Canadap2.doc 13-12-00 I REMEMBER CANADA ________________________________________ A Book for a Musical Play in Two Acts By Roy LaBerge Copyright (c) 1997 by Roy LaBerge #410-173 Cooper St.. Ottawa ON K2P 0E9 11111 2 Canada [email protected] . Dramatis Personnae The Professor an articulate woman academic Ambrose Smith a feisty senior citizen Six (or more) actors portraying or presenting songs or activities identified with: 1920s primary school children A 1920s school teacher Jazz age singers and dancers Reginald Fessenden A 16-year-old lumberjack Alan Plaunt Graham Spry Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers Guy Lombardo and the Lombardo trio Norma Locke MacKenzie King Canadian servicemen and civilian women Canadian servicewomen The Happy Gang Winston Churchill Hong King prisoner of war A Royal Canadian Medical Corps nurse John Pratt A Senior Non-Commissioned Officer A Canadian naval rating Bill Haley The Everly Brothers Elvis Presley Charley Chamberlain Marg Osborne Anne Murray Ian and Sylvia 3 Gordon Lightfoot Joni Mitchell First contemporary youth Second contemporary youth Other contemporary youths This script includes only minimal stage directions. 4 Overture: Medley of period music) (Professor enters, front curtain, and takes place at lectern left.) PROFESSOR Good evening, ladies and Gentlemen, and welcome to History 3136 - Social History of Canada from 1920 to the Year 2000. I am delighted that so many have registered for this course. In this introductory lecture, I intend to give an overview of some of the major events and issues we will examine during the next sixteen weeks. And I have a surprise in store for you. I am going to share this lecture with a guest, a person whose life spans the period we are studying. Will you please welcome Mr. Ambrose Smith. (Agitation behind curtain. Ambrose Smith enters through curtain downstage centre, looks about nervously, sees where professor is standing, and then walks to stand beside her.) PROFESSOR Welcome, Mr. Smith. I am very pleased that you are able to join us today and to assist me with this lecture. MR. SMITH: I'm glad to help, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. PROFESSOR Mr. Smith, you've been complaining about the way things are in Canada today and how much better they were in the old days. So here is your chance to have your say. Just comment on my lecture from your own experiences. Feel free to speak out anytime. Tell us if the Canada whose history I am describing is the Canada you remember. MR. SMITH Well, I'll try. But I'm kinda nervous in front of all these people. PROFESSOR Now don't worry. I'll help if you get stuck. Besides, all these people are on your side. How about a hand for Mr. Smith to show we're with him? (Pause for applause, whether real, claque-stimulated or sound- effect simulated. Mr. Smith responds with awkward bows.) 5 PROFESSOR Now suppose you begin by telling us what was different about the Canada you grew up in. MR. SMITH That's easy. The Canada I grew up in was the greatest dominion in the British Empire. PROFESSOR Good. That's the idea. And later Canada became the greatest dominion in the British Commonwealth. Now what are some of your earliest memories of that Canada? MR. SMITH The family's visits to Parliament Hill on July the first -- Dominion Day. The bands played and the solders and sailors marched by in the King's uniform. And at school, we were taught to be proud of the British Empire and Canada's place in it. (Curtain opens. Classroom scene. Schoolchildren, standing, sing.) THE MAPLE LEAF FOREVER* (Children sit.) TEACHER The readings for your first test are: Wolfe at Quebec, by Francis Parkman, Defeat of the Armada, by James Anthony Froude, The Death of Nelson, by Robert Southey, England My England, by William Ernest Henley, Rule Britannia, by James Thomson, and The Queen's Jubilee 1897, by Sir Wilfred Laurier. PUPIL England, by William Shakespeare This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by nature for herself 6 Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, PUPIL (Cont.) Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England. (Children stand and sing.) LAND OF HOPE AND GLORY TEACHER Very good class. Now let's join in singing some of the songs our brave Canadian soldiers sang in the Great War, when they went overseas to save the mother country. (Children sing.) (Medley, three of, one chorus each) IT'S A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY* PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES* THERE'S A LONG LONG TRAIL* KEEP THE HOME FIRES BURNING* SMILE THE WHILE YOU KISS ME SAD ADIEU PROFESSOR (at lectern) When the war was over and those servicemen returned home, many of them were unable to find jobs. The Canadian economy was on the downturn in the early 1920s. But business boomed later in the decade. Automobiles appeared on our city streets. Streets and highways were paved. MR. SMITH And more people got electricity and telephones and central heating. And even indoor plumbing. PROFESSOR And young women started bobbing their hair and wearing short skirts. It was the beginning of the jazz age, the fun time called the Roaring Twenties. 7 (singing and dancing in 1920s garb, one of:) CHARLESTON* AIN'T SHE SWEET* YOU'RE THE CREAM OF MY COFFEE* FIVE FOOT TWO, EYES OF BLUE* PROFESSOR Canada had prohibition. But it was just one-way prohibition. It was against the law to drink alcohol, but it was legal to produce it for sale outside Canada. MR. SMITH That opened up a new business for Canadians -- smuggling booze into the United States. PROFESSOR Canadian Sovereignty took a big step forward in 1925. The Imperial Conference recognized that all the members of the Commonwealth were autonomous and equal in status. In 1931, this was confirmed in the Statute of Westminster. As early as the 1920s, a new gadget, a radio receiver, started appearing in Canadian homes. An Italian, Guglielmo Marconi, is recognized as the first person to transmit a signal by radio. But that’s all he transmitted, a signal. (Sound of morse code transmission . --- . - - - . .) It was a Canadian, Reginald Fessenden, who made the world's first transmission of the human voice by radio. That was away back in 1900. MR. SMITH Reginald Fessenden? Never heard of him. PROFESSOR Reginald Fessenden also made the world's first broadcast of live and recorded music. That was in 1906, on Christmas Eve. (Fessenden on stage in radio "studio" with Mrs. Fessenden and Miss Bent, his secretary) FESSENDEN 8 This is Reginald Fessenden bringing Christmas greetings from the United Fruit Company to the crews of all our ships at sea. We open our transmission with a recording of Handel's "Largo" ("Ediphone" recording of a few bars of LARGO) FESSENDEN And now, a carol familiar to all. (Fessenden plays violin solo of O HOLY NIGHT, singing the last verse as he plays.) FESSENDEN Next, some readings from scripture by Mrs. Fessenden and my secretary, Miss Bent. (Mrs. Fessenden and Miss Bent come to microphone, freeze, open mouths but no sound comes out. Mr. Fessenden encourages them but they remain paralysed by microphone fright. Fessenden grabs the script from Miss Bent's hands and reads.) FESSENDEN And the angel said to them: Fear not; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be to all the people; for on this day is born to you a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David. And this shall be a sign unto you: you shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. And suddenly there was with angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God, and saying: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will. (pause) We now close our radio transmission by once again extending our best wishes for a merry merry Christmas on behalf of the United Fruit Company. If you heard this broadcast, please write and let me know. You can address your letter to Reginald Fessenden -- that's F E S S E N D E N -- in care of the United Fruit Company's office at Brant Rock, Massachussets. MR. SMITH Brant Rock, Massachusetts? But you said he was a Canadian? PROFESSOR Reginald Fessenden was born in Sherbrooke and educated in Canada. But, like many 9 other Canadians, he had to go to the United States to earn a living and develop his inventions. On the other hand, the Canadian government gave financial support to Marconi, as well as the exclusive right to build wireless stations in Canada. Radio Station XWA in Montreal, now CFCF, is credited with the first scheduled broadcast in North America. It was a musical program aired on May the 19th, 1920, to the Royal Society of Canada, which was meeting in Ottawa . The first radio network in Canada was developed in the 1920s by the Canadian National Railways. It produced musical programs and pioneered in radio drama. Many people heard their first radio broadcast on a CNR passenger train. Mr. Smith, did you ever year a radio broadcast on a CNR train? MR. SMITH No, I never heard a radio on a train.