Tag: 1925 Page 1 of 4

By Gregory Clark, August 29, 1925.

Nothing Anywhere That Equals in Size, Color, Imagination, Speed, and Smoothness, The Great Pageant Before the Grandstand at the Canadian National Exhibition – “Cully” Ross, Pageant-Master Supreme, Discusses Secrets of His Amazing Art

Toronto does not brag.

If she did there would have been a great deal more heard about the Biggest Show on Earth.

For the Biggest Show on Earth is held in the sixty-ninth largest city of the world – Toronto.

It is a show, a drama. A thousand actors perform in it. Four hundred musicians make the music for it. Its stage is eight hundred and fifty feet across. Its audience sits up to a fifth of a mile away from the centre of the stage. Other cities of the world have big shows – carnivals in Venice, fetes in Paris, religious processions in Tokio or Calcutta. But the Biggest Show on Earth is no rough-and-ready carnival, no come-as-you-please procession. It is a play, a pageant. It tells a story. It is a piece of stagecraft on a gigantic scale.

It is the pageant in front of the grand stand at the Exhibition.

Acres of stage, thousands of square feet of scenery, spotlights like cannon and floodlights like a storm of light, and a thousand actors without a spoken word to help them, smoothly performing the clear and sharp movements that will tell the furthest spectator, a thousand feet away, high in his twenty-five cent seat, the epic story of the building of empire and the founding of nation upon nation within an empire.

“Why,” asks a big theatrical man visiting the city to see this astonishing piece of stage-craft, “Isn’t this show advertised to the ends of the earth? It’s tremendous!”

The reason appears to be that the big show is done by Toronto people, from the trained dancers who make the beautiful ballet in the foreground up to the lone man who conceives. designs, executes, manages, directs it – Captain Cully Ross, of the Queen’s Own, pageant-master, director of all amusements and entertainment of the whole exhibition, who for thirty years has been doing his stuff for the great Canadian fair, and who is said to be the foremost pageant-master in America.

Because it is local the big show is taken for granted. When you see this year’s scene, St. Paul’s in the centre, with the streets of Old London spreading to right and left hundreds of feet, life size, it will be hard to realize that these are not actual buildings fading into the perspective. As all the nations of the empire on which the sun never sets begin to congregate in historical order against this scene, with their forty or fifty different types of costume, company after company of them, piling up the mighty story of the growth of the British nations, some sense of wonder at the skill back of this drama on the giant scale is certain to assail you.

Pageant Just 50 Minutes Long

The pageant at Wembley took six hours to unfold in two three-hour sessions on successive nights. The pageant at Toronto Exhibition takes in the neighborhood of fifty minutes, from the moment the eleven massed bands crash out the prelude to the scene until the curtain falls, so to speak, in a triumphant blaze of fireworks.

This fifty-minute pageant is one of the lessons Toronto has learned, via the shrewd showman gift of observation possessed by Captain Cully Ross.

He works from a central, picturesque idea, both in his scenery and his action, and then spreads about that central theme enough pageantry to make it graphic and vivid. He reduced the story of Cleopatra to fifty-two minutes. By one of those weird gifts he selected the Cleopatra story two years ago before King Tut’s tomb became the popular subject of the news, and by the time the pageant was presented it was right in the limelight.

“A pageant,” says he, “is a huge, simple, orderly drama, done in broad, swift strokes. To inspire the onlooker, it must not tire him.”

The grand stand show opens with a three-ring circus. For more than an hour acrobats, clowns and animals entertain the twenty-five thousand spectators. Then comes a few moments of community singing.

Why did Captain Ross introduce community singing before the pageant opens. Just an idle fancy? Ah, there is magic in the showman.

To dissipate the circus spirit into thin air, to make a break from clowns and fun-makers, to set the mind of the twenty-five thousand in tune for the stately magic of the pageant which is the biggest show on earth, these men who have made a science of the entertainment of the human mind and heart have introduced a few minutes of darkness. The lights that flooded the circus rings die down. In the gloaming, music, unseen musicians, swell forth old familiar tunes. In silence, the words of the songs are flashed on screens. Rollicky tunes to remind you you are on a holiday night, unbending. Then kindlier tunes near to the heart. Then semi-sacred songs, and even hymns, to make you rejoice in the velvet starry sky and the beloved kindly land that is being celebrated this night in excitement and music and the moving of great throngs. Hymns, songs, that you yourself are wheedled into singing. Then –

Then the magic lights strike into the dark and you see a fair and stately city. Nigh four hundred musicians, massed under Colonel Mackenzie Rogan, the greatest bandmaster in the British Empire, specially brought out from England just to conduct these hundreds of instruments. And the biggest show on earth, the glorification of Canada and the empire of which she is a member, has begun before your eyes, prepared and damp with the emotion of song.

