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Although unusual in his driving ambitions and his consuming need to accumulate a fortune, Harrison remained in most respects thoroughly conventional and Victorian, and his diary offers unrivalled insights into the voice of the mid-nineteenth century Toronto male.
A dozen years before the Black Donnellys were butchered at Lucan, Ontario, another murderous rampage took place a few miles away. On June 6, 1868, three men robbed and killed a rich farmer, his wife, and her unborn child. They concocted an alibi, stuck to it, and almost got off. In fact, two of them did. The third, Nicholas Melady, went to prison and fell in love with a beautiful woman in a nearby cell. There to entrap him, she listened, learned, and led him to the gallows. When he was hanged in Goderich, hundreds watched, but thousands were late for the spectacle. They were bitterly disappointed because they had missed the last public hanging in Canada.
How do the living maintain relations to the dead? Why do we bury people when they die? And what is at stake when we do? In The Dominion of the Dead, Robert Pogue Harrison considers the supreme importance of these questions to Western civilization, exploring the many places where the dead cohabit the world of the living—the graves, images, literature, architecture, and monuments that house the dead in their afterlife among us. This elegantly conceived work devotes particular attention to the practice of burial. Harrison contends that we bury our dead to humanize the lands where we build our present and imagine our future. As long as the dead are interred in graves and tombs, they never trul...
In nineteenth-century Toronto, people took to the streets to express their jubilation on special occasions, such as the 1860 visit of the Prince of Wales and the return in 1885 of the local Volunteers who helped to suppress the Riel resistance in the North-West. In a contrasting mood, people also took to the streets in anger to object to government measures, such as the Rebellion Losses bill, to heckle rival candidates in provincial election campaigns, to assert their ethno-religious differences, and to support striking workers. Expressive Acts examines instances of both celebration and protest when Torontonians publicly displayed their allegiances, politics, and values. The book illustrates not just the Victorian city’s vibrant public life but also the intense social tensions and cultural differences within the city. Drawing from journalists’ accounts in newspapers, Expressive Acts illuminates what drove Torontonians to claim public space, where their passions lay, and how they gave expression to them.
At the end of the nineteenth century, in the newly created city of Chatham, the possibilities seemed endless and almost utopian. Gone were the ramshackle wooden shacks that dominated its early days, and in their place were stately homes made of brick and stone. Taverns, mills, mercantile stores, mechanics' shops, shipbuilders, and iron foundries blossomed and flourished. Tall and small ships crowded the banks of the bustling Thames River, which had become Chatham's lifeline to the world. Such is the Chatham presented in this volume, which contains nearly two hundred striking images gleaned from personal and public collections. Many of these items, some published here for the first time, serve to present a stunning and fascinating commemorative pictorial album of Chatham's rich history. They will encourage readers to take a stroll on Tecumseh Park's lovers' lane, to board a grand steamer for an exciting river excursion, to prowl a King Street teeming with bicycles, horses, and carts, and to take a ride on those strange new horseless carriages.