NAME: _________________________
MY “PERSONAL PROFILE” IN CANADIAN SOCIETY: 1945-1967
1] Your name: _______________________2] Your age in 1961 [your present age]: _______
3] Your family’s ethnic background [ethnicity/nationality]: _________________________
Are you Canadian born or did you emigrate to Canada with your family?
____________________________________________________________________
4] What region of Canada does your family live in: __________ What province: ________
What town/city/village: __________________ Large or small setting: ______________
5] Your family’s social layer: _______
6] How many brothers and sisters do you have? __________ Their ages: ____________
7] What grade are you in? _____ Do you think you will complete high school? ________
Why or why not? ________________________________________________________
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8] Your father’s occupation: ______________________________.
How secure and prosperous is your father’s occupation? Explain.
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9] Describe your mother’s role and responsibilities within the family. Note that your
family’s social class, ethnic background, and where they live in Canada all will have
some bearing on your mother’s role/responsibilities within the family.
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10] Imagine and describe how your parents were affected by the Great Depression of the
1930’s [Assume your parents were teenagers in the early 1930’s]
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11] Imagine and describe how your parents were affected by the Second World War
[ Assume your parents were married just before or during the war. In what year were you born? Likely,
your father fought in the war!]
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12] Identify ANY FOUR events/trends/changes taking place in Canadian society
between 1945 and 1959 and IN EACH CASE explain how, given your personal profile,
it has influenced or affected you, your family or your community.
#1]
________________________________________________________________________
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#2] _____________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
#3] _____________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
#4] _____________________________________________________________________
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1951:
A sibling contracts polio and may - because of the lack of family financial
resources - die! (see: The Neil Young Case by Christopher Rutty or the
experience of Joni Mitchell.)
YES:
NO:
 Social class: The polio ‘epidemics’ of 1937, 1951 & 1953 affected all social classes, but especially the
middle classes for some reason. Students, who are in social layer #5 & #6, flip a coin & if they lose,
their sibling will die from polio & if family is #5, they will drop to #6 – the cost of medical & hospital care
for individual families before the coming of universal health. Students who are in social layers #1-#4,
their siblings will contract polio but will not die from it.
 Locality/region: For some reason, a higher incidence of polio occurred in Ontario & the prairie
provinces.
 Canadian medical historian, Christopher Rutty, claims Neil Young’s 1969 Helpless song ‘was at least
in part inspired by his childhood polio experience’ in 1951 while his family was living in Omemee, ON.
1953:
An uncle is decorated for his bravery while serving with the Canadian Army
in the United Nations forces in Korea during the “forgotten” Korean War,
1950-53.
YES:
NO:
1954:
A cousin becomes the first person to swim across Lake Ontario, when on
September 2nd, a 16-year-old, Marilyn Bell, completes the swim at Toronto
harbour.
YES:
1954:
A family is affected by the most devastating hurricane ever to hit the Toronto
area – the “Wrath of Hurricane Hazel,” October 15, 1954!
YES:
1955:
NO:
Many families have the ability and means to take a summer vacation and
motor/drive across Canada on the nearly completed Trans-Canada
Highway – the world’s longest highway!
YES:
1957:
NO:
Many families reap the benefits of the post-war “boom times” of the
“fabulous fifties” and move up the social ladder.
YES:
1956:
NO:
An uncle – maybe an aunt – is involved in the planning, or the
design/construction of one of Canada’s mega-infrastructure or defence
projects of the 1950s
 the Trans-Canada Highway,
 the Trans-Canada Pipeline,
 the St. Lawrence Seaway,
 a Don Mills-style suburb,
 the initial Toronto subway system,
 a hydro-electric/irrigation dam & accompanying transmission
lines (e.g. Kitimat, BC)
 a mining/railway project & town, (Elliot Lake, ON; Quebec,
North Shore & Labrador Railway; Schefferville, QC; Sept-Iles,
QC; Labrador City, NL; Flin Flon, MB; Uranium City, SK)
 a strategic Cold War era radar station, or
 the “Avro Arrow.”
YES:
1956:
NO:
NO:
Two teenagers from Ontario – or Montreal, Quebec – skip school to take a
train/bus to Ottawa in order to see and hear in person the “King of Rock ‘n’
Roll,” Elvis Presley, at the Ottawa Auditorium, on Wednesday, April 3 rd!
YES:
NO:
1959:
A teenage “carrier-boy/girl” wins an all-expense-paid weekend in Toronto
from a nationally-based newspaper chain. On Saturday March 21st, before
the game at Maple Leaf Gardens, she/he attends the “Hockey Weekend
Banquet” at the Walker House Hotel and obtains the autograph of the special
guest, - & the Calder Cup (season’s best rookie) winner for the 1957-58 NHL
season – Frank Mahovlich, a.k.a. the “Big M”!
