The victory of the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 1967 Stanley Cup was a singular event. It was unexpected then, and who would have predicted that it would not happen again? (With the Leafs not even in the playoffs in 2012, it has been 45 years and counting.)
The members of the Leafs that year knew they were flawed. They were mostly old by hockey standards (2 were over 40 and 5 others were 36 or older), lacked scoring, included some erratic personalities and they had endured a season in which at one point they lost 10 straight games. This team was essentially the same team that the previous year had been...
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In July 2011 Toronto Blue Jay’s second baseman Roberto Alomar and general manager Pat Gillick were inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame, making it a first for Canadians in baseball history. This marks the first time Canada’s only major league team will have a place to call its own in baseballs Hall of Fame in Cooperstown NY. While there are already four other Blue Jays in the hall, but neither Phil Niekro, Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor nor Rickey Henderson were inducted as Jays. Plenty of Canadians made the trek south of the border to watch Alomar and Gillick be inducted.
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“The pure white light generated by God’s greatest masterpiece”
With the current almost religious belief in privatization and the recent debate about selling off Ontario Hydro, it is timely to look back at a time when there was a very different view of what constituted the public good.
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“Everything before Ortona” said the Canadian Divisional commander “was a nursery tale.”
Wherever the Canadian infantry tried to advance through the rubble and narrow streets of Ortona in December 1943 they were exposed to murderous crossfire from the well-hidden defenders. Captain Bill Longhurst of the Loyal Edmonton Regiment had an inspiration.
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While Papineau was the most articulate and powerful spokesman for his party and his people, his message was a tangled skein of conflicting ideas.
On October 23rd, 1837 some 5000 people gathered at Saint Charles, Lower Canada. They came to hear their inspiring leader Louis-Joseph Papineau. It was a new phenomenon in the young democracy, an angry crowd demanding political change.
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Legend dictates that the games of the Olympiad owed their origin to the Theban hero Heracles who staged them to honour his grandfather Pelops.
It was said of Heracles that while engaged in his 12 labours he brought back a twig of wild olive from the legendary land of Hyperboreans and planted it in Olympia. This was the tree whose branches served to crown the victors.
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Then the order rang out “Down ramp!” The moment the ramp hit the ground heavy machine gun fire broke out over the seawall.
On June 6, 1944 Canadian forces took part in the greatest amphibious operation in military history. Over 10,000 Canadian seamen in 110 warships and 21,400 soldiers took part in D-Day. One of five assault beaches, codenamed Juno, was assigned to the 3rd Canadian Division and the 2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade.
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At some point in the 1650s, two adventurers from New France embarked on a journey that eventually revolutionized the fur trade and changed the course of Canadian history.
Médard Chouart, Sieur des Groseilliers, and his brother-in-law Pierre Esprit Radisson, traveled inland beyond lake Superior, possibly as far as James Bay. Des Groseilliers’ daring had already led him to explorations that were crucial for French territorial claims in North America.
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The formation of the National Hockey League was not a big deal in the life of Canada in 1917.
When a group of owners gathered to arrange it in the Windsor Hotel in Montreal November 22, Elmer Ferguson was the lone reporter sitting waiting for news. The first man to emerge from behind closed doors of the meeting was Frank Calder. Ferguson hollered after him, “Hey Frank, what happened in there?” “Not too much Fergie,” replied Calder.
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What do the words to that song we sing on New Year’s Eve mean, and how did a Canadian bandleader become so inseparable from them?
“Auld Lang Syne” has aptly been described as the song that nobody knows, although it is universally the song the English-speaking world uses to bid farewell to the old year and to hail the new.
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