Earle Gray's Blog, page 2
July 18, 2013
A billiard table upstairs keeps the boys home
An upstairs billiard room is an effective antidote to athletic sports that “disintegrate family life,� says the Toronto Mail and Empire, September 5, 1895. With athletic sports, “The boys are at baseball matches, the gymnasium, on the road bicycling. They are never at home, except to eat and sleep.�
If a man installs “a well-equipped billiard room near the roof, with good air, adequate privacy, and satisfactory means of refreshment, his sons, after business hours, are much more likely to come home and bring their friends with them to play until dinner, rather than go to their clubs. It is a fact that billiard rooms, which used to be in the basement, have gone upstairs. Men will go upstairs to play billiards when they will not go down. In the basement they are too near the servants, whose ears are preternaturally acute. Upstairs there is greater freedom for conversation.�
The billiard table, says the Mail and Empire, must measure 4 by 9 or 5 by 10 feet, and have strong support. Billiard cues require special attention. The proper wood is ash, “with leather tips that are made by French peasants, and are not procured elsewhere.� For the heavy end of the cue, “Bead like mouldings that assist the hand in its grip are preferred. The most expensive cues are ornamented with successive curving bands of coloured wood inlays, and these are so perfectly joined that they look like enamels, the effect being that of peacock’s eyes.�
The billiard room should provide “plenty of clear space around the tables� no projections to imperil the arms and shoulders of enthusiastic players� raised seats conveniently out of the way for onlookers� recesses for cues and other things.� Enclosed within the mahogany walls of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s billiard room, it was noted, there are “niches for cues and cupboards for refreshments and cigars.�
Download free sampler edition of About Canada at
TAGS Billiards, Sports, Family life, Extravagance, Wealth, Upper Class, Calvin Demarest
If a man installs “a well-equipped billiard room near the roof, with good air, adequate privacy, and satisfactory means of refreshment, his sons, after business hours, are much more likely to come home and bring their friends with them to play until dinner, rather than go to their clubs. It is a fact that billiard rooms, which used to be in the basement, have gone upstairs. Men will go upstairs to play billiards when they will not go down. In the basement they are too near the servants, whose ears are preternaturally acute. Upstairs there is greater freedom for conversation.�
The billiard table, says the Mail and Empire, must measure 4 by 9 or 5 by 10 feet, and have strong support. Billiard cues require special attention. The proper wood is ash, “with leather tips that are made by French peasants, and are not procured elsewhere.� For the heavy end of the cue, “Bead like mouldings that assist the hand in its grip are preferred. The most expensive cues are ornamented with successive curving bands of coloured wood inlays, and these are so perfectly joined that they look like enamels, the effect being that of peacock’s eyes.�
The billiard room should provide “plenty of clear space around the tables� no projections to imperil the arms and shoulders of enthusiastic players� raised seats conveniently out of the way for onlookers� recesses for cues and other things.� Enclosed within the mahogany walls of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s billiard room, it was noted, there are “niches for cues and cupboards for refreshments and cigars.�
Download free sampler edition of About Canada at
TAGS Billiards, Sports, Family life, Extravagance, Wealth, Upper Class, Calvin Demarest
A billiard table upstairs keeps the boys home
An upstairs billiard room is an effective antidote to athletic sports that “disintegrate family life,� says the Toronto Mail and Empire, September 5, 1895. With athletic sports, “The boys are at baseball matches, the gymnasium, on the road bicycling. They are never at home, except to eat and sleep.�
If a man installs “a well-equipped billiard room near the roof, with good air, adequate privacy, and satisfactory means of refreshment, his sons, after business hours, are much more likely to come home and bring their friends with them to play until dinner, rather than go to their clubs. It is a fact that billiard rooms, which used to be in the basement, have gone upstairs. Men will go upstairs to play billiards when they will not go down. In the basement they are too near the servants, whose ears are preternaturally acute. Upstairs there is greater freedom for conversation.�
The billiard table, says the Mail and Empire, must measure 4 by 9 or 5 by 10 feet, and have strong support. Billiard cues require special attention. The proper wood is ash, “with leather tips that are made by French peasants, and are not procured elsewhere.� For the heavy end of the cue, “Bead like mouldings that assist the hand in its grip are preferred. The most expensive cues are ornamented with successive curving bands of coloured wood inlays, and these are so perfectly joined that they look like enamels, the effect being that of peacock’s eyes.�
The billiard room should provide “plenty of clear space around the tables� no projections to imperil the arms and shoulders of enthusiastic players� raised seats conveniently out of the way for onlookers� recesses for cues and other things.� Enclosed within the mahogany walls of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s billiard room, it was noted, there are “niches for cues and cupboards for refreshments and cigars.�
Download free sampler edition of About Canada at
TAGS Billiards, Sports, Family life, Extravagance, Wealth, Upper Class, Calvin Demarest
If a man installs “a well-equipped billiard room near the roof, with good air, adequate privacy, and satisfactory means of refreshment, his sons, after business hours, are much more likely to come home and bring their friends with them to play until dinner, rather than go to their clubs. It is a fact that billiard rooms, which used to be in the basement, have gone upstairs. Men will go upstairs to play billiards when they will not go down. In the basement they are too near the servants, whose ears are preternaturally acute. Upstairs there is greater freedom for conversation.�
The billiard table, says the Mail and Empire, must measure 4 by 9 or 5 by 10 feet, and have strong support. Billiard cues require special attention. The proper wood is ash, “with leather tips that are made by French peasants, and are not procured elsewhere.� For the heavy end of the cue, “Bead like mouldings that assist the hand in its grip are preferred. The most expensive cues are ornamented with successive curving bands of coloured wood inlays, and these are so perfectly joined that they look like enamels, the effect being that of peacock’s eyes.�
The billiard room should provide “plenty of clear space around the tables� no projections to imperil the arms and shoulders of enthusiastic players� raised seats conveniently out of the way for onlookers� recesses for cues and other things.� Enclosed within the mahogany walls of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s billiard room, it was noted, there are “niches for cues and cupboards for refreshments and cigars.�
Download free sampler edition of About Canada at
TAGS Billiards, Sports, Family life, Extravagance, Wealth, Upper Class, Calvin Demarest
A billiard table upstairs keeps the boys home
An upstairs billiard room is an effective antidote to athletic sports that “disintegrate family life,� says the Toronto Mail and Empire, September 5, 1895. With athletic sports, “The boys are at baseball matches, the gymnasium, on the road bicycling. They are never at home, except to eat and sleep.�
If a man installs “a well-equipped billiard room near the roof, with good air, adequate privacy, and satisfactory means of refreshment, his sons, after business hours, are much more likely to come home and bring their friends with them to play until dinner, rather than go to their clubs. It is a fact that billiard rooms, which used to be in the basement, have gone upstairs. Men will go upstairs to play billiards when they will not go down. In the basement they are too near the servants, whose ears are preternaturally acute. Upstairs there is greater freedom for conversation.�
The billiard table, says the Mail and Empire, must measure 4 by 9 or 5 by 10 feet, and have strong support. Billiard cues require special attention. The proper wood is ash, “with leather tips that are made by French peasants, and are not procured elsewhere.� For the heavy end of the cue, “Bead like mouldings that assist the hand in its grip are preferred. The most expensive cues are ornamented with successive curving bands of coloured wood inlays, and these are so perfectly joined that they look like enamels, the effect being that of peacock’s eyes.�
The billiard room should provide “plenty of clear space around the tables� no projections to imperil the arms and shoulders of enthusiastic players� raised seats conveniently out of the way for onlookers� recesses for cues and other things.� Enclosed within the mahogany walls of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s billiard room, it was noted, there are “niches for cues and cupboards for refreshments and cigars.�
TAGS Billiards, Sports, Family life, Extravagance, Wealth, Upper Class, Calvin Demarest
If a man installs “a well-equipped billiard room near the roof, with good air, adequate privacy, and satisfactory means of refreshment, his sons, after business hours, are much more likely to come home and bring their friends with them to play until dinner, rather than go to their clubs. It is a fact that billiard rooms, which used to be in the basement, have gone upstairs. Men will go upstairs to play billiards when they will not go down. In the basement they are too near the servants, whose ears are preternaturally acute. Upstairs there is greater freedom for conversation.�
The billiard table, says the Mail and Empire, must measure 4 by 9 or 5 by 10 feet, and have strong support. Billiard cues require special attention. The proper wood is ash, “with leather tips that are made by French peasants, and are not procured elsewhere.� For the heavy end of the cue, “Bead like mouldings that assist the hand in its grip are preferred. The most expensive cues are ornamented with successive curving bands of coloured wood inlays, and these are so perfectly joined that they look like enamels, the effect being that of peacock’s eyes.�
The billiard room should provide “plenty of clear space around the tables� no projections to imperil the arms and shoulders of enthusiastic players� raised seats conveniently out of the way for onlookers� recesses for cues and other things.� Enclosed within the mahogany walls of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s billiard room, it was noted, there are “niches for cues and cupboards for refreshments and cigars.�
TAGS Billiards, Sports, Family life, Extravagance, Wealth, Upper Class, Calvin Demarest
July 16, 2013
The gift of an egg
“You must have a vision, to believe in something. You must also have perseverance. There were times when my better sense wondered whether I should be continuing on this or settle down and do something normal people do� Sometimes you lose heart completely. It’s not so much the faith and the rewards, the belief that this path would lead to success. But it was faith that what I was doing was important.� Maurice Strong, in his autobiography, Where on Earth Are We Going? (2000).
For Maurice Strong, the memory of the gift of a tiny egg given by a starving woman means that pessimism is an act of betrayal.
It was 1984 and sub-Sahara Africa was in the midst of one of the continent’s most devastating droughts. Two hundred million people in 30 countries were affected, and the survival of 30 million people was at imminent risk.
Strong, then under-secretary general of the United Nations, was travelling with a convoy of trucks heading for a temporary refugee camp in the Western Sudan. Before they reached the camp, they came across some “two or three hundred people sitting in little clusters in the dust by the side of the road,� Strong writes in his book. “There was nothing else there: no village, no huts, no trees, no shelter, no water, just the people.� Over the protests of his officials, Strong orders a bag of meal be dropped off at each cluster of people.
As the convoy pulls away, he notices that a woman with two small children have been missed. He orders a truck to return and provide them with a bag of meal. The woman tells Strong that she and her children had nothing to eat for several days, more days than she can remember. She presses in Strong’s hands a gift: a tiny egg wrapped in a scrap of paper.
Unwilling to either keep a gift of food from a starving woman or affront her by refusing it, Strong orders one of his officials to return it later, as a “special treat� for the children.
Strong sums up what the gift of the egg has meant to him:
“Whenever anyone asks me the ‘why� of my long life of public service, I continue my optimism in the face of what seems like gathering anarchy and imminent ecological catastrophe, whenever anyone questions the utility of foreign aid or the politics of relief, whenever anyone, someone who should know better, demands in a fit of postmodern Western anomie why they should bother to ‘fix the unfixable,� the woman in the Western Sudan desert comes to mind.
“That woman had managed to miraculously preserve the human gift of generosity in the face of unspeakable privation. That precious egg � wrapped so carefully in its torn scrap of paper � has become for me a metaphor of the largeness of the human spirit. In the face of that memory, pessimism becomes an act of betrayal.�
Download free sampler edition of About Canada at
Tags: Famine,Hunger,Relief,Selflessness, Sharing,Public Service,Maurice Strong, United Nations.
For Maurice Strong, the memory of the gift of a tiny egg given by a starving woman means that pessimism is an act of betrayal.
