80 Years Ago in Canada

Reginald Fessenden, born in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada in 1866, developed over a hundred patentable inventions including the electric gyroscope, the heterodyne and a depth finder. He also built the first power generating station at Niagara Falls and invented radio, sending the first wireless voice message in the world on Dec. 23, 1900. However, he lived most of his life in poverty, having to fight many court battles as other people tried to steal the credit for his inventions. He died in 1932. Fessenden was a major innovator and pioneer in the technical and energy revolution that saw the world become dependent on two energy sources after 1900. The first was a shift from coal to petroleum, but even more important was electricity. The American Thomas Edison is usually given credit for creating the first electric light in 1880, and this can also be seen as the start date of the "electric revolution". Most of Fessenden's inventions exploited new and different ways to use electricity. Think of all the things today that need electricity, from a simple light build to the most complex computer.

Canadian troops in the First World War fight and win the battle for Vimy Ridge in 1917. Although viewed in Canada as a great victory, where Canadian soldiers fought bravely, it was actually only a small part of a larger offensive that failed with heavy losses. Canadian losses from the campaign were more than 10,000 men. The need for replacements led to the Conscription Crisis, which saw the province of Quebec come very close to leaving confederation.

In Canada, under the law, women were not people. A group of five Alberta women, Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Irene Parlby, Henrietta Muir Edwards and Louise McKinney, took the issue to court, and after a lengthy battle, finally won in 1929, with the declaration that women are persons. This was just one step in a long fight by women to obtain equal rights with men under the law. Before 1850, the right to vote in democratic nations was generally limited to men who owned land. After 1850, the vote was gradually expanded to all adult males, but this still effectively left women out of elections. In Britain, women calling for the right to vote were called Suffragettes ("suffrage" is another term for the right to vote.) Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) became of the most well known Suffragette, but Denmark was the first European nation give the vote to all its citizens, women as well as men in 1913. Most other democracies followed suit after the First World War. The United States finally gave women the right to vote in 1920. In Canada, the first woman elected to the national parliament is Agnes McPhail in 1921.

The social turmoil after the First World War did not leave Canada untouched. The rise in the cost of living during and immediately after the war was not matched by a rise in wages, and many of the workers who suffered the worst poverty were veterans of the war--they had risked their lives fighting for Canada, but were now forgotten. A general strike was called in Winnipeg in 1919 to protest a law forbidding strikes, the largest of 460 strikes called that year, involving 149,000 workers. The response in Winnipeg was harsh, with the government using armed squads to attack strikers. Finally, the RCMP and army units were called in to smash the strikers using force, killing and injuring at least 30 workers.

Tom Thompson, Emily Carr and the Group of Seven are often seen as the first artists with a unique Canadian vision--that is they develop their own distinctive style and do not merely copy trends from Europe.

Fine art of the Group of Seven