Another year, I attended a pancake breakfast held in my Calgary neighbourhood of Country Hills. I was given a behind-the-scenes pass from a friend of mine who is with the Stampede Caravan, a community group that has organized free Stampede breakfasts for more than 85 years. I learned that it takes a dedicated army of volunteers to organize the marching bands, country music outfits and line dancers that are featured at these breakfasts. Not to mention all the cooking it takes to produce a mountain of bacon, sausages, eggs and baked beans, as well as the stacks and stacks of pancakes drenched in syrup! Mayor Nenshi was there, flipping pancakes and grinning for all of the people trying to take his photo. The Stampede queen and her princesses wandered around greeting folks, and of course everyone wanted to pose for a photo with Harry the Horse—the official mascot of the Calgary Stampede.
It was a fun-filled morning in our neighbourhood and I finally felt like I truly belonged in the city—I was now a Calgarian. As such, I cordially invite everyone to visit the Calgary Stampede. Come and discover for yourself what the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth has to offer. Try the pancakes and maybe the lobster corn dogs. And don’t forget the world-famous mini-doughnuts dusted in sugar and cinnamon powder. Cheer on the rodeo competitors, feel your heart race on the midway rides and enjoy some of the best country music in the world. I think every Canadian should attend the Stampede at least once in their lifetime!
—by Leanne Smith, Calgary, Alberta
The Saturday Matinee
Recalling a favourite childhood ritual
These days, we can instantly communicate and entertain ourselves through the Internet, cellphones and video games, but this “high-tech” generation may not know how an older generation of Canadians entertained themselves on Saturday afternoons.
In the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, many cities had a matinee movie theatre. They went by many names—the Capitol, Empire, Bijou, Roxy or Regent—and the experience was always memorable.
My Saturday matinees during the late ’40s and early ’50s were at the Empire Theatre, part of the Charlottetown Market Building before it burned down in April 1958. The Empire Theatre opened in October 1941 and, like many Maritime theatres owned by Saint John entrepreneur F.G. Spencer, the Empire offered a Saturday matinee consisting of a cartoon, short comedy and feature film—all for 10 cents.
Millions of kids across the country enjoyed these types of matinees in their hometowns. What made it so memorable for many in my generation was—like going to confession in church—that the Saturday matinee had certain rituals. I had to line up, and the line snaked around the Durango Kid poster at the corner of the Market Building. I also had to be “worthy,” so I’d patiently clutch my dime as the line moved up to reach the huge steps leading to the heavy, church-like doors through which I passed into the “sanctuary.” On the right was the box office where the short lady with the nun-like wispy hair sold me my ticket. Having paid my fare, I’d race up the wide staircase with its ornate banister to the landing where the usher tore my ticket in two—no sneaking in here!
My seat had a plywood back and was curved, so my legs dangled over the dusty floor. Some said creatures—rats from the Market—watched the movies with us, but I found that hard to believe; I never saw one. Besides, what would a rat have to do with Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy or my favourite, the Durango Kid? They were already chasing “rats” in the movies, like one who appeared in almost every Western, Roy Barcroft!
Rituals don’t change, so the Westerns were always the same. The film always opened with a stagecoach bouncing along the same terrain; the bad guys came from behind a familiar rock and the stagecoach guard always got nailed first. Then along came the Durango Kid, fanning his gun and knocking off the robbers while Smiley Burnette, riding his horse Ring Eye and clutching his hat, lagged behind the Kid.
Those stagecoach scenes, along with very familiar-looking ranch houses, and even the dishes in the kitchen of the fair damsel, recurred in most Westerns. That’s how Charles Starrett as the Durango Kid could make 65 Westerns between 1945 and 1952. The producers of these movies churned out “B” Westerns quickly and economically. Of course, I didn’t know all this as I watched Durango leap from his horse onto the villains, or when the Cisco Kid bullwhipped the gun out of the bad guy’s hand.
It didn’t matter that the structure of the Western never changed. I didn’t want it to change. I didn’t want the Empire Theatre to change. Outside was all the change we needed: the Korean War, the Cold War and, thanks to the buildup of enough nuclear arms to blow the world up two or three times over, nuclear attack drills where we all hid like ostriches under our desks when the siren sounded.
The Saturday matinee was a place where joy and escape danced together—it was all so innocent.
—by Bernard J. Callaghan, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
Going Home to “Lost Villages”
One of the costs of building the St. Lawrence Seaway was a devastating loss of communities—and history
For most of us, going back to our childhood hometowns, often to share memories with our children and future generations, is something we take for granted. The former citizens of the “Lost Villages” of the St. Lawrence River and their families, however, can never truly go home again.
Born in Cornwall, Ontario, I, like many young people, never really took much interest in where I came from or what the history of the area meant in the context of our Canadian identity. To me it was just the place I lived. Only now, as history and genealogy have become popular, have I realized that my history is not only tied to the beautiful St. Lawrence River but also lies beneath it.
