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001. Are there honorary Canadian citizens?
The Canadian Parliament designated, between 1985 and 2009, six non-Canadians as honorary Canadian Citizens.
Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat, was accorded this honour in recognition of his efforts on behalf of Jewish people in Nazi-occupied Europe. The award was made posthumously in 1985. Nelson Mandela, former president of the Union of South Africa, received this honour in person in a ceremony in Hull in 2001 to acknowledge his anti-Apartheid leadership. Paul Erickson, Major League baseball player, was named an honorary Canadian in 2001 for his philanthropy and outstanding contributions to Canadian life. Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama and recipient of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, was awarded honorary citizenship in 2006. Aung San Suu Kyi, prime-minister-elect of Burma and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, was awarded this status in 2007. His Highness the Aga Khan, 49th imam of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, became an Honorary Citizen in 2009.
002. Why does the name of a Canadian girl appear in a Harry Potter book?
J.K. Rowling’s book Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is a popular work of fiction that appeared in 2000. In July 1999, while completing it in Edinburgh, Scotland, she received a letter about Natalie McDonald, a nine-year-old Toronto girl who was dying of leukemia and found much comfort in the Harry Potter books. The letter was written by a family friend named Annie Kidder, who requested that Rowling correspond with Natalie by email. Rowling agreed, but her email arrived one day after Natalie’s death on August 3, 1999.
Natalie’s mother, family, and friend Annie Kidder all began to correspond with Rowling, and a transatlantic friendship developed. Unknown to Natalie’s family and friends, Rowling commemorated the young fan, who did not live long enough to read a copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by giving the name Natalie McDonald (on page 159 of the first edition) to a first-year student of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This sad-but-inspiring story was told by Brian Bethune in the article “The Rowling Connection,” in Maclean’s, November 6, 2000.
003. Did Al Capone go into hiding in Moose Jaw?
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, may seem an unlikely place for Al Capone to go into hiding, but the Chicago gangster did disappear for three months in 1926, when U.S. prosecutors wanted to indict him for the murder of fellow gangster Joe Howard. No one knows where Al Capone found sanctuary, but local stories are rife with indications that he took refuge in Moose Jaw.
The city, located on the CPR line with the Soo Line running to Chicago, was easily accessible to Capone. From the early 1920s to the early 1930s, prohibitionists put a damper on the sale of liquor, but gangsters expedited its illegal traffic and trade. It is said that secret tunnels beneath the city’s streets were used in the transport of bootleg beverages.
According to reporter Craig Wong, in “Canadian Mysteries: Rumours Rife, Hard Evidence Scant on Gangster Al Capone’s Time in Moose Jaw,” The Ottawa Citizen, July 11, 2001, local traditions boast of Capone’s presence in the city whenever there was “heat” in the Cicero district of Chicago, where he established his crime empire.
004. Has Elmer Fudd ever appeared in a cartoon as a Mountie?
Elmer Fudd, the fuddy-duddy cartoon character, played a Mountie in Fresh Hare (1942) directed by Friz Freleng, with story by Michael Maltese, animation by Manuel Perez, and musical direction by Carl W. Stalling. He fumbled his investigations with much muttering and stammering. According to film exhibitor Reg Hartt, “This is a great little film but the ending is cut from current prints as it features Black folks.”
005. Who was the Le Page of LePage’s Glue?
Generations of Canadian and American schoolchildren grew up with small, bell-shaped bottles of glue, or mucilage, as it was called. Each bottle was surmounted by a tip of red rubber. The bottles were labeled, LEPAGE’S GLUE. The company that manufactured these bottles was founded by William Nelson Le Page (1849–1919), an inventor and businessman who was born on Prince Edward Island, worked in Massachusetts, and died in Vancouver, B.C.
He was a youngster when the Le Page family moved to the United States. He was raised in Massachusetts, where trained as a chemist. In 1876, he established the Russian Cement Company in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which sometime later was renamed the LePage Company. His first glues were formed from fish skins. The company’s first product was the “original” glue and mucilage, and bottles of these made “LePage’s” a household name throughout North America. Between 1880 and 1887, LePage’s sold fifty million bottles of glue worldwide. Today, the company has special expertise in prepared industrial adhesives with long shelf life. It produces a range of adhesive products and is the world’s largest producer of private-label, pressure-sensitive tape. Its newest product is Power Grab.
Vanessa Le Page, the great-great-granddaughter of the founder, is a resident of Toronto who collects LePage memorabilia. By 2001, the company’s 125th anniversary, she had over 3,000 items in her collection. The items document LePage’s history and the wide range of products it produced.
006. Who is the singer Eilleen Twain?
Eilleen Twain is the name given at birth to the popular singer and performer — otherwise known as Shania Twain — by her parents, in her native city of Timmins, Ontario. On the advice of her producer and husband Mutt Lange, she changed the Eilleen part of her name to Shania. This occurred sometime after the year 1988, and success as a composing, performing, and recording artist followed suit. Shania is said to be a woman’s name in the Algonkian language of the Ojibway. (The singer’s adoptive stepfather is Ojibway.) Nicholas Jennings, writing in “Overture,” Maclean’s, December 3, 2001, identifies Twain as “the highest-selling female artist in the history of country music.”
007. Did Mary Pickford ever appear in a Canadian movie?
Mary Pickford (1892–1979), the silent film star who enjoyed so much popularity with audiences in the silent-film period that she was dubbed America’s Sweetheart, appeared in 147 short films released between 1909 and 1913 and in fifty-four feature films released between 1913 and 1933, when she retired. A filmography appears in Eileen Whitfield’s appreciative biographical study titled Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood (1997).
All of these shorts and features were produced in the United States. She never appeared in a Canadian-made movie. Yet of special interest to Canadians is the fact that she was born in Toronto and made special arrangements with the Department of Citizenship to regain her Canadian citizenship before she died.
In one of her movies (and possibly in another), she plays the part of a Canadian woman — an Eskimo lass in Little Pal (Famous Players, 1915). Set in the Yukon, the feature film was based on a short story by Marshall (Mickey) Neilan and was directed by James Kirkwood. Pickford played an Inuit girl in a “dispirited style,” according to one reviewer. It was greeted with dismay, her biographer Eileen Whitfield noted, perhaps because she hid her well-loved golden curls beneath a long black wig.
One of the short films might have Canadian content and might be set in Nova Scotia. It is called An Acadian Maid (Bioscope, 1910). No print of that film is known to survive. No description of its setting or action is known.
So the short answer to the question posed above is “No.” She never appeared in a Canadian movie. But she played a role identified with Canada. She has since then been described as “cinema’s first superstar.”
008. Did Buckminster Fuller have any Canadian associations?
Yes, the American designer and futurist Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), who is identified with the words “Spaceship Earth,” has a number of associations with Canada.
Fuller is internationally known as the creator of the geodesic dome, and the largest and most imaginative of his geodesic domes was the one he designed to house the U.S. Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal. It focused attention on American design and technology, and the image of the glass-ribbed dome became an icon associated with this most successful of world expositions.
In his memoirs Fuller mentioned that as a youngster he worked in the machine plant in Sherbrooke, Quebec, where he learned valuable lessons about assembly line production, with its efficiencies and the rationalization of effort.
As an innovative designer, twice he turned his attention to the city of Toronto, which he described in interviews as a city that “works.” In the 1960s he prepared “Project Toronto,” a three-month-long study of the city and how it works. He recommended, among other imaginative schemes, a floating city for the waterfront, a bold forerunner of the pale Harbourfront complex. In 1972 he promoted “Project Spadina,” a vast, futuristic highway that was to fill the ditch remaining from the city’s abandoned plans to extend the Spadina Expressway. His projects were utopian, attention-getting, and caused much comment but no commitment.
009. What is the meaning of Anishinaubaek?
Anishinaubae is singular for “human being” and Anishinaubaek is plural for “human beings.” The words may also mean “good human being” and “good human beings.” It is the way the Native people known as the Ojibway or the Chippewas refer to themselves in their own language.
010. What are the five basic functions of humanity according to the Ojibway?
Native elder Basil Johnston, writing in The Manitous: The Spiritual World of the Ojibway (1995), explains that there are five basic functions of humankind: leading, defending, providing, healing, and teaching. Each function is represented by its “totem,” or symbol of a bird, animal, small creature, or fish that served also as a family herald. Johnston explains, “The word comes from dodaem, meaning action, heart, and nourishment.”
