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All Canada celebrates its 146 birthday on Monday, July 1. But on that date in 1867,there was both cheering and wailing. Toronto celebrated with a roasted ox, while in Nova Scotia, a Father of Confederation was burned in effigy, with a live rat. The following is an excerpt from my book, About Canada.

As midnight broke on July 1, 1867, there was neither peace nor quiet across the land. From Halifax to Windsor, guns boomed, bells chimed, rifles, pistols and muskets were fired, bonfires were lit, as millions of Canadians poured out into the streets of towns and villages to celebrate the birth of their new country. Scant hours later, there were parades, military reviews, speeches, picnics, cricket and lacrosse matches, special railway and steamship excursions.

The enthusiastic rejoicing on that first Canada Day when Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada East and Canada West were officially forged into a new nation was not universally shared. For some in the two Maritime provinces there was bitter resentment at perceived loss of independence —and for some politicians, a loss of power and privileges.

In Canada East there were mixed feelings. Unionists saw Confederation as a bulwark against the threat of American annexation and the obliteration of French language, culture, customs, and institutions. Others feared that the British North America Act, the new constitution for the new country, gave too much power to the federal government, and not enough for Quebec to protect its interests.

From that first Confederation conference at Charlottetown in 1864, it had taken almost three years to put Canada together, and at times the whole idea was in danger of collapsing. The vision of a new nation from sea to sea to sea was far from complete. Prince Edward Island had opted out, and would stay out for another seven years. Newfoundland, too, had rejected Canada, and would not join for another 82 years. Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, and British Columbia were still to join the four million people of Canada.

Newspaper piss and vinegar

Less than two months before Dominion Day, the British Colonist and the Acadian Recorder had somewhat differing accounts of a Halifax meeting called to nominate candidates for the impending new Parliament.

The April 30 meeting "broke up in the wildest uproar and confusion," the anti-union Acadian Recorder reported the next day. The names of candidates were said to have been "called out amid great hissing," while "disgust and distrust seemed to be the leading elements which animated the breasts of the audience. 'Traitor' was called out in every quarter of the Hall." Confederation advocate Dr. Charles Tupper was said to have received "the loudest demonstration of disapproval," but when the name of anti-Confederation leader Joseph Howe was mentioned "a large majority of the audience arose and gave three hearty cheers for the Nova Scotia patriot."

A pack of "low and disgusting falsehoods" and "unblushing lies" was how the British Colonist described the Acadian report. Temperance Hall, said the union paper, was filled to capacity and hundreds had to be turned away. The "few obstructive" anti-unionists, in this report, "were silenced by the enthusiastic demonstrations of the mass of the friends of Union, whose rapturous plaudits cheered on the able and eloquent speakers." As for Dr. Tupper, far from being greeted with demonstrations of disapproval, he "was received with the wildest demonstrations of applause, and listened to with the most rapt attention." Other anti-unionists were accused of even worse, of "downright lying" and "odious, cowardly, unspeakable manners."

Cheers and boos

On Dominion Day itself, July 1, 1867, there was cheering across the continent, mixed with a few loud raspberries.

In Toronto, the Leader reported, "The New Dominion was hailed last night as the clock struck twelve by Mr. Rawlinson ringing a merry peel on the joy bells of St. James Cathedral... The bells had scarcely commenced when the firing of small arms was heard in every direction, so that both music and gunpowder were brought into requisition to usher in the great event. Large bonfires were lighted on various parts of the city... Large crowds also paraded the streets with fifes and drums, cheering in the heartiest manner."

Great events were scheduled to start at the crack of dawn. All the troops in the city were to parade to the review grounds where they were to be "supplied with ale at the expense of Mr. Gzowski [Sir Casimir, former superintendent of public works]. In the evening there were to be military bands, fireworks and Chinese lanterns at Queen's Park; "a picnic and festival" on the government grounds, while "A fat ox will be roasted and given away to the poor... by Capt. Woodhouse, of the schooner Lord Nelson." An event held at the city’s Crystal Palace was characterized by the Leader as “a loathing band of so-called mothers exhibiting their offspring for prizes —a horrid and disgusting exhibition.��

In Peterborough, on the northern flank of Ontario settlement, midnight bell ringing "was a cause of alarm" to many citizens, according to the Examiner. "But very soon they found their fears were groundless; the cause was nothing more than introducing our citizens to Confederation."

