Farewell, Keith MacDonald: A proud New Brunswicker, but also a proud Thompsonite, who helped make us a better community to live and work in

Keith MacDonald died a couple of days ago. That’s a big loss for his family and friends, of course, and my condolences to them, but it is also a very big loss for all of us here in the wider Thompson community, as Keith was tireless in both his work and many volunteer efforts in helping to make Thompson, Manitoba a better place to live. And he did it in a sort of low-key way with considerable humility.

I moved to Thompson in July 2007, a couple of years after Keith had arrived, and my first memories of him were serving as general manager of both the Burntwood Hotel and Thompson Inn (TI) for Winnipeg’s Manfred Boehm, who owns both hotel properties. These were nickel-fueled economic boom years for Thompson, and planned new hotels were on the drawing board. By 2010, Keith was also president of the Thompson Chamber of Commerce, and combined with his hotel management experience (which dated to back home in Moncton, New Brunswick and working as a young man for Keddy’s Motor Inns, and later for Inns of Banff), he shared valuable on-the-record insights with me about market dynamics at a time when Thompson would get 150 new hotel rooms and two brand-new hotels between 2011 and 2013.

Back in 2010, in addition to the Burntwood Hotel and Thompson Inn, guests could find accommodation at the Days Inn, Meridian Hotel, Country Inn and Suites (now known as Thompson’s Best Value Inn & Suites), Interior Inn, Mystery Lake Motor Hotel and Northern Inn & Steak House. The Interior Inn, which had burned down while under construction in October 1967, but was rebuilt, burned down again on New Year’s Day 2018, but is being rebuilt again. Choice Hotels’ 70-room Suburban Extended Stay Hotel, now known as the Quality Inn & Suites Thompson, opened in May 2011, followed by the 80-room Best Western Hotel, less than a year later in April 2012.

Another memory I have of Keith from that period is in his role as Thompson Chamber of Commerce president, as well as general manager of the Burntwood Hotel, barbecuing some choice steaks for a dinner to mark the chamber’s 50th anniversary year, out on the asphalt parking lot of the hotel, on a summer day so hot you could have fried eggs on the pavement. Such summer days are pretty rare in Thompson, so you perhaps tend to remember them. Keith, sweating over the flames, while getting smoked a bit himself in the grilling process, was, as always, the genial host. Having spent a good part of his working life in the hospitality industry, Keith was the consummate hotelier.  I also recall being at a Spirit Way gala with Jeanette about a year earlier on Nov. 12, 2009, at the North Star Saloon in the Thompson Inn, where Keith  bartended himself that evening, and had the place shipshape for the event.

Keith left the hotel business and became the property manager for the City Centre Mall in May 2011, a position he held until April 2018. While I had a number of interesting chats with Keith on any number of local issues during those seven years, one that stands out was from just after he left mall management. There were quite a few retail store vacancies at the time, so I asked him how close he thought City Centre Mall was to the tipping point where it becomes a so-called “dead mall.” Keith replied that he thought the two anchor stores, Wal-Mart and Sobeys/Canada Safeway, would both be fine, but said he worried about the future of the smaller bricks-and-mortar retail stores, national, regional and local, that fill up the space between the anchor stores in the mall. With such a competitive online shopping environment, Keith said he thought the future of such space in City Centre Mall and many other similar malls across North America, would be more about storefront government offices, along with dentists and perhaps other healthcare professionals, than it would be about retail stores and shopping.

While Keith spent most of his working life in the hospitality and retail service industries, he also studied civil engineering at New Brunswick Community College (NBCC) in Moncton between 1980 and 1982, and worked as a hydrographic surveyor for what was then Public Works Canada, and is now known as Public Services and Procurement Canada.

His volunteer service was considerable and diverse. It ranged from serving as treasurer of Spirit Way; active in leadership as president with both the Lions Club of Thompson and Rotary Club of Thompson; acting chair of the Thompson Zoological Society, and a passionate advocate for the Boreal Discovery Centre; serving as the Thompson Chamber of Commerce representative on the Thompson Regional Airport Authority board of directors; and serving as a board member of the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba (AFM).

