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The Spanish Flu
The Spanish Flu started in February 1918. The way it spread was though soldiers returning home from war. It was the most damaging epidemic of influenza for Canada, and the world. There were over 2 million cases of it in Canada, and at least 50 million people died from it. That was 1/5 of the world's population at the time. -
Bloody Saturday
The Winnipeg general strike, a crowd of aproximately 30,000 people fighting for higher wages and better working conditions, turned bloody. 1,800 special constibles were sent to disband the strike which caused many injured people and two deaths. This was the end of the WInnipeg General Strike. -
Residential Schools
Residential Schools were first introduced in 1831 and were around until 1997. How the schools worked is they would take indigenous children away from their families and assimilate them to white Canadian culture (Catholic, Christian, etc). There was a lot of abuse that happened in these schools, in all ways imaginable. This was not a bright time in Canada's history. -
Group Of Seven
The Group of Seven is a group a painters who were well known for their paintings based off of Canadian landscape. They first met in 1913 as employees of a design firm. During the FWW they split up. Some members became war painters for the time being. Not long after the war, reunited. They travelled around Ontario, sketching the landscapes, then decided to become a group to start making a distinct Canadian form of art, not yet been created, and called themselves the Group Of Seven. -
Xenophobia
After the first world war, there was still a lot of discrimination towards people of colour, and to people of different culture. Xenophobia, originating from Ancient Greece, means having the dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries. Since more and more people started to immigrate to Canada, more and more people began to discriminate. Lots weren't included in activities other Canadians were, such as going to a bar, and their pay was lowered much more, making it harder to live. -
Insulin
Insulin was first discovered by Sir Frederick G Banting, and it was first used in 1922 on a 14-year-old boy who was drifting in and out of consciousness. He first discovered it by figuring out how to remove insulin from a dog's pancreas. This discovery would lead to hope for the millions of people that were diagnosed with diabetes in the future. You would think after making a discovery like this, you would sell it for lots, but Banting sold it for a mere $1 so that people could afford it. -
Foster Hewitt
Foster Hewitt was a Canadian hockey broadcaster, famous for his play-by-play calls for Hockey Night in Canada. His first ever live hockey play-by-play broadcast happened on February 16th, 1923. After, he then served as the Maple Leaf Gardens official broadcast for 27 years. He is also the creator of the famous line hockey broadcasters still use to this day, "He shoots, he scores!" -
Talkies (Movies with sound)
In the early 1900s, when you went to see a movie, the sound effects were usually played live because the technology had not been developed yet to put sound on the movies. The first original talkie was a movie called the Jazz Singer. This was the first film with a synchronized music and vocal track, and it made more than double what it costed to make it. Making this talkie a huge success for the Warner Bros. -
Persons Case
The Person's case was a case about 5 women (Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney, and Henrietta Muir Edwards), who wanted to start a petition to the Canadian government about the meaning of the word "persons'. The government said that women were not "persons" according to the British North American Act, and were not ineligible for appointment to the Senate. Oct. 18th marks the day when women were included in the legal definition of "persons". -
The Great Depression
The Great Depression was a period of severe global economic turn down that took place for 10 years and was broken because of WWII. There was a high percentage of unemployment and poverty percentages also began to rise as people were not able to afford necessities. In the US, in 1929, is where the economic contagion began when the Wall Street stock market completely crashed. The event is often referred to as the beginning of the Great Depression. -
Relief
During The Great Depression, people were in great need of jobs and money, as the unemployment was very high it meant lots of people couldn't afford necessities. The government came up with an idea called Relief camps. Unemployed men would be forced into these camps, and would work to make money. The work was so physically damaging to the men, and they were not fed very well. These men working in these camps for hours on end and only make 20 cents every hour. -
New Deal
At the height of The Great Depression, R.B Bennett had broadcasted live on the radio to outline his "New Deal" for Canada as a way for them to vote for him in the up-coming election. He promised a more progressive taxation system, a maximum work week, a minimum wage, better working conditions, unemployment insurance, health and accident insurance, and many more things. But his proposals were seen as too-little, too-late. He lost the 1935 election to William Lyon Mackenzie King. -
On To Ottawa Trek
Since the Great Depression left a lot of people needing money, unemployed men were forced into Relief camps and paid only 20 cents an hour. But in 1935, a lot of these men were sick of being paid badly. Over one thousand angry workers in a camp in British Columbia left the federal relief camps, hoping on boxcars, and took their demand for higher wages and work directly to Ottawa. They began their travel and got to 2000 protesters. They reached Regina, were stopped, resulting in the Regina Riot. -
Joseph Armand Bombardier
Joseph Armand Bombardier always had a dream of inventing the perfect snow mobile and was able to do so in 1937. He launched his first ever snow mobile in 1959, naming it the Ski-Doo. His reasoning behind inventing it is quite sad. After a blizzard, his young son fell ill from peritonitis and died because he could not be brought to the nearest hospital due to the roads not being safe to drive on. He didn't want anyone else to have to go through that and had the perfect idea to prevent it. -
Five Cent Speech
In April, when the Opposition demanded that Mackenzie King's Liberal government should give money to provincial Conservative governments, the King declared that he would not give such governments a five cent piece for the unemployed. He also stated that the Canadian government should not give unemployment benefits to provincial governments that had Conservative leaders. This outburst of his would only be a minor issue for the upcoming election campaign.