Category: From Our Collection

The Host Files: Scout-Guide Week and Scouting in Oshawa

By Adam A., Visitor Host

The week of February 22 is Scout-Guide Week, the celebration of the global Scouting and Guiding movements around the shared birthday of its founder, Lord Robert Baden-Powell, and his wife, Lady Olave Baden-Powell, the former World Chief Guide. These organizations promoting preparedness and community mindedness have long been active in Canada and had an especially notable presence in Oshawa.

Lord Robert Baden-Powell’s role as the founder of Scouting began as a mere coincidence. He was a career soldier of the British Empire and served in a number of colonial campaigns in Africa. During this time, he penned a guide to living off the land and wilderness survival titled Aid to Scouting, meant to instruct the Army’s non-commissioned officers in the skills needed for reconnaissance. At the same time, a grassroots movement had begun to reconnect the youth with nature and revive the rural character that had been lost through industrialization and urbanization. In lieu of more suitable literature, a number of predecessor organizations had adopted Lord Robert’s book, inadvertently turning a niche military manual into a best seller. Lord Robert took a more active role in the movement upon returning from the Second Boer War, organizing the first scout rally in 1907 and rewriting Aid to Scouting to be more directly applicable to youth wilderness instruction, publishing it in 1908 as Scouting for Boys. In 1910 he formally founded the Boy Scouts Association and, along with his sister Agnes, established the Girl Guides in response to the high amount of female interest in scouting.

Scouts Canada would only be established in June of 1914 as an overseas component of the British Boy Scouts Association, but, as in the UK, a number of predecessor organizations and informal scouting troops already existed by that time. This arrangement gave Canada a national council to organize scouting activities and procure uniforms and other equipment for the troops, but Scouts Canada would continue to be internationally represented by its British parent association until 1946.

Colour photograph of a blue scout shirt. It has belts, ropes, and a number of badges attached to it.
022.11.1 – scout shirt from the 1930s

Last year the Oshawa Museum received an especially interesting collection of artefacts from this period of Canadian scouting. A collection of Sea Scouts uniform clothes belonging to John Chappell, son of Colonel Frank Chappell, was donated in September. This collection notably contained the uniform John Chappell had worn in 1933, his 6th year with the 8th Oshawa Sea Scouts Troop, and the year in which he was one of eight Canadians to attend the 1933 Scouting Jamboree in Budapest, Hungary. This uniform proudly displayed 20 proficiency badges:

  • Pathfinder
  • Ambulance man
  • Cyclist
  • Signaller
  • Fireman
  • Rescuer
  • Interpreter
  • Naturalist
  • Starman
  • Citizen
  • Swimmer
  • Pioneer
  • Camper
  • Laundryman
  • Handyman
  • Camp Cook
  • Musician
  • Electrician
  • Auto Mechanic
  • Plumber
Colour photograph of a sleeve of a blue shirt. The sleeve has many badges sewn onto it.
Detail of 022.11.1, showing the sleeve and badges.

He also had badges designating him as a King’s Scout and a First Class Scout. As Scouts Canada was still internationally represented by the British Boy Scouts Association, his 1933 Jamboree patch is accompanied by a Union Jack patch.

Girl Guides of Canada was established in July 1917, though a number of Guide Companies organized under the British Association had been operating since 1910. The Oshawa Girl Guides began as one of these early groups, first organizing in 1911. For many decades they lacked a permanent meeting place. They met at St. George’s Anglican Church as well as the homes of prominent Oshawa women like Adelaide McLaughlin and Verna Conant.

Black and white photograph of a group of young men and boys posed around a tall wooden structure, beside a log building.
Camp Samac, c. 1940s; Oshawa Museum archival collection (A002.9.8)

In 1943 Sam McLaughlin donated 150 acres in north Oshawa to Scouts Canada, and three years later it opened as Camp Samac. Camp Samac remains one of Scouts Canada’s largest properties and hosts a number of major scouting events, such as the international Join In Jamboree which has been held there since 2015. In 1947 the McLaughlins would provide the Girl Guides with their Guide House in downtown Oshawa.

