Brazil Street

by Robert Hunt

  I recall envying some of the well-off boys at school. They seemed to have everything that Dickie White and I wanted. One boy was a fellow named Damian Hayes. His parents owned and operated a grocery store on Craigmillar Avenue, and it was a dream to Dickie and me to have one, too. He always seemed to have everything that the rest of us didn’t have. He was nicely dressed, too, I might add. I always wished my dad owned a store, but of course he did not. But I do remember Damian, being a great guy, always shared what he had with us in candy or food. A nice person, a good friend, and a class act when we attended school.

  Many people were poor in those days, but we were never unhappy. We used to go to Kevin King’s or Frank Furlong’s store for Mom and Dad and “charge” things until Dad got paid. There we would get things on credit such as bread, milk, and some of the other necessities of life. When the credit limit reached its high point, it was stopped until paid in full, and then we would return again and charge more to get to another limit. It was the way most people of that time survived: from payday to payday. And in those days there was only one person working, usually the man, as the lady of the house stayed home and took care of the children.

  I learned at an early age that hard work paid dividends. We quickly learned that there were no handouts from anyone, and pennies had to be earned. I cannot count how many times I asked Mom or Dad for money that they didn’t have. Sometimes, if Dad had earned a few extra tips from passengers on the train, we would be given a dime or quarter as a treat when he came home from a trip. That usually had to do us a week or two, so we spent it sparingly.

  When you consider some neighbourhoods of my youth and how people lived, my family, although poor in some ways, were more fortunate than most people in the city, for jobs were few and far between. My father was lucky to have a good job, with CNR, compared to what other people in the city had. He had spent twenty-odd years working with the CN coastal boats as a young man before beginning work for the CN trains, working a total of forty-four years with them.

  I saw the deplorable conditions of some of the houses, or shacks, that so many other people lived in. Around St. John’s, in such places as Sheehan’s Shute, Gallivan’s, Taylor’s, and Andrew’s Ranges, were old homes in very poor condition. Many of these shacks should never have been occupied as living quarters. But people had no choice, as one had to live somewhere, and people without work, education, or with little or no income to support themselves had to exist as they did.

  I had a friend at Holy Cross School who resided on the lower part of Flower Hill. One day after class, a group of us were on our way to the old Feildian Grounds off the upper part of Prince of Wales Street to play a game of soccer. I followed him into his house and was shocked to see the conditions that he lived in. It was the first time I had ever been inside his home. I also knew that his mother was not too pleased with him for bringing me into the house to see how they were living. After all, people do talk. The first thing that struck me as I looked around was there were no pictures hanging in the hallway or in the kitchen. Compared to this place, Dickie and Tommy Dodd, another friend of ours, and I lived like kings!

  His mom tried to be as polite as she could as she saw me survey the home. To me it looked a lot like our clubhouse. In fact, the clubhouse in Dickie’s backyard was much cleaner than this shack. The walls in the kitchen were wooden and not finished, painted, or wallpapered. It looked as if it had not been touched up in years, as the old paint was peeling off the wood. You could see through cracks in the floor, and the ceilings were dirty and greasy-looking. When we walked into a room off the hallway, I saw there was only a partial floor, with rocks sticking up where the wooden part had ended.

  A little girl I presumed to be his sister looked clean body-wise but was partially naked, wearing dirty clothes that seemed as if they had not been washed in a long time. A basin of water was on top of the kitchen stove, and I could see the roaring fire inside the wood-burning stove heating it up as the mother boiled it. Wood for the stove was piled up in a corner. It was probably the only source of heat in the two-storey house. When I left I was thinking how lucky we were. First impressions always last, and I can see it now every time I pass by Flower Hill.

  Only after I had gotten home did I realize why Mom always baked bread and cookies for some of the ladies who lived over there. I knew then why people (mostly women) came to my house to see my mother. She always gave them food, especially baked bread, to take home with them. I also realized why many people in that area went to Walsh’s Bakery on Central Street. They were looking for the scraps, from packaged leftovers that had been taken from the machines while they were making bread and baked goods. They couldn’t afford to buy these things, so they bummed what they could from the bakery. The scraps were sold for ten cents a bag. Sometimes a guy in the bakery would dispense these bags to the residents for five cents a bag when they couldn’t afford the dime.

  The houses on Central Street, the lower part of Flower Hill, and surrounding areas were in ugly, sickening conditions. Some of these houses had little or no insulation, broken windows, some even without floors, and were mostly heated with just a wood stove. If there were any insulation in any of these homes, it usually consisted of old newspapers or cardboard. People on welfare, or the dole, lived there, and the people who did work brought home just enough money to live, eat, and support their families. They had no extras for anything else.

  Children sometimes had only one solid meal a day. Many times breakfast consisted of tea and toast. Night soil, or human waste, was collected from many of these houses by a horse and wagon—called the “honey wagon”—and water came from community taps, as there was no running water available in these slums.

