A Good Day's Work (35 page)
Authors: John Demont
And so there goes the old world, the world most of us are used to. The numbers don't lie: in 1871 when Canada was a new country, just 19 percent of us lived in cities. Today 81 percent of us make our homes where it's possible to get a Starbucks latte or see Quentin Tarantino gore on the big screen. That's out of necessity as well as choice. Of the nearly seventeen million people working in this country in 2006, the time of the last census, nearly one-third worked in sales and service occupations, while another three million were in business, finance and administration jobs. In other words, they did city work.
The Statistics Canada folk, on the other hand, found just 3,000 boat builders, 2,000 shoe repairers and 6,000 jewellers and watch repairers. Some 21,000 men and women operated printing presses. Another 31,000 made fine furniture. But our waterfronts employed just 6,000 longshoremen. In this big country, there were only 4,000 land surveyors and 7,000 people who made maps. Some of the juxtapositions were disheartening: there were 12,000 librarians, compared with 20,000 Canadians working in casinos. More people described themselves as “image consultants” than funeral directors and embalmers. The total number of auditors, accountants and investment professionalsâ315,000âwas more than all the
carpenters, electricians, cabinetmakers, roofers and glaziers in this country put together.
What about the people we talked about in this book? Public relations and communications practitioners outnumbered writers and journalists. There were 870 blacksmiths in Canada in 2006, a category that also included die setters. About 10,000 men and a few women operated our trains. There were 200,000 farmers. These people may not necessarily disappear tomorrow. But my travels didn't make me think that their offspring could dream, with any assurance, of following in the family business, be it operating the projector at a drive-in movie, selling records or delivering milk.
If I live long enough, one day in the not-distant future I'll sit a grandchild or two on my knee and tell them all about those folks. Like one of those ancient coots going on about the good ole days, I'll enlighten them about other things too: about friends, family and a life that, to one kid in one small city at the far end of the continent, seemed golden. If I really get going, I'll even tell them about what it was like in 1967, when the land seemed to vibrate with possibility and everything we wantedâeven if we didn't know quite what that wasâwas out there shimmering on the horizon.
I'll slap my thigh like Walter Brennan. Then I'll tell them how it was to mosey around in the neighbourhood where I now write these words. It's smaller than it seemed then. It always is when some codger goes back to visit the stomping ground of youth. Back then, after all, you were just a kid who was close to the ground, so everything seemed huge. The universe seemed bigger because days stretched longer before instant messaging and
Call of Duty
.
There was space back in the time of fountain pens, pond hockey and Saturday matinees. The possibilities were infinite when you were left to your own designs so long as you returned intact for supper, as the evening meal was known in many of our households in those olden times.
Parents, at least in this neighbourhood, didn't worry about bad stuff happening because nothing bad ever really happened to anybody. So we were free, like gap-toothed, snot-nosed Odysseuses, to wander. Near on half a century later I walk these streets still, hoping for a glimpse of a kid who was often seen in these parts: Adidas-shod, Levi's-clad, pockets bulging with pennies, lint, Bob Pulford hockey cards, a half-eaten bag of Planters peanuts. He was, I know for a fact, often running. It was not a graceful act. But no one was there to see it. He was just a boy. This was just a street. Back in the innocent days.
The most obvious debts of thanks for this book are to the subjects themselves who so generously gave me unfettered access to their lives.
An immense thanks goes out to Paul McNeil, who used his vast community newspaper web to help me throughout the course of this book. I'm also deeply indebted to renaissance man Chris Millsâwriter, broadcaster, lighthouse keeper and lover of black rumâfor his knowledge of all things related to coastal lights. Endlessly creative blacksmith John Little, as well was a huge help.
My wise agent Dean Cooke made this book happen. At Doubleday Canada, Tim Rostron and freelance copyeditor Beverley Sotolov took my unhewn lumber and fashioned it into something; designer Five Seventeen made it look good; Susan Burns oversaw the creation.
A big shout out to my children, Belle and Sam, for their encouragement and keeping me grounded in the here-and-now. The biggest thanks, as always, to Lisa Napier for, well, everything.
PROLOGUE
Pierre Berton's line about 1967 in Canada is from his book,
1967: The Last Good Year
, Doubleday Canada, 1997.
The information about the jobs of yesteryear came from the 1911 Census of Canada p. 14-29.
