Category Archives: In the News

100 Years Ago Today

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August 13, 2021

Many Cellars  Flooded In Rainstorm

Hundreds of Basements Under Water Through Lack of Surface Drains

Two Feet Of Water In Devenish Block

Subways Flooded And Motor Cars Stalled In The Middle

(Calgary Herald)

CALGARY – As the result of what was probably the heaviest rainstorm that ever visited Calgary, hundreds of cellars and basements in residences, apartment houses and business blocks were flooded last evening between 7:30 p.m. and 8 o’clock. City officials were almost harried to death by enraged property owners demanding relief from the flood conditions.

The tremendous rainfall came as a strong reminder to Commissioner Graves that Calgary requires a complete system of storm sewers in the business district. Even such a system, however, would have been taxed to its utmost capacity by the unexpected rainfall. “It was the most extraordinarily heavy rain that I have ever seen in Calgary,” said Commissioner Graves.

Among the big apartment houses where basements were flooded was the Devenish block. Nearly two feet of water flooded into the basement, driving the residents to the upper floors, and doing hundreds of dollars of damage.

A party of motorists in a big seven-passenger touring car attempted a dash through the flooded First Street West subway just at the conclusion of the storm. The motor went dead when they reached the deepest part of the flood, and they were marooned there until the subway was pumped out.

(History repeated itself on June 19, 2021)

Thief Overlooked Ten Thousand Dollars

(Canadian Press dispatch)

MONTREAL – Though a thief who cracked the safe of Tooke Bros. Ltd. at St. Henri was smart enough to learn the combination from employees of the company, or possessed the ability of Jimmy Valentine to decipher the combination, he carelessly overlooked $10,000 in pay envelopes and merely stole $300 lying loose in the safe.

The Capture Of A Golden Eagle

(Times of London)

EDINBURGH – The capture of a golden eagle on the Argyll Hills, and its presentation to the new Scottish Zoological Gardens in Edinburgh, formed the subject of a prosecution at Inveraray on Monday when Angus Cameron, gamekeeper, was charged before Sheriff-Substitute Penney with contravening the Wild Birds Protection Order by taking a golden eagle and having it in his possession between June 20 and 27 last.

Mr. Cameron pleaded guilty to a technical breach of the law, but in ignorance that such a law existed.

Mr. Tom Speedy, Fellow of the Zoological Society who spoke on behalf of Cameron, said he was the sinner who should be at the bar, not the keeper. He had seen a pair of golden eagles from Inveraray at the Zoological Gardens in London, and had written to Mr. Cameron asking if he could assist in getting specimens for Edinburgh. Mr. Cameron replied that the eagles were breeding on his ground and, since it was for a national purpose, he would be delighted.

Sheriff Penney said it seemed strange to him that a golden eagle could not be obtained without a criminal breach of the law. In view of the fact that Cameron had acted for no pecuniary benefit, but for a national purpose, he dismissed him with an admonition.

100 Years Ago Today

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August 12, 2021

Baked Bread Before Inspector Was Born

“You Don’t Know Bread From Dough,” says Witness To City Official

(Calgary Herald)

CALGARY – “You are a baker by trade?”

“I am sir, and I baked bread before you were born.”

The above piece of repartee took place in the police court this morning. The interrogator was Inspector Wood of the sanitary department, and the witness was Leopold L. Quirk of Quirk and Company, Bakers and Confectioners.

Mr. Quirk was charged with keeping dirty premises. The inspector stated that when he visited the bakeshop he found a lot of dough exposed to flying dust and dirt.

“Was there not some dough on the table?” asked the inspector.

“There were some buns that we had just taken out of the oven,” said the witness. “We were in the act of putting them into a case when you took our attention. We always put the bread into cases as soon as it is taken out of the oven.”

“I don’t think you know bread from dough,” was the scathing comment of the witness.

Inspector Wood was firmly of the opinion that he knew the difference. He stuck to his contention that the bakeshop was in a dirty condition.

Magistrate Davidson fined the offender one dollar and costs.

Groom-To-Be Arrested On Charge Of Perjury

Said To Have Misrepresented The Girl’s Age By Four Years

(Special dispatch to The Globe)

PORT HOPE, ONT. – Port Hope has a marriage sensation. The would-be groom is now in custody. Just as the marriage of Wm. H. F. Dixon of Port Hope to Clara Saddler of Peterborough was about to be performed at a house on Margaret Street, the police stepped in and arrested Dixon on a charge of perjury. He had sworn that the bride was 20 whereas her correct age is said to be only 16.

The girl had come in from Peterborough to be married, it is said, without the knowledge or consent of her parents. The local police received a tip that all was not orthodox, and the young man was arrested. The prisoner, who gives his age as 28, appeared in the police court this morning, and was remanded in custody until Wednesday.