In Ottawa, thousands gathered as a match was struck at midnight to ignite a huge bonfire, all the city bells rang out, rockets flared, and 100 guns of the Ottawa field battery boomed, the Citizen reported on July 4. There must have been little sleep for the players and spectators of four lacrosse games that started at 7 a.m. At the new Parliament Buildings, spectators and an honour guard awaited the arrival of the cabinet headed by John A. Macdonald, a gaggle of dignitaries, and Charles Monck, for his installation as Canada's first Governor General.

Confederation, predicted the Ottawa Times that day, will solve "a great problem" with which "the whole world is intimately concerned —whether British constitutional principles are to take root and flourish on the Western Hemisphere, or unbridled Democracy shall have a whole continent on which to erect the despotism of the mob. The issue is one of national existence combined with the enjoyment of national liberty, against the universal rule of an unrestrained Democracy."

In Quebec, the Journal des Trois Rivieres viewed the bells and guns as a proud announcement that "we have taken our place among the nations of the earth."

Montreal greeted July 1 at 4 a.m. when the guns of the Montreal Field Battery "boomed forth a royal salute," followed two hours later by more salutes from the guns at St. Helen's Island. The Gazette called it "the greatest day in the history of the North American province since Jacques Cartier landed at Stadacona."

Far away from the new Dominion, at the tip of Vancouver Island, Victoria's Daily Colonist greeted July 1 as a “memorable day for British North America.�� Its publisher, Amor de Cosmos, was apparently breaking with his long-time mentor Joseph Howe. Canada, de Cosmos predicted, will “play an important part in the world's history,�� guided by “a ministry composed of the best and greatest minds on the continent.�� Confederation had "given the deathblow to Annexation.�� All that remained to make the country complete was the construction of a railway to the Pacific coast and the admission of B.C. into confederation “as rapidly as possible.��

Mourning in the maritimes

In Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, there were a few muted cheers and some loud sobbing.

In Halifax, the British Colonist greeted the day with a rambling headline: “DOMINION DAY. UNIVERSAL REJOICING. Gorgeous Decorations. Enthusiastic Celebration of the Inauguration of the Dominion of Canada. Grand Display of Fireworks. Illumination, Bon Fires, &c. NAVAL AND MILITARY REVIEW.

The Morning Chronicle published an obituary.

"DIED.

"Last night, at twelve o'clock, the free and enlightened Province of Nova Scotia. Deceased was the offspring of Old English stock, and promised to have proved an honour and support to her parents in their declining years. Her death was occasioned by unnatural treatment received at the hands of some of her ungrateful sons, who, taking advantage of the position she afforded them, betrayed her to the enemy. Funeral will take place from the Grande Parade this day, Monday, at 9 o'clock. Friends are requested not to attend, as her enemies, with becoming scorn, intend to insult the occasion with rejoicing."

In Saint John, "There was nothing uproarious about the demonstrations" that marked July 1, the Morning News reported. "Everything was conducted in an orderly and becoming spirit, gratifying to the friends of the Union and at the same time not calculated to create an undue feeling of unpleasantness in the minds of those who have opposed the measure from a conviction of its unsuitability for our people."

According to Timothy Anglin's Morning Freeman, some of those politicians who had sought union for their own aggrandizement were rewarded, and some were disappointed. While Confederation Fathers James Mitchell and Leonard Tilley got cabinet posts "with salaries and pickings worth $8,000 to $10,000 per year," "poor Dr. Tupper had to relinquish all idea of taking immediate possession of the seat in the cabinet of the new Dominion which was the prize he so coveted that he sold his country for the chance of winning it."

