Party like it’s 1867
First Dominion Day was celebrated in ‘right royal way’
WATERLOO REGION — With a fire brigade’s parade, foot races between villages and stumbling militia exercises, the citizens of Waterloo County celebrated the birth of their new nation 150 years ago.
People awoke in the little village of Berlin (as Kitchener
was then called) on that sunny, warm Monday, July 1 in 1867 to find flags flapping from homes and patriotic banners hung across the roads. Soon, their community of about 2,500 residents would swell as an estimated 5,000 people from around the county crowded in to celebrate.
The celebrations had actually begun at midnight the night before, when some of the local churches rang out their bells as Canada, a fledgling nation of about 3.3 million people, was taking its first breath.
Many citizens of Waterloo County in 1867 would have had torn identities, as first-generation immigrants with one foot in the old world and one foot in their new home. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t want to cheer the birth of their new country, even if Canadian patriotism was still a somewhat foreign concept.
“Life was pretty dull here in 1867, so they probably would have celebrated anything,” said rych mills, a local historian. “When this thing comes to town, you’d want to see it.”
That first Dominion Day — as Canada Day was called then — was “celebrated in a right royal way,” according to an account in the Berliner Journal newspaper, which served the county’s predominantly Germanspeaking readership.
It was declared a national holiday, so people would have had a rare weekend, something that wasn’t common in an era when workers typically had six-day work weeks. That also partially explains how such a large crowd was able to gather in Berlin.
The festivities started when the fire department from the village of Waterloo, showing off its hose and ladder wagons, paraded down King Street and was met at the edge of town by the Berlin Fire Brigade. Together, they paraded into downtown Berlin and throughout the growing town.
Then came the militia units from Galt, Crosshill, Ayr and New Hamburg, who joined the local militiamen from Berlin and Waterloo for military drills and a rifle salute on the cricket grounds at Heins Park — a patch of green in the middle of the village that would later become Victoria Park, which wasn’t built until 1896.
The militias had only been formed about a year earlier to protect Waterloo County against the threat of Fenian raids, the Irish sympathizers who had been attacking Canadian targets to put pressure on Britain to withdraw from Ireland.
They were a far cry from professional soldiers, and it showed to everyone who flocked to the park. While they had spiffy uniforms, these were farmers, butchers, blacksmiths and carpenters, and their military drills were somewhat sloppy and disorganized.
But John Motz, the Berliner’s publisher, reminded his readers that the volunteers had never drilled together as a group, and had rare chance to practise.
“Whoever has seen English red coats or French Zouaves drilling will, perhaps, find much to criticize in the execution by the volunteers of Waterloo County,” he wrote.
After the drills, the 225 militiamen were led to the village hall, where long tables were set out with food and drink, catered by the husband-and-wife owners of the East End Hotel. Although a copy of the menu can’t be found, it’s a safe bet pork and sauerkraut was on the table.
The volunteer soldiers raised their glasses repeatedly, led by village reeve Ward Hamilton Bowlby in toasts to the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Royal Family, the Canadian parliament, the “new Dominion of Canada” and even “the press.”
Brass bands from Waterloo, New Hamburg and Bridgeport provided the music for the day, likely playing marching standards that would have been well-known to both their English and German-speaking spectators.
“We forget now, but that was a big deal. When those bands played, that was often the only time people would have heard that kind of music,” mills said.
Meanwhile, the citizens of Waterloo County competed in foot races from Waterloo to the corner of King and Queen in Berlin, with the winners taking homes prizes of oranges and coconuts — a rare treat in those days.
If races weren’t your thing, you could try your luck with the giant vat of water filled with dozens of oranges. Competitors had to suck an orange out of the tub, with the winners keeping their citrus.
And you’d have to do it all in your Sunday best, because Dominion Day would have been an occasion for the county’s citizens to flaunt their most fashionable clothes. For men, that typically meant a meant wool suit with a collar and tie, leather boots, long pants and a felt, straw or top hat. For women, it was usually a long cotton or linen dress with crinoline, a structured petticoat designed to hold out the skirt.
No flip-flops and tanktops here. In 1867, fashion was serious and conservative in the villages of Waterloo County. Shorts were reserved for people playing sports.
“An event like this, you would wear your best summer outfit. It would have been the same thing they would have worn going to church,” said Jonathan Walford, curator of the Fashion History Museum in Hespeler.
“Working class men would have had a wool suit, which would have been hot … So you’d have to pace yourself correctly to get through the day without sweating.”
Wearing all those layers in the heat of summer must have worked up a thirst.
“Berlin only had one brewery in mid-1867 … and its supplies ran dry before too much mayhem happened around town,” mills said. “It’s got to be the only time in history that Berlin ran out of beer.”
If you wanted a drink of something harder, you could wander into the grocery store at the corner of King Street and Foundry Street (now Ontario Street) owned by a Scottish man named “Bully” Spears. Or you could stop by one of the taverns that dotted the village, including The Great Western Hotel at King and Queen streets, where the Walper Hotel now operates.
The hotel was one of dozens of businesses that had sprung up in the bustling village by the time of Confederation. There was a jewelry shop, drugstore, a watch maker, a bank, multiple foundries, leather tanning operations and a furniture factory that was described as a “veritable fire trap.”
Berlin by then was already a hub for the region’s growing agricultural and industrial economy, fuelled by the arrival of the railway a decade earlier. The village’s oldest hardware store catered to farmers, builders and blacksmiths, advertising low prices for scythes, pitch forks, wagon axles and coal.
There was an eight-room schoolhouse in the village — although nearly half of local children worked instead of going to school. The county’s most senior school was Galt Collegiate, which only allowed boys.
With 5,000 spectators in town for Dominion Day, little Berlin would have been a busy place. There were 11 hotels in the village then, and they would have been overrun with guests — some sleeping on the floor after they ran out of beds, mills said.
If you stayed well past sundown and missed the train home and couldn’t catch a wagon, you might have taken your lantern and walked along the dirt road that once connected Waterloo and Kitchener. Sidewalks didn’t come to Waterloo County until 1870, so you’d have to dodge buggies as you went.
If you grew tired on your walk home to Waterloo, you could stop at the Greenbush Hotel, in the middle of the woods near King and Willow streets, for a drink and a meal.
For those who stayed in Berlin that day, there was an evening concert at St. Nicholas Hall, built above a horse shed at the corner of King and Frederick streets, attached to the St. Nicholas Hotel.
While the crowd danced away in the hall, Berlin’s children ended their celebration with a torchlight procession through the village. It was, all things considered, not a bad party.