07 October 2017

LAC Blog: Highlights from the Sir Sandford Fleming Diaries

Renowned Scots-Canadian Sir Sandford Fleming kept extensive diaries from 1843 to 1912. LAC archivist Andrew Elliott's new blog post provides a perspective on  Fleming's life and times based on his diaries, journals of trips and miscellaneous journals and notebooks in the Sir Sandford Fleming fonds.

Elliott comments that the hundreds of mundane details Fleming recorded also reveal something of the world he inhabited. As I prepare for a talk on Ottawa Weather History I was interested to see Fleming's record for 1 July 1867 in Halifax “Up at 5 o’clock, very cloudy and rainy…putting up flags etc. Clouds cleared away. Halifax very gay, a perfect sea of flags. Beautiful day."
In later life Fleming kept a house in Ottawa as well as living in Halifax so perhaps there are also remarks on Ottawa weather.
Fleming is one of the notable people buried at Beechwood Cemetery.

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1 comment:

  1. Bryan Douglas Cook07 October, 2017 10:32

    Unfortunately I believe Fleming's grave plaque at Beechwood carries an historical error....he was responsible for the Intercolonial Railway linking the Province of Canada to the Maritimes; and neither the Intercontinental Railway and not the Canadian Transcontinental Railway. I have not looked recently; they may have changed it by now. Bryan

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