#ontario history

[aultsville]

King Street Buildings (2023)

a piece about buildings in my hometown (prescott, ontario)

watercolour, acrylic, gel pen, bugs, beads, rhinestones, sequins and other things on canvas

24 x 24 inches

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"After beverage rooms opened in Ontario in 1934, the Board followed up with the further regulatory conditions concerning dancing and "ladies nights." The "ladies and escorts" sections "typically took up half of the beverage-room area, had their own entrances and washroooms,  and were heavily patronized from the beginning."

Even so, the very presence of women within drinking establishments in combination with unmarried men prompted a moral outcry against the potential impropriety inspired by this mixed drinking  within the male beverage rooms. In response in 1937 the LCBO drafted beverage regulations requiring licensed establishments to have "two separate and distinct beverage rooms one for men only, and the other solely for women, except where attended by bona fide escorts.” (Globe and Mail, 1937)

This regulation also applied to female servers, who contested their restriction from serving liquor within the "men only" beverage room. In repeated communications the Board stressed its strong opposition against women servers, denying women the right to work within these establishments even if they owned them or were wives of the owners. In 1944 the Board partially yielded on the matter, explaining to authority holders that they could "make use of females as waitresses in the Ladies' and Escorts' beverage room ONLY" (LCBO 1944). LCBO policy required that "authority holders desiring this privilege" within the Ladies and Escorts room to have female servers working "must make application to the Board as well as submit a medical certificate covering the proposed employee and indicating that she is free from disease" (ibid.). Having these women in male beverage rooms apparently "raised fears about prostitution, immorality and venereal disease" within anti-beverage room discourses (Marquis 2004:316; Globe 1934b; Ontario Provincial Council of Women 1944). Male servers, in contrast, were not held to this medical standard. The transfer of principle, then, was based not on exclusion, but instead on inclusionary segmentation of the space in which alcohol circulated. It continued in Ontario until the responsibility of controlling these establishments was shifted away from the LCBO and the opening of mixed "Cocktail Lounges" targeted a more temperate middle-class clientele in 1947 (Marquis 2004: 317).

Women could, of course, drink within their homes. Yet in the Board's early years even there some female drinkers who were the subject of gossip and public criticism, On the LCBO's opening day in 1927 the Globe reported on women purchasers as if they were spectacles for public consumption. Articles were critical of women who "wheeled baby carriages" when making their purchases, or of women who were assertive of their right to drink openly and questioning their ability to both drink and be effective mothers (Globe 1927h). Moreover, discourses surrounding alcoholism and motherhood in the late 1930s expressed fears over a scientifically underdeveloped and fear-based understanding of what would later become known as fetal alcohol syndrome. At a WCTU convention in 1937 a speaker expressed “science claims that alcoholic mothers give to the world either a prostitute or a delinquent, when she does not give an epileptic, an idiot or a lunatic.”

During the Board's early years many women also avoided taking out a permit of their own for fear of being stigmatized - a tendency that again increased the degree to which female gender performances concerning alcohol were mediated by male figures within their lives. When it came to Board policy, the identity of women's husbands or fathers was integrated into the purchase process: the occupations and sometimes names of these men were included on female permits, acting as the lenses through which cases of misspending and overindulgence were viewed.

Unlike men's clubs and legions, which had no trouble obtaining licenses and served as a means by which men could resist Board control over their drinking spaces, women's clubs were denied this privilege…this "issue blew up first in 1935 when the Germaine Club, which had always had a mixed membership, was ordered to stop serving beer to women." The Board held firm to its decision. It disallowed not only women in uniform from drinking but also the gender-exclusive woman's auxiliary equivalents of male clubs."

- Gary Genosko and Scott Thompson, Punched Drunk: Alcohol, Surveillance and the LCBO 1927–1975. Winnipeg and Halifax: Fernwood Press, 2009. p. 152-153

[carbombrenee]

Muskoka Lakes boat tour aboard the Wenonah II, Ontario Heritage Conference Gravenhurst//June 2024

[starsilversword]

I just finished reading The Stone Orchard by Susan E. Merritt. And oh I love it so much. I finished it in a day, read it during my breaks at work but I'm glad because it forced me to slow down and actually process the story, probably would have finished it in like, 2 hours otherwise.

