Notes from John Willis

1. Defining moments in the history of communication.
Subject Matter
Communication is a complex and omnipresent phenomenon of human life. Although present at every stage of our history, in every facet of everyday life, there are outstanding instances in which the significance of communication can be more easily highlighted. The instances or defining moments depicted in this exhibition will attract the attention of our visitors and support the primary message of the exhibition. Our object is first to show the communication side of historical events. Second we will focus on the human aspect and strive to show that ultimately men and women, not technology, make communication history.

Communication patterns vary according to the level or circle of social life. At the micro-scale, the level of the individual person, family, neighbourhood, village, voice will be of paramount importance. The inner circle can effectively carry any message, but it does not generate all the news. Much of this comes from the outer circle of communication where large communities and groups of people interact. At the macro-scale communication media are deployed, to sustain social relationships that have previously been confined to face to face interactions. In most but not all cases, writing is of paramount importance. Words are put down and moved along a network.

The circles are not impervious to one another. They interact. Popular expressions bubble up from below. Commands, normative texts trickle down from above. Words, traditions, strategies collide with one another, whether they originate at the same or opposite ends of the social edifice. There is no either or: just orality, just literacy, just inner, just outer. There is both.

The circles evolve: both within their respective spheres as well as by virtue of interaction. The little circles keep digging deeper, the big circles keep reaching ever further. The two keep interacting.

Content
The team proposes a preliminary selection of nine defining moments, drawn in the main from the last 100-120 years of history. Our selection may change in accordance with space and content considerations. A number of Canadian examples have been chosen, the better to illustrate the role of communication in the making of our country, international examples are chosen as well because along with the former these should resonate strongly with our visitors. In each case the theme is examined sui generis, and then in terms of historical precedent (looking backward) and consequence (looking forward). We will offer a few suggestions as regards events with a backward or forward potential. We try to convey the many different senses and dimensions at play.

Theme no. 1: Quand les choses doivent changer: The sinking of the Titanic, 1912. Hailed as an invincible craft the ship sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic 640 km off the coast of Newfoundland. Because of this incident certain key changes were introduced in terms of communication and navigation safety. The Titanic is an example of powerful circumstance necessitating change. It was also front-page news in newspapers the world over.
Looking backward: naval wrecks and naval communication, colonial period
Looking forward : The need for a United Nations: 26 June 1945, new world forum of communication
Postal Link: transatlantic mail.

Theme no. 2: Quand on prend les choses en main: The birth of the telephone, 1876. This modern device of communication was successfully tested by Alexander Graham Bell. The telephone was originally intended as a business tool but as a result of social practice it emerged as a vital tool of domestic communication. Human demand helped steer communication technology in a different direction. Just as it has done, more recently with the internet and the various spinoffs of digital convergence: cell-phones, blackberries, i-pods and i-phones.
Looking backward: (and postal link) Personal correspondence throughout history.
Looking forward: Communication by internet, text-messaging cell and blackberry.

Theme no. 3: Quand il faut conquérir: the news from Batoche, May 1885. The Capture of Louis Riel on May 15th put an end to the Northwest Rebellion. Newspaper correspondents travelling with troops sent to put down the revolt were forbidden that day to send out their despatches by telegraph. The news did find its way into the papers back east the next day. Following the defeat of the Metis the re-settlement of the Canadian prairie would proceed without interruption. Railway, telegraph and post, not to mention the troops, helped ensure that the west was won, for “civilization”.
Looking backward: Communication in the Prairie North-West and the West coast (B.C.) in the days of canoe and waterway travel, 18th + 19th Century.
Looking forward : communication in contemporary military situations, Canadian Forces in Afghanistan.
Postal Link: The Post Office and the development of the Prairie West.

Theme no. 4: Quand les idées secouent, shaking the tree of convention : McLuhan pronounces in 1964 that The Medium is the message. What he meant is that the medium by which a message is conveyed is of greater bearing on human behaviour than the actual contents of a message. The medium reaches deeply into our subconscious and pursues a particular sensorial line. Print media engage the eye; radio appeals to the ear. Human beings are prodded in particular directions in accordance with the prevalent media. Writing in the late 1950s and 1960s McLuhan viewed himself as a spokesperson of the new electronic era of television. He also advocated that the world-wide reach of the media has made of our species a global village. As a Canadian thinker of communication, McLuhan’s ideas enjoyed a world-wide reputation.
Looking backward : The Dreyfus Affair of 1898, an author with one dramatic front page article is able to shake to its foundations, the French military and political establishment.
Looking Forward: Yes We Can: the 2008 campaign of political upstart, Barack Obama, through an adroit and systematic recourse to the internet, captures the enthusiasm and votes of the American electorate.