Keith’s final gig pretty much brought him full circle as he became, as he described it, the inaugural “non-executive director” of the new Thompson Hotel Association in April 2018, a not-for-profit entity managed by a board of directors and ordinary members of the corporation, who are any proprietor who is actively engaged in the operation of the business and pays accommodation tax to the City of Thompson, acting as a lobby group for local hotels, with a mission to develop a stronger tourism presence in the area, and to get “heads on pillows.”

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Time dilation, Daylight Saving Time and Other Mysteries of Time

 

In 1983, Ohio State University historian Stephen Kern wrote The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918, a book which talked about the sweeping changes in technology and culture that reshaped life, including the theory of relativity and introduction of Sir Sandford Fleming’s worldwide Standard Time – and an onrush of technics, including telephone, electric lighting, steamships, skyscrapers, bicycles, cinema, airplanes, X-rays, machine guns, as well as cultural innovations that shattered older forms of art and thought, such as the stream-of-consciousness novel, psychoanalysis, Cubism, simultaneous poetry. All of these things created new ways of understanding and experiencing time and space during that almost 40-year period ending with the end of the First World War. Kern’s argument is that in the modern preoccupation with speed, especially with the fast and impersonal telegraph, international diplomacy broke down in July 1914, leading to the outbreak of the First World War the following month.

In physics, according to Albert Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity (SR), motion in space alters the flow of time, creating a time dilation, speeding up or slowing down time, because as you move through space, time itself is measured differently for the moving object than the unmoving object. This, in theory, would allow time travel within the known laws of physics into the future, not into the past.

I had a very odd experience, more akin to what Kern wrote about 33 years ago than Einsteinian physics, I suppose, where time was a product of perception – in this instance slowing down, rather than speeding up – back on Feb. 9, 2015, when I began working as a library clerk on the new Thompson campus of University College of the North (UCN) at the intersection of Thompson Drive North and UCN Drive.

I decided, probably not wisely in retrospect, to bicycle to work my first night, taking the then newly paved but snow-covered two-lane multi-use boulevard pathway for pedestrians and cyclists that then ran pretty much from behind my house all the way down to UCN (it now runs even further to Cree Road). While I had been riding all winter, very little of it until that point had been on the multi-use boulevard pathway toward UCN. I was also using an unfamiliar bicycle with some chain-dropping problems that first night.

The result was too little time and heavy exertion, not wanting to be late for work my first night. I thought I had given myself plenty of time for my 6:30 p.m. start, but conditions were more adverse than I anticipated. The ride is two kilometres, the last half kilometre or so from about the Giant Tiger department store to campus.

I distinctly remember checking the wristwatch on my left wrist four of five times under street lights as I pushed as hard as I could that last half-kilometre stretch. The oddest thing was the first three or four times, the hands on the analog display showed 6:28 p.m. – as if time was standing still, although my bicycle was in motion with me aboard. It wasn’t until I got to the door at UCN, the watch seemed to move that last two minutes to show exactly 6:30 p.m. on the dot. I have no rational explanation for what happened. Did the minute hand on my watch get stuck briefly and then free itself and jump ahead the two minutes? Maybe, but it didn’t feel like that.

Speaking of rational, under Manitoba’s Official Time Act, Daylight Saving Time (DST) begins on the second Sunday in March and continues until the first Sunday in November. That means it begins tomorrow. How rational Daylight Saving Time is; well that continues to be a matter of some debate.

The official time change to Daylight Saving Time occurs at 2 a.m., Sunday, March 13, at which time clocks should be set ahead to 3 a.m.

