“Mirth and madness will ring in halls throughout Saskatchewan this summer when a troupe of eight young University of Saskatchewan students tour the province in professional stock company style,” said the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix on May 22, 1948.

The University Stage Society travelled across the country, visiting sixty-six towns and villages and providing “cultural education for people in smaller communities.” For fifty cents, audiences were greeted with a repertoire that included A Doctor In Spite of Himself, Pyramus and Thisbe, and an excerpt from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Five members of the society are shown in Eastend, Saskatchewan on May 29, 1948: Peter Jaenicke, Murray Edwards, Frank Bueckert, Natalie Harrington, and Betty Walker. Also present was producer/director/drama teacher professor Emrys Maldwyn Jones, sitting at the ready in the Ford station wagon. (The other actors were Molly Tubman, High Edmonds, and Frances Hyland.) The vehicle served as their tour bus, and with a trailer attached they transported clothing, costumes, props, free-standing sets, and portable lighting equipment.

Murray D. Edwards submitted this photo. He was a member and lead actor of the University Stage Society at the University of Saskatchewan and now resides in Sidney, B.C.

— Text by Amanda Hope.

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Harold Birkett, the young man smoking the pipe, came to Canada in 1908 to farm. However, he settled in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, where he managed a boathouse.

On this beautiful B.C. afternoon in 1914, Birkett relaxes with his friends after a day of bird hunting. The catch of the day is proudly displayed on the car’s running board.

Partridges, blue grouse, quail, ducks, geese, and pheasants are still hunted in B.C. Like today’s hunters, the group favoured using shotguns, which fire many small pellets, increasing the likelihood of bringing down quarry.

Pheasants, however, are not native to British Columbia. The popular European game bird was successfully introduced to the province in 1883, and hunting seasons began as early as 1913. A provincial report on pheasant populations in the area listed their peak between 1938 and 1947, after which time the population began to decline.

Sadly, these friends would soon experience loss. Harold Birkett would be killed in France, at the Battle of the Somme, two years after this photo was taken.

Harold Birkett was Muriel Pope’s first husband. Muriel’s daughter Daphne Randall, who lives in Westbury, Wiltshire, U.K., submitted this photo. Text by Danielle Conolly.

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The Calgary Stampede has been a regular occurrence at Calgary’s Stampede Park since 1912. Billed as “The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth,” it was founded by American trick roper Guy Weadick. Weadick envisioned a “Wild West Extravaganza,” and with twenty thousand dollars in prize money and over one hundred thousand spectators the first year, it was a huge success.

The internationally recognized rodeo has been popular since its inception. Here we see Fred Hunt riding a bronco named Skye Blue at the stampede, probably sometime during the 1930s.

Fred’s life saw a great variety of careers besides rodeo riding. Born in the County of Middlesex, near London, England, he was conscripted into the County of London Yeomanry, a British cavalry regiment. He served under General Allenby on the Egyptian-Gaza front and fought at the Battles of Gaza and Megiddo, marching into Jerusalem in December 1917.

After emigrating to Canada in the 1920s, he worked across Western Canada before ending up near Binscarth, Manitoba, and marrying Margaret Mactier. Fred and his wife moved to Winnipeg, where Fred worked as a court stenographer. Neil says on Sundays he would practise his short hand by transcribing radio sermons. He died in 1978.

Neil Hill is a great-nephew of Margaret and Fred Hunt. He lives in Peterborough, Ontario.

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Tom Kennedy was a railway man. In 1897, at the age of eighteen, he joined the Michigan Central, which operated lines in southern Ontario’s Niagara region. His first occupation was as a call boy, running to the homes of men employed on the train crew to let them know they were needed for work, as telephones were not then in use.

This photo shows Kennedy, second from left, circa 1910 at the Victoria Yard, the marshalling yards at Fort Erie/Bridgeburg, Ontario. Fort Erie was then a bustling railway town and the railroad formed the social fabric of the community.

The International Railway Bridge linking Fort Erie and Buffalo, New York, was built there in 1873 and still operates today. The New York Central took over the Michigan Central line in 1929 and the old “board and batten” yard office was still in use until near the end of the Second World War. Sometime after 1960, the building was removed. A more modern brick depot replaced it across the tracks.