Elsewhere in Nova Scotia, July 1 was "by no means a day of rejoicing," in the view of the Yarmouth Herald. "There was a burlesque celebration in the morning," but numerous flags were reportedly flown at half-mast. "In several localities men wore black weeds on their hats," while at Milton, an effigy of Tupper "was suspended by the neck all afternoon" and in the evening "burnt side by side with a live rat."

Check out my latest book, About Canada. Free sampler copy at

TAGS: Confederation, Dominion Day, Canada Day, Fathers of Confederation, Political newspapers, Canadian regionalism, National unity and disunity, British North America Act,

Properly trained, a man can be a dog's best friend. Corey Ford (1902-69), U.S. magazine writer and author. Quoted by Jim Dratfield and Paul Coughlin in The Quotable Canine (1997).
Man has been the dog’s best friend for more than 20,000 years, says the Economist (August 3, 2011):

“In the Chauvet cave in the Ardèche region of France, which contains the earliest known cave paintings, there is a 50-metre trail of footprints made by a boy of about ten alongside those of a large canid that appears to be part-wolf, part-dog. The footprints, which have been dated by soot deposited from the torch the child was carrying, are estimated to be about 26,000 years old.��

Dogs share 96.6 percent of the same DNA as their ancestral wolves; which makes them closer than people are to chimpanzees, whose DNA are 96 percent the same. Fortunately the dog brain is wired differently than the wolf brain, after thousands of years of evolution. Outside of their families and packs, wolfs are defensive and hostile; dogs are mostly friendly because, it is said, of their dependence on man. Which does make man the dog’s best friend.

Check out my latest book, About Canada. Free sampler copy at

Properly trained, a man can be a dog's best friend. Corey Ford (1902-69), U.S. magazine writer and author. Quoted by Jim Dratfield and Paul Coughlin in The Quotable Canine (1997).
Man has been the dog’s best friend for more than 20,000 years, says the Economist (August 3, 2011):

“In the Chauvet cave in the Ardèche region of France, which contains the earliest known cave paintings, there is a 50-metre trail of footprints made by a boy of about ten alongside those of a large canid that appears to be part-wolf, part-dog. The footprints, which have been dated by soot deposited from the torch the child was carrying, are estimated to be about 26,000 years old.��

Dogs share 96.6 percent of the same DNA as their ancestral wolves; which makes them closer than people are to chimpanzees, whose DNA are 96 percent the same. Fortunately the dog brain is wired differently than the wolf brain, after thousands of years of evolution. Outside of their families and packs, wolfs are defensive and hostile; dogs are mostly friendly because, it is said, of their dependence on man. Which does make man the dog’s best friend.

Check out my latest book, About Canada. Free sampler copy at

Women's rights�� including the right vote and to wear pants—had staunch advocates and bitter critics when the Toronto Leader belched the following fiery editorial, September 12, 1853. The pants were named after Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894), a U.S. reformer who campaigned for temperance and women's rights.

Bloomerism, women's rights ism! and the Maine Law ism are the triajuncta in uno of New England fanaticism. They spring from the same root, flourish in the same soil, and yield the same quality of fruit. They are bitter apples, all of them.

The convention with which New York has been dishonoured within the last few days bear out the remark. The females who mounted platforms to unsex themselves were champions of the united causes. Mrs. Bloomer, Antoinette Brown, Lucy Stone, and the whole tribe of unwomanly women who disgraced themselves, their progenitors, and associates by lecturing noisy audiences night after night, are the prime movers and the proper representatives of these disorganizing developments of modern folly and wickedness. They figure in the morning, in Bloomer costume, as the advocates of woman's right to the breeches—of course, with the franchise, the right of divorce at will, and all the other et cetera of what passes under the phrase, women's rights, crammed into the pockets. In the evenings they elbowed their way through crowds of men, to mix with Negroes of either sex, and to join with practical Mormons in insisting upon the adoption and enforcement of the Maine Law. The last heard of them was the pithy telegraphic statement that “the women's rights convention broke up in a row.�� How else could it end? And what but a general row can follow the practical application of their pestiferous notions?