Theme no. 5: Quand plus rien ne fonctionne: The Ice storm of 1998. A freak combination of warm January temperatures and strong precipitation produced an abundance of freezing rain that felled transmission towers, blew transformers and in essence knocked the power out for upwards of 1,6 million homes in Québec and Ontario. The normal amenities of electronic communication were rendered obsolete. People had to rely on old-fashioned means of communicating as they gathered to meet, talk and eat, by candlelight. On the surface there was no communication, but deep down there was.
Looking backward: Winnipeg flood of 1950; Hurricane Hazel, Toronto 1954. (Possibly refer to another context in which face-to face of paramount importance.
Looking forward: The Ontario-U.S. blackout of August 2003; Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans 2005.
Link to post: the challenges to postal service during the ice-storm, how the mail kept running.

Theme no. 6: Quand le monde nous influence: The Assasination of John Kennedy, November 1963. Television has made a single integrated audience of the world’s populations. The first such example, one which rocketed around the world mainly through electronic media was the assassination of the U.S. president in 1963. The event left a huge impact on Canadian television and print journalism and upon Canadian public memory.
Looking backward: News of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, on 28 June 1914. (D’Arcy McGee assassintation as well.)
Looking forward: News of the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9 November 1989; news of attack on the World Trade Center, September 11, 2001.

Theme no. 7: Words of Mass Destruction: Rwanda, April 6, 1994. During the spring of 1994, 800,000 persons were massacred by their fellow citizens during a killing frenzy spread out over 100 days. The radio station, Radio Mille Collines played an important role; as propaganda instigator prior to the slaughter and as broadcaster directing teams of killers from one place to another. The genocide counts as one of the worst tragedies in the history of the 20th century.
Looking backward: radio and propaganda during World War Two.
Looking forward: communication and scapegoats in the contemporary world. (Gaza?)

Theme no. 8: When many are one or the crowd as great big communication machine. Protest and suppression at Tianamen Square, Beijing June 1989. Conflicts between police and students in Beijing broke out in 1989. Protesters fashioned symbolic temporary monuments out on the square and when the troops came, stood their ground on world television in the face of columns of army tanks. There is a political side to this event and a communication side as well. A crowd is a big communication machine. A crowd voices collectively its message through its shouting, gestures and choreography. At the same time within the crowd there is an ongoing exchange between individuals and smaller groups of people, between leaders and followers.
Looking backward: The crowd in the Winnipeg General strike, 1919
Looking forward: the Rio Carnival.
Postal Link: The postal strike within the Winnipeg General Strike, 1919.

Theme no. 9: Quand on doit le dire autrement (When Words will not do) 1958, Anti-nuclear demonstration London to Aldermaston England. A highly recognizable fixture of demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, during the 1960s and 1970s, the peace sign was first used by British anti-nuclear protesters in 1958. It served as a rallying symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament which sponsored marches between London and a nuclear research facility, Aldermaston, in the south of England. The symbol reminds us that although we live in a world dominated by words, graphic symbols, logos and pictures, are still effective means of communication. The visual dimension in communication is powerful because it facilities recognition and because art of some kind is embedded in virtually every human culture.
Looking backward: May 1920: Canadian art for a Canadian landscape: First art exhibition of the Group of Seven.
Looking forward: Symbol of victory, a classic photo taken in 1972, shows Paul Henderson celebrating his series-winning goal against the Soviet hockey team.


2: Inner and Outer Circles of Communication
The Canadian Postal Museum has decided to broaden its mandate to incorporate the wider field of communication. My job is to help formulate a conceptual launch pad to help guide us through the exhibit development process. I am a postal historian trying to communicate with communication.

