We are venturing into the second half of the first decade of the 20th century and many amazing things happened in 1905!
The first big event was the journey of the Dawson City Nuggets in their quest to win the Stanley Cup in Ottawa.
Beginning on Dec. 19, 1904, they travelled from Dawson City to Whitehorse by dog sled, with most of the team using dogs and some players even riding bicycles. Newspapers would follow the progress of the team. This first leg of the journey was 500 kilometres, and no easy task.
After reaching Vancouver on Jan. 6, 1905, the team boarded a train, and the easiest leg of their journey began.
As soon as the team arrived in Vancouver, newspapers across the country started to print that the challengers were on their way across the continent.
Travelling the distance from Vancouver to Ottawa, the team reached their destination on Jan. 11, only two days before the match was supposed to begin. The Ottawa team would not allow them to adjust the date of the game.
Everything kicked off with the first game in front of a crowd of 3,000 people and Dawson was only down 3-1 halfway through. The team from the north seemed to be holding its own but things quickly changed. Norman Watt of Dawson tripped up Art Moore of Ottawa. Moore then hit Watt in the face with his stick and Watt responded by knocking out Moore with his own stick. Both men received 15-minute penalties. Moore suffered four stitches in the altercation.
Ottawa had won 9-2 and the Dawson City players complained that many of the goals were offside. It is believed from first-hand accounts that the lone referee missed as many as six off-side Ottawa goals.
Feeling a bit big for his shoes despite the loss, Norman Watt said that Frank McGee was not that good since he had only scored one goal in the first game.
With that, the second game was ready to be played on Jan. 16 and McGee, possibly because of what was said, decided to respond in the best way he could. He began to score goals. He just didn’t score a few goals, he scored more goals than anyone ever has in a hockey game, before or since.
In the first half of the game, McGee scored four goals. By the end of the game, he had added another 10 goals. Ottawa won the game 23-2, making it the most lop-sided Stanley Cup win in the history of the game. Frank White scored once in the game, while Alf Smith scored three times and Harry Westwick scored five, all well behind McGee. Hector Smith scored both goals for Dawson City.
For Ottawa, this was the sixth challenge for the Stanley Cup against them since 1903 and by far the Dawson City challenge saw Ottawa score the most goals of any challenge it had faced so far with 32 goals compared to only four by Dawson.
While the Dawson City Nuggets lost, they were honoured at a banquet held by the Ottawa team.
On Jan. 25, James Whitney won the Ontario Provincial election. This brought an end to 34 years of Liberal rule over the province. The Conservatives won 69 seats, an increase of 21, while the Liberals won 28 seats, losing 22 seats. The Conservatives would continue to lead the province until 1919.
On Jan. 28, Ellen Fairclough was born in Hamilton. As an adult, she trained as a chartered accountant and was an executive with the Girls Guides of Canada.
From 1945 to 1950, she served on the Hamilton City Council. In 1950, she was elected to the House of Commons as a Progressive Conservative.
On June 21, 1957, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker appointed her as the Secretary of State. This made her the first federal female cabinet minister in Canadian history. From 1958 to 1962, she served as the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, and from 1962 to 1963, was Postmaster General.
From Feb. 19 to 20, 1958, she became the first woman to be appointed as Acting Prime Minister of Canada.
After she left Parliament in 1963, she was awarded the Order of Canada in 1979 and the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case in 1989. In 1922, she was bestowed with the title of Right Honourable, which is usually reserved for Prime Ministers, Governors General and Chief Justices.
She died in 2004 in Dundas, Ontario.
On March 27, Elsie MacGill was born in Vancouver. At the age of 16, she entered the University of British Columbia. Due to her age, the dean asked her to leave after only one term.
In 1923, MacGill enrolled in the Applied Sciences Program at the University of Toronto. In 1927, she began her graduate studies in aeronautical engineering at the University of Michigan.
In 1929, she became the first woman in North America to be awarded a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering.
In 1938, she was the first woman elected to corporate membership in the Engineering Institute of Canada. That same year, she was hired as chief aeronautical engineer at the Canadian Car and Foundry.
During the Second World War, her factory was selected to build the Hawker Hurricane fighter aircraft. The factory expanded from 500 workers to 4,500, half of them women.
When production shut down in 1943, her factory had produced 1,400 Hurricanes.
MacGill became famous for her role in producing the Hurricanes, resulting in a comic book and the title of “Queen of the Hurricanes”.
In 1953, MacGill broke her leg and while recovering, she wrote a biography of her mother’s life. Through writing her mother’s biography, MacGill became inspired to join the women’s rights movement.
In 1967, she was named to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada and co-authored the published report in 1970.
In 1971, MacGill was awarded the Order of Canada. Four years later, she was presented with the Amelia Earhart Medal.
MacGill died on Nov. 4, 1980.
On April 30, John Peters Humphrey was born in Hampton, New Brunswick. As child, he lost both his parents to cancer and one of his arms while playing with fire. He eventually earned a Bachelor of Commerce, Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Law. He began teaching at McGill and founded the McGill Debating Union.
In 1946, he was appointed as the First Director of the United Nations Division of Human Rights. In that position, he was the principal drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948. It was called the International Magna Carta of all Humankind.
He remained with the United Nations for two decades and implemented 67 international conventions and constitutions for dozens of countries.
