Sometimes, we have a particular image of the past which is too idealized.
This set of postcards looks at Kingston's sloping 'main drag' - which was also a provincial highway.
The Greatest Generation (i.e. it's not us) did not angle their front wheels when parking on a grade!
'Well, they didn't have power steering back then.'
That's true, but they didn't know that they didn't have power steering back then.
... I just thought there'd be greater knowledge of practical physics in the old days.
Perhaps no one in history has ever angled their wheels correctly on a grade.
Maybe Roman chariots were always rolling away while their owners were rushing in for smokes and Trojans.
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Our first postcard comes with a stamp first issued in 1942 showing King George VI in uniform. Notice the rubber-stamped '2 cents postage due'.
At the Capitol Theatre, Fred Astaire is starring in the 1935 movie Top Hat.
According to Kingston Portsmouth & Cataraqui Electric Railway; George Dillon & William Thomson; 1994; Kingston Division, CRHA. ... a fire in the carpenter's shop in March 1930 resulted in the loss of 20 streetcars. Colonial Coach Lines was contracted by the City of Kingston to provide temporary emergency bus service - marking the end of light rail in Kingston. The rails were lifted during World War 2.
The service started with horse cars on Princess Street in 1877, later 'going electric' in 1893. At one point, the line had extended as far west as Kingston Penitentiary and Portsmouth, and to the 'outer station' of the Grand Trunk on Montreal Street. The system was 8 miles in length at its peak.
Probably "& Cataraqui" was the company's equivalent of all the railway corporate titles ending in "& Pacific".
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Postcards often travel circuitously before many of them find their way 'home'. This looks like a Sunday afternoon photograph and not being an automotive or postcard scholar, I'll leave its dating to future historians.
In the early 1960s, Don Messer's Jubilee was hard-scheduled into our Lachine-based, rabbit-eared Viking brand black-and-white TV set. Its tuner clunked from channel to channel like the main switching gear at a hydro dam. LC Gagnon was a violinist and fiddler and that largely explains the show's reign over our apartment ever week ... Monday at 1930hr, perhaps?
In Montreal, today's TVA flagship station began as the famous Canal Dix of early French-language television broadcasting days in Quebec. LC Gagnon (an anglophone) never watched 'French TV', but the exception to this rule was Chez Isidore on Channel 10, Télé-Métropole. Isidore Soucy and family had real ceinture fléchée-ed fun - often with chansons à répondre which seemed to be more joyful and spontaneous than the carefully-practised precision of Don Messer and His Islanders and the Buchta Dansers.
We don't know about the first 30 or 40 years of this postcard's life, but it was dispatched to enter a Quebec geographical game show. The monastery name submitted as the contestant's entry is quite a large, sophisticated operation today with an impressive website.
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The 1953 Disney film Peter Pan is playing at the Capitol Theatre.
This card displays some good compliance with correct wheel-angling ... different up- and downhill techniques when parking along a curb-equipped road.
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The Valentine & Sons serial number for this card corresponds to 1906 - so the photo is probably from an earlier date. The streetcar company had applied to the city to double-track Princess Street in 1905, but this request was denied. The stamp depicts King Edward VII, who was born in 1841 and on the throne from 1901 until 1910 - you know, during the Edwardian era.
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This pass was purchased at a railway show.
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| from: Road Book, 1958-1959; Ontario Motor League. |
Probably the most interesting aspect of this map, which includes Kingston, is the construction of Highway 401. In some areas it is marked as UC (under construction). If you have ever driven along the 1000 Island Parkway and noticed that the right-of-way seems wide or 'doubled' in places, you can see that the original plan was to route the 401 right down the waterfront along the St. Lawrence River.
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The Wild Card ...
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This postcard was probably printed before World War I - perhaps in Malta.
The famous 'insurance company view' is from the Spanish perspective - not from the Strait of Gibraltar.
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| from: Handy Reference Atlas of the World; JG Bartholomew; 1904; John Walker & Co. |
The map above (from my favourite atlas) orients you to the Strait of Gibraltar and the small peninsula which features the Rock of Gibraltar.
Below, at the left, you can see the location of Neutral Ground between the British and Spanish territories.
At the right, you can see all the British Imperial features from ... the Edwardian era.
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| from: Handy Reference Atlas of the World; JG Bartholomew; 1904; John Walker & Co. |