Joseph “Joe” Shuster

Joseph “Joe” Shuster (July 10, 1914 – July 30, 1992) was a Canadian-American comic book artist. He was best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with writer Jerry Siegel, first published in Action Comics No. 1 (June 1938).

Shuster was involved in a number of legal battles concerning the ownership of the Superman character, eventually gaining recognition for his part in its creation. His comic book career after Superman was relatively unsuccessful, and by the mid-1970s Shuster had left the field completely due to partial blindness.

He and Siegel were inducted into both the comic book industry’s Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993. In 2005, the Canadian Comic Book Creator Awards Association instituted the Joe Shuster Awards, named to honor the Canada-born artist.

Early life and career

Joseph Shuster was born in Toronto, to a Jewish family. His father, Julius, an immigrant from Rotterdam, had a tailor shop in Toronto’s garment district. His mother, Ida, had come from Kiev in Ukraine. His family, including his sister, Jean, lived on Bathurst, Oxford, and Borden Streets, and Shuster attended Ryerson and Lansdowne Public Schools. One cousin is comedian Frank Shuster of the Canadian comedy team Wayne and Shuster.

As a youngster, Shuster worked as a newspaper boy for the Toronto Daily Star, The family barely made ends meet, and the budding young artist would scrounge for paper, which the family could not afford. He recalled in 1992,

I would go from store to store in Toronto and pick up whatever they threw out. One day, I was lucky enough to find a bunch of wallpaper rolls that were unused and left over from some job. The backs were blank, naturally. So it was a goldmine for me, and I went home with every roll I could carry. I kept using that wallpaper for a long time.

Sometime in 1924, when Shuster was 9 or 10, his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. There Shuster attended Glenville High School and befriended his later collaborator, writer Jerry Siegel, with whom he began publishing a science fiction fanzine called Science Fiction. Siegel described his friendship with the similarly shy and bespectacled Shuster: “When Joe and I first met, it was like the right chemicals coming together.”

The duo broke into comics at Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson’s National Allied Publications, the future DC Comics, working on the landmark New Fun — the first comic-book series to consist solely of original material rather than using any reprinted newspaper comic strips — debuting with the musketeer swashbuckler “Henri Duval” and the supernatural crime-fighter strip Doctor Occult, both in New Fun No. 6 (Oct. 1935). In a 1992 interview, in which he used the fledgling publisher’s future name, he said the two sample strips were not the ones eventually published:

One was drawn on brown wrapping paper and the other was drawn on the back of wallpaper from Toronto. And DC approved them, just like that! It’s incredible! But DC did say, ‘We like your ideas, we like your scripts and we like your drawings. But please, copy over the stories in pen and ink on good paper.’ So I got my mother and father to lend me the money to go out and buy some decent paper, the first drawing paper I ever had, in order to submit these stories properly to DC Comics.

Creation of Superman

Siegel and Shuster created a bald telepathic villain, bent on dominating the world, as the title character in the short story “The Reign of the Superman”, published in Siegel’s 1933 fanzine Science Fiction #3. The character was not successful, and Siegel eventually devised the more familiar version of the character. Shuster modeled the hero on Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and his bespectacled alter ego, Clark Kent, on a combination of Harold Lloyd and Shuster himself, with the name “Clark Kent” derived from movie stars Clark Gable and Kent Taylor. Lois Lane was modelled on Joanne Carter, who later became Siegel’s wife.

Siegel and Shuster then began a six-year quest to find a publisher. Titling it The Superman, Siegel and Shuster offered it to Consolidated Book Publishing, who had published a 48-page black-and-white comic book entitled Detective Dan: Secret Operative No. 48. Although the duo received an encouraging letter, Consolidated never again published comic books. Shuster took this to heart and, by varying accounts, either burned every page of the story, with the cover surviving only because Siegel saved it from the fire, or he tore the story to shreds, with only two cover sketches remaining. Siegel and Shuster each compared this character to Slam Bradley, an adventurer the pair had created for Detective Comics No. 1 (May 1939). In 1938, after that proposal had languished among others at More Fun Comics — published by National Allied Publications, the primary precursor of DC Comics — editor Vin Sullivan chose it as the cover feature for National’s Action Comics No. 1 (June 1938). The following year, Siegel & Shuster initiated the syndicated Superman comic strip.

As part of the deal which saw Superman published in Action Comics, Siegel and Shuster sold the rights to the company in return for $130 and a contract to supply the publisher with material.

Siegel and Shuster’s status as children of Jewish immigrants is also thought to have influenced their work. Timothy Aaron Pevey has argued that they crafted “an immigrant figure whose desire was to fit into American culture as an American”, something which Pevey feels taps into an important aspect of American identity.

When Superman first appeared, Superman’s alter ego Clark Kent worked for the Daily Star newspaper, named by Shuster after the Toronto Daily Star, his old employer in Toronto. Shuster said he modeled the cityscape of Superman’s home city, Metropolis, on that of his old hometown. When the comic strip received international distribution, the company permanently changed the name to the Daily Planet.

Legal issues

Shuster became famous as the co-creator of one of the most well-known and commercially successful fictional characters of the 20th century. National Allied Publications claimed copyright to his and Siegel’s work, and when the company refused to compensate them to the degree they believed appropriate, Siegel and Shuster, in 1946, near the end of their 10-year contract to produce Superman stories, sued National over rights to the characters. They ultimately accepted $94,000 to stop pursuing the claim after a court ruled that National had validly purchased the rights to Superman when it bought the first Superman story. But after this bitter legal wrangling, National cropped Shuster and Siegel’s byline. In 1947, the team rejoined editor Sullivan, by then the founder and publisher of the comic-book company Magazine Enterprises where they created the short-lived comical crime-fighter Funnyman. While Siegel continued to write comics for a variety of publishers, Shuster largely dropped out of sight.

Later career

Shuster continued to draw comics after the failure of Funnyman, although exactly what he drew is uncertain. Comic historian Ted White wrote that Shuster continued to draw horror stories into the 1950s. In 2009, comics historian Craig Yoe said Shuster was one of the anonymous illustrators for Nights of Horror, an underground sadomasochistic fetish comic-book series. This was based on character similarities, and comparison of the artistic style between the illustrations and those of the cast of the Superman comics.

In 1964, when Shuster was living on Long Island with his elderly mother, he was reported to be earning his living as a freelance cartoonist; he was also “trying to paint pop art – serious comic strips – and hope[d] eventually to promote a one-man show in some chic Manhattan gallery”. At one point, his worsening eyesight prevented him from drawing, and he worked as a deliveryman in order to earn a living. Jerry Robinson claimed Shuster had delivered a package to the DC building, embarrassing the employees. He was summoned to the CEO, given one hundred dollars, and told to buy a new coat and find another job. By 1976, Shuster was almost blind and living in a California nursing home.

In 1967, when the Superman copyright came up for renewal, Siegel launched a second lawsuit, which also proved unsuccessful.

In 1975, Siegel launched a publicity campaign, in which Shuster participated, protesting DC Comics’ treatment of him and Shuster. In the face of a great deal of negative publicity over their handling of the affair (and due to the upcoming Superman movie), DC’s parent company Warner Communications reinstated the byline dropped more than thirty years earlier and granted the pair a lifetime pension of $20,000 a year plus health benefits. The first issue with the restored credit was Superman No. 302 (August 1976).

Death

Shuster died July 30, 1992 at his West Los Angeles home of congestive heart failure and hypertension. He was 78.

 

Melville Island

Melville Island is a small peninsula in Nova Scotia, Canada, located in the Northwest Arm of Halifax Harbour, west of Deadman’s Island. It is part of the Halifax Regional Municipality. The land is rocky, with thin, acidic soil, but supports a limited woodland habitat.

The site was discovered by Europeans in the 1600s, though it was likely earlier explored by aboriginals. It was initially used for storehouses before being purchased by the British, who built a prisoner-of-war camp to hold captives from the Napoleonic Wars and later the War of 1812. The burial ground for prisoners was on the adjacent Deadman’s Island.

Later, Melville Island was used as a receiving depot for black refugees escaping slavery in the United States, then as a quarantine hospital for immigrants arriving from Europe (particularly Ireland). It briefly served as a recruitment centre for the British Foreign Legion during the Crimean War, and was then sold to the British for use as a military prison. In 1907 the land was granted to the Canadian government, which used it to detain German and Austro-Hungarian nationals during the First World War. During the Second World War, prisoners were sent to McNabs Island instead, and ammunition depots were kept on Melville Island.

The peninsula now houses the clubhouse and marina of the Armdale Yacht Club. Melville Island has been the subject of a number of cultural works, most of which concern its use as a prison.

Geography

Melville Island is part of the Halifax Regional Municipality, on the southeast coast of Nova Scotia. The peninsula lies on the eastern boundary of Melville Cove in the Northwest Arm, an inlet between the Halifax Peninsula and Mainland Halifax. It has a total area of approximately 2,000 square metres (22,000 sq ft). Melville Island is 200 metres (660 ft) west of Deadman’s Island, and southeast of Regatta Point. The peninsula lies on a fracture zone trending northwest–southeast, and is located at the border between the Halifax Slate Formation and a granite-based formation. There is evidence of glacial scouring in the area. The surrounding seabed ranges from gravel to muddy gravel, and the shore is rocky.

The water surrounding Melville Island is salty and ranges from 15 °C (59 °F) in summer to partially or completely frozen in winter. The water is polluted by sewage discharges from Halifax and is considered heavily contaminated. Water colour ranges from olive brown to greenish black, with little current. The water depth around Melville Island is 4.5 to 10.5 metres (15 to 34 ft).

The peninsula features thin and acidic soil, and hosts plants like witherod, Indian pear, Labrador tea, wintergreen, and blueberry shrubs. It is a woodland area, with birch, tamarack, maple, oak, beech, and white pine trees. Given the development of the land by the Armdale Yacht Club, plant growth is now largely limited to the hill on which the main clubhouse sits; most of the peninsula was paved in 1971. Fish caught from Melville Island include cod and mackerel. Local birds include grebes, loons, and alcids.

There is no weather monitoring station on Melville Island (the closest is the Halifax dockyards); however, as with most of the surrounding area, Melville has a humid continental climate heavily influenced by the water temperature in Halifax Harbour. Average air temperatures range from −4.4 °C (24.1 °F) in January to 18.9 °C (66.0 °F) in August. It receives about 1,500 mm (59 in) of precipitation per year, and may receive snow from October through April. Though the area is fairly sheltered, it is subject to damage from hurricanes and other storms, notably Hurricane Juan in 2003.

Early use

Though the Halifax area was settled by aboriginals, particularly the Mi’kmaq people, as early as 7000 BC, there is no archaeological evidence of native habitation on Melville Island prior to the arrival of the Europeans. The first Europeans to reach the land were likely French traders and missionaries in the 1600s. Halifax was founded by the British in 1749. The first documented use of Melville Island was by Robert Cowie and John Aubony, who obtained a Crown grant in 1752 to allow them to build a storehouse. After Cowie’s death in 1781, John Butler Kelly purchased what was then known as Cowie’s Island and quickly resold it in 1784 to James Kavanagh, the head of a prosperous family fishery, for £65. Kavanagh used the land, known as Kavanagh’s Island according to the then-prevalent tradition of place naming, to dry and store fish that he would then sell from his Halifax store. After the 1793 beheading of Louis XVI sparked a war between Britain and France, Nova Scotia Governor John Wentworth rented Kavanagh’s Island to house 600 French prisoners that had been captured on St. Pierre and Miquelon. The commander of the Halifax garrison, Brigadier General James Ogilvie, objected to the plan, and instead housed the prisoners at Cornwallis Barracks in Halifax. Several prisoners were able to escape from the makeshift prison, and the rest were sent to Guernsey in June 1794.