Painting of a two storey house, with words out front reading 'Oshawa Girl Guides'
Painting of Guide House, 1981, Oshawa Museum archival collection (A013.5.5).

Various troops from both organizations frequently visit the Oshawa Museum to learn about the area’s history and to do Victorian/pioneer crafts. The Oshawa Museum is also currently preparing a new exhibit on the history of Scouting and Guiding in Oshawa which is planned to open later this year.

Sources:

https://www.scouts.ca/news-and-events/national-calendar.html

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Robert-Stephenson-Smyth-Baden-Powell-1st-Baron-Baden-Powell

http://discoverhistoricoshawa.com/listings/camp-samac/

http://discoverhistoricoshawa.com/listings/girl-guide-house/

Blog Look Back – Top 5 Posts of 2022

Happy New Year! Throughout 2022, we shared 61 articles on the Oshawa Museum Blog, showcasing many different stories from our city’s past. 

We’re planning our new and dynamic posts for 2023, but to start the year, let’s look back at our top 5 posts of 2022:

Black and white photograph of a brick house. There is an orange banner overlaying the photo, with text reading "Top 5 blog posts 2022"

Oshawa’s Newspapers, Past and Present

By Lisa Terech, Community Engagement Preparing for our latest Sunday FUNday event at the Oshawa Museum, our first in person event since February 2020, brought me down the rabbit hole of newspapers. To celebrate Archives Awareness Week, I wanted the Sunday FUNday to be archives related, so newspapers were a good theme. We were able…

Profiling: George Kenneth Lancaster

By Sara H., Summer Student As my summer at the museum is wrapping up, it has been the perfect time to reflect on my time at the museum and how much I have learned about museums and Oshawa’s history.  My last blog post talked about past industries in Oshawa that were featured on the  Discover…

The Ocean Wave

By Jill Passmore, Visitor Experience Coordinator In the early years of the twentieth century, a man named Jack O’Leary owned the New Lunch/O’Leary’s Restaurant at 37 King Street West in Oshawa – between the Commercial Hotel and the coal yards at Centre Street. Behind this small restaurant, a semi-permanent, Trabant/wipeout style of carnival ride existed, a…

Street Name Stories – the ‘Knitting’ Streets

By Lisa Terech, Community Engagement Those who know me know that I’m an avid knitter. In fact, in the past I’ve written a blog post about a WWI Sock knitting pattern, I’ve examined some of Oshawa’s early woolen industries, and I’ve done a deep dive into one of those industries, the Empire Woolen Mills, available…

These were our top 5 posts written in 2022, however, for the FIFTH year, our top viewed post was once again Keeping Warm: The Ways The Victorians Did! This post was originally written in 2016 and has been the top blog post every year since 2018. The desire to know about foot warmers and window coverings must be strong with our readers!

Thank you all for reading, thank you to the OM staff, students, and guest authors who helped create content for the blog, and we hope to see you again through 2023!

ArteFACTS: The Mini Christmas Carol

By Lisa Terech, Community Engagement

Everyone has their own holiday traditions – for some, it’s making holiday treats, for others, it might be putting up seasonal decorations on a certain day, or by a certain time.

Me, I try to read A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, every year. The short novella makes for the perfect seasonal read at some point in December. Because of this, it is understandable why this particular artefact caught my attention.

In the Oshawa Museum collection is this book, A Christmas Carol.  What makes this artefact unique is its size – it measures 5.5cm by 4cm.

Colour photograph of a miniature book, A Christmas Carol. The book has a beige cover and the page edges are gold
Miniature book: A Christmas Carol; from the Oshawa Museum Collection (X998.91.1)

According to the Miniature Book Society, there are several reasons for producing miniature books, although convenience seems to be a popular reason. Mini books could be easily carried in waistcoats or in reticules. The MBS asserts the standard for a miniature book “is no more than three inches in height, width, or thickness,” and by this measure, our book can be classified as ‘Miniature.’