Hunted from New York, it seems that they are to find refuge in Toronto. The head of all the Bloomers—their pattern, instructress, and editorial advocate —is to show herself, too, not as a fugitive from outraged decency of the Empire City, but as the petted guest, the invited teacher, of the Toronto promoters of the Prohibitory Liquor Law. Mrs. Bloomer is to be brought to prove to our citizens, their wives and daughters, the folly of Paul's injunction, and the infinite superiority of Neal Dow and Lucy Stone.

Check out my latest book, About Canada. For a free copy of the pdf Sampler edition, or to order the complete book, go to

TAGS: Bloomers, Amelia Bloomer, Women’s rights, Female suffrage, Misogyny

An excerpt from my latest book, About Canada. (Read free sampler issue.)

For more than a century-and-a-half, Europeans had been killing North America’s Indians by giving them firewater—whisky, brandy, rum, port, sherry—in exchange for furs. Now, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, Canada’s pioneer settlers were killing themselves with their own medicine.

Alcohol consumption had reached epidemic proportions, and it was taking a terrible toll. At Ancaster, in Upper Canada, 11 of 13 accidental deaths in 1829 were attributed to excessive drinking. Inquests in the Bathurst District blamed all 20 accidental deaths on booze, according to a study on pioneer drinking habits by Rev. M.A. Garland and historian J.J. Talman.

With an abundant number of distilleries—the Bathurst District alone had six in 1836—whisky was plentiful and cheap. Farmers supplied the distilleries with grain. One bushel of grain made three or three-and-a-half gallons of whisky. The farmer received half the whisky as payment for his grain. Whatever he and his family didn’t drink, was sold to inns, taverns and the many shops that served as drinking houses.1

Whisky was a solace in the isolated log cabins where settlers lived harsh and lonely lives of incredible toil. “In many families,�� wrote Garland and Tallman, “whisky was served to each member of the household every morning, and thus from infancy, the children were accustomed to its taste.�� The whisky was often diluted with water, especially for young children. It was, however, considered a necessary protection against the winter’s cold or the summer’s heat, and an energizing tonic to help workers—men, women and children—meet their heavy task loads.

Whisky was also a principal product in many patent medicines. One such medicine is reported to have contained two ounces of Peruvian bark, half an ounce of Virginia snake root, and more than 50 ounces (3-1/2 pints) of whisky.2

Aside from the log cabins, the country was thickly dotted with other drinking places, in towns, villages and along the rough roads. In Lower Canada, there were twice as many bars and taverns as there were schools, Montreal’s Vindicator reported on March 27, 1832. There were reported to be 1,892 “taverns [and] shops licensed to retail spirituous liquors�� in the province, compared with 937 schools. That was said to mean a tavern or sales outlet “for every 128 persons of a fit age to indulge in Intemperance,�� compared with one school “for every 164 persons of a fit age to receive instruction.�� There were, said the Vindicator, 154,000 children “who ought to be in school,�� but only 45,000 who were.

Upper Canada seemed equally well supplied with drinking places. In 1833, there were 20 taverns on the 65-kilometre stage road between York and Hamilton. Bathurst District, in 1836, had 65 inns and 35 shops that sold, and usually served, liquor; London, with 1,300 people, had seven taverns.

“In travelling through the country, you will see every inn, tavern and beer shop filled at all hours with drunken, brawling fellows; and the quantity of ardent spirits consumed by them will truly astonish you,�� one anonymous “ex-settler�� wrote.3

In many smaller villages and towns, taverns offered the only space large enough to accommodate even small crowds. They were used for weddings, funerals, meetings, elections, court proceedings (where juries were sometimes served whisky and even magistrate were known to imbibe while administering justice), and religious services.

Every event was an occasion for drinking whisky, but none more notoriously so than the “bees�� or raisings at which log houses and barns were built. At one three-day raising, no more than 30 men were reported to have consumed 15 gallons of whisky��60 ounces of whisky per man.

Not every pioneer settler, of course, was a drunkard. The most successful were invariably moderate drinkers or teetotallers. And the first temperance movements were gathering forces by the 1830s. But heavy drinking would remain a costly social Canadian problem for decades.