  The rundown area of St. John’s began to develop after the fire of 1846. The government of the day put great pressure on the councils to rebuild homes for these people who were living in squalor. Homes were constructed quickly and close together, which led to them being built sometimes six, eight, or ten in a row without any building standards, codes, and surely without insulation. Then the Great Fire of 1892 consumed and devastated most of the city of St. John’s. But the slum area around Springdale Street in the west, New Gower Street in the south, Carter’s Hill in the east, and LeMarchant Road in the north, very old housing with poor sanitary conditions, had escaped the fury of the fire.

  Not much was done with these areas from the start of the century. At one count, more than 1,000 of these houses were situated in this area, and nearly all of them had unspeakable living conditions for those who occupied them. Nearly all of these homes needed repairs. They were overcrowded, and a government report in the early 1940s stated that at least three-quarters of these downtown homes should have been demolished. Most of them were located in this area, where nearly 6,000 people lived. When the city was rebuilt after the 1892 fire, these houses were neglected. Many of those who had escaped the fire and lost their homes moved into this area, sometimes with their relatives or other families, creating even more overcrowding. This created a larger shantytown area by the turn of the twentieth century.

  It would take more than sixty years after the great fire of 1892 before these homes were demolished. Things started to change somewhat around the late 1940s and 1950s, when another report from the Newfoundland Government stated that houses in the downtown area were unfit for human habitation. Living there put a mental and moral strain on people. The poor housing led to high mortality rates. Living in these neighbourhoods was dangerous for children and the elderly.

  Once the problems were fully recognized, efforts were made to improve the downtown housing situation. But getting money from the provincial government for the people who owned those homes was a problem. Nearly all of the people who lived there could not afford to rent in places elsewhere in the city, nor could they save any money to buy or build their own homes. The blighted areas of the city still had limited options, with a general lack of availability for be
tter housing. Relief was still a few years off.

  These squalid conditions continued to become poorer and poorer, until Newfoundland entered Confederation on March 31, 1949. That year, the federal government announced huge changes in its funding for public housing. The end result was that the city could now count on financial support from both the provincial and federal governments. Together they built hundreds of subsidized housing units on Empire Avenue, Anderson Avenue, Cashin Avenue, and elsewhere throughout the city. Residents of the areas in downtown St. John’s were finally moved, and the homes were eventually demolished in the late 1950s and early 1960s for redevelopment.

  With my dad working, we basically lived like kings compared to the people of Central Street and most surrounding areas of Sheehan’s Shute. My father had a job that paid a much better wage every two weeks than what many of those people had to live on every month, or even every two months. We ate homemade bread with molasses nearly every morning for breakfast, too, but sometimes we could afford to buy things like eggs and sausages or some sort of small tidbit for a home breakfast or lunch. We were not actually starving, as some people were, as we usually had two or sometimes three meals a day. Sausages, ham, and bologna were expensive and labelled “special” treats at that time.

  At home, Mom always tried to make sure that we ate a good supper. Sunday was the best day of the week for eating and always included either a turkey or a roast, with plenty of vegetables and our mainstay, fresh homemade bread. Fish, being plentiful, was served many times during the week. All this we could afford on my dad’s salary. There was a rule that you ate everything that was put in front of you. If you didn’t, then you went hungry. There was no such thing as having several meals prepared for dinner or supper.

  Dickie’s father, Blackie White, was a fisherman. His name was Harold, but nicknames were common in those days, and he was named Blackie—a play on the words “black” and “white.” He would give Dad meals of fresh codfish at a good price from the Water Street coves where he sold his catch and when it was plentiful, which was most times. He always gave what he could to Dad at a cheaper price, but he also had to make a living for himself from selling his catch. However, as our next-door neighbour, he shared with us what he could, even though he had six mouths to feed.

  Fishing was a prominent industry and served as the primary source of income for most men in those days. They spent time on the water to support their families. They were up early, at three or four o’clock in the morning, to head out through the Narrows to fish. These men then came back with their catch to set up at Beck’s Cove, Baird’s Cove, or on the main waterfront apron to sell the cod and sometimes indulge in a few socials before they headed home.

  Most men of the day took their hard-earned money and promptly passed it over to their wives to pay the bills and run the household. Many women had to go to the nearest drinking establishments to make sure their husbands didn’t waste it all on liquor, as drinking was one of the main social problems of the times. I recall women who went to the coves to watch as their husbands sold their fish—and to take control of the money that came from the sale. And many women went there with their children in tow to show the men that they had hungry mouths to feed.

  A good many, including my father, also smoked cigarettes. Mostly they rolled their own, as they couldn’t afford packs of cigarettes. A pack of smokes could cost as much as twenty-five to thirty cents. Hard-earned money was sometimes wasted on what most women of the day called demon rum and tobacco. Smoking and alcohol were not recognized as health hazards as they are now, and everywhere one looked, men and women were subject to both vices.

  I think back and wonder how many fishermen lost their lives in small open dories that went out on mostly rough seas to jig and catch codfish for a living. I know that stories could be told of so many of these men who did not have life jackets in their small boats as they left through the Narrows to ply their trade. Wearing waist-high rubbers and rain gear that covered them from head to toe left them vulnerable to the sea as they fished. I am sure that a few of them lost their lives over the years, or came close to it. As kids, we were not told about these tragic things when they did happen.