The Lost Villages, as they came to be known, were nine well-established communities in the former townships of Cornwall and Osnabruck that were dismantled and then flooded in July 1958—the “price of progress” as the St. Lawrence Seaway and an Ontario Hydro power project were being implemented. These were, however, places of our earliest history.
At the founding of Upper Canada, the United Empire Loyalists made their exodus from conflict during the American Revolution to lands along the St. Lawrence to forge a new home for their descendants. Predating the arrival of the Loyalists, the area had been the traditional lands of the Mohawk people for centuries. Yet, despite their significance to our collective history as Canadians, these places now lie under dark waters.
A recent trip to the Lost Villages Museum, located in Long Sault, Ontario, revealed just how lingering the loss is. The museum—a collection of original buildings from the various villages—had just opened for the day when a woman, appearing to be in her late 80s, aided by a walker and her grown son, made her way to the little red train station from the village of Moulinette. Of all the buildings there, this was the one I was most tied to as well: My grandmother Mary, more than 80 years earlier, would wait on the small station platform to catch “The Moccasin” steam train for the ride to high school in Cornwall.
Wondering if the woman was a tourist, with one gesture, I knew she was not. Removing one hand from her walker, she gently placed it on the outside of the building. I knew she was reconnecting with an “old friend” from a beloved time and place. As I watched, I noticed more people of the same generation appearing and going to what must have been their respective “places.” They, like my grandmother, no longer had a home to go back to.
Many people I meet assume the Lost Villages story was written long ago and only has regional importance. To set the record straight, I explain that where the St. Lawrence River flows today, west of Cornwall, is not its natural path; at one time, six villages, three hamlets and parts of towns existed there and were home to about 6,500 people. Soon the inevitable question comes, “When did this happen, the 1800s?” When I reply, “1958,” it always elicits a look of shock. I then ask them to imagine their hometowns being dismantled, burned or moved in pieces, and I can see a flicker of understanding wash over them. I then remind them how our history was changed forever when the Lost Villages were submerged in 1958:
<
br /> Ancient lands of the Mohawk People—obliterated.
Locales where United Empire Loyalists forged a new future—lost.
Fertile farmland, abundant orchards, old growth forests—drowned.
Historic site of 1813 Battle of Crysler’s Farm—submerged.
The thundering and once-famous Long Sault Rapids—silenced.
Loved ones at rest in their graves, including my grandmother’s “mama,” whom she lost to tuberculosis at age 14—never to be visited again.
This is a region rich in buried history, with many stories to tell. The more people visit, the better the chances that the Lost Villages will be remembered always.
—by Jennifer DeBruin, Smiths Falls, Ontario
The Last Steam Donkey
Preserving the memories of a bygone era
For years, the relic lay rusting and rotting in the West Coast rainforest. Then, in 2008, old-time logging legend Jack James decided that at the age of 77, he’d better get cracking if he wanted to preserve the memories of a bygone working world. After all, some things can’t wait.
The relic was a 1929 Washington Iron Works steam donkey, last operated by the R.B. McLean Lumber Company (1926-1965) in the Alberni Valley on Vancouver Island. It was the last steam donkey working when they closed down; all the other donkeys were scrapped or retired after the Second World War and replaced by diesel and gas machines.
The steam donkey—steam-powered winches mounted on wooden skids for mobility—was the workhorse of the British Columbia woods prior to the Second World War. Once the timber was felled, donkey engines provided the power to “yard” the logs out of the woods to be loaded for transport to the mills.
The engineer, or “donkey puncher,” was an essential person in camp. Every donkey had a team of workers to keep the steam up that included woodcutters, wood splitters and stackers; a fireman; and a “spark chaser,” whose job it was to extinguish fires caused by the machine. And then there was the “whistle punk”—either a beginner or an older worker who was no longer agile—who relayed signals by steam whistle from the crew in the woods to the donkey.
Jack James began work in the forests of Vancouver Island seven decades ago as a spark chaser. He went on to become a well-known woods foreman and lived through all of the technological change that followed the steam era. Now, well into retirement, he found himself about to start all over again on a steam donkey.
The first order of business was to build a new sled—the platform on which you fastened the steam engine and winches that yarded the logs out of the forest, a forgotten skill. A sled was made from two giant logs bolted together and tapered at the ends to allow them to slide over debris and the rough terrain in the forest to get to the next work site. Powered by the steam engine bolted onto the sled, the steam donkey would winch itself through the forest via a cable attached to a distant tree. A local company, Island Timberlands, donated two big fir logs and Jack and crew set to work.
A steam engineer and his brother restored the steam engine, which was then jacked up and slid onto the new sled—just a few tons! Jack’s dream included setting up an old-time steam-logging operation so that visitors to the McLean Mill National Historic Site would get a more complete picture of the forest industry of that era. Not only would they see logs being sawn into lumber in the vintage steam mill but they’d also see how the old-time loggers yarded the logs out of the forest in the first place.
