Canadian Zoot Suiters

12 June 1944 Globe

The zoot suit, was a Second World War fashion trend that begs explanation.  Young men would don what Jeff Keshen describes as "wide-brimmed gangsterish-looking fedoras, long and loose-fitting jackets with padded shoulders, high-waisted baggy trousers pegged at the ankles, and brightly coloured shirts with huge bow ties."  (Keshen,Saints, Sinners and Soldiers,p 207).  During the war in North America, zoot-suiters' wild fashions and spastic swing jazz rhythms were associated with juvenile delinquency and frivolous waste.


Due to wartime controls on dyes and textiles, the very suits themselves were considered unpatriotic.  Keshen notes that the backlash against these bombastic youths had much to do with the panicky press coverage of the 1943 Los Angeles, zoot-suit riot.  Sailors from the Chavez Ravine naval base, doled out some extreme beatings, and tore clothes from the civilian youth, who were perceived to have attacked sailors. 

Canadian press associated zoot suiters with the jitterbug, clearly a spastic expression of loose morals.  Tensions between servicemen and zoot suiters were greatest in Toronto and Montreal.  In the later city, violence was meted out to both sides, spilling over to Verdun, where the Dance Pavilion was raided by mob of 400 sailors.

In the summer of 1943, Toronto servicemen had ripped the clothes off the youngsters and tossed them in the lake.  A Globe and Mail article which predicted the swift end of the fad, patriotically ridicules the outlandishly clad youngsters.  One "youthful veteran of this war" is quoted as a representative of enlisted men:

I know how the servicemen feel.  They have exchanged their civilian clothes for a uniform of which they are very proud.  They feel a lot of these kids wearing the funny clothes should be either in the army, navy or air force.  And when, as was the case at Sunnyside recently, one zoot-suit wearer 'took a crack' at a fellow in army uniform - well what could you expect?"("Zoot Suit's Day Wanes in Opinion of Tailors", Globe and Mail, 12 June 1943, p.5 )

Globe and Mail 19 June 1943, p.3

Interestingly, the same article suggests a First World War parallel to the phenomenon.  A Toronto psychologist is quoted as saying that, "back in 1917 and 1918, all the younger fellows who had not reached army age were making big money in ammunition plants, just as they are today.  They turned to silk shirts with wide, 'noisy' stripes."

Globe and Mail. 6 July 1944. p.3

The Globe and Mail reinforced the moral consensus that the zoot-suiters were juvenile delinquents.  One article chose to report on school-ground bullying to show the moral regressions of these rebellious youths. It is not often that the playground pecking order makes the news!  The response to the trend in wartime Canada shows the strong forces of conformity at work, and the efforts of youth to break from these mainstream norms.

During the 1990s swing revival, the Cherry Poppin' Daddies broke onto the international stage with their hit "Zoot Suit Riot".  The song holds up better than the music video.

Patriotic Rye: A Parody of Canada First

Thomas Phillips Thompson LAC C-38581

Thomas Phillips Thompson, was a Canadian satirist and social reformer.  In the 1870s, Thompson wrote for Toronto's Telegraph as well as the Mail, where his lampooning of George Brown, the Grits and the Globe would become well known to the readers of the conservative press.  His pseudonym, Jimuel Briggs was used to publish a fictitious autobiography incorporating some of his satirical journalism under the title, The Political Experiences of Jimuel Briggs, D.S., Graduate of Coboconk University. (1873)

His embellishment of Thomas Moss's 1873 attempt at election under a Canada First platform shows that patriotism could extend to the type of alcohol one preferred.  Thompson satirizes the zeal of the Canada First movement, which in 1874 formed the Canadian National Association, a political party which went nowhere.   The scene portrays the founding fathers of the party searching for a Canadian nationalist identity in the bottom of bottle:

There were fully twenty of us involved with the idea of Canadian nationality.  Previous to our proceeding to business, one of those moved that we should wet the New Party, a proposition that was wildly encored.  'I move,' continued he, 'that we order a dozen bottles of Bass, or perhaps the party would prefer some hot Irish whiskey?'

     I rose with concentrated indignation in my glance, and proceeded to excoriate the cuss. 'Do I hear aright? Have we already a traitor in our midst? Is it possible that any one of those here assembled to vindicate the glorious cause of Canadian nationalism is so lost to manhood, so degraded and servile a being as to advocate the use of such derogatory foreign beverages as Bass and Irish whiskey?'

     'Never! Never! shall I be so false to our glorious motto "Canada First" so as to endorse such a proposition.  Let us have Canadian old rye, hot and sweetened with the extract of the maple - the noblest tree of the forest to whose trunk the emblematic Moss clings as tightly as our candidate does to the principles of Canadian nationality - and some lemon in it - beg pardon, gentlemen, I retract the lemon, I forgot that was a foreign ingredient.' [...]

    That night, under such auspicious circumstances, the Canadian party  was formed, the germ of its existence being stimulated into growth by Canada's national beverage. [...]

     We again moistened the roots of the Maple and adjourned.As cited in Ramsay Cook  The Regenerators (p.155-56):

After a sojourn to the United States, Thompson returned to Canada in 1879, when his wit was turned against the emerging industrial order.  Thompson was increasingly concerned with labour issues, was associated with the Knights of Labor, and continued to lobby for socialist causes decades into the twentieth-century.