011. What was Immanuel Velikovsky’s Canadian connection?
Immanuel Velikovsky (1895–1979) was the principal, modern-day proponent of the theory of catastrophism — the notion that major changes on the Earth’s surface are the result of global cataclysms. Scientists recognize that cosmic catastrophes have occurred in the distant past, but they dismiss the theory that they have taken place during the historical period by noting that the geological and cultural records do not support the theory of catastrophism.
Velikovsky was a Russian-born physician and psychoanalyst who studied these records in Palestine, in France, and in his later years in Princeton, New Jersey. He came to public attention with a highly readable book, titled Worlds in Collision (1950). It was followed by such bestsellers as Ages in Chaos (1952) and Earth in Upheaval (1955), in which he marshalled what evidence he could find — geological and cultural as well as psychological — to support his notion that mankind suffered from “cultural amnesia” when “the sky fell down.” This perspective allowed him to offer an original account of such mysteries as the parting of the Red Sea, the collision of parts of the planet Jupiter with Earth, the origin of Oedipus, the birth of Christianity and Islam, etc.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was among the earliest of public organizations to take an interest in his theories and to subject them to critical analysis in various radio and television programs, including some in CBC Ideas, produced by Robert Zend in the early 1970s. The CBC programs examined the reactions of scientists to such claims.
Velikovsky received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, which on May 9 and 10, 1974, sponsored an academic conference on his findings and influence. “Velikovsky and Cultural Amnesia” was a multi-disciplinary endeavour with the conference organizers, representing such disparate disciplines as physics, biology, English, and psychology. Its organizer was the physicist Earl R. Milton, who edited the proceedings published as Recollections of a Fallen Sky: Velikovsky and Cultural Amnesia (Lethbridge: Unileth Press, 1978). The guest of honour delivered an address with the arresting title, “Cultural Amnesia: The Submergence of Terrifying Events in the Racial Memory and Their Later Emergence.”
So it might be said that Canadians “led the way” not so much in espousing Velikovsky’s theory of catastrophism as in exposing it to public and academic scrutiny. As the astronomer and writer Carl Sagan noted, scientists are impressed with Velikovsky’s cultural evidence, whereas humanists are impressed with his scientific evidence. (Sagan went on to dismiss the latter.) Some of Velikovsky’s predictions about planetary atmospheres have been proven true; others, false. His dramatically written books retain a measure of their popularity to this day.
012. Who is “Mussolini of Montreal”?
There have been many bossy mayors of Montreal, including Camillien Houde, but the title “Mussolini of Montreal” belongs to Italy’s wartime dictator Benito Mussolini. A full-length, uniformed portrait of him aside a brown horse appears in the fresco painted high above the altar of the Church of the Madonna della Difesa. Il Duce is up there with the angels, cardinals, altar boys, prophets, and carabinieri.
This parish church was the first Roman Catholic church to be built in the Little Italy area of Montreal in 1919, at the expense of the city’s Italian immigrant community. The fresco was painted by Guido Nincheri, an Italian-born church artist. It commemorates “the signing of the Lateran Pact of 1929, the agreement between Mussolini and the Vatican that created the Vatican City State,” according to Ingrid Peritz, in “The Mussolini of Montreal,” the Globe and Mail, August 27, 2002. At the time, Mussolini was a hero in the eyes of the Catholic church. During the Second World War, Nincheri was interned for three months as a fascist sympathizer at Camp Petawawa, Ontario.
The image on the fresco became a national news story during a $4 million restoration program aimed at obtaining recognition for the church as a national historic site. There is no thought of expunging it.
013. What are Babe Ruth’s Canadian connections?
The American baseball star hit his first home run in a minor league game at Toronto’s Hanlan’s Point Stadium, September 5, 1914. Legend has it the ball disappeared into Lake Ontario, an incident described in Jerry Amernic’s novel Gift of the Bambino (2002).
Baseball historian William Humber, writing in “The Canada Connection,” Maclean’s, September 2, 2002, says, “Ruth’s life is a veritable treasure house of Canadiana.” He was taught to play baseball by an Xaverian Brother named Matthias, born in Lingan, Nova Scotia. His first wife was Helen Woodford from Halifax, and a Quebec City-born Red Sox owner brought him to Boston. His longest home run was 600 feet at Montreal’s Guybourg Ground in an exhibition game in 1926.
Humber has many more tidbits in his column. But these are enough to prove him right when he wrote, “The Sultan of Swat had a lot of the Canuck of Clout in him.”
014. Who designed the World Cup of Hockey trophy?
The World Cup of Hockey trophy, so named in 1996, is the victory cup awarded to the winning team in a series of invitational international hockey tournaments. Intermittently scheduled, the World Cup of Hockey replaced the Canada Cup for hockey supremacy, which was first awarded in 1966. The original cup was a bronze affair with a spiky appearance. It consisted of the right half of an upright maple leaf.
The World Cup of Hockey trophy, its replacement, was specially fabricated from a composite alloy of copper and nickel, as well as solid cast urethane plastic. It was designed in 2004 by Frank Gehry, the postmodern architect. He was long a fan of the game and played it in his youth in downtown Toronto near the Art Gallery of Ontario, which he redesigned in November 2008.
015. Was Pierre Elliott Trudeau a serious contender for the position of secretary general of the United Nations?
No. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a man of numerous achievements and notable accomplishments, but he was never a serious contender for the position of secretary general of the United Nations. The fact that an intensely private, left-leaning law professor was able to attain the office of prime minister of Canada and hold on (with one hiatus) from 1968 to 1984, the year he opted to resign from public life, is perhaps accomplishment enough.
Trudeau’s final year in office was played out on the international stage in terms of his well-meaning but hastily conceived world peace initiative. To many observers it appeared that Trudeau was less interested in advocating his peculiar peace plan than he was in promoting himself as a candidate for the highest office of the United Nation — secretary general. How seriously Trudeau sought this office is an open question, but it is generally admitted by U.N. observers that Trudeau was not a serious contender for the position, being distrusted by both the communists and the capitalists. He was also regarded as something of a loose cannon and a social gadfly by the representatives of the unaligned countries. Kurt Waldheim was succeeded as secretary general by Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru. It is likely, one would imagine, that Trudeau would have had greater impact on the world stage as secretary general than did the lack-lustre Perez de Cueller.
016. What did Lester B. Pearson not say was his greatest disappointment?
Many honours came the way of Lester B. Pearson, including becoming prime minister of Canada between 1963 and 1968. It is an open secret that Pearson, the career diplomat, wanted to be elected to the highest office of the United Nations — secretary general — not to the prime ministership of Canada.
He was a serious candidate for that office on two occasions. In 1946 he was defeated by Trygve Lie of Norway, and in 1953 by Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden. Pearson’s sympathies were too pro-American for the Soviets, who much preferred neutralist Scandinavians. Yet, between 1952 and 1956, Pearson served with distinction as president of the United Nations General Assembly, being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts in defusing the Suez Crisis.
It was something of an anti-climax for him to contest the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada, to endure the taunts of Prime Minister and then opposition leader John Diefenbaker, and for him to head Canada during its centennial year. Canada was not the United Nations; Canadian affairs were not world affairs.
017. Who wrote the score for the musical Duddy Kravitz?
Mordecai Richler’s novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz was the basis of both a successful feature film and an unsuccessful musical comedy. The music for Duddy was written by Galt McDermot, co-creator of the fabulously successful Broadway musical Hair. By all reports, McDermot, who was born in Montreal, composed a lively score for Duddy. The production opened at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, where it bombed. It reopened at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, in May 1984, where it bombed again. It has not been heard from since, but given the prominence of the author and the composer, it is not likely to lie fallow forever.
018. Who took the photograph that appears on the cover of Rush’s 1984 album?
The rock band Rush posed for the camera of famous portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh of Ottawa, and the image was reproduced for the cover of their 1984 album Rush.
019. What success story was told in the CBC-TV movie Breaking All the Rules?
Breaking All the Rules, which premiered on CBC-TV in 1987, told the story of the invention and marketing of the Trivial Pursuit board game. The game’s originators are two Canadians: John Haney and Scott Abbott. The game was conceived in 1981 at the Jester Arms Inn at Stratford, Ontario After a rocky year and a half, the concept caught on, and before long everyone, it seemed, was playing Trivial Pursuit.
