"Canadian Lumberman" and the Gramophone Purchase
by Paul Dodington
When I see an old portable gramophone, it generally
brings to
mind
visions
of endless
summer
days
by
the beach,
and carefree young people
cavorting
barefoot
in
the
sand
to
the saxophonic
sounds of Paul
Whiteman's Orchestra.
So
I
was
somewhat taken
aback
when
I
was thumbing through the
Nov.
15,
1923 issue of Canadian
Lumberman
magazine
(Gosh,
how
the
mail
does
pile
up!)
and
I
came across
an advertisement
which
made
me
realize
that all
my associations
about portable
gramophones
had been
programmed
in
my
mind
by
American ad-writers!
It appears that the Canadian version
of this fun-in-the-sun
scene
evokes
a bit
more of the
grim reality of
life
in
a
nation
of hewers of
wood
and drawers of water.
This
full-page
advertisement
for
the Victrola
No.
50 touts the virtues of the portable
gramophone as
a
means
of enriching the dreary life
of the
logging-camps
in the wilds of
our northern forests in winter.
The
ad is, of course,
aimed at the
camp
operators,
promising
that
they'll
"See discontent
replaced
with
content, get a better day's work,
[and]
have a better morale all through the
camp".
(You'd
almost
think
that
present-day
Muzac
ad-writers
had
gotten
their
ideas
about
soothing
the
savage
breast
with
music
from
reading Canadian
Lumberman.)
Certainly there
was not much
hope
of the
individual
logger being able
to afford
one at $62.50 at the then
standard wage of $1.00 for a
12 to 14
hour
day,
although
elsewhere
in
the issue it is stated that some
camps in northern
Quebec
were having
to
pay
wages
as
high
as
$45 to
$50
per month.
But even at that rate,
a
woodsman
would
soon
use
up
two
months
pay to acquire
a Victrola
and
a
few
Harry
Lauder records to play
on it.
It
would
be interesting to
know
how
many Victrola 50's
ever
found
their way
by this route into northern
lumber
camps
& if any survived
the rough-and-tumble of camp life. I
would venture to guess that most of
the
mainsprings
would
have
broken
the first winter due to the intense
cold
in
those
primitive
camps. The
advertisement
was
placed
in
the
magazine
by His Master's Voice Ltd.
a subsidiary of the Berliner
Gram-0-Phone Co. Ltd. of Montreal. This
company, at 196-198 Adelaide St.
W.
in
Toronto,
was
the
sole
Ontario
distributor of
H.M.V.
products.
As
wholesalers to
various
retailers
throughout
the
province,
His
Master's Voice Ltd.
could not sell directly to the public.
This is
why
there is
no
address
given at the
bottom of the ad.
In this case, the
wholesaler
was
simply
drumming
up
business that
would
ultimately
be
done through retail dealers.
I
have
personally
explored
the
remains of several of these old logging
camps
over the past
few years
but
never
have
I
come
across
any
trace of gramophonic items.
But who
knows?
I hear that there used to be
one
172 miles
west of Fort
William
on the
Grand
Trunk
line
somewhere
near Sioux Lookout and...
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