General Elections 1911, 2011, Canada

Well, here in Canada, they’ve called a general election for May 2. 2011. The posters are already up in my area. I wonder if anyone will be paying attention to the campaigning, considering April 29,th is the Royal Wedding. I can see the CBC was planning to give that event broad coverage, they’ve been promoting it for months. I wonder if the ADHD media still plan to put resources in England and do they have to change their plans. Whatever.

At least, it appears, no Canadian team will be still in the hockey playoffs by that time. Not the Canadiens, anyway. Gee, one hundred years ago there was another General Election in Canada, a famous or infamous one, depending on your point of view, the Free Trade Election. This election figures prominently in the Nicholson Family Saga. I have all the letters posted on http://thecarbonfiles-1910canada.blogspot.com/ Ironically, the Nicholson’s lived in Montreal and Richmond, Quebec, the town where Michael Ignatieff’s people would end up after coming out of Russia. Here are two letters from the two main candidates in that election in Richmond-Wolfe.

Richmond August 21, 1911

Dear Sir, At a large and representative convention held in the town of Richmond on the 18th day of this month, I was, by unanimous vote, selected as the Conservative Candidate for the Parliamentary Division of Richmond Wolfe. The honor is a great one, and if elected, I will do my utmost to truly represent the views of my constituents.

On the two great questions of the day, Reciprocity and the Navy my views are these: I am opposed to the Taft Fielding Reciprocity Pact for reasons which I will explain from the platform. As to the question of the Navy I am in favor of having this matter decided by the direct vote of the people. During the campaign I shall endeavor to visit all the parts of the two counties. The time is short and some localities may be overlooked, but I hope to have an opportunity of laying my views before you in meetings, the dates of which will be shortly announced.

If after having listened to our side of the case, you will favor me with your support. I will be grateful. Sincerely yours John Hayes MD (Stamped)

April 18,1921

Mr. Norman Nicholson, Residency 4, Division D Via Cochrane, Ontario NTRY

Dear Sir, I am in receipt of yours of the 15th instant and replying to same beg to say that I am still fighting the good ole cause and have Dr. Hayes of Richmond for opponent. I will give your letter over to Mr. J A Begin and he will have to see about these matters as you are aware, I am pretty busy at the present time seeing my people. I hope that everything will be all right and will be glad to have you come and vote.

Yours truly, E W Tobin (hand signed)

This 1911 General Election was in September, a few months after the 1911 Census. The Census is also mentioned in the letters and I have written about it extensively on this Flo in the City blog.

The Census was once a hot issue here in Canada, and I’m talking just a few months ago, but everyone these days has a near non-existent attention span. The politicans are counting on that fact, I imagine.

We’re a Twitter society and that name, TWITTER, says it all. We have bird brains and clicky fingers.

Maybe my Labrador, Darcy, should be the one to vote in my family, as, the other day, he spent at least 30 minutes sitting under the mantlepiece, staring up at the place where he knew was his bowling ball chew toy, and that’s a record for any activity by any living breathing being in this house this week.

Even better, the chew toy was out of his line of vision, he merely smelled it. So that seals it, Darcy should definitely be the one to vote. A good sense of smell is invaluable during elections. You can’t trust what you hear, that’s for sure.

All I know is I am VERRYYY glad they had a Census in 1911 (when people routinely sat through boring sermons at church and ingested long, word-padded articles about pressing social issues in magazines like the Delineator and the Saturday Evening Post) because it has helped me get to the bottom of the story of the Nicholson Family Saga. I can better figure out who their friends and acquaintances were, where they lived and how old they were and how rich they were (and whether or not they had a live-in maid) and I can figure out about the lives of the immigrant children in Marion’s classroom in Little Burgundy in the City, how poor they were and if their parents worked as domestics or if they had any work at all.

(The gap between rich and poor was HUGE back then in the Edwardian/Laurier/Tighsolas era. And guess what? The statistics reveal that it’s pretty much the same today! We’ve come full-circle in one hundred years. Too bad our attention span is so short (Oh, what a LOVELY wedding gown!) and our math skills are so bad we can’t properly process this inauspicious information. And the politicians are counting on that too.)

All very important to me: As it happens, Marion Nicholson, my husband’s grandmother never got enumerated for the 1911 Census. She was boarding in Montreal so the census taker in Richmond left her off. WRONG! But her brother Herb did get enumerated. He was in a boarding house in Qu’Appelle Saskatchewan.

He was one of 6 or was it 8 boarders, one of whom was a young woman. And one other boarder was a bartender, oh my! Margaret would have packed up and taken the train to Qu’Appelle and dragged her 26 year old back home by the ear had she known.

Immigration 1910 -2010

Immigrant 1910.

The Canadian newsmedia is reporting that Canada is experiencing a wave of immigration, the biggest in 40 years.

84,200 people came to Canada from other countries this summer, July 1 to October 1st.

16,800 people came to Quebec. About 250,000 immigrants are expected in Canada this year.

There appears to be Federal Skilled Worker Program – and it is skilled workers who are in demand. But it is the provinces who ultimately decide what workers are needed. I can’t see any breakdown for Quebec, but in BC apparently, Filipino immigrants outnumbered Mainland Chinese for the first time.

(Hmm. I can’t help but think of the charming Filipino woman who worked at the rest home where my mother was dying of bone cancer. One morning, my mother had spent 4 hours waiting to get dressed and the young woman finally arrived, complaining in a sweet way, that she had 12 debilitated old folk to wash and dress. That’s why she was so late. Overworked and underpaid (and working only part-time) in an corporate establishment that was charging us 8,000 a month for care.)