(Endnotes)
1 M.A. Garland and J.S. Talman. Pioneer Drinking Habits and the Rise of Temperance Agitation in Upper Canada Prior to 1840. Ontario Historical Society, Papers and Records, volume 27 (1931), pp. 341-64.

2 Craig Heron. Booze: A Distilled History. Toronto: Between the Lines, 2003.

3 Garland and Talman, Pioneer Drinking Habits.

About Canada, my latest book, is crammed with more “Amazing stuff�� about this great nation, says popular historian Christopher Moore. For a free sample copy—and four other free pdf booklets—click here.

Order About Canada from Amazon or chapters.indigo.ca. Or, for a signed copy with your special inscription, order direct from the author. Makes a great gift. You give me the inscription you want, up to 10 words, and I’ll inscribe it by hand, together with my signature, on the inside title page, To order your signed and inscribed copy, click now.

TAGS Alcohol, addiction, drunkenness, children, whisky, whiskey

The great compensating benefit of being hard of hearing is the easy ability to tune out. Unplug. Abolish noise pollution. Turn the roar of the world into meow. I speak from experience.

Another benefit is that civic authorities would likely have much less trouble on their hands if more people were hearing impaired. Few things seem to occupy the authorities of big cities and small towns more than noise, judging by a Google search that yielded a score of news reports about noise, all dated within two days in mid-April, 2013.

In Durham, North Carolina, police issued a citation to the New Hope Church alleging it was in violation of a city noise ordinance. A group of citizens filed a lawsuit, claiming that its services and “performances�� are “akin to rock concerts,�� causing “thumping base noises within our homes.�� The civil action turned into criminal hearings when some of the complainants were accused of lying during court proceedings, and the case seemed likely to drag on.

In Collegdale, Tennessee, Howard and Nancy Reykdale launched a lawsuit over noise from a police firing range, 719 feet from their home, resulting in proposed controversial amendments that would exempt the police from the city’s noise ordinance.

In Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, Shari Beachem complained to city council that noise from the 24-hour operation of folk lifts and power generators of an industrial firm operating on a former parking lot was a matter of life and death. “We’re talking about nervous breakdowns,�� Beachem said. “Something has to be done, or you are sick, sick, sick.��

In Powell, Ohio, Kurt Paulus filed a lawsuit against CityCorp over the noise from the bank’s emergency power generators at its data centre, said to disturb the tranquility of homes in a nearby wooded area, at any time of the day or night.

In Swanage, Dorset, England, Jessica Ashurst was fined more than £1,000 on three charges of noise nuisance caused by playing loud amplified music at her home.

In Stonington, Connecticut, 32 residents petitioned the Board of the Police to stop a teenager from riding his dirt bike, up to seven hour at a time, causing a noise said to be louder than a chain saw, so loud that “My kids can’t do their homework, even with the windows shut,�� according to one complainant.

In Ocean City, Maryland, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of the violinist William F. Hassay, Jr., said to have suffered a loss of income by an ordinance that prohibits playing musical instruments on the city’s boardwalk loud enough to be plainly audible at a distance of 30 feet. Hassay claimed to earn as much as $25,000 in tourist tips from his summer performances, until he was forced to stop.

In New York City, authorities received 40,412 noise complaints in 2012. The sources of the noises are identified on a map compiled and published by theatlanticcities.com.

TAGS: Noise, noise pollution, sound, silence, hearing impairment

Phineas T. Barnum will build “the most magnificent balloon that ever soared aloft,�� and sail it across the Atlantic from the United States to England, the St. John’s, New Brunswick, Daily News, October 9, 1873.

