlled boat in 1898 (which was protected under U.S. Patent 613,809). The remote-controlled boat contained "rotating coherers" that allowed secure communication between transmitter and receiver.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
Histori.ca has a great dramatization of his work here.
Alexander
Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell (3 March 1847 - 2 August 1922) was a Scottish scientist, inventor and innovator. Throughout his early life, Alexander Graham Bell was a British subject but in 1915, he characterized his status as: "I am not one of those hyphenated Americans who claim allegiance to two countries." Despite this declaration, Bell has been claimed as a "native son" by Canada, Scotland and the United States.[1] Born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, he immigrated to Canada in 1870, and then to the United States in 1871, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1882. Bell would spend his final, and some of his most productive years in residence in both Washington, D.C. and Beinn Bhreagh (Gaelic: beautiful mountain), a summer retreat he built in Nova Scotia, Canada.[2] Recognized as an eminent scientist and inventor, Alexander Graham Bell is most often associated with the invention of the telephone. In later life, Bell considered his most famous invention was an intrusion on his real work and refused to have a telephone in his study.[3]
Alexander Graham Bell was called "the father of the deaf".[4] His father, grandfather and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell's life's work.[5] His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices that eventually culminated in the invention of the telephone. Bell was awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876.[6] Although other inventors had claimed the honour, the Bell patent remained in effect. Many other inventions marked Bell's later life including groundbreaking work in hydrofoils and aeronautics. In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell was one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society.[7] Upon Bell's death, all telephones throughout the United States stilled their ringing for a silent minute in tribute to the man whose yearning to communicate made them possible.[8]
Later Inventions
Although Alexander Graham Bell is most often associated with the invention of the telephone, his interests were extremely varied. [83] The range of Bell's inventive genius is represented only in part by the 18 patents granted in his name alone and the 12 he shared with his collaborators. These included 14 for the telephone and telegraph, four for the photophone, one for the phonograph, five for aerial vehicles, four for "hydroairplanes" and two for selenium cells. Bell's inventions spanned a wide range of interests and included a metal jacket to assist in breathing, the audiometer to detect minor hearing problems, a device to locate icebergs, investigations on how to separate salt from seawater, and work on finding alternative fuels.
Bell worked extensively in medical research and invented techniques for teaching speech to the deaf. During his Volta Laboratory period, Bell and his associates considered impressing a magnetic field on a record as a means of reproducing sound. Although the trio briefly experimented with the concept, they were unable to develop a workable prototype. They abandoned the idea, never realizing they had glimpsed a basic principle which would one day find its application in the tape recorder, the hard disc and floppy disc drive and other magnetic media.
Bell's own home used a primitive form of air conditioning, in which fans blew currents of air across great blocks of ice. He also anticipated modern concerns with fuel shortages and industrial pollution. Methane gas, he reasoned, could be produced from the waste of farms and factories. At his Canadian estate in Nova Scotia, he experimented with composting toilets and devices to capture water from the atmosphere. In a magazine interview published shortly before his death, he reflected on the possibility of using solar panels to heat houses.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
J.A.D.
McCurdy
Born in Baddeck, Nova Scotia, he was known as "Douglas". He was schooled at St. Andrew's College and graduated from the University of Toronto in mechanical engineering in 1906. In 1907, he joined Alexander Graham Bell's Aerial Experiment Association.
After co-developer Frederick W. Baldwin first flew in 1908, on February 23, 1909, McCurdy became the first person to fly an airplane in Canada when he piloted the Silver Dart off the ice of Bras d'Or Lake in Nova Scotia. In 1910, he was the first Canadian to be issued a pilot's license and the following year he made the first flight from Florida to Cuba.
At the beginning of the Second World War, he became Assistant Director General of Aircraft Production. He remained in that position until he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia in 1947.
Douglas McCurdy established the first aviation school in Canada. He died in 1961.
He was inducted into Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame following its creation in 1973.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
A wonderful story of his life can be read at : FlightDeck's Great Aviators
Samuel
McLaughlin
Colonel Robert Samuel McLaughlin , CC, ED, CD, LLD (September 8, 1871 - January 6, 1972) was an important Canadian businessman, philanthropist and founder, in 1907, of the McLaughlin Motor Car Co., one of the first major automobile manufacturers in Canada.
