Between 1840 and 1860, more than 30,000 American slaves came secretly to Canada and freedom
WORLD WAR I was known as The Great War, a name that referred to its international scale, its massive mobilization of men, munitions and supplies, and its terrible toll on human life. Some say that the young country of Canada came of age in this war. Canadians won glory in the Royal Flying Corps, where Billy Bishop and Raymond Collishaw survived long enough to become aces of the air, and Roy Brown downed the Red Baron. However, it was also in the gruesome war of the trenches that Canadians demonstrated their endurance and courage.
Jacques Plante broke with tradition and changed the face of hockey forever. Jacques Plante was to become one of the National Hockey League's greatest goalies, but was never one to rest on his laurels. He would dare to be different and go against the game's "macho" traditions by wearing a protective face mask, and developed a very personal style of play in front of and behind the net.
The names of women are conspicuously absent from the lists of famous Canadian medical pioneers. During the 19th Century, while male physicians and surgeons were exploring new treatments and innovative medical procedures, Canadian women were struggling for the mere right to practice medicine. For them, acceptance into a medical school was a major achievement. The two women most responsible for breaking down the barriers and advancing medical training for women in Canada were Emily Stowe and Jennie Kidd Trout.
Superman leapt from comic books to radio serials in the 1940s, and on to the television screen by the 1950s. At the beginning of each episode a breathless announcer proclaimed that the caped superhero would once again defend "Truth, Justice and the American Way." Who would have thought that this great American hero was a Canadian creation?
Our governor general controlled by an elected assembly, instead of by us. It's a Canadian idea! Individual women and men can achieve great things when they break with tradition. But history shows that nations, too, must forge new paths to realize their ideals.
By the late Nineteenth Century, the railroad had connected eastern Canada with the West Coast. The train offered new access to the vast western prairies - thousands of hectares of fertile soil.
Nellie McClung was a political activist. She was also a charmer with a gift for oratory and a delightful sense of humour. Her spirited leadership rallied others to the cause of women's suffrage in Manitoba in the early 20th century.
In the 1850s, many Québec families adopted Irish orphans, their parents dead from ship's fever on the Atlantic crossing The Irish and the French Canadians share a part of history that goes back more than 150 years, at a time when waves of European immigrants were flooding into Canada, most of them arriving first in Québec. One tragic episode occurred in 1847.
After Columbus landed in the Western Hemisphere in 1492, European rulers sent explorers across the Atlantic to the Americas to claim territory and discover riches. The Spanish, Portuguese, English, Dutch and French all wanted a piece of the "New World" for themselves. Sometimes we forget that the "new world" was not new at all, but the ancient home of many people who were called "Indians" by the Europeans. Jacques Cartier came from the French court of King Francis I to explore North America. In 1534, on his first voyage, he explored the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
"What do you think you're doing?" shouted chief clerk William Lovett as train dispatcher Vince Coleman turned back towards the office. "We've only got a minute or two left! Anyone in the office won't stand a chance, and you're a married man with a family to think of!" But Vince Coleman was thinking about the passenger trains speeding towards the threatened harbour. He had to stop them.
Dr. Wilder Penfield had a passionate desire to unlock the mysteries of the human brain. He revolutionized the techniques of brain surgery and made major discoveries about human cognition, memory and sensation. Penfield's medical exploration began with the causes and treatment of epilepsy, which was considered incurable. In 1935 he set up the Montréal Neurological Institute, which brought together surgeons and scientists for co-operative projects in the research, diagnosis and surgical treatment of brain disorders.
"I will reply from the mouth of my cannons..." Heroism can take many forms. Louis de Buade, Comte de Frontenac, is the kind of swashbuckling hero who leaps out of history. At least, that is the image of the man that comes to us from his portraits and the romantic accounts of his exploits.
Until well into this century, most Canadians were born at home and the only professional hand guiding their arrival into the world was the midwife's The first midwife began her practice, so the saying goes, nine months after God placed two women and one man on the earth. The office of midwife, which literally means 'with wife,' is an ancient one. Throughout history, babies were delivered with the assistance of a midwife. At least until the 20th Century, women controlled the process of childbirth in all cultures.
Agnes Macphail began her career as a country schoolteacher. Interested in agricultural problems, she became a member and active spokesperson for the United Farmers of Ontario. Her move into politics stemmed from her desire to represent the farmers of her region. In 1919 women gained the right to run for Parliament, and Macphail was elected in 1921, the first federal election in which women had the vote.
