From Wikipedia: Drawing of Vicki Baum by Emil Stumpp, 1930
“There are short cuts to happiness and dancing is one of them.” Vicki Baum
Hedwig (Vicki) Baum (Jan. 1888 – Aug. 1960) was an Austrian writer known for her 1929 novel the Grand Hotel. Born in Vienna into a Jewish family, her first career was as a musician playing the harp. She later became a journalist and a writer, emigrating to the United States in the 1930’s.
“Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” Mark Twain.
Mark Twain (1867) Wikipedia photo
Mark Twain (1835-1910) born Samuel Langhorne Clemens was an American writer and humorist raised in Missouri. Among his works are The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Prince and The Pauper.
This year being Canada’s 150th birthday, it is the perfect time to reflect back and to wonder what life was like 150 years ago.
Manitoba was not yet a province and did not become one until 1870. Even then it was tiny and often compared to the size of a postage stamp.
The Kildonan area saw its first settlement when the Selkirk Settlers made the long and difficult journey from the highlands of Scotland in and around 1812.
In 1923, W.J. Healy wrote in Women of Red River that “the Selkirk settlers were more isolated from the world than a settlement on the north shore of Hudson Bay would be today.” Fur trade warfare “destroyed their first attempts at settlement, and brought death to some and extreme suffering to the survivors.”
The settlers also had to contend with floods, grasshopper plagues, shortages of food and supplies, illnesses and harsh winters.
The Aboriginals helped the settlers to survive teaching them about pemmican and other foods and helping them with hunting and gathering. Life soon improved. Healy quotes Gov. MacKenzie in 1833 saying that the settlement was “going most thrivingly forward” with “large and flourishing harvests.”
And life was not without its pleasant times. Healy quotes Harriet Cowan, born in the settlement in 1832, and her recollections of the many weddings in Kildonan.
“The dancing used to be kept up all night,” and “…at Christmas there used to be three weeks of parties.”
Noni Campbell-Horner, a descendant of the early settlers, says in her Red River Remembered that “summer was a time of work and chores… However, the settlers managed bat and ball games, cricket, horse races, picnics and canoeing.”
In the winter there was ice-skating, tobogganing and, indoors, chess, checkers, cards, and dancing.
Some links to these early days still stand. Seven Oaks House, built in 1853, by the Inkster family remains. The Kildonan Presbyterian church, built in 1852, still stands.
Bleak House, the home of sheriff Colin Inkster, was built in 1874 and is still in current use along Main St. St. John’s Anglican Cathedral is also a strong link to those early days.
The Anson Northrup was the first steamboat on the river in 1859. The first newspaper, The Nor’Wester, was founded in the Red River settlement that same year.
In 1869 Louis Riel led the Red River Rebellion and Manitoba became a province in 1870.
In the late 1800s and on, other European immigrants came to Manitoba, bringing their rich cultures and traditions to our growing province and since then we have become truly international.
Photo by Cheryl Girard
Be heard before it’s too late
By: Cheryl Girard Published Jan. 27/2017
“However sophisticated and technologically advanced we may be, we are biological creatures, utterly dependent on her (nature’s) beneficence for clean air, water and food,” wrote David Suzuki in Letters to My Grandchildren.
I often look back about a hundred years ago and write about what life may have been like back then. One thing always struck me. There seemed to be a lot less pollution then there is now. There were not many cars on the road then. Horses were still mainly used for transportation in this city, especially.
There were fewer chemicals too, less chemicals in our food, in our water, homes and cities and people seemed to spend more time outdoors, in nature, unplugged.
When I was growing up in a small town in the ’60s, I heard the story of a man who one day ended his life by sitting in his car and running it in an enclosed garage. It horrified and saddened me and haunts me to this day. It disturbs me for other reasons also. The thousands of cars that ply the roadways of our city put out those same toxic fumes into the air we breathe every day.
Millions of people around the world do this without ever thinking of the consequences.
Electric cars once ran on the streets of Winnipeg a century ago and would solve a lot of our pollution problems today. But making them available to the average consumer seems not to have been a priority.
A hundred years ago typhoid and other infectious diseases were major health threats in the North End of our city and elsewhere. Today, cancer is on the rise, along with other non communicable diseases.
According to the World Health Organization such diseases “were responsible for 68% of all deaths globally in 2012”. “The four main NCD’s are cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung diseases.”
Today it is more common for young children to be diagnosed with cancer. There seem to be more rare autoimmune diseases and other diseases.
Is there a connection? Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, which is said to have launched the environmental movement, thought so.
She wrote, “The 20th century was to create countless new cancer-causing chemicals and to bring the general population into intimate contact with them.” Even unborn children.
Suzuki writes that today we are faced with climate change, toxic pollution, overpopulation, deforestation, ocean degradation and species extinction.
Yes, we need to make our voices heard and do what we can. For our children’s sake. Before it is too late.
Published in Winnipeg’s ‘The Times’ Jan. 27/2017
My latest story for The Times….100 years ago in Winnipeg…..
Another new year has begun and once again it is the perfect time to start afresh and to try to better our lives. It is also the perfect time to reflect on the past to see how far we’ve come.
Source: What was Winnipeg like 100 years ago? – Winnipeg Free Press
“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” – Helen Keller
Helen Keller (1880 –1968) was an American author/lecturer. The story of how Keller’s teacher, Anne Sullivan, helped her to communicate despite Keller being deaf/blind was made famous in the film ‘The Miracle Worker.’ She campaigned for women’s rights, labor rights and published 12 books.
Merry Christmas! Have a peaceful one…. One of many Winnipeg winter wonders…and definitely not a Grinch….
“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!” ― Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
Theodor Seuss Geisel – (1904 – 1991) was an American cartoonist and author of children’s books written under the pen name of Dr. Seuss. He published 46 children’s books, including ‘The Cat in the Hat’, ‘Green Eggs and Ham’, ‘Horton Hears a Who’ and ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas!’
Portrait by J.H. Thompson at the Brontë Parsonage Museum
“I would always rather be happy than dignified.” – Charlotte Brontë in ‘Jane Eyre’
“I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our lord’s living garden.” – Thérèse de Lisieux.
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873 –1897), was a French Carmelite nun. She is also known as “The Little Flower of Jesus” or “The Little Flower.“
Along with St. Francis of Assisi, she is often regarded as one of the most popular saints in the history of the Roman Catholic church.
Born to a religious family she overcame many difficulties, and in 1888 at the age of 15, she became a nun in the Carmelite community of Lisieux, Normandy. She died at the age of 24 from tuberculosis.
But ‘The Story of a Soul’, her autobiography, published a year after her death was widely read and she quickly became one of the most popular saints of the twentieth century. She believed that people did not have to accomplish great deeds to achieve holiness. The ‘little way’ became the foundation of her spirituality. She wrote:
“Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love.”
whimsy and wit 