Born near Oshawa in Enniskillen, Ontario, the son of Robert McLaughlin, he started working, in 1887, for his father's company, McLaughlin Carriage Works, at one time the largest manufacturer of horse-drawn buggies and sleighs in the British Empire. With engines from William C. Durant of Buick he produced the McLaughlin-Buick Model F, establishing The McLaughlin Motor Car Company, incorporated on November 20, 1907. In 1908, its first full year of operation, it produced 154 cars. In 1910 he became a director of General Motors and sold his company in 1918 becoming president of General Motors of Canada, which continued to sell cars under the McLaughlin-Buick brand for the next few years. He retired in 1945, but remained chairman of the board until his death.
He remained on the Board of General Motors until the early 1960's, and was coincidentally replaced by Royal Bank of Canada President Earle McLaughlin, his first cousin once removed.
His brother, chemist J.J. McLaughlin, founded the Canada Dry company. After J.J.'s death, Sam also became President of this company briefly until it was sold about 1917.
McLaughlin was appointed Honorary Lieutenant Colonel of the 34th Ontario Regiment in 1921 and held this position until 1931, at which time he was appointed Honorary Colonel of same unit, later designated as The Ontario Regiment (RCAC), a reserve armoured regiment based in Oshawa. Affectionately known as "Colonel Sam," McLaughlin served as Honorary Colonel until 1967, earning the distinction as the longest continuously serving Honorary Colonel in the history of the Canadian Forces. In 1967 Sam McLaughlin was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
George
William Ross
Sir George William Ross (September 18, 1841 – March 7, 1914) was an educator and politician in Ontario, Canada. He was premier of Ontario from 1899 to 1905.
Born near Nairn, in Middlesex County, Upper Canada, he worked as a school teacher and school inspector before going into politics. He was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons as a Liberal in the 1872 election. He was re-elected in the 1874 and 1878 elections. He was initially declared re-elected again in the 1882 election, but his victory was challenged, and the next year the vote was declared void.
Rather than run again, Ross moved to provincial politics when he was offered the position of Minister of Education for Ontario in the Liberal government of Sir Oliver Mowat in 1883. He oversaw the construction of over 300 libraries, the expansion of the kindergarten system, and the creation of the School of Pedagogy for the training of school inspectors and masters. Ross increased grants to the education system, and oversaw the expansion of the university system and the federation of a number of smaller colleges with the University of Toronto.
The Conservative opposition protested against the possibility of increased support for the Catholic Separate school system, while the Catholic minority agitated for the same high schools and other facilities that the public (Protestant) school system enjoyed. The Protestant Protective Association was formed by Orangemen in the 1890s to oppose the expansion of Catholic rights, and to attempt to exclude Catholics from public life in the province.
After Mowat's retirement as Premier, and a short interegnum by Arthur S. Hardy, Ross became Premier (and Provincial Treasurer) on October 21, 1899. The Liberal government was tired, however, after almost thirty years in office, and Ross could do little to revive its fortunes. In the provincial election of 1902, the Liberal majority was cut to five seats, but at a time when parties lacked the discipline over their members they would later develop, five seats was not enough for a secure government. A vote-buying scandal based on allegations brought forward by Robert Roswell Gamey engulfed the government, and demands for prohibition split the party. Leading a stagnating and drifting government, Ross called an election for January 25, 1905, in which the Liberals lost twenty-two seats and the Conservatives under James P. Whitney won sixty-nine, making Whitney the new Premier.
Ross remained Liberal leader until 1907, when he was appointed to the Canadian Senate. He wrote two books about his life in politics, and died in 1914.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
Adam
Beck
Sir Adam Beck, (June 20, 1857 – August 15, 1925) was a politician and hydro-electricity advocate who founded the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario.
Beck was born in Baden, Ontario to German immigrants, Jacob Beck and Charlotte Hespler. He attended school at the Rockwood Academy in Rockwood, Ontario. As a teenager he worked in his father's foundry, and later established a cigar-box manufacturing company in Galt (now Cambridge, Ontario) with his brother William. In 1885 he moved the company to London, Ontario, where it quickly flourished and established Beck as a wealthy and influential civic leader.
He was also involved in horse breeding and racing, and at a horse show in 1897 he met Lilian Ottaway of Hamilton. Lilian's parents objected to their 20-year age difference -- she was 19 and he 40 -- as well as Beck's love of horse racing, which they felt would keep him away from home. Nevertheless, they were married on September 7, 1898. Beck named their London mansion Headley, after Lilian's parents' home in Surrey, England. In addition to horse breeding, for which he won numerous prizes, Beck was also associated with tennis and lawn bowling.
