Old News Features

When Avid Spectators Flocked To Witness Public Hangings

Monday, 31 August 2009 19:00

Canadians flocked in large crowds to witness public hangings in Canada in the early 19th century. When hangings were no longer public, eager spectators climbed telephone poles and lined rooftops to peer over prison walls. At a double hanging of lovers found guilty of murdering the wife's husband, a mob of 2,000 rioters tried to break down the prison gates to see the hanging.

People could be hung for stealing a horse or turnips or for any of some 230 crimes. By 1859, the death penalty list was reduced to 10 crimes, including "casting away a ship." An opponent, who called the death penalty "legalized murders," in 1914 introduced a bill in Parliament to abolish it.

It took half a century for Members of Parliament to abolishing the death penalty but it has now been 47 years since the last executions in Canada.

Booze Blues

Friday, 31 July 2009 19:00

Booze was a social epidemic in early nineteenth-century Canada. Whisky was commonly served at breakfast to all members of the family, including small children. It was thought necessary to combat cold in winter, heat in summer, and provide energy for heavy work. Prodigious quantities were drunk at barn- and house-raising bees. Accidents and brawls almost invariably followed, sometimes fatal. Booze outlets were everywhere: Lower Canada (Quebec) had twice as many taverns and grog shops as schools. Temperance societies - which soon became abstinent - sprang up to combat the evil. Tens of thousands of drinkers took the pledge, and teetotallers claimed great victories. But there was backsliding, and heavy drinking remained a problem.

Life in the Time of Cholera

Tuesday, 30 June 2009 19:00

Some 52,000 immigrants, mostly destitute Irish, arrived at Quebec in 1832, carrying with them North America's first cholera pandemic. An estimated 9,000 people died of cholera in Lower and Upper Canada. The disease could have been stopped if medical science had then known that it was spread in cholera-contaminated water that people drank, or more rarely, in food they ate. Clean, safe drinking water would have stopped the disease. But it was thought that cholera was spread in the polluted air of early nineteenth century towns. So instead of focusing on clean water, cannons shot blank charges skyward and great fires of tar and rosins were lit in efforts to clean the air.

Wonderful Winter

Sunday, 31 May 2009 19:00

Winter was enthusiastically welcomed in early Canada - when it wasn’t dreaded. In Old News Report No. 13, read about…

A sleigh ride to a gold mining camp in northern Ontario. A Lieutenant Governor who fought a knock down battle with a prairie blizzard. Why in no other country "the cold season is more enthusiastically welcomed." And a cold snap when killer winter struck.

Life in the Public Library

Thursday, 30 April 2009 19:00

Columnist Faith Fenton defends Toronto's first public library against critics who want to shut it down because they allege that it is a wasteful burden on taxpayers, a dispensary of trashy novels, and a sanctuary for loafers.