Christmas Every Day

1963 A Trio of Deaths

November 22, 1963 is best known for the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy as he drove in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas. Though he was unquestionably murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald, a Communist sympathizer who had lived in the Soviet Union and supported Castro’s Cuba, a plethora of conspiracy theories has blamed everyone from mobsters, to the CIA, the military-industrial complex, and most unfairly, Lyndon Johnson. A vile piece of 1967 agit-prop called Macbird! likened LBJ to Macbeth who slew his king and who would in turn be slain by a Bobby-Kennedy figure. The worst blot on the assassination’s historical landscape was the 1991 Oliver Stone atrocity JFK.

Also dying on that day in 1963 were literary scholar and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis and dystopian author Aldous Huxley whose Brave New World presciently spoke of a future world of pleasure drugs and genetic manipulation.

In 1968 another disaster took place on this date: the Beatles issued “the White Album”.

1970

The death of Newsy Lalonde

Édouard Cyrille “Newsy” Lalonde was born in 1887 and became one of the great “Flying Frenchmen” of the Montreal Canadiens hockey club was well as an outstanding lacrosse player. He began play in the era just before the formation of the National Hockey League when now-long-forgotten teams from across the continent could bid for first-rate talent. This article is, therefore, a salute to the Saskatoon Sheiks, the Renfrew Creamery Kings, the Vancouver Millionaires, the Victoria Aristocrats, the New York (later Brooklyn) Americans, the Portland Buckaroos, and the Seattle Totems.

The nickname “Newsy” was derived from Lalonde’s work in a printing plant. Hockey players, like their baseball counterparts, used to have splendid nicknames. Herewith a tip of the Chippendale Biltmore to

Georges Vezina, “the Chicoutimi Cucumber”; Dave “the Hammer” Schultz; Garnet “Ace” Bailey; “Bashin’ Bill” Barilko; Bobby Hull, “the Golden Jet”; Eddie “the Eagle” Belfour; Reggie Leach, “the Riverton Rifle”; Frank Nighbor, the “Pemberton Peach”; André “Moose” Dupont; “Sweet Lou from the Soo” Nanne; Alf “The Embalmer” Pike (he was a mortician); Maurice “the Rocket” Richard and his little brother Henri “the Pocket Rocket”; Matts “the Norwegian Hobbit” Zuccarello.

And surely the greatest of all sports monikers: Max Bentley, “the Dipsy Doodle Dandy from Delisle”.

1497 

Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope

The disintegration of the Mongol Empire and the conquest of Constantinople and the Middle East by the Turks meant that European trade with Asia was in the hands of Muslim and Italian middle-men, making commerce both more expensive and less reliable. A number of states, particularly on the Atlantic coast, sought a direct sea-borne route to Asia; the Spanish, taking the advice of Christopher Columbus, tried sailing west, while the Portuguese sought a long-rumoured passage around Africa. Columbus, of course, bumped into the Americas (which he mistook for Asia) but expedition after expedition from Lisbon kept pushing farther and father down Africa’s inhospitable shoreline.

In 1486 Bartolomeu Diaz reached the southern tip of Africa and in 1497 a three-ship flotilla led by Vasco da Gama finally rounded the Cape to begin the long voyage north and on to India. His trip shocked the Arab world which had long had the monopoly of trade and intruded European sea-power into Asia. Soon the technologically-advanced ships of other western countries ventured into those waters and joined the Portuguese and Spanish in establishing trading empires that persisted until the 20th century.

1863 Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address

The second-greatest short speech in history.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

1885

Death of a Canadian rebel

Louis David Riel (1844-1885) was born into a family of Métis businessmen in the Red River colony of Rupert’s Land, what is now Winnipeg, Manitoba. Showing early promise he was given a French-language education in hopes that he might be the first Catholic priest from his community but, though intelligent, he dropped out of his studies and worked in the United States before returning to his home in 1868.

Rupert’s Land was at that moment under the control of the Hudson’s Bay Company but it was soon to be transferred to the new nation of Canada. A flood of Ontario Protestant settlers had created tensions with the native, Métis and French-Canadian population and a nationalist sentiment arose. This was put to the test when a party from Canada attempted to make a survey of Red River land, threatening the locals who had no written title and whose traditional seigneurial river-lot land division would not easily fit the Canadian model. Riel led an armed group to oppose the Canadian interlopers and to assert that Métis concerns would have to be taken into account. When a pro-Canadian party armed in resistance the Métis imprisoned them and set up a Provisional Government to negotiate with Ottawa. While negotiations were going on in 1871 Riel foolishly ordered the execution of an obstinate Canadian, Thomas Scott, a deed that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Negotiations resulted in the creation of a new province of Manitoba, and settlement of land claims but a military expedition from Ontario forced Riel to flee to the United States to avoid arrest. Though elected to the Canadian Parliament in subsequent years he was never able to take his seat. He obtained a pardon for his actions but at the price of a 5-year exile. During his time in the United States Riel’s mental condition weakened; today he might be diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia characterized by a religious mania and delusions of grandeur. He was institutionalized for two years; on his release he headed to the American West, settling in Montana and becoming an American citizen.

When Métis and native grievances in Saskatchewan grew intolerable in the 1880s, a delegation was sent to Riel to ask him to return to Canada and resume a leadership role. He did so but much of the white support he had initially won dissolved when his religious obsessions turned into megalomania and he began favouring armed resistance to the Canadian government. Open warfare broke out in 1885 with a number of native tribes and a faction of the Métis took up arms, seized hostages and clashed with local troops. Though the rebels achieved some fleeting victories a Canadian force under General Middleton crushed the rising at the Battle of Batoche in May.

Riel was put on trial for treason in Regina and was found guilty with a jury recommending mercy, given Riel’s shaky mental state. John A. Macdonald ordered the execution to go through. “Riel shall hang,” he proclaimed, “though every dog in Quebec bark in his favour.” He was dispatched on  this date in 1885.

1908

Death of the Dragon Lady

Cixi (1835-1908) was the Dowager Empress of China during that empire’s last dynasty, the Qing (or Manchu). She effectively ruled that country for 47 years attempting to hold back the tides of change and to limit the power of foreigners.

A concubine to the Xianfeng Emperor, she gave birth to the royal heir and upon the death of her husband in 1861 she ruled as a regent for her son. When he died in 1875, she placed her nephew on the throne and ruled through him. This was all contrary to dynastic tradition but she was a ruthless infighter and shrewd politician who outmaneuvered ministers and royal family members to keep her grip on power.

In the 19th century China was a shaky and tottering empire, forced by European and American governments to accept the opium trade and foreign domination of much of the Chinese economy. Cixi at first approved of, and then undermined, attempts to modernize China. By the 1890s the growing threat from a modernized Japan compelled many officials and the emperor to press for drastic reform, the Hundred Days’ Movement, to which Cixi responded by launching a coup, ending the reforms and exiling the emperor.

In 1900 the Boxer Rebellion broke out, an anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising, that saw the massacre of thousands of foreigners, especially missionaries, and Chinese converts. The rebel armies moved on to Beijing where they laid siege to the diplomatic compound, drawing the world’s attention to the matter. Cixi, at first, secretly, and then openly, sided with the Boxers, which proved a mistake as foreign military forces invaded China and crushed the rebellion, levying heavy penalties on her government. She lived long enough to see her choice, Prince Puyi, ascend the throne but shortly after her death, a revolution overthrew the Qing and set up a Chinese Republic.