Also in 1898, Beck ran for provincial legislature for the first time, but lost. In 1900, Beck founded the London Health Association, which would later develop into the University and Victoria Hospitals. In 1902, he was elected mayor of London and a few months later was elected to the Ontario legislature as the Conservative member from the London riding. He was re-elected mayor in 1903 and 1904 while simultaneously serving as a member of the provincial legislature (which is no longer permitted). Already a wealthy man, he donated his salary to charity while serving as mayor. In 1905, he was appointed minister without portfolio in the government of premier Sir James P. Whitney.
Beck was an early and prominent advocate of publicly owned electricity grids, opposing the privately owned companies whom he felt did not adequately serve the needs of the public. With the slogan "Power at Cost" and in Latin, "dona naturae pro populo sunt" ("the gifts of nature are for the public"), he convinced Premier Whitney to create a board of enquiry on the matter, with him as chair. The enquiry suggested creating a municipally-owned hydroelectric system, funded by the provincial government, and using water from Niagara Falls and other Ontario lakes and rivers. In 1906 Whitney appointed Beck the first chairman of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission.
He was knighted by King George V in 1914 for his promotion of electricity and development of transmission lines. In 1915, he tried to introduce electric railway lines in Ontario, but this plan had to be put on hold during World War I, and only a few lines around London and Toronto were established. In the 1919 post-war election, Beck lost his seat to Hugh Stevenson as the United Farmers of Ontario swept the Conservatives out of power.
During his time in the provincial legislature Beck remained active in London. His daughter Marion, born in 1904, suffered from tuberculosis, but due to Beck's wealth and influence she had access to the best doctors and medicine. Realizing that not everyone could afford such care, in 1910 Beck founded a sanitorium, which was very advanced for its time. The Queen Alexandra Sanitorium, named after Alexandra of Denmark, wife of King Edward VII, was officially opened on April 5 of that year by Governor General Earl Grey. It was later renamed the Beck Memorial Sanitorium. Later still it was renamed the Children's Psychiatric Research Institute (CPRI). Today the building houses the London Child-Parent Research Institute. In 1918 Beck also paid fellow Londoner Guy Lombardo to play at Marion's debutante party.
Lilian Beck died of cancer on October 17, 1921. In 1923 Beck was re-elected to the Ontario legislature, until his own death from anemia in 1925. Former Prime Minister of Canada Arthur Meighen, Ontario premier George Howard Ferguson, and London mayor George Wenige attended his funeral.
The Queenston Chippawa power station (now Sir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Power Stations), which he helped to create, was renamed after him in 1950. Also named for him was Sir Adam Beck Collegiate Institute, a public secondary school in London which is now home to the Thames Valley District School Board headquarters, and a bilingual elementary school in Etobicoke, Ontario. In 1990, Headley, the Becks' mansion at Richmond and Sydenham streets, was demolished by Sifton Properties Ltd. and replaced with a condominium replica dubbed the Sir Adam Beck Manor. It is now used as a block of apartments. In Toronto, there is a statue of Beck (Adam Beck Memorial), sculpted by Emanuel Hahn, on University Avenue at Queen Street West. It was jointly erected by City of Toronto and the Toronto Hydro-Electric Commission in 1934.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
Born in Grey County, Ontario, in 1873 she moved with her family to a homestead in the Souris Valley of Manitoba. She lived in the West for the rest of her life — in Manitou, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Victoria.
She published her first novel Sowing Seeds inside Danny in 1908. It was a national best seller and was followed by numerous short stories and articles in Canadian and American magazines. In 1911, the McClungs moved to Winnipeg. The women’s rights movement in Winnipeg embraced her. An effective speaker with a sense of humour, she played a leading role in the successful Liberal campaign in 1914.
Her great causes were women's suffrage and temperance. It was largely through her efforts that in 1916 Manitoba became the first province to give women the right to vote and to run for public office. The Government of Canada followed suit that same year. After moving to Edmonton, Alberta, she continued the campaign for suffrage. She championed dental and medical care for school children, married women’s property rights, mothers' allowances, factory safety legislation and many other reforms. Not as acknowledged, is the fact McClung campaigned for the sterilization of those considered "feeble-minded" and "immoral"[citation needed]. Over 2,700 Albertans, under the care of the province and who were considered of "inferior genetic stock", were sterilized over a 44 year period. Over half the sterlizations were performed on aboriginals.