Director Never in Evidence

To jam on a great jamboree of color and noise is one thing. To do what Captain Cully Ross does is another. You will see whether he is a great showman or not.

At pageants elsewhere in the world, a gentleman in a nice smart suit, evening dress if you like, will be seen standing in the foreground, between you and the stage, and with a stick, or a megaphone, he directs the stiff figures marching and countermarching about the vast scene. He is the pageant master. At the biggest show on earth, you will see no stage direction. Cully Ross is there, all right. He is on the stage. Sometimes he is a Zulu or a soldier (he’s worn the uniform since he was a boy bugler in the Northwest Rebellion) or an admiral or a high priest. So are his three assistant directors, scattered at strategic points around the acres of stage. But you will not see him nor them. It is a drama you are watching. Nothing mars the illusion of light and shadow, color and stately graceful movement.

Eight giant Nubian slaves are carrying a high priest in a sedan chair to the centre of the vast stage. They deposit the burden too soon and the sharp voice of Cully Ross, disguised as an acolyte or something cuts in – “Pick him up, boys! Pick him up!”

One of the giant Nubian slaves turns and says in an injured voice – “That’s all very well, Mr. Ross, but you don’t have to carry this big bullock around!”

One beauty of the pageant is that the asides are not heard by the audience.

This year’s pageant is called the “Ties That Bind.” From the earliest Anglo Saxons to the triumphs of Vimy and Jutland, the story of the building empire is told.

How far in advance these pageants are planned nobody knows. Captain Ross is always busy with his next one before the one in hand is off. In addition to the conceiving and designing of the pageant, he happens also to have full charge of every item coming under the head of amusement and entertainment in the whole exhibition, Midway, bands, street minstrels, all. But early in the spring, the scene painters are at work in their big studio in Hamilton, working out the eight hundred foot set in sections, eight by sixteen feet, to be set up piece by piece on the great scaffolding at the Exhibition Grounds. Weeks before the show opens, the dancers, actors and supers to the number of a thousand are chosen and being drilled.

The costumes are authentic. Willie Clarkson, the famous London costumer who has the finest collection of fancy dress, has supplied many of the pageant costumes in past years, the rest coming from big houses in Philadelphia. There is nothing shoddy and haphazard in the dress of these thousand actors two weeks.

“How on earth do you manage to get a thousand costumes from abroad and fit them to your regiment of actors?”

“Regiment is good,” said Captain Ross. “Anybody who has had much to do with the militia knows the business of fitting a costume. You see, you make sure there are no mirrors around, to begin with. Then you put the costume on the wearer, take a good handful of the slack at the back, so drawing it tight across the front. Then you say – ‘Splendid fit! Splendid fit! Take it! There you are!’ If you speak fast, pat it on his shoulders, and don’t let go the hold on the slack until he has looked up, he is out and gone with it in a twinkling. Fitting costumes is one of the arts.”

Plans Made Months Ahead

The secret of a good show is attention to detail. By getting his plans away in mid-winter, Captain Ross is ready for the details. In this show he wanted pigeons around St. Paul’s. How to get those pigeons in sufficient numbers and how to get them to fly at night, against all the laws of nature, is one of the details he has had to work out. It matches a problem of two years ago, when the Cleopatra pageant was the feature, when Captain Ross had to find a camel in four days. He got it.

Some of his vast company of actors get stage fright. One year, the Queen Mary of the pageant came forth ardently chewing gum. Yet in another, the Prince of Wales was so real, officers standing near sprang to attention as he passed by. In the Cleopatra pageant, there was a water scene on which, the Queen’s barge floated in. A prominent railroad man called Captain Ross over to enquire how many million gallons of water were required for that scene. He was dumbfounded when told that the water was merely mechanical lights rippling on canvas and that the Queen’s barge, floating so softly in, was being yo-heaved by a gang of stage hands from behind.

A Texan interested in the show business on the large scale, asked Captain Ross about the bands that play in the dark at the Dufferin gate bandstand at half past ten when the crowds are going home.

“Looks like a waste of money, playing a band at that hour, after the show’s all over,” said the Texan.

“Music lifts tired feet,” replied Cully Ross.

