Speaking at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto at the launch of the Junior Encyclopedia of Canada in September 1990.

I really had the best job in the country, as editor of Canada’s national encyclopedia.

It was kismet for a boy whose irritated mother sarcastically called him “know it all!” As a kid in West End Toronto, I was obsessed with the only two books in our house, a one-volume encyclopedia and a small pocket dictionary my father carried with him in the war. I memorized maps and capitals and painters’ names from the encyclopedia—30 years out of date as it turned out. My father, who claimed to have memorized the whole dictionary, would rouse me from sleep in the middle of the night and make me query him on definitions (I had to be diplomatic about wrong answers as he was an agitated man when drunk and accused of error).

Another happenstance struck when a misguided teacher in high school determined to punish me by sentencing me to the school library to hand copy articles from Encyclopedia Britannica. Bliss.

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sir John A. Macdonald: Une «fripouille» indispensable est à peu près la perception qu’avaient de nombreux Canadiens de John A. Macdonald

Lorsqu’une délégation de Canadiens se rend à Washington en 1887 pour négocier un traité avec les États-Unis, leurs hôtes les invitent à faire une promenade en bateau sur le Potomac. Arrivé plus tôt, un des délégués canadiens entame une conversation avec une dame en attendant ses collègues. C’est la femme d’un sénateur américain.

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Sir John A. Macdonald, ca. 1875, George Lancefield / Library and Archives Canada

When in 1887 a Canadian delegation went to Washington to negotiate a treaty with the United States, their hosts treated them to a boat ride on the Potomac. One Canadian delegate arrived early and while waiting for the others struck up a conversation with a lady, the wife of a US senator.

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Canadian-born bandleader Guy Lombardo in his familiar pose, ushering in the New Year.

“Auld Lang Syne” has aptly been described as the song that nobody knows, although it is universally the song the English-speaking world uses to bid farewell to the old year and to hail the new.

The song nicely combines a note of conviviality with a poignant sense of loss, just the right mood for New Year’s Eve, when our minds hover between regret and anticipation.

The song we sing now is a version of an ancient song reworked by the 18th century Scottish bard Robbie Burns, a song he said “of olden times” which he took down from an old man’s singing and then improved with the words we (try to) sing today.

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A Christmas tree for German soldiers in a temporary hospital.

On December 25, 1943, the acrid smell of cordite hung over the rubble barricades of Ortona, Italy, where Canadians and Germans were engaged in grim hand-to-hand combat. Even amid the thunder of collapsing walls and the blinding dust and smoke darkening the alleys, the men of The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada and The Loyal Edmonton Regiment were determined to celebrate Christmas. They chose the abandoned church of Santa Maria di Constantinopoli as their banquet hall.

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Canadian machine gunners dig themselves into shell holes on Vimy Ridge, France, April 1917 (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/PA-1017).

“When death reigned, and the agony of pain.” – Private William Perover

When I was a boy and my father’s trauma from his service in Holland was raw in his shattered leg, our family mythology was still dominated by his father’s warrior pride. An argumentative man, my grandfather Marsh ended every dispute with a display of his scarred leg and the expletive “Vimy Ridge!”

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When he volunteered at age 41 for service in the First World War, John McCrae wrote to a friend that “I am really rather afraid, but more afraid to stay at home with my conscience.” In April 1915, McCrae and a young friend, Alexis Helmer, joined the 18 000 soldiers of the First Canadian Division in their positions near Ypres, Belgium. The Battle of Ypres commenced on 22 April and lasted for six hellish weeks. It was during this battle that the Germans launched the first gas attacks of the war.

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John McCrae was the Canadian medical officer who penned the poignant poem “In Flanders Fields.”

For a long time, I did not know how to sort out the memories on November 11. As a student I wore a poppy, held silent in a school assembly, and watched the widows lay wreathes beneath the cenotaphs. I was always impressed by the lofty sentiments about sacrifice expressed in the speeches that day, but my mind struggled to make a connection with my own family: my grandfather who bared his scars and bellowed the words “Vimy Ridge!” as a threat, and my father, whose injuries from the second war sped him into alcoholism and an early death.

How does memory speak to us? Each November, over 13 million poppies blossom on the jackets, dresses and hats of Canadians. Everywhere we are moved by the sad words penned by the Canadian medical officer from Guelph, Ontario, John McCrae:

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Marilyn Bell starting her swim, September 8, 1954 (courtesy Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame).

[Editor's Note: The Canadian Encyclopedia is proud to present its second free app, Toronto in Time, highlighting the stories of the city. “Marilyn Bell Swims Lake Ontario” is one of over 160 unique stories in the app, available for iOS and Android.]