It was a time of sweeping social change. Western Canada had seen major immigration in the decades preceding and following the turn of the 20th century. Changes to farm life, the plight of immigrants, conditions in cities and factories, prohibition, women's suffrage, World War I, and the Depression were historical events influencing McClung. Called a crusader by some, she was nevertheless a pragmatic leader who put words into action.
She served as a Liberal member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1921 to 1926. She was one of The Famous Five (also called The Valiant Five), with Irene Parlby, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Emily Murphy and Louise McKinney; who, in 1927, put forward a petition to clarify the word "Person" in Section 24 of the British North America Act (the Persons Case). On October 18, 1929, the Privy Council found that "Person" includes female persons, thereby making women eligible for appointment to the Canadian Senate.
Nellie McClung founded a number of organizations: the Political Equality League of Manitoba centered in Winnipeg, of which Lillian Beynon Thomas was a lesser-known but instrumental member, the Federated Women's Institutes of Canada and the Women's Institute of Edmonton (of which she was the first president). She was also active in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Canadian Authors Association, the Canadian Women's Press Club, the Methodist Church of Canada and the Calgary Women's Literary Club.
McClung had many firsts: delegate to the Women's War Conference in Ottawa in 1918; sole woman delegate of the Methodist Church of Canada to the Ecumenical Conference in London, 1921; the only woman in the Canadian delegation to the League of Nations, Geneva, Switzerland in 1938 and first woman member of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Board of Broadcast Governors (from 1936 to 1942). She toured Canada, the United States and England as an author and activist.
The first volume of her autobiography, Clearing in the West: My Own Story was published in 1933, after she and her family moved to Vancouver. She wrote sixteen books, many short stories and a syndicated column. Although she was forgotten for a decade, she was re-discovered by feminists in the 1960s.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
Some of you may remember this commercial featuring Nellie McClung.
She was born in Victoria, British Columbia, and moved to San Francisco in 1890 to study art after the death of her parents. In 1899 she travelled to England to deepen her studies, where she spent time at the Westminster School of Art in London and at various studio schools in Cornwall, Bushey, Hertfordshire, San Francisco, and elsewhere. In 1910 , she spent a year studying art at the Académie Colarossi in Paris and elsewhere in France before moving back to British Columbia permanently the following year.
Emily Carr was most heavily influenced by the landscape and First Nations cultures of British Columbia, and Alaska. Having visited a mission school beside the Nuu-chah-nulth community of Ucluelet in 1898, in 1908 she was inspired by a visit to Skagway and began to paint the totem poles of the coastal Kwakwaka'wakw, Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit and other communities, in an attempt to record and learn from as many as possible. In 1913 she was obliged by financial considerations to return permanently to Victoria after a few years in Vancouver, both of which towns were, at that time, conservative artistically. Influenced by styles such as post-impressionism and Fauvism, her work was alien to those around her and remained unknown to and unrecognized by the greater art world for many years. For more than a decade she worked as a potter, dog breeder and boarding house landlady, having given up on her artistic career.
In the 1920s she came into contact with members of the Group of Seven after being invited by the National Gallery of Canada to participate in an exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art, Native and Modern. She traveled to Ontario for this show in 1927, where she met members of the Group, including Lawren Harris, whose support was invaluable. She was invited to submit her works for inclusion in a Group of Seven exhibition, the beginning of her long and valuable association with the Group. They named her 'The Mother of Modern Arts' around five years later.
The Nuu-chah-nulth of Vancouver Island's west coast had nicknamed Carr Klee Wyck, "the laughing one." She gave this name to a book about her experiences with the natives, published in 1941. The book won the Governor General's Award that year.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
Lucy Maud Montgomery, (always called "Maud" by family and friends) and publicly known as L. M. Montgomery, (November 30, 1874–April 24, 1942) was a Canadian author, best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables.
Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in Clifton (now New London), Prince Edward Island on November 30, 1874. Her mother, Clara Woolner Macneill Montgomery, died of tuberculosis when Maud was a mere 21 months old. Her father, Hugh John Montgomery, left the province after his wife’s death and eventually settled in the western territories of Canada. She went to live with her maternal grandparents, Alexander Marquis Macneill and Lucy Woolner Macneill, in the nearby community of Cavendish and was raised by them in a strict and unforgiving manner. In 1890, Montgomery was sent to live in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan with her father and stepmother, however after one year she returned to Prince Edward Island to the home of her grandparents.
