Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Canada Read online

  •For almost 6,000 years, First Nations people living in what became southern Alberta used a spot in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains as a buffalo jump. A what? Blackfoot hunters drove buffalo from their grazing grounds over a 10-meter (33-foot) cliff in order to kill them for food and furs. Today, the area is called Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, and it’s one of five UNESCO World Heritage Sites located in the province.

  •Alberta is often called the “energy province” because of its many oil, coal, and natural gas deposits.

  Canada’s first known dinosaur is the Albertosaurus sarcophagus.

  •In 1884 Joseph Burr Tyrrell, a 26-year-old geologist working for the Geological Survey of Canada, stumbled on the skull of the Albertosaurus sarcophagus, the first known Canadian dinosaur, while doing research near the Red Deer River Valley. He knew nothing about dinosaurs, but knew enough to bundle up the curious artifact and transport it to Calgary for further research. That discovery ultimately set off the Great Dinosaur Rush of 1910–17, in which wild-eyed paleontologists seeking fame and fortune dug up the surrounding area looking for bones. For his discovery, Tyrrell got the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller named after him; it opened in 1985 just a few kilometers from where Tyrrell unearthed his find.

  •Alberta’s most notable glaciers are in Jasper and Banff national parks. Unfortunately, the glaciers are dwindling with global warming, so see them while you still can.

  •How many working cowboys are there in Calgary? Not many. But just as everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, everybody’s a cowboy during the annual 10-day Calgary Stampede rodeo. Plus Alberta has romanticized the once-menial job of herding cattle more than just about anywhere else in the world. The province boasts dude ranches, cowboy singers, a cowboy poetry association, and enough western boot and clothing stores to outfit a stampede of cowfolk. Heck, you might even see a real working cowboy—you’ll be able to pick him out because he’s likely to be the only one not wearing cowboy duds.

  Saskatchewan

  •Just four straight lines are needed to draw Saskatchewan’s outline. It is the only province without messy borders meandering along a river, a mountain range, or a coastline.

  Gordie Howe practices for the NHL Heroes of Hockey Game in 1996.

  •Hockey legend Gordie Howe was born in Floral.

  •Saskatchewan’s town names are good for a laugh or as a name for your indie band: Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, Buffalo Narrows, Southend Reindeer.

  •Unlike the rest of the country, suffering twice a year under the tyranny of Daylight Saving Time, Saskatchewan alone decided never to change its clocks.

  •The Tunnels of Moose Jaw are mysterious underground tunnels built in the early 20th century to connect the heating systems of downtown buildings. Over the years, these tunnels have been frequented by Al Capone’s gang, ill-treated Chinese immigrants, neighborhood kids scaring each other, and now tourists.

  •The Royal Canadian Mounted Police learn their profession at the RCMP Training Academy in Regina.

  •Saskatoon was named by a leader of a Temperance Colonization Society commune…after a berry. In the 1880s, while contemplating what to call his alcohol-free settlement on the east bank of the South Saskatchewan River, John Lake was interrupted by a young disciple offering a handful of locally grown berries. Called misâskwatômin by the Cree, the name became “saskatoon” in English.

  •On the shores of Ajawaan Lake in Prince Albert National Park, two beavers named Rawhide and Jelly Roll lived with the pioneering naturalist Grey Owl and his Mohawk wife, Anahareo, from 1931 until Grey Owl’s death in 1938. Rawhide and Jelly Roll appeared in books Grey Owl wrote and are credited with helping to promote his conservation message.

  Food for Comedy

  Some regional Canadian foods just sound funny. Here are a few that we feel a little awkward requesting in public.

  Lassy Mogs

  Small, cakelike cookies (“mogs”) sweetened with “lassy” (molasses), originally from Newfoundland.

  Jiggs Dinner

  Salty beef mixed with cabbage, boiled potatoes, carrots, and turnips.

  Figgy Duff

  A boiled-in-a-bag pudding from Newfoundland, rich with butter, sugar, eggs, and raisins…but no figs.

  Scrunchions

  Pork rinds.

