Sources
The major sources for the study of Old Home Week in North Bay are the North Bay Nugget and the souvenir books that were produced for each one. Town/city minutes provide very little additional information. There are few first hand accounts of the celebrations with the exception of Hartley Trussler's diary. Interviews with those who were children at the time tend to lack detail, and the memory of more recent OHW celebrations often blends in with that of the first two.
Although it is easy enough to find the Nugget articles printed during the week itself, an examination of articles published throughout the year is necessary to examine the planning and organization of these events. Searching The Globe online for Old Home Week produces numerous references to other comparable celebrations and a few references to the North Bay events.
Using these sources, I have written an article on OHW which touches on the commemorative aspects of the pageant parade and French Canadian Day in particular and on OHW as a form of tourism promotion. This article can be consulted in Urban History Review, forthcoming, Fall 2008. This article touches on the nature of French - English relations in North Bay and the surrounding communities.
If any of the records of the community groups involved in the organization of OHW have survived, I am not aware of it and would like to hear from anyone who has information on this. The Chamber of Commerce records were destroyed in a fire. We may never know, therefore, why the organizing committee removed the Orange Order from the list of official pageant floats in 1925, or why the masons were allowed to include a float of Old King Cole as one of the historic floats in the pageant parade of 1925.
Several articles published by the Nugget during OHW are historical in nature and we can learn a considerable amount about the early history of North Bay through them. Some of these key articles as well as key descriptions of the OHW celebrations in the Nugget or the Globe have been transcribed in full and are provided here.
While the sheer number of articles relating to OHW in the Nugget in both 1925 and 1935 makes it impossible to transcribe all of these, an annotated bibliography of these articles which was prepared as part of the research for a book length study of this region of Northeastern Ontario in the 1920s and 1930s is provided below. This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
The summaries provided are designed to assist researchers in finding the material they are looking for and should not substitute for examining the original articles. These two bibliographies are provided as excel files the full text of which can be searched using CTL + F. By using the filter option of the subject field, the list of articles can also be viewed according to the several broad categories. Links to the above articles available as full text are found in these files as well.
The souvenir books, although written with a view to boost tourism, also provide much information about the early history of North Bay. Copies of those available are provided and can be linked to below.
There is a growing literature on pageants and commemorative events. For a survey of some of these, see my article in Urban History Review. |