Old News Features

Celebration and Bitterness Mark Dominion Day 1867

Friday, 31 October 2008 19:00

Guns boomed, bells chimed, rifles, pistols and muskets were fired on July 1, 1867, as millions of Canadians poured into the streets in cities and villages to celebrate the birth of their new nation. There were parades, military reviews, speeches, cricket and lacrosse matches, and special railway and steamship excursions. In Toronto, a fat ox was roasted to feast the poor. But in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick there were mock funerals, obituaries and flags hung at half-mast to mourn the deaths of semi-sovereign British colonies, while one of the Fathers of the Confederation was hung in effigy, with a live rat.

Flowers Brighten Lives of Factory Girls and Street Urchins

Tuesday, 30 September 2008 19:00

Hundreds of girls, weary from a long day's work in Toronto's factories and sweatshops, and vagrant street urchins, were turned loose in 1912 to pick flowers from the former home of Ontario's lieutenant governors. When they were finished, no flowers were left in the gardens, but there were flowers in the homes and hearts of hundreds of young girls.

Life in Canada’s Barbaric Jails

Sunday, 31 August 2008 19:00

Guantanamo, the notorious U.S. prison for terrorist suspects, would have seemed as comfortable as a summer camp for inmates in the barbaric jails of early 19th century Ontario (then Upper Canada).

At Niagara Falls, a prisoner suffocated to death when the outside temperature in the shade reached 105 Fahrenheit, and even hotter in a tiny, unventilated cell. When a prisoner died in the Brockville jail, a jury ruled that death had been caused by "the visitation of God."

Toronto’s (then York’s) jail seemed the worst. "Of all the countries on earth, we believe there is none in which insolvent debtors are so bararously treated as in Canada," claimed newspaper editor Francis Collins, imprisoned for libelling the attorney general. Debtors were often confined to prison for life, sometimes with their families. William Lyon Mackenzie found cramped, primitive facilities, serious malnutrition and an overpowering stench from inadequate sanitation in York’s jail. One debtor languished in jail even after his debt had been forgiven, because his lawyer had not forgiven his fees. Another debtor was locked up with his wife and five children.

Whitecapping Heroes of Wheatley

Thursday, 31 July 2008 19:00

When a Wheatley, Ontario businessman was dunked in a well, walked in snow, and thrashed, the London Advertiser called for judicial discipline. But after they were acquitted, the vigilantes were celebrated by the town with a parade and a banquet.

Read about the Whitecapping heroes of Wheatley in the attached Preview Issue Number 3 of Old News. And about the 1902 version of dirty money, when the stench of soiled bills was "often literally horrible."

Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull Play Cowboys and Indians

Monday, 30 June 2008 19:00

"I never shot an Indian but I regretted it," William F. Cody, aka Buffalo Bill, proclaimed. Quite a few Indians were shot whenever Buffalo Bill, Chief Sitting Bull and the cast of the Great Wild West Exhibition played cowboys and Indians—but by this time, it was just staged shooting with blanks.

A decade earlier it had been the real thing, when Sitting Bull and his Sioux warriors slaughtered General Custer and 265 soldiers of the U.S. Seventh Cavalry in the Battle of the Little Big Horn, before fleeing to safety in Canada. Here they faced years of hunger because the buffalo had vanished. Cody himself had shot 4,000 of them to feed railway construction workers.

When the Wild West show pulled into town, it was aboard an 18-car train with 150 performers, 80 horses, 19 buffalo, 2 elk, steers, donkeys, mules and the famed Deadwood coach.