We have reached the last year of the first decade of the 20th century. The next decade is a massive one for Canada’s history, and 1909 was an important year to finish out that first decade.
On Jan. 11, Great Britain and the United States signed the Boundary Waters Treaty. This treaty helped to resolve disputes over the waters bordering the United States and Canada. The treaty covered the main shore of lakes, rivers and other waterways along the international boundary between Canada and the United States. The treat was officially implemented on May 5, 1910.
On Feb. 5, 1909, Alfred Shrubb and Tom Longboat raced each other in front of 15,000 at Madison Square Garden.
It seemed to many in the crowd that Shrubb was going to win as he had a 10-lap lead over Longboat by the 30-kilometre mark of the race.
Believing he wasn’t trying, the crowd began to boo Longboat, but he was just biding his time and waiting to strike.
Shrubb was a shorter distance runner, and Longboat had the endurance to outlast him.
With 10 kilometres left in the race, Longboat suddenly surged.
He lapped Shrubb, who had to slow down to a walk several times.
The Toronto Daily Star wrote,
“Shrubb now came down to a walk again for nearly a lap. Then he ran a couple of laps and walked again. Now Longboat was within four laps of him and both men were frantically urged by their representatives while the 12,000 people in the Garden made the place a bedlam.”
With each lap, Longboat closed the gap until he passed Shrubb for the last time and claimed victory once again with a time of two hours 53 minutes and 40 seconds, a full two minutes ahead of Shrubb who couldn’t finish the race and fell into the arms of his friends, completely exhausted.
The Montreal Gazette wrote,
“The Englishman, unable to continue further, collapsed on the track, leaving the triumphant Longboat to finish the race alone, a winner.”
On Feb. 23, the Silver Dart, the first plane designed and manufactured in Canada and the British Empire, took flight at Baddeck Bay, Nova Scotia. Back in 1891, Alexander Graham Bell began experiments in heavier-than-air craft at Baddeck but it didn’t go much beyond that.
He eventually founded Aerial Experiment Association with his wife Mabel in 1907. J.A.D. McCurdy was brought on to help design the aircraft. The son of inventor Arthur McCurdy, he was helped in the design process by Frederick Baldwin (pictured) and Americans Glenn Curtiss and Thomas Selfridge. The Silver Dart would be their fourth flying machine design.
The Silver Dart was made of steel tube, bamboo, friction tape, wire and wood. The wings were covered in rubberized balloon cloth. The silvery cloth gave the plane its name of The Silver Dart. It had 50-horsepower engine with a propeller and no brakes. On Feb. 23, 1909, the Silver Dart took flight, becoming the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to fly in Canada. Piloting the plane was John McCurdy. It travelled 800 metres at a height of three to nine metres at 65 km per hour.
On March 10, 1909, the Silver Dart was flown by McCurdy again, in a circular course that covered 35 kilometres. The first passenger flight also took place on the Silver Dart. From February to August 1909, the Silver Dart flew over 200 times. While the Canadian Army wasn’t too interested in The Silver Dart, the Association was invited to Camp Petawawa for a demonstration of it on Aug. 2, 1909. The sandy terrain did not make a great runway, and the plane had trouble lifting off each time.
The Silver Dart lifted off for a fifth time that day, but as McCurdy brought it in for a landing, a wheel struck a rise and crashed. The Silver Dart never flew again.
On March 9, the Allan Cup was won for the first time by the Ottawa Cliffsides of the Inter-Provincial Amateur Hockey Union. One week later, Queen’s University challenged for the Cup and won the game, taking over the Allan Cup. The Allan Cup had been donated by Montreal Amateur Athletic Association president Sir H. Montagu Allan to be awarded to the amateur champions of Canada.
On March 22, the Liberal Party of Alberta won 36 seats to win its second election with another majority. The party took 60 per cent of the vote.
Also on March 22, Gabrielle Roy was born in St. Boniface, Manitoba but later moved to Quebec. She wrote her first novel, Bonheur d’occasion, in 1945. It was a landmark work in Canadian history and unlike nearly anything that came before it in French-Canadian literature. The stark realistic portrait of the lives of people in Montreal’s Saint-Henri neighbourhood caused many Quebeckers to look at themselves.
Today, the novel is viewed as helping to lay the foundation of The Quiet Revolution that came 15 years later. It was published in 1947 in English as The Tin Flute and won the Governor General’s Award for fiction and the Lorne Pierce Medal from the Royal Society of Canada.
In the United States it sold 750,000 copies. It was translated into 12 languages. The book’s publication has been declared a National Historic Event in Quebec history by the provincial government.
She continued writing after her landmark debut novel, publishing 15 books in all. Her novel Alexandre Chenevert in 1954 garnered more critical acclaim. She was one of the first individuals to be awarded the Order of Canada in 1967.
Gabrielle died in 1983. Her autobiography, Enchantment and Sorrow, published after her death, won the Governor General’s Award in 1987.
In 2004, the $20 bank note was printed with a quotation from her book The Hidden Mountain.