Barnum, wealthy showman, circus founder, author, publisher, publicist extraordinaire, and hoaxster had examined the problem of a trans-Atlantic balloon crossing. He hired a professor, Washington D. Donaldson, to make twice-weekly ascents in a circus hot air balloon. On his first ascent, Donaldson released thousand of Barnum business cards, which fluttered down on New York City “like a flock of insects.�� The circus balloon was also used for performance of the world’s first wedding “above the clouds.��

Professor Donaldson was equipped with the very best instruments to measures air high altitude air temperature, wind speed and direction. After determining that prevailing winds blow from west to east, Barnum announced a balloon crossing to Europe could be “as easily and safely accomplished as a journey there in one of our best ocean steamers.��

Barnum’s monster trans-Atlantic balloon is to be “constructed in England of the strongest Chinese silk,�� the St. John’s Daily News reported. After exhibiting his balloon in England to hundreds of thousands of people, “in the exercise of his-well known benevolence,�� Barnum was to ship it to the United States for further exhibitions. Then, on its daring voyage to the Old World, “It will rise majestically to the level of the grand Eastward aerial current,�� for a speedy crossing.

The Daily News wished Barnum success. “It is mainly a question of wind, and Barnum has been a great blower in his time. It seems, according to the fitness of things, that a favourable blast should aid his grand project. Let us hope success will crown his efforts. He is as worthy of it as any of his brother charlatans.��

As it turned out, the monster balloon was never built and the planned trans-Atlantic crossing was cancelled. It was probably just as well. Even a balloon flight over Lake Michigan proved fatal the following year. Barnum’s circus balloon, with professor Donaldson and a newspaper reporter took off from show grounds in Chicago and drifted over Lake Michigan, where it was met by an unexpected gale. Professor Donaldson�� body washed ashore a month later, but the reporter’s body was never found.

About Canada, my latest book, is crammed with more “Amazing stuff�� about our great nation, says popular historian Christopher Moore. “I’m a fan,�� he adds. For a free sample copy—and four other free pdf booklets—or to order your complete copy, click here.

TAGS: P.T. Barnum, Dirigibles, Showmanship, Hoaxsters, Canada

Holy urine cure
Taken both as a drink and applied externally, urine has been called the world’s oldest medicine. A 5,000-year-old religious Sanskrit text, the Damar Tantra, extolled its benefits. British actress Sarah Miles, in a 2007 newspaper interview, said she had been drinking her own urine for 30 years as immunization against allergies, among other supposed benefits. French ladies bathed in it, and the French wrapped around their necks stockings soaked in it to cure strep throat. Chinese bathed baby faces with it to protect their skin. Mexican farmers in the Sierra Madre prepared poultices of powdered charred corn and urine to help mend broken bones.
John Strachan, an Anglican priest and future Bishop of Toronto, describes a rare instance of a Canadian prescription for urine, the following in the Kingston Gazette, Upper Canada, March 3, 1812.

The province is overrun with self-made physicians, who have no pretensions to knowledge of any kind��

I was lately visiting a young woman ill of a fever, the doctor came in, felt her pulse with much gravity, pronounced her near the crisis—She must take this dose, said the gentleman, pouring out as much calomel [a mildly toxic compound of mercury and chloride, once used as a purgative] on a piece of paper as would have killed two ploughmen. Pray what is this, said I, Doctor? “A schrifudger.��

“Is it not calomel?��

�Ԩ���.��

“You mean to divide this into several doses?��

“Not at all.��

“But the patient is weak.��

“No matter, I likes to scour well.��

“Do you not weigh carefully so powerful a medicine before you give it?��

“No, sir, I know exactly.��

As the woman was evidently getting better, I threw the calomel out of the window after his departure, and sent her some bark and urine.

About Canada, my latest book, is crammed with more “Amazing stuff�� about our great nation, says popular historian Christopher Moore. “I’m a fan,�� he adds. For a free sampler copy, more information and accolades, or to order your copy, go

TAGS Urine,Physicians,Cures.Folk medicine,Canada,John Strachan,Sarah Miles

Never has it been this easy, nor cost so little, to publish books, which digital technology causes to issue forth in floods.

An overcrowded market is the anguish of authors.

“One of the great diseases of this age is the multitude of books that�� overcharge the world�� with an “abundance of idle matter,�� is the complaint of English author Barnaby Rich.

“A vast chaos and confusion of books; we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning,�� is the lament of Robert Burton, another English author.

Anyone who uses a computer to assemble an adequate number of words arranged in a reasonably coherent manner has virtually prepared a book for publication. A publisher formats it, at little cost, for printing on a digital press, also at little cost; or publishes it paperless in the ether world at almost no cost.