Summary of our Approach
Communication patterns vary according to the level or circle of social life. At the microscale, the level of the individual person, family, neighbourhood, village, voice will be of paramount importance. The inner circle can effectively carry any message, but it does not generate all the news. Much of this comes from the outer circle of communication where large communities and groups of people interact. At the macro-scale communication media are deployed, “to sustain social relationships that have previously been confined to face to face interactions.” In most but not all cases, writing is of paramount importance. Words are put down and moved along a network.

The circles evolve within their own respective spheres: The little circles keep digging deeper, the big circles keep reaching ever further. And the two are not impervious to one another. They interact. Popular words bubble up from the plancher des vaches. They trickle down from above. Words, traditions, strategies collide with one another whether they originate at the same or opposite ends of the social edifice. There is no either or: just orality, just literacy, just inner, just outer. There is both. The micro dimension gets all wrapped up in the macro one and vice versa. Case in point: put 2 million people together in a capital city to watch a presidential inauguration. Many have cell phone which normally would allow them to have private conversations. But so many people with so many cell phones meant that the airwaves were jammed. Not all of the people could talk over their phone.

Each of the two scales can be used to demonstrate a defining feature of communication. Events transpiring within the first circle make it clear that as a species we have a strong propensity to communicate. Step onto a school bus at 7 in the morning, you will see what I mean. The outer circle provides a good vantage point from which to track the process of conquest that has done so much to shape our country and fasten Canada and therefore Canadian communication to the global wheel of fortune.

Before embarking on the inner-outer discussion, we need discuss first the contribution of Canadian thinkers on communication. Some of the biggest names in the field are Canadian (this usually doesn’t happen). The two names that come to mind: Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan

Innis
We begin with the most important of the two, Innis. A historian usually closely associated with the elaboration of the staple theory of economic growth, he studied the exploitation of such commodities as cod and fur in the pre-industrrial period, in the latter part of his academic career, Innis took a special interest in communication, publishing two significant works: The Bias of Communication and Empire and Communication. Innis was interested in the great sweeping approach to western history, from ancient civilizations to modern times. The crux of his arguments was that communication matters to human history. You want to know why a civilization rises and or falls, examine closely the circumstances of communication. Therein lies the answer for success or failure.

By virtue of the character of a communication system, a civilization will tend to develop extensively or not along either in space or over time. For example, the bias of communication will give a society the ability to expand in a robust fashion in space. The lighter the medium, argues Innis, the greater its ability to extend in space. The late Egyptians and later the Romans used Papyrus, a light-weight writing surface. It was easy to move messages around between the capital and the distant provinces. These were empires in which it was technically possible, road-system permitting, to centralize coordinating functions, power, in a capital city. Innis refers to the roads of the ancient Persian empire which allowed the prince to thus manage from a specific pre-eminent place. He could have used as a transport-communication metaphor, the convergence of railways on the city of Paris, since the mid to late 19th century. Here converged railways, beaurocratic reports from each department, information, mail paper, control.

A time-biased communication system will be characterized by a heavier writing surface or medium. Clay tablets are more difficult to move around, they are more likely to stay put. What you get is a dispersed pattern of social units, politically separate and autonomous from each other. In such a situation it is not easy to merge the disparate units. But you can dream about it, as did Machiavelli in the 16th century. His was an Italy of separate city-states that as a result of a developing postal system, were gradually coming in increasing congress with one another.

History is all about change, as Innis the historian knew. The balance between space and time inclinations is bound to fluctuate. The social balance of power will fluctuate. Around each communication medium there clusters a social group, class whose power is rooted in that medium. This class (priests, press magnates, politically charged evangelicals, will endeavour to exercise a monopoly of knowledge and communication. The monopoly is eventually challenged, the challenge originating on the margins of civilization, usually at a time when the ancien communication regime is beginning to falter: « Minerva’s Owl begins it’s flight only in the gathering dusk », Innis wrote in 1947. Paper will displace parchment in the late medieval era. The new medium which used printing, is driven by the city, it will displace the previous hegemony predicated on rural seigneurs and monasteries in the country. According to Innis.

