Today's Old News
Today’s Old News: Mini Canadian history stories from the newspapers of 1820 to 1930.
Rupert's Land great folly
Sunday, 18 October 2009 00:00
October 18, 1870. When in 1867 the United States paid two cents an acre to buy Alaska from Russia, it became known as "Seward's folly." Three years later, Canada paid little more than one-tenth of a cent to buy Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company—$1.5 million for about four million square kilometers, much of what are now the prairie provinces and northern Ontario and Quebec. Some critics thought this was as great a folly as Seward's.
Men are energetic windmill dancers
Saturday, 17 October 2009 00:00
October 17, 1864. Men are inclined to dance like dislocated windmills, according to this item in the Red River (Fort Garry) Nor'-Wester.
Ladies in the Senate better than old women
Friday, 16 October 2009 00:00
October 16, 1883. Ladies would do just a good a job in the Senate as the old women who fill the place, says the Toronto Telegram.
Squirrel hunt bags big game
Thursday, 15 October 2009 00:00
OCTOBER 15, 1840. A letter writer in the Cobourg Star, Canada West, provides an account of a bountiful squirrel hunt by the villagers of nearby Colborne.
Stewardess is heroine in Kingston shipwreck
Wednesday, 14 October 2009 19:00
October 14, 1851. It was an unusually dark night in Kingston harbour when the side-wheel stream Reindeer, known to sailors as Pollywog, rammed and sank the Ottawa. The Ottawa sailors reportedly abandoned ship as fast as they could, leaving shrieking women and children to look after themselves. The ship's stewardess emerged as the heroine, as told in this edited account from the Kingston BritishWhig.
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