This will be a very interesting and useful event!
The Victorian Spectator
The home of the Victorian Society of Alberta
Tuesday, 21 January 2025
Friday, 17 January 2025
January Fashion Friday
For our first Fashion Friday of 2025 here is a fantastic video by historian Ruth Goodman from YouTube.
Lots of info on daily life for the different classes in Victorian England.
While only a bit is about "Fashion" per se there is a tremendous amount of good info on daily living here. Always keep in mind that this is where many people in the West came from and they would have brought many of these patterns of life with them.
Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta
Friday, 3 January 2025
Victorian Calendars for 2025
For our first post of 2025 we have a real treat from VSA member Marian Gibbard.
Enjoy and Happy New Year!
The Victorian Society of Alberta
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A Calendar for 2025
Are you looking for a calendar for 2025 that has some Victorian flair?
Why not simply reuse and recycle an existing calendar - specifically an actual period calendar from a year which starts on the same day of the week and has the same number of days as 2025.
A quick visit to timeanddate.com generated a very long list of years that are equivalent to 2025. Reducing the list to concentrate on the Victorian Era, left 8 results - 1845, 1851, 1862, 1873, 1870, 1890, 1902 and 1913. From there I headed over to the Internet Archive at archive.org - one of my favourite places for searching for digitized historical documents.
A few hours of searching and browsing results, and here is a list of Victorian calendars for years that are equivalent to 2025. Some holidays (if they are listed) may not fall on the correct day, but the days of the week should fall on the correctly numbered day of the month.
Diary style desk calendar with illustrations in the style of medieval illuminated manuscripts and space for personal notes. Three pages per month - two for brief diary entries and one of important dates. Full colour illustrations.
https://archive.org/details/TheIlluminatedCalendar1845/mode/2up
2. Anglo-Chinese Calendar for 1851
Canton; Printed at the office of the Chinese Repository; No. 2 Mingqua's Hong.; 1851
Diary style format, with handwritten notes. Two page spread for each month - one page of historical dates, the facing page with dates and space for personal notes. Many pages of supplementary information that an English speaking foreigner in China would find useful. Not illustrated.
https://archive.org/details/1851anglochinesecalendar/mode/2up
3. Brandreth’s Annual Calendar for 1879
An advertising calendar for Brandreth patent medicines. One month per page, with small illustrated headers. One page per month, consisting mostly of moon phases and tables of sun/moon rise & set times across the United States. Facing pages are filled with snippets of information similar to newspaper column filler of the time, and testimonials and advertisements for various Brandreth patent medicines.
https://archive.org/details/101177060.nlm.nih.gov/mode/2up
4. Authors’ Calendar. 1890
By Alice Flora McClary Stevens
Tall narrow desk calendar with quotations and short poems from various authors. One page per week. Green monochrome illustrations and text.
https://archive.org/details/authorscalendar100stev/mode/2up
5. Nineteen hundred and two : a calendar for the year 1902;
with drawings by the Toronto Art League illustrating some Canadian sports & pastimes
Published by George N. Morang & Company; Illustrations by A. H. Howard, F. H. Brigden, C. W. Jefferys, D. F. Thomson, F. H. Brigden, R. Holmes, C. M. Manly, W. W. Alexander, W. D. Blatchly
Landscape oriented desk calendar in the art nouveau style. One or two months per page, facing full page colour illustrations of various typically Canadian sports and outdoor activities. Some water damage to the pages.
https://archive.org/details/nineteenhundredt00toro/page/n19/mode/2up
6. Bryn Mawr College Calendar 1902
Designed by Jessie Wilcox Smith and Elizabeth Shippen Green. Bryn Mawr College Students Association. Bryn Mawr, PA, 1901
Tall, narrow booklet in art nouveau style. Illustrations depict young women, presumably representing the students of Bryn Mawr College, engaging in various sporting and intellectual activities. One month per page, with space for brief daily notes.
https://archive.org/details/BrynMawrCollegeCalendar1902/mode/2up
Wednesday, 1 January 2025
Happy New Year!
Looking forward to a great 2025!
We wish you and yours a prosperous, healthy, and exciting New Year!
Cheers!
From
The Victorian Society of Alberta
Tuesday, 24 December 2024
Merry Christmas!
From all of us at the Victorian Society of Alberta to all of you, wishing you a very Merry Christmas!
Thursday, 19 December 2024
Canadian Christmas Dinner 1918
This is the menu for the Christmas day meals served to Canadian troops in England in 1918.
Note that their supper was largely served cold. This would have given the cooks an easier afternoon, with just the blancmange to cook and the pies to bake.
The Victorian Society of Alberta.
Sunday, 15 December 2024
2024 Heritage Park Ramble
Yesterday, December 14 2024, we had our annual ramble at Heritage Park's "Once Upon a Christmas".
The weather was just around freezing with snow still on the ground from a recent snowfall here in Calgary. There was a lot of ice on the roads but the board walks were clear and the park did a great job of keeping the roads sanded.
This year was the largest group participation in this event, with VSA members, WWI re-enactors and a couple of Civil War re-enactors rounding out the group.
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VSA members and Guests on the Porch of the Prince House |
Joining us for much of the day was Clare Young who is a member of the Special Events team at Heritage Park and a VSA member. Clare snagged us a spot at the volunteer canteen for lunch and we did our part to help use up the leftover beef stew and deserts, after the regular volunteers had had theirs of course!
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The Prince House |
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Heading into town |
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Meeting with the Town Crier |
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Junior Telegraphers Keeping up a steady traffic to the North Pole. |
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Junior Telegrapher Bravely manning the North Pole station (in the back room) |
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Marilyn (L) and Janice (R) Marshalling the lineup and writing out the telegrams for the kids. |
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On the road to the "Settlement" |
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Laggan station, closed for the winter, was the original station from Lake Louise. |