CPR 1939 Peninsula (Marathon), Ontario. A Royal Tour Stop

With our humidex reaching 40 degrees Celsius (around 104 degrees Fahrenheit) for a few days, I have been putting my energy into managing the legacy 'Stacks/Archives' in the basement which my parents accumulated. This major diversion of energy explains this week's abbreviated post. 

Looking back over 80 years of now 'historical' files accumulated by teachers, one also sees items which should be shared broadly using the available technology. With my particular interest in the north shore of Lake Superior, I found one to present immediately.

Before Facebook, there was Scrapbook.

Long before the internet, people collected images and stories from newspapers and magazines and 'curated' collections of items which interested them. Using mucilage, the items were glued into scrapbooks. So far, today's source scrapbook has endured for 83 years. It will be interesting to see if on-line Pinterest collections are still around in the year 2105. Do let me know, will you?

I don't know which side of the family filled a 15 x 11 inch scrapbook with clippings of the 1939 Royal Tour. Certainly my father's family actually attended or saw elements of the tour in Montreal.

My mother was 6 years old at the time. The careful adult effort put into the book, suggests it was not hers. However, the brand of scrapbook used matches others in her collection - so perhaps her older sister, or father (a veteran of the Great War), or her mother assembled this collection.

The clipping below has dimensions of roughly 5 inches by 13 inches. Many of the clipping photos are very large, making them attractive to newspaper readers, or people who wished to frame them afterwards. However, it often takes more than one pass of the scanner to digitize them. You can see elements of 'photoshopping' by a newspaper photo artist if you look closely.

The subject of the clipping is part of a simple, brief conversation between the King and Queen and a local resident of Peninsula (later Marathon) Ontario. Their typical interest in the citizens they encountered is evident in the exchange. Queen Elizabeth (later known as the Queen Mother) reflected afterwards that 'the Tour made us'.

... The 1939 Tour really marked the beginning of their roles as public relations ambassadors for, and wartime leaders of, Britain (and the 'Empire'/Commonwealth) during the Second World War. 

With the demanding schedule they followed, their knowledge of their Canadian 'subjects' increased, as did their PR skills. As these skills were refined, adapted and applied on the Tour ... their popularity with Canadians (Americans and Newfoundlanders) increased. 

... So the Tour made them effective and popular leaders - particularly when Britain needed all the help it could get early in the war - when Hitler's armies occupied most of western Europe.

From Peninsula, the Royal Train would be climbing the Ruling Grade to Neys - so a 'pusher' was being added to the headend. The Marathon Company pulp mill at Peninsula would soon be in constructed - providing forestry, log driving/log boom management, and mill jobs for the area in the years that followed.

from: Pic, Pulp and People; Jean Boultbee/Jesse Embree; 1981; Township of Marathon.

Looking timetable west, here is the station area as those on the Royal Tour would have seen it in 1939.

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More information on the Royal Tour of 1939 can be reached via the 'radio button' above:

Railway Technology & Systems 04

... under the heading ...

Royal Tour of 1939