In August 1794, a French ship captured in St. Domingo arrived in Halifax. A plan to house these prisoners in Halifax met with opposition from the citizenry because of a fear of “fever”; indeed, surgeon John Halliburton suggested that if the plan was carried out, “the popular would burn down [the housing] with the sick prisoners inside”. Halliburton rented Kavanagh’s Island, likely on the suggestion of Governor John Wentworth, and by June 1795 had sent 70 sick and wounded prisoners to its makeshift prison hospital. The other prisoners were kept on the La Felix prison ship. Sixteen soldiers of the Royal Nova Scotia Regiment acted as guards for the hospital beginning in 1796. Because of overcrowding aboard La Felix, some of its prisoners were allowed to live in Halifax, where some created such a disturbance that they were sent to Kavanagh’s Island to be imprisoned. In 1801, the Treaty of Amiens resulted in most of the prisoners being returned to France, and the site was abandoned.

Napoleonic Wars (1803–1811)

The site was formally leased for prisoner housing in 1803 after fifteen French fishermen, three surgeons, and 188 seamen were brought to Halifax as prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars. Though many of these prisoners were later sent to England or Bermuda, one of the surgeons (Antoine Noel) was hired to care for the prisoners, while at least sixteen other prisoners were able to escape. Melville was purchased for £1000 in 1804 (£68,634 as of 2010) by Robert Murray, appointed by the British Admiralty as prison agent; he was replaced shortly thereafter by John MacKellar. At the time, the facility had a maximum capacity of 200 prisoners. The makeshift prison was noted for discipline problems.

The land was officially renamed Melville Island in late 1804 or early 1805 in honour of Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville (who at the time had just been appointed First Lord of the Admiralty). A wooden barracks-style military prison was constructed to house common prisoners, the cornerstone of which was laid in 1808 and is today preserved as a monument, while a multi-storey building was designed to hold officers. As no exchange system was established with the French, the prison quickly became overcrowded. Some Spanish prisoners were also housed in the prison at this time.

Upon their arrival on Melville, prisoners had their name and other details recorded in an entry book. Inmates were given yellow clothing that clearly identified them as prisoners of war, and were supplied with provisions of beef, bread, potatoes and salt from a local contractor “reputed to own most of the livestock in the region”. Some officers were allowed to send trade goods to Halifax, or even work in the city as domestic servants or handymen. There were also prisoner-run shops and a “small town fair” on Melville Island, frequented by British officers and residents of Halifax. Other prisoner pursuits included prison lotteries, model shipbuilding, beer-brewing, fishing, and making molasses candy. Some prisoners were known to have pets or keep chickens.

In late 1805, a group of officers broke parole and escaped; this led the garrison captain to restrict the purchase of prisoner-made goods as a means of punishment and enforcing discipline. More serious punishments included flogging or being confined to a barred hole in the prison cellar, known as the “Black Hole”, with only bread and water. One of the prisoners, Pierre Poulin, stabbed another to death in April 1805, and was tried and hanged for murder in Halifax. The prisoners also maintained their own Grand Council (Grand Conseil) with which to impose discipline, though with a different focus than the British: anyone who disclosed a planned escape attempt to the guards was subject to being stoned to death (though historian Brian Cuthbertson disputes the likelihood of this claim). Escapes and attempts were frequent, and attempted escapees were regarded “with high esteem” by the other prisoners. Before 1812, approximately 130 prisoners, including 25 officers, escaped, of whom only 11 were recaptured despite advertised rewards in local newspapers. Many others were either sent to prisons in England or the West Indies, or were released after pledging allegiance to the British Crown. Approximately 1535 French prisoners were incarcerated at Melville between 1803 and 1813, and an unknown number were held during Napoleon’s Hundred Days. Sixty-six Frenchmen are known to have died in the prison, ten of whom were prisoners from the Hundred Days. Nine Spanish prisoners also died during this period.

War of 1812

The War of 1812 brought an influx of American prisoners to Melville Island; up to 1800 at a time were housed in its barracks or on a nearby 350-person prison ship, the Magnet. Most of the French prisoners were released or paroled to make room for the Americans, who were seen as more of a risk. David Stickney was the first recorded American prisoner, arriving on 4 July 1812. Early in the war, many Americans were exchanged for British prisoners in Boston or Salem, Massachusetts, in an arrangement known as a “cartel”; 1981 of the captives taken before October 1812 were thus exchanged, while another seventeen, accused of killing a Canadian farmer and raping his wife, were sent to England and imprisoned. African-American captives were never considered for exchange, and were instead commonly released under the 1807 Abolition Act.

By the end of 1812, maps of the peninsula showed a marked increase in buildings: a two-story common prison, a small hospital, officers’ quarters, a gunner’s house, a turnkey store, fuel sheds, the agent’s office and guard house, a bell house, nine sentry boxes, and four oceanside outhouses. Despite this, the facility was severely overcrowded, a problem compounded by attempts at segregating the remaining French prisoners and the few African-Americans from the majority white American population. 2078 prisoners were recorded by the end of 1812, including 1412 privateers and 572 merchant seamen. More than 3000 arrived over the next two years, including nearly 1000 soldiers captured in the Niagara area.

Accounts of prison life vary: Cuthbertson says that the prisoners were “reportedly well treated”, but prisoner complaints suggested they were “wretched indeed”. Because of the crowded conditions, “the authorities did everything they could to keep the prisoners quiet,” including lying to them. Captured privateers were sent to England in large numbers “to harass and distress that description of prisoners”. All letters sent to and by prisoners were read. Residents of the Melville prison barracks were lice-infested and slept in tier-hung hammocks (first three, and later four tiers), and their activities were more restricted than those of earlier French prisoners. A strict cleaning regimen was observed in an attempt to promote sanitary conditions, and prisoners could be sent to solitary confinement for uncleanliness. Rations were considered “robust”: prisoners were given 0.45 kilograms (1 lb) each of bread and beef and a gill of peas daily.

In October 1812, John Mitchell was appointed as an “American agent” to oversee the treatment of the American prisoners at Melville and to arrange prisoner exchanges. He gave the Americans coffee, sugar, potatoes, tobacco, newspapers, and soap, and also provided money for other purchases. Mitchell was responsible for buying clothing, but lacked the funds to meet demand: in late 1813, almost 1000 of the prisoners were shoeless, and many more had no jackets. Staff at the prison hospital attributed a tuberculosis outbreak to “want of comfortable clothing”. Though Mitchell visited Melville Island regularly, he was primarily concerned with speaking to the officers, not the common prisoners. Mitchell was removed in October 1814 in retaliation for the treatment of the British prisoner agent, Thomas Barclay, by the United States government.

Despite the conditions in the prison, the Americans continued the French tradition of establishing shops within the prison. Goods sold included cigars and smuggled rum. Gambling was a popular pastime, particularly backgammon and other dice games, as well as dancing, singing, and storytelling. One prisoner was able to counterfeit Spanish coins, which found their way into the Halifax economy. On Sundays, church services were conducted and visitors were allowed, though many visiting Haligonians were United Empire Loyalists who came “to gratify their eyes … with sight of what they called ‘rebels’ ”.

The 320 American survivors of the Battle of Boston Harbor were interned on Melville Island in 1813, and their ship, renamed the HMS Chesapeake, was used to ferry prisoners from Melville to England’s Dartmoor Prison.Many officers were paroled to Halifax, but some began a riot at a performance of a patriotic song about the Chesapeake’s defeat. Parole restrictions were tightened: beginning in 1814, paroled officers were required to attend a monthly muster on Melville Island, and those who violated their parole were confined to the prison. After foiled escape plots in 1813 and 1814, fears of a mass escape led to increased security and a 600-prisoner transport to England. Around this time, Lieutenant William Miller, who had been in charge of the prisoners, was replaced by Captain J. Crochet; Miller had been noted for his rudeness, including one occasion when he told the prisoners to “die and be damned, as there is one hundred and fifty acres of land to bury you in, God damn you.” He had also been accused of cruelty by American newspapers, though some prisoners defended him and the veracity of the media claims is questionable.

The crowded and insanitary prison led to frequent outbreaks of infectious diseases, including smallpox, typhoid, pneumonia, and dysentery, and a corresponding increase in mortality rates. 195 American prisoners died on Melville Island of various causes, most of whom were buried on Deadman’s Island; James Brooke suggests a death rate of one per week. The war ended in December 1814, but news of this did not reach Melville until March 1815, during which time about fifty prisoners died. The prisoners were released to “quit Halifax at their own expense”, though some were able to find berths on trade ships. All but 120 had left by mid-April; most of those remaining were hospital patients, who were sent to the Naval Hospital in Halifax in early May. Melville Island was decommissioned in May 1815, and its goods, including 1170 hammocks, were sold at auction in Halifax.

By the decommissioning, over 10,000 French, Spanish and American prisoners had been held at the prison. The vast majority had been Americans: there were 8148 recorded US prisoners, 3542 of whom were privateers from the 92 such ships brought to Halifax.

Receiving depot

After the decommissioning of the military prison, Melville Island was used as a receiving depot for some of the black refugees, the estimated 1600–2000 escaped slaves who arrived in Halifax between 1815 and 1818. In April 1815, seventy-six refugees were moved to Melville from the Halifax Poor House, many ill with smallpox. The refugees were given blankets, “colourful” clothing (often the uniforms of captured or demobilized soldiers), and children’s shoes. Rations included pork or beef, potatoes, rice, cornmeal, molasses, spruce beer (to prevent scurvy), and sometimes coffee. To discourage men from leaving their families at the depot as they worked in Halifax, rations were only given to heads of families. Thomas Jeffery was granted a salary of £1500 (£86,655 as of 2010) for administering the depot. Eighty-two refugees died during the smallpox outbreak, and 500 were vaccinated to prevent the further spread of the disease. An increasing number passed through Melville Island on their way to Canadian settlements: between 727 and 798 are recorded from April to July 1815. Most of these found work in Halifax or moved to land grants, but some returned the following winter “when in distress”. At least 107 of these refugees died on Melville Island. The province’s lieutenant-governor ordered that the refugees be moved to Preston or Halifax in May 1816, and put the land up for lease to “a person of unexceptionable character”, but no lease is recorded during this period. The hospital was officially closed in June 1816.

Beginning in 1818, Melville Island was used as a quarantine hospital for ill immigrants arriving in Nova Scotia. The hospital was operational for short periods in 1818, 1831, and 1846. By 1829, ten buildings were left on Melville Island, all “in a state of neglect and decay”. In 1831, three doctors (Matthias Hoffman, Samuel Head and John Stirling) were paid £30 each (£2125 as of 2010) to care for patients at the quarantine hospital; a nurse later arrived as Matron, bringing with her two teenaged children. In 1847, over 1200 Irish immigrants fleeing the Irish Potato Famine were ordered quarantined on Melville Island by the Board of Health; of these, 203 were held in the “fever hospital”, and 30 died. Typhus victims were also held at Melville, during which time the medical staff were not allowed to leave for fear of spreading the infection.

Diseases encountered among the immigrants included smallpox, typhus, and yellow fever. There were 37 recorded deaths.

British Army

In 1855, Nova Scotia politician Joseph Howe developed a plan to use Melville Island as a recruitment and training centre for American soldiers to fight for the British in the Crimean War. US neutrality laws prevented Americans from participating in overseas wars, so recruiters sent to the US advertised for men to work on the Nova Scotia Railway, and faced arrest if their true purpose was discovered. Upon arrival in Halifax, the men were sent to Melville Island for enlistment and basic training. The first group of 66 men arrived on 6 April 1855, but all refused to join the British Foreign Legion. However, by the end of May there were 71 newly recruited soldiers on the peninsula, and up to 158 total had enlisted. American discontent with the project forced its abandonment in June; the Melville Island depot closed, and the recruits were sent first to Halifax and then to England. Overall the recruitment project enlisted between 500 and 700 men, mostly German and Irish nationals.

After the recruitment project ended, the Admiralty sold the land to the British army for £2800 (£204,081 as of 2010) for use as a military prison. The first 70 prisoners arrived in 1856. At this time, flogging was gradually being phased out as a punishment for military members, who were instead imprisoned under the Mutiny Act of 1844; the purchase of Melville Island allowed these prisoners to be removed from the overcrowded Halifax Citadel. A 22-man military guard supervised the prisoners, who were subjected to hard labour: the chief warder imported 500 tonnes (492 long tons; 551 short tons) of granite from Purcell’s Cove for them to break. Punishments included solitary confinement or “shot drill”, where an inmate was made to carry 11-kilogram (24 lb) cannonballs from one end of the yard to the other. A new 34-cell prison building was constructed in 1884 to alleviate overcrowding. There were some escape attempts during this period, the most violent of which involved the stone hammers used to break stone being repurposed as projectiles and weapons.

British officers from the Halifax garrison conducted inspections of the prison four times per year, and maintenance was carried out either by the prisoners themselves or by soldiers from the Halifax garrison. The prison also housed a schoolroom and chapel, both staffed by army personnel. A new stone prison was built before 1905 next to the older wooden barracks, as well as housing for warders and their families. The new building alleviated reported problems with lack of lighting and ventilation in the previous structure. In December of that year, the Canadian Permanent Force took over wardenship of the prison, at which time there were three remaining prisoners. The land was granted to the Canadian Government as the British left Nova Scotia in 1907. The name was changed in 1909 from “military prison” to “detention barracks”, reflecting a shift in attitude towards incarcerated military personnel: inmates were known as detainees, not prisoners, and after their discharge from the military they maintained no permanent criminal record.

First and Second World Wars

When the First World War began in 1914, Canadian police were given the ability to detain German and Austro-Hungarian nationals, and incarcerate any who refused to agree not to support their homelands in the war. In September, a Spanish ship carrying a large number of men en route to Germany to report for military service was intercepted by the HMS Glory, which brought the ship to Halifax Harbour. Once there, the Germans aboard were taken to Melville Island with a garrison guard, interrogated, and imprisoned under the supervision of the detention barracks staff. Over the next several months, more German nationals were brought to Melville, detained either by British ships or by Canadian police forces. Escape attempts began in October, and a procedure to count prisoners twice daily was instituted in an attempt to prevent them. The anglophone guards often could not communicate with the prisoners or even pronounce their names, resorting to nicknames and complicating efforts in prisoner management. Repairs were made to the prison buildings after several inmates escaped by sawing a hole through the floor of the wooden barracks.

Initially there was no system in place to allow prisoners to send letters; censorship arrangements were made through the Dominion Police in Ottawa, and the American Consul was designated a representative for prisoner welfare. As the war progressed, groups of detainees were transferred to and from other prisons according to their behaviour or level of risk and the number of inmates per institution. After the 1917 Halifax Explosion, prisoners were transferred to the 800-man Amherst Internment Camp at Amherst, Nova Scotia. One of the prisoners transferred may have been Leon Trotsky, although this is disputed.

On 10 April 1935, a fire completely destroyed the old wooden prison barracks, so when the Second World War began in 1939, the remaining prisoners and guards were sent to McNab’s Island. Melville Island was used first to confine deserters from the army, then from 1941 as a temporary storage facility for Canadian Army ammunition depots. When VE Day caused riots in downtown Halifax, there were rumours of a plan to break into the depots and deploy hand grenades; a trooper squad was sent to guard against this possibility, but no “invasion” occurred.

1945–present

After the end of the Second World War, military activities on Melville ended; the land was initially awarded to the Naval Sailors Association, a decision that prompted some disagreement among members of Parliament. Haligonians pushed for the area to be repurposed for recreation, partially due to anxieties about its use as a storage facility for potentially toxic chemicals. In 1947, the Canadian Army leased Melville Island to the Armdale Yacht Club for C$1 per year. The club demolished some of the buildings, renovated and expanded others, widened the road, and filled in a new embankment for boating. Further renovations were done in 1952 and the 1960s, adding verandahs to the two clubhouses (one of which dates to 1808 and was used as a warden’s house) and remodelling their interiors. Though the club’s lease was initially year-to-year, in 1956 it began a 99-year lease from the Department of National Defence. The club dredged Melville Cove, added a “marine railway”, and created a large marina, at which dozens of boats are now docked.

Culture

During certain periods, Melville Island was a social destination for Halifax residents. Haligonians visited the “town fair” run by French inmates during the Napoleonic period. The peninsula was called a “great resort of the ladies of Halifax” by an 1855 newspaper. However, from the beginning of the First World War to 1947, visitors to Melville were restricted. Though it was re-opened with the arrival of the Armdale Yacht Club, the area’s history was largely forgotten until the 2000 establishment of Deadman’s Island Park on the adjacent peninsula. Since then, the site has become a tourist attraction, though its historicity is limited by the land’s current use as a marina. A model made from beef and pork bones by French prisoners and a cell key to Melville Island are preserved at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax.

The peninsula has also been the subject of artistic and literary treatments. A number of writings by Melville prisoners have been preserved, including a diary by François-Lambert Bourneuf and an account credited to Benjamin Waterhouse (though historians are unsure of its true authorship). Politician Joseph Howe wrote a poem describing its use as a military prison. The site’s history has been the subject of a book by Brian Cuthbertson, and another by Iris Shea and Heather Watts. The prison is the subject of a painting held by the UK National Trust and a Nova Scotian folk song, among other cultural works.

 

Colonel George Francis Gillman Stanley

Colonel George Francis Gillman Stanley, (July 6, 1907 – September 13, 2002) was a Canadian historian, author, soldier, teacher, public servant, and designer of the current Canadian flag.

Career

George F.G. Stanley was born in Calgary, Alberta in 1907 and received a BA from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He went to Keble College, University of Oxford, in 1929 as the Rhodes Scholar from Alberta, and held a Beit Fellowship in Imperial Studies and a Royal Society of Canada Scholarship. He earned a BA, MA, MLitt and DPhil. Always a keen athlete, he played for the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club, which won the Spengler Cup in 1931. At Oxford, he wrote his ground-breaking book, The Birth of Western Canada: A History of The Riel Rebellions, and began his lifelong work on Louis Riel.

Stanley returned to Canada in 1936 and was appointed a professor of history at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. He joined the military upon arriving there and qualified as a lieutenant in the New Brunswick Rangers. He served as an infantry training officer in Fredericton and then proceeded overseas during World War II as historian (rising to Deputy-Director) in the Historical Section at Canadian Army Headquarters in London, England; he was also responsible for administering the War Artist Program, whose staff included Bruno Bobak, Molly Lamb Bobak, Alex Colville, Charles Comfort, Lawren P. Harris and Will Ogilvie. Stanley was discharged as a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1947. He then taught at the University of British Columbia, holding the first ever chair in Canadian history in Canada. He came out of military retirement in 1948 to help fight floods in the Fraser Valley and was on the Reserve of Officers until 1967. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1949) to do research into the history of Canadian government policy in dealing with Aboriginal people.

In 1949, Stanley went to teach at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) in Kingston, Ontario, where he remained for twenty years. At RMC, he became head of the History Department, served as the first Dean of Arts for seven years (1962-1969), and had the rare opportunity to build ab initio an outstanding faculty in the humanities and social sciences. He taught the first undergraduate course in military history ever given in Canada and wrote a groundbreaking textbook, entitled Canada’s Soldiers, 1604-1954: The Military History of An Unmilitary People (1954), which became required reading for every service person for three decades. His students included John de Chastelain, Jack Granatstein, and Desmond Morton. Thanks in part to Stanley’s efforts as RMC Dean of Arts, the Royal Military College of Canada Pipes and Drums were equipped in 1965 with most of their highland kit, including the Mackenzie tartan.

Stanley’s two decades in Kingston were busy ones. He served as secretary and president of the Kingston Historical Society and edited Historic Kingston for several years. He was president of the Arts Society, director of the Art Collection Society, served on various committees working to save Kingston’s old limestone buildings, was president of the St. Andrew’s Society, and acted as clerk of his church’s vestry council. Stanley was President of the Canadian Historical Association (1955-1956), a member of the Massey Commission’s Committee on Historic Sites and Monutments (1950-1951), and a founding member of the Archaeological and Historic Sites Board of Ontario (1953-1969). He was chairman of the federal government’s Centennial Publications Committee and acted as chairman of centennial celebrations in Pittsburgh Township, Ontario. It was while Stanley was at the Royal Military College that he suggested the design for the Canadian flag, which was adopted on 15 February 1965.

In 1969, Stanley returned to Mount Allison University to become founding director of the new Canadian Studies program, the first of its kind in Canada. He was also the first holder of the Edgar and Dorothy Davidson Chair of Canadian Studies (1969-1975). At Mount Allison, Stanley taught trail-blazing courses in Canadian civilization, dealing with literature, music, architecture and culture. He served as a member of the Commission de Planification Académique de l’Université de Moncton (1969-1972), and a member of the advisory panel on the Symons Commission on Canadian Studies (1972-1975). He was a founding member of the Atlantic Canada Institute. He also served a member of the Federal Government Advisory Board on Canadian Military Colleges (1973-1979), on the Council of the New Brunswick Army Cadet League and of the Maritime Automobile Association, and as president of the New Brunswick Council of St. John Ambulance. He was a director of the Canadian Association of Rhodes Scholars (1983-1987) and of SEVEC, served as a member of the Advisory Board of the Canadian War Museum (1988-1990) and as Honorary Colonel of the Royal New Brunswick Regiment (1982-1992), and continued his long-standing role as corresponding member of the Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française.

George Stanley retired from teaching in 1975, but remained active in public life. From 1981 to 1987, he was Lieutenant-Governor of Brunswick, a post in which he served with great distinction. While Lieutenant-Governor, Stanley continued to act as General Editor of The Collected Writings of Louis Riel in five volumes, which appeared in 1985 after seven years of work by five Canadian scholars; this landmark project was published ahead of schedule and under budget. Well into his nineties, Stanley continued to research, write, read manuscripts, review books, give interviews and talks, encourage young scholars, and maintain an active interest in the militia, cadets, St. John Ambulance, and SEVEC. He answered a steady flow of letters from school children asking about the Canadian flag. He never missed an opportunity to promote Canadian citizenship and love of country. In 1998, he donated his book collection to the Special Collections of the MacKimmie Library at the University of Calgary; his personal papers are now also deposited there. Stanley died in 2002 and was buried with full military honours in Sackville, New Brunswick.