Tom Kennedy Jr. believes that his father was a brakeman or freight conductor when this picture was taken, judging by the clothing, but notes that the men have previously been erroneously identified as baggage handlers. The other men in the photo are Frank Dunn, Charles Finlay, Smith Irvine, Ben Kraft, and Jack O’Neill.

Railway work was in the Kennedy family’s blood. Tom Kennedy Sr.’s father was an oiler at the Victoria Yard and his grandfather supplied the railroad with ties. Tom Sr. completed forty-six years of service and was yardmaster for Victoria Yard at the time of his death in 1943.

Tom Kennedy Jr. is the son of Tom Kennedy and resides in St. Catharines, Ontario.

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F.A. Clayton General Blacksmith performed an essential service in the days when horses and wagons were the common form of conveyance. Frank Albert Clayton ran his blacksmith business in Armstrong, British Columbia.

The shop had several stalls in the back for the horses to cool down in before they had their shoes replaced. In the centre of the large room stood a huge brick forge with a massive chimney rising up to the wooden roof. Coal was burned until red-hot, pumped with air by manually operated bellows. New or used pieces of metal were heated to a brilliant glow in the fire, removed with long tools, and then placed on an anvil. There, Frank hammered the metal into the desired shapes –– a shoe to fit the horse’s foot, a rim for a wagon wheel, a runner for a horse-drawn sleigh or a child’s toboggan.

As his granddaughter Maxime Jones recalls, “whatever people desired to be made from metal were shaped by the use of the anvil and hammer and grandfather’s muscles.” The shop was big enough to bring wagons inside, close to the work area. In this photograph taken around 1906 Frank Clayton is second from the left. Frank married Maud Bilson in 1908 and blacksmithing sustained their family that expanded to six children: Mabel, Eva, John, Art, Frank, and Bill. All four of the boys had a turn in working for their father, until 1948, when Frank retired and his son Bill bought out the business. By then, the company had evolved into a machinery fabrication shop and Bill had a new steel-frame building constructed down the road.

This photograph was used on the Armstrong calendar in 1971 when the building was acquired by the city to become the Armstrong Spallumcheen Museum and Art Complex.

Maxime Jones is the eldest granddaughter of Frank and Maud Clayton. She lives in Ottawa.

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This photo was taken in February 1947 during the second Automatistes exhibition at the Gauvreau family home in Montreal.

The Automatistes were a group of Quebec avant-garde artists influenced by surrealism and the theory of automatism. The Automatistes in this photo include: Claude Gauvreau, Mrs. Julienne Gauvreau, Pierre Gauvreau, my brother, Marcel Barbeau (sitting at the front, the one with the glasses), Madeleine Arbour, Paul-Émile Borduas, Madeleine Lalonde, Bruno Cormier and Jean-Paul Mousseau.

My brother exhibited ten oil paintings at this exhibition and made his first sale, the Veillomonde painting. Paul-Émile Borduas, my brother’s mentor and professor at the École du meuble founded the group.

In 1948, Marcel signed the Refus global, an anti-establishment, antireligious manifesto that rejected the norms and values of Quebec society. Marcel was still living with us then and there were many discussions around the dinner table at our house. I didn’t understand that in the name of art, one had to destroy everything made by great artists such as Alfred Pellan and many others.

The studio was located in the alley behind our house and at any time of the day or night, artists would go through our house to get to the studio. Marcel believed that anyone who did not adhere to the statements in the manifesto was an unenlightened bourgeois! The manifesto shook public opinion at the time and is considered one of the causes of the Quiet Revolution.

The Automatistes broke up soon after the manifesto was published. Jean-Paul Riopelle went to Paris, as did Borduas, where he died. Fernand Leduc was already living in Paris. As for Marcel, he then lived in New York, California and Paris. His daughter, Manon, made a film called Les enfants de Refus global.

Marcel Barbeau is now eighty-two-years-old and lives in Paris. Despite his advancing years, he still paints from 5 a.m. to noon and has not lost his passion.

