French-Canadian Heroes Honored at North Bay. The Globe, Toronto, Thursday, August 8, 1935. First Page.
[Transcribed by F. Noël.]
French-Canadian Heroes Honored at North Bay.
Commemoration Parade Features Opening Day of Old Home Week – City Is Crowded With Visitors
North Bay, Aug. 7 (CP).
It is Old Home Week in North Bay, and hundreds of out-of-town visitors are here to help the natives celebrate.
Parades, ball games, fireworks and sports programs were arranged for the week.
Today the city turned out to watch a parade commemorating the deeds of the great French-Canadian heroes. A monument to Jacques Cartier, erected through the co- operation of the French-Canadian men and women of the district, was unveiled.
Escorted by police, the procession was headed by the Sacred Heart College Band of Sudbury, followed by automobiles containing clergy of the city and district and Mayor W.G. Bullbrook and D. Barker, Chairman of the Old Home Week Committee.
The North Bay float depicted the scene on the arrival of Jacques Cartier in Canada. District Indians joined in the parade, lending color to the celebration with their native costumes.
Sturgeon Falls representatives entered the parade with a float portraying Champlain paddling across Lake Nipissing. A descendent of the famous explorer Samuel de Champlain was in the float.
Canadian martyrs were commemorated in a float picturing the slaying of a missionary by Indians.
The life of Louis Hebert was displayed in a colonial setting.
Verner, Ont., French-Canadian residents chose Evangeline as a subject of interprentation and the float was one of the most impressive in the parade.
Noelville, Ont., drew praise for a float portraying the painting “The Angelus.”
Another tribute to the adventures of Jacques Cartier was shown in a float from Warren, Ont., depicting a party of explorers with their canoe and packs. Twenty-one members of the Turgeon family, on a float, represented Astorville.
The program began Sunday and Monday with the first reunion of the 159th Battalion, when more than 400 members of the Northern Ontario unit came together for the first time in twenty years.
Chief among the district’s attractions were the Dionne quintuplets at Callander, eight miles south of North Bay, where thousands of visitors gather four times a day to catch a glimpse of the famous babies.