A woodcut print of the Leonids meteor shower in 1833 by Mr. Pickering, an editor who witnessed the scene near Niagara Falls, New York Today and yesterday have hit the 25 degree mark in Toronto. Kids...
Here I am, back again after a bit of a hiatus though the winter and March Break holidays. If you are a regular reader you may have noticed that my postings have been less frequent in the past few mo...
As Valentine’s Day approaches, I thought I would share something I came across in an edition of The Peterborough Review published in late 1868 in Ontario. Tweet
I came across these photos of the Hazelton bank robbery and they really stood out to me. I immediately wanted to know the back story. After the bank robbery and gunfight in New Hazelton, BC on Apr. ...
I came across some mentions of Benedict Arnold’s ties to Canada last summer – he lived in New Brunswick for a few years and was granted land just north of Toronto. I was intrigued because I had neve...
Here is an image of a wood-cut engraved map of Hochelaga, the fortified Iroquois village located where Montreal now exists (on or near Mont-Royal). The map dates from between 1556 and 1606 and was p...
My frozen ground moose I’m back with a functioning laptop battery! A family member of mine, who belongs to a hunt camp with some men he grew up with, recently gave me a moose roast and two pack...
This is a great image drawn/painted of a French Canadian man around 1858 or 1859. It was created by Frances Anne (Beechey) Hopkins (1838-1919), an English painter whose husband Edward Hopkins worked...
Obviously more than I can find out in a brief trawl of the internet, and more than I could describe in one post. Recently I was inspired to dig into some Newfoundland history by a blog post from a Sc...
If you lurk around Toronto heritage locations and websites, you’ve probably seen this picture before, but it’s so great I had to put it up. This is a watercolour with pen and ink over pe...
This week I am particulary enjoying the Remembrance Day posts from The Memory Project (oral personal histories from WWII and the Korean War), and the If Ye Break Faith blog which focuses on WWI. The...
These are photos that stood out to me, and I thought I’d share them. Maybe you’ve seen them before, maybe you haven’t… "6-inch Naval gun on Percy Scott undercarriage, fi...
2nd Lt. George Clark (1887 - 1917) Photo used with permission of Queens University Archives. “A Letter from Belgium” published in the Oxbow Herald (Saskatchewan) on Feb. 17, 1916: The fol...
Here’s an image of a document relating to a matter concerning the land petition of William Ritchie in Dummer Township, Peterborough County, Upper Canada (aka Canada West/Ontario). It was sent ...
And watching-up too. If all you know about the War of 1812 involves a vague recollection of the names of some old dead dudes (I’m thinking Sir Isaac Brock and Tecumseh) and the ability to link...
Here is a wonderful description of how a typical sod house was built on the prairies. It’s from Barry Broadfoot’s “Memories of Settlers Who Opened the West: The Pioneer Years 1895-...
Occupy Toronto protestors camp out in St. James Park on Oct. 17, 2011 St. James park in downtown Toronto, that’s what! Yup, those protestors are camping out on the unmarked graves of cholera v...
Here’s a photo of a street in Elora, Ontario sometime between 1900 and 1919. The caked-on ice from an ice storm has tipped a hydro pole. This photo is believed to have been taken by John R. C...
About half an hour’s drive from Toronto, there is a reconstructed Wendat (Huron) village at the Crawford Lake Conservation Area. If you grew up in Halton region, you might have had a school fi...
This is a wonderful map, made by Guillaume de l’Isle in 1730 for the Academie Royale des Sciences. It has detail from the centre of the North American continent and eastward, and from Maryland...
I have tracked down several photos of women in the 1890′s to have a look at what they were wearing. Here’s what I found: This is a photo of an unknown regular woman at work, churning but...
This painting by Thomas Davies in 1760 shows a portion of the Battle of the Thousand Islands in the Seven Years’ War (aka The French and Indian War). It is called “L’OutaouaiseR. ..
Here’s a photo of some garbagemen using a wagon and a sleigh in Toronto on February 9, 1918. It was taken by John Boyd, who lived from 1865 to 1941, was born in Ireland, and grew up in the wes...
…well, maybe “ghost town” is a bit strong, since some of these buildings are still occupied or privately owned. But ever since the government expropriated a lot of the land in the ...
Which side of the American Revolution to support was a question that many settlers on the south side of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec asked themselves around 1775 and 1776. Then they joined pro-C...
This painting of Toronto was created in 1841 by William Henry Blett (1809-1854). Can’t find much information about Blett himself, but I like this image of the Toronto waterfront as it appeared ...
I have always tended to think of slavery as an American issue that didn’t have much to do with Canada. But we did have slavery here, even if our economy was not as dependent on it as in the Am...
I often wonder what encounters were like between the settlers who were clearing the forest to make farmland, and the First Nations people who inhabited nearby areas. It seems to me that we often hea...
This map was created in 1787 by J. F. Galaup, Compte de la Perouse, and was published in his “Atlas du Voyage de la Perouse”, (Paris), 1797. You will notice that the coast of Vancouver I...
Ever look up your ancestors on a census form from the 19th century and find their occupations a little weird, unfamiliar sounding, or just plain scary? Here are a few I’ve come across. “...
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