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It began with a midnight chorus of bells ringing across the capital, a 101-gun salute by the local rifle regiment and a “monster bonfire” at the sprawling picnic grounds we know today as Major’s Hill Park.
When Confederation officially came into force 150 years ago today — as the Notre Dame Cathedral clock struck 12 on that historic Monday and fireworks lit up Ottawa’s dark summer sky — hundreds of the city’s 16,000 residents couldn’t wait for the daylight celebrations to begin, letting loose a preliminary burst of patriotism to welcome the birth of the Dominion of Canada.
And, according to Ottawa newspapers of the era, the birthday bash didn’t really stop for the next 24 hours.
In between the kickoff and the wind-down of the capital’s first Dominion Day — what today would be branded something like Confed Fest ’67 or maybe Dom-Day-palooza — there was a military parade and marching music in the great square in front of Parliament. There were lacrosse games and a hard-fought cricket match in a city blessed by clear skies and a mid-afternoon high of 24 C. There were canoe and rowboat races galore on the Ottawa River and Rideau Canal, sports of all sorts at a shoreline park over in Hull — feats of running, leaping and “throwing heavy hammer” to win prizes and delight the crowds.
Later on, there was another colossal inferno (some 20 cords of wood were torched) and hours of starlit square-dancing to the fiddlers up on Ashburnham Hill, the height of land around the north end of today’s Bronson Avenue.
Less flashy than the roman candles and “coloured rockets” shot into the night — but central to the whole shebang — was the sombre, late-morning swearing-in of various mutton-chopped men (yes, alas, all men) assigned to run the country just created. At the head of the pack: the newly knighted prime minister, now “Sir” John A. Macdonald.
He and his cabinet colleagues took their oaths in the East Block right after governor general Viscount Monck — with a “clear and distinct voice” and “his right hand on the Bible” —pledged his loyalty to the Queen.
“The first of July, A.D., 1867, will ever be a memorable day in the history of this country,” proclaimed the Ottawa Times in its Dominion Day editorial, presciently observing that the “ultimate object” of Confederation was the creation of a single country “from Newfoundland to Vancouver,” and that the nation-building experiment just launched “is a question involving the destiny of four millions, a few ages hence, forty millions.”
Four provinces — Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick — were uniting to form a federation that would indeed stretch, within just a few decades, from Atlantic to Pacific to Arctic Ocean. And 40 million people? We’re now pushing 37; give it a few more years.
Saw-dusty old Bytown, a lumber village transformed into a national legislative and administrative hub on that day a century and a half ago, was giddy over its good fortune.
Giddy, proud and loud.
“This new Dominion of ours came noisily into existence on the 1st,” Macdonald’s spouse of just five months, Agnes — mistress of a fine Sandy Hill home and now, suddenly, “Lady” Macdonald — wrote in the diary she purchased to celebrate her elevated status as “a great Premier’s wife.”
But — surprise, surprise — only an hour or so after Sir John A. formally took office, Ottawa was gripped by its first political scandal, a messy mix of local and national intrigue over biscuits and lemonade (or maybe lager.)
City alderman John Rochester, a wealthy industrialist who ran sawmills and an Ottawa brewery, was vying to become the Conservative MP for old Carleton County — a rural riding at the edge of Ottawa — in Canada’s first federal election, to be held at the end of the summer.
But in the early afternoon of July 1, when Rochester invited Carleton’s volunteer regiments to refresh themselves with unspecified drinks and nibblies at his manor on the outskirts of Ottawa following their exertions on Parliament Hill, Liberal-Conservative candidate John Holmes accused his opponent of bribing thirsty voters. The brewer’s refreshments went ahead, but many of the volunteers declined his invitation out of concern “they would somehow or other compromise themselves in regard to their votes,” a news report noted.
(Rochester lost that election, but went on to a term as Ottawa mayor, then a 10-year run as Carleton’s member of Parliament.)
Meanwhile, the main Dominion Day festivities continued, the city folks unfazed by suburban scandal. Streets and houses everywhere were decorated with “flags, festoons and streamers,” and “never did the Capital look better than when thus dressed in its festal garb,” noted a Citizen scribe. There were cannon blasts and countless renditions of God Save the Queen — all sung with heartfelt devotion, no doubt, in a city chosen by Victoria herself to be capital of the newborn nation.
The firefighters’ band played deep into the night.
“Never was a magistrate’s order more spiritedly carried out than the Mayor’s proclamation requesting the citizens of Ottawa to observe the first day of the new regime as one of general rejoicing,” stated the Citizen, which was particularly impressed with the “lusty peal” of church bells and the monster Major’s Hill bonfire, fuelled as it was by “an immense quantity of inflammable materials — firewood, packing cases, tar barrels and other combustibles — formed into a huge pyramidal pile.”
Carbon footprint? Perhaps best not to ask.
In short, it was one hell of a party. Throughout the evening, while dancing extended into “the wee, sma’ hours,” as a Citizen reporter put it, public buildings and many homes and businesses glowed with coloured lights and silhouetted images of the Queen, heraldic shields or simple birthday wishes for the new country. Even Parliament itself was “brilliantly illuminated” to “very beautiful effect,” the Times said.
