Canada Corner

When early homesteaders arrived to claim their quarter section of western Canadian prairie, sod was often all they had to build temporary homes. One has endured nearly a century. If you follow Highway 21 north of Kindersley, Sask., then turn east on a dusty road called Gleneath, past scores of oilfield pump jacks that dot the horizontal landscape, you’ll come to a house that should have dissolved into the prairie at least 90 years ago. The Addison Sod House is the last one of its kind standing in Western Canada. From the late 1800s to the First World War, sod houses, affectionately [...]

From his trench barrack on the front line at Avion near Vimy Ridge, Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert Molson ripped a piece of paper from his notebook and began writing his eldest son. “When this war is finished, when the battle has been won,” he resolutely stated on July 25, 1917, “I will return to Canada to fight an enemy which is as tyrannical as the Kaiser.” Herbert Molson would not be alone, however, in his fight against his Canadian enemy—the prohibitionists. As they had in the trenches during the First World War, his brothers in arms would stand beside him. Together, they proved a potent force.

Danny Doyle grew up in the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighbourhood of Bay Ridge, the sixth of eight children of Newfoundland-born ironworker Fred Doyle. His father’s friends were mostly ironworkers and most were former Newfoundlanders who left home for New York in the middle of the last century. They said goodbye to a place of high un­employment and dismal prospects to risk life and limb raising the steel columns and beams that formed the frames of some of the New York’s most famous skyscrapers. These men earned good money, lived in the same sections of Brooklyn and frequently spent their off-hours together. “My [...]

A Union Jack snaps in the breeze on a sunny, but chilly November morning. It’s hoisted high on the Quebec City cliff where the St. Lawrence River narrows. Dignitaries have gathered in the Jardin des Gouverneurs near the Chateau St. Louis, the fortress quarters for governors of New France and British North America dating back more than two centuries to Champlain. It is 1827 and the officials are there to lay the cornerstone for the monument to General James Wolfe and Marquis Louis-Joseph de Montcalm. At the ceremony, dressed in full regalia befitting such an important occasion, are top officers [...]

In Powell River, B.C., a small balcony at the Manzanita Restaurant overlooks what was once the city’s biggest employer, the Catalyst Paper mill. By 2010, the mill will have just 350 employees, a fraction of the 5,000 people it employed when it was the world’s largest paper mill. And instead of the pungent odours it once spewed, today it emits mainly steam, because the wastewater treatment system has been upgraded. Inside the Manzanita, customers nosh on bison burgers, warm Brie, and fried local oysters with smoked paprika rémoulade. Eye-catching paintings—many for sale—line the brightly coloured walls. “There’s some incredible artist power [...]

It was to be an overseas Utopia for the upper classes of England—lush gardens and orchards, a heavenly climate and all the familiar trappings of aristocracy. It lasted about a decade. What went wrong? It is high noon in late July sitting here on a long-abandoned water flume in the dry hills of British Columbia’s semi-desert interior. The merciless sun has taken its toll—boards long blackened and split are grown through with sagebrush and bunchgrass or splayed down the mountainside. Looking south across the Thompson River you see tiny Walhachin. A century ago, this flume was to be the lifeblood of [...]

The May/June 2009 issue of Legion Magazine includes a feature article on the lure and popularity of Canadian community theatre. Many of the amateur companies referred to in our story enter productions in yearly provincial drama competitions. Below is a listing of some of the main festivals. Theatre BC Mainstage:  The annual Mainstage festival sponsored by Theatre BC is one of the longest running community theatre traditions in Canada. The program is the culmination of winning plays from the more than 60 community theatre clubs that compete in Theatre BC’s 10 zone festivals held between March and May. www.theatrebc.org/Mainstage Dramaworks: Each July [...]

Jim Coke graduated from Montreal’s McGill University in 1953 with a degree in electrical engineering, worked for a year and in the spring of 1954 embarked on a backpacking tour of western Europe with a friend. As Coke tells it, they spent the summer sleeping in fields and barns when they couldn’t find an appropriate bed and headed for home when they ran out of money. The young engineer returned to Montreal just in time to land a job on what was arguably the biggest Canadian construction project of the postwar era—the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway. “It was [...]

In our March/April 2009 issue, Legion Magazine published a story on Nova Scotia’s Joggins Fossil Cliffs. Listed below are just some of the other key attractions relating to coastal geology in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. We present this information with the idea that it might come in handy when planning a trip to the East Coast. It is good to keep in mind though that some of these attractions are seasonal—opening in the spring and running through to the end of summer or fall. Happy travels. Avalon Highlands: Located in Nova Scotia, the highland is defined by a 100-kilometre-long fault [...]

“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Only 66 years separate American astronaut Neil Armstrong’s memorable moonscape statement from the first flights of Orville and Wilbur Wright. When engine-powered flight began with the Wright brothers on an isolated North Carolina beach in 1903, it developed very quickly. Less than six years later, Henri Blériot flew across the English Channel. Yet, in the development of heavier-than-air powered flying machines, a significant Canadian contribution is often overlooked. The story of powered flight in Canada starts with Alexander Graham Bell and his insatiable thirst for knowledge, which began at [...]