He hates to send the people home tired. His pageant is short and swift. He greets them on; the way home with music, instead of the weary sound of a thick throng plodding off into the dark, with the sound of sleepy children crying and all the let-down of departure from big day. He plays them out to the street cars, always merry and bright.

For the same reason, he makes his final Saturday night the most tremendous of the whole two weeks, spends extra money on the works, closes the show up with a bang. Don’t let your show die away on you, is one of his maxims. Look after the ends and the middle will take care of itself. The tune is kept to highest pitch right to the last minute.

There is psychology in the show business. It is largely the business of creating an illusion. To fill the hearts of twenty-five thousand people who have been making the rounds of the fair seeing the handiwork of the dominion, with pride. of their native land is the job of that pageant, with its music and splendor and story. It is the biggest annual show on earth. And it is made in Canada.

By Gregory Clark, October 3, 1925.

War Cries, Battles and Other Disturbances at University of Toronto Now Regulated By Students’ Council – Ruffianism Abolished by Democratic Rule – Varsity Made Safe for Male Shingle and Marcelle

A terrible thing happened up on the campus of the University of Toronto the other day.

A student yelled “Yah!”

Right out loud.

It was a most disgusting exhibition. He was rough-looking sort of person. Large, bony, with big thick shoulders and thick legs.

The campus was crowded with students at the time, passing to and fro respectably, to their lectures. They were models of deportment. Most of them had the latest Oxford bags¹ on, and nearly a hundred per cent. of them were wearing their hair long and slick², in the very best manner. Contrasted with them stood this thick person of whom he are about to speak.

We will call him Buck.

Buck walked, perfectly composed, half-way across the campus. He was wearing a nondescript sort of blue suit the trousers of which clearly showed the shape of his legs. His cap disclosed the fact that his hair was cut short and bristly. On his face was a look of puzzlement.

Then Buck suddenly stopped in his track. Glared about him at the throng.

Then he reared up on his toes, threw his arms high in the air, and in a hoarse, deep, brutal voice yelled:

“Yah!”

Of course, after the students had picked themselves up off the ground, there was a momentary outbreak of protest and just indignation. But five members of the Students’ Administrative five members of the Students’ Administrative Council who were amongst those affected by this terrible breach of the peace were first to collect their senses and remind the throng of students of the amenities.

“Steady, fellow students!” cried out one of these officers. “Stand fast! Remember the constitution!”

And all the students quieted their voices and brushed off their Oxford bags in silence.

The officials of the Students’ Administrative Council gathered in a body near Buck, where he stood all alone amidst the throng, and then they approached him.

“Do you realize,” said the spokesman, standing forth a safe distance from Buck, they fearing for his sanity. “Do you realize that you are guilty of a grave offense against the laws, not to mention the honor and dignity of this great university of which we assume you are an undergraduate?”

Buck opened his large mouth, full of big, strong teeth, but then closed it without emitting another of those fearful yells.

“Presuming you to be a freshman and unacquainted with the regulations and interior administration of this great university, we ask you, will you come, without the use of force, to be instructed in the laws of this institution?”

“What if I don’t?” answered Buck in a loud voice.

“Then,” said the spokesman in a gentle and sweet voice of warning, “we will be obliged to call a policeman.”

Wild Buck Swiftly Tamed

So they led Buck, at a safe distance, all the throng following wonder and dismay, to the University College, where on the walls appeared this notice:

“Students who take part in disturbances or offensive contests unauthorized by the Students Council will be liable to a heavy fine not exceeding $50.00³ each.

“R. Falconer, President.”

Buck read the above, removed his cap and reverently scratched his hard, bristly head.

Several dozens of the students were crowding around the councillors, crying out that their Oxford bags had been damaged by falling down when this frightful yell stunned them. “Compensation,” they kept crying. “Recompense for damages!” And one poor fellow showed how the yell had caused him to lose the $12 marcelle wave⁴ in his hair that he had got only last week.

But the councillors spoke to the mob of angry students and pleaded for Buck that he did not know the law. That was really, no excuse, of course. But still, there you are. Even in a self-governing country, there are those who escape the law.

Nothing like this has been heard of for several years. It is sincerely hoped that no further Bucks will appear amongst the student body of this great institution of learning. Buck has not been seen since the episode, and it is generally thought that he has left the university for some other, where his extraordinary qualities will not get him into trouble.