Innis tends to generalize. As historians we might prefer less grandeloquent case studies. Yet I think we can concur with Innis that communication is the litmus test of empire. During the 18th century it was not easy to keep intact an imperial communication system, and hence the empire thereto appertaining. Kenneth banks, Chasing Empire Across the Sea, concludes that the French system was dysfunctional. He could have said as much about the British who could not persuade those 13 colonies to the south of New France to stick with the King. Regimes change. Let’s use a more contemporary example: The U.S. attacks Iraq after 9-11. Fox news, right-wing hotline shows and to a lesser extent the rest of the media, sing the praises of the coalition gladiators, until someone put the wrong picture in the papers (from the prison of) . So the opposition starts the rising, and they use the internet (e-mail, facebook etc) to get their man, yes we can believe in change, elected.

McLuhan
Is better known than Innis and always presented himself a loyal disciple of Innis.McLuhan is best known for his aphorism, the medium is the message. This he intends as an extension of Innis’ conception of the bias of communication. What does McLuhan mean: He means that that the medium or form of communication is more important than contents. A specific particular medium appeals to a particular realm of the senses. These senses then become a mere extension of the communication technology. Print and later television extend into the visualization components of the human nervous system, radio, oral-oratory, contribute to the hegemony of the ear.

You will note that there is almost no room in this scenario for social or cultural agency. The influence extends direct from the technical properties of the medium to the human nervous system. McLuhan bypasses hsitroy, and mankind.

One interesting concept of McLuhan is the global village, predicated on a older stratum, the postal village. The rise of electronic media, radio + t.v. in his day (there was no internet he died in the 1980s before the web) turned the planet into an interconnected village of radio listeners and t.v. viewers. As we are thus transformed into world villagers we rediscover or rebecome what we once were in an ealier more primitive stage of civilization. We want to know whose dna is on the dress hanging in Monica Lewinsky’s closet. Indignant as any villager would be, we want to know why the flag outside Buckingham palace is not at half mast, even thought the wife of the future King of England, has died, tragically in a car accident in Paris. And who is that voluptuous girl with the low-cut blouse on the arm of the Minister of External Affairs…

We are enthralled by all these petty things. We are captivated by what we see on our screens; just like the main character in Hitchcock’s film, Rear Window, he suffers from a broken leg he has lots of time to kill, so he starts staring outside his window at the apartments across the back alley, only to discover, after careful observation, aided and abetted by a pair of binoculars, that his neighbour has just murdered his wife, all the while ignoring his beautiful fiancée (Grace Kelly) who quite frankly, with what she was wearing, should not have been ignored. Voyeurisme is very strong thread in communication, past present.

McLuhan brings out the village in human communication. Innis offers the empire view of communication. There are my two starting points for this lecture. Village and empire: Inner and outer circle.


Inner Circle
The inner ring is a social experience of communication, intense and intimate. Life is lived, on a day to day basis, by and large in the first circle in the company of family, neighbours and entourage. The street people in Beijing today will congregate around an oil-barrel fire, useful for warming-up and for cooking. Elsewhere children gather around a neighbourhood soccer ball. Adults meet at the local dépanneur. The cinéma du quartier, is a veritable institution in Paris during the inter-war years: “Comme à la fête ou au bal, on consommé en commun de l’imaginaire…”.

Voice is the primary means of communication in the first circle. It gives wings to rumour. Talk, les bruits qui courent is a staple of the history of New France. Stories of the alleged unethical practises of merchants, given to speculating in foodstuffs, enraged canadiens. Popular scuttlebutt, eventually circulated news of the unscrupulous goings on of the second highest colonial official, François Bigot. Rumour was rampant in an age when people had sharp tongues and good ears. In Montréal, in 1731, a group of citizens testified that their neighbour, mère Guignolet maintained a house where vice of every description was committed. The Guignolet’s used foul language - “Crême et baptême, Vous êtes une conquine et un putain”. Evidently the witnesses were not deaf. They had good memories and repeated what they heard, in court.