020. Which painter did Oscar Wilde praise as “the Canadian Constable”?
The Anglo-Irish writer Oscar Wilde toured Central and Eastern Canada in 1882. At an exhibit of art in Toronto in May, he saw a painting called Fleeting Shadows. The pastoral landscape of Waterloo County impressed him as a work with “soul” and “feeling.” Wilde felt the artist to be “an exceedingly clever fellow” and proclaimed him “the Canadian Constable.” In an address later that evening at the Grand Opera House, Wilde praised the painting for being “full of the highest art and beauty.”
Fleeting Shadows was painted by a young artist named Homer Watson (1855–1936), who was a native of Doon, Ontario, and a self-taught artist with no social connections. His career was given a great assist by Wilde, who commissioned a landscape painting of his own and helped secure additional commissions from friends in the United States. When the painter made his first trip to England in 1888, Wilde introduced Watson to Whistler with these words: “Mr. Watson is the Canadian Constable, and Barbizon without ever having seen Barbizon.” These details are noted by Kevin O’Brien in Oscar Wilde in Canada: An Apostle for the Arts (1982).
021. Who was the only French Canadian ever to meet Victor Hugo?
Today, it is difficult to imagine the degree to which Victor Hugo (1802–1885) dominated the cultural life of France and French-speakers throughout the world in the second half of the ninteenth century. The only English writer to be compared with the great literary Frenchman is Charles Dickens. Yet, the English novelist was less versatile than the French littérateur. Hugo, after all, was not only a novelist, but also a leading poet and dramatist — and Dickens lived only fifty-eight years to Hugo’s eighty-three.
Victor Hugo’s life and work mightily impressed Louis-Honoré Fréchette (1839–1908). The Quebec poet and littérateur was accorded recognition as the unofficial poet laureate of French Canada and was the first Canadian to be honoured by the illustrious Academie Française. Fréchette initiated a correspondence with the Hugo. In an address delivered before the Royal Society of Canada in 1890, Fréchette recalled how ten years earlier he had been received by the great French writer, then in resident of the isle of Guernsey. Fréchette greeted Hugo as one “saluted by the entire universe.” Hugo replied that Fréchette was a victim of “the follies of Louis XV” during whose reign France lost Quebec.
It was Fréchette’s suggestion that he was probably the sole French Canadian ever to meet Hugo — or at least to be received by him.
022. Which American president is remembered in Quebec as le petit juge?
The American president William Howard Taft (1857–1930) served from 1909 to 1913 as the twenty-seventh president of the United States. Thereafter, he served as chief of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1921 until his death. Taft had an association with French Canada that is recalled to this day. For the last thirty-eight years of his life, Taft summered at the family lodge at Murray Bay, the resort community on the north shore of the St. Lawrence, known today as La Malbaie. The French Canadians were fond of le petit juge — the little judge — for Taft was short of stature but outgoing and friendly in nature. In fact, it is Taft who as president established the “special relationship” that was said to have existed between Canada and the United States until the Trudeau administration in 1968.
023. Was Benjamin Franklin’s son a traitor?
Benjamin Franklin’s son is judged a traitor to the cause of American independence, but not to the British and Canadian cause of the Imperial connection.
Benjamin Franklin was one of the signers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. His son, William Franklin, served as governor of New Jersey. Identified with the British during the Revolutionary War, he was arrested as a spy, jailed for two years, and deported to England. In England he enjoyed the perquisites of a lifetime pension.
Interestingly, William’s son, William Temple Franklin, was an American patriot and stuck with his grandfather.
024. What is Canadian about “The One Who Got Away”?
The One Who Got Away is the title of a British movie released in 1957. It was directed by Roy Baker and shot in Switzerland, despite the fact that the setting was Canada. It told the true story of Franz von Werra, a German pilot (played by Harvey Kruger) who had the distinction of being the sole prisoner of the Second World War to escape from a Canadian internment camp. He succeeded in making his way to the still-neutral United States, where he generated publicity for the Axis cause.
025. Who is the father of anthropology?
Many anthropologists consider Joseph-François Lafitau to be the father of anthropology. He has also been called the father of ethnology, anthropology’s cousin discipline. A Jesuit from France, Lafitau served as a missionary among the Mohawks at Caughnawaga. From 1712 to 1729, he observed the life and customs of the Natives and described them in Jesuit Relations. He identified the ginseng plant growing in the St. Lawrence valley and was thus responsible for the profitable trade in the plant, which continues to this day. One of his notions, since discredited, was that because the Iroquois had many customs in common with the Lycians — who lived in what is now southwest Turkey — the Natives of North America are their descendants.
026. Was Glenn Gould a fictional character?
Glenn Gould, the celebrated pianist, died in Toronto in 1980. As a recording artist, he has reached an immense audience of classical music lovers. As a fictional character, he has made appearances in two works of fiction. He figures in Austrian author Thomas Bernhard’s novel The Loser (1991) and in American author Richard Powers’s The Gold Bug Variations (1991). In both novels he is described as a hermit-like performing genius alienated from his country and century. Robert Fulford discusses these novels in this column in Saturday Night, September 1992.
027. Who were “Your Eminent Residences” at the Stratford Festival?
Tyrone Guthrie, artistic director of the Stratford Festival, was wryly amused when he arrived in Stratford to find in his company a house, a hut, and a mews — the talented actors Eric House, William Hutt, and Peter Mews — so he addressed them as “Your Eminent Residences.”
028. Who rode Scout?
Tonto, the faithful Indian companion of the Lone Ranger, rode a piebald Indian horse known as Scout. The Mohawk actor Jay Silverheels, a Native of the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario, played Tonto on radio, television, and in the movies in the 1940s and 1950s. The Lone Ranger rode “the great horse Silver.”
029. Who composed the women’s anthem “Give Us Back the Night”?
The words and music of the women’s anthem “Give Us Back the Night” were composed by Cynthia Kerr, the Hamilton songwriter; the French translation was prepared by Chantal Chamberland.
The anthem’s chorus runs as follows: “Who’s going to break this silence, who’s going to fight the fight? / Stand up and be counted, and give us back the night. / Who’s going to break this silence, who’s going to fight the fight? / Stand up and be counted, and give us back the night.” When the chorus is repeated the third time, the following words are added: “Give women back the night.”
Kerr composed and copyrighted the moving anthem on October 17, 1989, as if in anticipation of the Montreal Massacre of fourteen women students at l’Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, December 6, 1989. The anthem is now performed at the annual vigils that commemorate the massacre. An audio cassette, Give Us Back the Night / Redonnez-Nous la Nuit (Open Mind, 1989), includes the following notice: “We dedicate this recording to the fourteen women whose dreams were crushed on December 6, 1989, at l’Ecole Polytechnique, Montréal.” The cassette lists the names of the background vocalists, all of whom are Hamilton-area students. One of the vocalists was Nina de Villiers, who was slain the night of August 9, 1991.
030. Did A.H. Clough compose any verses in Canada?
This is a trick question. Arthur Hugh Clough, the Victorian versifier, did not visit any part of Canada on his trip to America. But he crossed the Atlantic in the summer of 1850 aboard the steamer Canada, and in his berth he wrote the lines of one of his moving poems, the one that begins like this: “Green fields of England! wheresoe’er / Across this watery waste we fare, / Your image on our hearts we bear, / Green fields of England, everywhere.” The incident is described by David Williams in Too Quick Despairer: A Life of Arthur Hugh Clough (1969).
031. Who is the Ottawa-born comic writer and actor whose name is most frequently misspelled?
That question sounds like a comedy routine from the typewriter of Dan Aykroyd, the Ottawa-born comic writer and actor who got his start with SCTV’s Second City stage troupe and TV’s Saturday Night Live, later moving on to such feature films as Ghostbusters and Spies Like Us. His name is frequently misspelled by the media and on movie marquees.
032. Who was the second premier of Newfoundland?
Everyone knows that J.R. (Joey) Smallwood was the first premier of Newfoundland. He held office from 1949 to his resignation in 1972. His successor was Frank D. Moores, who held office from 1972 to 1979.