In 1893, following the completion of her grade school education in Cavendish, she attended Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown. Completing a two year program in one year, she obtained her teaching certificate. In 1895 and 1896 she studied literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
After working as a teacher in various island schools, in 1898 Montgomery moved back to Cavendish to live with her widowed grandmother. For a short time in 1901 and 1902 she worked in Halifax for the newspapers Chronicle and Echo. She returned to live with and care for her grandmother in 1902. Montgomery was inspired to write her first books during this time on Prince Edward Island. In 1908, she published her first book, Anne of Green Gables. Three years later, shortly after her grandmother's death, she married Ewan Macdonald (1870 - 1943), a Presbyterian Minister, and moved to Ontario where he had taken the position of minister of St. Paul's Presbyterian Church, Leaskdale in present-day Uxbridge Township, also affiliated with the congregation in nearby Zephyr.
The couple had three sons, Chester Cameron Macdonald (1912-1964), (Ewan) Stuart Macdonald (1915-1982) and Hugh Alexander, who died at birth in 1914, perhaps inspiring the death of Anne Shirley's first child Joyce in her novel Anne's House of Dreams.
Montgomery wrote her next eleven books from the Leaskdale manse. The structure was subsequently sold by the congregation and is now the Lucy Maud Montgomery Leaskdale Manse Museum. In 1926, the family moved in to the Norval Presbyterian Charge, in present-day Halton Hills, Ontario, where today the Lucy Maud Montgomery Memorial Garden can be seen from Highway 7.
Montgomery died in Toronto in 1942. She was buried at the Cavendish Community Cemetery in Cavendish following her wake in the Green Gables farmhouse and funeral in the local Presbyterian church.
Her major collections are archived at the University of Guelph, while the L.M. Montgomery Institute at the University of Prince Edward Island coordinates most of the research and conferences surrounding her work. The first biography of Montgomery was The Wheel of Things: A Biography of L.M. Montgomery (1975) written by Molly Gillen. Dr.Gillen also discovered over 40 of Montgomery's letters to her pen-friend George Boyd MacMillan in Scotland and used them as the basis for her work. Beginning in the 1980s her complete journals, edited by Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston, were published by the Oxford University Press. From 1988-95, editor Rea Wilmshurst collected and published numerous short stories by Montgomery.
It appears as though Montgomery was an admirer of the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth through the novels she wrote; in Anne of the Island two instances reveal knowledge of Wordsworth's works: "the glory and the dream" of youth is mentioned (from his "Ode: Intimations of Immortality") and also the "drinking in" of nature.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) (10 March 1861 – 7 March 1913), commonly known as E. Pauline Johnson or just Pauline Johnson, was a Canadian writer and performer. She was born in Chiefswood, the family home built by her father on the Six Nations Indian Reserve outside of Brantford, Ontario and died in Vancouver, British Columbia. Pauline Johnson was the youngest of four children born to George Henry Martin Johnson (1816 – 1884), a Mohawk, and Emily Susanna Howells Johnson (1824-1898), an English woman.
Pauline Johnson is often remembered for her poems that celebrate her aboriginal heritage. One such poem is the frequently anthologized “The Song my Paddle Sings.”
Contrary to Emily and George Johnson’s initial concerns that their mixed-race family would not be accepted, they were acknowledged as a leading Canadian family (Gray 2002, p. 61). The Johnsons enjoyed a high standard of living, their family and home were well known, and Chiefswood was visited by important guests such as Alexander Graham Bell, Homer Watson, and Lady and Lord Dufferin.
Emily and George Johnson encouraged their four children, who were born on Native land and were thus wards of the British government, to respect, and gain knowledge of, both the Mohawk and the English aspects of their heritage. John Smoke Johnson was an important presence in the lives of his grandchildren. He spent much time telling them stories in the Mohawk tongue that they learned to comprehend but not to speak (Gray 2002, p. 47). Pauline Johnson believed that she inherited her talent for elocution from her grandfather and, near her time of death, she expressed regret that she had not discovered more of her grandfather’s knowledge (Johnston, p. 21). Although Emily Johnson fostered cultural pride, she also instilled inhibitions in her children and insisted that they behave perfectly to prevent rejection (Gray 2002, p. 48-49).