Pauline Barbeau is the sister of Marcel Barbeau, one of the artists featured in this photo. Credit: MAURICE PERRON/MNBAQ 99.354

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It's not hard to figure out what message Santa is conveying to Matthew Berger, who, it turns out, will be two years old the day after this picture it taken, December 16, 1960.

It is, perhaps, Santa's best-known directive. The wagging finger may be a bit stern, but George Feick, who played Santa Claus every year at the annual Kroehler Manufacturing Company Christmas party at Stratford City Hall, is reliably reported to have been the perfect jolly old St. Nick, not one to upset a child. Still, Matthew, who has just received a snappy toy car from the merry gentleman, is not responding happily. "Now, be a good boy," Santa says. Matthew considers the road ahead.

Wray Berger, who submitted this photograph, is Matthew Berger's father. Wray, seventy-seven, is retired from Kroehler's and lives in Stratford, Ontario. Matthew, who turns forty-five this month, owns an antique store on Toronto's Yonge Street. Asked if Matthew has been a good boy as Santa requested, his father replied, "Oh, yes. Relatively good."

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Nothing says summer like a walk through the local neighbourhood with the aroma of freshly baked bread and other delectable confections wafting through the air. Such was the pleasure that greeted Torontonians in the early 1900s when they arrived at 1252 Landsdowne at Bloor.

Arthur Ernest Gamble was born in Halifax, England, learning his trade of cook and baker in the British Merchant Marine. He served as a “cook’s boy” from the age of ten and when he arrived in Canada he set up his own bakery shop.

Waiting at the door to welcome you at A. E. Gamble were his eldest daughter Jessie (left) and her colleague. Along with an inviting exterior and pleasant serving staff, the bakery featured an array of goodies — breads, pies, cakes, and jellyrolls were only a few of the tempting treats. There were also huge glass jars of candies just waiting to be weighed on the large metal scale and boxes of Cadbury's chocolates to take home as gifts. And, if you couldn’t wait to bite into the delicacies, you could savour them immediately at the several sit-down tables inside. Edward Gamble’s grandfather later moved his establishment to St. Clair Avenue, just west of Dufferin Street.

See Sweet summer treats II for a view of the interior.

Edward Ernest Gamble is the grandson of Arthur Ernest Gamble and resides in Innisfil, Ontario.

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Another look at A. E. Gamble — Arthur Earnest Gamble's bakery shop in the early 1900s.

“Aunt Jessie,” Gamble's eldest sister, stands at the ready to serve freshly baked crusty bread, turnovers, and other sweet treats. The emporium, at 1252 St. Clair Avenue West in Toronto, looked like a delightful place to have lunch or to buy take-outs for later.

Sadly the bakery is no longer there. However, you can read more about A.E. Gamble, and see an exterior shot of the bakery, in the June/July 2009 issue of The Beaver – Album.

Edward Ernest Gamble, from Innisfil, Ontario, the grandson of Arthur Gamble, sent in these two great pictures.

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After a while, after you savour the oilcloth-covered table and the clay pipe and the nest of boots and the wooden, wired slops bucket, your eyes go to the hand on the far right. A woman's hand, perhaps? If so, why is the man peeling the potatoes?

A century ago, men and women played fairly traditional roles when it came to the division of labour (though as homesteading bachelors, some men learned to sympathize with women's work). Perhaps, though, the hand belongs to a man. Would a wife suffer such spare surroundings? This may be less home sweet home than workers' quarters at a lumber camp.

Ron Cason, among whose late father's belongings he found this photo, thought it might be such a camp at Grandview, Manitoba, near Riding Mountain National Park, in the early 1900s. But is that a stone wall at the back? Stone walls at a lumber camp? At any rate, there's only one naked spud in that enamelled pan, and many more waiting to be peeled.

Ron Cason, who submitted this photograph, is a retired master mechanic living in Calgary. He was born in Gilbert Plains, Manitoba, and recalls travelling with his father into the nearby Duck Mountains in the '30s and '40s to harvest lumber for the family farm.

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