Primitives’ Brains Bigger Than Ours?

Doctors at London Congress See Piltdown Skull – Views Regarding It Differ

(New York Times)

LONDON – Doctors at the International Medical Congress revealed a wide divergence of views today during a discussion of the Piltdown skull, which was found on Piltdown Common, Sussex, last year.

Dr. Arthur Keith, curator of the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, declared that the skull as modelled was an impossible skull – in fact it was the “dream of a diseased imagination.” He said that if Dr. Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of the geological department of the British Museum who reconstructed the skull, was right in giving the jaws of a chimpanzee to a skull that was human, then the rest of the world was wrong.

The famous skull was the object of a pilgrimage today by the anatomical section of the Congress. In accordance with the ideas of the scientists who assert that the skull was wrongly constructed, a model has been made that gives a brain capacity larger than that of the ordinary man of the present century, instead of the apelike form originally attributed to it.

Most of the scientists agree that the skull is that of a human being of 500,000 years ago, although some contend that the skull dates back only 150,000 years. The question considered by the anatomists today was whether prehistoric man had the brain power of the man of today, or was half-man, half-ape.

(Keith’s suspicions were well founded. In 1953 the “PIltdown Man” was exposed as a hoax, one of the greatest paleoanthropological frauds in the history of science.)

100 Years Ago Today

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August 11, 2021

Water Is Muddy Again

Recent Heavy Rains Dirty The Elbow River

(Calgary Herald)

CALGARY – The recent heavy rains have so stirred up the river water at the intake that the water in the city mains resembles soup rather than drinking water. Dr. Stanley Mahood, medical health officer, has sent a sample to the government chemist at Edmonton for a bacteriological analysis, and meanwhile advises residents to boil the water before using it for drinking.

It is not anticipated, however, that the water contains any germs deleterious to health simply because it is muddy. The muddy condition is abating already, and will soon be past. As long as the city continues to take water direct from the intake on the Elbow without filtration, the present conditions will reappear at every freshet.

Thousands Of Hindus To Come To Canada?

Report That A Scheme Is Afoot To Bring Them By Direct Line From Calcutta To Vancouver

(Special dispatch to The Globe)

OTTAWA – Secret reports that have reached the Department of Immigration of a scheme afoot to bring thousands of Hindus to Canada by a direct line of steamers from Calcutta to Vancouver are causing the officials considerable concern.

One rumour has it that a co-operative scheme, embracing 100,000 Hindus, will shortly be launched. Protests have already been received from the Pacific coast.

Hitherto it has been possible to prevent an influx by the order-in-council which stipulates that immigrants must come by direct passage from the land of their birth. In practice, the law applies only to immigrants from India, because the long distance requires that ships stop over in Japan or Hawaii.

If, despite warnings, the Hindus attempt to land in Canada, a serious situation will develop because the feeling among the white population in British Columbia is very strong. Dispatches from the Pacific coast say that white farmers are already clamouring for similar laws in British Columbia to those recently passed in California, and against which Japan so strongly protested.

(Canada’s racist exclusion law was challenged in 1914 when a Japanese steamship, the Komagata Maru, brought 376 passengers from Punjab, India, to Canada. Only 20 were granted entry. The other 356 were forced to return to India.)

A Happy Husband Tells The Big Secret

Seattle Millionaire Shows How One Can Be Married And Enjoy Life

(Special dispatch to The Globe)

SPOKANE, WASH. – L.C. Dillman, a Spokane millionaire, after 18 years of marital bliss, today promulgated the following rules for husbands:

  • Keep all promises made before and at the time of marriage.
  • Keep a joint bank account.
  • Go to your club no oftener than one night a week.
  • Have no dogs or pets of any kind.
  • Call her up on the telephone at least three times a day.
  • When away from home, write or telegraph every day.
  • Take her with you on business and pleasure trips.
  • Be more polite to her than to any other woman you meet.
  • Remember that she likes flowers, candy and books.
  • Make it a business to be comfortable whenever she is happy.
  • Do not criticize her dress.
  • Be a gentleman to all women, but a husband to one only.
  • If you have only a dollar, you are not wasting it by spending it on her.
  • When she is dissatisfied, get a divorce. Life is too short to waste any of it in trying to please an abnormal woman.

50 Years Ago Today

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August 10, 2021

Almost Every Major Oil Company In Race To Develop Alberta’s Rich New Oil Sands

Largest Known Petroleum Reserves

(Canadian Press)

MILDRED LAKE, AB. – Explorer Sir Alexander Mackenzie, 170 years ago, traded a bottle of whisky to the Indians for a jar of tar to patch his canoe.