By the second half of the 19th century, webs of written communication criss-cross the St. Lawrence and North America. But talk still runs up and down the parish highways and byways of the Gaspé penisula. The mayor of Douglastown, near Gaspé, was concerned at what his fellow citizens were saying, as they gathered in his store, about the parish priest: “On s’entretient souvent des propos très inconvénients à son égard et presque toujours il s’y trouve quelques protestants. » Bad things were said and they did not always flow from the mouths of Protestants. One woman would publicly tell tall stories of scandal just outside the church of Rivière-à-L’Anguille while the schoolmistress of Cap-des-Rosiers had a remarkable, if vicious, ability to spread gossip: “faite pour semer le vent et souffler la tempête...d’une ambition effrénée, d’une jalousie épouvantable et d’une langue affreuse pour inventer. »

Rumours, gossip can get vicious. Saying the wrong thing within earshot can get a enthusiastic talker in trouble. The widow of a farmer in St-Benoit, Lower Canada, 2 October 1844, Rose Vendette, was take to court by Lawyer L.T. Groulx, for having allegedly stated in a village inn, previous September, that Groulx was like a parasite (crève faim), living off trials and court proceedings at the popular expense; that all lawyers are cheaters, and that none of them can ever get to heaven.

The rumour mill is a constant of modern Canadian history and works in tandem with the press. Cordelia Viau was the organist at the parish church of Saint-Canut (Mirabel), north of Montréal. She was married to Isidore Poirier a carpenter would not infrequently worked in the U.S. for months, years at a time. While her husband was away she took up with another man, named Sam. Fellow villagers became aware of the relationship, it was difficult to be discrete in such close quarters. Someone talked to the parish priest who in turn wrote Poirier, insisting he come home. He did and during the winter of 1897-98 he was murdered. All eyes within the village turned on Cordelia + Sam. The outside investigors were made aware of the village news. The press got involved, including L’Égalité a newspaper based in the nearby town of Saint-Jérôme. Eventually the Montreal papers latch onto the story.

The motion for mistrial, on various counts was successful. The lawyer for the defence argued that public opinion throughout the north shore district of Terrebonne was solidly against Cordelia; terrible things were being spread around about the defendant and her supporters. It would be impossible to hold a fair trial within the district, because there was so much bias against her. The crown could only add, in response, that were Cordelia to be tried in another district public opinion would be just as hostile if not worse. So evidently word about the murder etc, was getting around the newspapers were doing their job.

A few decades later the Western front, writes World War One Historian Tim Cook, was an ideal breeding ground for rumour. The men were scared, they frequently spent days doing nothing. With little concrete news they devised a rumour mill which whiled away the time and allowed them to make sense of it all. The latrines were hubs of news. There were rumours about why the mail was late; that the men were about to be given leave; the war was about to end; the Germans had new weapons that clogged rifles. It was even alleged that les boches were feeding their troops the fat from dead bodies, so scarce were foodstuffs; the latter story was planted by British spies presumably to boost morale.

Talk is a constant of modern life not just in the country, talk isn’t always so bad. The day-to-day conduct of city life, wrests on a foundation of informal socialializing. City people need a certain amount of contact, outside the home, in order to go about their daily lives. But they do not want too much. They do not want people prying into their private business. The solution is the sidewalk: a conversational consensus, a place where you can interact with other people with no strings attached. The range of sidewalk encounters varies. The odd glance, tip of the hat, quick smile can, over time build into a bona fide conversation, perhaps while waiting in line for the bus. Jane Jacobs cites a study of Puerto Rican citizens of New York, which showed, that what people know of one another is invariably gained from public contact out on the sidewalk.

A dramatic event, in a local setting can set tongues wagging. F.R. Scott, wrily observed the scene on Clarke Street in starchy Westmount after a laundry truck accidentally crashed into a maple tree:
Normally we do not speak to one another on this avenue,
But the excitement made us suddenly neighbours.
People exchanged remarks
Who had never been introduced
And for a while we were quite human.

A fire or fallen branch on the power line down the street, are local events engaging our attention. But within the first circle outside events intrude. They are discussed long before the six o’clock news. A study conducted shortly after the assassination of John Kennedy (1963) stated that “Person to person communication as the first source of events has its primary role in the diffusion of events which receive maximum and minimum attention from the populace.” The study complemented observations made during the 1940 U.S. election by Katz and Lazarfield who argued that voters are not so much influenced by what they read-hear in the media, rather they are influenced by local opinion leaders who interact with people in face-t-face situations.

I recall that seven years ago someone walked into my office and told me that a skyscraper in New York had just fallen down. Preposterous, I said, before reaching for my radio. The news spread rapidly up and down the corridors of the museum. The coffee break was a long one, as dozens of us spent time conversing and looking incredulously up at the television. How do you first hear about big news? Would it be from someone else?

