London Evening Advertiser
- BRILLIANT SCENES ATTEND CEREMONY AT OLD QUEBEC
- All Ready For Phone ‘Cut Over’
- Claims Coal Move Was Haphazard
This London, Ontario, evening paper of October 2, 1926 carried a Quebec dispatch on the arrival of the new governor-general, Lord Willingdon, and Lady Willingdon. It described a mist-shrouded procession of scarlet uniforms from Lower Town to the Parliament Buildings, where he was installed at noon, and cast Canada as both heir to two peoples' traditions and part of a great empire. Local news covered the Bell Telephone Company's midnight cut-over to the new Fairmont exchange, which would put 15,820 numbers onto the new exchange and replace the old brown directory with a blue one. A third story gave a local coal dealer's view that the cancelled $7-a-ton Alberta coal trainloads promised by R. B. Bennett had failed over railway freight rates, not politics.
This is a partial reading. The OCR is corrupted and interleaves unrelated columns, so only three passages legible in the page image are translated. The Quebec dispatch ends at an uncertain point marked [?], and the telephone and coal stories break off mid-sentence at the edge of the legible area. No verified source was found for the Fairmont exchange's local history or for 1926 railway coal freight rates, so the context sections do not cover those details.
Translation
BRILLIANT SCENES ATTEND CEREMONY AT OLD QUEBEC
Governor-General and Consort Will Be Received At Ottawa Tomorrow.
Quebec, Oct. 2. – Canada today received a new governor-general and his consort. Lord and Lady Willingdon landed at Quebec, scene of the struggles which decided the fate of a continent, and were welcomed with the dignity of a country with more than three hundred years of the traditions of two races behind it and a part of a great empire; with the warm-heartedness of a country in its youth looking forward to its greater destiny.
The weather was unkind. The city was shrouded in heavy mist. But through it loomed the befitting display of ceremony, the scarlet of military uniforms, plumed and polished helmets, as the vice-regal party were escorted through the historic streets of Quebec, up Mountain street from Lower Town and then through the broader avenues of Upper Town to the Provincial Parliament Buildings, where the installation took place in the Legislative Council chamber at noon. [?]
All Ready For Phone ‘Cut Over’
Months of Work Necessary To Install New Fairmont Exchange.
The Bell Telephone Company's building on Clarence street is a veritable hive of activity today in preparation for the cutting over of the Fairmont exchange tonight. The cut-over will take place around midnight, the traffic department warning if there be any fires or other occurrences that will make necessary keeping the connections intact. When the traffic becomes normal men of the Northern Electric Company, who installed the system, will cut the wires connecting the subscribers to the old boards, leaving the new connections for the Fairmont exchange in their stead.
An average day's calls for the company is around 90,000 and the cut-over will be completed in the space of a second for each phone. It is the culmination of many month's work and the company are to be congratulated upon the efficiency of the installation.
Tonight 15,820 individual telephone numbers will lose their identity and become members of the new exchange. The old brown directory will be obsolete and the new blue one will be the official city directory. Numbers familiar to their users for years will be replaced
Claims Coal Move Was Haphazard
Did Not Sufficiently Investigate Matter Before Making Announcement, He Claims.
Cancellation of the second and third trainloads of Alberta coal at $7 per ton, promised by Hon. R. B. Bennett, Calgary, minister of finance in the late Meighen government, was not carried out by the King government on political grounds, as has been charged. Rather was it done, according to Wm. Buchanan, local coal dealer, because Mr. Bennett made his promise haphazardly without securing from the railways that low rate, and the Federal government was forced to pay the difference on the one trainload that came through, four cars of which were secured by Mr. Buchanan for local distribution.
The government, naturally, Mr. Buchanan says, refused to assume similar responsibility for two further trainloads, since both the C.N.R. and C.P.R. still quote $9 per ton as their lowest transportation figure.
Stands by Offer.
Mr. Buchanan still stands by his offer, made the first of last year, to take one trainload of Alberta coal a week at $14,000 for a train of 50 to 55 cars. This amounts to about $7 per ton, but the railroads would benefit in the ex-
Context
Who chose Lord Willingdon, and where was he sworn in?
The paper's Quebec dispatch records the landing and a noon installation in the Legislative Council chamber of the Provincial Parliament Buildings. Later accounts agree on the date and place: Willingdon was sworn in on 2 October 1926 in the salon rouge of Quebec's parliament buildings, and then travelled to Ottawa to take up residence at Rideau Hall, as the sub-headline anticipated. His appointment had been announced on 5 August 1926, when George V approved the recommendation of the British prime minister, Stanley Baldwin. The route to that recommendation was unusual. The British cabinet had not initially considered Willingdon a candidate, but the King himself put his name on the list sent to Canada, and Prime Minister Mackenzie King chose that name as his preference. The dispatch's image of a young country that was also part of a great empire fits the arrangement itself: the King made the appointment on British advice, but only after a Canadian prime minister had chosen the name.