033. Did someone named Robur ever go over Niagara Falls?
This happened only in the pages of Jules Verne’s Master of the World (1904). In the 1914 English-language version of this fantastic adventure novel, Robur the Conqueror is a master criminal who nurtures an insane ambition to rule the world. As captain of the Terror — a combination automobile, boat, submarine, and airplane — he flees two pursuing destroyers on the Niagara River and then sweeps over Niagara Falls and sails away. Verne wrote, “At the moment when the Terror reached the very edge of the Falls, she arose into space, escaping from the thundering cataract in the centre of the lunar bow.”
034. Who created Superman?
Superman, the first of the caped crusaders, was created in 1939 by writer Jerry Siegel (1914–1996) and cartoonist Joe Shuster (1914–1992). They met in Cleveland, where Jerry lived. Joe was a youngster from Toronto, and the Daily Planet, where Lois Lane and Clark Kent worked, is modelled on the Toronto Daily Star, which he had delivered house to house. It is frequently said that Americans claim Superman whereas Canadians claim Clark Kent.
035. What were John Buchan’s favourite Canadian books on angling?
John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir, served as governor general of Canada. Born in Scotland, his country home lay in the Border region. He was a confirmed angler and a discerning littérateur. He could tell a good book from a mediocre one, especially when it came to angling. Here is what he wrote about the conjunction of literature and fishing in Memory Hold-the-Door (1940):
The literary classics of angling after all are few in number, for who is there besides [Izaak] Walton? I should select part of the Noctes Ambrosianae, and some of Andrew Lang’s Angling Sketches, but that may be a Borderer’s bias; Lord Grey of Fallodon’s Fly-fishing beyond doubt; and two Canadian books, Stewart Edward White’s The Forest and W.H. Blake’s Brown Waters. But Walton must always head the list.
It is interesting to note that histories of Canada writing and writers yield no information on Stewart Edward White. W.H. Blake’s well-written Brown Waters was published in 1915; its sequel is A Fisherman’s Creed (1923).
036. What was the so-called Champagne Safari?
What has been called the Champagne Safari was the 1,200-mile expedition across the Canadian Rockies in the 1930s led by Charles Bedaux. The millionaire industrialist travelled in style with a fleet of Citroens, 130 horses, and gourmet food and books. He was accompanied by his wife, his mistress, and the cinematographer Floyd Crosby, who kept a record of the “trek.” In 1995, director George Ungar worked the footage into the film The Champagne Safari. The Canadian experience was the highpoint in Bedaux’s life — he was a Nazi sympathizer who was arrested for treason, eventually committing suicide in 1944.
037. Did Joachim von Ribbentrop ever visit Canada?
Joachim von Ribbentrop was a German aristocrat, royalist, and careerist who, swallowing principle, befriended Adolf Hitler and joined the Nazi Party. He ashamedly offered it the benefit of his contacts, experiences, and talents. He spent 1910 to 1914 in Canada, except for a short visit to Germany and a stint as a journalist in New York City. Von Ribbentrop learned to speak British English as a young man, and the British Empire impressed him as a system of government and trade. In subsequent years he tried to convince Hitler of the need to mingle some aristocrats among the ambitious non-aristocratic officers and to restore the Hohenzollern monarchy to Germany and Austria. The details appear in John Weitz’s biography Hitler’s Diplomat: The Life and Times of Joachim von Ribbentrop (1992).
038. Who lives in the residences known as Rideau Cottage and 11 Rideau Gate?
Rideau Cottage and 11 Rideau Gate are two residences located on the grounds of the estate known as Government House or Rideau Hall, the official residence of the governor general.
Rideau Cottage was erected by the first governor general, Lord Monk, and it subsequently served as the residence of the governor general’s secretary.
A temporary residence for official guests who for one reason or another have not been offered rooms in Rideau Hall itself, 11 Rideau Gate has no permanent residents.
039. Was Terry Fox the subject of a song written and sung by Rod Stewart?
Rod Stewart, the American hard-rock singer and performer, headed a benefit in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 5, 1989, to honour the memory of Terry Fox — the marathon runner who died at the age of twenty-two in 1981. Stewart wrote and performed a song titled “Never Give Up on a Dream.” It includes such lines as “Inspiring all to never lose, / It’ll take a long, long time for someone to fill your shoes. / It’ll take somebody who is a lot like you, / Who never gave up on a dream.” Its royalties are earmarked for cancer research.
040. Who was the last Canadian combatant killed during the Second World War?
The last Canadian combatant killed during the Second World War was Lieutenant Robert Hampton Gray, a Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve pilot and a native of Nelson, B.C. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery. He was twenty-seven years old when he died.
Gray was killed early in the morning of August 9, 1945, the day an atomic bomb was exploded over Nagasaki. Flying a Corsair launched from the desk of a British aircraft carrier, he was able to sink an enemy warship, but was caught in enemy fire. With his Corsair crippled, he crashed into Onagawa Bay. A memorial to his bravery was erected on August 9, 1989, at Sakiyami Park, which overlooks Onagawa Bay on the Honshu coast of Japan. The memorial was the first on Japanese soil to honour a foreign serviceman.
041. Are there years that Canadian athletes have failed to win gold medals at the Olympic Games?
Canadian athletes are among the world’s best, despite government programs that have inhibited and impeded their best efforts, especially at the Olympic Games.
Canadian competitors won no gold medals at the winter games in 1936 (Berlin), 1956 (Cortina), 1972 (Sapporo), and 1980 (Lake Placid). As well, Canadians failed to win gold medals at the summer games in 1972 (Munich), and 1976 (Moscow). At these games, Canadians earned silver and bronze medals in good numbers, but not one gold medal.
042. Was there an assassination attempt on the life of Tim Buck?
Tim Buck was the popular leader of the Communist Party of Canada. His actions were found to be in contravention of Section 98 of the Criminal Code (the “seditious conspiracy” clause used to deal with dissidents), and he was serving a five-year sentence in Kingston Penitentiary when a riot broke out. Six shots in three volleys were fired into his cell the night of October 17, 1932. By falling to the floor in time, he was unhurt. Buck was released on November 24, 1934, having served half of his sentence. Tim Buck emerged a hero. Two years later the controversial Section 98 was repealed.
043. Which Russian ballet dancer defected in Toronto?
Mikhail Baryshnikov, a leading dancer with the Kirov Ballet, which was then touring North America, defected on June 30, 1974, following a performance at the O’Keefe Centre in Toronto. He was immediately granted asylum and went on to re-establish his Russian reputation in the capitals of the Western world.
044. Who is the chief Boy Scout in Canada?
By virtue of his office, the chief Boy Scout in Canada is the governor general of Canada. The chief Girl Guide is the wife of the governor general.
045. Who or what was “Mrs. Mike”?
Mrs. Mike was the title of a best-selling biography of Katherine Mary O’Fallon, a high-spirited, sixteen-year-old Boston girl who meets and marries Michael (Mike) Flannigan, a gallant RCMP sergeant with “eyes so blue you could swim in them.” He introduces an urban woman to the delights of northern life at Hudson’s Hope, Yukon Territory, before the First World War. It was written by two American writers, Benedict and Nancy Freedman, and turned into the movie Mrs. Mike (1949), directed by Louis King and starring Dick Powell and Evelyn Keyes.
046. How many Marx brothers were there?
Were there four Marx brothers, or seven, or eleven?
One immediately thinks of the American vaudevillians and movie personalities: Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo, Beppo. But there was also a Canadian family of seven Marx brothers, known as “The Canadian Kings of the Repertoire” from Cape Breton to the Cariboo, according to an article in Early Canadian Life, August 1978.
The Canadian Marx brothers were a troupe of entertainers headed by Thomas Sr., a former cobbler from Perth, Ontario, who led his sons — R.W., Joseph, Thomas, Ernie, Alex, John, and McIntyre. Each son had his own specialty, whether song, dance, recitations, sketches, melodrama (villainy versus virtue), slide show, etc. They entered the town with a brass-band parade and ran a “clean” show. It was said that no one ever saw the Marx company twice — “he died laughing.”
The Marx Company toured from 1870 to the 1920s, when it came to break up. Thomas Sr. once saw Groucho Marx perform but felt the American comedian’s act was not smooth enough!
047. Whose body lay in state in the old Montreal Forum?
The funeral of hockey player Howie Morenz, know as the Stratford Streak, was held in the old Montreal Forum, at centre ice, on March 11, 1937. Fifty thousand people filed past the catafalque, and 250,000 Quebeckers lined the route to the cemetery. It was the most-attended funeral service in Canadian history.