Robert Borden's Unknown Rank and File, 1917

An enthusiastic reception for Rt. Hon. Sir

 Robert Borden and Lady Borden. 1912

Library and Archives Canada / C-009665

John English's The Decline of Politics (1977), has little praise for Sir Robert Borden.  Borden's long neglect of the Conservative party machinery and rank and file, is shown to have decimated the party for years to come.  In 1911, Borden gathered the unlikely bedfellows of English Canadian imperialists, French-Canadian nationalistes, and provincial premiers into a group-government for the win at the ballot box.  By 1917, however, the "false pretenses" that won the French-Canadians had worn off, and the Union government allowed the Laurier Liberals to reform a solid Liberal Quebec.


The result of the unholy Union between the Conservatives and Liberals in 1917 was a party that Borden hardly recognized.  As journalist Arthur Ford noted, "after the Unionist election of 1917 Sir Robert never learned to know by name or by sight half of the supporters of the new government." (Cited in English, p. 206)  John English cites an amusing anecdote which reinforces Borden's neglect of the grass-roots of his newly formed alliance:

On one occasion, a flabbergasted new member of Parliament, undoubtedly intoxicated with the eminence of his new office, had a letter thrust into his hands by Borden with the instruction that he should deliver it to a minister.  Seldom has a member been mistaken for a Commons page boy, but then seldom was a party leader so remote from his party as was Borden after 1917. (English, p. 206)

Brandon's First Restaurant...and Domestic Badger

Ken Storie. Winnipeg Times,Nov. 15, 1881

The tale of the founding of what Pierre Berton referred to as the first of the C.P.R. towns is that of a rustic backwater, soon flooded by profit-seeking speculators.  Like many other railway towns, the CPR's great powers of site location would decide who would get rich from the Brandon boom. In 1881, Brandon, Manitoba was little more than a tent city, but real estate fuelled expansion  would soon see the foundations laid for a major prairie grain hub.

Early Brandon is portrayed by Berton as the romantic epitome of the Old West.  The initial post office was reportedly quite austere.  This bastion of civilization and primary contact with the outside world was limited to a soap box with a hole in it, which sat outside the postman's tent.


Berton's characterization of fine dining in Brandon is worth quoting in full:

The first restaurant was a plank laid across two barrels on the trail that was to become Pacific Avenue.  The proprietor was an eccentric, white-bearded cockney named Tom Spence whose entire stock consisted of a keg of cider, a bottle of lime juice, a couple of pails of water, and two drinking glasses.  To attract trade, Spence had chained a live badger to a nearby post, 'just far enough from the counter to be unable to bite the customers.' (Berton, The Last Spike, p.30)

Title: Collection of small animal heads mounted on wall plaques.
Date: [ca. 1893]Photographer: Smyth, S.A., Calgary, Alberta

Early Brandon makes good fodder for the nostalgic lover of the bygone West.  Berton is in his element describing clap-board sidewalks, and rough frontier living.  While the bison and coyote usually take the spotlight in the western genre, it is good to see some other furry friends get their due.  In Berton's anecdote, and on a curious 1890s taxidermy display in Calgary, the noble badger is preeminent among the pantheon of prairie critters.

 

Proposals for stopping the Canadian Buffalo Extinction, 1876.

By 1876, the destruction of the buffalo in the Dominion of Canada's Northwest Territories had become an acute problem.  Lieutenant Governor David Laird, wrote a memorandum in that year which summarized the advice from those with experience on the Canadian plains.  Their responses reveal not only early ideas surrounding conservation and game management, but also the government's hopes to balance these actions with policies providing subsistence for indigenous peoples.[RG10, Volume 2641]

The problem, as laid out by Laird was stated thus:

The threatened early extinction of the Buffalo is a question of grave importance to the North West Territories of the Dominion.  The flesh of that animal forms the principal means of subsistence of several of the Indian tribes, as well as a large number of the Half-breeds.  The traffic in Buffalo peltries likewise enters largely into the trade of the country, and enables the natives to procure many of the necessaries of life. (RG10, Volume 3641, File 7530)

Buffalo carcass with three figures. 

William George Richardson Hind collection [graphic material] (R13878-0-X-E)

Date(s)July 19, 1862 Credit: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1963-97-1.37R

Laird notes that the "whites" and metis, "at times indulge[d] in a wanton slaughter of whole herds killing cows and calves indiscriminately...", and using very little of the animal.  The first suggestion to end these killings was forwarded by Colonel French, commissioner of the North West Mounted Police.  He suggested: a double export duty on cow and calf robes; a duty on pemmican; a closed hunting season during calving times; and severe punishments for those that used less than half the meat of the animal.

Father Alexis André, O.M.I.  Online (1)

Date(s)1885PlaceDuck Lake, Sask.

Credit: Library and Archives Canada / C-028538

Father Andre, at the metis settlement of St Laurent, near Fort Carleton, went further with his suggestions of restriction of hunting season for "whites and Metis", suggesting an open season from June to October.  He went so far as to hope to restrict them from staying on the prairies during the winter, while allowing the "Indians" to remain hunting on the plains.  He also sought a heavy tax on the skins of cows killed during the winter.

The committee of the North West Council suggested a closed season from January to the end of May, as well as the outlaw of "pound[s], or similar contrivance [in] the capture of Buffalo."  They also wished to restrict the hunt to animals over two years old.


Ultimately, the Dominion government, then under the Liberal guidance of Alexander Mackenzie, refused to create any export duties, as these were inherently "objectionable", and would not stop "wanton destruction" anyway.  The government subcommittee simply pointed to the authority of the North West Council over, "game and wild animals and the care and protection thereof", and delegated the duties to that territorial body.  These efforts of consultation were too little, too late, and the buffalo herds in the following years were effectively decimated.