The Ontario School Attendance Act which required students to deliver a note from a parent or guardian when absent from school was tested in a Cornwall court room on March 15, 1930. The case was King vs H. Bowles.
It was believed to be the first time the note requirement in the act was tested in an Ontario court.
The parent, Bowles, refused to provide a note to the school after his son, a Grade 4 student, was absent from class for several days. Without a note, the son was suspended. The father was charged by Cornwall Township school attendance officer S. G. Lawson with something called “non-performance of duty as a parent” and the case wound up in Cornwall magistrate’s court before Mag. J. C. Milligan who ruled that a teacher had the right to ask for an excuse note from a parent and the school had the right to suspend the student if the note was not produced. The father was fined $5. The son, with note in hand, returned to school.
MARCH 1930 – They were hanging from the rafters, literally, for an attendance-record hockey game that saw Cornwall Colts drop a 4-3 decision to Brockville Magedomas in a Citizen Shield intermediate playoff game at the Victoria Arena. The crowd of 2,260 – about 500 over capacity – was the largest to see a hockey game at the arena. The weekly Standard reported that dozens of fans climbed on the roof rafters while others were standing on crates, brought in from a nearby grocery store, in the third and fourth rows of standing room…Two women were arrested when police raided a home on Cartier Avenue. One was charged with permitting excessive intoxication in a residence, while the other was arrested for vagrancy (no means of support)…The need to purchase shares in Cornwall Golf and Country Club was replaced with a $50 initiation fee. Membership was 224, an increase of 70 from the previous year….Ferdinand Gatien, 14, was presented with a Royal Canadian Humane Society gold medal for bravery. During the summer he saved a young teen from drowning in Cornwall Canal…A city man was arrested by RCMP when he got off the train in Alexandria and charged with illegal possession of alcohol. Police found five gallons of home-made brew stuffed in his large suitcase. He pleaded guilty and received four months in the slammer…Parents in the Laflecheville area – Fifth West to Second and Cumberland to Wood’s Lane (Brookdale) – were calling for a Roman Catholic French elementary school to be built. The number of French Canadians living in the area was 300.
PART TWO A and P opened its second store in the city at 155 Pitt St. The other store was on Montreal Road. The Pitt Street store moved to what is now Farm Boy in the 1960s…John Entwistle Construction was given a permit to build a service station (ESSO) on Second Street West next to the Capitol Theatre…Council voted to extend garbage collection to all parts of the city…A log house one mile east of St. Andrews, occupied by Alex John Stewart, was destroyed by fire…The annual county jail report showed that it cost 17 cents a day to feed an inmate, one of the lowest rates in the provincial jail system…Nabbed with a carton of smokes smuggled into Canada from the U.S., a Waddington, N.Y. man was fined $50…Council voted to pave a gravel section of Marlborough Street from Second to Fourth streets. Other unpaved streets scheduled for pavement were Third from Gloucester to Marlborough and Water from York to Cumberland…J. R. Duquette planned to build a 20-room lodge along Highway 2 in Summerstown. He also owned the King George Hotel in Cornwall and the Stanley Island resort hotel.
HERE AND THERE With Vince Foy‘s retirement, Cornwall Police Service has started the deputy chief hiring process, but the force doesn’t have to look far for his replacement. Insp. Chad Maxwell, given the acting DC role, is more than qualified. That would kick-start a shift in the ranks which would open the door for the force’s second female inspector, Staff Sgt. Tracey Pilon…Smart money, as they say, is on a spring federal election. Unlike its provincial wing, the federal Stormont-Dundas-Glengarry Liberal Association will not have to parachute an unknown, un-electable candidate into the riding. Sarah Good, the gung-ho first-year city councillor has claimed the right to go up against incumbent Eric Duncan. Good luck…It seems reasonable to think that with all the chaos and division inflicted in the first few weeks that the Trump presidency can’t last four years.
TRIVIA Roy Rogers was his Hollywood name. What was his real name? 1) Marion Hart, 2) John Franklin, 3) Leonard Slye, 4) Howard Costello, 5) Roy Smith.
TRIVIA ANSWER World champion hammer thrower Roderick “Big Rory” McLennan quit the sport in 1877 when a young female spectator was killed by the iron ball he had thrown. The tragedy happened at Mattice Park in what was then part of East Cornwall in Cornwall Township.
QUOTED “God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous, inordinate wealth, while others live in abject, deadening poverty.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
