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there I headed over to the Internet Archive at archive.org  - one of my favourite places for searching for digitized historical documents.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.

1. The Illuminated Calendar and home diary for 1845

by Henry Noel Humphreys; Printed by Owen Jones

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

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

Merry Christmas!

From all of us at the Victorian Society of Alberta to all of you, wishing you a very Merry Christmas! 

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.

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.

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!

The Prince House

Heading into town

Meeting with the Town Crier

At the Midnapore station we watched the Heritage Park young telegraphers busily sending "Telegrams to Santa"  for all the kids. Especially important this year given the Postal Strike!  This group of eager budding telegraphers have been studying telegraphy under the watchful tutelage of Janice Povey and Marilyn Maguire and this was their first taste of actually sending messages across the wire. 

Junior Telegraphers
Keeping up a steady traffic to the North Pole.

Junior Telegrapher
Bravely manning the North Pole station (in the back room)

Marilyn (L) and Janice (R)
Marshalling the lineup and writing out the telegrams for the kids.

The park was really busy with lots of guests and frequent horse drawn wagons and carriages taking guest around the park  One of our favourite parts of our Christmas Ramble is to head to the Settlement part of the park.  This area represents the very early days of the colonization of the West and lies firmly in the middle of our period. It is also closed in Winter so it is a great place to wander apart from the hustle and bustle of the center of town. 

On the road to the "Settlement"

Laggan station, closed for the winter, was the original station from Lake Louise.

After a perusal of the very busy Christmas Market, in the large tents in the park, and after carefully sampling many of the wares of small distilleries, we bid adieu to Heritage Park and headed North to the town of Airdrie for their annual "Victorian Skating Party" during the town's "Festival of Lights".

The last two years have been incredibly cold but the temperature was quite pleasant, out of the wind, and we helped to add some period atmosphere to this great event.

Stunning light displays in the park

Another great Christmas Ramble.
Looking forward to next year. 

Wishing you all a very pleasant Christmas Season.

The Victorian Society of Alberta

November Fashion Friday

 This month a fascinating video from Nicole Rudolph on YouTube.

Travel clothes

Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta

 

Lest We Forget

 

 Remembrance Day was first observed in 1919 throughout the British Commonwealth. It was originally called “Armistice Day” to commemorate armistice agreement that ended the First World War on Monday, November 11, 1918, at 11 a.m.—on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

From 1921 to 1930, Armistice Day was held on the Monday of the week in which November 11 fell. In 1931, Alan Neill, Member of Parliament for Comox–Alberni, introduced a bill to observe Armistice Day only on November 11. Passed by the House of Commons, the bill also changed the name to “Remembrance Day”. The first Remembrance Day was observed on November 11, 1931.

Every year on November 11, Canadians pause in a moment of silence to honour and remember the men and women who have served, and continue to serve Canada during times of war, conflict and peace. We remember the more than 2,300,000 Canadians who have served throughout our nation’s history and the more than 118,000 who made the ultimate sacrifice.