It was 1984 and sub-Sahara Africa was in the midst of one of the continent’s most devastating droughts. Two hundred million people in 30 countries were affected, and the survival of 30 million people was at imminent risk.
Strong, then under-secretary general of the United Nations, was travelling with a convoy of trucks heading for a temporary refugee camp in the Western Sudan. Before they reached the camp, they came across some “two or three hundred people sitting in little clusters in the dust by the side of the road,� Strong writes in his book. “There was nothing else there: no village, no huts, no trees, no shelter, no water, just the people.� Over the protests of his officials, Strong orders a bag of meal be dropped off at each cluster of people.
As the convoy pulls away, he notices that a woman with two small children have been missed. He orders a truck to return and provide them with a bag of meal. The woman tells Strong that she and her children had nothing to eat for several days, more days than she can remember. She presses in Strong’s hands a gift: a tiny egg wrapped in a scrap of paper.
Unwilling to either keep a gift of food from a starving woman or affront her by refusing it, Strong orders one of his officials to return it later, as a “special treat� for the children.
Strong sums up what the gift of the egg has meant to him:
“Whenever anyone asks me the ‘why� of my long life of public service, I continue my optimism in the face of what seems like gathering anarchy and imminent ecological catastrophe, whenever anyone questions the utility of foreign aid or the politics of relief, whenever anyone, someone who should know better, demands in a fit of postmodern Western anomie why they should bother to ‘fix the unfixable,� the woman in the Western Sudan desert comes to mind.
“That woman had managed to miraculously preserve the human gift of generosity in the face of unspeakable privation. That precious egg � wrapped so carefully in its torn scrap of paper � has become for me a metaphor of the largeness of the human spirit. In the face of that memory, pessimism becomes an act of betrayal.�
Download free sampler edition of About Canada at
Tags: Famine,Hunger,Relief,Selflessness, Sharing,Public Service,Maurice Strong, United Nations.
July 15, 2013
Fox hunting on the Saskatchewan prairie: CANADIAN NUGGETS
The Moosomin Spectator, October 13, 1898, provides an account of fox hunting on the Saskatchewan prairie at Cannington Manor. One rider falls in a well, two tangle with barbed wire, and a lady rider falls in a muddy field.
Cannington Manor, 40 kilometres south of Moosomin, is, at this time, a village of 200 people, the heart of a 2,600-acre colony with an agricultural college intended to teach affluent English gentlemen bachelors how to farm. It includes a church, hotel, general store, flour and gristmills, sawmill, meat packing plant, two cheese factories, and a two-storey 26-room stone mansion with hand-carved mantle fireplaces and gilt-framed oil paintings, ballroom, billiard room, and servants� quarters. Farming was sandwiched between the activities of theatrical, literary, musical and art societies, and cricket, polo, tennis, football and fox hunting. The hounds were imported from the Isle of Wight, while thoroughbred horses were housed in a fieldstone stable with mahogany stalls and brass nameplates. Hunters set out with correct top boots, breeches and red hunting coats. Still, it wasn’t quite like England; the foxes were actually coyotes, referred to by the Spectator as wolves.
At a Monday hunt, two hunters were observed “running into their wolf in Mr. Daniel’s pasture, where they killed him in the open after a well-hunted run of something like two hours� duration. Several casualties are reported, one eager and presumably thirsty sportsman being rescued with difficulty from the bottom of an old well. Two gentlemen of suicidal turn of mind forced their unfortunate gees at a gallop through Mr. Gruggen’s barbed wire fence, and the mud-plastered condition of a lady’s habit suggest a complete cropper in a soft spot.�
On Saturday, hounds, horses and hunters trampled the brush on one farm. “In the end our friend saved his brush,� said the Spectator, “but it must have been a sadly bedraggled one.�
Cannington Manor did not prosper. In 1900, when the Canadian Pacific Railway by-passed it by 10 kilometres in building a new branch line, Cannington Manor became a ghost town, less than two decades after it had been founded. Today, it is a provincial park. The sound of the hunter’s horn no long echoes on the prairies.
