Blacklock’s observes the 158th anniversary of Confederation with a Canadiana Quiz. The questions are deceptively simple. The answers will have you say: “I did not know that!” Happy Canada Day.
1. What did they call the Peace Tower in World War II? (Answer: the Victory Tower)
2. What Canadian capital is named for a queen with 15 children? (Answer: Not Victoria or Regina but Charlottetown, named for the wife of King George III)
3. Only one province has ever gone bankrupt. Which one? (Answer: Alberta. In 1936 the province defaulted on two bond payments after being denied $18 million in federal aid. Alberta bonds were instantly barred from trading on the London Exchange. With the treasury unable to meet its payroll, Premier William Aberhart said: “We cannot go ahead paying the heavy toll placed on us by the money barons without ultimately losing all we have.” Alberta again defaulted on a bond issue in 1938 and was reduced to printing its own scrip. Newfoundland also became insolvent, in 1933, but was not yet a province of Canada)
4. Since 1867 only one federal party leader has been ejected from Parliament for election fraud. Who was it? (Answer: John A. Macdonald. The Father of Confederation was stripped of his Commons seat in 1874 for bribery and ballot-stuffing in Kingston, Ont. He was subsequently re-elected by 17 votes)
5. The U.S. took 11 minutes to recognize the new State of Israel in 1948. How long did Canada take? (Answer: Seven months. Israel was founded May 14, 1948. The Department of Foreign Affairs withheld recognition until Christmas Eve)
6. Everybody knows John F. Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic elected U.S. President. Who was Canada’s first Catholic prime minister? (Answer: Not Wilfrid Laurier but John Thompson of Halifax, in 1892. Thompson converted to marry his wife Annie, fathered nine children and became such a devout Catholic he climbed the 400 steps to the top of St. Peter’s Dome on an 1894 visit to the Vatican and collapsed with chest pains. He never recovered and died two weeks later)
7. What is the minimum time required by Parliament to pass a bill into law? (Answer: There is none. The parliamentary speed record was set June 6, 1919 when a measure to deport leaders of the Winnipeg General Strike passed the Commons and Senate and was signed into law in 90 minutes flat. More recently Parliament on March 13, 2020 took 119 minutes to pass a Covid-era bill granting cabinet wartime spending powers. It was introduced in the Commons at 10:15 am Eastern and passed into law by the Senate at 12:14 pm on complaints few legislators read the bill. “The House agreed to buy a pig in a poke,” Conservative MP Scott Reid (Lanark-Frontenac, Ont.) said later. “The House adopted bills it had not actually seen”)
8. Cabinet once passed an executive order forbidding children from crossing the Atlantic. Why? (Answer: U-boats. The order was enacted in 1917 after Imperial Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare. In a single month, April 1917, enemy subs destroyed 354 ships in the Atlantic)
9. What is Canadian Eastern Hard Red Winter? (Answer: a federal grade of wheat)
10. Who was the first prime minister to record an album? (Answer: Arthur Meighen. In 1936 Meighen delivered a speech to the Canadian Club entitled The Greatest Englishman in History, a tribute to William Shakespeare, that was recorded on 16-inch disc. Two decades later admirers dubbed it to vinyl and distributed copies to every college and university library in Canada)
By Staff 