In 1966, he returned to teaching at McGill. He died on March 14, 1995.
On June 8, Ralph Steinhauer was born in Morley, Northwest Territories. In 1928, he married Florence Davidson and together they had five children.
He worked as a farmer and cleared 16-hectare homestead and continued farming the land until his death. When The Great Depression hit, he supplemented the family’s income by logging and cutting fence posts.
He became the district president of the United Farmers of Alberta and was a co-founder and president of the Indian Association of Alberta. From 1966 to 1969, he was the Chief of the Saddle Lake First Nation.
On July 2, 1974, he was appointed as the Lt. Governor of Alberta. This made him the first person of First Nations Status to serve in that capacity. As Lt. Governor, he read speeches from the throne in the full regalia of a Cree chief. He also focusing on Indigenous issues in Canada. He remained as Lt. Governor until 1979.
He died on Sept. 19, 1987 in Edmonton.
On July 15, a five-storey Eaton’s store opened in Winnipeg.
The opening was a huge event, with thousands of people coming out. The Winnipeg Daily Tribune commented that,
“The Canadian Napoleon of Retail Commerce Reaches The Capital – Views His Great Store For First Time – Well Pleased”
The store was made of red brick and became known as the Big Store to those in Winnipeg. Initially having a staff of 750, that grew to 1,200 in only a few weeks. The business in Winnipeg continued to grow and by 1910 three-storeys were built onto the store. By 1919, the Winnipeg store covered 21 acres and employed 8,000 people.
The incredible success of the store was not lost on others, and it was felt it was the most successful department store in the world. Eventually, by the 1960s, it was estimated by Canadian Magazine that Winnipeg residents spent 50 cents of every shopping dollar at Eaton’s. On a busy day, one out of 10 Winnipeg residents would visit the store.
The Winnipeg store operated until Oct. 17, 1999 when it closed with 36 other stores.
On July 25, Grace MacInnis was born in Glen William, Prince Edward Island. She was the daughter of the founder of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, J.S. Woodsworth, and her husband, Angus MacInnis, served in Parliament from 1930 to 1957.
A founding member of the CCF herself, she was an MLA in the British Columbia Legislature from 1941 to 1945, and from 1965 to 1974 was a Member of Parliament for the New Democratic Party.
She championed issues such as abortion rights, family planning, affordable housing and women’s equality. She was the first woman from British Columbia elected to the House of Commons and the first wife of a former Canadian Member of Parliament to be elected to the House of Commons in her own right, rather than directly succeeding her husband in a by-election. She was awarded the Order of Canada in 1974 and received the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case in 1979.
She died on July 10, 1991.
Arguably one of the biggest events of the year occurred on Sept. 1 when Alberta and Saskatchewan were formed into two different provinces out of the North-West Territories.
The provinces we know today almost turned out very differently.
As plans were put into place to create provinces out of the Canadian West as the population increased due to settlers arriving, several proposals were considered.
1. Create a province out of modern-day southern Alberta and Saskatchewan.
2. Create two provinces, divided west to east, not north to south, at the 52 degrees North.
3. Create three provinces, one large one stretching from BC to Manitoba in the south, and two in the north, running south from the edge of Lake Athabasca in the north.
4. Create four provinces, effectively dividing current Alberta in half west to east, and making central and southern Saskatchewan into their own provinces.
5. Create four provinces, dividing current-Alberta in the middle west to east, and then southern Saskatchewan divided north to south.
Then there was the Province of Buffalo.
The plan was for this proposed province to cover all of present-day Alberta and Saskatchewan, with the border to about the middle of present-day Saskatchewan and running south. Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon and Regina would all be part of this province.
There was another version of this province, which ran from the Rockies to northern Lake Winnipeg, with the northern border being 57 degrees North.
That was the idea of NWT Premier Sir Frederick Haultain, who said
“One big province would be able to do things no other province could.”
Edmonton and Calgary were not in favour of this idea since Regina was to be the capital of the large province.
The problem was that Haultain, a Conservative, and Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, a Liberal, did not get along.
There was also a worry that such a large province in the west would minimize the power of Ontario and Quebec in the east.
Choosing the arbitrary line that is now the Alberta-Saskatchewan border was also to divide the potential strength of the Conservative Party which was concentrated in the south along the CPR mainline.
While Sir Wilfrid Laurier decided to create the borders of Alberta and Saskatchewan as we know them now, things could have been different if the Conservatives won the 1904 federal election, and not the Liberals.
Had that happened, Manitoba would have seen its border expand westward, not northward, and the remaining area would have become the Province of Buffalo.
On Nov. 9, Alberta went through its first election. The main issues of the election was whether Edmonton or Calgary would be the capital of the new province, if there would be funding for separate schools and the retaining of mineral and public lands by the federal government.
In the election, the Liberals won with 23 seats, with Alexander Rutherford staying on as premier of the province.
R.B. Bennett, future prime minister of the Canada, led the Conservatives. The party picked up two seats, but Bennett did not win his own seat in the election.
On Dec. 13, Saskatchewan went through its first election. Thomas Scott and the Liberals won with 17 seats, easily defeating Federick Haultain, the former premier of the Northwest Territories, and his Provincial Rights Party. That party only won eight seats in the election.
