C.D. Gallant King's Blog, page 22

Z - World Famous Composer John Williams Got His Start In Newfoundland

Two things: Yes, I know there are no "Z's" in any of those words. Yes, I've talked about this one before. It's been 26 friggin' days so I don't care. Wait, that's three things. *Ahem* Anyway. Before Star Wars, Superman, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter and a plethora of other hit Hollywood scores, John Williams was an up-and-coming musician serving his time in the US Army. In 1952 he was

Y - What the Heck is a Yukon Beaver Eater?

For a long time, the Indigenous people of the Yukon territory and British Columbia on the west coast of Canada have described a huge beast, "bigger than even the biggest grizzly bear," that has been spotted tearing apart beaver lodges and devouring the poor creatures within. On the one hand, this monster is among the rarest and most obscure of cryptids (mysterious creatures such as bigfoot,

X - Crazy Canadian Cultist Brother XII

Edward Arthur Wilson was born in England in July of 1878. Little did his parents know that they brought into the world the messiah who would save his chosen people when the rest of the world was destroyed. The face of the man who'll save the world. Or just rob a bunch of dumb rich people. Either/or. Wilson was a sea captain who traveled the world and was fascinated with religion. Any

W - Winnie the Pooh and Canada, Too

Okay, I wrote about this one before a few years ago. But 26 posts in one month is a lot, so you'll have to excuse me for reusing it. Plus it's a great story. In 1914 a Canadian soldier from Winnipeg named Harry Colebourn was travelling to Quebec on his way to be shipped overseas. He kept a detailed journal of his trip, and after stopping the night in Port Arthur, Ontario he wrote the following

V - Vancouver Beer Parlours

Prohibition of alcohol was common in Canada in the late 19th and early 20th century, though it was managed on a province-to-province and even town-by-town basis. The only nation-wide prohibition was from 1918-1920 as a temporary wartime measure. (Maybe to ship all the booze to the boys overseas? Who knows.) The ban was repealed province-by-province through the 20s, with Ontario abolishing

U - Underground SNOLAB

Sudbury. A city in Northern Ontario so exciting that the top two attractions listed on the tourism website is a 6-screen discount movie theatre and the slots at the local race track. However, this sleepy (and cold) town holds a surprising secret deep below the surface: Two thousand and seventy metres beneath the city lies a sprawling underground laboratory that would be an awesome secret

T - Toronto's Ill-Fated First Hanging

After the bleak and controversial topics of last week (treasonous nationalism, indigenous rights, and TWO separate cases of genocide), let's keep this week lighter. Monday's topic is... public execution. Actually, it's still not as bad as last week's posts. Back in 1798 Toronto was a small frontier town only five years old. It wasn't even called Toronto yet, it was still called York back then.

S - Shanawdithit, Last of the Beothuk

A few days ago I talked about the Mi'kmaq, an Indigenous group in Newfoundland that were actually "native" to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The Beothuk, however, were the true natives of the Island province, able to trace their arrival to Newfoundland about 2000 years ago. They encountered the vikings when they arrived in 1000 AD (in the Norse sagas they referred to them as "skraelings"). They

R - J.R. Robertson, Toronto's First Literary Pirate

John Ross Robertson was born in Toronto in 1841. As a child he collected pictures and historical memorabilia (so he was a nerd, basically), and in high school he started his own newspaper, which may have been the first school newspaper of its kind in Canada. He got into trouble with the school administration for printing negative pieces about them, and had to close and rename his paper several

Q - Qalipu Mi'kmaq First Nations Band

This one is still ongoing and is a very contentious issue back home in Newfoundland, so I'll try to stay as objective as possible. The Mi'kmaq (sometimes spelled Mi'kmaw or Micmac) are an indigenous people of Eastern Canada, today numbering around 40,000 in Atlantic Canada and Quebec. In the early 2000s the Federal Government of Canada started a process to officially recognize the Qalipu