The next step was to rig a spar tree—a tall, strong tree located in the middle of the patch of trees to be logged—to be able to demonstrate “high-lead” logging. The spar acted as a giant fishing rod that extended the reach of the donkey far into the forest.
In the old days of logging, the logs were dragged out of the forest along the ground, bumping into rocks and stumps and through mud. This was called “ground-lead” logging. Originally, they used oxen and horses before the brute power of the steam donkey was adopted. Then, some innovative American logger came up with the idea of trying to get at least one end of the log up in the air—thus the spar tree was born, modelled on the mast of a sailing ship.
“High rigging”—the art of climbing a tall tree to limb it, top it, then rig it with guy lines and blocks to yard in the big logs—is another vanished skill. The “high rigger,” an elite logger in those days who was not afraid of heights, would put on his climbing spurs and wrap his climbing rope around the tree, cutting off the branches on his way up.
At up to 160 feet, the high rigger would top the tree, which sometimes swung back and forth violently when the top snapped off. As riggers were sometimes pretty cocky, they might then sit on top of the tree for a smoke, or show off by standing on their heads before coming back down. The rigger next rigged the tree with steel cables, including the lines from the steam donkey winches.
In our case, Jack coached Aaron Thom, a local arborist, and also scrounged up the rigging (cables) and other ironwork, some of it scrap recycled from 60 years ago. We, as Jack’s crew, were rediscovering an entire lost way of working as well as recreating the old technology.
June 26, 2009, was a special day at the McLean Mill National Historic Site. For the first time in 45 years, a steam whistle echoed through the forest as the whistle punk gave the signal to the donkey engineer to “skin it back”—send the rigging into the forest—for the first “turn” of logs. The punk on duty on that particular day was none other than Jack James himself.
—by David Hooper, Port Alberni, British Columbia
A Treasure Reclaimed
Cherishing these small but precious books that chronicle the sentiments of youth
Being a book lover, the first things I look for at flea markets are books—new, old, shiny or shopworn. What matters to me is the content. At a recent sale, I spied a small box under a table with some dusty old books in it that had obviously been ignored by other buyers. Inquiring about it, the vendor said, “Take it as is and it’s yours.”
Returning home and dying of curiosity, I immediately delved into the ragged box. On top were some old, outdated reference books, a calculus book, an old, worn Bible and several novels written by unknown authors. Some tattered newspapers were folded in two, and beneath them—to my amazement—I discovered a well-worn black leather book with the word “Autographs” written in faded gold letters across the cover.
From what I’ve read, autograph books originated back in the mid-16th century among European university students who wished to preserve memories of their classmates and teachers upon graduation. These took the form of sketches, poetry and verse, and although they were chiefly confined to Dutch and Germanic cultures, by the late 18th century they were popular in America and flourished until school yearbooks replaced them.
Carefully turning the fragile pages of this book, I realized it was someone’s treasure of memories. Who would trash something like this? I wondered. The dates range from 1915 to 1926 and appear to have been written by friends who attended Provincial Normal School (for teacher training) in Vancouver from 1925-26—over 90 years ago!
One by one, I gently turned the faded gold-rimmed pages and began to read the beautiful sentiments, which were accompanied by some extraordinary coloured sketches.
The first page shows a delicate black-and-white sketch of a lovely dogwood flower, followed on the next page by a poem written in December 1915 and signed “Yours as ever, Dad.”
The following pages, 43 in all, with most written on both sides, reflect the affection with which this lady was held by her classmates. On one page, there is a King George V two-cent stamp, which reads, “By gum—it sticks!” signed “Howard Brown.” There is also a painted picture of orange poppies decorating another page, a sailboat and lighthouse on still another, a whole page devoted to an owl in full dress sitting in a tree, and many more, all with loving sentiments.
These are truly little works of art and should be preserved. The last entry in the book is from the recipient herself and reads: “This ends the book of affection, the album of beauty and
truth, this ends the sweet collection of gems that were gathered in youth.” It’s signed “May Cornwall, June 11th, 1926.”
After reading this exquisite little book, I remembered that I, too, have an autograph book somewhere in the recesses of a trunk that I had largely forgotten existed. Upon retrieving it, I saw that it was dated 1942 to 1945, my elementary school years at Sir Richard McBride, over 70 years ago!
Although it doesn’t contain any works of art, it has many of the same sentiments, poems and sayings as May’s does. My favourite teacher wrote: “Choose not thy friends from outward show, feathers float but pearls lie low.” The same verse occurs in May’s book as well, 20 years earlier.
Reading over the names of these friends brought back old memories of days gone by when we were all young and eager to face the future with our dreams and aspirations. I can’t help but wonder where they’ve all gone and whether their dreams came true.
Our autograph books are truly a record of our past as surely as a diary or journal and should be treasured as such. These are words and sentiments that were written in our youth and should be forever remembered. It is sad that May’s book was destined to end up in a dusty old box, but I shall treasure it for her.
—by Jo-Anne Sheanh, Sechelt, British Columbia
Remembering RCAF Station Namao
Our Canada Our Country Our Stories Page 18