Why was a new governor-general arriving in the autumn of 1926?
Willingdon replaced Lord Byng of Vimy, the end of whose term had been shaken by that summer's constitutional crisis. In June 1926 Byng refused Mackenzie King's request to dissolve Parliament; King resigned, and Byng invited the Conservatives under Arthur Meighen to form a government. The Meighen government lost a confidence vote on 2 July. After the general election of 14 September, King returned as prime minister, and Byng left Canada on 30 September, only days before the ceremony reported here. The dispatch says nothing about this controversy. Its stress on dignity and ceremony nonetheless came at a moment when the governor-general's political role had just been fiercely disputed.
How was the empire relationship behind this ceremony about to change?
Weeks after this installation, the Imperial Conference in London produced the Balfour Declaration, which the imperial prime ministers approved unanimously on 15 November 1926. It described Britain and the Dominions as autonomous communities 'equal in status', and recommended that governors-general should no longer automatically serve as the British government's representative in diplomatic relations between Britain and each dominion. Willingdon's appointment was thus the last Canadian viceregal appointment the monarch made in his capacity as sovereign of the United Kingdom. The paper's picture of Canada as 'a part of a great empire' was printed just as that imperial tie was being redefined. The conference's conclusions were later incorporated in the Statute of Westminster of December 1931.
What was the 'late Meighen government' behind the coal promise?
The coal story calls R. B. Bennett 'minister of finance in the late Meighen government'. That government held office only through the summer of 1926. At the time, ministers drawn from the House of Commons had to resign their seats on appointment and seek re-election in by-elections; Meighen avoided this by appointing ministers without portfolio as acting ministers. Liberals and Progressives objected, and the government lost a confidence vote by a single vote on 2 July 1926. After the September election King was back in office. A cheap-coal pledge made by a minister of that short-lived government therefore fell to the incoming King government to honour or drop, which is why the cancellation could be charged to political motives, a charge the dealer rejects. The case against that charge comes entirely from William Buchanan, a local dealer who had himself taken four cars of the one trainload that arrived and was still pressing his own offer to take a trainload a week. The selected passage quotes no response from the railways or the government.
Original
BRILLIANT SCENES ATTEND CEREMONY AT OLD QUEBEC
Governor-General and Consort Will Be Received At Ottawa Tomorrow. Quebec, Oct. 2. - Canada today received a new governor-general and his consort. Lord and Lady Willingdon landed at Quebec, scene of the struggles which decided the fate of a continent, and were welcomed with the dignity of a country with more than three hundred years of the traditions of two races behind it and a part of a great empire; with the warm-heartedness of a country in its youth looking forward to its greater destiny. The weather was unkind. The city was shrouded in heavy mist. But through it loomed the befitting display of ceremony, the scarlet of military uniforms, plumed and polished helmets, as the vice-regal party were escorted through the historic streets of Quebec, up Mountain street from Lower Town and then through the broader avenues of Upper Town to the Provincial Parliament Buildings, where the installation took place in the Legislative Council chamber at noon. [?]
All Ready For Phone ‘Cut Over’
Months of Work Necessary To Install New Fairmont Exchange. The Bell Telephone Company's building on Clarence street is a veritable hive of activity today in preparation for the cutting over of the Fairmont exchange tonight. The cut-over will take place around midnight, the traffic department warning if there be any fires or other occurrences that will make necessary keeping the connections intact. When the traffic becomes normal men of the Northern Electric Company, who installed the system, will cut the wires connecting the subscribers to the old boards, leaving the new connections for the Fairmont exchange in their stead. An average day's calls for the company is around 90, 000 and the cut-over will be completed in the space of a second for each phone. It is the culmination of many month's work and the company are to be congratulated upon the efficiency of the installation. Tonight 15, 820 individual telephone numbers will lose their identity and become members of the new exchange. The old brown directory will be obsolete and the new blue one will be the official city directory. Numbers familiar to their users for years will be replaced
Claims Coal Move Was Haphazard
Did Not Sufficiently Investigate Matter Before Making Announcement, He Claims. Cancellation of the second and third trainloads of Alberta coal at $ 7 per ton, promised by Hon. R. B. Bennett, Calgary, minister of finance in the late Meighen government, was not carried out by the King government on political grounds, as has been charged. Rather was it done, according to Wm. Buchanan, local coal dealer, because Mr. Bennett made his promise haphazardly without securing from the railways that low rate, and the Federal government was forced to pay the difference on the one trainload that came through, four cars of which were secured by Mr. Buchanan for local distribution. The government, naturally, Mr. Buchanan says, refused to assume similar responsibility for two further trainloads, since both the C. N. R. and C. P. R. still quote $ 9 per ton as their lowest transportation figure. Stands by Offer. Mr. Buchanan still stands by his offer, made the first of last year, to take one trainload of Alberta coal a week at $ 14, 000 for a train of 50 to 55 cars. This amounts to about $ 7 per ton, but the railroads would benefit in the ex -
Source: Holding institution