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Research Prompt #2 - Domestic Technology

Hannah Spaulding, University of Lincoln

The home is a technological space. Although today, devices like the refrigerator, stove, TV set, and even electricity itself seem almost banal, an everyday part of domestic living, they were once novelties. Their utility and place in the home was far from apparent; it was something that had to be explained to the public. When a new technology appeared on the consumer market, companies, advertising agencies, and sometimes even government officials often worked to encourage its domestic installation—through advertisements, public demonstrations, press releases, and sometimes, through cinema.

The films included in this Research Prompt all present different kinds of domestic technologies that serve a central role in the home. Certain films explicitly advocate for the installation of new devices and technical infrastructures in the home. Others merely display new technologies that are part of broader discourses on modernity, nationhood, and domestic life. And still others look at the past, highlighting now outmoded household tools and representing them as an important part of Canadian heritage and tradition.

In many of these films, the display and discussion of domestic technology is not the exclusive nor even the primary purpose of their creation. As such, this research requires an excavational approach. Rather than concentrating on a film’s most explicit or obvious content, researchers must sift through discourses on farming or national innovation and locate those moments in which domestic technologies emerge. Though this can present specific challenges for the researcher, the ways in which these devices appear and the broader discourses and narratives to which they are attached can be illuminating. By looking at educational, sponsored, and industrial films, much can be discovered about discourses, technology, domesticity, history, progress narratives, promotional tactics, pedagogical techniques, and of course cinema in Canada’s twentieth century.

CESIF Films by Title

Artists of the Range

(1940-1952, English, Sound)
Accession Number: 1952.0073  
Sponsor: Moffats
Distributor: Moffats: Advertising Department
Description: Film about the manufacture of electric kitchen range.
Commentary: There is very limited information about this film, however it would presumably be of use to researchers interested in kitchen technology and electric ranges of the 1940s and 1950s.
Bibliography:
Crawley Films, Free Films: Directory of Sources of Free 16mm Sponsored Films in Canada (Ottawa: Crawley Films, May 1952), 11.
CESIF Link: Artists of the Range

At Your Fingertips

(1961, English, French, Colour, Sound, 16mm, 24 mins)
Accession Number: 1961.0017
Sponsor: Canadian Electrical Association
Producers: Crawley Films, Peter Cock
Distributor: Canadian Electrical Association
Holding Institution: Library and Archives Canada (16mm)
Alternate Title: At Your Fingertip
Description: Film depicting the role of electricity in everyday life. It describes how electricity works, where it comes from, and how it gets from the plant to the individual user. The film demonstrates how electricity travels to factories, offices, farms, and homes and argues for the essential contributions it has made to community life and industrial prosperity.
Commentary: Although there is only limited information available about this film, the sequences about electricity’s journey and contribution to the home could be of particular relevance to researchers interested in domestic technology. In addition, the film’s advocacy for the benefits of and industrial growth brought by electricity could carry with it illustrative rhetoric for scholars interested in discourses of industrial and technological progress in Canada.
Bibliography:
“At Your Fingertip,” Alcan 16mm Film Catalogue Addendum (Montreal: Aluminum Company of Canada, Limited: c. 1960), 5.
Crawley Films, Free Films: Directory of Sources of Free 16mm Sponsored Films in Canada (Ottawa: Crawley Films, April 1959), 10.
CESIF Link: At Your Fingertips

Canadian Firsts

(1940, English, French, Black and White, Sound, 35mm, 10 mins)
Accession Number: 1940.0005
Sponsor: Lake of the Woods Milling Co.
Producer: Associated Screen News
Director: John E. R. McDougall
Holding Institution: Library and Archives Canada (35mm, ¾ IN SOF U, Betacam, VHS)
Description: Film depicting agricultural and industrial innovation in Canada. It includes scenes that tie industrial production to everyday Canadian life. The film contains sequences depicting underground nickel mining, the St. Lawrence Seaway, street views of Toronto, a radio unit, a hockey game, planes (Fokker Super Universal ski bush plane and a Fairchild 82), the wheat industry, flour production at a Five Roses mill, water lumbering, fishing, and commercial baking. It also presents two sequences of women cooking on home kitchen ranges.
Commentary: Though much of this film does not focus on domestic technology, the sequences displaying women cooking on their kitchen ranges are notable. It is interesting that in a film predominantly concerned with large scale industry and agriculture includes not one, but two sequences of women cooking on stoves (one on an early electric range and another on a wood range). The incorporation of such sequences suggests the importance of the home in promotional discourses of technological advancement.
Bibliography:
Crawley Films, Free Films: Directory of Sources of Free 16mm Sponsored Films in Canada (Ottawa: Crawley Films, May 1952), 10.
CESIF Link: Canadian Firsts

