The Daily Colonist, January 24-27, 1915
Tue, 2015/01/27 - 9:44am
« previous next »#dailycolonist1915 - The news out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago:
- Sunday, January 24, 1915
- Dr. and Mrs. I. W. Powell [for whom Powell Street, Vancouver, is named] celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. The colonial accomplishments of Dr. Powell are recounted—some of which include buying the entire Granvile townsite in 1884 [i.e. the entire east side of what is now downtown Vancouver, from Burrard Street to Main Street] in partnership with Major Dupont and Mr. David Oppenheimer [as in Oppenheimer Park, on Powell Street] and being the first federal Indian Commissioner.
- Winston Churchill donates a copy of a painting of Captain Cook's ships anchored in Nootka Sound in 1778 to the provincial archives. Article includes a picture of the painting and an excerpt of Captain Cook's log of the first meeting with the natives [which is as smug and condescendingly colonial as you would expect.]
- Ruth St. Denis to appear at the Royal Victoria Theatre this coming Thursday. The article includes an image of her with Ted Shawn. [Ruth St. Denis was one of the great pioneers of Modern dance, right up there with Isadora Duncan.]
- An ad for Ruth St. Denis and the Royal Victoria Theatre.
- A patriotic as all get-up ad for Bovril "British to the Backbone", created in Canada, bottled in Canada, employing thousand of Canadian, and "unlike some other beef preparations, it owns no cattle on enemy territory."
- A four page spread on the British Army [that like the previous Sunday spreads on the British Navy I have reproduced in 2-up spreads primarily because I really like the hand-drawn headlines and hand-drawn frames and captions for for the photos layouts. If you want to read it, it begins here: https://archive.org/stream/dailycolonist57y39uvic#page/n17/mode/2up ]
- Monday, January 25, 1915
- Tuesday, January 26, 1915
- Photo layout and article on a major naval battle in the North Sea. German Große Kreuzer Bluecher is sunk.
- [Some heavy-handed propaganda where an] Article headline calls Germans "Baby-Killers" and characterises Zeppelin attacks as "wild schemes of no military value."
- [And in the lead up to WWII...] Article speculating that the Japanese government will not reliquish territory in China taken from the Germans.
- Article on a lecture about the moon speculating on the volcanic origin of the craters [a theory not completely put to rest until the 1970s], puzzles over the bright rays patterns emanating from some craters [that we now know to be ejecta trails], discusses that "the moon was once a part of the Earth and, in some way, became detached from it" [which is somewhat in keeping with the currently preferred giant impact hypothesis, although at the time it was believed that the Pacific Ocean was the scar left by the unexplained ejection of the moon], and goes on to speculate on the nature of the far side of the moon.
- An ad for the "Corbin Door Check" automatic door closing mechanism [that is remarkable not for the mechanism, but for the need with "The iceman, grocer, meatman—all those people who are in a hurry..." making home deliveries, entering unlocked houses, and forgetting to shut the door properly behind them.]
- Zeppelin responsible for bombing of the Russian port of Libau downed and the crew taken prisoner.
- First hand account of its destruction from an English-speaking crewman of the Bluecher.
- Life insurance ad explaining that insurance is cheaper than smoking "two or three cigars" a day.
- Another article on Ruth St. Denis and her Asian-inspired dance styles that points out that she performed for King Edward VII and the British nobility and in all the great cities of Europe.
[ Source: http://www.britishcolonist.ca/dateList.php?year=1915 ]
