New Year’s Day in Ontario and the world – a timeline of great (and not so great) accomplishments

With New Year’s Day nearly upon us it is best to remember the words of poet and writer Dorothy Parker to her friend Robert Benchley: “You come right over here and explain why they are having another year!”

Doomsayers aside, we are going to go ahead with the first day of 2025 anyway, a day traditionally set aside for reflection and promises to pull up our bootstraps and do better, but also a time of great (and not so great) accomplishment.

Icelandic explorer Bjarni Herjolfsson

• 985 A.D – Bjarni Herjolfsson sighted Newfoundland – the first European to visit North America – and if you ask Canada’s Indigenous population, the place hasn’t been the same since.
• 1773 – the world is introduced to ‘Amazing Grace,’ a hymn about a former slaver who found salvation and a mainstay at funerals around the country, at a service in Olney, England.
• 1775 – American forces laying siege to Quebec fail in their invasion attempt.
• 1818 – Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ was published anonymously.
• 1862 – First income tax in the U.S., with a whopping five per cent rate for those earning more than $10,000
• 1885 – Worldwide time zones, introduced by Canadian Sir Sandford Fleming, is adopted by 25 countries.
• 1908 – First stroke-of-midnight ball drop at Times Square in New York
• 1922 – British Columbia drivers (of cars and horse-drawn buggies) switched from the left side of the road to the right. Vancouver was the last North American city to do so.
• 1924 – Status Indian World War 1 veterans granted right to vote in Canada. It was 1931 before Japanese-Canadian veterans from that war were awarded the same voting rights and 1947 before Chinese Canadians were given voting privileges.
• 1938 – Ducks Unlimited Canada was founded.
• 1947 – First ‘official’ Canadian citizen sworn in.
• 1970 – Voting age lowered to 18.
• 1989 – Free Trade Act with the United States goes into effect.
• 1991 – The GST is introduced to zero fanfare.
• 1999 – Euro introduced across the pond.
• 2000 – The world ends as Y2K drops airplanes from the sky. Not. Also, Pickering becomes a city.