At
a dinner party the other night, a story was told by one of the guests, John Farnham,
about his father, who lived in News Brunswick when the laws were changed to make
driving on the right side of the road the rule. John told the story his father
used to relate about some of the interesting side-effects of the new
regulations.
I
did not know, or at least did not remember that, in many parts of Canada,
vehicles use to travel on the left side of the road, the same as in almost all
of the British Commonwealth countries. On December 1, 1922, New Brunswick
changed the rules regarding which side of the road one should drive on,
presumably to conform to what was the case in the United States right next door.
In Nova Scotia, the law came into effect on April 15, 1923. British Columbia
had made the switch on January 1, 1922. Prince Edward Island changed on May 1,
1924 and Newfoundland on January 2, 1947. Ontario and Quebec drivers were
already following the practice, having apparently been doing so since before
the takeover of the country from the French. The central provinces of Alberta,
Saskatchewan and Manitoba had also been driving down the right side for many
decades.
 |
Page one of Amherst
Daily News for Saturday, April 14, 1923 – reporting on the changes to road
rules about driving on the right side (copied October 20, 2014 from the website,
History of Automobiles)
Some
newspapers had a field day with the new idea and the potential problems that could
come along with the change as described on the website, History of Automobiles, part of Nova Scotia’s Electric Gleaner website.
It
seems there was a lot of cross-border activity between New Brunswick and Maine.
Many local businesspeople, like milkmen, used to travel back and forth selling
their wares and services. To do so meant a trip across a bridge spanning the
Saint Croix River. This was, of course, in the days when there were still a great
many horse-drawn wagons in use in both countries. Before the changes, vehicle and
wagon operators were required to change over to the left lanes in the middle of
the bridge to conform to New Brunswick law. After the change, they could
continue on their way in the right-hand lanes. John’s father told him that the
horses were well-trained and very habitual in their trips into Canada. On
reaching the middle of the bridge after the changeover, they automatically
moved to the left as they had always done, causing some mayhem with motorists
and others travelling south. It was some time before all of the teams had been
re-trained to stay to the right for the entire trip.
The
same problem apparently occurred between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in the
four and a half months they had different driving laws. There were other
considerations as well resulting from the changes. The History of Automobiles
website reports that “Nova Scotia
Tramways & Power Company Limited, which owned and operated the electric
streetcar system in Halifax, sued the provincial government to recover the cost
of changing the doors on all streetcars to the other side, and the cost of
changes in track layout. In Lunenburg
County, 1923 is still known as The Year of Free Beef; the price of beef dropped
precipitously because oxen which had been trained to keep to the left could not
be retrained — oxen are notoriously slow-witted — and many teamsters had to
replace their oxen with new ones trained to keep to the right; the displaced
oxen were sent to slaughter.”
Wayne
Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program,
handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has
published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past
Editor of Chinook, the quarterly
journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides
genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.
