Golden Tales

My column in the Orono Times is called “The Local” because that’s what I do… I interview local people. I talk to them to get their story. There is a therapeutic element to this work, absolutely. People love to tell their stories. They think it’s important, and so do I. It’s important for them to tell their stories in their words. To hear their side of the story, their perception of the story.

People often say to me “I haven’t got much to say,” and I say “if it’s not written down, it’s gone.” We aren’t going to live forever, and our children only have one perception of us, if they are interested in the story at all. If you write it down it’s never lost.

A lot of people compare now and then. They remember when Orono used to be a village with two grocery stores, a hardware store, a blacksmith, a garage, a gas station, etc.

There’s a certain sadness when people think of the changes. So, they enjoy reminiscing about how it used to be.

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.

Growing up in Enniskillen, there were maybe ten or twelve kids that lived right in the village. We spent every day of our summers together.

Slemon’s Store was at the centre of town. The Slemons lived in the house part. They had a long counter, and behind were shelves with books. I would put everything I wanted on the counter, and they would write it all down in these books. I never had to pay for it. Once a month my dad would come in and pay the bill. Along the other side were linens, towels, and you could come in here and buy your scribblers for school. Anything you wanted.

There was a post office here too. Kathy Slemon was a really good friend, so I would come here for birthday parties. She had the best parties, and her mom always used to put money in the cake.

A funny thing happened one day when a milk truck came down too quickly, and tipped over. All the milk ran down the big hill. Every cat that ever lived in Enniskillen came out that day.

We went to Bowmanville High School, but then Courtice got its own when we were halfway through. The years we were at Bowmanville, we had to be on shifts: rural kids in the morning, town kids in the afternoon. That way the farm kids could get home in time to help with chores.

When we started school, (at Enniskillen P.S.), there were three of us: Lois Ashton, Dave Ferguson and me in Grade 1. We never had kindergarten. And when we went in 1950, Grade 9 was there as well. And everybody was in one room. Our teacher was Phillis Mitchell.

When I was growing up, I was the only boy my age in Enniskillen. There were other guys a little older than me, but they all lived on farms outside of town. And they were busy. So, I got all the odd jobs in Enniskillen. I’ve cut at least two-thirds of the lawns in town at one time or another. 75 cents if I used their mower, and a dollar if I used my own.

I’ve picked beans, I’ve pruned Christmas trees, I’ve picked strawberries. They called on me. I used to go with the Werry brothers to the cattle auctions, because I was the only guy available to do that stuff.

Not All Memories are “Golden”

There are a lot of memories from our childhoods that aren’t “golden.” One of them was with my sister, Doris.

Doris was born when I was 7 or 8 years old. She was born with, what we called, “water on the brain.” My mom was sent from Enniskillen to Toronto for her birth. If there were any programs that would have helped Doris, they were in Toronto. We only had one car, and my mother never drove.

I used to spoon feed her and push her around in her wheelchair. She was always a happy child. But when she got too big for my mom to manage, she was sent to live at a facility in Barrie.

One day, I was in Bowmanville having physiotherapy, and saw a staff member at the clinic working with a little girl… just rolling a ball to her. The girl was giggling and laughing and reminded me of my little sister, Doris. I watched and thought “oh, how I wish that kind of program was available when Doris was a child.” But, it wasn’t, and that was just the life we knew then.

Doris died when she was 20 years old, and is buried with our mother and father.

There were two general stores, diagonal each other. One was Slemon’s General Store and the other was Pethick’s Store. The barn at Pethick’s was used by Cliff as an auction barn.

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My friend Liz Kerr lives in the house where I grew up. When she got a new outdoor light, she told me she would give me the old one because that’s where Keith gave me my first kiss.

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The cemetery is where I spent a lot of Halloween nights telling ghost stories with my friend Judy.
I was married in the United Church. It used to have a steeple, but it was knocked down by lightning twice. Every year, on the May 24 weekend, we would have a service and supper out of the old shed at the back to commemorate the anniversary of our church.

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I nearly killed myself over there on the big hill. We used to build go-karts. It was just a slab of wood with some wheels on it. I was home alone and I decided to go down the big hill. I got going, and bang, bang, bang… I upset the cart. I slid a good ways down he road and under a wire fence. I tore up my shirt and my back. (David Stainton)

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There used to be a guide board sign at the intersection. So mom and dad, living right there, would see people coming home from Caesarea on Saturday night, drunk as skunks. They would come down too fast and smash into the guide board sign. We’d hear the brakes squeal from home. Dad would get out of bed and come down and see if they needed any help. They wanted to replace the wood sign with a metal one after they had replaced it about 100 times, but my dad said “absolutely not! You’ll kill someone!”