Our new publishing technology has eliminated the use of a lot of heavy metal, leaving us using words for things and processes that no longer exist, outside of museums. We still talk of type, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as, among other things, “Pieces of metal with raised letters or characters on their upper surface, for use in letterpress printing.�� But other than octogenarians, who among us ever seen, let alone used, these small pieces of metal? And is there anything still printed on a letterpress? We sometimes talk about typing on our computer keyboards, but real typing involved hitting the keys of a typewriter to cause metal type to strike paper, leaving impressions. We use the terms upper case and lower case to denote capital and regular letters of the alphabet, but it’s been a hundred years or so since printers sorted by hand their pieces of metal for individual letters into the upper and lower sections of their type-storage cases. Gone, too, with the dinosaurs are those big Linotype machines that replaced type of individual letters with lines of type, cast in lead slugs; in newspaper use, typically two inches long by about an inch high and perhaps one-twelfth of an inch thick, as I recall. These cumbersome machines live only in the memories of old time printers who can still almost feel the heat as a chain lowers a bar of lead into a hot pot where it is melted, ready for casting.

The flood of books brought by the digital displacement of all this metal is remarkable. The number of books published in the United States almost doubled in a five-year period, from 172,000 in 2005 to 328,000 in 2010, according to Wikipedia.

But authors�� complaints about technology-driven, overcrowded book markets are nothing new. Messrs. Rich and Burton were reacting 400 years ago to the revolution in printing and book publishing technology introduced by Johannes Gutenberg with his Gutenberg press and its moveable type. Rich wrote his complaint in 1,600, and Burton’s lament followed in 1,628.

Should you wish to check my source for these quotes, you will find them on page 65 of Will and Ariel Durant’s “The Age of Reason Begins: A History of European Civilization in the Period of Shakespeare, Bacon, Montaigne, Rembrandt, Galileo and Descartes: 1558-1648,�� volume seven of their monumental 10-volume, 10,000-page “The Story of Civilization.��

TAGS Books, authors, printing, publishing, type, digital technology, Linotype, Gutenberg, Robert Burton, Burnaby Rich

The Russian thistle, a noxious weed that can devastate farm crops, was made into a romantic image of the Old West by Gene Autry in his 1935 movie and hit song “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.�� The first singing cowboy movie, it cost just $12,500 to make but grossed a reported $1 million, a big sum in the Great Depression.

Best known on the prairies, the weed can be seen tumbling across open spaces almost anywhere in North America, or across screens in countless movies and television shows. The weed arrived not from Russia but the Ukraine, and despite its popular name, it is not a thistle. Salsola iberica, as it is properly known, is classed as a noxious weed that can spread rapidly as it is blown along; a single plant can produce up to 20,000 seeds. Government agricultural agencies have warned farmers that it can cause “serious production problems in crop, following harvest, and during summer fallow.�� It can spread a disease that is deadly to tomatoes, sugar plants and many other crops. It arrived in South Dakota about 1877, a stowaway in flax seed brought in by Ukrainian farmers

“It attracted but little attention at first; but of late it has spread so rapidly that last year [1892] it inflicted a loss of $4,000,000 on the farmers of the United States,�� the Winnipeg Free Press reported November 24, 1893. The paper warned that, “It will soon commence to invade the Canadian Northwest.��

“To get rid of this pest the farmers of the American Northwest are petitioning Congress to give the secretary of the department of agriculture power to take vigorous measures. They say a judicious expenditure of $2,000,000 would probably exterminate the thistle, and, as it did double that amount of damage last year, and if not checked, will do still more this [year], it would be money well spent.��

One hundred and twenty years later, the weed is still tumbling along and farmers have to fight to keep it under control. Almost as enduring as the weed has been the 1935 Autry movie. It is now available on DVD.

About Canada, my latest book, is crammed with more “Amazing stuff�� about our great nation, says popular historian Christopher Moore. “I’m a fan,�� he adds. For a free sampler copy, more information and accolades, or to order your copy, click here.