While it has been gradually remaining lighter later in the evening since late December here in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re about to get an even bigger early evening light boost Sunday. Tonight the sun sets here in Thompson, Manitoba at Latitude 56° 19.8′ North at 6:31 p.m. Central Standard Time (CST), according to National Research Council (NRC) of Canada calculations. Tomorrow sunset here is at 7:33 p.m. Central Daylight Saving Time (CDT).  Presto! In the course of a single day, we’ve picked up another hour and two minutes of daylight in the evening. And by the time the spring equinox arrives March 20 here in Thompson, we’ll be seeing about the same amount of hours of daylight as night, with sunrise at 7:33 a.m., and sunset at 7:48 p.m. Come the summer solstice June 20, don’t be surprised if we’re out on the dock at the Paint Lake Marina, a bit south of here, fishing until almost 11 p.m., as sunset won’t be until 10:26 p.m., while the end of civil twilight, defined as the centre of the sun’s disk at six degrees below the horizon, and the limit at which illumination is sufficient, under good weather conditions, for terrestrial objects to be clearly distinguished; the horizon is clearly defined and the brightest stars are visible under good atmospheric conditions, won’t be for more than an hour later at 11:30 p.m. CDT.

While fishing until midnight on the dock sounds pretty appealing right about now, as Lucas Powers pointed out earlier today in an interesting online CBC News story headlined “Daylight saving time 2016: How big business benefits from more sunshine. Longer daylight time has nothing to do with saving energy or benefiting farmers, critics say, which you can read at http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/daylight-saving-business-energy-1.3485281, as it outlines how the biggest long-time (pardon the pun) advocates for Daylight Saving Time over the years has been no other than the big business lobby. Tufts University professor Michael Downing wrote a book, Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, on the phenomena 10 years ago.

The Alexandria, Virginia-based Association for Convenience & Petroleum Retailing, formerly known as the National Association of Convenience Stores, founded in August 1961, loves Daylight Saving Time. Likewise big-box stores, sporting and recreational goods manufacturers, barbecue and charcoal retailers, lawn and garden retailers, shopping malls and golf courses. Surprise.

For this, we can thank (or blame) George Vernon Hudson, an English-born New Zealand amateur entomologist and astronomer who gave the world Daylight Saving Time (DST). Hudson’s day (and sometimes night) job was as a clerk (eventually chief clerk) in the post office in the capital of Wellington on North Island, and, in all fairness, Hudson could hardly be accused of being a shill for big business. They just picked up on Hudson’s idea in time, so to speak, and ran with it.

Standard Time, of course, with its standardized times zones, is a Canadian invention, courtesy of Sir Sanford Fleming, conveniently divided into hourly segments, and dating back to October 1884 and the International Prime Meridian Conference attended by 25 nations in Washington, D.C. Before Fleming invented standard time, noon in Kingston, Ontario was 12 minutes later than noon in Montréal and 13 minutes before noon in Toronto. Noon local time was the time when the sun stood exactly overhead.

Most of Canada’s time experts work in a place called Building M-36 (which involuntarily conjures up for me visions of the X-Files and Area 51.) They work in the Frequency and Time program in the Measurement Science and Standards portfolio with the National Research Council of Canada on Montreal Road in Ottawa. Physicist Rob Douglas, a principal research officer in the Frequency and Time group, however, can be found on Saskatchewan Drive in Edmonton.

Fleming’s genius was to create 24 time zones and within each zone the clocks would indicate the same time, with a one-hour difference between adjoining zones. Usually, when one travels in an easterly direction, a different time zone is crossed every 15 degrees of longitude, which is equal to one hour in time.

But on the other side of the world in New Zealand, Hudson had a somewhat different interest a decade or so after Fleming’s development of Standard Time.  Hudson’s shift-work job gave him enough leisure time to collect insects, and led him to value after-work hours of daylight for that pursuit when he was working days. On Oct.15, 1895, spring in New Zealand, he presented a paper called “On Seasonal Time-adjustment in Countries South of Lat. 30°”  to the Wellington Philosophical Society, proposing a two-hour daylight-saving shift, and after considerable interest was expressed in Christchurch on South Island, where 1,000 copies of his paper were printed in 1896, he followed up on Oct. 8, 1898 with a second paper, “On Seasonal Time,” also presented to the  Wellington Philosophical Society in springtime, and which can be found in the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, housed at the National Library of New Zealand in Wellington.