The forecasts about the expected declines in traditional jobs came from Frank Feather,
Canada's Best Career Guide 2000
, Warwick Books, 1999
Malcolm Gladwell's thoughts on satisfying work come from his book
Outliers: The Story of Success
, Little, Brown & Company, 2008, p. 149-151
Daniel Gilbert's thoughts come from his article “Times to Remember, Times to Forget,”
The New York Times
, Dec. 30, 2009
The information about the relationship between the formation of Canada and railways comes from
The Canadian Encyclopedia: Canada Since Confederation
along with
National Policy and the CPRâCanadian History Portal
.
The information about the formation of Via Rail comes from various sources.
The specs for the Canadian come from Via Rail.
The list of railway lingo comes from Jordan McCallum and other sources.
The figures on railways comes from the Central Intelligence Agency 2011
http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/longest-rail-network.html
The information on how the rail system works in Canada comes from Jordan McCallum and Craig Stead.
The information on railway accidents comes from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada's 1999 rail stats and an assortment of other sources.
The information about the gender makeup of Canadian veterinary colleges comes from the “Canadian Colleges of Veterinary Medicine” entry in the
Canadian Encyclopedia
.
The section on the Divco truck comes from Robert R. Ebert and John S. Rienzo Jr., Divco,
A History of the Truck and Company
, Antique Power Inc. Yellow Springs, Ohio, 1997, p. iii
Some of the information about the historical duties of the milkman comes from the Palo Alto
History.com
, a website devoted to the history of Palo Alto, California.
I interviewed Les Bagley, director of the Divco Club of America via email.
The reasons for the decline in milk consumption come from Wendi Hiebert's food blog FoodWise.
The information on declining milk delivery comes via an email exchange with the Canadian Dairy Commission.
The information on Farmers Dairy comes from a number of sources including Grant Gerke, Farmers Dairy's form/fill/seal system creates new landscape,
Packaging Digest 2003
and author's interview with Catherine Ludovice, marketing director Farmers Dairy.
The figure about urban populations in Canada comes from Statistics Canada.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-X/2007004/10313-eng.htm
The information on the negative impacts of working at night comes from Brandon Keim, “Nightshift makes Metabolism Go Haywire,”
Wired Science
, March 2, 2009; Navdeep Kaur Marwah, “Women Working the Night Shift Inch Closer to Breast Cancer,”
MSN, Midday
, March 4, 2009; “Working the Night Shift May be Hazardous to Your Health,”
Health News
, Sept. 29, 2009 and Kenneth Macdonald, “Night Shifts Spark Cancer Pay-Out,”
BBC
, March 15, 2009.
The information on the history of Sam the Record Man comes from
http://news.library.ryerson.ca/musiconyonge/”a-historical-corner/
The information on the big department stores in Canada comes from a variety of sources but mainly The Department Store Museum website
http://departmentstoremuseum.blogspot.ca
which includes the floor plan for the Toronto Simpson's.
The information about the recording industry came from
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/03/28/top-10-dying-industries/
The Michael Chabon line comes from his book
Telegraph Avenue
, HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 2012, p.7
The information about the 2003 election comes from “PEI Votesâand Votes and Votes,” John DeMont,
Macleans
magazine, Oct. 13, 2003 and
http://results.elections.on.ca/results/2003_results/stat_sum_totals.jsp
.
The number of Atlantic Journalism Awards won by Prince Edward Island media outlets comes from the Atlantic Journalism Awards.
The notion of the ephemeral nature of Google searches was explored in depth by Robert D. Kaplan in “Cultivating Loneliness,”
The Columbia Journalism Review
, January/February 2006.
The information for the Montague history section comes from the Town of Montague's website.
The portrait of Jim MacNeill came from “The Common Touch: a colorful publisher stirs the pot in PEI,” John DeMont,
Macleans
, May 9, 1994, interviews with his son Paul and MacNeill's friend, the singer and entrepreneur Denis Ryan as well as David Cadogan's May 21, 1998 eulogy for MacNeill.
The sampling of stories and advertisements in the
Eastern Graphic
came from the paper during July 29 and Aug. 12, 2010.
The rural depopulation information comes from Census Snapshot of CanadaâUrbanization, Statistics Canada, 222.
statcan.gc.ca
Information about the history of blacksmithing comes from The History of Blacksmithing, the National Blacksmiths and Welders Association
The Kane & Son website is
https://www.blacksmithsdepot.com
.
The quote from Richard Sennet, is from his book
The Craftsman
, Yale University Press, 2008, p. 9
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
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, 1870â1930.”
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 Americaâthe 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