Golden Tales

I came from Toronto as a retired civil servant, but I’ve never really retired. I worked in the same government ministry, the Ministry of Community Social Services, for 49 years. It’s might be a record. I retired and then started the three year jazz program at Humber. 

I remember my dental hygienist, who was a girl from South Africa, she lived in Bowmanville and told me that she moved out because she found the town racist and she was afraid. And there I was thinking “geez, I’m living the dream here.” Her experience before I moved here was a whole lot different than mine.

There was also a place called The Acres. In the good old days it was a dance hall, and it was always hopping on a Friday and Saturday night. A lot of the migrant workers from Barbados and Jamaica were going down there to party and the girls who knew they got paid on a Friday were down there too. Many a mother have warned their daughters about going to The Acres.

These days to see what had been apple orchards and corn fields turned into developments, that’s hard. All these houses with no space between them. New subdivisions with new people trekking to Toronto for work. No time for community involvement.

When I was 17, I was living in Lindsay. Bruce MacArthur, who ran a funeral business, asked me if I was willing to go out at night and pick up a body. He needed help and I said I would do it. That’s how I got started. We would bring a body back to the funeral home and he would do the embalming and I would watch. When I was in grade 13, there was a funeral home in Whitby that was looking for an apprentice. I got that job. My pay was $24 a week, and my room and board was $16 a week. I worked 11 days on and then had three days off, and I was on-call every other night.

The business was the WC Town Funeral Chapel and Ambulance Service. All I needed was a chauffeur’s license and my basic first aid. Everything else you just learned on the job. Eventually, the funeral and ambulance businesses split, and it became the Whitby Ambulance Service, and then Durham Regional Ambulance Service in 1982. I worked for 30 years in the Whitby station, then Bowmanville for four years, and my last three years of service were out of Port Perry.

I moved to Bowmanville in 1981. I’ve always been a history buff. I was lucky enough to grow up with a mother who was a historian. I can remember people phoning her up to ask things about their family’s history, and she’d rhyme off history for an hour with people she’d never met.

Here in Grande Prairie, I have a museum village, and incorporated in my museum village is a 1911 Presbyterian Church. It’s a log building, and it’s one of the first buildings from Grande Prairie. When it opened, what do you think they had inside? They had a Dominion organ from Bowmanville.

I worked for the Bowmanville Museum for a long time, and every summer at least one German would show up. We would take them out to the school. Back then the school was a religious school, and that’s who we bought the log cabin from. It was from a skills training exercise for the German soldiers to do, and we were able to buy that for $200. We got a company to move it for free and then we restored it all. So, that was the last piece from the time of the Germans in Bowmanville.

Most of the German soldiers had very positive things to say about their time at Camp 30. One funny story involved Bruno Petrenko. When they had the reunion in 1991, it occurred to me that everyone was talking about how well they were treated. I finally said “well, you guys were prisoners here… you must have some bad memories about this place.” And Mr Petrenko thought about it and says “oh… there was one thing.”

I said “aha! I knew it! What was it?” And he says “Well, you know that it used to be a boys school before it was a prison and work camp.” He said “they had boys there of all ages. Well, we were stationed was where the little boys were, so the toilets were only so far off the floor, and the sinks were only this high off the floor,” as he gestured close to the floor. And that was the only bad thing he could think of from his time in Bowmanville as a Prisoner of War.

When my mother moved to Bowmanville, she sang in the choir at Trinity. In the evening there weren’t a lot of people that came to the service, but she did see a young bachelor sitting in the back row. My father grew up as a minister’s son, so he, of course, went to church. She took one look at him and thought “mmhmm...” 

They got married at my grandfather’s home by my other grandfather. They were married December 13th, and my mother was very pleased about that. She had a teaching contract in those days (1940); if you got married as a woman, that was the end of your job. But she had a contract with the board and they had to keep her on and pay her until June. 

I met my husband, Robert, in Grade 9. He already knew my mother because she had taught him. I had no chance of getting into any trouble because everyone knew who I was... My mother taught at Bowmanville High School, and my father worked at Goodyear. In those days, people kept an eye on everybody.

With a lot of veterans that I’ve known over the years, they would talk to me... you know, as an associate… the old guard they called us. And I always asked permission. “Can I share your story?” They would say “yeah.” And the underlying tone was “as long as you never let the kids forget us.” They were worried back then that all of this (the Wars) would have been for nothing. And look what’s happening in the world right now!?

We’ve been in Courtice since 1993.

Some of the legions have died and closed over the years because the numbers aren’t there. But we’ve got such a great Legion here. It represents a real connection to the men and women that served. Because, the banners aren’t just about the wartime. It’s about other people too.

I believe that by looking at the history and seeing where the soldiers were back then... I mean... it’s so different from now. How are you ever going to learn to be better without it? So, by looking at the history and learning from it, it shows us where we’ve been and where we can head to, right? 

I think what the older generation taught us was that you have to be grateful for what you have. I don’t know if the younger generations fully understand that.

We moved here in the 80’s. It took me three days before I could sleep because those crickets were so loud. People were waving and I said to my husband “ok, I don’t know what’s going on here, because there’s people driving down the street and waving at me, and I don’t know who they are.” And now I am the waver. And I love that.

I found that people in the town were very welcoming and very kind. 

I did a lot of research for the 150th. I researched the creameries and dairy history. I have worked with Brenda Metcalfe and Marilyn Pearce. We want to keep working on a research project on these histories. I don’t have an agricultural background. But, when I moved here I made a point of going out around the entire area to see what was what. I learned so much from my neighbours Terry and Phyllis Price. Terry would tell me where farms had been and what families had been there. It was a great insight into how things have changed. They gave me so much information. I miss Phyllis and think of how much she would have offered to a project like this.

There’s been so much change. If you don’t look at something when it’s originally there, this advancement wipes it right off the earth. There’s nothing there that shows you what had been there. There’s nothing that gives you a sense of anything other than a big push of modernization coming this way.

One of the joys of Clarington is if you want to be in a field, or go to a farmer’s market, or see some apple blossoms, it’s a 10 or 15 minute trip. Can you imagine how long it would take you in downtown Toronto? The ski hill? The Provincial Park? That’s in our backyard.

I had never anticipated that I was going to be a politician. I was approached by Jane Rowe who was the local councillor in Ward 1 at some point in 2003. In a weak moment I said yes that I would run. She was retiring and looking for someone to replace her. At the beginning of 2003 if you had told me that by the end of 2003 I was going to be involved with municipal politics, I would have found the whole concept hilarious.

When we first moved to Courtice there were a number of newspapers. Early on, I got the newspaper and the front page of the paper said that a billy goat had been found wandering in downtown Bowmanville on Highway 2, and “does anyone know who owns the billy goat?” Deb and I looked at each other and wondered “what have we done?” Ha ha.

Clarington has an unusually high number of good “nodes,” you know. There are any number of days (on this job) that I’d just as soon forget about, but the flip side is you have all these amazing stories. You’ll talk to the “old timers,” these people you get to connect with in this community. By and large, it’s an incredibly friendly community.