While interest grew in  Hudson’s Daylight Saving Time ideas between 1895 and 1898, they were hardly greeted by a rousing show of unanimous support when he presented his first paper in Wellington on Oct. 15, 1895, according to  the abstract in Volume 28, 1895 of the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand, which noted, “The author proposed to alter the time of the clock at the equinoxes so as to bring the working-hours of the day within the period of daylight, and by utilizing the early morning, so reduce the excessive use of artificial light which at present prevails.

“Mr. Travers said the clocks could be managed by having different hands. He did not think we were far enough advanced to adopt the plan advocated by the author of the paper.

“Mr. Harding said that the only practical part of Mr. Hudson’s paper had long since been anticipated by Benjamin Franklin, one of whose essays denounced the extravagance of making up for lost daylight by artificial light. Mr. Hudson’s original suggestions were wholly unscientific and impracticable. If he really had found many to support his views, they should unite and agitate for a reform.

“Mr. Maskell said that the mere calling the hours different would not make any difference in the time. It was out of the question to think of altering a system that had been in use for thousands of years, and found by experience to be the best. The paper was not practical.

“Mr. Hawthorne did not see any difficulty in carrying out the views advocated so ably by Mr. Hudson.

“Mr. Hustwick was of opinion that the reform spoken of would have to wait a little longer.

“Mr. Richardson said that it would be a good thing if the plan could be applied to the young people.

“Mr. Hudson, in reply, said that he was sorry to see the paper treated rather with ridicule. He intended it to be practical. It was approved of by those much in the open air. There would be no difficulty in altering the clocks.”

While Hudson may he have been somewhat discouraged by that initial reception, he was far from defeated, so he was back before the Wellington Philosophical Society with his second paper on the subject three years later in October 1898:

“In order to more fully utilize the long days of summer, it is proposed on the 1st October of each year to put the standard time on two hours by making 12 (midnight) into 2 a.m., whilst on the 1st March the time would be put back two hours by making 2 a.m. into 12 (midnight), thus reverting to the present time arrangements for the winter months,” wrote Hudson in 1898.

“The effect of this alteration would be to advance all the day’s operations in summer two hours compared with the present system. In this way the early-morning daylight would be utilised, and a long period of daylight leisure would be made available in the evening for cricket, gardening, cycling, or any other outdoor pursuit desired. It will no doubt be urged that people are at present quite at liberty to make use of the early-morning daylight in summer without any such drastic alteration in the established order of things as is here suggested. To this objection it may be pointed out that, living as we do in a social community, we are unable to separate ourselves from the habits of those around us. We cannot individually alter our times of going to bed or getting up, but must fall in with the habits of the majority – at all events, to a great extent, Again, under the present arrangement, those who desire to utilise the early-morning daylight are compelled to take some of their recreation before their daily work and some afterwards, which in many cases results in their having to forgo pursuits that they would be enabled to follow successfully if their daylight leisure were continuous  … The foregoing remarks are framed to apply to us in the Southern Hemisphere, but with the seasons reversed they’ would, of course, apply with equal force to the Northern; Hemisphere.”

While Vernon’s self interest in Daylight Saving Time stemmed at least in part from his interest in collecting insects during a  longer evening, along with such other genteel pursuits by his countrymen as  cricket, gardening and cycling, it wouldn’t be until 18 years later that his DST proposals would be implemented in a modified form in a very different military context in the midst of the First World War by  Germany and Austria at 11 p.m. on April 30, 1916, when they advanced the hands of the clock one hour until the following October.  The rationale was simple: conserve fuel needed to produce electric power. Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Turkey and Tasmania immediately followed suit, as did Manitoba and Nova Scotia here in Canada. Britain also followed three weeks later on May 21, 1916. In 1917, Australia and Newfoundland began DST.