The incident demonstrates the most interesting fact about the University of Toronto. It is the most civilized university in the world. All the excesses that used to be linked with college students have been abolished. That roughness and intolerance that once upon a time shamed the fair name of learning has been dissipated. How? By the winning of self-government by the students.

While Sir Robert Falconer signs the warnings that are plenteously distributed all over the university buildings, the students themselves solemnly elect the Students’ Administrative Council, a body representing all colleges in the distinguished galaxy of colleges, and this council disciplines the students.

It shows the power of self-government to quell savage tribes. As you can see from the notice signed by Sir Robert, disturbances and offensive contests may still be held, but “with the authorization of the Students’ Council only.” You may apply to the council to hold an offensive contest. You may or may not get it, as the grave deliberations of the council may decree. In the old days of benevolent despotism, when the president ruled the roost, there were all kinds of terrible excesses. The world was certainly not safe for the cake-eater as it is to-day on ‘Varsity⁵ grounds. The students’ council has made the male shingle and the marcelle wave perfectly safe.

Old Relic of Barbarous Days

The last, dying gesture of old college rascaldom occurred four years ago, when a few returned soldiers, who had not had time to complete their university courses owing to an out break of ruffianism in which they felt impelled to take part, returned to their alma mamma to finish their education.

A relic of past barbarous days is an old ramshackle one-story wooden building hidden in behind New Trinity and south of the athletic stadium. This is called the old temporary gym. It is used for storage purposes and for holding. such “disturbances and offensive contests” as the students’ council may agree to on application and after due deliberation.

The sophomores of one of the faculties – we will spare their blushes by refraining from naming the faculty – got permission, just for old times’ sake, to hold an initiation of freshmen in this old building. Permission, sad to relate, was granted.

The freshmen of that year were invited to attend and be initiated.

Now these freshmen, amongst whom were a lot of rough, demobilized soldiers, had no idea of the great reform which had been effected in ‘Varsity. They thought an initiation was an initiation.

So the sophomores locked and barred themselves in the old Rough House, as the ramshackle building is called, and invited the freshmen to come in.

The freshmen attempted a frontal attack. Then some old soldier devised a gas attack. They made up some ammonia solution, climbed to the roof of the building and poured it through the holes in the roof.

They nearly killed the sophomores. A tragedy was narrowly averted. But the freshmen, so dim is the primitive mind, deemed it a victory. They gained entry into the Rough House, and all the sophomores went home to bed.

This incident, of course, is never referred to in polite academic circles. It is blamed on the war.

Three years ago the dental sophs took the freshmen and removed all their boots and threw them out an upper story window into College street.

The students’ council at once took action on this dastardly outbreak of hoodlumism, and fined every soph. the sum of $2.

Two years ago the medical faculty held a little celebration and then formed up and went on an entirely unauthorized parade down Yonge street. They raided the Italian fruit stores along the way and threw vegetables all about.

The students’ council at once called an emergency session and called the whole faculty before them. After a long and grave study of the crime, they fined the medical students who went in the parade three hundred dollars, collectively.

How do they collect the fines, you ask?

The students’ council does not permit a student to write his exams until he has paid the fine. It is quite simple.

When you consider the precedent set by the past, it is a wonderful thing the students have done in discipline by self-government. When you count up the suits of clothing destroyed even within the past fifteen years, it would fill the old Rough House.

Historic Cases of Ruffianism

 Here are certain historic cases.

The Model School Fence for example. Around the Model School on Gerrard street ran a drunken wooden fence that was unpainted, awry, staggered. For years the public and press cried out against it. Then one Hallowe’en, the students went down and held a bonfire. That was all.

The late Dr. Beattle Nesbitt was connected with an outrage that is remembered, even unto this day. A cow weighing fourteen hundred pounds, was somehow carried up the narrow stairway of the Old Grey Tower, and there left to moo and wail a greeting to the president the next morning. How they got it up was a mystery. For it took a gang of twenty workmen with block and tackle to get it down. It is the only time in the history of the place that a cow has ever been in the Old Grey Tower.

The picket fence around the athletic grounds, where the stadium now is, was burned year after year on Hallowe’en. It was one’ of the normal expenses of higher education, the renewing of that fence.

Theatre night used to be a night when everybody in Toronto used to try and get tickets to the show. The students’ atrocities in the theatre on these occasions used to be the talk of the town. Extraordinary sorts of confetti rained down from the gods. Strange musics afflicted the air.