  Fish and Brewis

  Newfoundland classic made with dried, salted cod, hard tack, and scrunchions (see above).

  Figgy duffs (far left), jambusters (center), and sea-moss pudding (right) are favorite treats among Canadians.

  Chinois

  Similar to shepherd’s pie, this French-Canadian dish features layers of ground beef, corn, and mashed potatoes. Despite the “Chinois” in its name (in French, pâté Chinois means “Chinese pie”), it’s not Chinese. The dish probably gets its name from two towns in Maine (China and South China), where men from Quebec went to work in forestry camps around 1900. Cooks at the camps probably served it, and the men brought the dish back to Quebec.

  Sea-Moss Pudding

  Irish moss boiled in water, and mixed with milk and sugar. A dessert made in the Maritimes…not really from moss, but from Canada’s most valuable seaweed crop.

  Jambuster

  What people in Manitoba call a jelly doughnut.

  Crimcoe

  Chocolate milk on Cape Breton Island.

  Son-of-a-B****-in-a-Sack or Bugger-in-a-Bag

  Also called poutine en sac, these European-origin puddings are steamed inside a bag.

  Donair

  A pita with spiced meat and sauce made popular in Halifax.

  Toutin

  Also known as “damper devils.” Like pancakes, but made by deep-frying dough.

  May West pastries are named for actress Mae West.

  May West

  The crème-filled, chocolate-frosted snack cake was originally named Mae West after the buxom actress, but the name changed in the 1980s to avoid lawsuits from the actress’s estate.

  First Superstar Export

  It’s become a cliché—a talented Canadian achieves international fame and ends up living in America. But someone had to do it first, right? We think we’ve found her.

  May Irwin

  Drama Queen

  In 1875 13-year-old Georgina May Campbell of Whitby, Ontario, changed her name to May Irwin and went into show business. Her father had died suddenly, and her mother needed money. So Mrs. Campbell decided that May and her younger sister Flo should hit vaudeville’s stages as a singing act. By the time May was 15, the pair was playing the Tony Pastor’s Theatre in New York, one of the most highly sought gigs on the vaudeville circuit. They stayed at the Pastor Theatre for six years, becoming a well-known act. Then, when May turned 21, she set out on her own, bouncing between vaudeville and comedic theater in London and New York for nearly four decades.

  For all her comedic talent, though, May was renowned for her melodic voice, strong and loud enough to fill a theater. She wrote some of her own songs, and made others her own just by the power of her voice. Her hits included “The Frog Song,” “The Bully Song,” (also called “I’m Looking for the Bully of the Town”), “Crappy Dan,” and “Hot Tamale Alley,” a song she wrote with George M. Cohan, a popular Broadway star known as the “father of American musical comedy.”

  The Kiss Seen Around the World

  Irwin was making a name for herself just as one of Thomas Edison’s most important inventions, the phonograph, was revolutionizing entertainment. Thanks to Edison, Irwin achieved what’s probably her longest-lasting claim to fame: she appeared in the first-ever movie kiss.

  Thomas Edison saw her perform in a musical called The Widow Jones on Broadway in 1896. The play ended with a sweet, lingering kiss between the two stars, Irwin and John C. Rice. Edison was so enchanted that he hired Irwin and Rice to come to his studio and perform the kiss for his cameras. The resulting 18-second film, The Kiss, titillated and scandalized many; it resulted in brisk ticket sales as well as stern newspaper editor
ials. Some people demanded that the film be confiscated and its exhibitors arrested. But others were more offended by aesthetics than morality. One critic wrote, “Neither participant is physically attractive, and the spectacle of the prolonged pasturing on each other’s lips was beastly enough in life size on the stage but magnified to gargantuan proportions and repeated three times over, it is absolutely disgusting.”

  Back in Canada, The Kiss became the first film to be publicly shown in Ottawa, and only the second film ever exhibited in the entire country. (The first had premiered in Montreal less than a month earlier.). And 100 years later, in 1999, the U.S. Library of Congress called The Kiss “culturally significant” and chose to preserve it as a national resource.