The Outer Circle
In the outer circle the exigencies of distance, frequency and volume are such that it is necessary to create an infrastructure which empowers the messengers and speeds them and the message along their way. Various systems have been devised in order to sustain communication: including post, telegraph, telephone, satellite and internet. There is a good deal of writing in circulation, even by cell. Modern networks allow media to conduct business, witness the pervasiveness of advertising in the press, on billboards and web taglines. Communication through the mass media is experienced collectively, sequentially. As messages are sent the information is processed. The feedback eventually surfaces but usually in a round-about way. Communication is complex, mediated and interactive. What goes around comes around, but it takes time. (Except by cell)

In communication the mother of all invention is the human willingness to communicate no matter the circumstance. On slave plantations in the ante-bellum American south, quilts were sewn and hung out on a nearby fence, ostensibly so they could be aired. In fact they served as mnemonic devices with different patterns designed to convey a specific message to fellow slaves intending to escape and travel along the Underground Railroad. The monkey wrench quilt pattern meant it was time to gather the tools needed for the journey. The tumbling boxes pattern signified that the escape was imminent. Once the journey began, slaves moved along an interlocking network which eventually landed them across the border in Upper Canada.

What matters is human willingness, not technology: case in point: the telephone: originally created as a tool of business for men, it is turned buy women into a tool of domestic communication for everyone.

By the mid 19th century the largest interlocking communication network in North America was the post. The significance of the post is staring us right in the face, yet so many observers have preferred to highlight other developments, notably the advent of the electric telegraph in the 1840s. McNeill and McNeill in their survey of world history thus highlight the speed of telegraph communication, “For man hath grasp the thunderbolt and made of it a slave”. Yet the telegraph was not, from the get-go, an open and accessible system. It did not become a popular medium of communication, in the U. S., until 1910.

The post meanwhile, in Canada and elsewhere was a popular medium. Osborne-Pyke, documented the onset of the postal revolution in the province of Canada during the 1850s. Similarly Henkin examines the new culture of national connectedness which emerged in the U.S. during the mid 19th century period. The means consisted of a cheap and comprehensive postal system. Whereas beforehand the post primarily sustained the movement of newspapers and mercantile information by the 1850s it became a medium dominated by the exchange of personal correspondance - including pictures - on a massive scale. The post office kept up with the transient population which migrated out west during the California Gold Rush (1849); or left home to fight Mexicans in 1848 and Southern rebels during the U.S. Civil War. No other medium was capable of so servicing interpersonal communication.

The U.S. was on the move by the 1850s. Canada’s systematic westward projection would not come until the 1870s and 1880s. The prairies would eventually emerge both as a region with communication needs of its own, and a bridge to the west coast. This is not to suggest that there was no communication out west at this time. The correspondence of William Lane, employee of the HBC stationed in Moose Factory, shows that news travelled through the west regularly, albeit laboriously.

William’s brother Richard wrote from Fort Garry on New Year’s Eve 1844; the letter was to travel along with the rest of the English mail sent to the Hudson Bay for shipment overseas in spring. Lane’s correspondence refers to native couriers: “Please write to me by the first Indian that may come this way”, wrote one correspondent in 1850. Boats, canoes travel between fur posts. Letter-writers pen quick messages in order not to miss the opportunity to send a message via someone destined for another factory. The outside world did penetrate the prairie. A letter sent in February of 1846 refers to the epidemic at Red River which nonetheless pales in comparison with events in Ireland and Scotland. The news was at times local and banal, at times surprising. Nathanial Logan reacted to Lane’s of October 4 1850 in forceful terms: “I was in such a state that I nearly shit my bricks.”

The 1880s saw a fundamental transformation in the geography and geo-politics of communication. The west was becoming modernized and settled with new peoples and new means of communication. The old pattern of seasonal expresses, beyond the region; of piggy-backing notes and letters on the person of travellers was increasingly obsolete. The West was traversed with telegraph wires – the first were laid down as far west as Edmonton, by the Dominion Government in the 1870s. A transcontinental railway was being built the last spike of which was nailed late in the fall of 1885. Post offices dotted the countryside along the CPR line and in the north from Batoche to Lacombe.