In 2003, a former student reflected: “George Stanley was a scholar revered by his peers throughout the world and equally he was held in the same regard by all his former students, many of whom became professional historians and leaders in their fields across Canada. Stanley was the Head of the History Department when I was a young cadet at RMC. In a highly organized and rigidly structured environment, he stood out to us as the perfect role model – a gentleman, a scholar, a friend and later a confidant. He led by example and set his students on a path of personal and individual achievement unhampered by his own prejudices and influences. As a result, Stanley sent his students into the world equipped to make up their own minds and not just echo what they had been taught.”

Dr. Desmond Morton, one of Stanley’s students at RMC in the 1950s and now a distinguished Canadian military historian and author, and formerly the founding director of Montreal’s McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, has observed: “George’s books and their non-conventional wisdom are a great contribution to this country. When you do the unexpected, you make a difference, and George always argued differently — especially for the rights of French Canada, which wasn’t a popular thing to do at the time.”

The historian, R.C. [Rod] Macleod of the University of Alberta, has written that: “Much of English Canada’s understanding of the formative years of the Canadian West comes from George Stanley’s remarkable work, The Birth of Western Canada. Considering that it was one of the earliest works by an academically trained historian in this country, it has stood the test of time remarkably well. No other work of Canadian history published before the Second World War is as regularly read by historians, students and the general public…. [This] subject will always be identified with his name.”

Public life

In 1981, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau appointed George Stanley the 25th Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick since Confederation. The mid-1980s were a festive time as New Brunswickers marked their province’s bicentennial and many other historic events. During those years, eminent visitors from around the world, such as Queen Elizabeth II and Pope John Paul II, also came to help New Brunswick celebrate. George and Ruth Stanley, with their strong sense of tradition and their comfortable manner with people from all walks of life, brought “a new level of decorum” to this viceregal role. When George Stanley retired from his post as Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick in 1987, a testimonial dinner was given in his honour at CFB Gagetown; the guests at the head table were all Canadian generals, who had flown in to honour their former professor from the Royal Military College.

Family life

In 1946, George Stanley married Ruth L. Hill, ONB, BCL, LLD, a Montreal lawyer (she was gold medalist in law at McGill University). They had three daughters: Dr. Della M.M. Stanley [The Hon. Thomas Cromwell], Professor Marietta R.E. Stanley (1952–2008) [formerly married to Maurice McAtamney], and Dr. Laurie C.C. Stanley-Blackwell [John D. Blackwell]. The Stanleys also have two grandchildren: Thomas E.G.S. Cromwell [Megan Ormshaw] and Ruth L.H.Q. Stanley-Blackwell.

Honours

In 1976, George Stanley was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 1994. He was also the recipient of twelve honorary degrees (Laval, Mount Allison, St. Dunstan’s, Alberta, Royal Military College, St. Francis Xavier, University of New Brunswick, Dalhousie, Calgary, Ottawa, Moncton and St. Thomas), in addition to his five earned degrees. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) and of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS). In 1983, he was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Heraldry Society of Canada (FRHSC). In 1950, he was awarded the Royal Society of Canada’s J. B. Tyrrell Historical Medal. In 1955, he was elected president of the Canadian Historical Association; his landmark presidential address, entitled “Act or Pact? Another Look at Confederation,” has been frequently reprinted and remains a core reading for students of Canadian history. He was Professor Emeritus of both the Royal Military College and Mount Allison University.

Early in his career, Stanley received an Army Efficiency Medal, but in 1992 he was awarded a Canadian Forces Decoration (CD); at 85, he was almost certainly the oldest Canadian soldier so to be decorated. Stanley was an Honorary Ex-Cadet #H889 of the Royal Military College. He was made a Knight of Justice of the Order of Saint John (and held the Victoria Medal with bar of the Order), a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Lazarus, and a Comendador of the Brazilian Order of São Paulo. He was a Fellow of the Company of Military Historians and a Paul Harris Fellow of Rotary International. He was a Life Member of the Royal Canadian Legion, the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association, the York-Sunbury Historical Society, the Kingston Historical Society, the United Empire Loyalists’ Association of Canada, the Military Institute of Fredericton, the Fredericton Garrison Club, and the Union Club of Saint John. He had the distinction, while he was the Queen’s Representative in New Brunswick, of being made an honorary citizen of the “Republic of Madawaska”. In 1994, Stanley was awarded a special certificate of merit by the Kingston Historical Society to mark the 100th anniversary of the Society and to recognize his long devotion to their work and to historical research and conservation.

Historical plaques honouring Stanley have been erected in the Public Library, Stoney Creek, Ontario (includes a bronze bust by Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook), in front of the Public Library, Sackville, New Brunswick, at his boyhood home in Calgary, Alberta, and on the Parade Square, Royal Military College, Kingston, Ontario. Sergeant J.A. Scobbie, 1st Battalion, The King’s Own Scottish Borderers, composed a march for bagpipes to mark the occasion of Col. Stanley’s official visit to Edinburgh Castle in 1986. Lisa Lapointe has composed and recorded a ballad, entitled “One Single Leaf,” honouring Stanley’s role in designing the Canadian maple leaf flag. A street is named for him in Sackville, NB. In 2003, the annual George F.G. Stanley Lecture series in Canadian Studies was established at Mount Allison University to honour his legacy to the university.

Designer of the Canadian Flag

On 23 March 1964, Stanley wrote a formal four-page memorandum to John Matheson, a prominent member of the multi-party parliamentary flag committee, suggesting that the new flag of Canada should be instantly recognizable, and simple enough so that school children could draw it. He included a rough sketch of his design in the memorandum.

Stanley had become friends with Matheson in Kingston, Ontario, where their children learned Scottish dancing together. Two months before the Great Flag Debate erupted on 17 May 1964 with Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson’s courageous—or strategic—speech at the Royal Canadian Legion’s national convention in Winnipeg, Matheson had paid a visit to Stanley at Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) in Kingston. Over lunch at the RMC mess hall, the two discussed heraldry, the history and the future of Canada, and the conundrum of the flag. And as the two men walked across the parade grounds, Stanley gestured toward the roof of the Mackenzie Building and the college flag flapping atop its tower.

“There, John, is your flag,” Stanley remarked, suggesting the RMC College Flag’s red-white-red as a good basis for a distinctive Canadian flag. At the centre, Stanley proposed, should be placed a single red maple leaf instead of the college emblem: a mailed fist holding a sprig of three green maple leaves.

The suggestion was followed by Stanley’s detailed memorandum of 23 March 1964 on the history of Canada’s emblems, in which he warned that any new flag “must avoid the use of national or racial symbols that are of a divisive nature” and that it would be “clearly inadvisable” to create a flag that carried either a Union Jack or a fleur-de-lis. His vision provided a sound rationale and brought together all the key components of the new flag design. Stanley wrote the pivotal flag memorandum in his study at Cluny House, Pittsburgh Township, just east of Kingston; this fine stone residence was built in 1820 by Colonel Donald Macpherson (c.1755-1829), a maternal uncle of Sir John A. Macdonald. Stanley was forbidden by his superiors at RMC from appearing in person before the Parliamentary Flag Committee, which was made up of 15 MPs from various federal political parties.

The Stanley proposal was placed on a wall of the Flag Committee’s meeting room in Ottawa with literally hundreds of other flag designs, and eventually was selected as one of the final three designs for consideration. In a classic Canadian compromise, the Stanley design, which was supported by the sole NDP member (Reid Scott) on the Flag Committee, beat out John Diefenbaker’s flag (a combination of fleurs-de-lis, a maple leaf and the Union Flag) and the Pearson Pennant (three red leaves conjoined on a stem set against a white background with blue bars on either side).

Stanley’s design was slightly modified by Jacques Saint-Cyr, a graphic artist with the Canadian Government Exhibition Commission (and ironically a Quebec sovereigntist), who gave the flag its current look. It was officially adopted as the flag of Canada (replacing the Canadian Red Ensign) by the House of Commons on 15 December 1964 and by the Senate on 17 December 1964, and proclaimed by H.M. Queen Elizabeth II, taking effect on 15 February 1965. At 2:00 am on 15 December 1964, following the historic vote in the House of Commons to adopt Stanley’s maple leaf design as Canada’s new flag, Matheson wrote to Stanley: “Your proposed flag has just now been approved by the Commons 163 to 78. Congratulations. I believe it is an excellent flag that will serve Canada well.”

Many Canadians did not yet share this sentiment. Shortly before the official flag raising on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on 15 February 1965 (February 15 was declared National Flag of Canada Day in 1996), Stanley received an anonymous death threat. Unperturbed, he attended the ceremony in a colourful and quintessentially Canadian Hudson’s Bay coat, which stood out dramatically in a sea of dark formal attire worn by the other dignitaries.

Support for the new flag grew quickly, including in Quebec. As Matheson noted in his book Canada’s Flag (1980), “when in June 1965, Dr. George F.G. Stanley of [the] Royal Military College … was granted an honorary doctorate at Université Laval, he was loudly applauded by the student body when the Canadian flag was referred to in his citation. The applause interrupted the citation.” French-Canadian nationalists had long demanded that the Union Jack (Union Flag) be removed from any future Canadian flag.

Some debate lingered over whether Stanley or Saint-Cyr should get credit for the flag, but it was settled in 1995 when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien officially recognized Stanley as the designer of Canada’s flag. Stanley also suggested the name for the Canadian pale, an original vexillological and heraldic device first used in the Maple Leaf flag.

In a recent feature article for The Canadian Encyclopedia, entitled “The Stanley Flag,” Richard Foot observed: “The main players in the flag saga are now gone. Pearson died in 1972, Stanley in 2002 and Matheson in 2013. But what they created has lasted for nearly half a century and counting — flown from the top of the Peace Tower and from thousands of public and private buildings across the country, from embassies around the world, and recently, at Olympic medal ceremonies in Sochi, Russia. The Stanley flag is now a universally-recognized Canadian symbol.”

Position on Immigration to Canada before World War II

In their book, None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948 (1982), Irving Abella and Harold Troper quote a letter George Stanley wrote on 29 December 1938 to the federal Conservative leader, Robert James Manion, in support of a speech Manion had recently given in Quebec, opposing any immigration “so long as any Canadian remained unemployed.” As a novice academic, Stanley had returned to Canada from the University of Oxford in 1936 during the Great Depression and was distressed by the destitution he encountered, particularly in his native Western Canada. At that moment (late December 1938), he found it difficult to sympathize with “those who shed tears over the fate of Jews in Europe and who raised funds for the assistance of foreign refugees … [while they] ignore the distress on their own doorstep. … Charity begins at home.”

With perfect hindsight, it is all too easy to misconstrue this private statement as anti-Jewish. Events in Europe and North America were unfolding quickly during this period. The future was far from clear. The MS St. Louis crisis did not occur until June 1939. War did not break out until September 1939. It should also be remembered that Stanley served in the Canadian military during World War II, a cause to which he was profoundly committed. One of his responsibilities was supervising the Canadian War Artists, who revealed the true horrors of the war, including those of the concentration camps, to the world. Furthermore, in his later life, Stanley’s circle included highly esteemed Jewish friends whose interests ranged from business to the arts.

