Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Today in Canadian history?

Guylaine emails a question:
I was wondering if you knew of a resource (book or web site) that lists important anniversaries in Canadian history, i.e. 100th anniversary of birth of a prime minister or famous artist, 200th anniversary of a famous event, etc. 
Guylaine, for "What happened this day" questions, mostly I just google "today in history canada" or something like that, and browse through some of the sites that come up.  I'm not aware of one that is really comprehensive or even just better than the rest. Amazingly John Robert Colombo seems never to have written this particular Canadian reference tome.

Anyone?

Update, Nov 28:  Brian Busby of The Dusty Bookcase suggests:
I'm not aware of a Colombo-like reference book, but have something that might satisfy.
In my hunt for upcoming anniversaries of note, I use the search feature at the Canadian Encyclopedia. This requires a few passes - "28 Nov 1962", "28 Nov 1912", "28 Nov 1862", etc - but I find it works well. I usually do blanket searches that cover a month - "Nov 1962", "Nov 1912", "Nov 1862" - and read through the hits. There aren't as many as one might expect.
This has allowed me to raise a toast to folks like Sir Gilbert Parker, whose sesquicentennial I celebrated just last week.
Note: It's important to use quotation marks in the search.  
And Mark Reynolds recommends the Today in History feature on the Sympatico website run by Bell Canada's internet service.

Update, Nov 29  ... which today tells us that today is, among other things, Ramsay Cook's birthday.  Historians in the news!