maple leafToday's Canadian Headline...
1995 REASONABLY WELL PAID RINK RATS GO BACK TO WORK

North America - 1994-95 NHL Season starts after a lengthy pro hockey strike.

1936

Also On This Day...

London England - Edward VIII 1894-1972 starts reign on the death of his father George V. He will abdicate eleven months later, on December 11, 1936, to marry 'the woman I love,' Wallis Simpson. The stamp shows him four years earlier when he was Prince of Wales, and first visited Canada.

1899

Also On This Day...

Halifax Nova Scotia - Advance group of about 2,000 Russian Doukhobors lands in Halifax en route to the west; 5,400 follow shortly after. These first members of this mystical Christian sect (the name means 'spirit wrestlers,') are sponsored by Count Leo Tolstoy, the novelist and author of War and Peace. The picture shows a group of Doukhobor farm women breaking sod in Alberta while their husbands are away working for cash on railway construction.

1811

And in Today's Canadian Birthdays...

Samuel Keefer 1811-1890
civil engineer, born on this day at Thorold Ontario in 1811. Keefer learned his trade working on the Erie and Welland Canals as a boy - his father was one of the promoters of the Welland Canal. He was Canada's first Chief Engineer of Public Works, and built the country's first suspension bridge at the Chaudière Falls in Ottawa in 1843, as well as the Clifton Bridge, the first suspension bridge at Niagara Falls in 1869. He also selected the plans for the Parliament Buildings in 1859, and directed their construction.

Also Ethel Wilson 1888-1980
writer, was born on this day in 1928 at Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 1888; died in Vancouver Dec 22, 1980. Wilson's parents, English missionaries, died when she was 10, and she was sent to live with relations in Vancouver. She taught school in that city from 1907-27. Her novels include Hetty Dorval (1947), The Equations of Love (1952) and Swamp Angel (1954), and Love and Salt Water (1956).

In Other Events...
1995Yellowknife NWT - Roger Warren convicted of second-degree murder for killing 9 men during the 1992 strike-related bombing of the Giant gold mine.
1994 Ottawa Ontario - Telesat Canada's Anik E-1 communications satellite spins out of control; newspapers, radio and TV broadcasters scramble to get news feed.
1994 Henley-on-Thames England - Beatrice Lillie, Lady Peel 1894-1989 dies at age 94; born Constance Sylvia Gladys Munston in Toronto on May 29, 1894. Lillie was a comic movie/stage actor that Noel Coward billed as the funniest woman in the world. She appeared in such films as Auntie Mame (1958), Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967).
1971 Tuktoyaktuk NWT - Radio Tuktoyaktuk starts broadcasting in English and Inuktutuk.
1965 Ottawa Ontario - Yvon Dupuis resigns on 1964 charges of accepting $10,000 bribe in 1961; Minister Without Portfolio.
1953 Toronto Ontario - CBS Television production of Studio One transmitted to CBLT-TV and rebroadcast in Canada; first transmission of a TV show from the United States to Canada.
1923 Ottawa Ontario - Canadian Government Railways becomes the CNR; takes over the Intercolonial, National Transcontinental & Hudson Bay lines.
1910 Ottawa Ontario - Ottawa Senators sweep Edmonton in 2 for the Stanley Cup (2nd of 1910).
1904 Ottawa Ontario - Canadian government disallows British Columbia Act to restrict Chinese immigration.
1892 Springfield Massachusetts - Almonte, Ontario native James Naismith hosts his first organized basketball game, the world's first, at the Springfield YMCA college.
1715Nova Scotia - Samuel Vetch appointed Governor of Nova Scotia; to August 17, 1717.