The United States followed on March 31, 1918 and Daylight Saving Time was observed for seven months in 1918 and 1919, but was largely unpopular and Americans used in variably and inconsistently for decades afterwards. The most recent change in the United States, pursuant to the Energy Policy Act of 2005, adding parts of March and November to DST, came into effect in 2007, and has been adopted by most Canadian jurisdictions to keep in synchronization with American business and government interests. The operative word is “most,” however, as there are a slew of Canadian exceptions to the general norm.

Most of British Columbia is on Pacific Time and observes DST, but there are two main exceptions: Part of the Peace River Regional District, including the communities of Chetwynd, Dawson Creek, Hudson’s Hope, Fort St. John, Taylor and Tumbler Ridge, are on Mountain Time and do not observe DST. This means that the region’s clocks are the same as those in Calgary and Edmonton in the winter, and they are the same as those in Vancouver in the summer.

The East Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia, including the communities of Cranbrook, Fernie, Golden and Invermere, are on Mountain Time and observe DST, meaning the region is always on the same time as Calgary. An exception is Creston, which observes MST year-round. Clocks in Creston match those in Calgary in the winter, and Vancouver in the summer.

While the rest of Nunavut observes DST, Southampton Island, including Coral Harbour, remains on Eastern Standard Time throughout the year. The Kitikmeot Region including Cambridge Bay observes DST but is on Mountain Time.

Most of Ontario uses DST, but Pickle Lake, New Osnaburgh, and Atikokan, located within the Central Time Zone in Northwestern Ontario, all observe Eastern Standard Time all year long.

Most of Quebec also uses DST. However, the eastern part of Quebec’s North Shore, east of 63° west longitude, are in the Atlantic Time Zone, but do not observe DST for the most part, meaning in summer their clocks match those of the rest of the province, while in November, their clocks are match Atlantic Standard Time (AST) in the Maritimes. Although places east of 63° west are officially on Atlantic Time, local custom is to use Eastern Time as far east as the Natashquan River. Those communities observe DST, including all of Anticosti Island, which is bisected by the 63rd meridian. Les Îles de la Madeleine observe DST and are on Atlantic Time.

Although Saskatchewan is geographically within the Mountain Time zone, the province is officially part of the Central Time zone. As a result, while most of Saskatchewan does not change clocks spring and fall, it technically observes DST year round. This means that clocks in most of the province match clocks in Winnipeg during the winter and Calgary and Edmonton during the summer. This time zone designation was implemented in 1966, when the Saskatchewan Time Act was passed in order to standardize time province-wide. Lloydminster, which is bisected by the Saskatchewan-Alberta provincial boundary, observes Mountain Time year-round, with DST, which in the summer synchronizes it with the rest of Saskatchewan. Along the Manitoba inter-provincial boundary, the small, remote Saskatchewan municipalities of Denare Beach and Creighton unofficially observe Central Daylight Time during the summer, keeping the same time as the larger neighbouring Town of Flin Flon here in Manitoba.

Just remember, you are about to pass briefly through The Twilight Zone. Nothing can happen tomorrow between 2:01 a.m. and 2:59 a.m. because those 59 minutes do not exist on March 13 this year or any when March day when Standard Time meets Daylight Saving Time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVSRm80WzZk

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Happy Canada Day from the True North: Land of Back Bacon, Pickerel, the Maple Leaf, Beaver, Moose and Loon, eh

Here’s some food for thought from Ipsos Reid’s annual Canada Day survey conducted between June 12 and June 15 on behalf of Historica Canada, formerly known as the Historica-Dominion Institute, as you get ready to hoist the cold libation of your choice tomorrow to perhaps toast Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, and mark Canada’s 148th birthday.

