CANADA DAY IN WATERLOO REGION IN 1867 BY JON FEAR
ABOVE Waterloo County Militia in 1867. OPPOSITE Map of Galt (now part of Cambridge) in 1867. Both images courtesy of Waterloo Region Museum
T
his was the great eventful day of this extensive dominion,” 23-year-old Matilda Bowers Eby noted in her diary when Canada came into being 150 years ago. The young mother lived in Perth County, but had grown up on a farm outside the Waterloo County village of Berlin (renamed Kitchener in 1916) and was visiting family there. Her brief entry for July 1, 1867 hints at irritation with a photographer who made a portrait negative for her, but was too busy to do one of her two-year-old daughter. She observed some Confederation celebrations from a distance, but didn’t get involved. By all accounts, the 40,000 residents of Waterloo County — today’s Waterloo Region has 535,000 — enjoyed beautiful weather on the day Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick became provinces in the new country of Canada — which now, of course, has 10 provinces and three northern territories. There were parades and fireworks in the rival communities of Berlin, which had about 2,500 residents, and Galt (now part of Cambridge), which had 3,500. Still, the crowds didn’t match those seen most years to mark Queen Victoria’s May 24 birthday. Berlin, which had
many people of German descent, would draw far more people for an 1871 “peace festival” when the FrancoPrussian War in Europe ended. Dozens of Confederation-era buildings still stand in the region today. The Joseph Schneider Haus (1816) in Kitchener and the McDougall Cottage (1858) in Cambridge are now museums that can help us imagine what life was like in the 1860s: No electricity. Little or
Joseph Schneider Haus, Kitchener.
Courtesy of Waterloo Region Museum
McDougall Cottage, Cambridge.
Courtesy of Waterloo Region Museum
no plumbing. If you were lucky, you had a private well for obtaining water. No refrigeration or air conditioning. Coal-oil lamps were a recent innovation for seeing in the dark. The telephone had yet to be invented (that came in 1876) so to communicate you met in person, wrote letters or had the nearest telegraph agent send a note. To shop or get to work, you walked or travelled by horse and buggy. Trains were a new option for longer trips. On the outskirts of Berlin you might see Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation when they wintered near today’s Schneider Creek. The county was part of their traditional territory. Larger communities had police and fire brigades. Some fires could be fought with water stored in tanks buried at street corners. There were doctors, but Berlin didn’t get a full-time dentist until 1867. By then Galt Population in Waterloo Region: 1871 and 2016 1871
2016
Galt Preston Hespeler
3,827 Cambridge 129,920 1,408 797
Berlin Waterloo
2,742 Kitchener 1,595 Waterloo
Ayr Elmira New Hamburg
1,300 600 1,003
Waterloo 40,251 Region of County Waterloo
233,222 104,986 4,171 10,161 13,595 535,154
Note: Galt, Preston and Hespeler are now part of the City of Cambridge, which also includes parts of the former Waterloo Township. Kitchener now includes the former village of Bridgeport and parts of the former Waterloo Township. Other boundaries have changed. Sources: Lovell’s Province of Ontario Directory for 1871, 1871 Census figures published in Waterloo County to 1972: An Annotated Bibliography of Regional History by Elizabeth Bloomfield, 2016 Canada Census.
had at least two, one of whom advertised he had “the most perfect apparatus in Canada for extracting teeth without pain.” The creation of Canada meant there would now be elections for the new federal Parliament in Ottawa and the provincial legislature in Toronto. Late in the summer of 1867 voters (only male property owners got to cast a ballot) elected Isaac Erb Bowman of St. Jacobs the first federal member for the north half of Waterloo County. In the south half, James Young of Galt was elected. Both Isaac Erb Bowman, first MP of became Liberal MPs in North Waterloo County. the House of Commons, Courtesy of Waterloo Region Museum where John A. Macdonald, a Conservative, was the first prime minister. Fears that the United States might try to expand north had been an argument for Confederation. Also a worry were raids in the Niagara area in 1866 by Fenian Brotherhood members seeking independent rule for Ireland. These had prompted creation of a county militia unit, the 29th Waterloo Battalion. On July 1, 1867, its members were summoned to take part in Confederation celebrations. Newspaper accounts of the Galt festivities describe how the day began with a 5 a.m. blast — a royal salute fired from a cannon — followed by the ringing of bells. Later in the morning, school children paraded to a public gathering at a grove above the Grand River, led by four “handsomely dressed young ladies” representing the new “sister provinces.” Galt’s mayor, Morris Lutz, led the crowd in giving three cheers for the Queen. That evening a torchlight procession through the town concluded with fireworks in Queen’s Square. In Berlin,“flags fluttered on the houses and colourful bunting stretched across the streets to greet the visitors who . . . numbered about 5,000 in the course of the day,” the German-language Berliner Journal reported. Firefighters from Waterloo village (then about 1,300 people) joined their Berlin counterparts in demonstrating their special skills. Militia members marched on the local cricket grounds, then attended a luncheon where Ward Bowlby, reeve (mayor) of Berlin, sang their praises. “Not as many of the ‘leading men of Waterloo County’ were present as had been expected,” the Journal noted. Evening events included a concert, dance and torchlight parade. Fifty years later, Jacob Stroh, a militia member present for the 1867 celebrations, recalled that a cannon salute was also fired off that day in Berlin. The vibrations were so strong, he said, that nearby windows were broken.
TAKE A TOUR BACK IN TIME DOZENS OF PRE-CONFEDERATION BUILDINGS, MANY OF THEM HOMES, ARE STILL STANDING ACROSS WATERLOO REGION. MOST HAVE BEEN ALTERED IN MAJOR WAYS SINCE 1867. HERE ARE JUST A FEW TO VISIT TODAY:
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3 Courtesy of New Hamburg Independent
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1. Joseph Schneider Haus, Kitchener (1816). Shown on page 38. 2. Cambridge Mill, Cambridge (1844) 3. The Waterlot Restaurant & Inn, New Hamburg (1847) 4. The Blue Moon, Petersburg (1848) 5. Solé Restaurant and Wine Bar, Waterloo (1851) 6. The Lancaster Smokehouse, Kitchener (1852) 7. Commercial Tavern, Maryhill (1854) 8. Easy Pour Wine Bar, Cambridge (Blair) (1852) 9. Cambridge City Hall, Cambridge (1858) 10. McDougall Cottage, Cambridge (1858). Opposite page.