 

Walter Harris Callow

Walter Harris Callow (1896-1958) was a Canadian veteran who invented the accessibility bus for veterans returning from WW2 and others in wheelchairs (1947). He designed and managed the Walter Callow Wheelchair Bus, while he himself was blind, quadriplegic and, eventually had both legs amputated. Callow planned trips for disabled veterans, tours of the countryside, picnics, sporting events, art classes and other activities. He was born in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia and became a resident the Camp Hill Military Hospital for twenty years.

History

As a member of the Royal Flying Corps in Camp Mohawk, Ontario, Callow crashed in a test flight in 1918. He received a serious back injury and a heart condition. He continued on in a lumber business in Advocate, Nova Scotia. He eventually became bed-ridden in 1931 because of his injuries, the same year his mother and wife died and left him with a young child. He continued business by selling real-estate.

In 1937 Callow became a full-time resident of the Camp Hill Hospital and two years later he was blind and quadriplegic. While at the Hospital he established a board of directors and hired two secretaries. He established the Callow Cigarette Fund to send cigarettes to soldiers serving over-seas during World War 2.

After the war, he turned his cigarette fund into a wheelchair coach service for disabled veterans (1947). He started by having two custom made buses built in Pubnico, Nova Scotia. He eventually garnered the support of General Motors and Ford to build the wheelchair coaches. He named the company the “Callow Veterans’ and Invalids’ Welfare League” and established an office in Halifax. He worked tirelessly to make facilities accessible and to make visible the needs of those with physical disabilities.

His funeral was conducted in Halifax with full military honours. The only time that Callow had the opportunity to ride on his bus is when his body was returned to Advocate to be buried.

Legacy

There was an unveiling of the Walter Callow Memorial Plaque at the Advocate cemetery on 10 August 2001.

The Walter Callow Wheelchair Bus continues today.

 

Edouard Beaupré

Edouard Beaupré (January 9, 1881 – July 3, 1904) was a circus and freak show giant, wrestler, strongman, and a star in Barnum and Bailey’s circus.

Life

Beaupré was the eldest of 20 children born to Gaspard and Florestine (born Piché) Beaupré in the newly founded parish of Willow Bunch, Saskatchewan, Canada, and was the first child to be baptized in the parish. Beaupré did not appear abnormally large at birth, and for the first three years of his life, his growth was relatively normal. However, Edouard’s growth rate then increased dramatically, so much so that by age nine he was six feet tall, and by the age of 17 his height was recorded at 7 feet 1 inch (2.16 metres). In 1902, Edouard’s height was measured at 8 feet 2.5 inches (2.50 metres) and he weighed over 400 pounds (180 kilograms). His death certificate described him as being 8 ft 3 in (2.51 m) tall and still growing.

As a young man Beaupré quickly grew into a first-rate horseman. Edouard had a dream of becoming a cowboy when he was growing up. When Beaupré was 15, he quit school to pursue his dreams of riding the open range. Legend has it that he had to give up his cowboy dream because his legs dragged on the ground when he rode even the tallest horses, but that is unlikely, since an average-sized saddle horse is about 5 feet tall at the saddle. He then decided to use his size to his advantage to support his family. Edouard would become known as the “Willow Bunch Giant”.

At the urging of others and to help support his family, he went on to tour the North American freak show circuit. Over the years he would be stared at by onlookers, wrestle strongmen, and perform feats of strength. His signature stunt was crouching underneath a horse and lifting it up to his shoulders. He would then go on to star in Barnum and Bailey Circus, even though life on the road was not easy for Beaupré. (To accommodate his size, hotel staff would line up trunks to support a second mattress to lengthen his bed.) He would spend the latter part of his short life performing in freak shows and circuses reportedly lifting horses as heavy as 900 pounds (410 kg).

While in Montréal, Que., March 25, 1901, Edouard wrestled Louis Cyr, who was known as one of the strongest men. The match was very short, Cyr winning the match, because Edouard didn’t dare to really touch him, probably because of his gentle nature.

Death

In 1902 Beaupré was diagnosed with tuberculosis. By the time he reached the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904, his rapid growth and the disease had taken a heavy toll on him. He became ill and died at a local St. Louis hospital on July 3, 1904. Even at the time of his death at age 23, doctors determined that Beaupré was still growing.

Gaspard Beaupré made a trip to St. Louis to retrieve his son’s body. When he reached his destination, however, Gaspard turned back when he realized that he didn’t have enough money to pay double fare to return home with the body.

The elder Beaupré believed his son’s body was going to be buried in St. Louis or used for medical experiments, but that was not the case. When the circus refused to pay for the transportation costs back to Willow Bunch, Edouard Beaupré’s body was embalmed and put on display.

Scientific study

Around 1905, his body made its way to a museum in Montreal and then a circus. When the circus went bankrupt, the body was claimed by the Université de Montréal, whose scientists then discovered the cause of Beaupré’s giant status — his pituitary gland had secreted an abnormal amount of growth hormone throughout his body.

Burial

In 1975 Ovila Lespérance, Beaupré’s nephew, discovered the whereabouts of his uncle’s body. Lespérance’s efforts to return Beaupré’s body back to Willow Bunch were unsuccessful, as the university claimed it was still needed for research and refused to assist with the efforts to give Beaupré a proper burial. An agreement was finally reached in 1989. To ensure that Beaupré would not be publicly displayed or used for personal gain, his family insisted that his body be cremated. His remains were brought to Willow Bunch, and buried during a memorial service on July 7, 1990.

 

Raid on Lunenburg

The Raid on Lunenburg (also known as the Sack of Lunenburg) occurred during the American Revolution when the American Privateer, Captain Noah Stoddard of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and four other privateer vessels attacked the British settlement at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia on 1 July 1782. In Nova Scotia, the assault on Lunenburg was the most spectacular raid of the war. On the morning of 1 July Stoddard led approximately 170 American privateers in four heavily armed vessels and overpowered Lunenburg’s defence, capturing the blockhouses and burning the house of the local militia colonel. The privateers then looted the settlement and kept the militia at bay with the threat of destroying the entire town. The American privateers plundered the town and took three prisoners, who were later released from Boston without a ransom having been paid.

Historical context

During the American Revolution, Nova Scotia was invaded regularly by American Revolutionary forces by land and sea. Throughout the war, American privateers devastated the maritime economy by raiding many of the coastal communities. There were constant attacks by privateers,such as the numerous raids on Liverpool (October 1776, March 1777, September 1777, May 1778, September 1780) and on Annapolis Royal (1781). There was also a naval engagement with a French fleet at Spanish River, Cape Breton Island (1781).

On 17 November 1775, Washington’s Marblehead Regiment aboard the Hancock and Franklin made an unopposed landing at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Three days later, they expedited to Nova Scotia and raided Canso. In 1779, American privateers returned to Canso and destroyed the fisheries, which were worth ₤50,000 a year to Britain.

The 84th Regiment had been defending Nova Scotia, attacking an American privateer ship off of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia (1775). The 84th was led by Captain John MacDonald. They boarded the warship when some of its crew were ashore seeking plunder. They captured the crew and sailed her into Halifax. There were also Patriot attacks on Nova Scotia by land, such as the Battle of Fort Cumberland and the Siege of Saint John (1777). There was the constant threat that American Patriots would attack Halifax by land.

The month prior to the Raid on Lunenburg, there was a significant Naval battle off Halifax between an American privateer and a Royal Naval vessel.

Raid on Lunenburg

During the early morning of 1 July 1782, five American privateers, who had left Boston under the command of Captain Noah Stoddard, began to raid Lunenburg. Captain Stoddard’s ship was the schooner Scammel, which had sixteen guns and sixty men. Stoddard organized both a land and sea assault of the town. The vessels first landed at Red Head, two miles outside of the town and soldiers began to march toward the town. The vessels then moved toward a frontal assault on the town.

The Lunenburg militia was led by Colonel John Creighton (judge) and Major D. C. Jessen. Colonel Creighton and five other militia men occupied the eastern blockhouse and began firing at the approaching land assault. Several of Captain Stoddard’s privateers were wounded. The landed fleet of privateers then rounded East Point. The vessels landed and quickly took control of the western blockhouse and established themselves at Blockhouse Hill. Captain Creighton and others in the blockhouse were cannonaded into silence and the blockhouse burned. Colonel Creighton surrendered and was taken prisoner along with two other men aboard Captain Stoddard’s vessel Scammel.

Resistance was also offered by Major D. C. Jessen. He was initially held up in his home, which the privateers fired full of bullets. He escaped and his house was looted. Major Jessen assembled with a militia behind the hill overlooking the town. A militia from La Have under the command of Major Joseph Pernette also advanced toward Lunenburg to join Major Jessen. Captain Stoddard sent a message to Jensen and Pernette that if they advanced on the town, all the homes would be burned. To ensure his threat was not idle, Captain Stoddard burned down Major Jessen’s home.

Captain Stoddard’s privateers looted the town and destroyed what remained. The Reverend Johann Gottlob Schmeisser tried to interfere and was bound by the privateers and placed in the middle of town.

Relief came when Lt. Governor Hamond dispatched from Halifax three ships under the command of Captain Douglass. Captain Stoddard began the retreat. Despite not having received a ransom, Captain Stoddard released Colonel Creighton and the other prisoners after they arrived in Boston.

 

Sunanda Pushkar

Sunanda Pushkar (27 June 1964 – 17 January 2014) was an Indo-Canadian businessperson and the wife of Indian minister Shashi Tharoor. She was a sales manager in the Dubai-based TECOM Investments, and a co-owner of the India-based Rendezvous Sports World.

Early life

Sunanda Pushkar was born on 27 June 1964 in a Kashmiri Pandit family of landlords and army officers native to Bomai. She was the only daughter of Lt Col Pushkar Nath Dass and Jaya Dass. Her father retired from the army in 1983. She had two brothers, one of whom works for a bank; the other is in the Army. The family moved from Bomai to Jammu in 1990, after their house was set on fire by militants. She graduated from the Government College for Women in Srinagar, where she studied during 1986-88.

Personal life

While studying at the Government College, she married a fellow Kashmiri Pandit and a hotel management graduate Sanjay Raina. The couple divorced in 1988. Subsequently, Sunanda went to Dubai in 1989 and married Sujith Menon in 1991. Their son was born in November 1992. In October 2009, she met Shashi Tharoor at a party organised by the billionaire Sunny Varkey. Tharoor had arrived in Dubai in 2007, with his Canadian wife Christa Giles. Sunanda married Shashi Tharoor in 2010, after he was elected to the Indian Parliament. The couple had a Malayali wedding ceremony in Tharoor’s ancestral home at Elavanchery in Kerala, India. This was the third marriage for both of them.

Business career

In India, Pushkar had briefly worked as a receptionist at the Centaur Lake View hotel in Srinagar, after doing a course in hotel management. After coming to Dubai, she started an event management business called Expressions, and became well known for her networking with sponsors and artists for fashion shows. Her company organised several model shows for product launches, featuring several Indian fashion designers and models, including Hemant Trivedi, Rhea Pillai, Vikram Phadnis and Aishwarya Rai. Later, she joined Bozell Prime Advertising as an accounts executive. She and her second husband Sujith Menon organised a Mammootty show together, which made a financial loss. According to one report, the couple had collaborated on the show in an attempt to save their failing marriage. According to Sunanda, Sujith had run into financial trouble as a financial consultant. Sujith returned to India, and died in an accident in Delhi in March 1997.

