Fascinating Canada. John Robert Colombo
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 Two years later the controversial Section 98 was repealed.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