048. Were Ukrainian Canadians mistreated during and following the Great War?
In 1988 the Ukrainian Committee of the Civil Liberties Commission determined that from 1914 to 1920, 8,579 so-called enemy aliens were incarcerated, including women and children. According to Victor Malarek, “Ukrainian Canadians Seeking Redress,” the Globe and Mail, January 15, 1988, “Of that number, 3,138 could be classified as prisoners of war ... the other 5,441 were civilians ... a further 88,000, most of them Ukrainian, were categorized as enemy aliens and were obliged to report regularly to their local police authorities or to the North West Mounted Police.” This was done legally under the War Measures Act of 1914.
049. Who was the witch of Plumb Hollow?
The so-called witch of Plumb Hollow was Mrs. Elizabeth Barnes, a farmer’s wife who was known locally as a clairvoyant and fortune teller. She called herself Mother Barnes and was feared yet frequented by members of the farming communities around Plumb Hollow, near Athens, which is near Brockville, Ontario. In 1889 she was sought out by George Dagg, a farmer from Shawville, Quebec, who believed he had a poltergeist on his farm. Blessed with “second sight” and the “sixth sense” (for she claimed to be “the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter”), Mother Barnes identified the cause of the disturbance: an adolescent girl with a troubled psyche. In the process, she inspired at least one novel and a number of short plays. Her abandoned log cabin was still standing in the late 1990s.
050. Who claimed Canada as his personal possession?
Alexander Humphreys claimed Canada as his personal possession. The otherwise-humble schoolmaster made the astonishing claim and came close to proving it in 1839 during an amazing trial in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Humphreys maintained that he was the descendent of Sir William Alexander, who in 1625 and 1628 had been granted land across much of today’s Eastern Canada. The direct line of inheritance died out in 1739. Nonetheless, there were two pretenders.
The first claimant was William Alexander Stirling, an American soldier, who tried to claim the title and the immense land grants. But he was unable to prove his legal right to the title.
The second claimant was Alexander Humphreys, the humble schoolmaster, who claimed he was the Earl of Stirling, Hereditary Viceroy of the Canadas, Lord Lieutenant of Nova Scotia, Proprietor of Maine and New Brunswick, Master of the Grand Banks Fisheries, Absolute Owner of All Lands, Waterways, and Minerals found between the Great Lakes and California.
Humphreys supplied documents to prove his claim, but he was in turn accused of imposture and forgery. Losing his case, he settled in Washington, D.C., where he and then his sons continued to press their grandiose claim. The Man Who Claimed Canada was the title of a CBC Radio drama broadcast on December 6, 1954. The play was researched and written by R.S. Lambert.
051. Who are the “titans” of the Canadian big business?
Peter C. Newman, the Boswell of members of Canada’s business establishment, has focused on the new breed of powerful men, whom he calls “titans.” He does this in his book Titans: How the New Canadian Establishment Seized Power (1998), which documents the deals and personal lives of such titans as Ted Rogers, Paul Desmarais, Conrad Black, Eddy Cogan, Peter Nygard, Peter Munk, and Thomas d’Aquino.
052. Did L.M. Montgomery base Anne of Green Gables on Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm?
L.M. Montgomery’s classic novel Anne of Green Gables (1908) has surprising parallels with an earlier and even more famous children’s book, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1903), the American classic written by Kate Douglas Wiggin. According to scholar David Howes and writer Constance Classen, similarities of plot, description, and dialogue are so obvious that Montgomery, in the writing of her children’s book, must have been consciously or unconsciously influenced by Wiggin’s writing. As Andy Lamey noted in “Is Anne of Green Gables Really from Sunnybrook Farm?” National Post, April 10, 1999, “Both Anne and Rebecca tell the story of a young girl who goes to live with an older couple after one or both of her parents dies.”
053. Who is Dudley Do-Right?
Writers Alex Anderson and Jay Ward created the character of Dudley Do-Right — the upright, uptight, and unbright Mountie — as long ago as 1948. It was not until 1961 that the animated character first appeared as a segment of the TV program The Bullwinkle Show. Then Dudley had his own series of brief episodes (each four and a half minutes in duration) on ABC-TV in 196970.
The incompetent Dudley was modelled on Nelson Eddy’s Mountie character in the movie Rose Marie. Inspector Fenwick supervises Dudley in his battle against his arch enemy, Snidely Whiplash, who repeatedly kidnaps Dudley’s girlfriend, Nell (the Inspector’s daughter), and ties her to railroad tracks. If that weren’t proof enough of his villainy, Snidley also has green skin. According to Michael Dawson in The Mountie: From Dime Novel to Disney (1998), Ward has described Dudley as “stalwart, clean-living, chaste, dense — and a crashing bore.”
054. Who was the strongest man in the world?
Weight-lifting records are made and broken every year. Yet, in downtown Montreal there is a statue raised to “the strongest man in the world.” He is the French-Canadian strongman Louis Cyr (1863–1912), whose strength became a legend. Before the sport of weightlifting was developed, he won every challenge match in North America in 1885 and even claimed the world championship in 1892. Three years later, in Boston, he lifted 1,967 kg, believed to be the heaviest weight ever hoisted by a human being.
Harry Houdini, writing in Miracle Mongers and Their Methods (1920), had this to say about Cyr: “It is generally conceded that Louis Cyr was, in his best days, the strongest man in the known world at all-round straight lifting. Cyr did not give the impression of being an athlete, nor of a man in training, for he appeared to be over-fat and not particularly muscular; but he made records in lifting which, to the best of my knowledge, no other man has been able to duplicate.”
055. Did Jesse James hide in Ontario?
The American outlaw Jesse James was shot by a fellow gang member, Bob Ford, in April 1882. As John Macdonald wrote in “The Traveller,” CARP News, May 1998, “The story made the headlines around the world, including Princeton, Ont., a small Oxford County village 50 km southwest of Kitchener. Villagers saw the pictures of James and recognized him as a former local resident, a Mr. Richardson. To this day, over a century later, stories persist around Princeton that Jesse James lived there while on the run from U.S. authorities.”
It is said that he arrived in the early 1880s and moved into the local hotel. He bought a horse and buggy and was noted for his marksmanship. He courted a local young lady and after their engagement was announced, he made known his plan to buy a farm on Governor’s Road, now Highway 2. Thereupon, he vanished, leaving behind his broken-hearted fiancée.
The legend of James’s days in Princeton is one of many stories included by Anna Williamson in History of Princeton (1967).
056. Where is there a replica of Lester B. Pearson’s study?
Upon the death of former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson in 1972, a replica of his study from his Ottawa home, complete with books, furnishings, and memorabilia, was fitted into Laurier House in Ottawa, as incongruous as it might seem. The result is that Laurier House could be called Liberal House, for it is associated with three prominent Liberal prime ministers of Canada: Sir Wilfrid Laurier, W.L. Mackenzie King, and Lester B. Pearson.
057. Who was the so-called Lone Cowboy?
Aficionados of the art and fiction of the Wild West know the “Lone Cowboy” as Will James — cowboy, bronco-buster, rodeo performer, cattle-rustler, ex-onvict, Hollywood stuntman, illustrator, and storyteller about Western subjects. Curiously, James was not the adventurer’s real name, and contrary to the impression he gave, he was not born in the United States, though he did live in the West and his last decades were spent on his ranch at Pryor Creek, Montana.
A French Canadian by birth and background, he was born Ernest Dufault (1892–1942) at Saint-Nazaire, Eastern Townships, Quebec. At the age of seventeen, he headed out to Alberta, where he ran afoul of the RCMP and then crossed the border, eventually spending time in a U.S. prison. Between 1924 and 1942, he wrote and illustrated twenty-four popular Westerns. Two of them, Smoky (1933) and Lone Cowboy (1934), were made by Hollywood into movies. His rambunctious life became the subject of a NFB documentary titled Alias Will James (1988), directed by Jacques Godbout with music supplied by Ian Tyson.
058. Who was Mary Helena Fortune?
Mary Helena Fortune has an imposing name, but one that is appropriate for an unusual woman and an impressive writer. Born Mary Wilson (1833–1910) of Scottish ancestry, in Belfast, Ireland, she was brought to Canada as a child. In 1851 she married Joseph Fortune, a surveyor, and in 1855 they travelled to Australia to join her father, George Wilson, who was working the goldfields.