  A poster advertises the musical, The Widow Jones.

  Exit Stage Left

  May Irwin’s last professional hurrah was a 1922 Broadway run. After that, she retired and split her time among several homes, including a winter home in Florida and a vacation house on Club Island in Ontario’s Thousand Islands area.

  Irwin wasn’t done with fame, though. One day, at a restaurant on Club Island, she was served a salad topped with a type of dressing that was unique to the area. She liked it so much she bought the recipe and started serving it to guests at her various homes. She called it “Thousand Islands dressing,” a name that stuck. She died in New York City in 1938.

  Wild, Wild West

  Canada’s western frontier had its share of colorful outlaws.

  Rattlesnake Dick Barter

  Rattlesnake Dick Barter

  Sometimes people get themselves a bad nickname and end up living down to it. That was the case for “Rattlesnake Dick” Barter, who started out honest enough but became the ornery sidewinder his name implied. In 1850, Barter, an educated teenage son of a British army officer, left his home in Quebec, hoping to strike it rich panning for gold in California. He arrived at Rattlesnake Bar, a small mining area along the American River. Although he tried hard, Barter didn’t do well as a miner. Some said that was because Dick’s spot at Rattlesnake Bar was already “placered out”—all the easy gold on the surface of streams and rivers had been found.

  Still, around town in the saloons, the young man bragged about how much gold he was finding. And all that exaggerating earned him the nickname “Rattlesnake Dick.” It also made him more enemies than friends. Twice he was arrested for crimes he didn’t commit. First, a store owner accused him of stealing merchandise, but Barter was acquitted. After that, he was convicted of stealing a mule. But while Barter was on his way to jail, the mule was found with a man who admitted to the crime, so Barter was set free.

  Hoping to start a new life, Barter began to call himself Dick Woods and moved to Shasta City, in northern California. But once there, he ran into a few miners from the old days and was again saddled with his nickname and bad reputation. So it seems Barter finally just decided that if he was going to be called a criminal, he might as well become one, and he started working hard at building up that bad reputation. After mugging his first victim, he reportedly made a point of saying, “You have just been robbed by Rattlesnake Dick, the Pirate of the Placers.”

  Mugging didn’t turn out to be very lucrative, though. Neither did rustling horses. He got caught pretty early in his career and was sentenced to two years in jail, where he met brothers George and Cyrus “Cy” Skinner. The three decided to start a gang, and after their release began recruiting accomplices and stealing gold from mule drivers coming from Nevada City.

  For a while, they made enough to keep sheltered and fed. But finally, they got the opportunity for their biggest heist yet. A drunken mining engineer talking big in a tavern let it be known that a Wells Fargo mule train was coming, and it was loaded with $80,600 in gold bullion—the equivalent of a few million dollars in today’s money. The gang split into two. Most of them planned to ambush the well-guarded convoy, but Barter and a cohort were supposed to steal some mules to replace the branded Wells Fargo animals. That part of the plan went seriously awry. Barter and his buddy were caught in the act and thrown in jail.

  George Skinner, a member of Dick Barter’s gang, hid a huge haul of gold somewhere on Trinity Mountain.

  Meanwhile, back at the robbery site, the convoy approached, and the Skinner brothers couldn’t wait for the long-overdue mules. Things started out okay; after the brothers threatened the guards, the men meekly handed over the gold. But the Skinners didn’t want those incriminating Wells Fargo mules, so they decided to unload the gold. What they discovered, though, was that it was too heavy for their horses to carry, making a speedy getaway impossible. George Skinner made an executive decision on the spot: he decided to bury half of the loot somewhere on Trinity Mountain and would come back later to dig it up.

  That never happened. When the Wells Fargo posse caught up with the group, the ensuing shoot-out killed Skinner. The gold bullion has never been recovered. Barter was never convicted of the holdup. He got out of prison for mule thievery, continued his life of crime by robbing stagecoaches, and was sent to jail often, only to escape each time. In July 1859, while riding with his gang outside of Auburn, California, Barter was shot in a confrontation with law enforcement officials. He managed to ride away, but was mortally wounded. The next morning, he was found dead by the roadside. He was 26.