Download free sampler edition of About Canada at
TAGS: Fox hunting, Cannington Manor, Aristocracy, Extravagance, Sports, Saskatchewan
Cannington Manor, 40 kilometres south of Moosomin, is, at this time, a village of 200 people, the heart of a 2,600-acre colony with an agricultural college intended to teach affluent English gentlemen bachelors how to farm. It includes a church, hotel, general store, flour and gristmills, sawmill, meat packing plant, two cheese factories, and a two-storey 26-room stone mansion with hand-carved mantle fireplaces and gilt-framed oil paintings, ballroom, billiard room, and servants� quarters. Farming was sandwiched between the activities of theatrical, literary, musical and art societies, and cricket, polo, tennis, football and fox hunting. The hounds were imported from the Isle of Wight, while thoroughbred horses were housed in a fieldstone stable with mahogany stalls and brass nameplates. Hunters set out with correct top boots, breeches and red hunting coats. Still, it wasn’t quite like England; the foxes were actually coyotes, referred to by the Spectator as wolves.
At a Monday hunt, two hunters were observed “running into their wolf in Mr. Daniel’s pasture, where they killed him in the open after a well-hunted run of something like two hours� duration. Several casualties are reported, one eager and presumably thirsty sportsman being rescued with difficulty from the bottom of an old well. Two gentlemen of suicidal turn of mind forced their unfortunate gees at a gallop through Mr. Gruggen’s barbed wire fence, and the mud-plastered condition of a lady’s habit suggest a complete cropper in a soft spot.�
On Saturday, hounds, horses and hunters trampled the brush on one farm. “In the end our friend saved his brush,� said the Spectator, “but it must have been a sadly bedraggled one.�
Cannington Manor did not prosper. In 1900, when the Canadian Pacific Railway by-passed it by 10 kilometres in building a new branch line, Cannington Manor became a ghost town, less than two decades after it had been founded. Today, it is a provincial park. The sound of the hunter’s horn no long echoes on the prairies.
Download free sampler edition of About Canada at
TAGS: Fox hunting, Cannington Manor, Aristocracy, Extravagance, Sports, Saskatchewan
July 14, 2013
Absolute wisdom
An angel appears at a faculty meeting and tells the dean that in return for his unselfish and exemplary behaviour, the Lord will reward him with his choice of infinite wealth, wisdom or beauty. Without hesitation, the dean selects infinite wisdom. “Done!� says the angel, and disappears in a bolt of lightning. Now all heads turn towards the dean, who sits surrounded by a faint halo of light. At length, one of his colleagues whispers, “Say something!� The dean looks at them. “I should have taken the money.�
From Absolute Zero Gravity (1992), by U.S. journalist Betsy Devine (1946- ), and mathematical biologist Joel E. Cohen (1944- ).
Download free sampler edition of About Canada at
TAGS: Wealth,Wisdom,Beauty,Choice,Jokes,Besty Devine,Joel E. Cohon
From Absolute Zero Gravity (1992), by U.S. journalist Betsy Devine (1946- ), and mathematical biologist Joel E. Cohen (1944- ).
Download free sampler edition of About Canada at
TAGS: Wealth,Wisdom,Beauty,Choice,Jokes,Besty Devine,Joel E. Cohon
Absolute wisdom
An angel appears at a faculty meeting and tells the dean that in return for his unselfish and exemplary behaviour, the Lord will reward him with his choice of infinite wealth, wisdom or beauty. Without hesitation, the dean selects infinite wisdom. “Done!� says the angel, and disappears in a bolt of lightning. Now all heads turn towards the dean, who sits surrounded by a faint halo of light. At length, one of his colleagues whispers, “Say something!� The dean looks at them. “I should have taken the money.�
From Absolute Zero Gravity (1992), by U.S. journalist Betsy Devine (1946- ), and mathematical biologist Joel E. Cohen (1944- ).