In colonial Australia she began to write crime fiction under various pseudonyms for a popular Australian Journal, contributing over five hundred detective stories between 1865 and 1908. Her one-book publication was The Detectives’ Album (1871), possibly the first collection of detective stories published by a woman. She died under mysterious circumstances.
She wrote one of the longest-running series in crime fiction and pioneered the “police procedural.” She was probably the first woman to write stories narrated by a police detective, and certainly the first woman to make a literary specialty of crime fiction. These details come from George Vanderburgh, publisher of the reprint edition of The Detectives’ Album: Stories of Crime and Mystery from Colonial Australia (2002).
059. Did Biggles ever fly North?
Biggles did, although his flight is pretty well forgotten these days.
Biggles is short for Flying Officer James Bigglesworth, the action hero of a series of boys’ adventure novels that were published in England between 1932 and 1998 and were read throughout the Empire and the Commonwealth. Biggles’s big decade was the 1950s.
In the novels, the intrepid aviator was a dauntless adventure hero born of English stock in India and raised at a school in England. He flew a Sopwith Camel during the Great War, worked with British Intelligence, flew a Spitfire with the RAF during the Second World War, and then sought out adventure in South America, Australia, Asia, Africa, Canada, and behind the Iron Curtain.
Ninety-eight of these thrilling, well-loved novels were published. They were written by Captain William Early Johns (1893–1968), an English writer and former Flying Officer who promoted himself to “Captain” following the success of the early Biggles books. The last in the series is Biggles Sees Too Much (1970). In all, Johns wrote close to two hundred works of fiction for young readers, including a series for girls about Joan Worrals, a determined, eighteen-year-old flier for the WAAF during Second World War.
Of specific Canadian interest is the fact that Canadian editions of a number of these novels were published by the Musson Book Company of Toronto. Curiously, one novel that Musson failed to release in Canada is Biggles Flies North (1938), in which the flier heads for the Great Northwest in pursuit of villains who lack common decency and are intent upon the subversion of good old British values in the Dominion upon the eve of the Second World War.
060. Who was Canada’s “King of the Pulps”?
King of the Pulps, published in 2003, is about H. (for Henry) Bedford-Jones (1887–1949). The three authors of the book (Peter Ruber, Darrell C. Richardson, and Victor A. Berch) explain that, between 1909 and the year of his death, Bedford-Jones wrote 231 novels and 1,141 short stories — some 25 million words published in the American and British pulp magazines, which were then very popular, under his own name and a host of pseudonyms,
The phenomenally prolific “pulpster” was born in Napanee, Ontario, attended one year at Trinity College in Toronto, worked as a newspaperman in the United States, came into his own as a freelancer contributor to the pulps, and spent his last years in Palm Springs, California, where he died.
He wrote fast-moving tales in most of the genres: adventure, fantasy, epic heroism, science fiction, horror, crime, true-crime, westerns, etc. In the 1920s he was described as the highest paid pulp writer in the United States. Today, his tales seem simple-minded, yet there is the thrill of the chase to them.
As Allan Hawkwood, he wrote the “Famous John Solomon Adventure Series” in the 1930s, which was set in the Middle East of the same period. His earliest fiction dealt with New France’s Ancien Régime and the Northwest fur trade, but he soon found that imaginative adventure tales set in exotic climes sold best. The Depression dealt a death blow to most of the pulps; those that survived were polished off by television and then paperback originals. These originals were a throwback to the earlier penny dreadful and dime novels.
In 1934 H. BedfordJones jokingly ceded the title “King of the pulps” to a friend and fellow writer, Earle Stanley Gardner, the lawyer who created Perry Mason.
061. Who are the country’s leading stand-up comedians?
Mark Breslin answered this question in his book, The Yuk Yuk’s Guide to Canadian Stand-up (2009). A student of comedy, Breslin knows what is funny ... or at least what is comic. It was 1974 when, in Toronto, he founded the Yuk Yuk’s chain of comedy clubs, which has sixteen locations across Canada.
He was asked to name the “ten most influential Canadian stand-ups” by Bruce Demara, who published the list in “Breslin a No-brainer for Book,” The Toronto Star, November 8, 2009. Here is his choice of names, in alphabetical order:
1. Dave Broadfoot.
2. Brent Butt.
3. Jim Carrey.
4. Larry Horowitz.
5. Elvira Kurt.
6. Mike MacDonald.
7. Howie Mandel.
8. Paul Mandell.
9. Russell Peters.
10. Kenny Robinson.
Although these comics are known to write and perform their own material, he leaves off the list those people who are strictly writers or movie and television personalities known for their light comic touches. Among the Canadian performers and contributors to the Second City revues and Saturday Night Live are such talented comedians and comic actors as Leslie Nielsen, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Mike Myers, etc. All of them make Canadians — as well as North Americans — laugh (and sometimes groan!).
062. Who discovered the Calypso borealis?
John Muir discovered and described the Calypso borealis, a rare white orchid that he encountered on his trek across the Holland Marsh, north of Toronto. At the time (1865–66) he was in his mid-twenties and a wanderer, working as a sawmill-hand and living in a log cabin outside Meaford, Ontario. In 1892 he established the Sierra Club to protect the environment.
“The flower was white and made the impression of the utmost simply purity, like a snow flower,” he recalled at the age of seventy-one. “It seemed the most spiritual of all the flower people I had ever met. I sat down beside it and fairly cried for joy. It seems wonderful that so frail and lovely a plant has such power over human hearts. This Calypso meeting happened some forty-five years ago, and was more memorable and impressive than any of my meetings with human beings excepting, perhaps, Ralph Waldo Emerson and one or two others.”
These details come from Cameron Smith’s column “Muir’s Long Cabin the Bush,” the Toronto Star, October 11, 2003.
063. Who was Quebec’s “rural cartoonist”?
One of the country’s most charming illustrators was Albert Chartier, born and trained in Montreal in 1912, where he worked as a freelance illustrator. “For almost sixty years, from 1943 until 2002, Chartier drew the monthly comic strip Onésime for Le Bulletin des Agriculteurs, a magazine that, like The Old Farmer’s Almanac, remains a fixture of rural Québécois life.” So wrote Jett Heer, in “Culture High and Low,” National Post, November 20, 2003.
The central character of his comic strip is Onésime, a chinless, pipe-smoking, Walter Mitty figure of a man who is married to Zéonïde, an opera-going matron. As Heer points out, Chartier’s subject is rural attitudes, but his style was as modern and cosmopolitan as the cartoons that appeared in The New Yorker of the day.
Chris Oliveros, publisher of Drawn and Quarterly, in Volume 5, fall 2003, devoted more than seventy pages to the reproduction and study of Chartier’s art, which may be compared and contrasted with that of Jimmy Frise, who at approximately the same time drew “Birdseye Center” for the Toronto Star Weekly. Chartier’s audience was at once more rural and more sophisticated than Frise’s.
064. Was Sir Henry Baskerville a Canadian?
Sir Henry Baskerville is the principal character in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). In the Sherlock Holmes mystery, Sir Henry is an Englishman “who had been farming in Canada until he inherited a baronetcy from his uncle, Sir Charles Baskerville, upon the latter’s mysterious death.” The location of Sir Henry’s farm is unspecified in the novel, but Doyle wrote that he bought his boots in Toronto, from a bootmaker named Meyers. (The “Meyers, Toronto” reference led to the founding of the fan group known as the Bootmakers of Toronto in 1972. At the turn of the century, a shoemaker named Meyers had a shop on Wellington Street in the city. Donald Campbell Meyers was a leading psychiatrist at the turn of the century in Toronto.) He returns to the Moors and is confronted with the mysterious Hound! Further details appear in Christopher Redmond’s article “Sherlock Holmes from Sea to Sea” in Lasting Impressions: The 25th Anniversary of the Bootmakers of Toronto, The Sherlock Holmes Society of Canada (1997), edited by George A. Vanderburgh.
065. Was Sherlock Holmes a Canadian?
Enthusiasts of the Sherlock Holmes stories enjoy arguing strange theses and proving odd theories, such as the fact that Dr. Watson was five-times married and the suggestion that Holmes was a Canadian. The latter notion stems entirely from the fact that Canadians have the habit of adding “eh?” to the ends of their sentences. Holmes, it seems, uses the construction a number of times, notably in his first adventure, A Study in Scarlet (1887), where he says to Watson, “I might not have gone but for you, and so have missed the finest study I ever came across: a study in scarlet, eh?”
