Looking Through the Catalogue:

I remember older teachers reminiscing about the Eaton’s catalogue when I was in public school; recalling the fact that their mother’s ordered furniture for their home from it. They remembered the catalogue as a high point, often when their families could buy things from it, it meant that their families, mostly immigrant backgrounds, had made it financially. While going through the catalogue I felt old, because I could remember shopping at the Eaton’s store at Yorkdale mall with my mother. If I mentioned this to anyone at least five years younger than me, they would probably not remember shopping there. When thinking about Eaton’s I was surprised how well I remembered them going bankrupted, then re-opening some stores (including the Yorkdale one), then going bankrupted for a final time. I went to check Wikipedia to see when this all happened. Their final bankruptcy was in 1999, when I was ten. I strongly recall the basement of their store in Yorkdale having a liquidation sale during their first bankruptcy. And that they chose a sparkly indigo blue for their new store near the escalators. On a side note, I really don’t like escalators, because when I was around seven years old I remember watching one of those 20/20 or Dateline specials about dangers. And they showed this kid who lost a chunk of his foot from it being caught in the escalator; I always stare at my feet when on an escalator due to this show. That’s why the sparkly blue is in my memory, because it had to be something eye catching for me not to look at my feet to make sure they did not get sucked into the side of the escalator. 

Though it may seem like I am all nostalgic about Eaton's closing, I don’t really care. It is a tad sadder that the oldest Canadian company (HBC) was sold to Americans. But, since Lord & Taylor bought it, the shopping there has just become so much better.  While I am on this topic of lost Canadian business to America; I think the selling-off of part of CN Rail to Americans probably made John A. MacDonald role over in his grave. Since he temporarily lost being PM for almost making the railway go into the States, and now its own by Americans. Though I think a train from Union Station to Grand Station would make it up to me.

So I should probably stop my mind from digressing, though thats just how it works. I start thinking about one thing off topic, then it snow-balls and I am off googleing random-ass things.

My most predominate memory of the Eaton’s catalogue is from Roch Carrier’s book “The Hockey Sweater”. Which in grade two I remember reading in three different languages (I no longer can do this). The Quebec boy sadly gets a Toronto Maple Leaf’s sweater from the Eaton’s catalogue, instead of the coveted Maurice ‘The Rocket’ Richard jersey.  

The cover of the first Eaton's catalogue, published in 1884.

Now back to the assignment. After doing all these readings about how to preserve, what has been preserved, problems with preservation, ect. I am still impressed by how much is on the internet. The magnitude of it all is far beyond my comprehension. I really like to be able to see and touch things to truly understand and comprehend. Holding a primary document is way cooler than a digital copy, especially when you have to hold it close and squint at it in your attempt to read it, hard to do with a computer that is heavy. Yet, I am all for these out of copyright books to be available for free on-line. Obviously, the benefits of the internet do not reach everyone in the world equally, since globalization as a process hopes from spot to spot, instead of spreading resources evenly.  But let’s not be grim on the eve of another semester finishing, let’s instead be happy that at least some are benefiting; problems with equal distribution of the internet can be a topic for next semester.

One popular undergrad course at this university is Children’s Literature, it’s offered at main and all three affiliates; my sister took it last year. For the first semester of the course you read classical children’s literature. I happened to notice as I looked through the catalogue that many of the children’s books they were advertising were on my sister’s reading list, and are currently now on our shelf of past university books. I went through the books on our shelf and noticed that most were ten dollars, and that she had to read around one book a week. So in a semester she spent over a hundred dollars on these books, not including textbooks for the course. So I went to Project Gutenberg and looked up the famous (but is way too often referenced by people who think they are being profound by making illusions to it) Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”. It is available here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12 . I mentioned this to her, that she could have read all these books on-line for free, but she replied that she prefers to read from a printed book, which I really can’t blame her. But it’s still nice to know you have the option.