"There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wilderness, the Western breath of go-to-the-devil-if-you-don't-like-it, the eternal big spaceness of it. Oh the West! I'm of it and I love it!" "Contrary from the start" was the way Emily Carr described herself in her autobiography. She was a naughty child, an impatient and rebellious young girl, and a young woman who scorned the tidy conventions of the very proper Victorian society of Victoria, British Columbia.
By the time young Joseph Burr Tyrrell was sent to survey the Alberta badlands, he had already proven himself to the scientist-explorers of the Canadian Geological Survey, those unheralded heroes who mapped the vast territories of Canada in the last century. In June 1884, 24-year-old Tyrrell and his assistant were paddling their canoe between the steep banks of the Red Deer River. In the layers of ancient rock, the geologist found seams of coal, outcroppings of one of the largest coal deposits in North America. He also discovered something even more amazing.
Basketball fans have come to expect the impossible from the fast, powerful giants who dominate the game today. The phenomenal feats of Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson would have amazed Dr. James Naismith, the modest Canadian who invented the game 100 years ago when he hung a peach basket on a gym wall. The centenary of Naismith's invention was commemorated by a postage stamp, issued on October 25, 1991. This Historica Minute dramatizes the first clumsy efforts of Naismith's un-enthusiastic gym class to play the new game.
The spring of 1870 came so early to the Saguenay region and was so dry that the farmers of this region in northeastern Québec hurriedly ploughed their fields so that sowing could be finished by early May. These unusual conditions, however, set the stage for one of the worst disasters ever to befall the region.
We are pleased to inform you that we have just opened a workshop intended for the manufacture of Organs and Pipes for Churches, Chapels, Concert Halls and the like. This was how, in November 1879, Claver and Samuel Casavant announced the opening of Casavant Frères in Saint-Hyacinthe, near Montréal. Though their interest in research and technological innovation, as well as a keen business sense, had led the brothers to launch this most prestigious organ factory, it was a blacksmith with a passion for music who first dreamed the dream years earlier.
In the first years of the 17th century, the beaver pelt trade created a heated rivalry among the French, English and Dutch in North America. The European powers vied for alliances with the Native peoples. While the English and Dutch tried to attract Natives to their trading posts, the French chose a different approach - travelling to where the Natives lived, learning their languages and customs, and converting them to Christianity.
Centuries ago, the Iroquois nations found a way to establish peace and unity among themselves. Even today, they rediscover the source of their peace in the story of Peacemaker. It is said that somewhere in "the land of the crooked tongues," the region that is now eastern Ontario, an old woman had a dream that a messenger from the Great Spirit was standing before her.
On an August day in 1885, Prince Edward Island painter Robert Harris paid a call on Kate Henderson, the teacher of the one-room school at Long Creek, P.E.I. As Miss Henderson told the story of how she had "laid down the law" to the men who sat as school trustees and "talked them over" about her unconventional teaching methods, Harris had the inspiration for his masterpiece, "The Meeting of the School Trustees." Now the painting and the story behind it come to life in a Historica Minute that honours Kate Henderson and the many other rural teachers of Canada's past.
"The world loves a peaceful man," declared Emily Murphy, "but it gives way to a strenuous kicker." Murphy herself was a strenuous kicker, one who opened the path of reform in the legal landscape of Canada. Emily Murphy began her career as a writer of sunny, patriotic travel sketches, which she published under the pseudonym Janey Canuck. Known for its liveliness and humour, her writing also expressed serious concern for the welfare of women and children. Increasingly she found herself speaking out frankly and publicly on behalf of the disadvantaged.
From the fury of the Northmen deliver us, O Lord !
PROVINCE OF CANADA 1841 - Canada's existence owes much to the partnership of two moderate reformers: Louis Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin. Trained as a lawyer, LaFontaine began his political career with election to the Lower Canadian Assembly when he was twenty three years old. Tall and portly, LaFontaine was respected as a man of ideals whose love for French Canada was readily apparent.
Most Canadians know the name of Laura Secord, although they may be a bit fuzzy on the subject of her heroic trek that saved the British and Canadian forces at the Battle of Beaver Dams during the War of 1812. Laura Ingersoll Secord was the young wife of James Secord, a settler in Queenston, Upper Canada. The War of 1812 was very personal to Laura. Like her husband and many others in Upper Canada, Laura had been born in the United States and had relatives across the line. But she was fiercely loyal to the British Crown, and was committed to the defence of the colony.
