Welcome to Wayback Wednesday sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab! Every week, we’ll be sharing a vintage photo and asking our readers to chime in with anything you can recall about the photo, other related memories, or even a funny caption. Have some vintage photos of your own? Send them to [email protected] and we may share them with our readers!
Scroll down to see last week’s photo.
It’s Wayback Wednesday brought to you by Cavalcade Color Lab! In this week’s photo, the steamer Algonquin. Do you know where she is docked here? Can you guess the date? (Photo courtesy of the Toronto Public Library)
Wayback Wednesday is sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab
Last week we shared this photo with you:
Here’s what Susan Pryke’s Huntsville: With Spirit and Resolve tells us about this photo:
“The Dominion elections in September 1911 saw Wilfred Laurier’s Liberal government defeated over its support of free trade between the United States and Canada. The reciprocity issue consumed the public’s attention for most of that year. The Forester ran an informal poll of public opinion, asking people to mail in ballots that had been printed in the paper. The results, published weekly in April, showed those opposed to free trade outnumbering the “free traders” two to one.
“After 15 years, the country was again Conservative with Prime Minister Robert Borden at the helm. William Wright, the standing member for Muskoka, was triumphantly returned, winning over Liberal candidate, G.H.O. Thomas of Bracebridge. Huntsville gave Mr. Wright the largest Conservative majority in its history.
“Meanwhile, the public in Huntsville looked forward with some amusement to the payment of an election wager between two of its leading citizens. H.E. Rice, editor of the Forester, had bet hardware store owner J.E. Mosley that the Liberals would still win the election in spite of the unpopularity of free trade, and that they would win by a majority of 25. If they didn’t, he promised to take Mosley on a wheelbarrow ride from the swing bridge to the post office and back to his store.
“’Of course Rice paid the price of unwarranted optimism,’” the paper announced. So one bright afternoon the week of September 28, 1911, Mosley arrived at the Forester office with a decorated wheelbarrow. Across the front was a large banner bearing the words, “The larger markets R.I.P.” With huge crowds watching, H.E. Rice wheeled Mosley to the bridge and back.”
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david johns says
I’m going with 1929 at North Portage on Penn Lake. Looks like the two Portage Flyer steam trains are getting lots of steam up.