Also had to look up who the Fenians were before I started reading for context but the story itself actually does a really good job of explaining who they were.

Might draw some art of Maud and maybe Crow the crow later.

[fashionsfromhistory]

Riding Habit

c.1770-1780

England

Royal Ontario Museum (Object number: 2013.17.3.1)

[vintagecamping]

Prepping breakfast in a snow hole.

Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario

1973

[lionofchaeronea]

Title: "I am half sick of shadows," said the Lady of Shalott Artist: John William Waterhouse (English, 1849-1917) Date: 1915 Genre: Arthuriana; literary painting (based on the poem "The Lady of Shalott" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson) Movement: Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 100.3 cm (39.4 in) high x 73.7 cm (29 in) wide Location: Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

[yesterdaysprint]

The Windsor Star, Ontario, June 26, 1925

[momsopposed2theoccult]

Oh, you’re from Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Minnesota? Okay, tell me where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours. 

[humanoidhistory]

Grain elevator at Collingwood, Ontario. Like a big spooky house.

(Library and Archives Canada)

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Black History Month 2025 is right around the corner, and to celebrate, one mall in Toronto is set to host a pop-up market featuring unique goodies from dozens of BIPOC-owned small businesses. The Trending Table is on the cutting edge in Toronto when it comes to hosting unique vendor markets across the city, and things are only ramping up for them. Founded by Kana Nagai and Martina Willis, The Trending Table was founded in 2021 with the aim of promoting the city's small business community, and for the past four years, that's exactly what they've done: taking over venues like Stackt Market, Square One and Scarborough Town Centre with their uniquely curated markets.

Continue reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[aultsville]

Two appliqué projects I did about the St. Lawrence Seaway/The Lost Villages.

Top one is based on the Lost Villages Historical Society logo, bottom is based on a photograph by George Hickey taken in Aultsville, Ontario just before the flooding of the Seaway.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

Great history of Bob Rae and the NDP in power in Ontario in the early 1990s. My parents still feel betrayed all these decades later. "Deficit mania In its first two years of power, the NDP had brought in important labour law changes, raised the minimum wage, raised welfare rates, invested in housing, and raised taxes on higher income earners. 

At the same time, the government was laying the groundwork for severe austerity. In January 1992, Rae took to television to tell Ontarians there were unsustainable deficits ahead and action needed to be taken. The NDP’s main focus was to get the deficit under control.

Either the NDP was going to push forward real substantive changes to how the economy works and for whom, or it was going to appease the economic forces in power. Rather than take on the big business agenda head-on, the NDP in government was pulled into managing the economy. And, first and foremost, this meant placating business interests and creating a stable climate for investment and business. 

It should be noted that much of the hew and cry about the deficit and impending debt wall was baseless. The government claimed that the deficit would be $18 billion by 1995, an over-the-top projection. The real figure was almost half of that. Ontario still had access to financial markets; there was little concern about its long run debt to GDP ratio. 

The NDP was viciously attacked by the rightwing and under siege from the big business lobby but there is little to suggest that Ontario was facing an actual fiscal crisis. The net debt-to-GDP ratio under the Rae government was lower than any subsequent government in Ontario. 

To get the deficit under control, the NDP opted to not go after the rich and powerful. Both a wealth tax and an inheritance tax were dismissed early on. The NDP was also not going to substantially raise corporate taxes. The government was more comfortable bailing out corporations, opening casinos, and doing big pharmaceutical companies favours, at the taxpayers’ expense.' - David Bush, "Rae Days: Lessons from the Social Contract 30 years later." Spring Magazine. July 7, 2023.

[carbombrenee]

The Segwun, the last coal-operated steamship on the Muskoka lakes

[amnhnyc]

It’s time for another Trilobite Tuesday! Pictured is a 2-in- (5-cm-) long Ceraurus mantranseris. This well-preserved specimen was found in southern Ontario.

[fashionsfromhistory]

Knitted Jacket

1630-1650

Italy

Royal Ontario Museum (Object number: 2007.28.1)