What neither Mackenzie nor the Indians knew was that the modest transaction represented the first economic exploitation of the Athabasca oilsands, containing what are today the world’s largest known petroleum reserves – 300 billion barrels.

Almost every major oil company in North America is in the race to develop the sands, which are spread over 13,000 square miles of hinterland, 280 miles northeast of Edmonton.

An estimated $100 million has been on research, much of it highly secret, by companies interested in the sands.

Chemists, economists and engineers have been studying the problems of extracting and marketing the oil for almost 30 years, and it now appears their dreams are near realization.

The Alberta Oil and Gas Conservation Board has already given permission to one company, Great Canadian Oil Sands Ltd., to develop the sands, and is studying the proposals of two others.

 

What Next?

Gear Shaft Removed From Man’s Throat, Wife Finds His Voice Is Hoarse

(Canadian Press)

KAPUSKASING, ONT. – The man who walked through the doors of Sensenbrenner Hospital looked like any other – except for the gear shift protruding from both sides of his neck.

Half an hour later, an emergency operation had removed the nine-inch shaft from the neck of Ronald Bisson, 29, of Kapuskasing.

He was resting comfortably in hospital yesterday. Doctors said the steel shaft just missed the neck arteries.

Bisson was in a car accident Tuesday night. He said everything happened so fast he didn’t know how the gear shift pierced his neck, or how it snapped off the car.

Bisson’s wife, a nurse, was on duty at the hospital when he arrived. Of his condition she said, “His voice is a little hoarse.”

 

Loot From British Train Robbery Now Exceeds $7 Million

(New York Times)

LONDON – The loss in Britain’s great train robbery rose today to more than $7 million, most of it in easily disposable banknotes.

Detectives searched in vain for the masked and well-armed gang that ambushed a special mail train before dawn yesterday and made off with the fortune in cash and jewelry. They may have pulled off the world’s greatest heist.

The Postmaster General, Reginald Bevins, announced that new postal security precautions would be put into effect immediately. He refused, however, to break custom by arming the train crews.

“The last thing we want is shooting matches on British railways,” he said.

100 Years Ago Today

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August 9, 2021

Mary Beers Sent To Barracks Again

Given Chance To Leave Town But She Loved Calgary Too Well

(Calgary Herald)

CALGARY –  Mary Beers is in the tolls again. Two weeks ago, she came before Magistrate Sanders for the umpteenth time on a charge of vagrancy or disorderly conduct – one forgets which – connected with an overindulgence in the cup that both cheers and inebriates. On that occasion, Mary was given the choice of spending a term at the barracks or leaving town. She chose the latter.

But Mary simply couldn’t leave. She may have thought she could, but found that the memories and associations that had gathered around the police court were too strong. She turned up again this morning and the tale was of old: vagrancy and overstimulation.

Mary was astonished to find a new incumbent on the bench. She has become accustomed to her little tilts with Colonel Sanders, whom she never fails to reward at the end of the joust with the requisite bit of flattery. “You’re a perfect gentleman, your honour.”

But this time it was Magistrate Davidson who sat on the bench. If Mary had any hopes that Mr. Davidson would be unfamiliar with her record and disposed to be lenient, her hopes were soon shattered..

Now, Mary has gone to the barracks. Ten days hard labour was the sentence imposed by Magistrate Davidson. During that time. life will not be all beer and skittles for Mary.

Hamilton Youth Tried To Intimidate Farmer

Threatened To Blow Up Barn Unless Given $5,000

(Special dispatch to the Globe)

HAMILTON, ONT. – Farmer R. Bennett Carlisle says that George Draker, a young man from Hamilton, walked into his place and handed him a letter threatening to blow up his barn unless given $5,000. The farmer kept Draker in conversation until a neighbour, who had been out shooting, called with a gun. Draker submitted quietly to arrest and was taken to Dundas. It is alleged that Draker had letters to other farmers in different handwriting.

Sticks and Stones Win, Says Sylvia Pankhurst

Riotous Scenes are Expected at Hyde Park Meeting next Sunday

(Canadian Press Dispatch)

Sylvia Pankhurst

Sylvia Pankhurst

LONDON – The Sunday afternoon suffragist riot has become as much a feature in London life as the mounting of guards at St. James’ Palace. Sylvia Pankhurst, the militant suffragist, promises to lead next Sunday’s riot. The battle cry will be, “On to Downing Street.”

The Free Speech Defence Committee invited Miss Pankhurst to address a meeting in Trafalgar Square, Sunday afternoon, but imposed the condition that she should not ask her hearers to go to Downing Street. Miss Pankhurst declined this invitation and issued a notice:

“I believe it is an argument of sticks and stones – a general popular revolt – that will win the fight for women as it did for men in the past. Therefore, when the Free Speech people have done their talking, I shall be in the Square to go with you to Downing Street.”