THE CENTENNIAL CITIZEN
How your newspaper looked in 1967
In 1967, there were 15 police forces in the National Capital Region. Hospital bed shortages made the news. A new science and technology museum was slated to open on St. Laurent Boulevard. The House of Commons planned to sit into July.
And the Ottawa Citizen could be mailed — that’s good old-fashioned snail mail — to your cottage if you were a subscriber leaving town in the summer.
What a rich time capsule a newspaper is — the traditional, unwieldy physical version, that is. The Citizen’s Special Centennial Edition, published a few days ahead of July 1, 1967, was a hefty 116 pages, a broadsheet much broader than today’s print progeny, larded with advertising, heavier on words than on photos. It must have rattled windows when delivery kids threw it on the porch.
Leafing through the musty, yellowing pages took hours. But as with any time capsule, the effort was worth it. There is a reason they call journalism “the first rough draft of history.”
In 1967, for instance, the Civic Hospital closed 88 beds for the summer, due to a nursing shortage. “It is normal for the hospital to lose married nurses during the summer months when they can be with their children,” the paper’s editorialists shrugged.
Esteemed columnist Don McGillivray railed against the yearly salary of MPs: $18,000. Journalistic legend Charles Lynch defended Queen Elizabeth as Canada’s sovereign. There were letters about traffic tickets and Soviet colonialism and a story on how to find the shortest lineups at Expo 67 pavilions in Montreal.
Attitudes toward women were well-reflected. A news photograph shows then-Prime Minister Lester Pearson escorting the visiting Indian president to a “stag party” at Government House. The caption reports Pearson chuckling to the governor general’s wife and her aide, standing nearby: “Well, I guess you ladies can go watch television.”
The Citizen reported that politicians were studying how to improve the BNA Act and find an “amending formula” — yes, in 1967. The royal commission on bilingualism and biculturalism was preparing to report. And a Gallup poll showed only one-third of Canadians thought the birth control pill could be used safely.
The Canadian War Museum, meanwhile, was “greatly expanding” at its Sussex Drive site. The National Museum (you know it today as the Museum of Nature) flaunted its “dioramas in Eskimo Hall” and its “newly renovated Indian Hall.”
The newspaper’s advertisers were many and varied and in no danger of being dubbed politically correct. An ad for Cohen and Cohen (metal specialists) noted: “We’ve done our share … of helping beautify Canada’s capital, by demolishing approximately 500 buildings in Ottawa in the past three years.” Heritage hounds, cover your eyes.
The City of Ottawa’s auditor general might want to cover his, too. Though Don B. Reid was the city’s mayor in that centennial year, his business still took out a large display ad noting that “Don is also the guiding light of Reid’s Furniture and Appliances.” A city hall ad signed by him in his capacity as mayor ran in another section. The concept of conflict of interest has evolved since.
Ads for furs abounded: Burkholder’s Furs, Dworkin Furs, Renfrew Furs. Matinée was Canada’s “mildest cigarette” and was smoked by a bombshell straight from the Bond-girl school. Less glamorously, an ad for Mortimer Ltd., a printing and lithography company, contained 132 small photos of the company’s employees, explaining to newspaper readers that these people spend “over one million dollars” a year in the City of Ottawa. So, buy their stuff.
Barefoot in the Park was playing at the Capitol, You Only Live Twice at the Elgin.
One of my favourite finds was a promotion for the paper itself. An ad seeking Citizen carriers asked: “Is it true newspaper boys get higher marks?” Answer: “It’s a proven fact. Newspaper boys are a dependable group; they have the discipline to study at the proper time.” Newspaper girls? No mention.
Wonder what everyone will think of today’s edition — in another 50 years? Christina Spencer is the Citizen’s editorial pages editor.