Golden Tales

I worked for Clarington for almost 20 years. There’s been quite an evolution, especially because I remember what it was like when I grew up here versus what happened in the era I worked here. My focus is on the architecture in history. It’s not just the Boys Training School that carries the history of the war era, it’s the contribution that Durham Region made with the Bomber Girls and Camp X and Goodyear and GM. There’s a whole history there that isn’t told particularly well and doesn’t really have a “home” yet.

When I grew up south of Solina, everyone went to the same church, and afterwards there would be a baseball game or a football game in someone’s field. Most of us went to 4H together.

On Saturday and Wednesday nights, you were at the soccer game. The cars would drive in and park around the field, and the kids would sit on the hoods. If there was a goal, all the horns would honk. It was great fun.

Clarington is changing. It’s growing, and the demographics are changing rapidly. So, in another year it won’t be the same. People will have different memories, different perceptions, and different opinions. And that’s what makes this all so interesting.

I got involved with Camp 30 at first because my kids were interested in history and the war. It has grown from that into a real interest in preserving an ability for people to really connect with something real that is from the war.

One place I think of is the old bake shop. I loved walking in. For years I wanted to marry a baker because it just seemed too good to be true. It was on Temperance street, and it was so good. Carter’s.... those glass cabinets and wood floors. It just smelled of sugar and goodness.

That’s a memory that comes up. And it takes you back to the way our life was when I was growing up. There was one car trip to Bowmanville on Saturday mornings. There was no running back and forth. You might go to the Olympia for hot roast beef sandwiches. Mom would get her hair done. There was a while we didn’t have a washing machine at home, so we brought our laundry into town. That Saturday trip was really important.

Our families have been here since the mid-1800’s. Our grandchildren, who live here, are seventh-generation in Newtonville.

Our auction hall is the old B/A station on Highway 2, and behind it is the feed mill Betty mentioned. 

That feed mill building was an ammunition building in Ajax. They became defunct after the war and the government put them up for sale at ten percent of their value. My dad bought one of the old munitions buildings. It was DIL industries in Ajax, where the bomb girls worked. My mother was a bomb girl. The building was disassembled, brought to Newtonville, and rebuilt here.

In the Stapleton’s Auction lifetime, we had over 12,000 auctions in 50 years. Every one of those with one hundred to one thousand people at it. I can’t imagine the number of people I’ve done business with over the years. We would sell for people with major collections one weekend, then the next weekend selling for someone who lost their farm. There’s lots of happy stories and there’s many sad stories in the auction business too.

Betty and I have been married 55 years this year. I love her more now than ever. 

My dad (Bill Skelding) had the fuel company, serving Bowmanville through Cobourg. Frank’s dad had the feed mill. So, between us, our families knew just about everyone. 

Frank and I first went to school here at SS#4. In 1959, they built the new school down by the 401. The day the new school opened, all the students were told to “carry your books down to the new school.” So, off we went in a long line from the old school to the new one. How I wish I had a picture of that!

Frank and I met growing up here in town. Frank’s sister was my best friend. I didn’t like him, of course, because he was my best friend’s brother. Years later, I got a job in Toronto, and one day, my mother asked Frank if he would give me a ride up. She knew what she was doing… she liked him. I think she still does! 

We met here and we stayed here. Newtonville is home.

I went to school in Crooked Creek, and then went to Starkville, then to Newcastle, and finally Grade 13 in Bowmanville. In that last year, I got a letter from the principal asking if I wanted to replace a male teacher, while there were away fighting in the war. So, I was hired to teach at the age of 17. 

We had two or three lessons on how to mark and manage and about curriculum, but we didn’t really follow it. Sometimes we only had one child per grade in the schoolhouse.

On my first day of teaching, my mother was driving me, and she put the car in the ditch. Well, I couldn’t be late, so I grabbed my books, and my lunch pail, and away I went running. It was a full concession away… about four miles. I got to the schoolyard, and the boys thought I was a student running in. Then I pulled the keys out to open the school. It was a memorable first day.

I loved teaching. I taught for 27 years. It was the best. I hope I helped the children… but they taught me as well. 

Goodyear wanted somewhere to expand, so they came to Bowmanville. They had some trouble finding employees, because so many men were farming here. So, they went to Toronto to get workers, including my grandfather. 

There were no accommodations for them in Bowmanville, so they built the Balmoral Hotel. The men, including my grandfather, took the train from Toronto and rented rooms for the workers. That’s how the plant got going.

If you drive around the town, along somewhere like Carlisle Avenue, you will see places where the housing is all the same. Those houses, and many like them, were built by Goodyear to house their workers. They were built a long time ago, and don’t look all that bad today, still!

We used to have track and field meets out at the Boys Training School, because they had such good land. They had a lot of boys there. The boys were nice too… although they’d always want you to bring a pack of cigarettes. 

As a teen, I played baseball for Newcastle and we won an All-Ontario Championship. For that, we were taken on a trip to New York City, and saw two Yankees games. I’ve never forgotten that time.

(Photo courtesy of The Orono Weekly Times)

Mom and Dad had to move their house, which was a Rundle house, as the 401 came through. They moved it on skids, a few feet a day. They lived in it while they moved it. Unbelievable! When they got it to where the OPG office is, they put the outside back on it.

My mom was very stylish. A city girl, with her nails painted, and high heel shoes and dressed to the nines. 

After I was born, my dad fastened a box onto his tractor. That’s where I would lay as a baby. My mom would have to drive the tractor with me riding along in the box beside her. My dad was working full time at General Motors. Well, we had to get the crops planted somehow, and the only one to do it was my mom… the city girl. He would tell her he needed a field done by the time he got home, and then he would plant at night, after his shift.

Ken adds: “This is why Karen can’t drive long distances in the car. She just falls asleep.”

I grew up down by the lake, near where the cement company is. Dad lived there ‘til he died in 1967. The farm is gone... it’s all a big hole now.

Karen and I were five miles apart growing up. Both our dad’s had contracts with Stokely-Van Camps... you know sweet corn and pumpkin and all that. My dad grew for them and so did Karen’s dad. That’s how I met Karen when we were 21. I had a summer job with Stokely-Van Camps harvesting peas and driving a combine, and Karen’s brother, Ron, had the same job. Ron asked if I wanted to come home and have dinner at his place. So we met then and started going together.

We originally met when we were five years old at nursery school. Our teacher had a heart attack halfway through the school year and that was the end of nursery school. It was where the BOAA is now. The Lion’s Centre… I remember sitting on those lions when I was younger.

After we got married at Ebenezer Church, we had our reception at the same Lion’s Club.