This is in response to the Federal Government’s 2010 Immigration Plan. The October 2009 press release claimed:

“While other countries have cut back immigration levels as a short-term response to the global economic downturn, our government is actually maintaining its immigration levels to meet the country’s medium- to long-term economic needs,” said Minister Kenney.”

(It’s funny, because I am certain I have read that it is immigrants who are suffering the most from this downturn.)

The Tighsolas era, the 1910 era, was when the greatest proportion of immigrants ever came to Canada. This Flo in the City blog has covered the issue extensively, describing the 1906 immigration act and the subsequent 1910 adjustment (where they came down on illegal trafficking of immigrants.)

Today, the Governments appears to be doing the same thing, allowing immigrants in and cracking down on illegal trafficking and refugees.

There’s a lot to be learned from the 1910 era to apply to today..

Oddly, Americans are immigrant shy, these days. They have just refused to allow the children of illegal immigrants to become citizens.

In 1910, Canada felt their immigration policies were superior to the Americans’.

From Information Age to Dark Age in a few easy steps.

Nadruco Products. 1910 pamphlet. Nadruco was National Drug Company of Canada

With all this controversy around the Cons wanting to drop the long form census I thought I’d blog about the NaDruCo atlas I have from 1911, which is one of the most informative documents I have from the Nicholson stash.

It’s a promotional brochure, for the NadruCo product line and if you ‘read it’ you can get a clear look at “what changes” and “what stays the same.”

Yes, medical science has come a long way, but human gullibility stays the same.

Human beings will believe anything: especially when it comes to ‘their survival’ or other aspects of self-interest, especially protecting their children. That’s why the advertisements made by NaDruCo for its many weird sounding products, sound no different from ads made for similar health products on TV today. In short, the medicine has changed (mostly as fish oil is still considered a must for health) but the pitch hasn’t. OK. ads were more wordy then, although J. Walter Thompson, the legendary ad agency, was creating short lifestyle ads.

Here’s a sample of an ad in the NADRUCO atlas promotional brochure:
“In the strenuous rush of commerce, the severe strains of depressing social conditions, overstudy, changes of female life, or impending attacks of disease, the nerves become impaired. Irritability, brain worry, Sleeplessness ensue, accompanied by lack of Energy, Emissions, Impotency, Nervous Dyspepsia, Partial paralysis, palpitations of the heart,incontinence…NADRUCO nervozone is specially prepared to cover all such cases…”

Hmm. Gee, 100 years ago this company was pitching a tonic as a cure (or a patch or crutch) for the depressing social conditions of the day. Live in windowless room in Griffintown with 10 kids sleeping in the same bed and floodwater coming in each spring, work in a factory 12 hours a day? No problem, take a pill! (Whoops, you can’t afford such pills, too bad. The anxious middle class, who desperately want to stay comfortably middle class, with take them for you.)

Sound familiar? I heard on the BBC that 10 percent of the population of Glasgow was on Prozac, today.

Anyway, we live in an age of ‘information overload’ which makes it doubly important to have ‘the numbers’ about the world, to make sound decisions about public policy and for future reference. Yes, historians need statistics. I have used Stats Cans historical statistics to research the background to the Nicholson letters, http://www.tighsolas.ca/. Besides, I’d rather fill out a long census, on penalty of jail if I don’t, rather than have the government be allowed to look into my computer and trace my every action by having access to my IP on the grounds of public security. Now, THAT is a gross invasion of privacy. But it really isn’t about privacy, it’s about control, and “the truth” as stated by numbers gets in the way of control, or being able to manipulate the population with ‘untruths’ that tweak their ‘fear centers.’ And bubblespeak, such as you are going to fill new prisons with people who have NOT been accused, let alone NOt been convicted, actually resonates with some people because it is nonsense so they just fill in the blanks for themselves and hear what they want to hear.

Ironically, this NaDruCo promotional brochure is also an almanac and it tips its hat to the upcoming 1911 census, by listing the populations of various cities and towns in Canada from the 1901 census and by giving the reader a place to add the 1911 numbers. Here’s a small sample: In 1901, the population of Canada was 5, 371,315. (It rose to over 7 million in 1911.) The population of Halifax in 1901, 40,831, of Fredericton, 7,117, of Montreal 267,730. (As I wrote in an earlier blog, the population of Montreal grew hugely in the next decade, and that is why Flo and Marion got jobs teaching in the city.) Of Westmount, 8,856, of Barrie, Ontario 5,949, of Ottawa, 59, 928, Toronto, 208,040,
North Bay, 2,530, Oshawa, 4, 394; and out West they had a 1906 census, so 1906 Winnipeg, 90, 153, up from 43,340 in 1901 , Moose Jaw, 6, 249, Edmonton, 11, 167 in 06, up frm 2, 626 in 1901. Vancouver in 1906, 26, 133…

Anyway, last night I read over the 1900 household accounts of the Nicholson family. 1900 is just a year, like any other, but it’s the year people consider a kind of benchmark year. (And all because we have 10 fingers.) I am going to transcribe the items in the 1900 accounts in a pdf and complement them with pictures from the Eaton’s catalogue. The list shows that Nicholson parenting was more modern than Edwardian. The kids were paid for ‘work’ and also given lots of pennies to spend, and Herb was even given 25 cents just for ‘passing at school.’

Ah, the middle class….