066. What is “The Scarlet Claw” all about?
In the Universal Studios movie The Scarlet Claw (1944), Basil Rathbone plays Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce appears as Dr. Watson. It is a propaganda film set in Quebec City and the rural village of “La Morte Rouge.” As Christopher Redmond wrote in “Sherlock Holmes from Sea to Sea,” Lasting Impressions: The 25th Anniversary of the Bootmakers of Toronto, The Sherlock Holmes Society of Canada (1997), edited by George A. Vanderburgh:
Holmes solves a series of murders which are initially being blamed on a monster or a supernatural influence. The film ends with a coy scene in which Holmes and Watson are driving through a forest on the first stage of their journey home to England. Watson says he would like to have seen more of Canada on the trip, and Holmes agrees, speaking in the style of a civics textbook about Canada’s “relations of friendly intimacy with the United States on the one hand and their unswerving fidelity to the British Commonwealth and the motherland on the other. Canada, the link which joins together these great branches of the human family.”
The film appeared the year following the first Quebec Conference in September 1943, which saw the meeting between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
067. Was Richard Hannay a Canadian?
Richard Hannay is a character in a series of popular thrillers written by the Scots novelist John Buchan. Hannay makes his debut in The Thirty-nine Steps (1915) as a South African mining engineer who recently settled in London. In later novels he joins the British Army, rises to the rank of general, and exposes a series of espionage rings, saving England from unspecified enemies on a number of occasions. This Hannay thus has no Canadian connection.
Yet, when Alfred Hitchcock filmed The 39 Steps (1935), described as “adapted from the novel by John Buchan,” he went out of his way to identify the hero as a Canadian. Hitchcock was assuring himself of a North-American market for the film by transforming an Australian hero into a Canadian one. In one of the film’s celebrated vaudeville scenes, Hannay — played by English actor Robert Donat — asks the character Mr. Memory, “How far is it from Winnipeg to Montreal?”
Mr. Memory (played by Wylie Watson) replies, “Ah, a gentleman from Canada. You’re welcome, sir. [Applause from the audience.] Winnipeg, the fair city of Canada and the capital of the province of Manitoba. Distance from Montreal? 1,454 miles. Am I right, sir?”
Hannay replies, “Quite right!”
Buchan’s novel remains in print to this day and is highly regarded by its readers; however, it is Hitchcock’s version of Richard Hannay that most people remember, not specifically as a Canadian, but as an agreeable chap.
068. Who are Ghandl and Skaay and why are they great?
Gandhl and Skaay are the names of two great poets of the Haida people. Their narrative poems would be lost, but were recited in the original Haida language to an anthropologist who transcribed, translated, and annotated them in English. These texts so impressed the British Columbia poet and scholar Robert Bringhurst that he devoted a substantial book to the study of them: A Story as Sharp as a Knife: the Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World (1999). He followed it with Nine Visits to the Mythworld: Ghandl of the Qayahi Llaanes (2000) and Being in Being: the Collected Works of Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay (2001).
Ghandl of the Qaysun Aqyahl Llaanas was born about 1851 and died about 1920. He was christened Walter McGregor and in later years was blind. In 1900 he dictated his narrative poems to anthropologist and linguist J.R. Swanton, who translated and annotated them with the assistance of a bilingual Haida named Henry Moody.
Of Ghandl, Bringhurst writes, “He seems to me a great deal more accomplished — and therefore far more worthy of celebration as a literary ancestor — than any Canadian poet or novelist who was writing in English or French during his time. In fact I know of no one writing in any language, anywhere in North America toward the end of the nineteenth century, who uses words with greater sensitivity and skill. He seems to me not just an exceptional man ... but a figure of durable importance in the history of literature.”
Skaay of the Qquuna Qiighawaay is also known as Robert McKay or John Sky. His vital years were roughly 1827 to 1905, and at some point he was crippled. He also dictated his narrative poems to Swanton in 1900. Bringhurst regards Skaay as “the greatest Haida poet whose work survives.”
A typical narrative by Ghandl or Skaay — long and seemingly discursive — relates a tale of archaic creation or everyday event, timeless or temporal, or both together. It might commence with the words “they say” and conclude with the words “this is where it ends” or “so it ends.”
Bringhurst regards the nineteenth century as the classic period of Haida expression. His work is a “reclamation project” of cultural interest, though it is unlikely that the general public will ever be in a position to appreciate the quality and interest of the narratives of Ghandl and Skaay and other Haida “mythtellers” — not to mention the “mythtellers” of the other indigenous languages of North America.
069. Who were LaFontaine and Baldwin and why are they important?
Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine and Robert Baldwin were lawyers and parliamentarians from Montreal and Toronto who, following the Rebellions of 1837, worked against the British administration’s attempts to assimilate the French of Upper Canada into the English society of Upper Canada.
LaFontaine and Baldwin formed governments in 1842 and 1848 and had a profound effect on public administration, the legal system, and public education in pre-Confederation Canada. They are remembered as the architects of responsible government. They set the country on the road to democracy, racial amity, and national sovereignty — aims realized two decades later in the 1867 Act of Confederation.
The achievement of LaFontaine and Baldwin’s achievement, against such heavy odds, was recalled by John Ralston Saul, author and intellectual, who wrote and lectured on the ability of French and English Canadians to work together to deal with common problems.
Saul was the first speaker in the annual LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium Lectures in Toronto in 2000, a joint undertaking of Saul and The Dominion Institute. The institute, headed by Rudyard Griffiths, is a national, non-partisan, charitable organization founded in 1997 to promote a better understanding and appreciation of Canadian history. Subsequent speakers included Alain Dubuc (Montreal), Georges Erasmus (Vancouver), and David Malouf (Toronto).
070. Who was the first American president to visit Canada?
It was not until July 1936 that a president of the United States visited Canada. The visit was a private one and the response to the express invitation of John Buchan, Governor General Lord Tweedsmuir. That summer, U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt “took the opportunity of a sailing trip off Nova Scotia with his sons at the end of July to see Buchan in Quebec. Amazingly, it was the first official visit of an American president to Canada.”
Buchan and Roosevelt had been friends and admirers for years. Indeed, Buchan had hoped to be appointed Britain’s ambassador to the United States instead of governor general of Canada. FDR referred to Tweedsmuir as “the best Governor General Canada ever had.”
This information comes from Andrew Lownie’s John Buchan: The Presbyterian Cavalier (1995). Howard Taft was one of a number of U.S. presidents who recalled youthful vacations and hunting expeditions in Canada before they assumed the mantle of power.
071. What was unusual about Glenn Gould’s name and signature?
Glenn Gould’s name and signature were quite unusual.
Recipients of letters from the recording artist found that he seldom bothered to write the last letter of his first name. In haste he would sign his letters “Glen Gould.” The signature looks odd.
Scholars have noted that at his birth, on September 15, 1932, he was registered “Glenn Herbert Gold.” At the time anti-Semitism was a factor in Toronto, and although the family was Presbyterian and not Jewish, family members felt it was wiser to spell the family name “Gould” rather than “Gold” (a name identified with European Jewry).
072. Who are the “top ten” Canadians?
People enjoy making lists and reading them, especially graded lists, which organize one’s thoughts on the relative importance of its items. For The Top Ten Greatest Canadians, CBC-TV invited members of the public to vote on the “top ten” Canadians of all-time from all walks of life, and a list of fifty names was supplied as a reminder of claims to greatness. On November 29, 2004, the results of the voting were telecast. Here are the top ten in order of popularity:
1. T.C. Douglas, founder of Medicare.
2. Wayne Gretzky, hockey star.
3. Don Cherry, hockey commentator.
4. Sir John A. Macdonald, first prime minister.
5. Terry Fox, marathon runner.
6. Frederick Banting, co-discoverer of insulin.
7. Lester B. Pearson, prime minister and Nobel laureate.
8. Alexander Graham Bell, telephone inventor.
9. David Suzuki, scientist and environmentalist.
10. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, prime minister.
