Immigrants arriving by the ship load
Friday, 02 April 2010 00:00
One hundred years ago, clippings from the newspapers of Saturday, April 2, 1910.
Halifax Herald. “Seventeen special trains from Halifax and Saint John are due in Montreal” Saturday and Sunday, carrying 6,000 immigrants. 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 of the immigrants were homesteaders, heading for the prairie provinces.
The first 14 years of the 20th century marked Canada’s biggest immigration period. A total of 2,758,851 arrived before the First World War stemmed the flow in late 1914, according to official figures. From the 1901 census to 1921, Canada’s population increased from less than 5.4 million to almost eight million. In Saskatchewan and Alberta, population increased more than eight-fold; from 91,000 to 757,000 in Saskatchewan, and from 73,000 to 588,000 in Alberta.
Strike trouble
Toronto News. Twenty armed police have been stationed at the two plants of the Hamilton Steel and Iron Company. The company’s 700 employees were on strike for a pay increase from 16 to 20 cents an hour. The company “absolutely refused” to meet the demand. The company expected to suspend operations “until strike breakers can be brought in,” the News reports. “The police look for rioting if strikebreakers are brought to the city, but they are confident that they will be able to handle the situation.” The discovery of a large quantity of dynamite at the plant has been taken as a sign of impending trouble. “The Poles among the strikers claim they were forced to leave work by threats from the Italians and Hungarians.”
Bank trouble
Toronto World. Mr. Ham, president of the defunct United States Banking Company of Mexico City “is incarcerated in the famous Belem prison on the outskirts of Mexico [City], where so many prisoners have entered, never again to be heard of, dead or alive.” The Bank of Montreal has been swindled out of $600,000. Shareholders fear that the loss will bankrupt the bank. When the incident caused a run on the Bank of Montreal it reportedly “paid out some $600,000 more to depositors.” Some shareholders “now threaten the Canadian bank, alleging that had the latter not allayed their fears, they would have withdrawn their money, which has now gone where good Ethiopians go.” Despite such dire assertions, the Bank of Montreal survived.
Treed by wolves
Montreal Star.William Midlige, Dr. Michael Bourdreau and H.P. Kenney of La Tuque, Quebec, spent a night treed by a pack of wolves, the Star reports. The trio set out after supper for a tramp in the woods. Kenney noticed that they were followed by three animals. To prove they were just dogs, Dr. Bourdreau turned back to pet one. “He did not get very near, however, when growling and barking, with similar warnings, re-echoed from the forest, convinced him of his error.” The trio “had just time to climb up a small tree when they were surrounded by a party of a dozen grey wolves, who remained at the foot the tree, snapping and growling all night. The tree swayed with the weight of the three men, and they could not change their position all night. With daybreak the animals slunk back into the woods.”