Our mini was published in 1904 and contains the text of Charles Dickens’ classic ghost story of Ebeneezer Scrooge and how his entire life was changed one Christmas Eve through visiting his past, present, and future. The book is 350 pages, printed on India paper (or bible paper) and contains seven illustrations that appear in the original publication.

A Christmas Carol was written in 1843.  It was Dickens’ novella that helped Americans embrace the Christmas holiday by associating children and good will with the holiday, in essence changing Christmas from the rowdy city celebrations to private family matters.  He wrote the story after a visit to a Ragged School.  Dickens hoped the story would raise the profile of London’s poor and generate some much needed cash for him. He finished the manuscript in six weeks, and within five days, the entire first printing (6000 copies) sold out.

Colour illustration depicting a man sitting in a chair by a fire, and he is approached by a ghostly figure wearing chains.
Marley’s Ghost. Ebenezer Scrooge visited by a ghost, illustration by John Leech. From the British Museum collection (public domain)

In today’s culture, the time for ghosts and spirits is long past, with Halloween taking place almost two months ago, but in the Victorian era, Christmas was the time to tell ghost stories, and perhaps Dickens’ tale is one of the most prolific and enduring. The story opens as follows,

“Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

Dickens let his reader know right off the bat what tone his story was going to take, and the reader was immediately drawn in, wanting to know more about Marley and why the fact of his certain death was so important. The ghostly story unfolds, and readers follow Scrooge along on his journey of self reflection and change.

References

https://mbs.org/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/03/why-we-are-fascinated-by-miniature-books

The Timelessness of the Music Box

By Kes Murray, Registrar

Over the summer, I had the pleasure of leading tours. While in Henry House, I had multiple visitors, on different tours, ask about the music box in the parlour. Besides providing basic information that the object was a music box, I was left feeling that there was more to this music box than its appearance.

Henry House Music Box

The music box in Henry House is a pinned cylinder music box made by Langdorff & Fils. Langdorff & Fils were music box makers located in Geneva, Switzerland and active between 1850-1870. They made cylinder music boxes with their signature harp and music sheet decorated on top.

View of a closed, wooden box. There is a decorative motif of musical instruments and sheet music on top.
995.1.1 Top view. You can see the signature Langdorff & Fils stamp, although ours has wind instruments instead of a harp.

Cylinder music boxes, like ours, were the first music boxes to be widely used in homes in the mid to late 1800s. The first music box appeared in the late 1700s in Switzerland and is credited to Swiss watchmaker, Antoine Favre. Based off the advancements made in mechanical watches, early music boxes used the same movements: notes produced by a revolving disc with teeth around the edges.

Author Gilbert Bahl says, “The [cylinder] music box is actually based on a very simple principle: metal teeth which are tuned to scale in a variety of ways are plucked by pins projecting from a revolving cylinder. These pins are set in the cylinder in such a way that they pluck the teeth of the comb at precisely the right moment.”

The popularity of music boxes over the next fifty years led to many improvements, including its incorporation into decorative household items, longer and larger cylinders to play more music, and further mechanization that allowed simply pushing a button to play instead of having to hand crank the player.

Our music box is powered by hand, with a crank for the cylinder on the left side. On the right side of the box, you can see two switches. One is the stop and play switch, while the other is to repeat or change songs. As well, our music box is within a very stylish box that can be set up in any room, ours being in the parlour. The label inside the music box says the cylinder plays twelve songs, including waltzes, polka, and some opera songs, all in either French or German.

Overhead view of an open music box. It is made of dark wood, and inside the box, there is a gold coloured cylinder.
995.1.1 Inside top view.

A lasting history

As I researched music boxes, I realised that I, too, had music boxes in my parents’ house. Something that spoke to me that Bahl wrote was the timelessness of the music box. I was reminded of the ballerina music box my mom had as a child and still has today and, as Bahl explores, how hearing the music from a music box connects us to the past. We realise that we are listening to music that was also listened to and enjoyed by people many years ago. Mine are not that old, but I still adore them and think that maybe someone in some future will listen to them too.