Historica Canada is a national charitable organization that was launched in September 2009 as the Historica-Dominion Institute, through the amalgamation of two existing organizations: The Historica Foundation of Canada and the Dominion Institute. The Historica Foundation of Canada was launched in October 1999, while the Dominion Institute was formed in 1997 by a group of young professionals, concerned about the erosion of a common memory and civic identity in Canada.

While Ipsos Reid assures us their sample of 1,005 Canadians from Ipsos’ panel interviewed online was weighted to balance demographics “to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the adult population according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe,” I wonder? Does it really matter that much? It’s the all-too-short summer barbecue season in Canada, time to have some fun, without worrying too much about how the sample was constructed. It’s a Canada Day poll after all, not say a … provincial election seats results prediction poll!

Don’t get me wrong. I have worked in public opinion research on-and-off, sometimes between journalism gigs, since 1980, including working as a supervisor for Cambridge Survey Research where I supervised telephone call center employees for Democratic National Committee (DNC) pollster Pat Caddell’s firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the 1980 Carter-Reagan presidential election campaign. Earlier the same year, I worked as a field interviewer in Peterborough, Ontario for Opinion Place/Marketing Insights, a Winnipeg company, doing a 1980 Quebec Referendum survey for the Center for Canadian Studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. So when Ipsos Reid says the precision of their Canada Day poll is accurate to a confidence or credibility interval of plus or minus 3.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadian adults been polled with the margin of expected sampling, coverage, measurement and perhaps other errors, as well as a confidence or credibility interval that is wider among subsets of the population, I’m suitably impressed.

And then I go back to the barbecue. Or perhaps my mother’s black cast-iron skillet if it is breakfast time.  Ipsos Reid  says 35 per cent of Canadians named back bacon as Canada’s national food, beating out poutine, named by only 30 per cent, for the top spot this year. Salmon, whether Atlantic or Pacific, trailed at a distant third (personally, I’d have opted for Paint Lake pickerel, a regional delicacy of Northern Manitoba), named by 17 per cent, followed by beavertails at eight per cent; tourtière at six per cent and doughnuts (which is how we’ll spell it for Canada Day) at four per cent.

Other fascinating tidbits include such illuminating facts as only 12 per cent of us have had the opportunity to go out dog-sledding.

When it comes to Canadian symbols, the beaver ranks up with the maple leaf, and 64 per cent of Canadians have seen a beaver in the wild, followed by moose at 60 per cent, edging out loons at 59 per cent and a bear in the wild at 55 per cent. Meanwhile 16 per cent of Canadians say they  have never seen any of these animals,  Ipsos Reid reports. If you live in Toronto or Vancouver, well, take your dog-sledding stats for guidance. Could happen, I suppose, but back bacon is a better bet. Trust me.

Respondents were asked which musician they are proudest to call Canadian. Nearly four in 10  (38 per cent) chose Celine Dion from a list which also included Kingston’s The Tragically Hip (picked by 14 per cent), Nickelback (11 per cent), Blue Rodeo (nine per cent), Drake (six per cent), Justin Bieber (two per cent), or some other musician or group (20 per cent). Given that Neil Young, The Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, April Wine, the Stampeders, A Foot in Coldwater and Loverboy, just to name half a dozen or so others, are apparently absent from the top of the list, I’ve concluded this must be the result of the confidence or credibility interval that I mentioned earlier. Or, perhaps more likely even, the fact my tastes in Canadian music apparently haven’t quite arrived in the 21st century yet. A possibility not to be discounted, to be sure.

Five years ago, the Historica-Dominion Institute, in partnership with the Munk School of Global Affairs and with the support of the Aurea Foundation, conducted an online survey, “Canada and the World in 2010,” which was also conducted for it by pollster Ipsos Reid and had more than 18,000 respondents in 24 countries.

The survey found, among many other things, Canadians sometimes overestimate their own influence in world affairs:

While two in three Canadians (67 per cent) agreed in 2010 that Canada had an influence on the world stage, only 55 per cent of global respondents agreed. Those polled in Brazil and India were most likely (both 74 per cent) to agree that Canada had influence in world affairs, while only one third of Japanese and Swedes agreed, making them least likely of the 24 countries polled to believe that Canada is influential on the world stage.