“We hope that all things connected with the Dominion,” the Citizen concluded, “will be conducted by the people with the same good feeling and promote as much happiness as did its inaugural celebration.”
查看原文...
When Confederation officially came into force 150 years ago today — as the Notre Dame Cathedral clock struck 12 on that historic Monday and fireworks lit up Ottawa’s dark summer sky — hundreds of the city’s 16,000 residents couldn’t wait for the daylight celebrations to begin, letting loose a preliminary burst of patriotism to welcome the birth of the Dominion of Canada.
And, according to Ottawa newspapers of the era, the birthday bash didn’t really stop for the next 24 hours.
In between the kickoff and the wind-down of the capital’s first Dominion Day — what today would be branded something like Confed Fest ’67 or maybe Dom-Day-palooza — there was a military parade and marching music in the great square in front of Parliament. There were lacrosse games and a hard-fought cricket match in a city blessed by clear skies and a mid-afternoon high of 24 C. There were canoe and rowboat races galore on the Ottawa River and Rideau Canal, sports of all sorts at a shoreline park over in Hull — feats of running, leaping and “throwing heavy hammer” to win prizes and delight the crowds.
Later on, there was another colossal inferno (some 20 cords of wood were torched) and hours of starlit square-dancing to the fiddlers up on Ashburnham Hill, the height of land around the north end of today’s Bronson Avenue.
Less flashy than the roman candles and “coloured rockets” shot into the night — but central to the whole shebang — was the sombre, late-morning swearing-in of various mutton-chopped men (yes, alas, all men) assigned to run the country just created. At the head of the pack: the newly knighted prime minister, now “Sir” John A. Macdonald.
He and his cabinet colleagues took their oaths in the East Block right after governor general Viscount Monck — with a “clear and distinct voice” and “his right hand on the Bible” —pledged his loyalty to the Queen.
“The first of July, A.D., 1867, will ever be a memorable day in the history of this country,” proclaimed the Ottawa Times in its Dominion Day editorial, presciently observing that the “ultimate object” of Confederation was the creation of a single country “from Newfoundland to Vancouver,” and that the nation-building experiment just launched “is a question involving the destiny of four millions, a few ages hence, forty millions.”
Four provinces — Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick — were uniting to form a federation that would indeed stretch, within just a few decades, from Atlantic to Pacific to Arctic Ocean. And 40 million people? We’re now pushing 37; give it a few more years.
Saw-dusty old Bytown, a lumber village transformed into a national legislative and administrative hub on that day a century and a half ago, was giddy over its good fortune.
Giddy, proud and loud.
“This new Dominion of ours came noisily into existence on the 1st,” Macdonald’s spouse of just five months, Agnes — mistress of a fine Sandy Hill home and now, suddenly, “Lady” Macdonald — wrote in the diary she purchased to celebrate her elevated status as “a great Premier’s wife.”
But — surprise, surprise — only an hour or so after Sir John A. formally took office, Ottawa was gripped by its first political scandal, a messy mix of local and national intrigue over biscuits and lemonade (or maybe lager.)
City alderman John Rochester, a wealthy industrialist who ran sawmills and an Ottawa brewery, was vying to become the Conservative MP for old Carleton County — a rural riding at the edge of Ottawa — in Canada’s first federal election, to be held at the end of the summer.
But in the early afternoon of July 1, when Rochester invited Carleton’s volunteer regiments to refresh themselves with unspecified drinks and nibblies at his manor on the outskirts of Ottawa following their exertions on Parliament Hill, Liberal-Conservative candidate John Holmes accused his opponent of bribing thirsty voters. The brewer’s refreshments went ahead, but many of the volunteers declined his invitation out of concern “they would somehow or other compromise themselves in regard to their votes,” a news report noted.
(Rochester lost that election, but went on to a term as Ottawa mayor, then a 10-year run as Carleton’s member of Parliament.)
Meanwhile, the main Dominion Day festivities continued, the city folks unfazed by suburban scandal. Streets and houses everywhere were decorated with “flags, festoons and streamers,” and “never did the Capital look better than when thus dressed in its festal garb,” noted a Citizen scribe. There were cannon blasts and countless renditions of God Save the Queen — all sung with heartfelt devotion, no doubt, in a city chosen by Victoria herself to be capital of the newborn nation.
The firefighters’ band played deep into the night.
“Never was a magistrate’s order more spiritedly carried out than the Mayor’s proclamation requesting the citizens of Ottawa to observe the first day of the new regime as one of general rejoicing,” stated the Citizen, which was particularly impressed with the “lusty peal” of church bells and the monster Major’s Hill bonfire, fuelled as it was by “an immense quantity of inflammable materials — firewood, packing cases, tar barrels and other combustibles — formed into a huge pyramidal pile.”
Carbon footprint? Perhaps best not to ask.
In short, it was one hell of a party. Throughout the evening, while dancing extended into “the wee, sma’ hours,” as a Citizen reporter put it, public buildings and many homes and businesses glowed with coloured lights and silhouetted images of the Queen, heraldic shields or simple birthday wishes for the new country. Even Parliament itself was “brilliantly illuminated” to “very beautiful effect,” the Times said.
“We hope that all things connected with the Dominion,” the Citizen concluded, “will be conducted by the people with the same good feeling and promote as much happiness as did its inaugural celebration.”
查看原文...
