London Evening Advertiser
- OFFICIAL RULING PUTS ANNEX IN LONDON RIDING
- Canadians Welcome The Queen
- Situation In Britain Menacing
The London Evening Advertiser of October 26, 1926, led local readers with an election-law tangle: chief election officer Allan Dymond ruled, after a week of doubt, that districts annexed to the city since 1912 belong in the London North riding, settling the status of nearly 2,000 voters left uncertain by the wording of the 1925 Redistribution Act. From Niagara, the paper reported Princess Ileana and the visiting queen's party crossing the steel arch bridge into Canada on a sightseeing drive, after the mayors of both Niagara Falls had welcomed the queen at breakfast. Henry Somerville's dispatch from Britain described miners' leader Cook still free to speak, an explosive mood in many districts, snow in London and ill-clad children queuing at gas works to buy coke in paper bags.
This is a partial reading. The OCR text was too corrupted to use, so the three excerpts were transcribed from legible parts of the page images. The beginnings of the Niagara and Britain stories are lost, as marked by [?]. Stories cut off at tile edges were not translated: the Guelph crossing crash, the Ferguson constituency item, Rail Officials Mystified and Murder Charged. The fetched background pages do not cover the official arrangements for the queen's Canadian visit or British coal and coke prices, so the commentary does not discuss them.
Translation
OFFICIAL RULING PUTS ANNEX IN LONDON RIDING
Official ruling of Allan Dymond, chief election officer, handed down today after a week of uncertainty, places annexed districts definitely in the riding of London North. Nearly 2,000 voters are affected. The uncertainty was occasioned by the wording of the Redistribution Act of 1925, which said that London North embraced all that part of the city lying north of Dundas street, westerly to the centre line of the Thames River and thence along this line to the westerly limits of the city, except that portion of the city annexed since 1912.
Canadians Welcome The Queen
[?] Princess Ileana and party, crossed the upper steel arch bridge over the Niagara River to Canadian soil this morning, in the course of a sight-seeing motor trip which was undertaken immediately after the breakfast at Niagara Falls, N. Y., when her majesty was welcomed by Mayor William Laughlin of Niagara Falls, N. Y., and Mayor H. P. Stephens of Niagara Falls, Ont.
Situation In Britain Menacing
[?] that he thought the atmosphere was explosive at the moment, and that the meeting would have threatened disorder. There is no general prohibition against Cook's speaking, and he will be as active as ever this week. There is reliable information that the atmosphere is explosive in many places, as the Staffordshire officer feared. The weather has turned bitterly cold. It was snowing in London yesterday, and it is a pitiable sight to see the long queues of ill-clad children waiting outside the gas works to buy small quantities of coke in paper bags.
Context
Why London's annexed districts needed a ruling on their riding
According to the paper, the confusion came from the text of the 1925 Redistribution Act itself: it defined London North as the part of the city north of Dundas Street, bounded on the west by the centre line of the Thames, but it excluded every part of the city annexed since 1912. That exception left nearly 2,000 voters in the annexed districts without a clear riding until chief election officer Allan Dymond ruled that they belonged to London North. Ontario's legislature passed redistribution acts in 1925 and 1926 to realign electoral districts, and in that round Ottawa, Hamilton, London and Windsor each gained an additional seat as representation shifted from slow-growing rural counties to fast-growing cities. Before the change London had been a single provincial seat, so the appearance of a London North riding fits the city's split into two provincial divisions. The excerpt itself does not say whether the riding is provincial or federal; the provincial reading is an inference from the timing and the redistribution record.
What was at stake: Ontario's December 1, 1926 election
The ruling came about five weeks before Ontarians went to the polls. The province held its general election on December 1, 1926, to elect the 112 members of the legislature, and the contest turned on the provincial government's proposal to repeal the Ontario Temperance Act and replace prohibition with government control of liquor sales. London's seat had stood vacant since August 1925, when it was last held by a Conservative, so the city's voters were about to be represented again under new boundaries. In that setting, knowing which riding nearly 2,000 annexed-district voters belonged to determined where they would be listed and which candidates they could vote for in a sharply divided wet-versus-dry election.
Who was the queen crossing at Niagara
The royal visitor in the Niagara story was Queen Marie of Romania, wife of King Ferdinand I, who had been born into the British royal family as a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. In 1926 she made a diplomatic tour of the United States accompanied by her children Nicholas and Ileana, which is why Princess Ileana appears with the party in the paper's account of the bridge crossing. As queen she was very popular both in Romania and abroad, and on the 1926 tour she and her children were received enthusiastically by the people.
How the 1926 royal tour went and how it ended
Queen Marie arrived in New York on October 18, 1926, eight days before this edition. The tour that followed zigzagged across the United States and Canada for seven weeks and two days, covering 8,750 miles in her special train, the Royal Romanian. Crowds were large, but official Washington was cool: President Coolidge gave her thirteen minutes at the White House before rising to end the interview. The Niagara crossing reported here, a sightseeing drive taken right after the mayors of both Niagara Falls had welcomed her at breakfast, belongs to the early stage of that journey. The trip ended under a shadow. King Ferdinand sent word that he wished her home, and on her return she found him gravely ill; he died a few months later.
Who was Cook, and why Britain's mood was explosive in October 1926
The Cook of Henry Somerville's dispatch is Arthur James Cook, general secretary of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain from 1924 until his death in 1931. He was closely identified with the slogan "Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day" during the 1926 General Strike. After the Trades Union Congress abandoned the general strike after nine days, Cook continued to lead the miners' resistance for several months, and the strike ultimately ended in defeat. Somerville's report catches that later phase: the miners were still holding out, Cook remained free to speak and would be as active as ever, and at least one Staffordshire officer had judged a meeting too dangerous to hold. Somerville set that political tension beside a sudden cold snap, snow in London and queues of ill-clad children buying small bags of coke at the gas works.
Original
OFFICIAL RULING PUTS ANNEX IN LONDON RIDING
Official ruling of Allan Dymond, chief election officer, handed down today after a week of uncertainty, places annexed districts definitely in the riding of London North. Nearly 2, 000 voters are affected. The uncertainty was occasioned by the wording of the Redistribution Act of 1925, which said that London North embraced all that part of the city lying north of Dundas street, westerly to the centre line of the Thames River and thence along this line to the westerly limits of the city, except that portion of the city annexed since 1912.
Canadians Welcome The Queen
[?] Princess Ileana and party, crossed the upper steel arch bridge over the Niagara River to Canadian soil this morning, in the course of a sight-seeing motor trip which was undertaken immediately after the breakfast at Niagara Falls, N. Y., when her majesty was welcomed by Mayor William Laughlin of Niagara Falls, N. Y., and Mayor H. P. Stephens of Niagara Falls, Ont.
Situation In Britain Menacing
[?] that he thought the atmosphere was explosive at the moment, and that the meeting would have threatened disorder. There is no general prohibition against Cook's speaking, and he will be as active as ever this week. There is reliable information that the atmosphere is explosive in many places, as the Staffordshire officer feared. The weather has turned bitterly cold. It was snowing in London yesterday, and it is a pitiable sight to see the long queues of ill-clad children waiting outside the gas works to buy small quantities of coke in paper bags.
Source: Holding institution