As the youngest of her siblings and being a sickly child, Pauline Johnson was not forced to attend Brantford’s Mohawk Institute, one of Canada’s first residential schools, like her oldest brother. Instead, her education was for the most part informal, deriving from her mother, a series of non-Native governesses, a few years at the small school on the reserve, and self-directed reading in Chiefswood’s library. There she became familiar with literary works by Byron, Tennyson, Keats, Browning, and Milton (Jackel 1983, p. 398). She especially enjoyed reading tales about the nobility of Native peoples such as Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha and John Richardson’s Wacousta (Gray 2002, p. 53). At age 14, Johnson was sent to attend Brantford Central Collegiate with her brother Allen and she graduated in 1877. Even according to the standards of her time, Johnson’s formal education was limited and throughout her life she worried that her lack of education would prevent her from achieving her high literary aspirations (Gray 2002, p. 124).
Shortly after George Johnson’s death in 1884, the family rented out Chiefswood and Pauline Johnson moved with her mother and sister to a modest home in Brantford, Ontario.
During the 1880s Pauline Johnson wrote, performed in amateur theatre productions, and enjoyed the Canadian outdoors, particularly by canoe. Johnson’s first full-length poem, “My Little Jean,” a sentimental piece written for her friend Jean Morton, first appeared in the New York publication Gems of Poetry in 1883 and the production, printing, and performance of Johnson’s poetry increased steadily afterwards. In 1885, she traveled to Buffalo, New York to attend a ceremony in honor of Iroquois leader Sagoyewatha, also known as Red Jacket, and wrote a poem which relays her admiration for the renowned orator and voices pleas to reconcile feuds between British and Native peoples (Gray 2002, p. 90). At a Brantford ceremony held in October 1886 in honor of Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, Johnson presented her poem “Ode to Brant,” which expresses the importance of brotherhood between Native and European immigrants while ultimately endorsing British authority (Gray 2002, p. 90). This performance generated a long article in the Toronto Globe and increased interest in Johnson’s poetry and ancestry.
Throughout the 1880s Johnson established herself as a Canadian writer and cultivated an audience amongst those who read her poetry in periodicals such as Globe, The Week, and Saturday Night. Johnson contributed to the critical mass of Canadian authors who were constructing a distinct national literature (Monture 2002), (Gerson 1998). The inclusion of two of her poems in W.D. Lighthall’s Songs from the Great Dominion (1889) signaled her membership amongst Canada’s important authors (Strong-Boag and Gerson 2000, p. 101). In her early literary works, Johnson drew lightly from her Mohawk heritage, and instead lyricized Canadian life, landscapes, and love in a post-Romantic mode reflective of the literary interests she shared with her mother (Strong-Boag and Gerson 2000, p. 101).
In 1892, Johnson recited her poem “A Cry from an Indian Wife,” a work based on the battle of Cut Knife Creek during the Riel Rebellion, at a Canadian Authors Evening arranged by the Young Men’s Liberal Club. The success of this performance initiated Johnson’s 15 year stage career and encouraged perceptions of her as a girl (although she was 31 at the time of this performance), a beauty, and an exotic Aboriginal elocutionist (Strong-Boag and Gerson 2000, p. 102). After her first recital season, Johnson decided to emphasize the Native aspects of her literature and performance by assembling and donning a feminine Native costume (Strong-Boag and Gerson 2000, p. 9-10). Johnson’s decision to develop this stage persona, and the popularity it inspired, indicates that the audiences she encountered in Canada, England, and the United States — like the large crowds who attended shows such as Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show and ethnological Aboriginal exhibits in the 1890s — were educated to recognize representations of Native peoples on stage and were entertained by such productions (Strong-Boag and Gerson 2000, p. 111).
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
Best known for being the Minister of the Interior under Sir Wilfred Laurier, Sifton is responsible for creating the immigration policies that encouraged the massive influx in the early 20th Century.
In 1896, Sifton was elected a Member of Parliament and served as Minister of the Interior under Laurier. As Minister of the Interior he started a vigorous immigration policy to get people to settle and populate the West. Sifton established colonial offices in Europe and the United States. While many of the immigrants came from Britain and the United States, Canada also had a large influx of Ukrainians, Doukhobors, and other groups from the Austrian Empire. Between 1891 and 1914, more than three million people came to Canada, largely from continental Europe, following the path of the newly constructed continental railway. In the same period, mining operations were begun in the Klondike and the Canadian Shield.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
Sir Wilfrid Laurier, PC, GCMG, KC, baptized Henri-Charles-Wilfrid Laurier (November 20, 1841 – February 17, 1919) was the seventh Prime Minister of Canada from July 11, 1896, to October 5, 1911.
