Golden Tales

The first time I walked into the Newcastle Historical Society, there were two guys sitting there: Royal Lee and Ken Stephenson. I said “Hi, I’m Myno and I want to do some research on policing in Newcastle… Can I look up some information?” Ken looks at me and says “Yeah, what do you need to know?” I said “Well, are there any files I can look at?” and Ken taps his head. That was the only file. Ha ha.

Then he said, “If you want to find out more information, the first thing you do is go sign that book over there.” So I did. And I hand him $5 and he gives me a membership card. Within a year, I was president. That’s how it started for me… I became that old guy sitting at the table.

What I realized from my years there was that you didn’t learn from books. You didn’t learn from the files. You learned from the people that walked in the door.

There are all these stories, you absorb these things over a period of years. I made a point of being there. I sat in that room for 25 years, on Tuesdays and Saturdays because I didn’t want to miss out on anything.

We moved to Newcastle in 1954. If you’ve ever gone into the Snug, that’s where it all started. That was my parents’ restaurant.

I would say none of us had, as they say, a “pot to pee in.” All working class. My best friend was Ukrainian, our doctor was Hungarian, Polish war veterans, English war brides, lots of Dutch, we even had Indigenous people then, right? And we all got along.

My dad came to Canada in 1911. He was 22, born in China. He was caught up in the Chinese Exclusion Act. The government thought the head tax would be enough to dissuade any Chinese from coming over, but somehow there were able to pay the $500 head tax.

My mom came over in 1952, and I am only assuming it was an arranged marriage. They never talked about it. If I did ask, you know, they didn’t want to talk about it, and you didn’t pry. 

Growing up at the Snug, we lived at the back. If you look there is a 2 storey part, and I slept in the same room with Dad and my sister slept in the same room with Mom. We used to have a Quebec stove that we put coal into, and then dad got a little Superior propane heater. It was supposed to heat the upstairs, but I can remember wearing probably 10 layers of clothes just to keep warm. But we never knew anything different. It’s just the way it was.

I think back now, if my friends came over and my parents were speaking Chinese, I’d be embarrassed. We would be serving fried rice and chicken balls up front, and we were eating authentic Chinese food at the back… you know, with chopsticks. And that was pretty novel for Newcastle. You know, I would be embarrassed. And I look back now and think “what did I have to be embarrassed about?”

It’s those reflections I do now, and how proud I am of my Chinese heritage. The first time I went to China, back in 2011, I got off the plane in Hong Kong and I just had this sort of feeling that Mom and Dad were looking down on me, and how proud there were of where I am in my life. They never had that opportunity.

Sierd De Jong

Most of the Dutch people who came here were farmers. My Dad, he was a carpenter. He worked for a big lumber mill. When the war ended, my dad said “I’m not going through another war.” So, he had the choice to go to either Australia or Canada. So, he knew people who were already here, friends of his, and they said “come to Canada… that’s a great place.” So he did… 7 kids and 2 adults, and here we come to Grafton.

Erla Jose

We have to give credit to the early directors, starting with the Massey family. They demanded that there be women on the board here. Can you imagine in 1920 that they would ask that? I think that says something about Newcastle itself though. It always had a community feeling. Everyone was so intertwined.

Peter Martin

I’ve been here for close to 3 years. I have a lifelong interest in history in the broadest sense. I sought out this place almost immediately. In a sense, a place like Newcastle is a treasure trove for a historian.

Sher Leetooze on the Newcastle Community Hall

I think we should have the local kids come in and we can talk to them about the history. We can tell them there used to be hall dinners and things… different groups and organizations, and the hall was fully stocked with dishes and everything to use. But at the end of the night, if someone says “oh, I can’t eat all this,” well, you couldn’t put it in a takeaway container, there was no such thing! So they would wrap up your plate and say “bring the plate back tomorrow will you?” And some people brought the plates back and some people didn’t. So, what a fun treasure hunt! We send the kids off to grandma’s or great grandma’s place to look in the cupboards. “Do you see anything like that?” (Pointing to a plate from the early days of the Hall) Bring it back!”

(Erla Jose: “In all the years I’ve been here, I have never heard that story. Isn’t that a great story?”)

Marilyn Kent

I wish I could go into my mother’s grocery store one more time. It was where the Home Hardware is now. She was there from 1954 to 1963. My father had passed away, and my grandmother had inherited that whole corner. The Tom’s family had started a grocery store on the end and they kept growing and expanding and buying more property from my grandmother. All that was left was this one space and she wouldn’t let it go, because she always had this idea that my family would take it over. My father’s health wasn’t good, and he was going to have to give up the farm. We would have to move to Newcastle and they would run the grocery store. But by 1964, Thompson’s had got the IGA franchise and she couldn’t’ compete anymore. She called it Helen’s Groceteria.

She was a resilient woman. I was 12 when my dad died and my brother was 7.

You know I often think right now, of my Grandmother Baskerville that owned this property, she died in 1966. I wish so much that I had more interest in history then. I think of questions today that I wish I had asked her, but I was just too busy.

(Bill Lake: “Well, when you’re young you don’t think about history”)

Remember Old George Butler? When we were kids we used to go down there to play hockey. There was no rink uptown here, so we’d go down there. It was about 20 below, Fahrenheit, and that ice was just like glass.

We were all up near where the boats were playing hockey, and somebody shot the puck way down to the bottom. We had a hound dog then, who used to go with us in my ‘53 Ford pickup. When I got down to the bottom the dog was barking and going crazy. Old George had walked across the ice and fell through. 
There he was, his one arm caught in between the pylons, just his head out of the water. He had on one of those coats you used to call a bomber jacket, big silver one. He was on his last legs.

There was an old boathouse there, and we got a bunch of kids and tore some old boards off it. We slid them over the ice and got old George out of the hole. We put him in my truck and by the time we did that he was snow-white. That’s how cold he was.

I drove him straight to his brother, the doctor. He never even got a cold.

That hound should have got a citation. But it didn’t even make the paper.

It’s interesting when you start delving into things, no matter what era you’re looking at. Right now, we’re looking into the Victorian era, but there are really interesting stories from more modern times as well. When I finish this book, I might go on to an Edwardian one, and then a mid-century one and so on.

When you’re looking at local history, the story perspective changes from that of an historian to that of a local citizen who grew up here. The stories are different, and I love that. History takes all shapes and sizes.

The face of the nation changed so much after the wars. Before that, very little had changed from the days of the first settlers. It was all agricultural and rural. If you had communities, they were small.

The face of a place is always changing, and so the stories are always changing. Even someone new to a community will have stories in a few years. Every year there’s a change that warrants a story, and we may never keep up with it. 

Collecting history is a never-ending story.