Alberta History 1961-1966

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Jasper Alberta's Historic View

1961

June 1: The census of the west is: B.C. 1,629,000, Alberta 1,332,000, Saskatchewan 925,000, Manitoba 922,000, Yukon and N.W.T. 38,000.



1962

March 6: Sons of Freedom Doukhobors destroyed an electric power pylon, and nine were arrested and sentenced, May 10-11, to 15 years imprisonment. It is important to remember that their children, 170 of them, were taken away from their parents and the children were interned in a Residential School from 1953 to 1959. The children were released amidst great resentment. Eight hundred Sons of Freedom walked from the Kootenays to Agassiz Mountain Prison in the lower mainland to join their imprisoned relatives. They camped at the gates of the prison until 1972.

June 11: Seventy two Sons of Freedom Doukhobers were charged with various incidents between 1958 and 1961, but the charges of conspiracy were dismissed August 7.

July 30: The Trans-Canada highway is finally completed from sea to sea at the Roger Pass in British Columbia. It is considered the longest National Hiway in the world.

October: John Fitzgerald Kennedy President of the United States of American warned Americans that the world was on the brink of Nuclear War. The military consultants recommended an immediate air strike. Most Canadians were not surprised as the Cold War taught them that World War III was inevitable, it was just a matter of when. This was a key turning point in east-west relations and the beginning of the end of the Cold War. We were soon to realize that the Russian People were terrified of an 'Atomic War' as was the rest of the world..

October 15-28: John Diefenbaker (1895-1979) Prime Minister of Canada loses public support when he is slow to support President John F. Kennedy in support of the National Security of North America, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

December 8: The first session of Vatican II (1962-1965) closed, with Pope John XXIII (1958-1963) not pleased with the progress. He is attempting to pull the Church, kicking and screaming, into the twentieth century. The old conservative guard is not pleased. His objective for this council is to liberalize the Roman Catholic Church.

Between 1962 and 1990, ten Christian Brothers from the Mount Cashel orphanage in Vancouver were convicted of abusing boys in their care.



1963

Diefinbaker issued his famous quote; "Everyone is against me except the people". Kennedy, however, considered Diefinbaker as a platitudinous old bore. This likely represents the decline and fall of the Colonial English culture in Canada.

In the spring Pope John XXIII (1958-1963) published his Encyclical welcoming progress and proclaimed every man's right to worship God in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience and to profess his religion both in private and in public. In essence, this spelled the end of Inquisition type thinking. No longer would Catholics blindly follow the Churches teachings. A fundamental principle of the value, dignity, and the liberty of each individual that has been given rights by God , which no man or institution can ever take from them. The old guard considered this heresy. This is reformation type thinking. It is aboriginal type thinking and is perceived as an attack against all known European traditional authority. A great rebirth is taking place. Beliefs, values and principles are being openly challenged. Organizational experimentation, floating parishes, theological think tanks, human rights, and a search for historical Christian roots had begun. Pope John knew that the Church problems were systemic, and that assimilation doctrine is fundamentally wrong.

President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) president (1961-1963) is assassinated .

June 3: Pope John died or is killed (assassinated ), and by June 17, Pope Paul VI (1963-1978) is elected as a conservative. A gray cloud descended upon the Church. John Paul acknowledged his regret for the shared role of Catholic leaders in perpetuating the division within Christianity.



1964

Pope Paul VI, in a sermon on Passion Sunday, stated, "Jews are predestined to receive the Messiah and have been waiting for him for thousands of years. When Christ comes, the Jewish people- not only do not recognize him- they oppose him, slander him and finally kill him." The media of the laity, however, is playing a different tune. No more concentration camps; no more gas chambers; no more attempts to slay an entire people; no more persecution of Jews, native peoples or minority groups. The people began to openly proclaim the Church is and has grievously erred and is less Christian than it proclaims itself to be. It is noteworthy that the Jews didn’t kill Christ; it was the Romans (Italians) who did the killing. The Jews didn’t have the authority. It is also noteworthy that crucifixion was a Roman form of execution, and stoning was a Jewish form of execution at that time.

The Great Canadian Oil Sands (Sun Oil Company) start development of the Athabasca Oil Sands at Fort McMurray.

March 27: The Alaska earthquake caused a Tsunami that reached 67 meters (220 feet) in some areas. Many villages in Alaska were completely wiped out. Vancouver Island suffered much damage but no loss of life on the Island nor elsewhere in Canada. In Crescent City, California many people mounted a hill to observer the approaching tsunami and were swept to their death. Crescent City reported 11 deaths..

December 16: Canada adopts the Maple Leaf flag designed by Alan Beddoe. Royal assent was given January 28, 1965.





1965

Pierre Elliott Trudeau (1919-2000), a unionist and socialist; boarding on a communist, joins the Liberal Party, not because he believes in Liberal Policy, but because they are in a position of power.

The Vertical Mosaic, by John Porter, describes Canada as a vertical Mosaic of different ethnic, language, regional and religious groupings unequal in status and power and had a profound impact on my understanding of the unjust and unequal representation in the status and power structure in Canada. Porter noted that those with English origin had better income, education and health, than those of eastern or southern European origins. Native Indian, Inuit and Metis the founders of this land were the most disadvantaged. This English arrangement also applied to the legal system, power structure, political system and in decision making. Some sociologists were amazed to find his assessment of Canada hasn't changed much by the turn of the twentieth century. That is because the English prejudice is systemic, being built into the legal, religious and business systems of Canada. That Ontario with its Liberal social engineering principles has assumed the English position relative to Quebec and the west is of no surprise. The French have made some minor gains as have women. The ills of the past are couched in more politically correct terminology and most Canadians are oblivious to many aspects of their own cultural roots, especially in Ontario and Quebec.

Few people realize that child slavery existed in England to about this time under the guise of 'The Home Children Program", where 15,000 English children are sent to Australia, New Zealand and Africa as slave labor. Canada, Australia and New Zealand had received 100,000 child slaves between 1869-1930, with an estimated 150,000 being the overall total. It is estimated that about 75,000 children were abused and suffered child neglect. Because the children's identities were deliberately falsified to disguise a child's origins the practice was labeled "Stolen Identities".

May 12: The terms of the 1876 treaty with Saskatchewan Indians, requiring the Federal Government to provide free medical care, was upheld in court.



1966

After more than four centuries of the censorship of the Index of Forbidden Books, which caused readers to be excommunicated, imprisoned or killed, the censoring is discontinued by Pope Paul VI (1963-1978). The credibility of the Church carried no weight and, since most people had ignored the Index for years, this was considered a nonevent. He also allowed dispensation from religious and celibacy vows upon leaving the religious life and there is a flood of applicants. The Conservatives initially considered this a cleansing of bad blood (Liberals) from the Church, but as the numbers leaving continued to increase they lobbied to bring back the old rules. The church was crumbling before their very eyes. Some were saying that God gave the Church one last chance to come out of the dark with Vatican II, but some learned that the leaders liked the dark.

Jasper Alberta's History