The wind howled and icy rain pelted down as the fragile kite swung desperately in the gale over the Newfoundland cliffs, tugging at its 180-metre wire. It was midday on December 12, 1901, and Guglielmo Marconi sat anxiously in the small, dark room on Signal Hill.
Our history is full of discoveries and occasional surprises - the origin of "O Canada!" is one example. Although officially proclaimed Canada's national anthem in Ottawa on July 1, 1980, "O Canada!" was introduced in Québec City a hundred years earlier, on June 24, 1880, and was subsequently adopted as the patriotic anthem of French Canadians!
What thoughts ran through Louis Riel's mind as he stood on the scaffold, waiting for the trap door to open to his death? Perhaps he thought about the turmoil that surrounded him, a turmoil that still surrounds the controversial Métis leader today. Even now, Louis Riel is a hero to many, a visionary, the fiery leader of a downtrodden people. To others he is a madman, a traitor, or a misguided zealot.
The Conquest of 1760 raised problems of coexistence between the Canadiens and the British, two peoples who differed in language, religion, and legal codes as well as in attitudes and customs. The Constitution Act [1791] attempted to provide a solution by splitting the colony into two parts, Upper Canada for the Loyalists (which became Ontario) and Lower Canada (which became Québec) for the Canadiens, allowing the two peoples to develop through representative institutions.
"They say that for every mile of railway, one Chinese man died," the old man tells his granddaughters. The story of the Chinese people who came to British Columbia in 1882 to work on the final link of the Canadian Pacific Railway is the subject of the Historica Minute Nitro. The experience of these Chinese immigrants, who risked their lives performing the most dangerous jobs on the railway [for half the wages of white labourers!] is only one chapter in the history of the Chinese in Canada.
The Nineteenth Century was the Age of Steam, an era when technical innovators like Sandford Fleming transformed the face of the industrial world and took on the stature of national heroes. This Historica Minute captures the energy and spirit of the dynamic chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway who surveyed the first rail route across Canada, designed our first postage stamp, and successfully championed the Trans-Pacific telegraph cable which was laid from Vancouver to Australia.
Superintendent Sam Steele of the North West Mounted Police was no stranger to action. The big, burly Mountie had helped rid the west of whisky traders, policed the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and averted war between natives and white settlers in British Columbia. At last, as commanding officer at Fort Macleod, married, with three children, he thought he might settle into peaceful retirement.
Through the tireless efforts of Benjamin Hart, the Legislative Assembly granted Jews the right to erect a new synagogue and to keep registers of births, marriages and deaths within their community.
From 1850 until his death in 1890, Sitting Bull symbolized the conflict between settlers and native American culture over lifestyles, land, and resources. Sitting Bull led the Sioux resistance against U.S. incursion into Indian lands, resistance that often ended in battle. After the most famous battle at Little Big Horn, in which General George Custer's forces were completely annihilated, Sitting Bull left the United States for the Cypress Hills in Saskatchewan.
It is ironic that England's claim to North America, the claim that is responsible for the creation of Canada as we know it, rests on the discoveries of an Italian sea captain.
Myrnam, Alberta 1935 It was snowing outside and the three-bed "service station" that acted as a hospital for Myrnam was overflowing with seventeen patients. It wasn't the first time the little hospital located two hundred kilometers east of Edmonton - had been filled past capacity. Something had to be done.
On December 8, 1915, Punch magazine published a poem commemorating the dead of World War I. "In Flanders Fields" was written by John McCrae of Guelph, Ontario, after his experiences in the trench warfare around Ypres, Belgium.
In 1867, just weeks after Confederation, a lighthouse keeper and three fishermen from Saint John, NB took the sporting world by storm. The place was Paris, France and the event was the World Amateur Rowing Championship, part of the International Exposition.
Archibald Belaney perpetrated one of the 20th Century's most convincing hoaxes. Known to the world as "Grey Owl," he convinced everyone that he was a Canadian-born first nations author. In this persona, he became one of Canada's most popular and famous personalities. Grey Owl's British origins came to light shortly after his death and the ensuing public outcry ignored his significant contributions as a conservationist.
Is there anything more Canadian than maple syrup? "Sugaring time," that brief space between winter and spring when the snow starts to melt and the sap begins to flow in the maple groves evokes romantic images of our pioneering past. Despite the technological advances in farming techniques, production of maple syrup remains largely a "family operation," essentially unchanged from its traditional past.
"Whenever and wherever people shall have occasion to congregate, then and there shall be the time, place and means of their education." - Reverend Alfred Fitzpatrick, 1920