Canada's first francophone prime minister, Laurier is often considered one of the country's greatest statesmen. He is well known for his policies of conciliation, expanding Confederation, and compromise between French and English Canada. His vision for Canada was a land of individual liberty and decentralised federalism. He also argued for an English-French partnership in Canada. "I have had before me as a pillar of fire," he said, "a policy of true Canadianism, of moderation, of reconciliation." And he passionately defended individual liberty, "Canada is free and freedom is its nationality," and "Nothing will prevent me from continuing my task of preserving at all cost our civil liberty." Laurier was also well regarded for his efforts to establish Canada as an autonomous country within the British Empire. His efforts were continued by his successor as Prime Minister, Robert Borden.
Laurier is the fourth-longest serving Prime Minister of Canada, behind William Lyon Mackenzie King, John A. Macdonald, and Pierre Trudeau. A Maclean's historical ranking of the Prime Ministers placed Laurier third behind King (first) and Macdonald [2]. Laurier also holds the record for the most consecutive federal elections won (4), and his 15 year tenure remains the longest unbroken term of office among Prime Ministers. In addition, his nearly 45 years (1874-1919) of service in the House of Commons is an all-time record in Canadian politics, unmatched by any other politician. [3] Finally, at 31 years, 8 months, Laurier was the longest-serving leader of a major Canadian political party, surpassing King by over two years.
Quebec stronghold
Laurier was able to build the Liberal Party a base in Quebec, which had been a Conservative stronghold for decades due to the province's social conservatism and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church which distrusted the Liberal's anti-clericalism. He was aided by the growing alienation of French-Canadians from the Conservatives due to the national Tory party's links with anti-French[citation needed], anti-Catholic Orangemen in English Canada. These factors combined with the collapse of the Conservative Party of Quebec gave Laurier an opportunity to build a stronghold in French Canada and among Catholics across Canada.
Because Laurier believed in a separation of church and state, Roman Catholic bishops in Quebec repeatedly warned their parishioners never to vote for the man. Renowned journalist and author Laurier LaPierre wrote in his 1996 biography of Laurier: "children were made to kneel and beg God that their parents not be damned should they have the temerity to vote for the Liberal candidate. When electors asked directly whom they should vote for, the cagey priests contented themselves with informing them that 'le ciel est bleu, l'enfer est rouge' – heaven is blue, hell is red."
Personal Views on Religion: Academics in the field of Canadian history have suggested that Wilfrid Laurier may in fact be the first atheist Prime Minister in Canadian history. There is scant evidence to suggest this beyond interpreting his method of politicking, which placed any religious considerations behind more practical and 'earthly' concerns. Considering the climate of the day, he would have been unable to express this personal point of view[1].
Prime Minister
Laurier led Canada during a period of rapid growth, industrialization, and immigration. His long career straddles a period of major political and economic change. As Prime Minister he was instrumental in ushering Canada into the 20th century and in gaining greater autonomy from Britain for his country.
One of Laurier's first acts as Prime Minister was to implement a solution to the Manitoba Schools Question, which had helped to bring down the Conservative government of Charles Tupper earlier in 1896. The Manitoba legislature had passed a law eliminating public funding for Catholic schooling. The Catholic minority asked the federal Government for support, and eventually the Conservatives proposed remedial legislation to override Manitoba's legislation. Laurier opposed the remedial legislation on the basis of provincial rights, and succeeded in blocking its passage by Parliament. Once elected, Laurier proposed a compromise stating that Catholics in Manitoba could have a Catholic education if there were enough students to warrant it, on a school-by-school basis. This was seen by many as the best possible solution in the circumstances, making both the French and English equally satisfied.
In 1899, the United Kingdom expected military support from Canada, as part of the British Empire, in the Second Boer War. Laurier was caught between demands for support for military action from English Canada, and a strong opposition from French Canada, which saw the Boer War as an "English" war. Henri Bourassa was an especially vocal opponent. Laurier eventually decided to send a volunteer force, rather than the militia expected by Britain, but Bourassa continued to oppose any form of military involvement.
In 1905, Laurier oversaw Saskatchewan and Alberta's entry into Confederation, the last two provinces to be created out of the Northwest Territories.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)
Joseph-Napoléon-Henri Bourassa (September 1, 1868- August 31, 1952) was a French Canadian political leader and publisher. He is seen by many as an ideological father of Canadian nationalism.
Born in Montreal, Quebec, to Napoléon and Marie Bourassa, Henri Bourassa was a grandson of the pro-democracy reformist politician Louis-Joseph Papineau. He was educated at Montreal's École polytechnique and at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1890, he became mayor of the town of Montebello, Quebec, at age 22.