073. What were Beatrice Lillie’s fondest memories of her hometown?
In her golden years — between the two world wars — Beatrice Lillie was well-described as “the toast of two continents.” She performed in the West End and Broadway and starred in countless touring productions. Called “the ungilded lily,” this star of musical comedy was born in Toronto, married to Sir Robert Peel, and was in her early forties when she agreed to be interviewed by R.E. Knowles of the Toronto Star (March 31, 1936).
Lillie never hid her background of genteel poverty in Toronto; indeed, she sprinkled it with stardust, at the urging of R.E. Knowles, who encouraged her to reminisce about the early years in the city. He asked her about the things she would like to re-experience, so she strode down Memory Lane:
Oh, lots of things — I’d love, once more, to go out with my new parasol the first warm day — or to win a race at the Sunday school picnic — or to duck for apples on Hallowe’en — or to cut a swath, on the sidewalk, with my new skipping-rope — or to hear the bell once more when my boy-friend called to take me to a party — or to go to Hanlan’s Point and stay till it got quite dark. Or, perhaps most, to have one more long day at the Exhibition — and — and this — to gather in all the “samples” — all free and all beautiful. Ah, me! It’s all very fine to imagine all this — but it will never, never, come back again.
Knowles listened and all the while observed her expressive features: “The fine face now aglow with the tender and wistful light that only yesterday can lend.”
074. Who was “the real McCoy”?
When something or someone is genuine or bona fide, the folk expression “the real McCoy” is applied. There is no agreement as to the expression’s origin, but Canadians have argued that it refers to Elijah McCoy (1843–1929), a black inventor or technician who was born in Colchester, Ontario. According to Barbara Wickens, writing in “Immersed in Canadiana,” Maclean’s Special Commemorate Issue 100, October 2004. McCoy, the son of escaped slaves from Kentucky, “registered more than fifty patents in his lifetime, including one for a lawn sprinkler, an ironing board, and a train-wheel lubricator that came to be known as ‘the real McCoy.’” The lubricator was self-regulating and eliminated the need for trains to come to a full stop for lubrication. The first claim to be “the real McCoy” was made on his behalf only in 1992.
075. Why is Henry Ross honoured in Australia?
It is not often that a foreign government honours a Canadian-born rebel or hero, but the Australian government did so officially when it drew attention to the role played by Henry Ross in the Eureka Stockade standoff, near Ballarat, Southern Australia, on December 3, 1854. The official endorsement came from Canberra exactly 150 years later.
“It was Toronto-born Henry Ross, a twenty-seven-year-old miner who emerged from the historic battle with mortal wounds but an enduring place in Australia’s national mythology.” So wrote Randy Boswell in “Australia Honours Toronto Rebel,” National Post, December 3, 2004.
In 1849 Ross joined many other former miners from around the world in the Australian gold rush. He became a leader of the uprising at Ballarat to protest the high licensing fees and the colonial regime’s blocking of democratic reforms, including voting rights. He helped to draft the miners’ list of demands, a document important in the evolution of responsible government in Australia.
For the miners, Ross even designed a distinctive blue-and-white flag, inspired by the Southern Cross, the four-star constellation visible in the night sky in the southern hemisphere. The image of the constellation was subsequently adopted as a distinctive part of the country’s official flag. The original flag is preserved in the museum at Ballarat, the modern city at the site of the Eureka standoff.
As Boswell noted, the raising of the flag was a decisive moment in the colony’s history: it was the subject of a watercolour drawn on the spot by a French Canadian named Charles Alphonse Doudiet, a miner and rebel sympathizer. The watercolour depicts the rebels ringed around Ross’s flag. A century later the watercolour was discovered in an attic of a descendant. Since then, it has been reproduced in history texts and on Australian stamps. Along with the present-day Australian flag, it draws attention to the enduring contribution of two former Canadians — Ross and Doudiet — to the independence of Australia, Canada’s “sister Dominion.”
076. How many federal ministers have resigned from Cabinet on principle?
There is much talk of “ministerial responsibility,” but in the last sixty or so years, of the hundreds of members of Parliament who have been appointed to federal Cabinet posts, only two ministers have ever resigned from Cabinet on matters of principle.
Columnist Graham Fraser made this observation in his article “Missile Defence Debate Haunts P.M.,” the Toronto Star, December 19, 2004. He noted that James L. Ralston, minister of national defence in Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s Cabinet, resigned in 1942 over the issue of conscription. (King opposed conscription, Ralston favoured it.) It was not until 1963 that the second Cabinet minister, another minister of national defence, resigned. Douglas Harkness left Cabinet to protest Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker’s refusal to accept arming Canada’s Bomarc missiles with nuclear warheads. The first resignation occurred during the Second World War, and the second at the height of the Cold War.
077. Do New Canadians receive free Bibles?
Free copies of the King James version of the Bible were automatically presented to all new Canadians at citizenship ceremonies for a period of about fifty years. Copies were made available on a complimentary basis by the Canadian Bible Society. The practice of such presentations was discontinued in 1998 in the interests of multiculturalism, freedom of religion, and a separation of church and state.
The Bible Society objected. According to Leslie Scrivener, in “Welcome to Canada: Bring Your Own Bible,” the Toronto Star, December 26, 2004: “We are very concerned that this is not protecting the rights of Canadians — it’s taking away rights. If you exclude something how are you protecting people’s freedom? What if most people want them?”
Removal of the Bibles was supported by the Humanist Association of Canada, which recommended that the oath of allegiance should be based on a non-religious statement. Its director noted, “When you give testimony is your religious faith relevant? What is important is your obligation to fellow citizens and your country to tell the truth.”
078. Who was Whipper Billy Watson?
Fans of wrestling enjoyed watching the astounding feats and dumbfounding deeds of Whipper Billy Watson (1916–1990), the country’s best-known professional wrestler. He was born William Potts in Toronto. Until his retirement, following an automobile accident in 1971, he brought colour to the ring and won numerous titles, including the world wrestling and the commonwealth championships. It is said that he won 99 percent of the 6,300 matches in his thirty-year career. He is fondly remembered by fans for the Canadian Avalanche (cartwheels that dazzled opponents) and Canuck Commando Unconscious (a special grip that momentarily puts an opponent out of commission). In retirement he assisted charities for impaired children and the disabled. As for his nickname, it is said that he “whipped” all his opponents.
079. How many serving prime ministers have had to testify in court?
It is extremely rare for a prime minister still in office to testify before a court of law. More often, a former prime minister is required to appear in court to offer testimony about government procedures and policies. While still in office, two Canadian prime ministers were summoned to appeared before judges.
Prime Minister John A. Macdonald appeared before a three-man commission on September 17, 1873, to explain his involvement (or non-involvement) in the Pacific Scandal. He was accused of soliciting election funds from Sir Hugh Allan in exchange for Allan’s appointment to the presidency of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. Macdonald claimed, “These hands are clean!” but the commission found him guilty of “having obtained money from a suspicious source and having applied it to illegitimate purposes.” He subsequently resigned from office to sit in the Opposition benches. Throughout, Macdonald wrapped himself in the flag of Canadian nationalism.
Prime Minister Paul Martin appeared on February 10, 2005, before the Gomery Commission, which investigated the expenditure of public funds that had been awarded largely without tender or accountability to Liberal-friendly advertising agencies in Quebec. The prime minister at the time was Jean Chrétien, and he appeared as a witness. Paul Martin, his minister of finance and subsequently his successor as prime minister, testified that he knew nothing of what had happened. In fact, both Chrétien and Martin wrapped themselves in the flag of Canadian unity.
080. Do portraits of living Canadians appear on postage stamps?
By tradition, portraits of living Canadians do not appear on Canadian postage stamps. However, regular-issue stamps do bear likeness of the reigning monarchs, and since Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is a Canadian by statute, her portrait does appear on stamps. At the same time, some commemorative stamps bear recognizable images of living hockey stars and astronauts, but these are issued to mark group endeavours. Canada Post broke its tradition with the issue of a stamp that bears the beaming features of jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. The 50-cent stamp appeared on August 15, 2005, to celebrate his eightieth birthday and mark Peterson’s contribution to the world of popular music.
081. Did a Canadian play a role in Lincoln’s assassination?
In a way, a man of Canadian birth did play a part in that assassination.
During the American Civil War, U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, while attending a production at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, was shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth, actor and Confederate agent. Booth, ever theatrical, leapt onto the stage and yelled to the horrified audience, “Sic semper tyrannis!” before making his escape.
