Photography, History and Whatever Else Strikes my Fancy.

The Daily Colonist, September 10, 1914

Wed, 2014/09/10 - 10:28am

#dailycolonist1914 - News out of Victoria, British Columbia, 100 years ago today.

News from the front is pretty sparse today. Fighting on the Western Front is spread over a large area with no notable developments. What's remarkable about today's paper requires taking the blinders off and reading with 21st century hindsight. Colonialism, nationalism and racism are assumed truths in 1914. Sometimes it is just a vague, permeating force, and sometimes it is so blatant and bizarrely casual that it is stunning that anyone ever thought this way (but then it only takes reading a few YouTube comments to realize maybe not so much has changed.)

Russians are advancing into Galicia [a Hungarian province in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now split between Hungary and Ukraine, and where my paternal ancestors hail from]
Germans and Austrians are registering in Canada, swearing to live peacefully and not provide any intelligence to the enemy [this is the first inkling of what's now known and the Ukrainian Internment.]
Front page news about "India Offering Generous Help". Rulers of the nearly 700 states have all offered support to the British Empire.
On the very next page, a report on how East Indian immigration is going to be controlled and curtailed to avoid another Komagata Maru incident. [It is really more that Indian emigration is going to be controlled at the source, allowing only a limited number of passports to be issued each year in order to prevent immigration not only to Canada, but also to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and anywhere else in the Empire.]
The editorial section chimes in on this restriction, stating "It is very satisfactory" and "If they increased indefinitely they would destroy the very conditions that made it worth their while coming here. It goes without saying that to overrun Canada with them would make conditions intolerable for Canadians."
Meanwhile, on the shipping page the "Annual Exodus of Orientals to China" for Chinese New Year has begun. "Hitherto the C.P.R. has been in the habit of getting the bulk of this particular class of trade as the Chinaman invariably favors the larger boats. Now that the big C.P.R. liners have been temporarily withdrawn from service...the wily Oriental must perforce travel by other lines."
On a lighter [but no less bizarre in hindsight] note, the property owners of Davie Street have voted against having the street paved.
[Also strange from a contemporary perspective] Thanksgiving Day 1914 is to be celebrated on Thursday, October 8, rather than on the Monday [The current settled date of the second Monday in October was not set until 1957 and before that it was moved quite a bit.]
And a couple lovely advertising illustrations.