YES:
NO:
13] If you had the power to change something in your family’s situation, 1945-1967, what
would you change? Why?
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14] If you had the power to change something in Canadian society, 1945-1967, what
would you change? Why? How?
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15] Identify ANY FOUR events/trends/changes taking place in Canadian society
between 1960 and 1967 and IN EACH CASE explain how, given your personal profile,
it has influenced or affected you, your family or your community.
#1]
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
#2] _____________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
#3] _____________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
#4] _____________________________________________________________________
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1960:
An older sister creates a family rift when she demands that her parents give
permission for her to get a prescription from the family doctor for the newly
created contraceptive pill, since she and her boyfriend had been “going
steady” for over a year!
YES:
1962:
NO:
A senior high school student at your high school is investigated by the
RCMP after that person had written to the Soviet Union’s embassy in Ottawa
requesting – and receiving - substantial material on that country’s latest Five
Year Plan, on which she/he was doing a major school paper. This happens
during a time of increased international tensions in the Cold War between
East and West – the year of the Cuban missile crisis.
YES:
1963:
NO:
During the night of April 20th-21st, a war veteran and a distant relative (65year-old Wilfred Vincent O’Neil) living in Montreal, working as a night
watchman at the army recruiting centre on Sherbrooke Street, is killed
when a terrorist bomb explodes in a garbage bin. The original cell of the
Front de liberation du Quebec - the FLQ - had planted the bomb. All groups
in Quebec - both separatist and federalist – denounce this bombing - & other
bombings - as “the fireworks of hate” & that “French- Canadians are on the
side of the victim” (editor of Le Devoir, Andre Laurendeau). On March 29th,
the General James Wolfe monument on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec
City was knocked over. On April 1st, a bomb exploded in the federal
government’s National Revenue building in Montreal. Another bomb was
found in a corridor at Central Station. Another bomb blew up a section of
railway track on the CNR’s main line between Montreal and Quebec a few
hours before Prime Minister Diefenbaker’s election campaign train was to
pass. A few days later, a 24-stick bomb was discovered beside the
television-transmitting tower on Mount Royal. It was dismantled. The bomb
would probably have disrupted most broadcasting in the city, including
broadcasts of the federal election results a few days later. On July 13 th, the
Queen Victoria’s statue in Quebec City was blown up and on August 22 nd, a
bomb exploded on a railway lift bridge over the St. Lawrence Seaway.
YES:
NO:
16] How do you respond to the rise of the FLQ in Quebec during the 1960’s?
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1964:
Through funding from the federal government, a sibling receives a generous
grant from the Canada Council to pursue a possible career in the arts, the
humanities or the social sciences within Canada.
YES:
NO:
17] How do you respond to the new Canadian Flag?
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1966:
A sister or cousin - who is caught up in the Vietnam War protests and the
anti-war movement - meets, dates and later marries an American draftdodger. This may create significant tensions within the family.
YES:
1967:
NO:
A “cute” younger sister or cousin – who has just graduated from university
and who is fluent in three different languages - is hired as a “hostess” at
Expo 67 – the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal.
YES:
NO:
18] What are you thinking about as Canada celebrates its 100th birthday on July 1, 1967?
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1967:
A younger sibling from a white, middle-class family background - who is fed
up with the “establishment” - decides to “turn on, tune in and drop out” and
moves to the hippie district of Toronto: Yorkville. On August 21st, she/he
participates in an illegal Yorkville “sit-in” and is arrested, but is later released.
Later that summer, your younger sibling hitchhikes across Canada to
Vancouver Island, where she/he lives in a rural commune for six months.
This “trip” creates much tension, anxiety and anger within the family. In the
spring of 1968, she/he enrols in Rochdale College: a new experience in
education – or anarchy – at the University of Toronto. This latest venture
further complicates family relations!
YES:
NO:
1945-1967: As a child, as a teenager and as a young adult, did your family reap the
benefits of prosperity during this time of economic growth and expansion?
Yes, very much so:
Somewhat:
If the answer is “Yes very much so” and you are in social layers #3,4,5,6, you move up the social
ladder by one layer! But there are some conditions and exceptions:
1) If you are in social layers #4,5,6 and live in the Maritimes, flip a coin.
2) If you are in social layer #6, flip a coin.
3) If you live in Stephenville, Nfld., move DOWN one social layer! Something happened in the
1960’s.
4) If your father was an unlicensed Hungarian medical doctor in 1957, move UP two layers.
5) If your father was an aeronautical engineer in Downsview, ON., your family moved to the United
States in 1960. Something happened in 1959! You remain in social layer #3.
6) If your father was a fireman on a railway locomotive, his job disappeared in 1958. Your family’s
social position remained static.
7) If your father worked in Elliot Lake, ON.,your family was forced to move in 1960. Your family’s
social position remained static.
19] What do you think your future holds for you in terms of your professional personal and
social life as you move into the late 1960s and 1970s?
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