A Good Day's Work
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The figures on jobs in Quebec are from the 1911 Census of Canada.
The information on blacksmithing in Quebec comes from J.C. Dupont’s Canadian Encyclopedia entry on the Blacksmith’s Trade in the Province of Quebec.
The information on Lloyd Johnston comes from http://www.waybacktimes.com/blacksmith83.html as well as a catalogue entry about his work: http://www.warehamforge.ca/gravegoods/catalog/johnson.html
CHAPTER SEVEN: READING THE GRASS
The geographical information about the Great Plains comes from the Great Plains Encyclopedia. http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/
The person per acre ratio for the Special Areas comes from the history section of the Special Areas Board’s website http://specialareas.ab.ca/profile/history
The quote about the history of Hanna, Alberta comes from the history section on the town’s website http://www.hanna.ca/Visitors/History.aspx
The Canadian governments recruitment efforts to settle the west come from the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s exhibit: “The Last Best West: Advertising for Immigrants to Western Canada, 1870–1930.” http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/hist/advertis/ads6-01e.shtml. As well as the Canadian Encyclopedia’s entry on “Ranching History.” http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/ranching-history and Curtis McManus’s history master’s thesis at the University of Saskatchewan, Happyland: the Agricultural crisis in Saskatchewan’s Drybelt, 1917-27.
The estimate for the numbers of Americans who immigrated to the Canadian west come from Karel Denis Bicha, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 109, No. 6 (Dec. 10, 1965), p. 398-440.
The Palliser quote comes from Exploration-British North America—the journals, detailed reports, and observations relative to the exploration, by Captain Palliser, of that portion of British North America, which, in latitude, lies between the British boundary line and the height of land or watershed of the northern or frozen ocean respectively, and in longitude, between the western shore of Lake Superior and the Pacific Ocean during the years 1857, 1858, 1859, and 1860, John Palliser, p. 4
G.A. French’s quotes come from David Jones, “We’ll all be buried Down Here: the Prairie Dryland Disaster, 1917-1926,” published by the Historical Society of Alberta, Calgary, Alta, 1986, p. 2.
Jones’ description of the conditions during that period comes from David Jones, Empire of Dust: Settling and Abandoning the Prairie Dry Belt, University of Calgary Press, 2002-09-01, p. 44.
The overwrought journalistic description of Southern Alberta comes from the same book by Jones, p. 33
The increase in Alberta’s population in the 1920s comes from the website Forgotten Alberta http://forgottenalberta.com/about/
The fact that wheat was the main crop on most of the Alberta farms during this period comes from Gregory Marchildon, “Institutional Adaptation to Drought and the Special Areas of Alberta, 1909-1939,” p. 9 http://www.parc.ca/mcri/pdfs/papers/iacc038.pdf.
The statistics about cattle farming come from Statistics Canada’s 2011 Farm and farm operator data. http://www29.statcan.gc.ca/ceag-web/eng/community-agriculture-profile-profil-agricole.action?geoId=480000000&selectedVarIds=242
The information about Jack Nestor comes from Marj Venot and from Jack Nester’s obituary in the Hanna Herald, May, 2010
CHAPTER EIGHT: LIFE OF A SALESMAN
History of Shawville comes from the town’s website http://town.shawville.qc.ca/web
The breakdown of Shawville’s population comes from the 2001 Census of Canada.
The story about the language inspector comes from Dave Rogers, “Where Have the Angry Anglos Gone,” Ottawa Citizen, July 24, 2010
The W. Francis Gates rules come from his book Tips for the Traveling Salesman, B.C. Forbes Publishing Co. 120 Fifth Ave., New York City, 1929. The anecdote about American sales firms handing out spiels for their agents to use comes from p. 5 in that book.
The Epstein story comes from John DeMont, Coal Black Heart: The Story of Coal and the Lives it Ruled, Doubleday Canada, 2009, p. 63
The information about the Newfoundland peddlers comes from Jenny Higgins Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Web site. The information for the section on Syrian peddlers in the West, including the quote from Gilbert Johnson comes via Andrea W. Lorenz, “Canada’s Pioneer Mosque,” Saudi Aramco World, vol. 49, no. 4. The history of peddlers in the rest of Canada comes from: Andrew Armitage, “Peddlers Once a Common Sight,” The Sun Times (Owen Sound), April 24, 2009 and Benita Baker, “Rag and Bone Men,” The Beaver, December, 2004 which was also the source of the Macleans magazine quote about peddlers and the quote from Allan Grossman’s autobiography.
The information from Terry Carruthers, chief executive officer of the North West Commercial Traveller’s Association of Canada came from a telephone interview with the author.
I based my estimate for the number of sales call Steve has made during his career on a conservative six sales calls a day for 250 days a year over 38 years. It could just as easily be twice that number.
CHAPTER NINE: SHOWTIME
The early days of drive-in movies comes from various sources.
The summary about the end of the good times for drive-ins comes from Shining Stars: Canada’s Drive-in Movie Theatres, a 2004 documentary by KarowPrime Films. Some of the information about how drive-ins used to work comes from the same film.
The drive-in job figures come from “Movie Theatres and Drive-Ins,” Statistics Canada, June 28, 2005. I based my estimate on drive-in movies in Canada by taking driveinmovie.com’s figure of a peak of 4,000 drive-in screens in North America and then dividing that by 10. The figure on annual drive-in customers in Canada comes from “Drive-in movies attract new generation,” CBCNews.ca July 14, 2006.
Carl Weese’s commentary is from “The American Drive-in Movie Theater,” a 2007 show at the Washington Art Association, Washington, Connecticut. I first read of him in Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, “Showcase: Dark Screens, Bright Memories,” The New York Times, Jan. 15, 2010.
CHAPTER 10: A TRICK OF THE LIGHT
The description of life in a lighthouse comes from sources within the light-keeping community who, for obvious reasons, wish to remain anonymous.
The world history of lighthouses comes from a variety of sources.
The Louisbourg lighthouse information comes from a variety of entries on the Louisbourg Lighthouse Society websight http://fortress.cbu.ca/LouisbourgLighthouseSociety/.
The information about the Bull Island, Nfld. lighthouse came from Lighthouse Digest http://www.lighthousedigest.com/Digest/StoryPage.cfm?StoryKey=1988.
The information about the St. Paul Island lighthouse came from http://www.nslps.com/light-detail.aspx?ID=272&M=IP&N=2.
The figure for the number of lighthouses in Canada at the turn of the 19th century comes from author’s interview with Chris Mills.
The author interviewed Elaine Graham via telephone.
For information on the recent saga of lighthouses in Canada I leaned heavily upon Seeing The Light: Report on Staffed Lighthouses in Newfoundland Labrador and British Columbia, “Report of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans,” Bill Rompkey, Chair December 2010 and “Implementation of the Heritage Lighthouse Protection Act,” Report of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans, Bill Rompkey Chair, March 2011
The job numbers in this chapter came from the 2006 Census of Canada.