Bob Edwards foe died 100 years ago

Calgary Daily Herald, December 12, 1912

One hundred years ago today—on December 11, 1912—former Calgary newspaper publisher Daniel McGillicuddy died in Toronto. McGillicuddy had founded the Calgary Daily News in 1907 and published it until 1910. The paper later morphed into the Calgary News-Telegram and continued as one of the city's three dailies—along with the Herald and the Albertan (which became the Sun in 1980). Finally, a few days after the armistice of November 11, 1918 that ended the First World War, the News-Telegram folded and the Albertan took over its plant.

McGillicuddy started his tenure with an anonymous attack on Robert Chambers (Bob) Edwards, publisher of the Calgary Eye Opener. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography's entry on Edwards summarizes the incident:

Another of the Eye Opener’s opponents was Clifford Sifton, whom Edwards accused of having relations with a married woman in 1905, at the time of negotiations for the formation of the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Three years later, Edwards heard a rumour that Sifton was backing the establishment of a Liberal newspaper in Calgary to counteract the influence of the Eye Opener. A short time after, Daniel McGillicuddy launched the Calgary Daily News and immediately prior to the election of 1908 he published a stinging personal attack on Edwards, calling him a “miserable wretch of a depraved existence,” a libeller, character thief, coward, liar, drunkard, drug addict, and degenerate. Edwards sued for criminal libel and won the case, but McGillicuddy was fined only $100.

      Edwards never forgave those involved in the lawsuit. He ridiculed McGillicuddy’s lawyer, Edward Pease Davis, to such an extent that the man initiated a successful libel suit and Edwards was forced to publish an apology. Edwards also accused the judge, Nicholas Du Bois Dominic Beck, of political bias, describing him on one occasion as the “narrow, prejudiced, fanatical Beck.” As for McGillicuddy, Edwards was bitter even after the man was dead. When Edwards was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta 13 years after the suit, he would write, “Isn’t it remarkable, here we are in the legislature and McGillicuddy is in hell?”

The affair temporarily soured Edwards on living in Calgary, and he left in 1909, publishing his newspaper in central Canada and then in Winnipeg before returning to Calgary around 1911.

Calgary Daily Herald, December 12, 1912

Calgary Hebrew School centennial

"New Hebrew School Has 70 Students," Calgary News-Telegram 7 Dec. 1912: 21.

My alma mater, the Calgary Hebrew School, was established around 1920. In 1987, the school amalgamated with the Yiddish-language I.L. Peretz School to form today's Calgary Jewish Academy. But there were earlier attempts to create a Jewish school in Calgary, and one of them was featured in the Calgary News-Telegram 100 years ago today. Here is the article.

Somerset Maugham's non-visit to Calgary

A century ago, author and playwright W. Somerset Maugham was expected to visit Calgary, where it was presumed that he was researching for a play he was going to write about the phenomenon of the English remittance man in the Canadian west. He never arrived. Here is the fanciful account of a Calgary News-Telegram reporter about Maugham's non-visit—or why his visit, if it occurred, was not reported. It was first published December 5, 1912—100 years ago today:

AS A WILD, WOOLY COWTOWN CALGARY IS A FLAT FAILURE 

 

But as Live, Progressive Metropolis It is Liable to Give Playwright Maugham Swift Jolt 

 

What has happened [to] William Somerset Maugham, British playwright and author, who landed at New York over a week ago and gave out that he was on his way to Calgary, Alta., to study frontier life, cowboys, remittance men and generally the primeval way of this cow town in the wild and wooly west?

Mr. Maugham has had plenty of time to reach here. In fact, he was due about four days ago, but persistent search on the part of The News-Telegram has failed to locate him.

It is surmised that Mr. Maugham did reach here for he was fully determined to come. It is also surmised that he took one long, lingering look at this place and then fled.

Any man who gives out that he is desirous of studying the bad man in baggy chaps and sombrero in his native haunt and decides that Calgary is that haunt, has a perfect right to take one look and then retreat.

According to the story telegraphed from New York Mr. Maugham was coming for the purpose of securing material for a play. Presumably he wanted material of the boisterous, gunplay type.

The impression of a man who reaches Calgary from the east with the idea that this is a frontier town and that hard riding, hard drinking and straight shooting desperadoes gallop madly about the village trails, must be odd.

Getting the Perspective

For the purpose of getting an idea of how it must feel to enter Calgary with the impression that this is the original jumping off place, a News-Telegram man wandered down through the local depot, switched his ideas and then walked back into the city.

First he was very surprised at the size of the station. Then it occurred to him that a large station was needed for the purpose of taking supplies from the trains for the settlers int eh surrounding district.

Reaching the front of the station he was astonished by the sight of the C. P. R. hotel* that is being built just west of there. From gazing on it he turned and saw the King George hotel,** then the Grain Exchange building, then the C. P. R. department of natural resources building, the various hotels along Ninth avenue and the number of automobiles passing along that thoroughfare.

 

Wires Get Crossed

Hastily The News-Telegram man rushed back into the station.

"I say, my deah fellow," he said to the constable on duty, "how soon can I catch the train for Calgary? This must be Winnipeg or Minneapolis or Chicago, or some such bally place. Really, now it cawn't be Calgary, for Calgary is a frontier town."

The policeman regarded the newspaper man in disgust.

"No this is not Calgary; this is London, England," he replied.

Feeling affronted at the impossibility of the suggestion, the newspaper man, playing with the greatest fidelity his part of deluded newcomer, made for the King George hotel. There he asked for some stationery. Sure enough on it was "Calgary, Alta."

With one despairing glance up and down the street, in the hope of seeing at least one wild man shooting up the town, the newspaper man rushed back to the station. So strongly had the part he was playing impressed upon him that he was only prevented from buying a ticket back to London, England, by lack of funds.

Anyway, the newspaper man came to the conclusion that he could not blame Mr. Maugham for fleeing after a short examination of Calgary.

* Palliser Hotel
* Later renamed the Carlton Hotel, now the site of the EnCana building across 9th Avenue from the Palliser.