In 1896, he was elected to the House of Commons as an independent Liberal for Labelle County, but resigned in 1899 to protest against the sending of Canadian troops to the Second Boer War. He was re-elected soon after his resignation. He argued that Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier was un vendu ("a sell-out") to British imperialism and its supporters in Canada.
To counter what he perceived to be the evils of imperialism, in 1903 he created the Nationalist League (Ligue Nationaliste) to instill a pan-Canadian nationalist spirit in the Francophone population. The League opposed political dependence on either Britain or the United States, supporting instead Canadian autonomy within the British Empire.
Bourassa left the federal parliament in 1907, but remained active in Quebec politics. He continued to criticize Laurier, opposing Laurier's attempts to build a Canadian navy in 1911, which he believed would draw Canada into future imperial wars between Britain and Germany. He supported the eventual creation of an independent navy, but did not want it to be under British command, as Laurier had planned. Bourassa's attacks depleted Laurier's strength in Quebec, contributing to the Liberal Party's loss in the 1911 election. Ironically, Bourassa's moves aided in the election of the Conservatives, who held more staunchly Imperialist policies than the Liberals.
In 1910, he founded the newspaper Le Devoir to promote the Nationalist League, and served as its editor until 1932.
In 1913, Bourassa denounced the government of Ontario as "more Prussian than Prussia" during the Ontario Schools Question crisis (see Regulation 17), after Ontario almost banned the use of French in their schools and made English the official language of instruction. He charged his compatriots to see their enemies inside Canada, in 1915:
The enemies of the French language, of French civilization in Canada, are not the Boches on the shores of the Spree; but the English-Canadian anglicizers, the Orange intriguers, or Irish priests. Above all they are French Canadians weakened and degraded by the conquest and three centuries of colonial servitude. Let no mistake be made: if we let the Ontario minority be crushed, it will soon be the turn of other French groups in English Canada." [in Wade v 2 p 671]
Bourassa led French Canadian opposition to participation in World War I, especially Robert Borden's plans to implement conscription in 1917. He agreed that the war was necessary for the survival of France and Britain, but felt that only those Canadians who volunteered for service should be sent to the battlefields of Europe. His opposition to conscription brought him the anglophone public's disfavour, as expressed by hostile crowd amassed in Ottawa that threw vegetables and eggs during his oration.[1]
Three months after stating that he had nothing more to do with politics, he returned to the House of Commons in the 1925 election with his election as an Independent MP, and remained until his defeat in the 1935 election. In the 1930s, Bourassa demanded that Canada keep its gates shut to Jewish immigrants, as did many other Canadian politicians of the time.
Bourassa also opposed conscription in World War II, though less effectively, and was a member of the Bloc populaire. His influence on Quebec's politics can still be seen today in all major provincial parties.
Bourassa's political thought, according to [MacMillan 1982b] was largely a combination of Whig liberalism, Catholic social thought, and traditional Quebec political thought. He was distinctly liberal in his anti-imperialism and general support for civil liberties, while his approach to economic questions was essentially Catholic. While Bourassa embraced the ultramontane idea that the Church was responsible for faith, morals, discipline, and administration, he resisted Church involvement in the political sphere and rejected the corporatism espoused by the Church. Bourassa opposed state intervention wherever possible and increasingly throughout his career emphasized the need for moral reform.
As Levitt [1978] has shown, attitudes of historians, both Anglophone and Francophone, toward Bourassa consistently have been colored by the position of each historian on the major issues Bourassa addressed. Goldwin Smith, a fellow anti-imperialist, introduced him into historical literature in 1902. The isolationism of the 1930s and the biculturalism of the 1960s (Bourassa, while a champion of Francophone rights, always opposed separatism) occasioned favourable treatment among Anglophones, while Lionel Groulx, his onetime foe, described him in 1971 as "l'incomparable Éveilleur." Bourassa's position on social issues - Catholic, moderately reformist, emphasizing the family and agricultural values - likewise has called forth praise and blame.
Upon his death in Outremont, Quebec in 1952, Henri Bourassa was interred in Montreal's Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges.
Henri Bourassa Blvd., Henri-Bourassa metro station, and the federal riding of Bourassa, all in Montreal, are named for him. He is not related to Robert Bourassa, the former premier of Quebec.
The above is excerpted from Wikipedia, 2007 (e. and o. e.)