Download free sampler edition of About Canada at
TAGS: Wealth,Wisdom,Beauty,Choice,Jokes,Besty Devine,Joel E. Cohon
From Absolute Zero Gravity (1992), by U.S. journalist Betsy Devine (1946- ), and mathematical biologist Joel E. Cohen (1944- ).
Download free sampler edition of About Canada at
TAGS: Wealth,Wisdom,Beauty,Choice,Jokes,Besty Devine,Joel E. Cohon
July 9, 2013
A Cat Ranch To Skin Calgarians: CANADIAN NUGGTS
When Calgarians stampeded in 1913 and 1914 to buy what became largely worthless shares in fly-by-night oil companies, those thought to be unlucky enough to miss out were offered an alternative investment opportunity � shares in a cat and rat ranch � in this spoof by a reader, published in the Albertan.
Seeing by The Albertan that there is not going to be oil stock enough to go round to all the investors, perhaps some of those having money to invest in a profitable undertaking would be pleased to know of our company.
We expect to operate a large cat ranch near Sedgewick, Alberta, where the best farming land in the province can be bought, at least the surface rights, which will be all we need, for less than the oil barons would ask for the mineral rights.
Now to start we will collect, say, 100,000 cats, each cat will average 12 kittens a year which will means 1,200,000 skins. The skins will sell from 10 to 15 cents for the white ones and 75 cents for the jet black ones, making an average price of 30 cents apiece, thus making our revenue about $10,000 a day gross. A man can skin 50 cats a day and he will charge $2 for this labor. It will take 100 men to operate the ranch, therefore our profit will be about $9,800 per day.
We will feed the cats on rats and will start a rat ranch adjoining the cat ranch. The rats will multiply four times as fast as the cats so if we start with say 1,000,000 rats we will have four rats a day for each cat, which is plenty. We will feed the cats on the rats and in turn will feed the rats on the stripped carcasses of the cats, thus giving each rat one-fourth of a cat. It will be seen by these figures that the business will be self acting and automatic. The cats will eat the rats and the rats will eat the cats and we will get the skins.
TAGS: Financial bubble, petroleum industry, speculation, satire, spoof, stock market, cat ranch, Calgary, Turner Valley, Earle Gray, About Canada, ISBN 9781895589955,
Seeing by The Albertan that there is not going to be oil stock enough to go round to all the investors, perhaps some of those having money to invest in a profitable undertaking would be pleased to know of our company.
We expect to operate a large cat ranch near Sedgewick, Alberta, where the best farming land in the province can be bought, at least the surface rights, which will be all we need, for less than the oil barons would ask for the mineral rights.
Now to start we will collect, say, 100,000 cats, each cat will average 12 kittens a year which will means 1,200,000 skins. The skins will sell from 10 to 15 cents for the white ones and 75 cents for the jet black ones, making an average price of 30 cents apiece, thus making our revenue about $10,000 a day gross. A man can skin 50 cats a day and he will charge $2 for this labor. It will take 100 men to operate the ranch, therefore our profit will be about $9,800 per day.
We will feed the cats on rats and will start a rat ranch adjoining the cat ranch. The rats will multiply four times as fast as the cats so if we start with say 1,000,000 rats we will have four rats a day for each cat, which is plenty. We will feed the cats on the rats and in turn will feed the rats on the stripped carcasses of the cats, thus giving each rat one-fourth of a cat. It will be seen by these figures that the business will be self acting and automatic. The cats will eat the rats and the rats will eat the cats and we will get the skins.
TAGS: Financial bubble, petroleum industry, speculation, satire, spoof, stock market, cat ranch, Calgary, Turner Valley, Earle Gray, About Canada, ISBN 9781895589955,
July 8, 2013
Oil shares are wallpaper when bubble bursts: CANADIAN NUGGETS
Calgarians in 1913 and 1914 were gripped for months by oil fever as a “wildcat� well drilling in the Rocky Mountain foothills at Turner Valley, 30 miles southwest of the city, teased speculators with tantalizing indications that this could be Alberta’s first real oil field. When a flow of oil was finally struck in mid-May, 1914, the Albertan newspaper was even more gushing than the well. “It was the wildest, most delirious, must uproarious, most exciting time that had ever entered into human imagination to conceive,� the Albertan newspaper reported.