One aspect that I found really interesting about this assignment was seeing what was popular for boys and girls in 1913-14. As a child, and still now, I enjoy reading what is often the duel year publication of novels about a favourite protagonist, that usually come out before Christmas, and in early spring. Often these types of books that become mass produced by an author by the fifth one are really popular in the time that they are written in, but become forgotten as new popular series get written. I was surprised to see such long lists of books about protagonists I had never heard of, so I decided to look them up. I was pleasantly surprised that the whole catalogue for these protagonists is available free on-line.  For girls I looked up the “Elsie Dinsmore” series by Martha Finley. The first book of the series is available here: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6440/pg6440.html.  But the rest are also on Project Gutenberg.

 For boys books they tended to be categorized by the author’s name, and contain lots of colonial imperial imagery (they would definitely not be available in public schools anymore).  One author is G.A. Henry, I provided his book “The Young Colonists” here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32934/32934-h/32934-h.htm. Another popular boy’s author was Horatio Alger, which are available here:

http://www.readbookonline.net/books/Alger/230/. Alger’s books were 19 cents in the Eaton’s catalogue.  Next, out of curiosity, I decided to look through the catalogue of the Toronto Public Library, to see what the likelihood was of me discovering any Alger books as a child. Well it makes sense that I never heard of him. His books are in the catalogue but they are only at the Toronto Reference Library, and they are in the back where you have to get a librarian to bring them out for you. So you can’t take any Alger books home, and you have to know that you want to see his books, you won’t merely discover them by shelf browsing (which is a shame because I find it a great way to discover new books). I think the true beauty in the Gutenberg Project is evident here, for books that are no longer easily available.

In the catalogue I liked the title “High Class Fiction” which cost 50 cents. But I did not know how much that was equal to today.  I discovered that The Bank of Canada has an inflation calculator, which is cool, so you should check it out: http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/. The calculator stated that 50 cents in 1914 (which is the furthest back it goes) is $9.90 in 2011. From this list, I decided to seek out an on-line copy of “Torchy” by Sewell Ford, it’s available here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20626/20626-h/20626-h.htm. After finding it on the Gutenberg Project website I went to the Indigo/Chapter’s website and was surprised to find that they only had a pre-1923 historical reproduction of this book, and the website kind of hinted that it might have errors. The book is currently out of print, though they claim that they are trying to bring it back into print again. The book is quite expensive for a novel at $34.50. Another book under the High Class Fiction section in the catalogue was “Sowing Seeds of Danny” by Nellie McClung. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that she was an author, I had not known that prior; it’s available here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4376/4376-h/4376-h.htm.

I began to worry that I was not really challenging the system. I figured that novels had a high chance of being preserved since people become so attached to them. So I decided to try and seek out instruction books. I was surprised at first by the easiness it was to find free on-line copies of these books too. I first searched for Mrs. Emma F. Angell Drake’s “What a Young Wife Ought to Know”: http://www.archive.org/stream/whatayoungwifeo04drakgoog#page/n9/mode/2up. But then I realized that was not really a challenge, some feminist historian will definitely want a copy of that someday. So I decided to search for a book about building things, something obscure that they most likely have found a better way of making it by now. I saw in the catalogue Frederick Thomas Hodgson’s “Light and Heavy Timber Framing Made Easy”: http://www.archive.org/stream/lightheavytimber00hodguoft#page/n1/mode/2up. But I found that quite fast too.

Now I was on a quest to stump the internet. I think I may have found it with Frank H. Atkinson’s “The Art of Sign Painting”. The problem with trying to find this book was that many people have referenced it. Also, the fact that Atkinson made an updated copy with a similar title a few years later hinders its search ability. I was only available to find a hard copy that could be shipped to my house, but it was kind of a wonky site.

I liked that this assignment connected the past with the present. Flipping through catalogues is a very common human activity that is shared throughout the world by people of all ages. So far as a history student I have been a bit limited to the historical items made available to me. I enjoyed this assignment because it never occurred to me to look at an Eaton’s catalogue as a means of understanding Canadian society for a particular time. I would have really enjoyed seeing order forms: what was the most popular item sold, who bought what where, and even what got returned the most because of poor manufacturing?