Curious Facts from the Past

Curious Facts from the Past

The most colossal understatement in History: François Marie Voltaire (1694-1778), famed French writer and philosopher, who on learning that Canada had been taken from France by Britain, said it was no great loss after all, Canada was only “a few acres of snow”.

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Moustaches were worn by almost all of the early members of the North West mounted police (R.C.M.P.). The reason, as given by an inspector of the time, was that the men believed shading the upper lip weakened the eyes.

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A horrible hobbler was used in jails and penitentiaries in the 19th century. Known as the Oregon boot it weighed 4-5 kg around its top was a circular 6-8 kg weight that locked around a convict’s leg.

Historical Park in Toronto. Photo by Elena

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It’s not that long ago that policemen in Canada’s large cities wore uniforms the same as those of British bobbies.

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Queen Victoria: Strange as it may seem in these days of instant communications, it was more than a month after the death of William IV, in 1837 before Canada learned its sovereign was no longer William, but Victoria.

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The man who had a premonition of his own death: Recorded only by the name of Carpenter, he was with a party of Overlanders on their way to the British Columbia gold fields in 1862, when they reached turbulent rapids in the Fraser River. He hung his coat on a tree before heading into the rapids where he was lost in the swirling water. Later a note was found in his coat pocket. It read: “arrived this day at the canyon at 10a.m. and drowned running the canoe down. Good keep my poor wife.

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The first motor vehicle license plates in Canada (issued by Ontario) in 1903 were made of patent leather.

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Canada’s first games of golf: After the Arduous siege of Quebec in 1759, Highland officers of Wolfe’s army relaxed by playing games of golf, a sport developed many years previously in their Scottish homeland. There were the first games of golf to be played in Canada.

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Mud in the eye of officialdom. In 1856, one John Butt arrived in Victoria, British Columbia, and took up the job of cleaning streets under separate contracts. Some time later officials discovered they were being conned. Butt’s modus operandi consisted of loading his cart on Government Street, then driving around the corner to Yates Street, where he sully let the mud and filth ooze out. Returning with more loads he disposed of them the same way. After clearing up Government Street he would obtain a contract for the mud he had deposited on Yates Street, than cart it back to Government Street and so on…

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How prehistoric wealth was found: In pre-confederation days, prospectors crossing Northern Ontario were puzzled by the fact than their compasses spun crazily in the area of present day Sudbury. The mystery was solved in the 1880th when construction gangs were dynamiting their way through pre-Cambrian rock to lay a road bed for the C.R.R. The found nickel deposits so vast in scope that it staggered the imagination of the world.

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Uniformity of weights and measures throughout Canada was first provided by Act of Parliament in 1873.

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A Norwegian captain Roald Amundsen completed in 1906 the first traverse of the long sought Northwest passage through the Polar seas in his little ship the Gjoa

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Thomas Ricketts, a private in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment during World War I became, at age 17, the youngest soldier ever to win the Victoria Cross.

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Sable Island, the Graveyard of the Atlantic, Off the South-East Coast of Nova Scotia is given that descriptive title by mariners. Today it is the home of wild ponies, but since it was first charted about 450 years ago it has shared and destroyed over 500 ships with a loss of 10,000 lives. Authentic sources say that millions of dollars in gold lie in ships strongboxes beneath the boiling surface.

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The Frozen Dutchman: Far in the Arctic on the shores of Frobisher Bay, a Geodetic survey party in 1902 uncovered a tomb. It contained a dead man with papers identifying him as Derrick Van Laan of Holland, a whaler, who died July 11, 1740. He had remained in a perfectly preserved state for 162 years. The tomb was released and presumably Derrick Van Laan remains refrigerated after 234 years.

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Macabre mementoes: When Dr. William King of Brighton, Ontario was hanged 1n 1859 for the murder of his wife, the relatives of the murdered woman cut up the hangman’s rope and kept the pieces as souvenirs.

Montreal, Levesque avenue. Photo by Elena.