On Jan. 11, Fort Vermilion, Alberta recorded the coldest temperature in North America’s history to that point with a temperature of -61.2 degrees Celsius. That record was later broken on Feb. 3, 1947 in Snag, Yukon when that area recorded a temperature of -63 degrees Celsius.
On Jan. 17, Busher Jackson was born in Toronto. A gifted hockey player, he played in the NHL from 1929 to 1944 with the Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Americans and Boston Bruins. He had his greatest success as a member of the Kid Line with the Maple Leafs with Joe Primeau and Charlie Conacher. The line was one of the best lines in hockey history. In 1931-32, Jackson led the league in scoring and helped the Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup.
He was part of five NHL All-Star teams.
Off the ice, Jackson was known for his playboy lifestyle, and love of partying and drinking. This led to his trade to New York in 1939. After his hockey career ended, his personal life began to crumble. He was divorced twice and near the end of his life resorted to selling hockey sticks outside Maple Leaf Gardens to make money.
He died on June 25, 1966 without being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. He was finally inducted in 1971. His induction led Conn Smythe to leave the selection committee. In 1975, Jackson was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.
On April 22, Alexander Bell Patterson was born in Raymore, Saskatchewan. In 1953, he was elected to the House of Commons, and would serve until 1958. He returned to Parliament in 1962 and was the acting leader of the Social Credit Party in 1967. He lost in the 1968 election, but was returned to Parliament in 1972. He remained in Parliament until the 1984 election. He passed away on April 2, 1993.
On May 11, Mitchell Sharp was born in Winnipeg. In 1942, he took a position in the Department of Finance, and then became the Director of the Economic Policy Division five years later. In 1963, he was elected to Parliament. In Parliament, he took on several portfolios including Minister of Finance, Secretary of State for External Affairs, President of the Privy Council and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons.
Sharp resigned from Parliament in 1978. Offered the role of Governor General by Pierre Trudeau, he turned down the offer due to his opposition to the monarchy. He stated,
“Canada should have its own head of state who isn’t shared by others.”
After he left politics, Sharp was the commissioner of the Northern Pipeline Agency, and served as a personal advisor to Jean Chretien from 1993 to 2003, during which time he was paid $1 per year.
On Feb. 22, 2004, he fell and broke his collarbone. Taken to the hospital, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He died less than a month later on March 19.
On May 16, James Palmer became the 11th Premier of Prince Edward Island. He had served in the legislature since 1900 and was the attorney general for much of the early 1900s. At the time, any MLA who became a premier had to resign their seat and run in a by-election. He did so but lost in the Dec. 2, 1911 by-election.
On June 14, Nova Scotia went through an election. The Liberals under George Henry Murray were able to hold onto power with 27 seats, a drop of five from the previous election. The Conservatives remained the Official Opposition with 11 seats. The Liberals had ruled the province, nearly uninterrupted, since 1867. As of 1911, the party had only lost one election, in 1878.
On July 21, Marshal McLuhan was born in Edmonton. As a Canadian philosopher, his work laid down the foundation of the study of media theory. After studying at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge, he taught English at various universities before he started teaching at the University of Toronto, where he remained for the rest of his life.
He is best known for coining the expression of “The Medium is the Message” in his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. He also coined the term global village and predicted the World Wide Web 30 years before it was invented.
He received the Order of Canada for his work. In 1977, he had a famous cameo in the movie Annie Hall, where a pompous academic is arguing while waiting for a movie about the work of McLuhan, who soon appears.
He died on Dec. 31, 1980.
On Sept. 21, Canada went through a federal election. The central issue of the election was an agreement that was proposed between Canada and the United States to lower tariffs. The Conservative Party campaigned against it and won their first election since 1891. Led by Robert Borden, the party won 132 seats, an increase of 47 seats. The win ended 15 straight years of Liberal rule under Sir Wilfrid Laurier. The Conservatives would remain in power for the next decade, throughout the First World War. Laurier would never again be prime minister, and died while Leader of the Opposition in 1919.
On Oct. 4, Mary Two-Axe Earley was born at the Kahnawake Reserve in Quebec. Her parents were Dominic, a Mohawk man, and Juliet, an Oneida nurse and teacher. When she was 10, her mother died of the Spanish Flu while treating patients. From that point on Mary was raised by her grandparents.
When she was 18, she moved to Brooklyn to look for work. It was there she married an Irish-American electrical engineer named Edward Earley in 1938. Together, they had two children. Since she married a non-Status man, Mary lost her Indian Status under the Indian Act. In 1966, a close friend died of a heart attack in Mary’s arms. The friend lost her Indian Status and was forced to move away from her reserve. Mary believed that the stress of those losses led to her death. Mary didn’t want this to happen to another Indigenous woman.
In 1967, she established the Equal Rights for Indian Women & submitted a brief to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women on the encouragement of women’s rights activist and Senator Therese Casgrain. The Commission recommended the Indian Act be amended.
The amendment didn’t happen, but Mary was not about to let that stop her. In 1969, her husband died and she moved back to the reserve to a house she inherited from her grandmother. To live there, she was forced to give the house to her daughter, who still had her Status. In 1974, she attended an International Women’s Year conference in Mexico City. While there, her band council attempted to evict her from the reserve. They reversed the decision due to intense negative press coverage & Mary spoke about the situation at the conference.
At the First Ministers conference in 1982, Mary asked to speak but was denied permission. Hearing this, Quebec premier Rene Levesque gave up his seat in support of her. The momentum for gender equality in the Indian Act continued to gain steam in the early-1980s. On June 28, 1985, Parliament passed Bill C-31 to remove gender discrimination in the Indian Act. One week later, Mary became the first woman to regain her status. Another 16,000 women and 40,000 descendants also regained their Indian Status.
In her life, Mary earned the Governor General’s Persons Case Award, an honorary doctorate, the National Aboriginal Achievement Award, and the Order of Quebec. In 2021, a Google Doodle honoured her.
On Oct. 16, James Flemming became the Premier of New Brunswick after Douglas Hazen resigned to join the cabinet of Sir Robert Borden.
Flemming served as premier for three years until Dec. 6, 1914. He led the Conservatives to their greatest victory in the 1912 election when they took 42 of the province’s 46 seats.
On Dec. 2, John Mathieson became the premier of Prince Edward Island after the Liberal government resigned after Premier H. James Palmer was defeated in a by-election. Mathieson’s government pressed the federal government to fulfill the terms agreed upon when the province entered Confederation in 1873. Mathieson served as the premier until 1917 when he left to become the Chief Justice of Prince Edward Island.
On Dec. 11, Ontario went through an election with the Ontario Conservative Party led by Sir James Whitney taking 86 seats, four less than the last election, but maintaining their majority. It was the third straight majority win for the Conservatives. The Liberals finished with 22 seats, an increase of three.