On May 28, Red Horner was born in Lynden, Ontario. He began playing junior hockey for the Toronto Marlboros in the Ontario Hockey League before making the mump to the NHL in 1928 when he joined the Toronto Maple Leafs. In his 12 year career until 1940, he took on the role of an enforcer. During his career, he had 42 goals and 110 assists in 490 games. From 1938 to 1940, he was the captain of the Maple Leafs. In his time with the Maple Leafs, he won a Stanley Cup in 1932.
He led the league in penalty minutes seven times, including with 167 minutes in only 43 games in 1935-36.
His 1,264 penalty minutes was an NHL record until it was broken by Ted Lindsay in the 1950s.
Following his retirement, he divided his time between Florida and Toronto where he was involved with various businesses including the Canada Coal Company.
In 1965, he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. This induction was one of the most controversial in NHL history due to his low goal and point total. Many did not consider him to be one of the best defencemen in the league, let alone on the Maple Leafs.
On Feb. 13, 1999, he took part in the opening and closing ceremonies at the final game at Maple Leaf Gardens. He was also on hand for the opening of the Air Canada Centre.
Upon his death on April 27, 2005, he was the last living member of the 1932 Stanley Cup champion Maple Leafs, and the oldest living NHL player.
On June 7, Mary Pickford, who became one of the most famous women in the world as a silent film actress, acted in her first starring role. Her role was in The Violin Maker of Cremona through the Biograph Company.
On Oct. 13, the Ontario Provincial Police was founded through an Order in Council by the Ontario government. This first force consisted of 45 men under Superintendent Joseph E. Rogers. The starting salary was $400 per year, which was increased to $900 in 1912. The early detachments were founded in the mining areas of Cobalt and Timmins where crime was becoming a major problem. Today, the OPP has 5,800 uniformed officers, 600 auxiliary officers and 2,600 civilian employees.
On Nov. 28, Lotta Hitschmanova was born in Prague. She spent the first part of her life in Europe before she was forced to flee Czechoslovakia in 1938 when the Munich Agreement handed over one-third of the country to Germany.
Highly intelligent, she spoke several languages and worked as a journalist before she left Europe during the Second World War as a refugee.
In Canada, she began to work with the Unitarian Service Committee to help others who were fleeing war-torn regions. In 1945, she founded the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada, now SeedChange, and led the organization for the next three decades.
She became famous in Canada for wearing an army nurse’s uniform and military style hat and traveling the country to raise funds to help people in towns and villages that were suffering from drought, war, disease and poverty around the world.
Through her tireless leadership, she was able to help millions of people around the world and she set up programs in 20 countries around the planet. Between 1945 and her retirement in 1984, under her leadership, the Uniterian Service Committee raised $128 million to help people.
During that time, the RCMP also spied on her believing she was sympathetic to Communism.
Canadians came to know her voice through her commercials in which she asked for donations to be sent to 56 Sparks Street, Ottawa.
She passed away on Aug. 1, 1990. In 2020, she was announced as one of the eight finalists to be featured on the $5 bill.
On Dec. 4, 1909, the first Grey Cup game was played between the University of Toronto Varsity Blues and the Parkdale Canoe Club. The Varsity Blues won 26 to 6 in front of 3,800 fans. The trophy, donated by Governor General Earl Grey, was not ready yet and would not be presented to the team until March 1910. The team held the trophy for the next two years until the Hamilton Alerts took over the trophy with their Grey Cup win.
Since the establishment of the Grey Cup, the Toronto Argonauts have won a record 18 Grey Cups in 24 appearances in the Grey Cup. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers hold the record for most Grey Cup appearances with 30, and have won 12 Grey Cups in those appearances.
The same day that the Grey Cup was won for the first time, the Montreal Canadiens were formed when Ambrose O’Brien put up a $5,000 security deposit for a new franchise that would be a team for French-Canadian players in Montreal. The name of the club was Le Club de Hockey Le Canadien. In that first season, the team finished in last place in the National Hockey Association with two wins and 10 losses.
Since the founding of the Montreal Canadiens, the team has won a record 24 Stanley Cups, with the most recent being in 1992-93.
In 1909, the Old Gold Salvage Group, which included future American president Franklin Roosevelt, dug into the Oak Island pit down 34 metres. Divers were sent into the pit as well but nothing of consequence was found.
After several accidents in the Kicking Horse Pass over the previous two decades, the Spiral Tunnels were finally opened in August 1909. These tunnels replaced the direct route through the pass. Designed by J.E. Schwitzer, he was inspired by the same system of tunnels he saw in Switzerland. The tunnel system included two short straight tunnels on Mount Stephen. During construction, their measurements were so precise that when the two sides of the tunnels came together, they were only off by 30 centimetres. Through the use of the tunnels and the addition of several kilometres to the route, the ruling grade was reduced to 2.2 per cent and the trip over the top of the big hill was completely abandoned.
In 1909, William Lyon Mackenzie King gave his first speech in the House of Commons. He went on to serve as Prime Minister for 21 years, longer than anyone else.
