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Ontario History
Images of a Century: The City of Niagara Falls, Canada, 1904-2004 By City of Niagara Falls Centennial Book Committee Beautiful Barrie: The City and its People: An Illustrated History of Barrie, Ontario By Su Murdoch, Bradley E.S. Rudachyk, and Kurt H. Schick Brian S. Osborne
Volume 98, numéro 1, spring 2006
URI : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1065849ar DOI : https://doi.org/10.7202/1065849ar
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Éditeur(s) The Ontario Historical Society
ISSN 0030-2953 (imprimé) 2371-4654 (numérique)
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Citer ce compte rendu Osborne, B. S. (2006). Compte rendu de [Images of a Century: The City of Niagara Falls, Canada, 1904-2004 By City of Niagara Falls Centennial Book Committee / Beautiful Barrie: The City and its People: An Illustrated History of Barrie, Ontario By Su Murdoch, Bradley E.S. Rudachyk, and Kurt H. Schick]. Ontario History, 98(1), 129–131. https://doi.org/10.7202/1065849ar
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Cet article est diffusé et préservé par Érudit. Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l’Université de Montréal, l’Université Laval et l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. https://www.erudit.org/fr/ 129 Images of a Century The City of Niagara Falls, Canada, 1904-2004 By City of Niagara Falls Centennial Book Committee. Niagara Falls, On- tario: City of Niagara Falls, 2004. viii + 368 pp. Illustrated. $35.00 hardcover. ISBN 0-973647-90-6. Electronic edi- tion forthcoming 2006.
time and develop a distinctive character, Beautiful Barrie a veritable “personality of place” as they The City and its People: An Illustrated are molded by the people, great and small, who live in them. History of Barrie, Ontario Of course, everyone knows Niagara By Su Murdoch, Bradley E.S. Rudachyk, Falls, one of the world’s “natural won- and Kurt H. Schick. Barrie, Ontario: ders.” In many ways, the ever-changing Barrie Press, 2005. 440 pp. Illustrated. reactions of human beings to it reflect $65.00 hardcover. ISBN 0-968373-32-1. our evolving cultural history. For the First Nations, Niagara was a place of wonder ildungsroman is an interesting term. and awe and elicited supernatural associa- It relates to stories that follow tions. For early Europeans, the sublimity Bcharacters through critical phases of the colossal scale, the overwhelming of their lives, relating their personal de- sounds, and the incomprehensible vol- velopment to significant events and ex- ume of moving water all defied descrip- periences. They are biographies with a tion. Then with the conquering of the narrative spin. Then there’s another word gorge by bridges (and tight-rope walking – prosopography – that refers to a collec- entertainers!), and the harnessing of the tion of biographies which, taken togeth- power by canals and tunnels and turbines, er, constitute an array of dramatis personae Niagara became metamorphosed into that are the movers and shakers of a given what David Nye has termed the techno- time and place and, when considered in logical sublime – a metaphor for human their individualities and interconnections, progress and dominance over Nature. serve to throw light onto society, culture, Now the focus of sight-seeing was on and politics. other places: an array of bridges, tow- And that’s my segue into this review ers, and lavish hotels all highlighted by of two excellent local histories of two of an abundance of electricity. The sensory Ontario’s cities: Niagara Falls and Barrie. excesses of Nature became accompanied They too are biographies, albeit biogra- by the carnivalesque, even the burlesque, phies of places. Like human biographies, as tourism shifted from the domain of places have beginnings, evolve through the elite to the realm of the masses. And 130 ONTARIO HISTORY
throughout all of this, the people who year slices. Thus, while the first chapter, lived within earshot of the Falls and sur- 1904-13, captures Canada’s and Niagara’s rounded by visitors to that attraction, optimism and boosterism, and the sec- contended with the prosaic requirements ond, 1914-23, the defining experience of life and created a community in which of the Great War, the transforming years to live and work. of World War II straddle the 1943-44 Much of this was in place by the threshold. Yet, somehow, it works. Schol- advent of the twentieth century and, in arly, yet accessible, introductions set the 1904, the City of Niagara Falls was cre- scene for a magnificent array of images: ated out of the town and village of the bridges and railways; homes and hotels; same name. This comprehensive volume factories and workers; bicycles, trolleys, attempts to capture what has transpired sleighs, and automobiles; advertisements since that date. As the Chair of the Cen- for movies, dry-goods and food-stuffs; tennial Book Committee and the city’s schools, bands, and sports teams; local Official