The News Telegram more cautiously warned that the city “had a population of 80,000 people, mostly lunatics.�
They were crazy to buy shares offered by promoters in some 500 hastily-incorporated “oil companies� that had acquired petroleum rights somewhere or other in southern Alberta. “All day and all night the crowds fought and struggled for precedence in the offices of the most prominent oil companies,� the Calgary Herald reported. “There was never a moment when the would be purchasers were not lined up three deep, buying, buying, buying.� In the satirical Eye Opener, Bob Edwards complained that “you are never sure whether the man you meet on the street is a multi-millionaire, or just a common millionaire.�
The discovery well turned out to be no bonanza. During the next 10 years, the new Turner Valley oil field produced only a trickle of oil � less than 66,000 barrels. Later wells would drill deeper, in the 1920’s and 30’s to find truly great quantities of oil and natural gas, making Turner Valley the largest oil field in what was still called the British Empire.
Meanwhile, fewer than 50 of the 500 companies formed in 1913 and 1914 actually drilled any wells, and very few of these found any oil or gas. Calgarians were wiped clean of more than $1 million of their savings. Some of the thousands of worthless share certificates were used to wallpaper homes and the lobby of at least one hotel.
TAGS: Petroleum industry, Stock market, Financial bubble, Calgary, Turner Valley, Speculation.
The News Telegram more cautiously warned that the city “had a population of 80,000 people, mostly lunatics.�
They were crazy to buy shares offered by promoters in some 500 hastily-incorporated “oil companies� that had acquired petroleum rights somewhere or other in southern Alberta. “All day and all night the crowds fought and struggled for precedence in the offices of the most prominent oil companies,� the Calgary Herald reported. “There was never a moment when the would be purchasers were not lined up three deep, buying, buying, buying.� In the satirical Eye Opener, Bob Edwards complained that “you are never sure whether the man you meet on the street is a multi-millionaire, or just a common millionaire.�
The discovery well turned out to be no bonanza. During the next 10 years, the new Turner Valley oil field produced only a trickle of oil � less than 66,000 barrels. Later wells would drill deeper, in the 1920’s and 30’s to find truly great quantities of oil and natural gas, making Turner Valley the largest oil field in what was still called the British Empire.
Meanwhile, fewer than 50 of the 500 companies formed in 1913 and 1914 actually drilled any wells, and very few of these found any oil or gas. Calgarians were wiped clean of more than $1 million of their savings. Some of the thousands of worthless share certificates were used to wallpaper homes and the lobby of at least one hotel.
TAGS: Petroleum industry, Stock market, Financial bubble, Calgary, Turner Valley, Speculation.
July 1, 2013
Secret of a bestseller
How much re-writing does J.K. Rowling do? “Loads and loads and loads,� she tells the Toronto Star.
“The worst ever was 13 different versions of one chapter (Chapter 9 in The Goblet of Fire). I hated that chapter so much; at one point I thought of missing it altogether and just putting in a page saying ‘Chapter 9 was too difficult,� and going straight to Chapter 10.�
Interview, Toronto Star, November 3, 2001.
TAGS: Writers and writing, Rewriting, Repitition, Books, Literature, Best sellers, Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling.
“The worst ever was 13 different versions of one chapter (Chapter 9 in The Goblet of Fire). I hated that chapter so much; at one point I thought of missing it altogether and just putting in a page saying ‘Chapter 9 was too difficult,� and going straight to Chapter 10.�
Interview, Toronto Star, November 3, 2001.
TAGS: Writers and writing, Rewriting, Repitition, Books, Literature, Best sellers, Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling.