After Sujith’s death, Sunanda started getting threatening calls from his creditors. For a few months, she left her four-year old son with her sister-in-law, and later with her parents. By the time she brought him back to Dubai, he had developed a communication disorder. She left Bozell Prime to spend time with her son, and later joined Ravissant. Struggling as a small-time event manager in Dubai, she moved in as a paying guest at her friend’s apartment in Al Satwa. She spelt her name as “Sue P. Menon” on her business cards, and later, started using “Pushkar” (an alternative spelling of her father’s name) as her last name. According to her, she faced financial troubles, as she had to repay Sujith’s debts, support her parents and her brother through engineering college.

Impressed by the Canadian healthcare system, she emigrated to Canada in the 1990s, as her son needed speech therapy. According to one account, she lived with a banker companion in Toronto. According to Sunanda, she became a partner in an IT firm called “Valley Resources” through sweat equity, after a San Francisco-based friend introduced her to the founders. Subsequently, she became wealthy during the dot-com bubble, managing to buy her own house and a BMW car. The business was impacted by the post-9/11 slowdown and closed in 2001. After four months of unemployment and financial difficulties, Sunanda did a course in emotional intelligence, and joined a company called Noble House International. She organised “Human Potential Reengineering” programmes for several banks in Miami, Amsterdam and Geneva.

Sunanda felt that she was not earning enough at Noble House. In August 2004, she moved to Dubai with a Canadian passport, working as a general manager for Best Homes. Later, she joined TECOM investments to work on the International Media Production Zone. She was financially successful, buying two 3-bedroom apartments at Palm Jumeirah, an apartment in Jumeirah Beach Residence and two more apartments in the Executive Towers.

Return to India

IPL controversy

When she was dating Shashi, Sunanda started getting media attention in India, as it became known that she had been given sweat equity worth 700 million in Rendezvous Sports World. In 2010, the company bid for the IPL cricket team Kochi Tuskers Kerala, which represented Tharoor’s native state Kerala. The company was founded in 2009, while Sunanda Pushkar was made a Director of the company on 25 February 2010, just 18 days before the IPL bid. There were allegations that Shashi Tharoor had misused his ministerial position to ask for a free stake in the company, and that Sunanda was acting as a proxy for him. The controversy ultimately resulted in Shashi Tharoor’s resignation as a minister. In her defence, Sunanda argued that she had been invited to join Rendezvous because of her “extensive international experience as a business executive, marketing manager and entrepreneur”. She also stated that she had been given a similar offer by Karim Morani of Kolkata Knight Riders in the past. In April 2010, Sunanda announced that she had relinquished her stake in the company following the controversy. However, she continued to hold the stake, after was told that there is no provision under the BCCI’s IPL rules for surrender of shares at that stage. Later in 2014, after the Twitter controversy (see below) and shortly before her death, Sunanda stated that she had taken upon herself “the crimes of this man [Shashi Tharoor] during IPL”.

Twitter incident

On 15 January 2014, a series of intimate messages, supposedly sent by the Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar to Tharoor, were posted on Tharoor’s Twitter account. The messages proclaimed Tarar’s love for Tharoor. Tharoor tried to downplay the incident by stating that his account had been hacked. However, Sunanda later stated that the account had not been hacked and that she had posted the messages to expose what she believed to be Mehr’s stalking of her husband. She accused Mehr of being an ISI agent. Later, she stated that she did not want to go public about the matter, especially in an election year. The next day, a note titled as “Joint statement by Sunanda and Shashi Tharoor” was published on Shashi Tharoor’s Facebook page. The note stated that the couple was happily married, and that some personal comments not intended for publication had been misrepresented after being posted to Twitter. The note also stated that Sunanda had been hospitalised after being ill, and was seeking rest.

Death

On 17 January 2014, a day after the Twitter controversy, Sunanda was found dead in room number 345 of the Leela Palace hotel in Chanakyapuri, New Delhi. Shashi Tharoor discovered her body, when she did not wake up from her sleep in the evening. He informed the Delhi Police, who recovered the body from the hotel and sent it for postmortem. According to initial reports, Sunanda was suspected to have committed suicide. Later reports stated that the cause of death was unnatural; the doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences gave a preliminary autopsy report that revealed injury marks on her body. They said that these injuries may or may not be the cause of death. The autopsy indicated that she died of drug overdose, most likely a combination of sedatives, other strong medicines and probably alcohol. An investigation has been ordered by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate to examine the cause of poisoning and to ascertain if it was murder or suicide. Her body was cremated at Lodhi Crematorium in South Delhi.

Doctors at KIMS Hospital Trivandrum, who had examined her a few days earlier said that Sunanda did not have serious health problems. However, Sunanda had hinted about her death, hours before her body was recovered from the hotel.

 

Buffy Sainte-Marie

Buffy Sainte-Marie, (born February 20, 1941) is a Canadian-American Cree singer-songwriter, musician, composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues of Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire also includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism.
She founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project, an educational curriculum devoted to better understanding Native Americans. She has won recognition and many awards and honours for both her music and her work in education and social activism.
Personal life
She was born Beverly Sainte-Marie in 1941 on the Piapot Cree First Nations Reserve in the Qu’Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was orphaned and later adopted, growing up in Wakefield, Massachusetts with parents Albert and Winifred Sainte-Marie, who were related to her biological parents. She attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, earning degrees (BA 1963 and PhD 1983) in teaching and Oriental philosophy. and graduating in the top ten of her class.
In 1964 on a return trip to the Piapot Cree reserve in Canada for a Powwow she was welcomed and (in a Cree Nation context) adopted by the youngest son of Chief Piapot, Imu Piapot and his wife, who added to Sainte-Marie’s cultural value of, and place in, native culture.
In 1968 she married surfing teacher Dewain Bugbee of Hawaii; they divorced in 1971. She married Sheldon Wolfchild from Minnesota in 1975; they have a son, Dakota “Cody” Starblanket Wolfchild. That union also ended and she married, thirdly, to Jack Nitzsche in the early 1980s, but her current partner is Chuck Wilson (since 1993). She currently lives on Kauai.
She became an active friend of the Bahá’í Faith by the mid-1970s when she is said to have appeared in the 1973 Third National Baha’i Youth Conference at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and has continued to appear at concerts, conferences and conventions of that religion since then. In 1992, she appeared in the musical event prelude to the Bahá’í World Congress, a double concert “Live Unity: The Sound of the World” in 1992 with video broadcast and documentary. In the video documentary of the event Sainte-Marie is seen on the Dini Petty Show explaining the Bahá’í teaching of Progressive revelation. She also appears in the 1985 video “Mona With The Children” by Douglas John Cameron.
Career
Sainte-Marie played piano and guitar, self-taught, in her childhood and teen years. In college some of her songs, “Ananias”, the Indian lament, “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone” and “Mayoo Sto Hoon” (in Hindi) were already in her repertoire.
1960s
By 1962, in her early twenties, Sainte-Marie was touring alone, developing her craft and performing in various concert halls, folk music festivals and Native Americans reservations across the United States, Canada and abroad. She spent a considerable amount of time in the coffeehouses of downtown Toronto’s old Yorkville district, and New York City’s Greenwich Village as part of the early to mid-1960s folk scene, often alongside other emerging Canadian contemporaries, such as Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell (she also introduced Joni to Eliot Roberts, who became Joni’s manager).
She quickly earned a reputation as a gifted songwriter, and many of her earliest songs were covered, and often turned into chart-topping hits, by other artists including Chet Atkins, Janis Joplin and Taj Mahal. One of her most popular songs, “Until It’s Time for You to Go”, has been recorded by artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Michael Nesmith, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra, Roberta Flack, Françoise Hardy, Cher, Maureen McGovern, and Bobby Darin, while “Piney Wood Hills” was made into a country music hit by Bobby Bare. Her vocal style features a frequently recurring, insistent, unusually sustained vibrato, one more prominent than can be found in the music of any other well-known popular music performer.
In 1963, recovering from a throat infection Sainte-Marie became addicted to codeine and recovering from the experience became the basis of her song “Cod’ine”, later covered by Donovan, Janis Joplin, The Charlatans, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Man, the Litter, The Leaves, Jimmy Gilmer, Gram Parsons, Charles Brutus McClay, The Barracudas (spelt “Codeine”), The Golden Horde, and more recently by Courtney Love. Also in 1963 Sainte-Marie witnessed wounded soldiers returning from Vietnam at a time when the U.S. government was denying involvement – this inspired her protest song “Universal Soldier” which was released on her debut album, It’s My Way on Vanguard Records in 1964, and later became a hit for Donovan. She was subsequently named Billboard Magazine’s Best New Artist. Some of her songs such as “My Country ‘Tis of Thy People You’re Dying” (1964, included on her 1966 album) addressing the mistreatment of Native Americans created a lot of controversy at the time.
In 1967, Sainte-Marie released the album Fire and Fleet and Candlelight, which contained her interpretation of the traditional Yorkshire dialect song “Lyke Wake Dirge”. Sainte-Marie’s other well-known songs include “Mister Can’t You See”, (a Top 40 U.S. hit in 1972); “He’s an Indian Cowboy in the Rodeo”; and the theme song of the popular movie Soldier Blue. Perhaps her first appearance on TV was as herself on To Tell the Truth in January 1966. She also appeared on Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest with Pete Seeger in 1965 and several Canadian Television productions from the 1960s through to the 1990s, and other TV shows such as American Bandstand, Soul Train, The Johnny Cash Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson; and sang the opening song “The Circle Game” (written by Joni Mitchell) in Stuart Hagmann’s film The Strawberry Statement (1970).
In the late sixties, Sainte-Marie used a Buchla synthesizer to record the album Illuminations, which did not receive much notice. “People were more in love with the Pocahontas-with-a-guitar image,” she commented in a 1998 interview.
1970s
In late 1975, Sainte Marie received a phone call from Dulcy Singer, then Associate Producer of Sesame Street, to appear on the show. According to Sainte-Marie, Singer wanted her to count and recite the alphabet like everyone else, but instead, she wanted to teach the show’s young viewers that “Indians still exist”. Sainte-Marie had been invited earlier that year to appear on another children’s TV show which she would not name, but turned the invitation down since the program ran commercials for G.I. Joe war toys.
Sainte-Marie regularly appeared on Sesame Street over a five-year period from 1976 to 1981, along with her first son, Dakota Starblanket Wolfchild, whom she breast-fed in one episode. Sesame Street even aired a week of shows from her home in Hawaii in December 1977; where Sainte-Marie and her family were joined by Bob (Bob McGrath), Maria (Sonia Manzano), Mr. Hooper (Will Lee), Olivia (Alaina Reed Hall, who was Sainte-Marie’s closest friend from the Sesame Street cast), Big Bird and Oscar (both portrayed by Caroll Spinney).
In 1979 the film Spirit of the Wind, featuring Sainte-Marie’s original musical score including the song “Spirit of the Wind”, was one of three entries that year at Cannes, along with The China Syndrome and Norma Rae. The film is a docudrama of George Attla, the ‘winningest dog musher of all time,’ as the film presents him, with all parts played by Native Americans except one by Slim Pickens. The film was shown on cable TV in the early 1980s and was released in France in 2003. Sainte-Marie’s musical score has been described as ‘inspiring’, ‘haunting’, and ‘perfection’.
1980s
Sainte-Marie began using Apple Inc. Apple II and Macintosh computers as early as 1981 to record her music and later some of her visual art. The song “Up Where We Belong” (which Sainte-Marie co-wrote with Will Jennings and musician Jack Nitzsche) was performed by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes for the film An Officer and a Gentleman. It received the Academy Award for Best Song in 1982. The song was later covered by Cliff Richard and Anne Murray on Cliff’s album of duets, Two’s Company.
In the early 1980s one of her native songs was used as the theme song for the CBC’s native series Spirit Bay. She was cast for the TNT 1993 telefilm The Broken Chain. It was shot entirely in Virginia. In 1989 she wrote and performed the music for Where the Spirit Lives, a film about native children being abducted and forced into residential schools.
1990s
Sainte-Marie voiced the Cheyenne character, Kate Bighead, in the 1991 made-for-TV movie Son of the Morning Star, telling the Indian side of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Lt. Col. George Custer was killed.
In 1992, after a sixteen-year recording hiatus, Sainte-Marie released the album Coincidence and Likely Stories. Recorded in 1990 at home in Hawaii on her computer and transmitted via modem through the early Internet to producer Chris Birkett in London, England, the album included the politically charged songs “The Big Ones Get Away” and “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” (which mentions Leonard Peltier), both commenting on the ongoing plight of Native Americans (see also the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.) Also in 1992, Sainte-Marie appeared in the television film The Broken Chain with Pierce Brosnan along with fellow First Nations Bahá’í Phil Lucas. Her next album followed up in 1996 with Up Where We Belong, an album on which she re-recorded a number of her greatest hits in more unplugged and acoustic versions, including a re-release of “Universal Soldier”. Sainte-Marie has exhibited her art at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the Emily Carr Gallery in Vancouver and the American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In 1969 she started a philanthropic non-profit fund Nihewan Foundation for American Indian Education devoted to improving Native American students participation in learning. She founded the Cradleboard Teaching Project in October 1996 using funds from her Nihewan Foundation and with a two-year grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, Michigan. With projects across Mohawk, Cree, Ojibwe, Menominee, Coeur D’Alene, Navajo, Quinault, Hawaiian, and Apache communities in eleven states, partnered with a non-native class of the same grade level for Elementary, Middle, and High School grades in the disciplines of Geography, History, Social Studies, Music and Science and produced a multimedia curriculum CD, Science: Through Native American Eyes.
2000s
In 2000, Sainte-Marie gave the commencement address at Haskell Indian Nations University. In 2002 she sang at the Kennedy Space Center for Commander John Herrington, USN, a Chickasaw and the first Native American astronaut. In 2003 she became a spokesperson for the UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network in Canada.
In 2002, a track written and performed by Sainte-Marie, entitled “Lazarus”, was sampled by Hip Hop producer Kanye West and performed by Cam’Ron and Jim Jones of The Diplomats. The track is called “Dead or Alive”. In June 2007, she made a rare U.S. appearance at the Clearwater Festival in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.
In 2008, a two-CD set titled Buffy/Changing Woman/Sweet America: The Mid-1970s Recordings was released, compiling the three studio albums that she recorded for ABC Records and MCA Records between 1974 and 1976 (after departing her long-time label Vanguard Records). This was the first re-release of this material. In September 2008, Sainte-Marie made a comeback onto the music scene in Canada with the release of her latest studio album Running For The Drum. It was produced by Chris Birkett (producer of her 1992 and 1996 best of albums). Sessions for this latest project commenced in 2006 in Sainte-Marie’s home studio in Hawaii and in part in France. They continued until spring 2007.
Censorship
Sainte-Marie claimed in a 2008 interview at the National Museum of the American Indian that she had been blacklisted and that she, along with Native Americans and other native people in the Red Power movements, were put out of business in the 1970s.
“I found out 10 years later, in the 1980s, that President Lyndon B. Johnson had been writing letters on White House stationery praising radio stations for suppressing my music”, Sainte-Marie said in a 1999 interview at Diné College given to Brenda Norrel, a staff writer with Indian Country Today … “In the 1970s, not only was the protest movement put out of business, but the Native American movement was attacked.” According to Norrel, this article was initially censored by Indian Country Today, and finally published only in part in 2006.
Awards and honors
In 1997, Sainte-Marie won a Gemini Award for her 1996 variety special, Up Where We Belong.
In 1983–4, the song “Up Where We Belong” (music by Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie; lyrics by Will Jennings) from An Officer and a Gentleman won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a BAFTA Film Award for Best Original Song.
In 2010, she received the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award.
Honorary degrees
In 1996 she received an honorary Doctor of Laws Honoris Causa degree from the University of Regina in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. She then gave the convocation address to the administration, education, and engineering graduates. As part of the address, Sainte-Marie sang a song about the Canadian Indian residential school system.
In 2007 she received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. On 13 June 2008, she received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada, an honorary Doctor of Music from The University of Western Ontario on June 10, 2009, in London, Ontario, and an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the Ontario College of Art & Design on June 4, 2010, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. On May 23, 2012 she received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia.