Marilyn Bell waded into the frigid waters of Lake Ontario at Youngstown, NY, at 11:07 p.m. September 8, 1954. It wasn’t supposed to be a race, but she made it into one. The Canadian National Exhibition had offered $10,000 to American swimmer Florence Chadwick to swim the lake. Many thought it was unfair not to include Canadians in the event. Only two others took up the challenge, Winnie Roach Leuszla and 16-year old Marilyn Bell.

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Toronto Maple Leafs centre Dave Keon was awarded the Conn Smythe Trophy in 1967 (courtesy Hockey Hall of Fame).

[Editor's Note: The Canadian Encyclopedia is proud to present its second free app, Toronto in Time, highlighting the stories of the city. “The Maple Leaf's Last Stanley Cup” is one of over 160 unique stories in the app, available for iOS and Android.]

No one expected the 1967 Maple Leafs to win the Stanley Cup and no one expected that it might never happen again! The Leafs themselves that year knew they were flawed. They were mostly old, erratic, tired and had a poisonous relationship with their coach and general manager “Punch” Imlach. They lost the first game of the playoffs against the highly favoured Chicago Black Hawks but then the magic began as the goaltending of 42-year old Johnny Bower and 37-year old Terry Sawchuk turned back a dispirited Hawks team.

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Isaac Brock was long remembered as the fallen hero and saviour of Upper Canada (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-36181).

[Editor's Note: Saturday, October 13 marks the 200th anniversary of the death of Sir Isaac Brock, the hero of the War of 1812.]

In the very early morning of October 13, 1812, Major General Isaac Brock was fast asleep in his bunk at Fort George, on the Niagara Frontier. About 4:00 am he was awakened by the distant thud of cannon fire. He rose in a flash, dressed, mounted his horse Alfred and dashed through the fort gate towards the sound of the guns.

Brock knew that the Americans, who had declared war on Britain in June, would try to invade somewhere along the frontier. Former US president Thomas Jefferson told President James Madison that taking Canada would be a “mere matter of marching.”

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Peter Lougheed and Mel Hurtig leaf through the new The Canadian Encyclopedia  which Hurtig’s company had just published on June 28, 1985. (Photograph by: Keith McNicol , edmontonjournal.com)

When I arrived in Edmonton in 1980 to become the editor of The Canadian Encyclopedia I was only dimly aware of the presence of the man at the epicentre of both the oil boom and the fight with Ottawa. Having lived in Ottawa I had experienced the power that another man, Pierre Trudeau, had over the political landscape, but I soon learned that Peter Lougheed had equally put his stamp on the dramatic decade of the 1970s.

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The charioteer was one of the few clothed athletes at the ancient Olympic Games. The vitor’s crown went to the owner of the horses, not the driver.

Legend dictates that the games of the Olympiad owed their origin to the Theban hero Heracles who staged them to honour his grandfather Pelops. It was said of Heracles that while engaged in his 12 labours he brought back a twig of wild olive from the legendary land of Hyperboreans and planted it in Olympia. This was the tree whose branches served to crown the victors. If we look for more practical explanations, the Olympic Games more likely derived from funeral games held in honour of fallen heroes, like the one Achilles held for his friend Patroclus in Homer’s Iliad.

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The Amabile Youth Singers sing “O Canada” (courtesy Amabile Choir).

Canada’s national anthem was first heard one fine June evening in 1880, on the campus of Laval University in Quebec City. Joseph Keaney Foran and some fellow law students were relaxing in one of the buildings when they heard a commotion at the front door. They saw Father Pierre Rouselle, the university secretary, and three other men enter the building and head straight for the piano. In the lead was a small man with a halo of black hair around his balding dome. “He was very excited,” Foran later wrote of the little man, “and kept tapping his hands and saying ‘I’ve got it! I’ve finally found it; I’ve succeeded; come, listen.” He arranged himself at the piano and the others perched on a nearby dais. “Throwing back his head he played for us, for the first time, the masterpiece of his genius – it was Calixa Lavallée; he played O Canada.”

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On July 1, 1867, Canadians gathered in public squares to hear the reading of the Queen’s Proclamation announcing the birth of their country. This photo was taken in Kingston, Ontario (Courtesy of Queen’s University Archives)

There were celebrations that first day, July 1, 1867, for the new “Dominion of Canada.” But neither the date, nor the name nor the designation was a sure thing even a few months before. The celebrations were hardly a spontaneous public outpouring.

After all, confederation had been strictly a political process that took place in the backrooms of Quebec City and Charlottetown, with the colonial politicians being urged on by their distant masters in London. “Here in this house,” wrote Agnes Macdonald, the new prime minister’s wife, “the atmosphere is so awfully political that sometimes I think that the very flies hold Parliament on the kitchen tablecloths.”

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