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Cliff Pethick used to have a porch on the front of his store. All the men would come home from GM or Goodyear and sit on a bench that was on the front porch. They’d all have their black lunch pails and they’d always save something for the kids. We’d hang out there waiting after school, because we would get a treat leftover from their lunch.

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There was an old guy named Doug Barton, he worked for my dad every now and again. He lived down here and was a bachelor. He came up to our house one day to see my dad and the television was on. Someone was kissing on the show, and Barton said “well isn’t that just unsanitary.”

My parents were immigrants from Holland. They came over right after the war. There was a lot of that here. They came here not speaking English, and they weren’t always received well by the Canadians at the time. They built their own churches and their own schools. We would walk over the trestle bridge by Elgin Street to our bus stop. All the public school kids were coming this way, and we were going the other. 

We would come down to a variety store; it was Frank’s Variety Store. We would come on the weekends and get a 10 cent ice cream cone. We used to walk down to the mill pond and go skating. My dad would come down and tie our skates. I remember before we had a freezer in our home there was a store called Dykstra’s, and they had lockers where you could leave your frozen food until you needed it. The milk came in a horse drawn wagon a few times a week. You had the bottles with the tokens inside that indicated what kind of milk you wanted and how much. 

I grew up north of Newtonville, between the 3rd and 4th concession, on Reid Road. My family had been in that area since the early 1800’s.

My relatives were the Brimacombe family. Aunt Florence used to tell me stories. Her father used to light fires around the barn at night to keep the wolves at bay. And here, I can open the windows and hear that cacophony of sound, and it so connects me in another way to where I live. This forest behind me is the Kendal Crown Lands, and it’s about 900 acres. We can thank Premier John Robarts for that. He worked to preserve green spaces in Ontario. Much of that land came from my father’s land.

If you lose your local connection to family, it all starts to fall apart. Add to that the demise of actual cemeteries and newspapers and other physical pieces of history, and you really start to lose the ability to find your own histories.

I lived a year in Europe, in 1963-64. The evidence of the war was still everywhere. And, I realized how fortunate I was, simply by right of birth. That year changed how I live my life. It made my life focus on giving back to community and country.

I’m very much a historian. I love the history of this area, and always listened intently to my grandfather when he told his stories. The Rutherford family has been here eight generations. The land directly to the west of Brimacombe, my uncle has the Crown Deed for that. We’ve been here since the 1830’s, and so there’s not too many people I am not related to.

My grandfather bought the land from the Brimacombes. The Oshawa Ski club started up in the 1936/37 season. I was told it was a bunch of people from the Oshawa Yacht Club who were looking for something to do in the winter. They would ski on any little hill they could find, and then they started using Raglan.

During the war, Dermot Conway was stationed here. He was a ski instructor from Quebec. When he saw Raglan, he didn’t think it was up to his “Quebec standards.” Ive Richards had been out scouting for a bigger hill in the area. He wanted a hill that faced north, with a nice big pitch and a natural bowl. He found that here on the face of this drumlin.

Ive brought Dermot out to test the hill. Dermot took off down the hill, and when he got partway down, he stopped to look up at the top. Ten feet from the top was Ive Richards, who had quickly realized it was too big a hill for him. Derm put his thumb up and that was the moment this property started it’s evolution into the ski hill it is today.

As a kid, my grandmother ran the canteen, and my sister and my cousins hung out and drank as much pop as we wanted. People still tell stories about the honey buns my grandmother made. This was my winter playground.

I worked at the library when it was known as the Orono Public Library. Same building. It was my after school job. My career was as a teacher, but when I retired I came back here in 2017.

My parents grew up here. My uncle Keith (Wood) used to work at Stutt’s drugstore, and recently my daughter worked there.

I grew up in Orono and moved back here ten years ago. You used to know everyone in Orono, and now you don’t. It’s still got that small town feel, because it hasn’t grown like other places. I am glad that Orono is “capped” in it’s growth. 

My childhood memories here include the Stedmans with the wooden floors. We had two grocery stores, we had an IGA and a Red and White. There was a barbershop, Ray’s, and the other half was Middleton’s and you could get your penny candy there. You used take pop bottles, and you could trade it for your candy. 

My family goes back to the 1700’s in this area. My grandfather ran Rolph’s Hardware store on the main street in Orono. My father met my mother at a dance in the area when he was surveying, and they ended up settling here and my father took over the store from my grandfather. My grandfather also had a Christmas tree farm. We backed onto the Crown Lands.

I spent my summers at the pool. I was a lifeguard and taught swimming at the Orono Park from age 15 to 19.

I remember my grandfather contributed $1000 in around 1972 to put lights in at the baseball diamond. On a clear night you could see down to the diamond from our house.

Sharing the history fills me up because it honours my mom, who cared so much about local history.