  Pearl Hart

  Pearl Hart

  Pearl Taylor came from a solidly middle-class, educated Ontario family, and her initial downfall came in 1888 when (at age 16) she fell in love with a handsome guy named Fred Hart. They eloped, and Fred worked as a bartender, but his wages went to feed a wicked gambling addiction.

  He was also a mean drunk, making Pearl’s life miserable. Still, the two traveled to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 to work whatever jobs they could find there. Fred became a sideshow barker. Pearl sold tickets and toured the fair’s exhibitions. Chicago exposed Pearl to many new ideas. She became enthralled by Annie Oakley’s Wild West Show performance and heard a number of female speakers, including Julia Ward Howe, a noted women’s activist famous for writing the blood-stirring song “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It was also in Chicago that Pearl got her first taste of independence and the first inkling that she ought to leave Fred.

  At the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, a young Pearl Hart was inspired by Annie Oakley’s Wild West shows.

  The couple separated several times. The first time, Pearl was pregnant, so she made her way back to Canada, where she dropped off her son with her mother before heading to Arizona. In 1895 Fred found Pearl living in Phoenix, and the two reconciled.

  After Pearl gave birth to another child, Fred decided he’d had enough of domesticity and left to join the Spanish-American War. Once again, Pearl left her baby in Canada with her parents and returned to Arizona, where she hooked up with a miner named Joe Boot. Months later, however, Pearl received word that her mother was ill, possibly dying, and in need of money for medical bills. Pearl and Joe decided they needed to make a lot of money fast, so they came up with a con: she would lure men to a hotel room, Joe would knock them out, and the two would take the men’s money to help out Pearl’s mom.

  That, however, turned out to be too much trouble for the small amount of money they grossed, so the couple decided to think bigger—they figured that robbing a stagecoach would prove more cost-effective. Pearl cut her hair and dressed in Joe’s clothing. The two staked out a suitable spot and waited for the Globe-to-Florence (Arizona) stage. When it arrived, they stopped it; Joe threatened the passengers with a gun, and Pearl relieved them of almost $450 and two revolvers.

  A Disappearing Act

  As well as the robbery was planned, the escape wasn’t so easy. Pearl and Joe were quickly caught and thrown in jail. Pearl briefly escaped before the sheriff’s posse brought her back, but eventually, she spent 18 months in jail for the crime. And that made her famous—as one of only a few female stagecoach robbers, Pearl became well known in the United States and Canada.
>
  Reporters from both countries clamored to tell her story and take her picture. Pearl Hart had no taste for fame, though. When she got out of jail, she disappeared. She died somewhere in the United States sometime after 1928.

  The Case of Steven Truscott

  Steven

  Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976, and one of the cases that inspired the decision was that of Steven Truscott. He was 14 years old in 1959, when he gave 12-year-old Lynne Harper, a classmate in Clinton, Ontario, a ride on his bicycle. Two days later, Harper was found raped and strangled in some nearby woods. Because Truscott had been the last person known to see her alive, police zeroed in on him as a suspect almost immediately even though there were no witnesses and no physical evidence linking him to the crime. He was arrested within two days of the body’s discovery, and the subsequent trial lasted only two weeks.

  Truscott was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging, making him Canada’s youngest death row inmate ever. People all over the world were outraged that a child would be sent to his death. Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker said he had no intention of allowing the boy to be executed. Weeks before Truscott was scheduled to die, he received a stay of execution. Then his sentence was commuted to life. Finally, in 1969, Truscott was paroled. He changed his name and quietly reasserted himself into regular life. The conviction remained on Truscott’s record until 2007, when Ontario’s court of appeals reviewed the case, decided the original trial had been unfair, and acquitted him of Lynne Harper’s murder. The next year, Ontario awarded Truscott $6.5 million in damages. Finally, a victory of sorts—Truscott called the ruling “bittersweet.” Lynne Harper’s murder has never been solved.