Communication progress in the west was ultimately less a matter of technology than an expression of brute force in response to the Métis insurrection of 1885 and the policy of westward settlement which helped spark it. Force was exercised despite technical limitations. Arriving on the scene in mid April, the general sent to put down the rebellion found there was no ferry at Clark’s Crossing. A scow was eventually procured for the purpose of moving a body of troops onto the west bank of the South Saskatchewan. The telegraph line was not in good shape. Many of the poles between Prince Albert and Clark’s Crossing had rotted. A series of huts stocked with firewood and hay, was built in order to accommodate the inevitable repair crews. The general made daily use of the telegraph. Updates were sent to Ottawa and instructions arrived by return message.

The military put the telegraph to good use, as did the coterie of newspaper correspondents sent to cover the Rebellion. Guerre oblige there was censorship of the press. The officer in command of the Battleford expedition, further west, perused the copy of the reporter of the Montréal Witness prior to despatch. The commander of the Batoche expedition exercised some control as well. On May 15th a scout came into the telegraph office at Clark’s Crossing with a command from the General that news of Riel’s capture was not to be made public on the wire. One of the journalists refused to comply with the ban. He left, returned within the hour and announced that he had found a courier prepared to carry his despatch to the nearest office 60 miles away in Humbolt. The agent thanked him for the information and promptly telegraphed his counterpart in Humbolt instructing him not to send the despatch when and if it arrived. The gag order was rescinded perhaps by end of day for news that Riel had been taken appeared in the May 16 Saturday edition of the Toronto Globe.

There was a post office in Batoche, the main Métis camp. Located next to the church in the school house, on a bluff commanding the South Saskatchewan River, it was run by reverend Father Moulin, with the probable assistance of the school mistress. The idea of having a post office in Batoche was sound. The two nearest ones, Stobart and Grandin were on the western side of the South Saskatchewan. Access to the river was especially complicated when the ice was running. In the spring of 1883, the mail-men were obliged to leave their horses behind on the east bank. Upon reaching the other side, couriers faced the daunting talk of trekking through mud and ascending the steep slope of the west bank on foot.

The valley of the North Saskatchewan, at Edmonton, is a steep-banked affair as well. In winter pedestrians and teams could cross on the river’s frozen surface but come April, as in 1893, this could be dangerous; the ice showed signs of breaking, the water was rising. We could really use a bridge, opined the Edmonton Bulletin. Population in 1890 was probably less than 50 but the founding fathers were sure Edmonton had a grand destiny.

The population numbered some 4200 in 1901 and a whopping 53,000 in 1916: i.e. within 15 years. In terms of infrastructure Edmonton received every thing in short order: a new bridge, a power house, railway connections on both sides of the river, telephone, telegraph, tram and, in 1910, a de luxe 4-story post office, featuring a 130 foot clock tower and a staff of 42 clerks and 15 letter carriers. The new post office was built because the previous one burnt down in 1907.

The fire started in the basement shortly before noon. Someone phoned the alarm into fire department which was the customary way of doing things. (out of total of 77 fire incidents in 1907: 33 were made known to the fire department advised by phone, 15 by electronic firebox; 7 times by messenger. Most of the morning mail had been sorted, letter carriers were about distributing it to the homes and people of Edmonton. The street was black with people, some volunteering their assistance, but most just looking on and sometimes applauding the courage of firefighters. The area was cordoned off by a rope, policemen ensured that no one touched the goods emptied from the various neighbouring commercial premises, piled out in the street, and the kept the crowd under control. The post office was a loss, although thankfully most of the morning mail had been sorted, letter carriers were about distributing it to the homes and people of Edmonton. There had been some concern that the telephone building would go up but that didn’t happen. These nearby premises were damaged: a tailor shop, lawyer office, physician, butcher, printer, photographer and the Bijoux Theatre. City center power supply was cut off from noon to 3 p.m. in order to permit the use of an auxiliary engine serving the main water-pumping engine.

In this description I think we see many elements of communication: the crowd spectators, the telephone (as building as fire alarm), the post office, the photographer and Bijoux Theatre (cinema). They are all linked to a common power supply and a common culture of urban communication.

Large post offices would grace the streets of other prairie towns and cities during the key boom era of 1890 to 1920. Along with the troops, newspapers, telegraph and news wire, the post helped ensure that the west was won, for civilization.