But one night, the students poured flour down out of the gods. It was about this time Toronto began to feel that after all, there is nothing greater than property. The show chosen by the students for their theatre night was “The Middie Man” with E. S. Willard. When the riot and confusion was at its height, Mr. Willard rang down the curtain and came to the front.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said he, “I have come a long way to make this my humble offering of the drama. When I learned that the students had chosen to attend my poor performance as their annual theatre night, I was greatly flattered. But it seems I have been guilty of misunderstanding. It appears that the students have come with the intention of presenting the entertainment, not I. I have rung down the curtain to allow these gentlemen to file out of the theatre, and as they pass the box office, each will receive his money back.”

Dead silence for a moment. Then a burst of tumultuous applause – from the gods. Mr. Willard had won. The students were perfectly quiet for the remainder of the show.

Theatre night now – if they still have theatre nights – they do not form up on the campus and march in a body. The students go individually, with their girls.

Students didn’t have girls in other days, They couldn’t be afforded.

There was at one time a chiropodist on College street whose sign was a huge human foot, gilded. A small select society was formed at the university which for the purpose of the moment called itself Order of the Boot. The large gilt foot disappeared never to be seen again of mortal eye. It decorated a room in a residence.

Signs are safe to-day. It was only 1910 that no student felt he was a student until sundry street car signs, “keep out,” “office of the president,’ and similar notices graced their studies. Recently, a stop and go signal, complete taken by students. The police sent word they wanted it back. They got it back.

Initiation Now Means Less

The Literary Society for long years annually elected its moral suasion committee from the largest and heftiest members of each party. At the Lit elections, these two moral suasion committees met to settle their differences by moral strength alone. Their fights were epics. Hoses usually played a large part. It was about the time that self government was imposed on the student body that the Literary Society voted to do away with the moral suasion committees as not being in keeping with the dignity of the society. Now they have got the dignity, at least.

Serenading the ladies residences, St. Margaret’s College and other girls schools within reach of the campus used to be the gallant way in which incognito gentlemen used to pay their respects to the girls. This had the advantage of being collegiate. To-day, the student in his wide pants and oiled hair takes his lady to a dance pavilion. Yelling Adeline under school windows however, was cheaper. A college education to-day is not so rough but more expensive than it used to be.

No Man’s Land is the more modern name for that bit of road that lies between the east door of the Engineering Building and the south door of the Medical Building. Across, this space of road, hundreds of fierce battles have been fought. For some reason, probably propinquity, engineers and doctors seem to hate each other. Between lectures, groups of Meds and Engineers would gather at their respective doors. Taunts would be hurled. Then insults. Depending on the weather and the barometric pressure, these rival groups would or would not go any further than taunts. When they did, woe betide the poor Arts men who might be in the neighborhood. Being known to neither side, both sides regarded them as enemies, in the fierce hand-to-hand that would follow. The writer had the distinction of having a thumb-full of shoe blacking smeared into his right eye by the eminent school battler. Bull Ritchie who weighed, dry, nigh unto three hundred pounds. And the writer started out merely as spectator, Arts.

When these battles started, all yearly differences and antipathies were wiped out. For example, it might be School Freshmen and Meds third year that were engaged. But no sooner did battle engage than the roars and groans of the battlers would be heard in lecture rooms and corridors within the separate strongholds. And out would rush school men of all years to the side of their detested Freshmen, and Meds Freshmen would with swelling pride come to the defense of their conceited Third Years men.

And the late Dean Galbraith himself would have to come out, armed with a hose, perhaps, to put an end to the little difference.

A Freshman used to be an object of intense physical repugnance to his elders. The only parallel is the feeling in a small boy’s soul when a new baby arrives in the house. No Freshman could be allowed to join the sacred circle without having a few mushings to indicate to him his physical deficiencies. For a university is a place of the intellect.

All this is gone. The parable of our good simple friend Buck and his indiscreet “Yah” illustrates what self government can do to a wild people.

If Buck yells “Yah” a second time, he is likely to be fined fifty dollars by a grave assembly of his peers.

Initiation, too, has fallen upon materialistic times. Initiation means initiation fees.

The dollar has tamed Varsity.

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Editor’s Notes:

1. Oxford Bags were very baggy trousers popular with male students at the time. ↩︎
2. Slicked back hair using pomade or other oils was also the style at the time. ↩︎
3. $50 in 1925 would be $915 in 2025. ↩︎
4. On the subject of hair, Marcel waves were more common on women, but some men had them too. ↩︎
5. Varsity was a generic term used at the time for the University of Toronto. ↩︎