A plastic toy piano, shaped like a grand piano
A hand crank music box within a plastic piano. I am not sure what song it plays
A metal contraption with a metal crank, sitting on top of a table.
A simple hand crank music box. This one plays ‘Let it be’ by the Beatles.

Sources consulted

Bahl, G. (1993). Music Boxes: The Collector’s Guide to Selecting, Restoring, and Enjoying New and Vintage Music Boxes. Running Press Book Publishers.

https://www.britannica.com/art/music-box

https://obsoletemedia.org/music-box-cylinder/

Oshawa Sea Rangers

By Melissa Cole, Curator

One of the main projects I have been working on is the creation of a virtual exhibit for the Digital Museum of Canada, looking at the history of Oshawa’s waterfront with a focus on the harbour.  This exhibit is a collaborative project with content sourced from various community archives and our local community.  Here is a sneak peak at one of the stories that will be highlighted in this virtual exhibit.

Oshawa Sea Rangers

The Sea Rangers were a branch of Guiding for teens until 1964 that eventually became known simply as “Rangers.”  The Sea Rangers merged with the Air Rangers and became “Rangers,” who would specialize in sea or air activities, where facilities are available. 

A white hat on a wooden hat block; there is a triangular scarf tied at the bottom of the wooden hat block
SRS Crusaders, Oshawa Cap and Scarf, Oshawa Museum collection, 022.4

The Sea Rangers gave their members a sense of pride working with others and created many long last friendships. Sea Rangers provided young women with the opportunity to develop their confidence and responsibility through the mentoring of other women.

Blue and white crest. The centre features a stylized steering wheel with a boat and oars in the middle, and the words on the crest read: SRS Crusader Cutter Champs, 1960
Crest, commemorating SRS Crusader Cutter Champs, 1960; part of album, Oshawa Museum archival collection (A021.9.1)

The Oshawa Sea Rangers, known as the Crusaders, would meet at the Oshawa Navy League, Cadet Hall, to practice precision drills.  The Cadet Hall, located at 44 Oshawa Boulevard North, is still in the same location today. 

The Oshawa Harbour was the location where Oshawa’s Sea Rangers, practiced drills on the lake and their cutters were stored in the boat house that was located on the east side of the beach.  The sea cadets and rangers both used the boathouse at the lake to store their cutters.  The cutters were rowed by a team of ten with a coxswain who steered the cutter and set the pace.  Practices took place once a week at the harbour, sometimes more as the regatta got closer, practices would increase to twice a week. When practicing, the cutter would be rowed out of the inner harbour, along the jetty and out into the open lake.

Sandra Gaskell
Newspaper photo of nine Caucasian women posed for a photo. Six are wearing white shirts, dark skirts, and white hats, while three are wearing dark coats and dark hats. Under the photo, the caption reads: Sea Ranger Crew, SRS Crusader, Receive Well-Earned Awards
From the Oshawa Times, 1960; image part of album, Oshawa Museum archival collection (A021.9.1)

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Sea Cadet (Navy Club) boat house was located at the lakefront, west of the Yacht Club.  The Sea Cadets took the cutters out in the spring, where it would be tied up, usually on the west wall or the south wall.  In the fall the cutter would be placed back in the boat house.  During this time, it was possible to drive right over to the inner harbour near where the cutter would be tied up.

A group of 11 Caucasian women, wearing white shirts and white hats, posed for a photo with a trophy.
SRS Crusaders Cutter Champs, 1960; image part of album, Oshawa Museum archival collection (A021.9.1)

There is a group of friends who talk about our Sea Ranger days every time we get together. All these Sea Rangers married Sea cadets except for two of us. The boat house at the lake was where we kept the cutters that both the sea cadets and rangers used. Several boathouse paintings of the boathouse hang in at least 4 homes. My sisters, Marg & Pat won the cutter races in the ‘50s. Cathy and I crewed wins in the ‘60s. We have photos to prove it. Not to mention the blisters on our hands and backsides. All the sea rangers kept log books and photos. Mine are long gone but a few others have theirs.

Mary Ellen Cole
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