 

Anne Murray

Morna Anne Murray (born June 20, 1945), known professionally as Anne Murray, is a Canadian singer in pop, country, and adult contemporary music whose albums have sold over 54 million copies worldwide as of 2012.

Murray was the first Canadian female solo singer to reach No. 1 on the U.S. charts, and also the first to earn a Gold record for one of her signature songs, “Snowbird” (1970). She is often cited as the one who paved the way for other international Canadian success stories such as Alanis Morissette, Nelly Furtado, Céline Dion, Sarah McLachlan, and Shania Twain. She is also the first woman and the first Canadian to win “Album of the Year” at the 1984 Country Music Association Awards for her 1983 album A Little Good News.

Murray has received four Grammys, a record 24 Junos, three American Music Awards, three Country Music Association Awards, and three Canadian Country Music Association Awards. She has been inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, the Juno Hall of Fame, and The Songwriters Hall of Fame. She is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame Walkway of Stars in Nashville, and has her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles and on Canada’s Walk of Fame in Toronto.

In 2011, Billboard ranked her 10th on their list of the 50 Biggest AC Artists Ever.

Early life

Morna Anne Murray was born in the coal-mining town of Springhill, Nova Scotia. Her father, James Carson Murray, was the town doctor. Her mother, Marion Margaret (née Burke) Murray, was a registered nurse who focused her life on raising her family and community charity work. Murray has five brothers. Murray’s father died in 1980 at the age of 72 from complications from leukemia. Her mother died April 10, 2006, at the age of 92 after suffering a series of strokes during heart surgery.

After expressing an early interest in music, she studied piano for six years. By 15 she was taking voice lessons. Every Saturday morning, she took a bus ride from Springhill to Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia, for singing lessons. One of her earliest performances was of the song “Ave Maria” at her high school graduation in 1962. Following high school, Murray attended Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax for one year. She later studied Physical Education at University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. After receiving her degree in 1966 she taught physical education at a high school in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, for one year.

Career

Early years

In 1965, Murray appeared on the University of New Brunswick student project record “The Groove” (500 pressed). She sang two songs on the record – “Unchained Melody” and “Little Bit of Soap”. On the label her name was misspelled “Anne Murry”. While there, she was encouraged to audition for the 1960s CBC musical variety television show Singalong Jubilee, but was not offered a singing position. Two years later she received a call from Singalong Jubilee co-host and associate producer, Bill Langstroth, and was asked to return for a second audition. Following that second audition, Murray was cast for the show.

After a summer of singing in local venues across the Maritimes, Murray began teaching physical education at a high school in Summerside, Prince Edward Island. After one year of teaching, she was offered a spot on the television show Let’s Go, and returned to Singalong Jubilee. As a regular member of the “Singalong Jubilee” cast, Murray appeared on the Singalong Jubilee Vol. III soundtrack and Our Family Album – The Singalong Jubilee Cast records released by Arc Records. The show’s musical director, Brian Ahern, advised Murray that she should move to Toronto and record a solo album. Her first album, What About Me, was produced by Ahern in Toronto and released in 1968 on the Arc label.

Success

Anne Murray’s debut album was on the Canadian Arc label, titled What About Me (Arc AS 782). The lead single, the title cut, was written by Scott McKenzie and was a sizable Canadian radio hit. The project was produced by Brian Ahern, and covered songs by Joni Mitchell, Ken Tobias, and John Denver. After a year-long stint on Arc, Murray switched to Capitol Records in 1969 to record her second album, This Way Is My Way, which was released in the fall of 1969. It featured the single that launched her career, “Snowbird”, which became a No. 1 hit in Canada. “Snowbird” became a surprise hit on the U.S. charts as well, reaching No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970. It was also the first of her eight No. 1 Adult Contemporary hits. “Snowbird” was the first Gold record ever given to a Canadian artist in the United States (RIAA certified Gold on November 16, 1970). As one of the most successful female artists at that time, she became in demand for several television appearances in Canada and the United States, eventually becoming a regular on the hit U.S. TV series The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.

After the success of “Snowbird”, she had a number of subsequent singles that charted both pop and country simultaneously. During the 1970s and 80s, her hits included Kenny Loggins’s “Danny’s Song” (1972) (peaked at No. 7 on the Hot 100) and “A Love Song” (1973); “He Thinks I Still Care” and her Top 10 cover of The Beatles’ “You Won’t See Me” (1974); her all-time biggest Hot 100 hit “You Needed Me” (1978) — though, the biggest hit of her career (and her personal favorite) peaked at No. 4 country and No. 3 AC; “I Just Fall in Love Again”, “Shadows in the Moonlight”, and “Broken Hearted Me” (1979); her revival of The Monkees’ 1967 No. 1 hit “Daydream Believer” and “Could I Have This Dance” from the Urban Cowboy motion picture soundtrack (1980); “Blessed Are the Believers” (1981); “Another Sleepless Night” (1982); “A Little Good News” (1983); 1984’s “Just Another Woman in Love” and “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do” (a duet with Dave Loggins of 1974’s “Please Come to Boston” fame and cousin of Kenny Loggins); and “Time, Don’t Run Out On Me” (1985).

She performed “O Canada” at the first American League baseball game played in Canada on April 7, 1977, when the Toronto Blue Jays played the Chicago White Sox at Exhibition Stadium. She reprised the Canadian national anthem prior to Game 3 of the 1992 World Series at the SkyDome. Following the last game at Maple Leaf Gardens, she concluded the arena’s closing ceremony by singing “The Maple Leaf Forever” at center ice wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey.

Murray was a celebrity corporate spokeswoman for The Bay, and she also did commercials and sang the company jingle (“You Can Count on the Commerce”) for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC).

Murray’s last Hot 100 hit was “Now and Forever (You and Me)” from 1986; it also was her last No. 1 on both the American and Canadian country chart. Her last charting single in the U.S. was 1991’s “Everyday”, which appeared in Billboard’s Country Singles chart, and her last charting single in Canada was 2000’s “What a Wonderful World”.

1990s to present

In 1996, Murray signed on with a new manager, Bruce Allen, who also has managed careers for Bryan Adams, Michael Bublé, Martina McBride, and Jann Arden. She recorded her first live album in 1997 and in 1999, she released What a Wonderful World, a platinum inspirational album, which went to No. 1 Contemporary Christian, No. 4 Country and No. 38 pop. She released Country Croonin’ in 2002, the follow-up to her successful 1993 album, Croonin’. In 2004, she released I’ll Be Seeing You in Canada only, which features a collection of songs from the early 20th century through to the mid-1940s. The American version, titled All of Me, features a bonus disc containing many of her hit singles, followed in 2005. The album is dedicated to her friend Cynthia McReynolds who died of cancer.

On December 26, 2004, Murray joined other Canadian music stars in the Canada for Asia Telethon, a three-hour, tsunami relief concert broadcast on CBC Television (January 13, 2005) to support CARE Canada’s efforts. Bryan Adams and Murray closed the show with a duet, “What Would It Take”.

Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends was released in November 2007 in Canada and January 2008 in the U.S. The album comprised seventeen tracks that included many of Murray’s biggest hits over her four-decade career, re-recorded as duets with other established, rising, and – in one case – deceased female singers. These artists included Céline Dion, Shania Twain, k.d. lang, Nelly Furtado, Jann Arden, Québec’s Isabelle Boulay, Murray’s daughter Dawn Langstroth, Olivia Newton-John, Emmylou Harris, Martina McBride, Shelby Lynne, Amy Grant, Carole King, the Indigo Girls, Irish sextet Celtic Woman, Dusty Springfield, and Sarah Brightman. The duet with soprano Brightman was of her 1970 hit song, “Snowbird”.

Anne Murray Duets: Friends and Legends was recorded in four cities – Toronto, Nashville, New York and Los Angeles. According to Billboard magazine, the album reached No. 2 on the Canadian pop album charts and was certified Double Platinum in Canada after merely two months, representing sales of over 200,000 units. The album was the second-highest debuting CD on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart for the week ending February 2, 2008. It entered the chart at No. 42, making it her highest-charting U.S. CD release since 1999’s What a Wonderful World, which peaked at No. 38 on the Top 200 and was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Also for the week ending February 2, 2008, the CD debuted at No. 8 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart and at No. 3 on its Top Internet Albums chart. Murray was nominated for the 2008 Juno Award for Album of the Year and Pop Album of the Year.

Murray’s album What a Wonderful World was re-released in July 2008 in North America as a 14-song package. A new Christmas album, titled Anne Murray’s Christmas Album with bonus DVD was released in October 2008. Sony BMG Music also released an Elvis Presley Christmas album, titled Elvis Presley Christmas Duets, on October 14, 2008 featuring a virtual duet of “Silver Bells” with Murray.

On October 10, 2007, Murray announced that she would embark on her final major tour. She toured in February and March 2008 in the U.S., followed by the “Coast-to-Coast – One Last Time” tour in April and May in Canada. Murray’s final public concert was held at the Sony Centre in Toronto on May 23, 2008.

On August 25, 2008 Murray appeared on the popular TV program Canadian Idol as a mentor. On February 12, 2010, Murray was one of the eight Canadians who carried the Olympic flag during the opening ceremonies of the XXI Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver.

Television

Murray has had five highly rated US specials on CBS (over 40 million viewers each) and several Canadian specials on CBC including Anne Murray in Nova Scotia, Intimate Evening with Anne Murray, Anne Murray RSVP, A Special Anne Murray Christmas, Legends & Friends, Greatest Hits II, What A Wonderful World, Ladies Night Show, Anne Murray in Walt Disney World and Anne Murray’s Classic Christmas. Her 2008 television special, Family Christmas, garnered a 43 per cent share on CBC with 4.2 million viewers.

She has appeared on Solid Gold, Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Dean Martin Summer Show, Singalong Jubilee, Dinah!, The Today Show, Dolly!, The Mike Douglas Show, Christmas in Washington, Boston Pops, The Helen Reddy Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, 20/20, CNN, Perry Como’s Christmas in New Mexico, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, Night of a 100 Stars, Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, The Pat Sajak Show, Royal Canadian Air Farce and Good Morning America. Her 2005 CBC special Anne Murray: The Music of My Life broke ratings records for a Thursday night, with more than 7 million Canadian viewers tuned in.

Personal life

In 2009, Murray released her autobiography, All of Me, and embarked on a 15-city book signing tour, starting in Nashville on October 27, 2009 and ending in Ottawa on November 24, 2009. The tour also included a special In Conversation interview with Michael Posner at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto on October 30, 2009.

Marriage and children

Murray married music producer Bill Langstroth in 1975. They have two children – William (born 1976) and Dawn (born 1979), a singer/songwriter and artist who has recorded with her mother a number of times, including the duet “Let There Be Love” in 1999 for Murray’s What a Wonderful World album. Murray and Dawn were featured in a mother-daughter duet of “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do” on Murray’s hit 2008 U.S. CD (released in late 2007 in Canada), Anne Murray Duets: Friends & Legends. Murray and Langstroth separated in 1997 and divorced the following year. Langstroth died in May 2013.

In January 1998, Murray and her daughter Dawn performed at a benefit concert for Sheena’s Place, an eating disorder treatment center in Toronto. Murray and her daughter have spoken publicly about Dawn’s struggle with anorexia nervosa, which developed when Dawn was 10 years old. Dawn has since sought treatment and continues to pursue a career in music.

Philanthropy

Murray has always kept ties with her hometown, Springhill, Nova Scotia, located about an hour south of Moncton, New Brunswick, and two hours north of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The Anne Murray Centre, located in Springhill, houses a collection of memorabilia from both her personal life and professional career in a series of displays. The Anne Murray Centre, which opened on July 28, 1989, is a registered Canadian charity. As a non-profit association, all the revenue generated from its operation is used to provide employment for local people and for its ongoing maintenance. The Anne Murray Centre aims to foster tourism in the area and promote awareness of the music of Nova Scotia and Canada.

Murray was involved in the construction of the Dr. Carson and Marion Murray Community Centre in Springhill, Nova Scotia. She served as the honorary chair of the fundraising campaign to replace the town arena that collapsed after a peewee hockey game in 2002. Named for her parents, the Dr. Carson and Marion Murray Community Centre sports an NHL-size ice sheet with seating for 800 people, a walking track, multi-purpose room, community room with seating for up to 300, and a gym. The Dr. Carson and Marion Murray Community Centre has become an integral part of the Springhill community since opening on September 15, 2004.

Murray has also been involved in a variety of charitable organizations. In addition to being the Honorary National Chairperson of the Canadian Save The Children Fund, she has served as a spokeswoman for many charities throughout her career – most recently Colon Cancer Canada. On May 20, 2009, Colon Cancer Canada launched the inaugural Anne Murray Charity Golf Classic. Over $150,000 was raised through the event.

Murray has been a public supporter of Canadian environmentalist and geneticist David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge.

Hobbies

A longtime golf enthusiast, Murray made history in October 2003 at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino in Verona, New York, by becoming the first woman to score a hole-in-one on the 108-yard, par 3, 17th hole at the Kaluhyat Golf Club. On May 11, 2007, Golf For Women magazine named Murray the world’s best female celebrity golfer, noting her 11 handicap.

Discography

Since 1968, Murray has had 32 studio albums (15 of which have gone multi-platinum, platinum, or gold in the U.S.) and 15 compilation albums.

Awards and honours

Anne Murray is the winner of four Grammys (including one in the pop category), three American Music Awards, three CMA Awards, and a record 24 Juno Awards.

Murray was ranked No. 24 in Country Music Television’s 40 Greatest Women of Country Music in 2002.

Murray is a Companion of the Order of Canada, the second highest honor that can be awarded to a Canadian civilian. She was a recipient of the Order of Nova Scotia in its inaugural year.

In 2006, the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame chose her and Leonard Cohen as recipients of the Legacy Award for their contributions to and support of the Canadian songwriting industry. Murray was recognized for her support of Canada’s songwriters, through her performances and her recordings.

On June 29, 2007, Canada Post issued the limited edition Anne Murray stamp. She was recognized along with three other Canadian recording artists: Paul Anka, Gordon Lightfoot, and Joni Mitchell.

In popular culture

On February 17, 2013, Family Guy devoted the “Chris Cross” episode to Murray. In the episode, Stewie and Brian become obsessed with Murray’s music. Murray also appears in animated form contributing her voice. She is also named prominently in the song Blame Canada from the movie South Park.

 

Jeanne Mance

Jeanne Mance (November 12, 1606 – June 18, 1673) was a French nurse and settler of New France. She arrived in New France two years after the Ursuline Nuns came to Quebec. Among the founders of Montreal, Canada in 1642, she established its first hospital, the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal, in 1645. She returned twice to France to seek financial support for the hospital. After providing most of the care directly for years, in 1657 she recruited three sisters of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph, and continued to direct operations of the hospital.

Origins

Jeanne Mance was born into a bourgeois family in Langres, in Haute-Marne, France. She was the daughter of Catherine Émonot and Charles Mance, a prosecutor for the king in Langres, an important diocese in the northern Burgundy. After her mother died prematurely, Jeanne cared for eleven brothers and sisters. She went on to care for victims of the Thirty Years War and the plague.

Vocation

At age 34, while on a pilgrimage to Troyes in Champagne, Mance discovered her missionary calling. She decided to go to New France in North America, then in the first stages of colonization by the French. She was supported by Anne of Austria, the wife of King Louis XIII, and by the Jesuits.

Mance was a member of the Society of Our Lady of Montreal; its goal was to convert the natives and found a hospital in Montreal similar to the one in Quebec.

Founding of Montreal and Hôtel-Dieu hospital

Charles Lallemant recruited Jeanne Mance for the Société Notre-Dame de Montréal. Mance embarked from La Rochelle on May 9, 1641 on a crossing of the Atlantic that took three months. After wintering in Quebec, she and Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve arrived at the Island of Montreal in the spring of 1642. They founded the new city on May 17, 1642 on land granted by the Governor. That same year Mance began operating a hospital in her home.

Three years later (1645), with a donation of 6000 francs by Angélique Bullion, she opened a hospital on Rue Saint-Paul. She directed its operations for 17 years. A new stone structure was built in 1688, and others have been built since then.

Later years

In 1650 Mance visited France and returned with 22,000 livres of money set aside by Mme de Bullion for the hospital. On her return to Montreal, she found that the attacks of the Iroquois threatened the colony. She loaned the hospital money to M. de Maisonneuve, who returned to France to organize a force of one hundred men for the colony’s defense.

Mance made a second trip to France in 1657 to seek financial assistance for the hospital. At the same time, she secured three Hospital Sisters of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph from the convent of La Fleche in Anjou: Judith Moreau de Bresoles, Catherine Mace, and Marie Maillet. They had a difficult passage on the return, made worse by an outbreak of the plague on board, but all four women survived. While Mgr. de Laval tried to retain the sisters at Quebec for that hospital, they eventually reached Montreal in October 1659.

With the help of the new sisters, Mance was able to ensure the continued operations of the hospital. For the rest of her years, she lived more quietly.

She died in 1673 after a long illness and was buried in the church of the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital. While the church and her house were destroyed in 1696 for redevelopment, her work was carried on by the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph. The three nuns she had recruited in 1659 served as hospital administrators. Two centuries later, in 1861 the hospital was moved to the foot of Mount Royal.

Legacy

• A small statuette (2008) representing Jeanne Mance by André Gauthier was commissioned for the Canadian Nurses Association for a biannual award of nursing excellence.
• Rue Jeanne-Mance, a north-south street in Montreal, is named after Mance.
• Jeanne-Mance Park, situated on Park Avenue, opposite Mount Royal, and just south of Mount Royal Avenue, is named after Mance.
• Jeanne-Mance Building, situated on Eglantine Driveway, Tunneys Pasture, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. A Federal Government of Canada Office Tower currently occupied by Health Canada.