For Americans, Independence Day Saturday on July 4 marks the defeat of the British Redcoats in the War of Independence in 1783, although some Southerners still mourn it as the date in 1863 when Vicksburg, Mississippi fell to Union troops in the War Between the States or Civil War.

Canada being Canada and Canadians being Canadians, we quintessentially mark July 1 with what might appear to outsiders to be a rather odd mix of reticence, pride and ambivalence. Me? I like to recall that it was on Canada Day 2007 I arrived to live in Manitoba!

Sometimes we forget just how remarkable an achievement Canada was in 1867. In the spring of 1864, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island were contemplating the possibility of Maritime Union. But nothing concrete happened until the Province of Canada, springing from the legislative union of Canada East and Canada West, heard of the proposed conference and members of the combined legislature requested permission to attend the meeting of the Maritime colonies, in order to raise the larger subject of British North American union.

Delegates from away arrived by steamer in Prince Edward Island and shared the spotlight with the first circus to visit the island in more than 20 years. No kidding. How absolutely Canadian can you get?

The historic Charlottetown Conference took place from Sept. 1 to 9, 1864. My ancestral Acadian roots are on the saltwater Tantramar marshes of Amherst, Nova Scotia, in Cumberland County on the Isthmus of Chignecto at the head of the Bay of Fundy and Missiguash River, bordering New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and connecting the Nova Scotia peninsula with those who come from away elsewhere in North America. From Amherst came four of the 36 Fathers of Confederation, more than any other city or town in Canada:  Robert Barry Dickey, Edward Barron Chandler, Jonathan McCully, and Sir Charles Tupper, a Conservative who went onto serve as Canada’s sixth prime minister briefly in 1896.  While he was born in Amherst, Chandler was best known as a New Brunswick legislator.

Tupper was also a medical doctor and founded Pugsley’s Pharmacy, dispensing chemists, at 63 Victoria Street East in downtown Amherst in 1843, the same year he became a doctor. Tupper was president of the Medical Society of Nova Scotia in 1863, and was the first president of the Canadian Medical Association from 1867 to 1870. Pugsley’s operated at the same location in the same historic Tupper Block building, as the oldest business in town and one of the oldest pharmacies in Canada, for 169 years until May 2012.

While there are differing historical opinions as to who should be considered a Father of Confederation, traditionally they have been defined as the 36 men who attended one or more of the three conferences held at Charlottetown; Québec City from Oct. 10 to 27, 1864; and London, England from Dec. 4, 1866 to Feb. 11, 1867 to discuss the union of British North America, preceding Confederation on July 1, 1867. Negotiators settled on the name “Dominion of Canada,” proposed by the head of the New Brunswick delegation, Samuel Leonard Tilley.  The word dominion was taken from the King James Bible: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth” (Psalm 72:8). Tilley, who had a background in pharmacy, became the minister of customs in Sir John A. Macdonald’s first cabinet in 1867.

As a Canadian, it also remains an uncommon privilege for me to have to sat in the public gallery in the balcony of historic Province House in Charlottetown, designed and built by local architect Isaac Smith and completed in 1847, to accommodate the legislative assembly of Prince Edward Island. To this day, the assembly has only 27 seats for the members from the ridings of Souris-Elmira through to Tignish-Palmer Road.

The July 1 holiday was established by statute in 1879, under the name Dominion Day. There is no record of organized ceremonies after the first anniversary, except for the 50th anniversary of Confederation in 1917, at which time the new Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, under construction, was dedicated as a memorial to the Fathers of Confederation and to the valour of Canadians fighting in the First World War in Europe.

The next celebration was held in 1927 to mark the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation.

Since 1958, the federal government has arranged for an annual observance of Canada’s national day on July 1.

Well done, Sir John A.

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