My Family – Larry Clark — Hilda Strike — Olympic Medallist

Linda,

I saw a reference to a Gary Strike in one of your posts and recalled that Beth’s family were neighbours of Hilda Strike in 1946/47 when they moved into a new “wartime” house in Montreal. At the time, so new that they had no water or hydro for several days-they were the 1st to occupy the house. I don’t know of any relationship with Gary Strike but I thought you might be interested in Hilda’s career. Following is a short history-typed by someone in the family (Beth’s)-the info may have come from Hilda. I googled her and came up with a couple of other versions. Beth remembers her very well but unfortunately we lost contact in the 60s sometime after we last visited them in the Ottawa area. 

Larry Clark

AC-Athletic Club

Hilda H. Strike (later Sisson)-She was a Canadian track athlete and Olympic medalist. She was born in Montreal and died in Ottawa. Competing in the 1932 Summer Olympics, she won a silver medal in the 4×100 metre relay and a silver medal in the 100 metre losing to Stanisawa Walasiewicz. In 1972, she was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame. When Walasiewicz was shot to death in 1980 during a store robbery, it was discovered that Walasiewicz was a hermaphrodite. Many subsequently argued that the gold medal should be given to Strike. At the 1934 Empire Games she won the silver medal in the 100 yards event. She also was a member of the Canadian relay team which won the silver medal in the 110-220-110 yards relay competition. She died in 1989.

Photo- Larry Clark

Photo Larry Clark

Larry Clark

Hilda Strike, (born at Montréal, 1 Sep 1910; died at Ottawa, 9 Mar 1989). Hilda Strike was an athlete in the 1932 SUMMER OLYMPICS in TRACK AND FIELD.

In 1964, she was inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame, and eight years later into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.

Hilda Strike’s achievements resurfaced in the early 1980s at the death of her major rival Stella Walsh. Since Walsh died following a burglary in Cleveland, Ohio, an autopsy was performed, and the American proved to be a hermaphrodite, with both masculine and feminine characteristics.

A few years later, in 1984, Hilda Strike claimed the medal won by Walsh in the 1932 Olympic Games, but unfortunately, since sex verification tests were not carried until the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, her request went unheeded.

Hilda Strike, the fastest woman in the world in 1932, died on 9 Mar 1989 in Ottawa.

Montreal-born Strike made history at the 1932 Olympic Games when she lost a gold medal to a hermaphrodite.

It looked like Strike had the 100-metre final within her grasp until Poland’s Stella Walsh made a late surge and edged Strike at the finish line. Although the judges clocked both runners at 11.9 seconds, they decided to award Walsh the gold.

Nearly 50 years later, on Dec. 4, 1980, Walsh, who had lived most of her life in the U.S. even though she competed for her native Poland, was shot and killed during an armed robbery at a Cleveland store. She had gone to the store to buy ribbons for a visiting Polish women’s basketball team. She was 69.

An autopsy revealed that Walsh, born Stanis{lstrok}awa Walasiewicz, was a hermaphrodite, having both female and male sexual organs, including a small penis. While gender tests weren’t instituted at the Olympics until 1968, Walsh, who had set more than 18 world records in sprinting and jumping events, probably would have been disqualified from competing as a woman had officials known of her status during the 1930s, says Olympics historian David Wallechinsky. “There really weren’t any rules dealing with that at the time. It was not something they anticipated in 1932.”

Canada’s Hilda Strike (centre) celebrates her silver medal win in the women’s 100m event at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. (CP Photo/COA)

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Larry Clark Memories : Billings Bridge, Willow Trees and the Orange Lodge

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Glory Days in Carleton Place– Larry Clark

Larry Clark — Your Veribest Agent

A Personal Story — Caught in the Ice– Rocky Point- Larry Clark

Women of the Red Cross — Mary Slade –Larry Clark

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The Eaton’s Sewing Girls

Image from Eaton’s – Golden Jubilee (1869-1919) (T. Eaton Co Ltd, 1919).

 On April 30th of 1897 the Almonte Gazette had this small article on their front page:

Eight sewing girls in the mantle department of T. Eaton & Co’s, factory, went on strike because no more than 12 cents was allowed them for making a jacket. They said they could not live on that amount, and who will doubt them ? And yet there are women in Almonte and elsewhere who patronize such a system.

Strikes like this were common in the needle trades in the early twentieth century as men and women sought better wages and working conditions. But, despite some gains, the early labour movement had little sustained success in improving the lot of workers. In the garment industry, conditions remained as deplorable on the eve of the Second World War as when a young and social-minded William Lyon Mackenzie King first investigated sweatshops in 1897.

It wasn’t until ten o’clock in the morning on February 25, 1931, more than five hundred women of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) put down their work, halted their machines, and walked out of garment shops across Toronto.
All my life I will never forget this strike. It was so terrible that the police protected the shops, and they treated the workers like garbage. It was so horrible. I tell you, I remember how they came so close by with the horses. The picketers they treated terrible. They protected the strikebreakers. So you know even [if] you didn’t believe in unions … you believed in unions when you saw what was [happening].

 

Image from Eaton’s – Golden Jubilee (1869-1919) (T. Eaton Co Ltd., 1919).

The citizens of Toronto interpreted the workers’ wage demands as greedy in the midst of the Depression. After two-and-a-half months, the strike ultimately ended in failure, abandoned at a mass rally attended by a thousand supporters on May 5.

Wages were low and employees were not even allowed to speak to each other while working. Starch filled the air, one worker reporter, making your “throat sore and your nose stuffed up and you felt a wreck.” But if a window was opened, there were serious cold drafts.

Worse than the physical conditions were the “brutal task-masters” who swore at—or sexually harassed—the women, and discriminated in the distribution of piece-work to reward their favourites, or those who did them favours, with additional pay. Slower workers, or those who showed up even five minutes late, might be sent home without pay for indefinite periods. The supervisors used stop-watches and implemented speed-ups when orders increased.

“I would go home nights and I would be so tired I could not eat my supper,” said one woman describing the impact of the speed-ups. “And I would be so tired and stiff going home on the streetcar, I would just dread getting a seat, because if I sat down, I could not get up again, my knees and my legs would be so stiff.”

Files from the Historicist: Sewing the Seeds of Discontent

 

 

In 1884 the Eaton’s catalogue had 32 pages. Twelve years later it had grown to 400 pages.

The Eaton’s catalogue was such a valued part of Canadian life that it had a number of nicknames including the “Homesteaders Bible,” the “Family Bible” and the “Wish Book.”

The Eaton’s catalogue seemed to offer all things to Canadians. In the late 1800s an expectant mother could even order supplies for giving birth at home. In the early 1900s the

 

Eaton’s catalogue offered prefabricated barns and schoolhouses along with various sizes of prefabricated houses

The Eaton’s Christmas catalogue was first published in 1897. The store’s French catalogue first appeared in 1928.

Canadians found practical uses for old Eaton’s catalogues. They were used as shin pads in hockey games; boiled down for their dye to colour Easter eggs; used as readers in classrooms; and rolled up tight and put near the stove to be used as foot warmers in bed.

Come and visit the Lanark County Genealogical Society Facebook page– what’s there? Cool old photos–and lots of things interesting to read.

Information where you can buy all Linda Seccaspina’s books-You can also read Linda in Hometown News and now in The Townships Sun

 

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I Found My Childhood in the Eaton’s Christmas Catalogue

Memories of Eaton’s