Rolly Martin Country

The 1939 shop floor of the CLC, and a flatcar holding an 11-ton cheese for the 1892 Chicago World's Fair are included as we look at a few 2025 issues as they were seen in the past. One school of thought says that history is not just a sterile record of the past - battles and dates - but an effort to understand how people reacted to change in the past.

Below you'll see a Prime Minister and President riding around together and shaking hands over the new bridges of friendship and understanding which have been built between good neighbours.

The first few images come from this annual look at Canadian progress as documented by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics.

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Then, as now, Canada's energy production was dispersed across the country. However, rather than national energy independence, cross-border flows of energy were preferred when it made economic sense.

Beyond coal ... petroleum and natural gas deposits were being developed and distribution systems were evolving - where economically feasible - to get them where they could be put to work.

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from: The Rideau, a pictorial history of the waterway; Ed: Adrian G Ten Cate; 1981; Besancourt Publishers, Brockville ON.

This bridge in Kingston's harbour is gone, but some might like to see this photo.

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from: The Rideau, a pictorial history of the waterway; Ed: Adrian G Ten Cate; 1981; Besancourt Publishers, Brockville ON.

Tariff this!

The international trade bugaboo of Canadian supply management was not an issue in 1892. Cheese, made at local cheese factories, preserved and stored perishable milk protein for consumption during the winter. This was in an era before the mechanical refrigeration of bulk milk ... and also before the road transport of bulk milk was made possible by internal combustion vehicles and paved roads.

As Canadian farmlands developed, milk cans were transported on wagons or sleighs drawn by horses to meet the morning 'milk run'. This all-stops train would take the milk to the urban dairy. The subsidized provision of fresh milk to urban schoolchildren in their classrooms prevented calcium-deficiency disorders.

During winter, hay and sileage was fed to the dairy cows who were stuck indoors for months and many might go 'dry' during this period. When they finally hit the new grass in June, a surplus of fresh milk was produced and prices for milk would be depressed.

Starting in the 1960s, AI* enabled the selective breeding of cows. Using this method, their freshening could be scheduled to occur throughout the year, preventing boom (June) and bust (winter) cycles of milk production. *Artificial Insemination

Supply management helped preserve consistent reasonable rates of return for family dairy farms and ensured that production was evenly spread out through the calendar year through the use of 'over quota levies'. The latter were applied when a farmer produced too much milk during a given month.

Imagine the workload on a typical family farm - cows need to be milked twice daily, 365 days per year. Feeding and other 'material needs' also need to be tended to ... 365 days per year.

Some experts point out today that Canadians pay more than Americans for dairy products. These experts would probably not turn in their laptops in exchange for the Canadian 'dairy farm lifestyle'.

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from: Cartoons by Macpherson; Duncan Macpherson; circa 1963; Toronto Star.

In the 1950s, there was a 'Rooshan' under every bed ... and under the ice. There was great fear that bombers of the USSR would be flying over the north pole to drop atomic bombs on us. People built backyard fallout shelters and stocked them with canned goods.

In the early 1960s, the US could use their new nuclear-powered subs to patrol under the ice of the Canadian arctic. While I don't know all of the details which prompted this editorial cartoon, you can see that arctic security was a priority for our American neighbours.

In the late 1980s, Canadian Minister of Defence Perrin Beatty opened talks to buy nuclear patrol submarines from France. France received a gentle nudge from the United States discouraging them from supplying submarines which could patrol under Canada's polar ice.

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from: Cartoons by Macpherson; Duncan Macpherson; circa 1963; Toronto Star.

[Corrected for inflation, $1.2 million equals about $12.2 million in 2025 dollars]

In keeping with the enduring idea that bombers will travel over the north pole ...

The Lockheed Starfighter was a high-altitude supersonic interceptor which (like the Avro Arrow) had been designed to attack the nuclear bombers of the USSR as they sneakily approached North America over the north pole.

After Sputnik, the Starfighter became kind of useless - but Canada still bought them and Canadair built them under licence providing unionized high-tech aerospace jobs for Canadians.

... Sure, the Starfighter was still a really cool piece of hardware, but the 'rockets' (i.e. missiles) of the inspiring and exciting US/USSR Space Race were really all about the ability to drop nuclear weapons on your enemy with greater and greater precision. Except, with nukes ... precision doesn't matter as much as the wind direction which transports the radioactive fallout.

... While many (including some politicians) still picture the Dr Strangelove image of attacking bombers coming over the north pole ... since the 1960s it would have been more likely that massive warheads would have arrived silently by missile.

What this cartoon doesn't foresee, is that the RCAF Starfighter, as part of the NATO mission, was going to be repurposed as a short-range treetop-level bomber.

As detailed in Canadian Nuclear Weapons; John Clearwater; 1998; Dundern Press, this high-altitude interceptor would race at near treetop level (to avoid radar) from West Germany ... before delivering its bomb to one of the Warsaw Pact countries as directed by the US and NATO. This type of flying in this aircraft was probably as safe for RCAF pilots ... as running a racing motorcycle at top speed along a biking trail through the woods!

Within particular RCAF bases in West Germany there were separate US military compounds housing the nuclear bombs. Upon proper authority, an RCAF Starfighter would enter the US compound, get bombed up by the US personnel ... and head off toward its target.

Upon reaching the target area, the Starfighter would 'zoom' up to a relatively high altitude, and use a rudimentary computer to release and 'loft' the bomb upward on a parabolic flight - which might be slowed by a parachute on the way down. Given that it was designed as a supersonic interceptor, the Starfighter's nuke could only be slung under the fuselage. The RCAF Starfighters carried 3 or 4 different designs of bomb, each with many more sub-options to enable the US personnel to tailor the bomb's yield before bombing up the aircraft.

So ... during the mission ... the RCAF pilot would have to avoid controlled flight into the ground, avoid getting shot down, avoid nuclear fratricide by all of the other weapons going off nearby ... but ... the pilot could at least outrun the shock wave ... in his supersonic fighter.

However ... the plane could not outrun the burst of gamma radiation from the detonating bomb. This is why the it was released high in the air with an upward trajectory - to give the aircraft time to dive and thunder away, to escape most of that radiation. The survival of a pilot in this complete scenario seems very unlikely.

But you have to have some hope ...

Historical lesson? Canadians purchased a US-designed plane which had become kind of useless because the nature of warfare had changed ... so ... with American help ... they found something else for it to do ...