  I’ve seen men who came in from fishing to set up in the coves to sell their catch, drinking constantly from the time they left port until the time they docked back at the waterfront. It’s a wonder that a lot of them didn’t fall overboard and drown. Such were the times as these hardened veterans of the fishing industry went to sea out of necessity and fought to bring home money to their families. It was not an easy life for these men or their wives.

  Dickie White and I were usually at the coves on Water Street on weekends when the men came in with their catches. We always claimed the cod tongues that fishermen cut from the catch for us to sell to people who milled around looking for these delicacies. Saturday was usually a great day for fish, as we had no school and people crowded to Water Street on their days off work.

  Prices varied, and a good bag of twenty, thirty, or forty small tongues could cost the customer twenty-five cents to a dollar or more, but it was well worth it for the taste alone. In those days, cod tongues were sought after and eaten by a majority of the population of St. John’s. They still are. The older generation, and some of the new, still love these delicacies. The belief was the smaller the cod tongue the tastier it was, as the larger ones were a bit more jellied. But when we had them for supper, I found they all tasted the same: delicious! We would spend the majority of the day on Saturday at the coves helping fishermen with these chores and their catches. When we had finished, Blackie or another fisherman would always give us a ton of fish or tongues to bring home to Mom and Dad for the week.

  Blackie and his buddies would always let Dickie and me sell their fish when they were busy. After all, the more we sold, the more money it made for them. We were given five to ten cents, and sometimes fifteen cents, for every bag of tongues we sold. A bag of ten was, I believe, twenty-five cents, twenty tongues were fifty cents, and forty of the beauties were going for a dollar. Most of the “rich” people had no trouble handing over that kind of money. So, we made ten cents on a bag that sold for fifty, and fifteen cents on a bag that went for a dollar. Extra fish was added as a reward to entice us to work harder to sell their catch. On a good day, we could leave the cove with a dollar or, heaven forbid, two, plus two or three huge codfish, which we would sell to keep us going in treats until the next weekend.

  Each year, the seal fishery was another way for fishermen to gain an extra source of income. It was very dangerous for the men who acquired a berth on a sealing ship and went to the ice. When the seal fishery was on and the fish merchants put out the call for men to board their vessels, people from the whole island came in to St. John’s to compete for a berth on a sealing ship. Lives were lost out on the ice; many women saw their men set sail never to return home. The men were paid a pittance for their trips, many times in dangerous conditions, while the fishing merchants took the majority of the money they got for the seals.

  We lived by modest means, not expecting more than what we had, for a lot of things in those days were not plentiful. We accepted that, and we lived accordingly. When we did have money, we would go to the old Memorial Stadium located on Lake View Avenue down by Quidi Vidi Lake. Today it is a Dominion supermarket. It was a 4,000-seat stadium, opened in 1955. After another previous indoor rink, the Prince’s Rink, burned down in 1941, the demands of the Second World War prevented the city of St. John’s from replacing it until after the war had ended. However, in 1948, a committee tried to raise funds to build a new arena to honour the Newfoundlanders who lost their lives in that war. Raising money proved to be a slow endeavour, and it was not until 1954 that the St. John’s city council interceded and floated a bond to help finance the facility, of which it would be the principal owner. After a year of construction, this structure officially opened in 1955.

  Over the years, t
he stadium held many events that appealed to us. As young kids we started going there to sit and watch the hockey games between the rival schools of Holy Cross, Bishop Feild, Gonzaga, St. Bon’s, and St. Pat’s. The rivalry between schools was intense, and there was more than one fight when these teams met on the ice. Sometimes there was more fighting in the stands than on the rink surface. We would walk to the stadium after school to see our favourite school teams play. Wrestling was also a big draw, with the likes of fighters Whipper Billy Watson, Hardboiled Haggerty, The Great Antonio, and the Midgets battling it out in the ring .

  I started going there when I was about seven years old. When I turned ten, roller skating and ice skating caught our attention. Dickie, Tom Dodd, and I spent days and nights circling the floor on a pair of skates. It became like a second home.

  Going to the movies was another form of entertainment that we shared in those days. Theatres such as the Majestic on the corner of Duckworth Street and Queen’s Road, the Nickel on Military Road, the York on Water Street, and the Cornwall on LeMarchant Road were the main movie houses of the 1950s. The Capitol Theatre off Henry Street and the Paramount Theatre opened in the 1960s. It cost about ten cents to go, and you could bring your own food with you. If we couldn’t afford to go see the movies, we stayed home and watched our favourite westerns on television, such as Hopalong Cassidy, Paladin, Bonanza, or The Big Valley.

  We always had something to do and some place to go. Distance was never an issue, as we walked everywhere for enjoyment. Water Street was always our favourite spot to go, but if we were looking for entertainment farther away from home, then we headed to Signal Hill or Fort Amherst to climb the hills. These places were taboo, but we ignored the danger.