Canadian Power

(1939, English, 16mm, Colour)
Accession Number: 1939.0013
Sponsor: Canadian Geographical Society : Société canadienne de géographie
Producers: Crawley Films; F.R. ‘Budge’ Crawley; Judith Crawley
Director: F.R. ‘Budge’ Crawley
Holding Institution: Library and Archives Canada (16mm, 3/4 inch, VHS)
Description: Film tracing the history of power in Canada with a focus on Quebec. The film begins in the 17th century, depicting how early immigrants used wooden tools, animal powered machines, and water to simplify agricultural labour. It contains close-ups of gears and wheels, emphasizing early industriousness. The film then shows the advancements of the 19th century as steam power began to be deployed for tanning and wood cutting. Sequences focus on the use of waterpower in activities and industries performed at home. There are shots of power-assisted butter churning, textile production, grain milling, and wood cutting. The film also displays more contemporary systems of hydro power, including the Alcoa Dam, the Chelsea and Farmer Plants, the Chats Falls dam, and the Queeston-Chippewa plant. The film concludes with a sequence of all the industries which today relay on these hydro infrastructures.
Commentary: Although this film is most directly concerned with waterpower, the sequences depicting the application of hydro to home industries provides a compelling site of interrogation. Here we see the new water powered machines which were taken up by home workers to render their labour more efficient. This would be useful not only for researchers looking into the history of domestic machinery but also those interested in rural life and the home as a unit of industrial production. The expansion of water-powered machines at home is presented explicitly as a benefit to industry and economy. Throughout the film, the home appears less as a site of domestic reproduction than domestic production, of which new technologies emerge as central nodes in this labour.
Bibliography:
Peter Morris, Embattled Shadows: A History of Canadian Cinema, 1895-1939 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1978), 272.
CESIF Link: Canadian Power

Electrified Farming

(1951, English, Colour, Sound, 16mm, 25 mins)
Accession Number: 1951.0014
Producer: Canadian General Electric Co.
Holding Institution: Library and Archives Canada
Description: Film presentation of the impact of electricity on the farm. Looking at specific examples, the film demonstrates the power of electrification across all sites of rural life, from the fields to the factory to the kitchen. The film includes sequences demonstrating new electric machines deployed in baling hay, feeding chickens, shelling corn, and pumping water. It compares older farming techniques with the new electric practices, advocating for the economy and efficiency of these new machines. The film also includes a sequence at a country fair, showing the rural community activities and traditions that still persist even with technological change.
Commentary: Although there isn’t too much information available, the sequences depicting the changes brought by electricity to the farm kitchen are particularly pertinent to researchers interested in domestic technology. Like other films focusing on the advent of electricity, this film is less concerned with individual devices than a broader technological shift and its capacity to transform everyday rural life. Moreover, concentrating on electricity on the farm, the film also blurs economic production and household labour. As such, it could be of interest to researchers examining the often-complicated boundaries between domestic space and industrial space on the farm.
Bibliography:
“Business in Motion: Films of Current Interest,” Canadian Business 24 (July 1951): 62.
CESIF Link: Electrified Farming

Family

(1976, English, Sound, Colour, 30 mins)
Accession Number: 1976.0045
Producer: CTV Television Network
Holding Institutions: University of Ottawa (16mm); University of Windsor: (16mm).
Description: A critical interrogation of changes to the family since the 20th century. The film contends that today’s family is too confined and isolated to truly fulfill people’s fundamental emotional needs. It traces the family’s transformation from a large, extended assemblage to a closed and generationally bounded unit. It ties the emergence of the nuclear family to a reaction against the isolation and impersonal nature of industrialism. Living in large, anonymous cities and working in factories and office buildings, alienated individuals became increasingly invested in their immediate families. They imagined the family as the site that would give them all necessary intimacy and see entirely to their emotional wellbeing. The film contends that this placed an unrealistic demand on the nuclear family, as people need more than just their spouse or children to feel fulfilled. In addition, the film includes a sequence on the effects of the widespread and fast paced technological transformation that has structured our lives since industrialism. It argues that such rapid changes produce a disconnect between parents and children, as parents can no longer truly grasp what it is like to be young in the technologically saturated present. Finally, the film concludes by advocating for an embrace of communal living, community building, and reconnecting with extended families as a means of combatting domestic isolation and the emotional dissatisfaction it affords.
Commentary: The sequence on the consequences of rapid technological change to family dynamics will be pertinent to scholars interested in the relationship between technology and domestic life. More particularly, it will be relevant to researchers interested in the discourses of technological change, especially as they relate to family relationships and moral panics. Additionally, the film as a whole may be of interest to individuals studying alternative modes of living and critiques of the nuclear family emerging in the wake of the social and countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
CESIF Link: Family

Far Speaking

(1936, English, Black and White, 35mm, 10 mins)
Accession Number: 1936.0004
Producer: Associated Screen News
Holding Institution: Library and Archives Canada (35mm, VHS, Betacam)
Description: Film documenting the operations and history of the telephone. Film begins with an opening sketch of a young 19th century married couple debating whether the 1877 telephone will ever take off—the husband is enthusiastic, while the wife is skeptical. The film then traces the development of telephone service in Canada, from the first switchboard and exchanges in Hamilton to the growth of long-distance services and the appearance of exchanges throughout Canada and the US. It highlights significant moments in the telephone’s history. Some of these are technological (e.g. the 1901 loading coil) and some are industrial (the 1915 US transcontinental line, the 1921 link to Cuba, and the 1932 Trans Canada Telephone System Line). The film concludes with the same couple as depicted in the film’s opening. Now much older, they ponder the great power of the telephone, as they wait for a call from their daughter in Japan. The wife—misremembering her initial prediction—insists that she had always thought the telephone would be a huge success.
Commentary: This film will be especially relevant to historians of telephony in Canada (and the US). In addition, the opening and closing sequences with the married couple are particularly pertinent to those interested in the gendered dynamics of technological discourse. From the film’s beginning, the husband is framed as the technological expert, explaining the operations of the brand-new telephone to his wife. In contrast, the wife is shown to be comically ignorant, voicing a skepticism about the telephone’s potential the audience knows to be faulty. This dynamic is reinforced in the film’s conclusion, in which, after being presented with the history of the telephone’s success, the wife now denies her original prediction, further underscoring the original joke and impression that women are inadequate technological subjects.
CESIF Link: Far Speaking

Fiberglass RP Bathrooms at Habitat

(1967, English, Colour, Sound, 16mm, 6 mins)
Accession Number: 1967.0029
Sponsor: Fiberglass Canada
Producer: Crawley Films
Director: Sally MacDonald
Distributor: Fiberglass Canada
Holding Institution: Library and Archives Canada (16mm)
Description: Film about the Montreal Expo’s Habitat ’67. Film discusses the housing project’s innovative design, demonstrating the advantages of its approach to apartment living with built-in gardens and individual aesthetics. The film pays particular attention to project’s high-tech bathrooms, which were built as a single piece of reinforced plastic, reducing the cost and labour of traditional bathroom installation.
Commentary: Though focusing less on traditional domestic technologies, the film highlights new building materials—particularly fiberglass—and construction practices, connecting them to innovative apartment life and utopian architecture. This film would be particularly relevant to researchers looking at technological development in home construction, which could undoubtedly be analyzed as part of the history of domestic technology. Moreover, it might also be of interest to scholars of utopian architecture, Expo 67, and the home of the future.
Bibliography:
“Geographical Index to Producers,” Business Screen 24, no.1 (March 1968): 191
CESIF Link: Fiberglass RP Bathrooms at Habitat

The Home

(1969-1971, English, Sound, Colour, 16mm, 11 mins)
Accession Number: 1971.0061
Sponsor: Black Creek Pioneer Village
Producers: Moreland-Latchford Productions; John Churchill
Director: Graham Parker
Holding Institutions: The University of Michigan (16mm); Manitoba Education Library, Winnipeg (16mm, VHS)
Related Title: “Pioneer Living” (series)
Description: Part of the “Pioneer Living” series, this film depicts pioneer life in the early 19th century. Focusing particularly on the family, the film describes how pioneers would select a place for their home, build a log cabin, and set up their new house with their sparse possessions. The film presents how families were self-sufficient, using the natural environment and relatively simple tools to provide for themselves. It includes sequences where pioneer families are shown growing, cooking, and storing food, weaving, building furniture, and making candles and soap.
Commentary: This film is not concerned with the promotion of new technologies. Instead it displays the tools, machines, and techniques which dominated domestic life in the past. As such, the film could be relevant to researchers investigating 19th century home and family experiences in rural Canada. More particularly, it provides a compelling example of how the past was imagined in the 1960s and 1970s. The function of the film as a construction of an imagined Canadian past could be especially pertinent for anyone interested in discourses of home, domestic labour, and nostalgia.
CESIF Link: The Home

Home Crafts

(1969-1971, English, Sound, Colour, 16mm, 11 mins)
Accession Number: 1971.0059
Sponsor: Black Creek Pioneer Village
Producers: Moreland-Latchford Productions; John Churchill
Director: Graham Parker
Distributor: Coronet Instructional Films
Holding Institutions: University of Michigan (16mm); Manitoba Education Library, Winnipeg (16mm, VHS)
Related Title: “Pioneer Living” (series)
Description: Film depicting the everyday life of pioneer families in the 1800s. Similar to The Home (1971.0061), the film shows many different home crafts and skills mastered by Canadian pioneers. This includes a sequence depicting the process of making cloth, including shots of sheep shearing, washing, carding, spinning, and weaving. The film also shows how family members worked at home, braiding rugs, building furniture, dipping candles, and making their own quill pens and ink. In depicting these domestic production practices, the film also shows the various tools, techniques, and machines deployed by pioneer families to assist in their labours.
Commentary: Home Crafts is concerned with the demonstration of home life, domestic technology, and familial labour of the 19th century. Thus, this film is particularly pertinent for researchers interested in analyzing the home labours and household technologies of the 1800s. In addition, as the film was produced over a hundred years after the era it depicts, it would also be of interest for those investigating how the Canadian past, with its history of settler colonialism, has been represented in sponsored films.
CESIF Link: Home Crafts

Hommage à notre paysannerie

(1938, French, Silent, Black and White, Colour, 16mm, 37 mins)
Hommage à notre paysannerie, 1938

Accession Number: 1938.0036
Producer: Albert Tessier
Director: Albert Tessier
Holding Institutions: Blibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (16mm, VHS, DVD); Cinémathèque Québécoise, Montréal; Bibliothèque du Cégep de Trois-Rivières (VHS)
Description: A cinematic portrait of the life, culture, and citizens of rural Quebec. The film captures the people, places, habits, and traditions of Quebec’s paysannerie. Combining black and white photography, colour images, and explanatory intertitles, Hommage celebrates rural Quebec life, praising the fortitude, community, craftsmanship, and religiosity of its residents. It depicts farmers at work, at home, at church, and at school. The film is composed of a variety of sequences of individuals engaged in the daily activities of rural life. It shows country residents tending to their land, caring for their livestock, going to church, praying, playing outside the school yard, practicing music, baking bread, spinning, weaving, sewing, knitting, and enjoying meals together. Throughout the film, the unique, religious, and moral character of rural Quebec and its people are celebrated through the rhetoric of its intertitles, the visual intimacy of its cinematography, and the rhythm of its editing.
Commentary: There are several brief sequences in this film that might be of particular interest to researchers of domestic technology. In particular, the sequences showing bread baking in an outdoor wood burning oven, those depicting women—both young and old—spinning, weaving, and using a sewing machine, and finally those showing the inside of farmhouses and kitchens. Each of these sequences is notable in part because of the low-tech nature of the domestic devices depicted. There is very little evidence of electric technology in these sequences. The spinning wheel, sewing machine, and loom are powered by the foot pedal and the stoves and ovens are fuelled by wood. The women using the machines, though engaged in demanding physical labour, are not presented as tired or overwhelmed by their work. After depicting them focused on their various tasks, the film shows their completed labour—a big meal enjoyed by the whole family, a dress for a delighted child, or a new vestment presented proudly to a parish priest. Throughout these sequences, the women are rarely shown working alone. Instead, multiple women labour together, husbands chat with their wives, children observe their mothers’ activities, and priests visit women as they work. Thus, unlike films that advocate for new technologies, presenting such these older methods of housework and home craftsmanship as inefficient drudgery, Hommage celebrates the traditional domestic habits, techniques, and technologies of rural Quebec, positioning them as part of the morality and beauty of peasant life.
Bibliography:
Patrick Bossé, “Politiques d’un cinema vers l’État-nation: hommage à notre paysannerie (1983) de l’abbê Albert Tessier” (MA thesis, Concordia University, 2008).
Peter Morris, Embattled Shadows: A History of Canadian Cinema, 1895-1939 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1978), 222, 271.
René Bouchard, Filmographie d’Albert Tessier (Montreal: Éditions du Boréal Express, 1973), 75–76.
Gouvernement du Québec: Ministère des Communications, Direction Générale du cinema et de l’audiovisuel, Catalogue des films d’archives Volume 2 (Québec: Éditeur official du Québec, 1978), 146.
Watch Online: numerique.banq.qc.ca/patrimoine/details/52327/2282605
CESIF Link: Hommage à notre paysannerie

Hydro-Electric Power on the Farm

(1923, English, Silent, Black and White, 28mm, 15 mins)
Hydroelectric Power on the Farm, 1923  

Accession Number: 1923.0021
Sponsor: Ontario Motion Picture Bureau
Producer: Filmcraft Industries
Holding Institution: Library and Archives Canada (28mm, 25mm, VHS, digibeta)
Alternate Title: Hydro Power on the Farm
Description: Industrial film demonstrating electricity’s applications on the farm. The film traces the transformation of water into power, as it moves from Niagara Falls, to the Kitchener Hydro Distributing station, to rural power lines, and finally to a specific farmhouse (describing this process with intertitles). The film then explains how electricity operates within the farm and demonstrates the many technological advances it has given to the farmer and his family. The film highlights different electric machines at work in the home and the barn, including a cream extractor, coffee maker, toaster, power loom, iron, vacuum cleaner, kitchen range, fan, milking machine, grain grinder, corn cutter, pump, and new electric methods of threshing, silo cutting, and silo filling. The film also describes how farmers are sharing electric transformers with one another, so they can all access these new electric technologies.
Commentary: The series of shots demonstrating kitchen and household electric technologies are of particular pertinence. They display a variety of domestic devices (coffee maker, toaster, power loom, iron, vacuum cleaner, kitchen range) and almost exclusively show women as their primary users. The accompanying intertitles do not merely describe the different devices depicted but promote electricity by insisting on the benefits of these new tools for the housewife. They contend that these new home technologies alleviate domestic drudgery and give mothers “more time with the kiddies”—thus implying that childcare is somehow different than other forms of domestic labour and not subject to the same conditions of drudgery. In addition, the film depicts men and women of different ages using the various electric technologies. This suggests that in the 1923, the family on the Canadian farm encompasses multiple generations, all of which are engaged in some form of household labour. As such, we can see how this film projects a vision of domestic life distinct from that which would come to dominant ideologies of the generationally bounded, suburban nuclear family. Here the farm encompasses the fields, the barn, the silos, and the farmhouse. Although labour is divided by gender, the entire family (mother, father, grandmother) works. They use the newly installed electric technologies to tackle both productive and reproductive labour. Thus, Hydro-Electric Power on the Farm does little to distinguish housework from farm work; in their promotion of electricity, both dimensions of farm labour are considered central to its appeal.
Watch Online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdgWKs8UH10
CESIF Link: Hydro-Electric Power on the Farm

Kitsilano Solar House

(1979, English, Sound, 21 mins)
Accession Number: 1979.0022
Producers: Khouri and Gallagher
Directors: Chris Gallagher; Jacques A. Khouri
Holding Institutions: University of Waterloo (16mm)
Description: Film depicting a solar-powered housing project developed in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Kitsilano. The film describes the economic and environmental benefits of the project, as well as its technical and architectural specificities. It follows project manager Jacques Khouri (who is also a producer and director of the film) as he develops the housing project. The film shows him choosing a site, securing sufficient funding, and designing the solar-heating system. It depicts the construction process, going into detail about window construction, building materials, heating and cooling systems, and insulation. It pays particular attention to the trombewall (created by designer Chris Maddock and architect Klaus Schmidt) which collects solar energy and diffuses heat. In addition to profiling the project and discussing the advantages of solar power, the film also includes an interview with a representative from BC Hydro who articulates concerns about the high cost of solar-powered homes. However, the film concludes with profiles of other solar-power projects, including one by BC Hydro, and insists on the need for investment in renewable resources.
Commentary: This film is particularly relevant for those interested in specific details about solar power and the technologies and materials required for its utility in the home. Unlike other films on solar energy, this film focuses on a single project and traces its development start to finish, presenting a detailed and durational view of the steps involved in its construction. In addition, the Kitsilano project is a housing co-operative located in a busy Vancouver neighbourhood. As such, this film is relevant to researchers interested in alternative and urban modes of dwelling.
CESIF Link: Kitsilano Solar House

Mirror, Mirror: An Advertiser’s Scrapbook

(1983, English, Sound, Colour, 26 mins)
Mirror, Mirror: An Advertiser’s Scrapbook, 1983

Accession Number: 1983.0017
Producers: Don Hopkins, Playing with Time, David Springbett, Linda Schuyler, Kit Hood
Directors: Kit Hood, Linda Schuyler
Distributors: National Film Board of Canada : Office national du film du Canada; Ranfilm
Holding Institutions: Carleton University, Ottawa (VHS); Library and Archives Canada (3/4” Videotape); York University, Toronto (16mm)
Description: Mirror, Mirror presents a hundred years of Canadian history through the imagery, sounds, and slogans of advertising. Framed as a multi-generational family story told in the first person by a slightly sardonic narrator, the film moves through decades of social, cultural, and technological transformation. It with begins at the turn of the century with “the grandparents.” The film describes the prominence of mail order catalogues, the growth of national magazines, and the rise of radio. It tells this history of the advertising industry alongside the grandparents’ more personal story, tracing their experiences of World War I, the 1920s, and the great depression. Through montage sequences of magazine advertisements and promotional campaigns, the film describes the grandparents’ everyday lives—showcasing the products they buy, the work they do, and the values they hold. This initial pattern is repeated throughout the film—first with “the parents” and then with the narrator herself. Again, social and cultural changes are depicted through a series of historical advertisements that regularly promote new technologies and products by appealing to the norms and values of the moment. We see commercial campaigns in different media and from different eras, referencing World War II, the postwar suburban dream, the counterculture, feminism, and environmental politics. Throughout the film, advertising history is present as integral to social and cultural history, although film’s views on this relationship remain ambiguous.
Commentary: Domestic technology is everywhere in Mirror, Mirror. It serves as one of the film’s key markers of historical change. Through the various montage sequences, we see advertisements for washing machines, kitchen ranges, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, radios, television sets, etc. These ads regularly present these home devices as essential and modern technologies that will radically transform housework liberating women from domestic drudgery. The rhetoric is the same whether in the 1900s, the 1930s, or the 1950s. As such, this film would be relevant to researchers exploring both the evolution of domestic technologies as well as the history of their advertising discourse. Moreover, the degree of critique and sarcasm embedded in the film’s narration might also be of interest for what it might reveal about 1980s attitudes towards consumerist rhetoric and the place of corporations in everyday life.
Notes: Kit Hood and Linda Schuyler were also the creators of the Degrassi series.
Watch Online: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cU12BqOf8hw
CESIF Link: Mirror, Mirror: An Advertiser’s Scrapbook

More Power to the Farmer

(1940-1949, English, Sound, Colour, 16mm, 21 mins)
Accession Number: 1940.0017
Sponsor: Hydro Electric Power Commission of Ontario
Producer: Associated Screen News
Director: Jack Chisholm
Holding Institution: Library and Archives Canada (16mm, VHS)
Description: Film presenting the many advantages electricity brings to the Canadian farm. It follows Mr. Henderson (an old farmer portrayed by Alex McKee) and his wife (played by Nellie Smith) as they discuss their experiences with electricity and the technological advances it has afforded. Giving specific thanks to the Hydro Electric Power Commission of Ontario, Mr. Henderson contends that electricity has improved his farming. He tells the story of wiring is farm, outlining everything from securing proper wiring, soliciting the advice of experts, and predicting water requirements. He also talks about the many benefits brought by electricity, praising everything from electric milking machines to electric clippers to the radio—which lets him listen to music while he works. Mrs. Henderson describes the ways that electrical appliances (refrigerator, kitchen range, vacuum cleaner) have rendered her domestic labour more efficient, saving her time and energy. The film concludes with Mr. Henderson extoling the virtues of electricity on rural life, arguing that it gives farming families more time to spend with one another, increasing their leisure time and keeping children at home.
Commentary: Of particular pertinence are the scenes featuring Mrs. Henderson. Here the advantages of electricity on the farm are not restricted to the barn, fields, or cattle, but emerge in the everyday operations of domestic life. Mrs. Henderson’s labour is constructed as part of the farm and the new electric appliances are promoted as a means of rendering that labour easier and more efficient. In addition, for those more generally interested in issues of technology and the family, Mr. Henderson’s final speech might also be of interest, as he explicitly ties technological development to family recreation and a desire to keep children in the traditional family farm. As such, electricity and all the electrified devices which go with it are not only tied to discourses of innovation and efficiency, but also to desires of family closeness and efforts to support the family farm as a Canadian institution.
CESIF Link: More Power to the Farmer

La Nature: Source D’Énergie Motrice

(1944, French, English, Black and White, Colour, Sound, 16mm, 21 mins)
Accession Number: 1940.0061
Sponsors: Canadian Geographical Journal; Canadian Geographical Society : Société Canadienne de géographie
Producer: Crawley Films
Distributor: Service de ciné-photographie de la province de Québec
Holding Institution: Library and Archives Canada (16mm, VHS)
Description: Film about the harnessing of Canada’s natural resources for the cultivation of power. Tracing a history of Canadian power, the film demonstrates technological transformation, as humans moved from body power to wind power to steam power to oil and the internal combustion engine. After presenting this evolutionary trajectory, the film turns its attention to hydro power. It illustrates how Canadian rivers have been used since the country’s earliest days to assist colonists, power industries, and grow the economy. The film demonstrates the impact of Canada’s natural resources, by showing how they were used to power many local industries, agricultural practices, and domestic machinery. It includes sequences in which waterpower is used to fuel home technologies, presenting shots of butter churns, milling grain, and cutting wood.
Commentary: For researchers interested in domestic technologies, the sequences on home technologies will be particularly pertinent, as they most directly address issues of technological development in domestic space. In addition, the film’s progress narrative may also be worth considering. Analyzing which industries, activities, resources, and modes of living are presented as belonging to the past, the present, and/or the future could offer compelling insights into how Canada envisions its history and imagines its future.
Bibliography:
Service de ciné-photographie de la province de Québec, Films 16mm: edition 1956-57 (Quebec City: Service de ciné-photographie, 1956), 300.
Gouvernement du Québec: Ministère des Communications, Direction Générale du cinema et de l’audiovisuel, Catalogue des films d’archives, Volume 2 (Québec: Éditeur official du Québec, 1978), 2–3.
CESIF Link: La Nature: Source D’Énergie Motrice

Preparing Food

(1970-1971, English, Colour, Sound, 16mm, 11 mins)
Accession number: 1971.0060
Sponsor: Black Creek Pioneer Village
Producers: Moreland-Latchford Productions; John Churchill
Director: Graham Parker
Distributor: Coronet Instructional Films
Holding Institutions: University of Michigan (16mm); Manitoba Education Library, Winnipeg (16mm, VHS)
Related Title: “Pioneer Living” (series)
Description: Film depicting the process through which 19th century Canadian pioneer families prepared their food for the winter. The film shows the various techniques and technologies deployed in storing and preserving food. It includes sequences of family members engaged in food preparation. They make bread, smoke meat, churn butter, peel and preserve apples, and produce maple sugar.
Commentary: This film is particularly relevant to those interested in the practices and technologies deployed in food preparation and preservation of the 1800s. It represents the pioneer family as a working family and the home as a site where production and reproduction are one and the same. In addition, this film will also be of particular interest to researchers looking at representations of the Canadian past and the fantasy of the pioneer family.
CESIF Link: Preparing Food

The Solar Frontier

(1977, English, Sound, Colour, 24 mins)
Accession Number: 1977.0050
Producers: Mellenco Film; Frances Mellen; Peter Mellen
Distributor: Canadian Filmmakers’ Distribution Center
Holding Institutions: University of Waterloo (16mm); University of Guelph (16mm); Library and Archives Canada (16mm)
Description: Film depicting the process and possibilities of harnessing of solar power. The film describes how the sun’s energy can be used in the snow belt to provide power and heat to Canadian homes. Through narration and interviews, it outlines the operations and designs of variety of different solar-heating systems, including the Solar 5, the Meadowvale home, and Prospect House. The construction, science, technical operations, and economics of solar power are explained in the profiles of these three housing projects. Specifically, the film demonstrates how these homes are designed to collect solar power and convert it into air and water heating systems. It includes interviews with architects, engineers, and homeowners who all discuss different dimensions of the solar-powered house. The film concludes with images of the current and future applications of solar energy, arguing for its development as a clean, efficient source of power.
Commentary: This film does not focus on a specific domestic device but depicts a new and technologically advanced method of powering the home (in this way it resembles films about electricity). The film demonstrates how the home itself becomes a technology in the production of its own energy, through solar panels, flooring materials, pipe installation, windows, insulation, and monitoring equipment. Here we see another example of how architecture and building materials can be analyzed as domestic technologies and incorporated more directly into histories of technology and the home. In addition, the sequences in which homeowners describe the experience of living in a solar-powered home are especially pertinent. In these segments, the film moves past technical and engineering details and gives researchers insight into how residents understood and lived within their solar-powered homes.
CESIF Link: The Solar Frontier

Water on Tap

(1951, English, French, Colour, Sound, 16mm, 22 mins)
Accession Number: 1952.0004
Sponsors: Canadian Institute of Plumbing and Heating : Institut canadien de plomberie et chauffrage; Canadian Pump Association : Association canadienne des fabricants de pompes
Producers: Crawley Films; George Gorman; F.R. ‘Budge’ Crawley
Director: George Gorman
Holding Institutions: Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Québec (16mm, DVD-r); Library and Archives Canada (16mm, VHS, Digibeta)
Related Titles: L’Eau cournate (alternate title); L’Eau courante sur la ferme (French version)
Description: Film about the advantages of pressurized hot water systems in rural life. The film follows the Pattersons as they install a new automatic water system in their family farm. It demonstrates the advantages of their new the system, which provides automatic running water in both their home and their barn. The film contends that pressurized hot water increases agricultural and domestic productivity, heightening efficiency and decreasing drudgery for both the farmer and his wife.
Commentary: The sequences depicting the advantages of the new water system in the farmhouse will be particularly relevant to researchers. Although the film does not highlight any specific new devices and domestic machines, it’s the pressurized hot system as a novel piece of technology, emphasizing its capacity to assist in the labours and demands of the home. Like other films depicting new technologies on the farm, this film unites the farmhouse with the barn, combining agricultural production with domestic reproduction in compelling and revealing ways.
Bibliography:
“Business in Motion: Films of Current Interest,” Canadian Business 25 (January 1952): 80.
Crawley Films, Free Films: Directory of Free 16mm Sponsored Films in Canada (Ottawa: Crawley Films, May 1952), 6.
Crawley Films, Free Films: Sources of Free 16mm Sponsored Films in Canada Compiled and Published by Crawley Films (Ottawa: Crawley Films, April 1969), 11.
Service de ciné-photographie de la province de Québec, Films 16mm: edition 1956-57 (Quebec City: Service de ciné-photographie, 1956), 350.
CESIF Link: Water on Tap

Your New Dial Telephone

(1940-1980, English, French, Sound, Black and White, 35mm,)
Accession Number: 1980.2019
Sponsor: Bell Telephone Co. of Canada : La Compagnie de téléphone Bell du Canada
Producer: Phoenix Studios
Holding Institution: Library and Archives Canada (35mm, VHS)
Related Title: Votre nouveau téléphone automatique (French version)
Description: Film in which a man explains how a dial telephone works. Throughout the film, the man sits at a desk and addresses the camera directly.
Commentary: Little information is available, however this film would be of interest to researchers interested in the operations and developments of telephone technology.
CESIF Link: Your New Dial Telephone

Non-CESIF Films Relevant for Researchers: NFB

Related Published Works

Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. New York, NY: Basic Books, 1983.

Evenden, Matthew D. Allied Power: Mobilizing Hydro-Electricity During Canada’s Second World War. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, 2015.

Marvin, Carolyn. When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988.

May, Elaine Tyler. Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2008.

Morris, Peter. Embattled Shadows: A History of Canadian Cinema, 1895-1939. Montreal, QC: MQUP, 1978.

Sandwell, R. W. Powering Up Canada: The History of Power, Fuel, and Energy From 1600. McGill-Queen’s Rural, Wildland, and Resource Studies Series. Montreal, QC: MQUP, 2016.

Waller, Gregory A. “Cornering The Wheat Farmer (1938).” In Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States, edited by Marsha Orgeron, Devin Orgeron, and Dan Streible, 249–70. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011.