Historian, Sherman Zavitz, puts politicians, foreign dignitaries, royalty, it, hundreds of photographs were care- and, of course, Marilyn Monroe. And all fully selected for “their human interest of these are accompanied by expansive value” to “present a window into the life and informative captions. Taken together, and times of Niagara Falls” from 1904 to text and image constitute a rich panoply 2004. Hence the sub-title: “Images of a of urban life in Niagara Falls. Century.” This is very much a history ren- Beautiful Barrie: The City and Its People dered in the scopic devices of the age of is another illustrated history. But its range photography. is much greater, running from “earli- Zavitz sets the scene in his Introduc- est times” to 1959 when Barrie was in- tion, reviewing the pre-1904 experience corporated as a city. This span of time with this place. Rather than proceeding is underscored by an interesting device: then with thematic periods that might en- a succession of date-notes listed at the capsulate the essence of particular phases foot of each page throughout the full on Niagara Falls’ development, the ensu- nineteen chapters. For example, on page ing hundred years follow in precise ten- 14 we read that in 1649 “Five Nations at- tack Ouendat villages in Huro- nia.” One of the notes on page 343 records that on December 31st “Barrie’s Sesquicenten- nial ends with the Downtown Countdown at City Hall.” Of course, there is a lot of detail in between as befits a community that has encountered the geo- politics of the early nineteenth century, and subsequent agri- cultural settlement, transport economics, and urban growth. Since the opening years of Beautiful Barrie predated cam- book reviews 131 eras, its illustrations are a rich array of a comprehensive rendering of the Bar- surveys, maps, and military topographic rie urban area. I really think I know this art and sketches that are replete with place. details of peoples and places. Indeed, Which brings me back to that other such is the comprehensive scope of this word, prosopography. Just as multiple project that it will serve as a template for biographies allow us to populate the other local histories. The authors identify past with actual insights into the work- and draw on such diverse sources as De- ings of society, so multiple biographies partment of Lands and Forests surveys, of places allow us to create a tapestry land registry records, travellers’ accounts of regions and communities which, and diaries, family correspondence, early when taken together, elevate the lo- chronicles and local newspapers. The text cal into the regional and even the na- is studded with images of self-assured tional. And there have been so many in founding fathers and, as in other exam- this genre of historical writing: among ples of the genre, prominent attention them Bill Patterson’s Lilacs and Limestone is given to their places of work and resi- (1989) on Pittsburgh Township, Orland dence. These views seem to underscore French’s North of Seven (2003) for North an edifice complex that bespoke of pride Hastings, and the Kingsville-Gosfield and progress in the transformation from Heritage Society’s two volume study of wilderness to urbanity. But urbanity re- Kingsville, A Stroll through Time (2003). quires more than elegant homes, prosper- The volumes reviewed here have added ous enterprises, and inspirational ecclesi- Barrie and Niagara Falls to this growing astical architecture. The warp and woof list of excellent regional scholarship dis- of a developing society needs institutions playing community pride. and cultural activities too, and in Beautiful Barrie these are also to the fore. A bicy- Brian S. Osborne cle club, a Kazoo band, a Girls’ Hockey Queen’s University, Kingston Club, a St. George’s Society, an Oddfel- lows’ fraternity, and a Kiwanis club all Bibliography: speak to an emerging public culture. The French, Orland, ed. Bancroft: North of Seven and authors sweep us through decades of Proud of it: a Parade of Memories from North war-depression-war into an age when the of Hastings. Bancroft, Ontario: The Ban- city’s boosters claimed it could be an “in- croft Heritage Book Committee, 2002. dustrial utopia” and even “Ontario’s most Kingsville, 1790-2000: A Stroll through Time. progressive city.” Although the authors 2 vols. Kingsville, Ontario: Kingsville- decided to close with the founding of the Gosfield Heritage Society, 2003. City of Barrie on the first of January in Nye, David E. America as Second Creation: Tech- 1959, another three chapters and ninety nology and Narratives of New Beginnings. pages bring the story into the 21st cen- Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. tury. Coloured collages of community ac- Patterson, William J. Lilacs and Limestone: an tivities, three superb fold-out waterfront Illustrated History of Pittsburgh Township, views (from 1853, 1875, and 2003), and 1787-1987. Kingston, Ontario: Pitts- dozens of oblique air-photographs effect burgh Historical Society, 1989.