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.

The Colour of Memory

Lest We Forget

by Kevin Jepson

When I was growing up history was something that permeated our house.

There were books and photos, and old records.

There were fossils, models, maps and artifacts.

I was always interested in military history, because the military and warfare runs like a horrible bloody thread through the history of civilization. Didn't matter if it was ancient history, Romans, Greeks, Persians, Celts, or Medieval sieges and battles, or 18th and 19th C wars, or the great upheavals of the 20th C. I was interested in them all. There was one thing that I remember very clearly though and that was the major difference in the way my Father treated the wars of the 20th C compared to those of history.

These wars were different, they were different because they were still MEMORY not just HISTORY. My Grandfather fought in the First World War and I had friends whose parents had fought in the Second.
The Ghosts of these wars were not ready to be history yet. They were real people still living, still working, still hugging their loved ones and trying to live with the MEMORY of chaos and destruction that they had been forced to live through. They also struggled with the memory of those they had lost.

As a kid my strongest impression of the difference between the Wars of History and the Wars of Memory was simply that History had colour whereas the modern wars of the 20th C were BLACK and WHITE.

We had photographs of these titanic struggles in all their gritty horror, you could see the face of war in its terror and its destruction, but there was no colour. That made them real in some senses but strangely unreal in others.

The Thin Red Line. 93rd Highlanders at Balaclava.
Illustration for Scotland for Ever (Hodder and Stoughton, c 1900).

The wars depicted in the history books were often illustrated in colour paintings, romanticized,
propagandized, draped with the colours of empire and the gloss of academic history. The Wars of living Memory were written of that way but they were illustrated with photographs that gave a glimpse of the true nature of war.

The first time I saw colour photos from the Second World War I was shocked, these were real people, they looked my age, they were not the Black and White ghosts that I had seen for so many years. Along with the colour came the realization that these great upheavals had been filled with REAL people who smelled the earth, the smoke the blood and the death just as I could.

Suddenly War changed from a historical event to a mass tragedy, necessary sometimes but never something to take lightly. Suddenly to stand with the dwindling numbers of veterans on November 11th became not only a duty, but an honour. These men and women had seen unimaginable horrors, they had lived through chaos and destruction and they were REAL people. People I could shake the hands of, people I could see standing with tears for their lost youth and their lost friends. The colour that is in their memories we can never see, we only have the black and white old photos.

There is now, no longer anyone alive who knows the colours of WWI, who remembers the smell of the mud of Flanders, the sound of artillery or the shrieks of dying companions. That war has become history.

Soon the same will happen for those who lived through WWII. And still, there are wars where young men and women fight because they are told to. There are still men and women now much younger than me who will have such memories. 

To stand beside them today is to stand beside all of those who are now history, to stand and remember is to make sure that History is not forgotten.

Tasty 19th c Sourdough Bread

 This fascinating video shows how Sourdough was made in the mid 1800's.

Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta