INTERVIEW WITH MR - Rothesay Living Museum



INTERVIEW WITH MR. BILL MCKNIGHT

So, what we’re doing is we’re simultaneously recording here for better sound quality and we’re hoping we get everything off that but we are not absolutely sure. So we have back up for the back up.

Did you read the story in the reader about Currie?

Yes, that was interesting. I kind of browsed through it, I didn’t really get a chance to read the whole thing but that’s the story of a guy who went away and then came back.

Yes, as a matter of fact, it was explained to me why when we drove up to the village that there were tents out on Drury Lane during the winter time. He was having dig posts and everything put in but the people he had, he must have had the means to be able to do that kind of thing and the spiral staircase I don’t think was in the house.

Yeah, it looked like it.

Yes. Because there was a crew working there all winter long and several vehicles so the man has the means to be able to do those things. First of all, he had the desire to match the means.

Well, he’s 69 now I guess.

Yeah, he’s rather young for that age.

Well, it’s just that I guess he’s sort of pondering retirement of some kind or another and it’s nice that he’s chosen to come here.

Well, he has four homes.

Yes, but he certainly has taken that property, which was in a debatable state and certainly it will last another hundred years.

Yes. Well, when Mackay owned it, he was basically a farmer so I don’t imagine he.

Did he build it?

I doubt very much that he built it, I don’t know, I have no idea to go back that far.

There was at one time, to my understanding, very near to that, are you guys recording this?

BACKROUND: No, we’re, for some reason this is going to automatic or going to a manual so I can switch the voice off.

And then, when the Oland family bought it, they heard that he was going to sell it and I don’t think UNB, I think they owned it.

Yes, and I think UNB found it onerous, at that time UNBSJ found it onerous to maintain it. But I thought, somehow or other this Currie has a connection with UNB. Now I don’t know if it’s UNB Saint John or UNB Fredericton. My suspicion is it’s UNB Fredericton.

I think so too, yes. When he went to school, I don’t think UNB Saint John was there.

No. See, I was out there the other day and I didn’t realize that UNBSJ started in 1964 but when it started it was uptown. It was an uptown concept and it was at the Beaverbrook house or whatever.

Yes, up at the head of Coburg Street.

Yes.

Are you guys ready? Are you rolling? Ok, so we were just talking a little bit about the house that Richard Currie has and we started talking a little bit about UNB and UNBSJ and the Beaverbrook house, which was 1964 and at that time, now my understanding was that house was originally a Starr house that Miller Britten had some connection to it one way or another. He was a painter if you remember.

Oh, I knew Miller.

Oh did you?

Oh yes.

Ok. So did you get one of his drawings or two?

I have, what to you call the kind of pain you use, chalk.

Pastel drawings?

Yes, and it’s of an old factory somewhere over in West Saint John and on the back there is a drawing by pencil on the back of it. But I knew Miller in Saint John and my dad, Miller was in the reserve Army and he was trying to get into the military and he wouldn’t be accepted because of his physical condition. But his father was able to help him and by God didn’t he get into the air force.

Oh really? Ok yes.

Yes, and he made quite a number of trips over Germany and all and when Miller came back, as a matter of fact, we stored one of his chairs in our kitchen in the south end and we gave it back to him when he came home. But he used to have his art studio down at the foot of Princess Street and he was in the religious frame of mind at that time.

After the war?

Oh yes.

So that’s when he did his whole series of religious works and a lot of pastel drawings and sort of very, I don’t know how you could describe it, but the thin figures, they were drawn sort of not stick-like but I remember there were flowers and figures and a lot in praying positions and that sort of thing.

Yes.

And then, would that be the time he did the mural for the hospital? That’s in the hospital now I think.

Oh I don’t really know.

Ok. So that’s where your paths connected and you didn’t.

I knew him up until, oh when would it be? Fred McKinnon’s mother, she was a good friend of his and she used to be the equivalent to the Chief of Police in Saint John, this was a female. And when she left here, she went up and opened the Coverdale Home for Girls in the Riverview Moncton area.

Oh ok.

So, my association with Miller would not have gone beyond the 60’s.

Recognizing him on the street sort of thing. Your father had a closer relationship with him?

Well, that was pre-war you see because he helped him get into the military service and of course Miller was gone all during the war and then he came back afterwards. But I also knew some local people that were personal friends of his after the war. Harold MacDonald, MacDonald down on North Wharf, Harold was a personal friend of his. Miller bought that old house out by going out by Peacock’s Flowers.

Yes, there was a Dr. Keddy that lived way down the end of I forget what it was called, like the Beach Road it comes down and where Shirley McAlary lived, there was a property there and it had like a pond in front of it and it had sort of a large veranda around the side of it.

Yes.

And I guess that lasted until about the 70’s and all that’s left there now is the pond is still there I believe and there were stone pillars on the entrance to the house and that was his last phase. Of course, he had sort of an unfortunate end in a way when his addictions grabbed hold of him and that was the end of that. So here we are. It’s just a side view on something but it is very interesting and it would be interesting to people who are interested in art and Saint John. But we’ll get back here to Rothesay and this house. This property that we are sitting on and the houses in the background of it, can you talk about that a little bit?

Well, we acquired the house in the late 50’s, so we’ve been here I guess 48 years now and it had belonged to a gentleman named Ron Bovaird who was a mason. He was I believe one of five brothers that were all masons and the families are still around this area and I doubt very much if there’s a house between Sussex and Brookville that a Bovaird didn’t participate either in the foundation or a chimney or the fireplace. And as you can see, he ribbed every stone in the foundation and that foundation was two-feet thick. Most homes built today, you’re lucky if you get them more than 8 inches. It is a very, very old property and there is no such thing as a 2x4, they were all 3x5’s so they were very thick and very strong. The plaster in the house is at least an inch thick in most places and it is held together with horse hair is how they used to plaster years ago and there’s quite a number of features. Of course cut nails were used.

Any idea of the time? Now the foundation and the house were all built at the same time?

Well, in years gone by, when you built a foundation, you simply dug down until you hit bedrock and then you simply built the foundation up from the bedrock.

Oh ok.

Ok. So, there is seepage because they didn’t know how to really prevent seepage in those days and plastic pipes draining away the water around the foundation is a rather new thing. It wasn’t available 200 years ago. So, there’s also a drain out so if anything does leak in, it follows little cement trenches and goes out.

Little cement trenches?

Yes.

So you say they used to put the ribbing between. Is that a different material?

Well, that would be like they do brick work. Just a cement and sand mix all the way around and you can see it. He had color, like he used red there.

Ok. So, the stone, the first part of the house he built this. So that’s about 200 years old?

No, Ron didn’t build it.

Oh, the property is?

Yes, the property is. As a matter of fact, Harry Green who lived down the road here, I am so angry with myself because I spent a couple hours sitting on his front step one morning and he told me the number of people that had lived here and it was just amazing, it goes way back to sea captains and so on and the original people that work for Mr. Allison, Manchester Robertson Allison here, there were three old properties; this one, the old farm house on the crest of the hill over here and Art Miller’s little place across the way here. And, as a matter of fact, Harry is long gone now, but he told me that he remembered when he lived here himself. As a little boy he was up looking out the window upstairs and you could see across and they were pulling the other farm house from further back with horses out the edge of the field.

In the location where it is now?

Yes.

But that house didn’t have a foundation at that time?

I have no idea. But that house was used for the first people that lived up here. Bill Gandy was the first. See the Green Road ended just by Art Miller’s place and there was just a driveway up to the old farm house and when Bill Gandy was building the house over there, he lived there and different people lived there when they were constructing. I don’t know whether Burt Cosman lived there before he built or not.

In Art Miller’s?

No in the old farm house.

Oh, ok.

We referred to it as the old farm house just because we’ve been here that long. And all the properties down the road here, we think of them who the people were first here. Like the old MacDonald house down here, that’s the one, that just above,

The one that Martin Flewelling has now?

No, just above it.

Oh, the one that Carson, Steve Carson from Enterprise Saint John?

No, what’s his name? Who’s the Speaker of the House in Fredericton now?

Yeah, that’s the one that Steve Carson has now. Bev Harrison lives there.

That was the MacDonald house. Now, Mr. MacDonald was the brother of the one that owned Export A cigarettes.

Oh really?

Yes. And he lived there and he was the maritime representative.

Of MacDonald Tobacco?

Yes, MacDonald Tobacco, yes.

So, is that some of the reason why there’s MacDonald Consolidated School? Because the tobacco company sponsored these consolidated schools.

I don’t really know. The MacDonald Consolidated School is up in Kingston isn’t it?

Yes. But it’s called MacDonald Consolidated because it was MacDonald Tobacco.

Yes, but I have no idea of the name.

Ok, but there’s a local connection to MacDonald Tobacco or there was at that time?

Oh, yes, because Mr. MacDonald lived down here.

So, would have been an Atlantic representative?

Yes.

And he did the same type of work that you did working for Barbour’s I suppose.

Well, he was the local sales representative for MacDonald’s here. They had no manufacturing facilities here.

Oh, ok. So, then the house existed here on another foundation, Ron Bovaird came in and he put the foundation is at it is?

Well, I think he probably restored it.

Oh ok.

Well, that’s my guess.

He would’ve raised the house and put the foundation in?

I don’t know if he raised it or not.

Oh, you mean the foundation might have been here before but he’d have restored it?

Well, when Ron retired or gave up work, the federal government hired him for two years and he went to Cape Breton and he taught the Cape Bretoners how to restore Louisburg.

He was a master.

Yes. As a matter of fact, up behind the barn, I have some granite slabs that the people that made gravestones used to cut and the pieces they had left over, they’d save for Ron and I have a whole punch of them up there. Some of them are this big and they’d be that thick at one end and that thin at the other and I have never used them so I’ve just kept them stored up there. I’ve had to move them a couple of times and they are so heavy I could only move them during the winter time by putting them on a toboggan and pull them because you couldn’t lift them they were so heavy.

Now, what would he have used them for? For ornamental work?

I’m not sure.

He’d cut them up to fit his?

Yes. You can see there’s a small one by our front steps there, that’s the kind of granite they were. But they were cut fine smooth just like a gravestone and the back side would be rough, unfaced.

So then, you added on to this house later and your sister lives here with you. But the barn that is here, that was originally with the property too?

Yes, that was part of the barn. The big part of the barn went this way, opposite to the other and over here where that garden is, over there they had a horse connection somehow because when we dig down there, we could find old parts of harnesses and horseshoes, etc. so, they must have had horses here as well. Of course, the original picture that I showed you shows a rake, one of those old hay rakes right here.

So, the original property. Was this always known as the Green Road and then it ended where Art Miller’s house or rental property is?

Yes.

And so was that part of a land grant?

I really don’t know. The Green family, Harry Green who lived just down the road here, he was a plumber and Andy Green, I’m not sure where he lived but he did live finally on the Scoville Road over here and he was an electrician. They were two trades’ people that were known throughout the community. Harry and Andy’s parents and possibly grandparents had a mill down by the Taylor Brook where it crosses under the railway tressel. So, if you go down the Kinghurst Road there and follow the tracks, it will take you along to the brook entrance to the river and that’s where the mill was.

Did they employ a fair number of people?

I have no idea how many they employed.

Did they bring in the lumber? It wasn’t lumber cut from here. Was it used for building ships or?

I have no idea. But there was certainly big lumbar here because this property next to us right here, the woods were so thick that you couldn’t throw a stone into the woods, there was so much. When John Baxter decided to build his house there, he had no idea just where to put the house because he couldn’t see the land. So, he had a crew come in here during the winter and they took out trees that were this big around and 60-70 feet high and they put them on trucks and carted them away. Then when they cleared it all out, John could walk over the property and say oh boy, that’s where I’ll build. Because, there’s a rock out-draft underlying here to such a degree that you could only go down so far and the place where John built his house was the only place you could build because there’s a rock mountain down there that the kids used to play on that is about 30-40 feet high, a rock.

Really?

Yes. And as a matter of fact, when John put the foundation in he had to blast out there and not just dig. There were two fields next door here that were part of this property and I had the opportunity to buy it when we bought the house but we didn’t do it, and I used to keep the field mowed for the boys to play baseball. We used to have a run around diamond and football posts. All the local boys used to play baseball and football here in the field and then the first person that bought this property here was Percy Lamb and Percy couldn’t put a foundation in so he had to pour a slab because the rock out-draft came right through the ground.

Oh, yes. Because that was the first house, I think Steve was his son, and it was the first house I’d ever seen that had a knee wall in it. I said don’t you have a basement? And they said no. But that was the reason.

Yeah, rock out-draft. It actually shows through the surface of the ground.

Like it does up at the top of Spyglass Hill?

Yes. And there are several places over in the other field where rock comes right out of the surface.

But it still was fertile land? Even if it was rocky.

Oh yes, very much so. We used to have a herd of cows here in the back field and they add to the fertility of the soil as well.

Well, starting we were talking about the Currie house that was at one time Mackay and his name was Campbell Mackay?

Campbell Mackay and he owned the Kinghurst Dairy and he had all Jersey cows. As a matter of fact, there is a block of woods here about 100 years square adjacent to us here, that was never touched because there were three springs in it. If you go down the back of this field and look down, there’s one spring right at the end, there’s one in the middle and one at the far end. And they were all joined together. Somebody, somehow dug a ditch and joined all three together and the last one they put a little roof over it. And all the cows down by the barn down by the dairy had all their water, all gravity fed, didn’t even need a pump. But that well is still there and running very well.

It still exists today?

Oh, very much so. You see, this whole back field it drains down, saucer like down into this area here, where on this side of the hill it drains down to your side. But, when the town extended the Green Road in, they put in storm drains so most of the water over by your area goes down the Green Road under storm drains.

And out into the river?

And out into the river yes.

Is that a good thing?

Well, there is no pollution in that field up there. It is such high ground.

Well, I got talking one time to Bruce Tanner and he said that he didn’t agree with asphalt because he said it affects the rate of water levels in the area and of course there’s always a concern with people on wells around whether you retain the water or if you have the water run off quickly.

Yes.

Where there ever any floods that you remember?

Well, right behind, that ditch on my driveway was a stream. Every spring I had to put planks across it as a bridge and it had the iris flowers growing all along it. Well, once the Green Road was extended, that stream sort of diminished and dried up. But, when you get very severe heavy storms, you get an awful lot of water flowing down there and that used to flow right out onto the green road and it used to be an awful mess because during the spring it would freeze and make ice. So, the town finally went along the bottom of this property and dug a ditch and put gravel in so the stream when it came down would go right into the gravel and right out into the storm drains.

Because at the crest of the hill, you would hit that ice just as you were.

That’s right.

Yes, I remember that.

It would flow right across the road and onto the other side.

Yes. And it would wash out the road. So, that boggy area that is behind there, that would drain in through here? Right behind the Delaney’s and behind Lamb’s. That naturally low area this coming off of Spyglass Hill would come down and go there?

Yes. And see all the land behind you here belonged to this property. And, I understand that Ron Bovaird sold it to Campbell Mackay in 1933. Now, Campbell Mackay, his dairy was here and as I said, he had all Jersey cows and the milk was in glass bottles. The cream line in the bottle would be down that far and if you took the top off, it would never pour, you had to spoon it out, but you could whip it. And he had a brother that owned the Hilo farm up in Hampton and he had all Jersey cows, so all the milk from up there came down to here for the dairy.

So how did they get it from there to here?

Oh it would be trucks of some kind.

Not by train?

By gosh, you know that’s a possibility too but I somewhat doubt it because you’re going back to the 30’s and 40’s and truck vehicles were not common, even in Saint John trucks were not common. They used to use slovens to move barrels of molasses and vinegar around.

Even in the 30’s?

Oh sure. Yes, even into the 40’s when you wanted something moved, you would go down to the foot of King Street, Market Slip, and you would hire a sloven like you hire a truck to haul something.

And that’d be like a horse or maybe a couple of horses?

Yes, mostly one horse. But the sloven was a unique vehicle because they had great big wheels but the axel was way down just above the ground so the slovens were just a few inches off the ground. You didn’t have to lift anything, you’d just roll it on.

And they were, my understanding is that it was a local invention of some kind.

I’ve heard that too. I’ve never known of it being anywhere else.

Ok. So, now prior to that being a dairy, and I’m not sure of the genesis of that house, but my understanding was that there was at one time a school there, a private school for girls I think. But that it was a wooden structure and it disappeared. I have no idea exactly where it is, it was just mentioned briefly. Now, you moved out here in the 40’s but you had history or you had interest in this area from childhood did you not?

Well, in the 30’s, pardon me I’ll explain that to you in a minute. In the 30’s, my father used to rent a cabin out on they called it the Carter Road but now it’s called the Shipyard Road, but they had five cabins. The Carter family owned five cabins down at the end of the road all along the beach and in the 30’s, I was about between the ages of 8 and 12 and of course we had bicycles and that’s how we got about. It would be very common for us to get on our bikes and drive down to Gondola Point because they had a nice pavilion down there at that time. That was before they put the Majestic in. The Majestic went into that pond later.

Ok, but was there not a Purdy, D. J. Purdy?

Oh yes, I said the Majestic, the Purdy was put in there. There were two riverboats, the Majestic and the Purdy. The Majestic ended up on the other side of Darling’s Island just right there.

Ok. Alright. So, that was a point, people have told me different stories about the D. J. Purdy. First off, it was used quite extensively but then its demise. And one thing that happened is sort of it lost its usage in terms of river transportation and so then it was dragged up the Gondola Point Beach.

Yes.

Then, was there a fire?

Actually, the one dragged up on the beach where the ferry went across and the road went down to the pavilion, there was a pond. And, they would dig out the beach and pull in that little canal they made and place it right in the pond.

In the spring freshet?

No, the pond was there all the time. And then they just filled in gravel around it and used it as an entertainment center. You know, you could buy hot dogs and pop on it and that kind of thing. And I think they had Nickelodeon’s and sort of a dance hall kind of thing.

And that was the depression in that area there, still there on the beach. And you can still, I went up there and saw places where there were anchor bolts in trees and that sort of stuff that was obviously left over from anchoring.

Yes, well just where you go down the ramp to the ferry, the portion on that side of the road, that was the pond and the pond was surrounded by high trees. You had to actually get through some bushes to get into it and of course the road was on the upper side and went right straight down to the pavilion. That also, right down the road during the winter time, was kept open right down to the pavilion because when the river froze, the Department of Highways put trees in the ice that would freeze in and those were the markers for when you drove across the river. You simply drove right down and turned out by the beach and right straight across the river.

Where the ferry is now?

Just above it. And it came up of course where the ferry lands on the other side but on this side it was right in front of the pavilion.

So, sort of a little further up river I guess, did you ever see or use the crossing at Perry Point?

No, that was long before my time.

Oh it was, ok.

But you could see the posts were still there.

The abutments?

Yes, the abutments. They were logs around with rocks in the middle. I don’t know what the bridge whether it was a wooden bridge or a covered bridge or what, I’m not sure.

It was a wooden one but there was a mill over there at Perry Point. But that was, as far as I know, still the only land crossing or permanent structure for crossing over onto the peninsula that’s ever been. And I’m not sure exactly what happened to it, I’d have to look back into it but I’m not sure of the genesis or the time. Now, you lived in Fairvale in the summer. Would your father come from work on the train and get off at the Fairvale Station?

Well, it was a long drive out here so father would come out on the weekends and mother and my sister and I would be here.

There wasn’t a train service at that time?

No, well remember the train service is a long ways from there. It’s way in by where it is now.

Oh yes, ok. Where the train station was.

Where the road down to Sycamore Point goes.

That’s right. And that would be a good ¾ of an hour walk from there down to the bottom of Shipyard Road wouldn’t it?

Oh yes, very much so.

So he would stay in town and come out on the weekends?

Yes.

And then you bicycled around and you went to Gondola Point Beach. What about the Recreation Center that was in there and still there, was that used on Ballpark Road in Fairvale? Not Ballpark but the next one over.

Yes, I know where you mean.

The Fairvale Outing Association.

Yes, that was mostly tennis courts there years ago. There were quite a number of people that played tennis there but we, the other things that we did, we’d bike into the Riverside Golf Course because they wanted caddies at the course.

So you were at the Golf Club and you caddied. At what age did you start doing that?

Oh, I would say 10-12 years old, that range.

Did you have to carry the clubs?

Oh yes. There were three classes of caddies, 1st, 2nd and 3rd class, and a 3rd class caddy, which most of us were, we got 25 cents for 18 holes. We never got out before 10 o’clock in the morning because nobody played golf before 10 and the grass was wet.

And they had leather shoes I suppose.

And a 2nd class caddy got 35 cents and you could become a 2nd class caddy. You could never become a 1st class caddy because when you were a first class caddy you were then a golfer and they got 50 cents and it was very nice when the Americans came because you could carry doubles. You could carry a bag on each shoulder and the only difficulty with that was they always played on opposite sides of the fairway so if you didn’t go this way you went this way as a caddy.

So how many holes? Would you do a whole round in a day or would you do 2 or 3?

Oh yes, you’d do one and then stay and hopefully do another one.

So you might make 50 cents?

Yes. Tips were not prevalent in those days either.

Ok. But would 50 cents be quite a bit of money?

Oh heavens yes. When I was a teen going to high school, I got a weekly allowance from my dad, which was $1 and that did everything. That not only gave you a chance to go with your friends to the restaurants but also to the dance hall on the weekends.

So it was profitable in the summer for you to work as a caddy. But it wouldn’t be every day. It wouldn’t be rain days. Would they book you in advance for certain things?

Oh no, you’d just show up and sit on a bench waiting for golfers to come.

Ok. And how would they come in? Would they come in by car?

Oh yeah.

And the roads were paved or not?

Yes, they would come out from Saint John.

Were the roads paved?

Yes.

Was Shipyard Road paved?

No, Shipyard Road would be a dirt road. The street car system in Saint John used to come out beyond the three-mile house and it could bring you out far enough on the street car that you could then hitchhike the rest of the way.

If you were staying in town?

If you were living in town. And of course you were always picked up. You never had any difficulty hitchhiking because any of the golfers always knew they needed caddies.

So if you were in town and you were hitchhiking out, you may have already made your first job for the day by sticking out your thumb.

Yes.

So then, any other sort of early memories of this area when you were living in Fairvale in the summers that you remember up until?

Well, when I think of the Fairvale Road, there were no properties on the upper side of the road, they were all farms with barns. The people lived on the river side of the road and that was true almost all the way out there, just fields on the right hand side. Of course, now you have Sherwood Park and all that area of housing. In the whole Renforth area, there were no real permanent homes there. Rothesay had the permanent homes but the other areas, well it was a farming community in Fairvale Gondola Point and there was the Renforth area were summer homes and gradually people winterized those homes and moved out here all year around.

So the farms would be the most common I guess in a sense business, they would be a family business, but they would be the most common business out here.

Well, in by Colwell’s store, all that land just beyond it was all farm, the Mercer farm. The great big barn is still there.

Yes.

And that was the Mercer farm.

And were these farmers…

They were both cattle and milk.

So it was mostly beef and milk?

Beef and milk yes.

It wasn’t vegetables or that sort of thing? That wasn’t as prevalent?

I wouldn’t have any recollection of that.

Did they butcher at all? Were there any that worked, you know the farmers now you tend to see them come in from other countries and they provide other products.

Well, the butcher house, there were two of them. There was one right on Thorne Avenue there just this side of the burying ground, Canada Packers had that one and then there was another one up where the Woolco Mall was in East Saint John. When you looked over at East Saint John from the South End, you looked across Courtney Bay and industry was along the bay, then there were a few houses, commercial on the other side of the road but the whole hill where the Woolco mall was built was just a bare hill and right in the middle of it was the old butcher house, you could see it there, it was a wooden building.

Oh ok. So it was at the crest of a hill or that hill, that rocky out-crop. I’m not sure what it is now, but Woolco is what it is most known for.

Yes.

I’m trying to think, it’s a call center place now. But the houses that were below that going into where the Jarvis Bay memorial and all that, those were all post World War II houses weren’t they?

Oh yes.

So, there were a lot of houses that were built post World War II. We were talking, you were living in Fairvale in your teenage years in the summer, that would be about what year?

Well, all during the war, everybody lived in Saint John and all in the South End. There were a few people living on the West Side and a few in the North End but the first housing development was the Rifle Range is what they call it, out where.

Milledgeville.

Well, this side of Milledgeville, that was the Rifle Range out there and that was called Portland Place. Then the first development outside of that was Fundy Heights on the West Side.

So, you were a teenager. So when did World War II start. I mean it started at 1939 but what age were you in that time?

Well, I would have just been in the latter part of grade school going to high school. There’s something that might be interesting to you. Any males of military age were not here, they were in the military. And the jobs in Saint John were all done by high school students. I worked at the Winter Port on the West Side, worked for the CPR, unloading boxcars into the sheds and then the longshoremen would pick it up in the sheds and put it aboard the boats. Now, you must remember that all the facilities for removing grain from ships had been bombed out in England and therefore all the grain had to go in bags. The port of Saint John was pretty well manned by students.

And actually while we were going to high school, we were all members of the various Army cadet cores and if the war had extended beyond 1945, we all would have went into it because I graduated from Saint John High just at the time of Europe.

Saved by the bell.

Well, I guess you could say that, yes.

Now, prior to this, sometime around you said you were 14, you were still in Fairvale but you learned how to drive and then you became a chauffeur.

Well, in those early days one didn’t require any kind of a test for a driver’s license. You simply went to the police station and you said you wanted one and someone just asked for your name, put it on a piece of paper and you got your license.

And it didn’t matter what age you were?

Well, when I was going to Saint John High, we were in the Army cadets in the high school but there were a few of us that also joined the Reserve Army, we were only 14 and 15 at the time, and we used to go down after school, get out of school at 3:00 or 3:30 and go down and we would drive army trucks in the back of the artillery armory down just beyond Marsh Creek Bridge just on the other side there. And not only did we drive army trucks there but we were also drove army trucks for two weeks army training in Camp Tracadie.

So, you were 14 and 15 driving these?

Yes.

But you were also caddying or was that earlier?

That was just prior.

So you were about 12 when you were caddying and then at 14 you were driving vehicles and they you got into an interesting assignment where you became a chauffeur.

Well, when I was attending Saint John High School, Mr. G. E. Barbour wanted someone to drive him up to some of the branches that he was at and I chauffeured for him and he had a ’37 Packard. He would want to go up to Fredericton for the day so I would drive him up. He always wanted to go the River Road and we would come back what was called the Broad Road. They we’d drive down to St. Stephen because there was a G. E. Barbour branch in St. Stephen and Fredericton and I was very well paid, he paid me $5 a day for it.

Did you have to dress in a certain manner?

Oh no.

But people ordinarily, well there wasn’t the range of clothing that there is today. If you look back at the pictures, people tended to wear wool and darker colors.

Oh yes. There was nothing like no polyester or any type of nylon. It was almost all cotton or wool I think at the time.

But people dressed more formally. I mean I have pictures of my grandfather working in the garden wearing a shirt and tie.

Yes.

It doesn’t seem very practical today but I mean people dressed even informally in what we would consider a formal manner. So you didn’t necessarily wear a shirt and tie?

Oh no. And Mr. G. E. Barbour had his name in to get a car after the war. There were no cars made during the war for about 5-6 years, no new cars. I think the last car that you could buy was probably ’42. Then, in ’48 he got a Cadillac, automatic transmission, I had never driven one before. The first one I drove, I drove him down to the airport in Penfield and that was where TCA , TransCanada Airlines came in.

And that would be where anybody who was doing business in Saint John or the Saint John area would come into that airport but there was no reception area or no facility was there at that time at Penfield?

There was a building there. But you must remember too that the Penfield Airport was very extensively used during the war because almost all the English people who joined the RAF were sent here and they were trained at Penfield and they had a large number of buildings, two-story army barracks type of things and it was a great place for training because they had so much fog, it was very close to what they were used to in England.

Ok. So the fog was an advantage?

Yes.

Now, a lot of these plains or parts of these plains were built in Saint John. Wasn’t the Golden Ball building at one time used in constructing the wings or these mosquito aircrafts?

I don’t know. The mosquito planes were made of plywood.

Yes.

And I don’t recall them ever being made here. I remember going into the Golden Ball because when we’d go to a movie at the Mayfair up on Waterloo Street or the Empire up on Coburg Street, going home we would cross through the Loyalist Burying Ground and the Golden Ball garage had a ramp up to the first floor and you could drive around up the ramp up to the second floor and a ramp would drive around right up to the roof. So, we would simply walk right up to the roof and look out over and no one ever told you to get out.

So it was open like a car park type of thing?

It was a garage. That was a garage. They sold cars down on the lower floor. I think that was a Ford dealership. I think that was one of Mr. K. C. Irving’s business of yesteryear, the Golden Ball Garage and that’s why he always drove a Ford made car. But is was all garage service. Each floor was a service area right up to the roof.

And then from the roof you could look out? That would be the high point at that time?

It was an open roof, just the edge of a ramp right up to the roof, you could park cars out there and you could look down onto Loyalist Burying Ground or look across to King’s Square or look the other way right down on the Red Ball Brewery. The Red Ball Brewery was at the corner of Union and Carmarthen Street where the present Irving Building is located.

So, back to G. E. Barbour. Now, there are two Barbour’s that we know about. One is the Barbour spices that are still sold today and that’s the company that you worked for an extensive period of time.

Well, G. E. Barbour Company had two operations. One was a wholesale grocer who they bought everybody’s product and sold it to all the local stores. That was before chain stores.

Yes.

And Saint John I suppose had several hundred corner groceries.

And that was G. E. Barbour.

And G. E. Barbour sold Lantic Sugar, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Graves’ Beans whatever was manufactured by all the food companies in Canada ended up at wholesale grocers and that’s how it got to the stores.

That would be somewhat similar to what Trecartin’s is today?

Well, they are a very, very small operation, they have a little bit of tobacco but that’s about all. But the G. E. Barbour Company would have I would say in the Saint John area it probably had at least 3-4 trucks just servicing the stores here. But, they also distributed down to New River Beach area. The area of St. George and so on was supplied by G. E. Barbour Company in St. Stephen, trucking the other way, and we sold to Grand Manan and Parsborough and that was all sold at North Wharf. The boats would come in to North Wharf and the products, various products, would be slid down planks into the holds of the ships and the ships would go across the harbor to Yarmouth and Digby and the Saint John G. E. Barbour Company would sell up as far as Welsford. G. E. Barbour Fredericton would sell to the Fredericton area, G. E. Barbour Woodstock would sell up and then had another branch up in Grand Falls. The G. E. Barbour Company was very prevalent in the western part of the province and the southern part. Atlantic Wholesalers, which were the equivalent to G. E. Barbour, their head office was Sackville and they had branches in Moncton and Newcastle and Campbell ton, so they were the main food supplier as a wholesale grocer to the stores in the eastern and northeastern part of the province.

Now the time you were working with G. E. Barbour, you met, or working as a chauffeur, you met some very prominent business leaders because G. E. Barbour Company………….

BREAK…..

I would like to go back to the G. E. Barbour Company. I worked for the manufacturing division. Now, the manufacturing division, we made products under two major names, Barbour’s and King Cole. We had King Cole tea and coffee and Barbour’s peanut butter and mustard and spices and pudding, jelly powders.

And that still exists to this day.

Yes. And we moved our operation to Sussex in 1966. We broke ground there in ’65 and we were an operation the following summer.

Until today?

Until today, yes. It is still in existence.

So that manufacturing division was started by G. E. Barbour himself was it?

No, actually, Mr. G. E. had retired by that time. Mr. G. E. Barbour, when he started his wholesale grocery operation, there were a couple of business in Saint John, the King Cole Tea Company and Maritime Spices. They were owned and run by two gentlemen, Mr. Clive Dickison for tea and Mr. Percy Webb for the coffee and spices, and they weren’t having the kind of success that they needed to Mr. G. E. offered to buy them, which he did and offered them stock in the company, so that’s how the manufacturing division became associated with the company. But it was run separately.

People like Atlantic Wholesalers, which was Barbour’s biggest competitor, were one of our biggest customers because we sold all our products through them. We had over 20 salesmen in the Maritimes. Now, G. E. Barbour Company had their own salesmen, like in Saint John they had four salesmen and then of course the St. Stephen branch would have a couple and Fredericton would have two or three and Woodstock would have a couple.

So, you had started working as a chauffeur I guess in a sense for G. E. Barbour.

Well, that was apart from, nothing to do with the company. It was just the individual.

Yes, but I guess going back to that when you were the youngest dealing with him, as a chauffeur, did you meet interesting people? Like I thought that this fellow, he met with Prime Ministers and he met with you know prominent business people on a regular basis, G. E. Barbour that is.

Well, Mr. Brennan decided to sell the company in the late 40’s.

Sorry, there’s G. E. Barbour, wasn’t there G. E. Barbour himself? Wasn’t he the person.

George E. Barbour, he decided to sell the company.

Ok. And then Mr. Brennan is?

Mr. R. B. Brennan acquired the company at that time.

Oh, ok.

And Mr. R. B. Brennan was a very highly respected man in the community, not only did he have things locally but he became director of many different companies in Canada, not only companies like Zellers and

Banks as well.

He was director of Bank of Montreal, Royal Trust, CNR, the Fraser Corporation, oh I can’t think of them all right off hand but there were about a dozen that he was associated with.

So Mr. Brennan was your working boss I guess in a sense.

Well, Mr. Brennan hired me, I’m not sure of how it happened but I had been working in Vancouver and I had just come back to Saint John and I got a call from Mr. Brennan and he asked me to come down and have tea with him one afternoon, which I did. And he asked me if I would like to learn the tea tasting business and I guess I said yes because I was with Barbour’s until I retired.

What is the tea tasting business?

Well, you cannot analyze a taste, you can only tell the quality of tea through tasting. It is one of the most fascinating businesses in the world. Tea in those days was only supplied by mostly India and Sudan and we had buyers in those areas and tea would be produced in tea gardens all through those countries and when it was finished, it would go into tea tests and come down to auction centers in Cochin, Calcutta and Colombo and we had buyers there operating on our behalf and when they were bought, they arrived at the Port of Saint John and that’s where the tea company would package the tea. But this was the same in coffee and spices. So, these products came from all over the world too. Our spices came from every part of the world.

Now curry is a mixed blend is it not?

Yes, of several different spices.

And there’s a variant in that just as there is in others?

Well, if you were to go to stores in North America and pick up a package of curry, every one would be different because everyone has a different formula for it.

And is the same true with tea? Is that why you are saying it’s a tea tasting business?

Well, a blend of tea in my times there would have at least a dozen different gardens making up the blend. And of course, the blending of tea is the tea is rotated in a large drum and you only have say 24 chests of a certain brand. Then, after 24 blends are done, you have to replace that one with another tea. So, the blend of tea is that each tea as it runs out is replaced with another tea but the end result is always the same.

So, and that’s something like the blends, some would have different qualities? Some would be sharper and some would be smoother? What kind of were the qualities?

Well, the terms that you use are not the tea tasting terms.

Ok. So what are the tea tasting terms?

Well, you can just tell by the flavor of it.

Is it a bouquet? Is it a wine tasting term too?

Well, wine is a very similar type of product that the only way you can assess its value is by taste. With the tea, tea is produced in a tea garden and when it is sent to the auction center, the buyers will taste a whole variety of tea and they will determine that King Cole wants that tea and I’ll pay this price for it. Well, when he goes to the auction, there are a whole bunch of people in that room and if somebody bids 4 and 5 and says there’s a block of 48 chests in a block, well if nobody else puts their hand up, he’ll buy that whole block. But if somebody else puts there hand up, that block of tea will be divided 12 or 14 chests per each buyer. If three people bid, it would only be 8 chests per person. So that’s how the world auctions go and the value of the tea is determined. But if our buyer says if he bids 4 and 5 and somebody else wants part off it, he says no, I’ll be 4 and 8 and he will keep going up until the other ones drop out if he wants to get it all. And you’ll find that same process takes place in wine because taste is very prominent. And of course auctions, flowers auctions, not taste but looks and appearance and meat, a lot of those are all the same. That’s what we call the free enterprise system, people bid.

And so you’d have these buyers that would bid at certain locations. Did you ever work as a buyer yourself?

Yes, I did all the buying of coffee and spices and all the raw material, things like gelatin, sugar, starch, the ingredients that went into making Barbour’s baking powder, which is sodium sulfate and calcium phosphate and bicarbonate soda, those are all the ingredients, so those things. I did all the buying of all the packaging materials; glass, caps, corrugated paper boxes. Then, as years went by, I gradually turned those items over to others who were following and when I retired, I had turned everything over to others who were following me.

So that was principally your job to be involved with the buying of products in the manufacturing wing?

Well, that was my day to day work but I was also involved in marketing. Mr. Brennan sent me down to Boston one winter, I spent a winter down there with First National Stores. I went on an international marketing thing that was held in New Brunswick; we had I think there were about a dozen from Nova Scotia, about a dozen from New Brunswick and another half dozen from PEI. We had a month marketing course where we had professors from Harvard Institute International Marketing. They came in by plane everyday from Boston to Moncton and then drove down to Amherst and we spent a month in a hotel in the International Marketing and that was a very interesting thing. So, I’ve been involved in other aspects of the business. My last responsibilities before leaving, I was the plant director at the plant and everything that happened in the plant was my responsibility.

And during this entire time, you did this in Sussex but you were living here, raised your family here.

Yes.

So, you went from living here in the summer time and then you were in Saint John. How did you come to this location and how did you move here.

Well, when I was first married, we lived in the South End and of course everybody lived in a flat. There were no condos or anything like that. We were there for a few years and then as our family grew we bought our first home in Fundy Heights and we lived there for a number of years. Then, our family was still growing so we started looking for a bigger place and it ended up that we found this location and it was sort of unique the way it came about because as I told you, Mr. Bovaird was a mason and he was looking for a little place in town and we wanted a little bigger place. There was nothing in town, they were all outside of town, and we came across this place. Then, when we chatted and he learned that I had a brick bungalow in town and being a mason in a brick house, there is an immediate response. So, we talked about it and what we did was we traded homes. He told me how much he wanted and I told him how much we wanted and there was only that much difference so that’s how we came about moving to this place. Then, when we moved our business to Sussex, I was the only dumb one who didn’t move. I bought a second car instead.

You were committed to living here?

Well, we enjoy the property and my two younger kids went to Saint John High and the two older ones went out here.

Would that have been Rothesay High at that time or Kennebecasis Valley High?

Uh, it was Rothesay High at that time.

What’s now Harry Miller?

They have names now.

Yeah. Well, there used to be, there was the Rothesay Consolidated School at the corner and then it became Rothesay Park and was an elementary school. Then, there was Rothesay Junior High School, which at one time had been Rothesay Consolidated School I think as well, or regional, Rothesay Regional High School.

Well, the elementary school was in here at the corner and they went there until they were like grade 7 I think. Then they went up to junior high and the high school was behind it. They were together up there where the rink is.

So that’s where your two youngest went?

No, two oldest.

I thought they went to Saint John High?

No, our two youngest went to Saint John High.

Oh, ok. So you were commuting to town at that time?

What do you mean?

Well, how did they get to Saint John High from here?

Well, they took a school bus. No, sorry, they took a regular bus.

Oh the SMT bus?

Yes, the SMT bus.

Yes, I remember the SMT bus was fairly regular. Did you use it? I mean I remember walking down the street and taking the bus in town. It seemed to be pretty reliable and consistent.

Oh yes. As a matter of fact, one of my sons went to Saint John High. My wife would give him a quarter for the bus and he would hitchhike and save the quarter.

So a quarter for the bus, that was 18 holes of caddying for you, but by the time he went, that was a bus trip in town. So the value of the money had….

Well, he’s always learned to be very frugal. Matter of fact, he arrived in Moncton yesterday and he’ll be going back to Arkansas next Sunday.

Really. So I guess we should really go back further because we never talked about your father and your grandfather. How did your family come to Canada.

Well, on the McKnight side of the family, my great great grandfather with his wife, four sons and two daughters left Scotland heading for upper Canada. They call that Toronto today. A storm blew them into the Miramichi so they stayed. Two of the sons went on to Ohio in later years but the two daughters stayed and married, the two sons stayed and married and we had a McKnight family reunion last summer in the Miramichi and there were over 400 people that showed up. So, I guess you could say the grew a bit.

But your father mostly was in Saint John?

No. My father was overseas in the first world war and he actually stayed with the occupation force so he didn’t come home until 1919. My grandfather had a general store in Douglastown and when father came back, father would not married before he went overseas because of the risk of death, so he married when he came home and mother came from Newcastle, which was just 4 miles up the river. I was born in 1928 and we moved to Saint John in 1929.

So, when the second world war came up, father again offered his services but he was too old for active duty and therefore he joined the Reserve Army and the Saint John Fusiliers. As a matter of fact, quite a few members of the Saint John Fusiliers were all first world war veterans, a lot of them, and as a matter of fact, father was the last commanding officer of the Fusiliers before they disbanded but he served with a lot of them. Like Jerry Anglin lived down here and Tom Bell’s dad was with father in the second world war in the Fusiliers. As a matter of fact, Tom Bell knew that our fathers had been associated in the military and I met him on King Street. This was when he came back to Saint John. He had given up his ministership in Ottawa, he was the local MP for that area and he was a judge now. Tom had served in the merchant navy during the war but he asked me if I’d be interested in participating in the history of this and I said I would be. So, we had a meeting at the legion hall down on Queen’s Square and decided to go ahead with it and as a result, we had three authors and we produced a history of the 26th battalion and it was a book about that wide, that long and that thick and we produced 100 of them for the military and the museums across Canada and we distributed them out. But when people found out about this, they said where can we get a book. Of course we didn’t have any. So, the pressure got on us about producing the history of the 26th for the general public and one of the problems was we didn’t have any money and not too many printers are willing to associated with you and print a book if you can’t pay for it. So, we got Rob Logan and Jerry Merrithew and with their persuasive abilities, we were able to get some local money to help us. The Irving’s and the Moosehead, but of course there were some military people there as well and they were paying for this. We produced the history and it was a hardcover and it was a very successful book. The trouble was we ran out until we had to produce another one. But the second one just had plastic rings on the edge of the book. Then, when that was gone, they still wanted them, so then we produced one that was just staples on the end of the book. But there were an awful lot of New Brunswick families that had fathers, uncles and so on the 26th battalion.

It was the New Brunswick battalion?

Oh yes, very much so.

Where did they serve? Where was there operation?

Paschendale, Vimy all that area. I never showed you the book?

Oh yes you have, just not on tape I guess. So, now when I first came to visit you, you had all these materials that you were giving to the archive. You had lugers, you had guns, you had pistols, semi-automatic machine guns, it was just an arsenal.

Yes, well I had them all here and I was terribly fearful of my passing on and somebody finding them all in a box and they’d be thrown out. So, Bob Lockhart knew about them and he contacted me but he also contacted the museum first. The museum were just in the process of developing a first world war display for the museum here in Saint John but it was also expected to travel across Canada. So, Bob told them in there about me and they called and came out and saw it and they said we want it.

Well, I’m shortening the story down but that’s it basically and he said well I’m sorry, we don’t have any money. And I said well this is not a merchandise question on my point, I am not desirous of money, I just want to find a good home for them all. So, they went through it all and they wanted that and that and that and that and that. I was afraid that after it had all gone, that they wouldn’t know what it was so my daughter had her digital camera so she came up and took pictures of it. So, I have pictures of all the stuff that I donated to the museum. Now, like I said, it wasn’t a merchandise thing on my part but they did say that they could give me a receipt for donation and I said fine but I had no idea. So, they had a military man come down from the Revenue Department in Ottawa and assess it all and one day in the mail I got a little envelope saying I made a donation, which I was able to use on my income tax. But then on top of that, after that was gone, father had a great big tea chest full of everything from the Vimy trip. Father represented New Brunswick at the Vimy Memorial in 1936 and they had a trip overseas in that period with the unveiling of the Vimy Memorial in France.

You said ’36, did you mean….

1936.

Oh right, because it was the first world war, sorry. I was trying to think, isn’t there a large memorial there now.

Oh yes.

But it’s huge now?

That was it. That’s when it was built. This was the opening of it. I have a lot of pictures of it as a matter of fact and Bob Lockhart was here one day and I showed him, there were letters tied with a piece of rope, and these were all letters that father had written home all during the war, almost every day he would write a letter.

Really.

Yes, and them kept them up in the Miramichi. Well, they were all in this but I had never read them. And Bob said oh my God, that’s a goldmine because he was also in the process of writing a history of the first world war 26th battalion himself. So, he contacted the Irving Library in UNB Fredericton and they contacted me and they were very desirous of having them, so I gave them all that stuff, all the letters, plus all the stuff on the Vimy thing, which there was quite a bit of. So, they decided to put it all on tape and all on microfilm, every letter. There were letters there, there was one where father wrote home that he was invited to Buckingham Palace and he was being presented the military cross by the king and I hadn’t even seen these. So, they have them in Fredericton, they are all going on microfilm and they are going to be available for anybody who wants to do historical things at all. So they were very pleased to get all this stuff.

Yes, because Bob Lockhart himself I think was working on a masters degree in history.

Yes he is. Bob has done well. He got his bachelors and his masters and now he’s working on his doctorate. Good for him. He never had an opportunity when he was scuba diving in Newfoundland.

Scuba divining? Now, I knew him as the mayor and a politician. It was kind of funny because from my recollection of things, he brought in the Canada Games but then he lost the election to Elsie Wayne but they Elsie got all of the glory but he did all of the work to bring it and for it to happen in Saint John in ’85. So he must’ve lost the election in ’84. He was also quite a bit involved with the military as was Jerry Merrithew and Bev Harrison.

Oh yes, as a matter of fact, Bob has parachuted in Afghanistan and I think he holds the rank now of colonel. He has done very well. We talk once in a while on the phone because we have found that we have some shared friends of yesteryear but our paths never crossed here in Saint John. Well, I was a member of the Health Club at the Y and I went everyday at noon and Bob was there but our paths never really crossed. But by golly, the number of times in the last couple of years, it’s just amazing the number of times that the things of our interest have grown together and he is in the process of writing the history now of the 26th battalion.

So, in ’66, you left Saint John and went to Sussex?

Yes.

And that was in the period of what they called urban renewal.

Well, that’s one of the reasons why we left. We had no choice. We had our building, our main manufacturing building was called the old Ganong building, which was up opposite the Red Ball Brewery where the Towers Store is now. We had a five story building there and we did our coffee and spices and all the things there and our property extended out the back onto Prince Edward Street and that was the urban renewal area. So, we were considering building out the back of our building and no, that was part of the urban renewal district so we couldn’t do anything. The houses that we owned and bought along Prince Edward Street we were going to tear down but we couldn’t tear them down. Because the urban renewal group said no you can’t do that.

No, what I see at the end of urban renewal from looking at it in hindsight, the whole area of East Saint John doesn’t exist anymore, the whole area that was just full of army / navy surplus stores or whatever on, not Thorne avenue but you know follows alongside the Reversing Falls there where Thorne’s Hardware store is, that used to be full of little tiny stores and Main Street and there seems to be absolutely nothing of any substance there now. There were huge communities. What was the basic premise behind urban renewal?

Well, the urban renewal areas began down where the York Cotton Mill is and it moved right up to where Loyalist Burial Ground is.

But why?

Well, you’d have to go back to the political people at that time. We also had acquired the McCReady Pickle plant and we moved it to Sussex and we also had our tea plant down on North Wharf, so we were kicked out of the three. We lost the Ganong building on the urban renewal off of Union, we lost the North End where they were building the Harbor Bridge across and we lost our tea plant on North Wharf where the present city hall extends right now. So, we acquired all the land from the Telegraph Journal down to Downey Motors so we were going to relocate there. But, then again, we got into difficulty with the…..

Urban renewal? The board or whatever?

Well, let’s say the city of Saint John. So, we decided well, we bought a farm up in Sussex and relocated there. We offered all our people to go with us, the ones that wanted to go and the ones that didn’t want to go could go. Once the news got out, I got calls from Lantic Sugar, from Polycel and Bell, they all wanted our staff. They were such good people so I got jobs for everybody. As a matter of fact, I would go to each member of our staff and offer them three jobs and say where do you want to work.

Really.

Yes. So, when we moved, the people who were left behind, we had jobs for everybody.

So really, it was Saint John’s loss? You were quite willing to do business in Saint John, you had no intention of moving to Sussex?

No, not in the beginning. But, we were ….

Moved out.

Well, I guess you could say that.

Ok, that’s very strange to me anyway. Because I remember there used to be a little bank of Montreal where Downey’s and when I first came to Saint John there were hundreds of homes there.

Yes.

And there’s nothing there now. Well, maybe not nothing but it’s sort of all industrial. Was it because the houses weren’t up to snuff? I mean, some of the people I know they had dirt floors and that sort of thing. Maybe they weren’t up to standards, I don’t know.

I don’t think you would go that far. They were old properties but the internal parts of most of the homes were in very good shape.

Because they had a reunion not too long ago, East Saint John, and they had photographs and I think they met in the old St. Joseph’s School and had a reunion weekend. It was a friend of mine that was working on the history of East Saint John. But they had certain plans at that time for the history of Saint John. There was the start for instance of UNBSJ that originally was uptown and somehow it got moved out to its current location. And I know there was a concept at that time that Saint John about this time would be probably about 300,000 people and you know that they needed this space. But, none of those plans told out the way that people thought they would. But that was kind of the reason why the hospital and the university are where they are today. You know, it seems like they are out in the middle of nowhere, at that time they figured with the population it was going to expand. But, a number of things really didn’t happen, the businesses didn’t really grow or the employment didn’t grow or something happened anyway that the economy shifted. But, in terms of employment during that period of time, say post world war, this was an extremely busy area. I remember the shipyards, I mean at 4:00 it was impossible to get out on Bayside Drive.

Oh yes, very much so.

It was a zoo. And, you know there were a lot there but that place is a ghost town now. The city has changed quite a bit.

Well, when Wilson owned the dry dock during the war, there were a lot of naval ships repaired there and then after the war there were a lot of commercial ships. Then the Irving family took over and it grew even more. They had the Canadian Navel Fleet Plan they had, the destroyers that were built there, and the world market on shipbuilding has changed dramatically and there is no way that the local shipyard could ever compete with the Japanese and other foreign countries.

But now, G. E. Barbour, even as a small operation, still has a niche in the market of spices and what have you that it is still a flourishing business. Now, we must be hitting a dead spot for a break or something. So, the land around here, or other types of things. Did you have recreational things that you did? Did you boat with your family? You did a lot of traveling around the states with your kids.

Yes, as a family, we started I would say around, well no before 1970, our first experiences were tenting. You’d have a tent and you’d go to a campground down in Maine and put pegs in the ground kind of thing and you lived on the ground.

Then, beyond that, we had a J.C. Higgins trailer, and this was a tent that was raised off the ground and that was very nice because then we could down around the Cabot Trail and do all those kinds of things and go into a campground and could set up very nicely. If there was a rainstorm, you didn’t have to worry about digging a trench around the tent to carry the water. Then, in 1970, we bought a Volkswagen camper and that had a pop up top. There were six of us, my wife and I and four kids. Our first major trip was across Canada. We did a lot of miles and enjoyed it very much. We went across Canada and came back through the northern states through Montana and that area. But that was just the beginning, that’s how it started. Then every year we would travel and travel and travel. We went through three, the first Volkswagen van we did 175,000 miles, miles not kilometers, and that was a great van. We enjoyed that. Matter of fact, our first trip to the west coast, we were paying 18 cents a gallon for gas in Alberta. You could fill up your tank for less than $3. But we traveled a lot and enjoyed it. We did the whole east coast, Chesapeake Bay, we did Florida and Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Texas, the Rockie Mountains and the southwest. The southwest was my favorite. Well, we did the west coast twice, we were right to California and right up to Vancouver. We’ve covered every national park in the United States and Canada and I’m talking not only places like Yellowstone and the grand Canyon but Rice and Zion and Cedar Brakes and Capital Reef and Canyon Lands and Arches and the national park system in the United States is just absolutely fabulous and is very well worth seeing. So, we did that for 20 years and now my kids have done somewhat the same for there kids. But then we decided we wanted to find some place that we could go to and not travel. So, we just happened to be in Branson, Missouri and we had an extra week and said what’ll we do. So we said let’s drive out to the coast. So, we drove out to the coast and we arrived in Myrtle Beach and had a campground book and there were campgrounds listed and every ad was actually the same as the other so we said to our daughter choose one. She went like that and it was called Pirate Land so we went there. It was right on the ocean and that was 16 years ago. We are booked in four September this year, this will be our 16th year, we go back every year. So, we sold our travel vehicles and we bought a trailer and we towed it down and store it at the campground. So, we can just phone ahead and say we’ll be there Thursday at noon and they tow it out and put it on our campsite for us. That was one of the best things we ever did because at our age, when you get close to the 80 mark, you’ve lost a lot of your friends, your circle of friends gets smaller and smaller. But, it’s just the opposite for us. We’ve gone down there because everybody that we’ve met there have become friends, they go back year after year, we all get the same campsites and our circle of friends has expanded rather than diminished and it is a very, very reasonable cost. My wife, daughter and I, the three of us adults, can live down there, well we go down about September / October every year and we can live down there with transportation, lodging and food for $1000/month so it is a very, very reasonable cost for us. And, this year, we are going down September / October, we are going to stay in November, we are going to come home in December and then go back down in January / February. And now, there are more and more people joining us all the time coming there. My son is in Moncton right now, as I said one of my sons is in Moncton but as I said, they are going back to Arkansas on Sunday, that’s where he works now, but his wife likes to get from Arkansas to Myrtle Beach to spend a week with us. Our son in Saint John and his wife, they are planning on coming down for a couple of weeks this fall.

And the friends that we’ve made there, we invite them up here. We’ve had two of them here from North Carolina about two weeks ago and we’ve had friends from upstate New York that have been here twice. Then we’ve had other people from South Carolina here, we’ve had a couple from Florida come all the way up here and it used to be just a Christmas card, now it’s every night, every night for an hour and not just talking but with the web cam so everybody comes into the room and says hi there, you know, and look into the camera. So, we are in contact with these people everyday and we are all booked in for September. So this is called Pirate Land North.

Oh ok. Oh, that’s what I saw on the sign right there it says Pirate Land.

I put an underground water and power line in so anybody who comes here with an RV or a trailer or a fifth wheel can back in and I’ve got water and electric and I can give them cable. I haven’t got sewer down there.

That would have to be wireless so you can get them wireless internet connected.

Oh my God, Lynn was out here on the back deck the other day. The only trouble with the outdoor, the light is too much for the laptop. But my God, those things are great because one of our sons, he comes here at noon and he takes out his laptop and he is interested in rally racing, he used to do a lot of that around the Maritimes and out with the computer and he is checking on all the races everywhere. Then our son in Arkansas, he grew up in Saint John and went to Saint John High, but then he worked with Willett Fruit, worked in the warehouse the first year and the second year he drove a truck for them, the third year he was selling for them and they wanted him back when he finished school, which he went back and there was fellow that worked there from England that persuaded him to go to Moncton and to open a produce store. So, he did that and they were in business on Mountain Road and then his English friend decided to go back to England so at this point he had no other option but to stay and he did well and worked hard.

That’s not Pete Luckett?

Well, he knew Pete very well because Wayne did all his produce from Boston market and Pete was doing his from the Moncton market. So there were times when they used to trade off on things but he and Pete knew each other well. Wayne opened up the second store over in Riverview and then Co-op, all the stores in the Maritimes were buying their produce from wholesalers and they wanted someone to start an operation with all their stores. So, they were after Wayne every month for a couple of years and he kept saying no. So they finally gave up and went across Canada and looked for somebody but couldn’t find anyone so they came back to him and he said what will I do with my stores and they said we’ll buy them. So they bought his stores outright just to get him. So he started the Co-op operation in Moncton.

Then there was a fellow in Toronto who owned five companies across Canada; IGA was one of them and some others I don’t know the names of the them, but they were separate companies but this guy wanted them all put together. So, he persuaded Wayne to go up to Toronto and he was with them for a few years and then Sobeys came along and bought them out. So, all of a sudden, Sobeys have a maritimer located in Toronto so Wayne was working with them in the Toronto area and WalMart got after him. The CEO of WalMart visited him three times and I didn’t think he was going to go but they persuaded him to so he relocated in Bettenville, Arkansas with WalMart and now his job takes him all over the world. He was probably in China last week and he’ll be in Chile next week and then France and Italy and everywhere, his job takes him all over the world.

And so he kind of has a similar type of occupation that you did with Barbour’s as a buyer and involved with wholesaling.

There are parallels to it yes.

Yeah. And your other children. They all grew up here but did anybody settle here?

Well, our youngest took her nursing in Fredericton and she worked there for a while at the hospital when she finished and then she worked here. She is a neonatal nurse. Then, she got married here and moved to Halifax with the Grace and then the Grace was taken over by the IWK so she has been a neonatal nurse with them for a number of years. She has two children, the youngest I think is 13 and the oldest will be going to, I don’t know if he finishes school this year or not. But our son in Arkansas has two. They did French in Moncton and our grand-daughter speaks English, French and Spanish and now she’s taking Japanese and she says she wants to be an interpreter. She is doing very, very well. She is at the University of Toronto now. Our next grandson in Arkansas, of course they have their driver’s licenses, but he’s into biking. He was in Littlerock a couple of weeks ago and won the Tour de France there. But he bikes everyday for at least two hours.

Sounds like something that Todd would be into. Todd used to be into competitive bicycling.

Oh is that right. He’ll be here tomorrow or the day after.

So, when you left for work, you drove up, this was the top of the hill.

What do you mean, in Moncton?

No, right here. When you left here, you were at the top of the hill?

Yes.

There was nothing behind here except for cows back there?

That’s right yes.

You would wake up and you would hear cows?

No I was.

You were gone before the cows?

I was always at work an hour or two before I had to be so I was an early riser.

So the cows, you wouldn’t hear the cows?

They’d be here at night when I’d come up and they would greet me up at the back fence.

So you would go down the street here and there would only be maybe half a dozen houses?

Yes, there are a few new houses but most of them are vintage. The one at the foot of the hill was owned by Hyme Marcus who had Marcus Furniture in Saint John, and that’s the one that John Mackay has now or I don’t know who has it.

On the right hand side?

Yes, on the right hand side going down, the last house. The house above it was Hyme Marcus’ son and he lived there and he had a sailboat on the river. He’s out in Victoria in think now. But Tim Harley bought it and Tim.

His mother sold I gather to Martin Flewelling or I mean his wife perhaps.

Yes, Tim’s wife. Tim’s son Ted is the one that built the house in on Rothesay Common.

Yes. Then up from that would be the house

MacDonald house.

The MacDonald house that Bev Harrison used to live and Steve Carson lives in now.

Steve Carson?

Yes, from Enterprise Saint John.

Oh, is he. Oh, that must be Bill Carson’s son.

No I don’t think he’s related.

Oh he’s not, ok. Then the house above that was a guy named Ray Green and Ray lived there for a number of years. He was cousins to Harry and Andy’s kids and he moved to PEI. Then Short’s built the house next to him. That’s the only new house on that side.

Ok. And that house that Ray Green had, there’s a retired English professor that lives there now.

Yes, from UNB. Yes, she is there.

And the house that’s right across from that with the veranda.

Yes, that’s an old, old property there as well. There is a school teacher there. I don’t know.

Doucette.

Yes, Doucette’s. So that house, would that have been a farm house or is it? It’s at the corner of Carol Lane, it kind of looks likes it.

I imagine it would be. I imagine. Then there’s a little house in between and when then sold, they built the house just above Short’s, just below John Baxter’s house here. There’s one with a driveway that goes way in.

Yes.

You would never see it.

Yes.

That’s in behind Short’s house.

And that’s in a rocky outcropping that’s just where the old Kinghurst Dairy Manufacturing.

You see, John Baxter’s house, the far end of his house, you can throw a stone to the field where the dairy was.

Yes. Now going way back, we were talking about the cream, the quality of the mild and …………we’re at the end….?

This is all the Fundy Trail and the TransCanada Trail. Are you interested in that? That’s something you’d be interested in. We formed the Kennebecasis Valley Trail Association.

Ok.

And the TransCanada, what comes across Canada, is going to come down the Saint John River to St. George area, then cut across Saint John to the Fundy Trail, then go across and join onto PEI and Nova Scotia trails.

Wasn’t that supposed to be finished by now, like 2006?

You’re talking the Fundy Trail?

No, I’m talking the TransCanada.

Oh, the TransCanada Trail, I don’t know where they’re at now. But we formed our trail association because we want to have a loop off of that to come out here and go up towards Sussex. We had federal money to have the trail go from the Renforth Wharf to the golf course on the outboard side of the tracks and then there were a couple of people that owned property there, they have beach rights that they wouldn’t give up. So, we couldn’t build the trail and we lost the money, but in the meantime, we had gone to the RC church and they gave us permission to use, we have it in writing with lawyers and all and the local RC bishop, to go right along by the railway tracks down to the Renforth Wharf. There is a trail there on the outside of the railway tracks. We also, Mr. Brett owned the land from Hasting’s Cove around the Drury Cove and he gave us permission to put the trail through there.

But it doesn’t exist now?

No.

So the right is there but the land itself or the property is not.

We were going to extend out through Fairvale out to Gondola Point and through to Hammond River.

So, the trail that’s there now right by the side of the river, that wasn’t part of it? You know, by the monument, the rowing monument.

Well, that would be part of it because you have to cross the railway tracks. We had the money for the trail to go from Renforth Wharf to the foot of where the monument crosses, that would have been the track crossing. Then on this side, they put in a drain sewer right from the golf course right along this side of the railway track right through to the tressel and we could have used the upper part of that as a right of way. Then we could have gotten, there’s a road following alongside the tennis court along the railway track, that could have gotten us to past the yacht club to the Fairvale Outing area but there are also some NBTel and power lines that they have the right of way that we were going to work on to be able to use theirs and that would have taken us right to Hammond River.

But it didn’t happen? The plans are still there but it didn’t happen?

Well, the interest of our membership sort of fell away but I’m hoping somewhat it will be revived. Because I think the trail system is absolutely fantastic. They are talking about a trail now right from Maine to Florida. And the Appalachian Trail goes right from Georgia right up to northern New Brunswick. Peter down here, he walks the whole thing.

Yes, Peter Fleming.

And Peter was a member of our trail group too.

Oh, ok.

But both of us have sort of, well we’re running out of steam. But, I want to show you something.

I’ve got a picture of myself standing in that garden when I was probably 21 with my girlfriend at the time. His daughter was friends with my sister.

That’s Wayne, my son Wayne.

Global food procurement, huh. He looks like you.

Does he? Open the book to the leaves there where they’re marked.

So, this Richard Currie, he also became

Almost the same roots.

Yeah, that’s kind of interesting isn’t it.

From the south end. I hope our paths cross because we have so much, we’re next door neighbors but he would know a lot of the people that I know. I saw in a book where he had to do with the McCain boys. Wally McCain and I are friends. We were in the navy together and Tim Bliss, who used to run the Florenceville plant, his wife and my daughter in Halifax are friends. They live in the same neighborhood. And Tim and I were in the navy as a matter of fact, I used to call Tim in Florenceville once in a while because Harrison and Wally, they were always in the sales end but they were never in the manufacturing end.

When they were working for Irving?

Oh, they hadn’t started McCain’s then. When Harrison worked for Irving Oil, I don’t know what division it was then, but Wally worked for Thorne’s on King Street in Saint John.

Right. We were looking at those maps and we were looking at different things at how the city had changed over the years and there were a lot of facilities and businesses that just don’t exist nowadays, especially in the MRA block I guess where Thorne’s was. I guess it moved over into, I’m trying to think the name of that road that runs parallel to the river. Now there are all kinds of new houses going in there right below Green Lee Shoe. So, you served in the Navy? At the end of the war, you just graduated from high school.

Yes.

But then you continued with your service?

Well no. Actually what happened there, I was attending Mount A and I went through the UNTD (University of Naval Training).

And what did that entail?

Well, it was a great summer job because university was eight months and summer was four months and it was a great opportunity for a summer job but I also liked the sea so we had all kinds of courses. We took courses in seamanship and gunnery and navigation. I actually became a qualified navigator but it’s odd now, because to be a navigator in those days you had to be able to read stars and do sites and all kinds of things. Nowadays you reach in your pocket and press a button and her I am. In the old days, you had to do a lot of work to see where you were.

They used to call that orienteering. Now with a GPS unit they call it geocaching or something similar.

Well, this is where I met a lot of people is because, well Tim Harley down here was with us and there were several others from Saint John, and like I said Tim Bliss and Wally McCain. Peter Newman was one of us.

Peter C. Newman?

Oh yeah. I knew Peter well. Matter of fact, the first book he wrote, you never heard of, I’m the only one who knows about it. It was called Night Without Stars. He worked up in the mines in Sunbury and it was wonderful. A Night Without Stars, could you have a more beautiful name for a book, he worked in the Nickel Mines in Sudbury than that.

So you met him through the Naval Association in Sackville?

Oh yeah. Peter was our first editor of our UNTD book. I could show you pictures of that too. And Bill Langstroth was a member of our group.

That name sounds familiar.

He married a girl from Spring Hill, Anne Murray.

Oh right, right, right.

Bill’s from Hampton.

Really?

Oh yeah.

Ok. Well he was her promoter wasn’t he? Producer or manager?

Oh yeah. But in the original days, he used to do the Don Messer show from Halifax. He worked for the CBC for years.

So he went from Hampton to working with the naval training and then went to Halifax.

Well, he had summer jobs too. I know he had a summer job at Eaton’s in Montreal. He was a character. His name was Gorp, Gorp 2 as a matter of fact, and is parents were living in Montreal at that time and he got down selling blankets at the store and he got up on the counter and had a thing. He sold so many blankets, he caused a lot of concern so they fired him, but when they realized how much he sold, they hired him back again. But he was a real comedian. That was his sport in life was comedy.

So he worked for CBC ultimately and then on the Don Messer show?

Yes.

Then he managed Anne Murray and they had several children.

Yes.

What does he do nowadays?

They’re divorced. I don’t know what he’s doing now. He’s probably still in the Toronto area. I don’t think he’s ever come back.

I thought you said he was from Hampton, born and raised in Hampton?

I think his grandmother owned the old red brick in right across the tracks there. As a matter of fact, I was coming down from Sussex one time when I was working at Barbour’s and I stopped off at the funeral home to see him because it was a member of his family had died. Who was that now? I’ve forgotten. But the family member was at Reid’s Funeral Home there.

So then, Peter C. Newman, you would have known him just for a year or longer than that? That training that you took at Mount A?

I would say Peter was two years and then where did he go?

Did he go into journalism.

He was the editor of MacLean’s Magazine for a number of years and I think he got into that before he started his book career. But he has a property just by Victoria on Vancouver Island and he had a sailboat. Peter was very lucky. His family was caught by the Germans in the second world war you know and he just got out and that’s all. Just ahead of them, because he was of Jewish extraction as well. I don’t know if he got out with his parents or not or was it is his family, I’ve just forgotten.

Now, a name that came up in our early conversations was C. D. Howe. Now was that in relationship to Brennan?

Oh, Mr. Brennan was a very prominent gentleman in the business world. He had known C. D. Howe during the war and of course Mr. C. D. Howe was the minister of everything. You know, I guess Mackenzie King was the Prime Minister but I think the truth of the matter is that the country was really run by C. D. Howe.

And he lives on today in the C. D. Howe Institute, which is a think tank.

C. D. Howe himself was a businessman. He built the wharves out in Fort William, which is now Thunder Bay and that was a terminal for a lot of the grain. The elevators were all grain because they went aboard ships in Lake Superior and came down through the Welling Canal, so C. D. Howe was a businessman himself but he was encouraged into politics at the time by the liberals and Mr. R. V. Brennan was a very, very strong liberal. He was very active in liberal organizations. But so were the McCain families. At least the potato people were liberals. The other McCain’s, the cousins, were in the conservative side. The MP for that country up there was a McCain, cousin to Wally and Harrison. Then there was another brother Bob, I knew Bob too. Funny thing about what’s his name here next door neighbor, he worked at the Lantic Sugar Refinery and I used to help them out a lot because they would run out of starch and they would borrow about 10,000 pounds from me because they were making icing sugar and we were using cornstarch in baking powder so I always had a hundred bags or more around and they would borrow them. So, I had good. And Bill Brown was the plant manager and Bill and I were both members of a group that had a food technology group and we had meetings once a month in Fredericton in the evening and we’d both take separate cars. But then it was awful going up to Fredericton and we wouldn’t get out of the meeting until after 12:00 at night and then coming down in the middle of winter in January it was risky so we decided to take one car. So I would drive to Saint John in my car and I’d pick him up at the sugar refinery and we’d go up and I’d bring him back and drop him off. Then the next time, he would come up to Sussex and pick me up and he’d drive up. But it was a lot better to have two guys in one car in the middle of winter because it came down the old Broad Road area.

Now, the Broad Road. The River Road was the natural road right, or I mean the original road? Or, was there always a Broad Road.

No they were both there. But the Broad Road came from Oromocto to Westfield and it came through Welsford.

Was it a military road primarily?

Oh no. It was long before the military were there. The military didn’t move in to Camp Gagetown until

The 50’s?

Oh, yes it had to be the 50’s. yeah. And the River Road was apple orchards all the way along.

It still is today.

Is it?

Yes.

I haven’t been up the River Road for a long time.

It’s beautiful still but it sure takes a long time to get to Fredericton compared to the other road, Broad Road.

I think it would be 90 miles and the I think the Broad Road was about 60.

Until you got to Saint John or the center of the city.

Yes.

Well, I guess these guys, we’re hoping to have more of these conversations but we certainly need to re-focus and see what we have and then focus in on some areas. Because there is a whole range of different things that we could talk about. I’m just trying to think of anything under general terms. Like recreation, were you a member of the yacht club or the boating club or did you do boating? You did camping mostly I guess hey?

No, well I never owned a boat but when somebody owned a boat they always had half a dozen friends. And we friends, we would bike take our bikes and go out to Milledgeville to the RKYC and there were no such things as a plastic boat in those days, they were all wooden boats, and all wooden boats had to be painted and scraped every year. So, we would go out in the early spring when there was still snow on the ground and the boats were all up on land, they had a rail system full of them. And the boats would be covered with wooden planks and tarpaper.

Oh they didn’t have tarps?

No, they didn’t have tarps in those days. So you’d pull those off and you’d start to scrape and paint, every year. Yes, there was one fellow, his name was Doug McKee, he lived across the street from us on Leinster Street, he had a little boat called the Blue Cat. We were coming back from Grand Bay one night across the Saint John River into the Kennebecasis and it was just a very small little boat with a center board that dropped down. Well, my God we lost our wind so here we are out in the middle of the bay between where the Saint John River meets the Kennebecasis and couldn’t move so we just put the tiller hard over and just, rrrrrrrr, and it started to rain. So we pulled the sail down and put our legs over the center board and sat there with the sail over us to keep the rain off. Then, all of a sudden, my God, I died. A power boat came down, saw us, came over and shone a great big light on us and through the sail, we didn’t hear the boat coming. But they gave us a tow into the club that night and we just slept on the bench in there. But we had a lot of experiences on them. Doug Armstrong, one of the fellows that I was crew with, he had a boat called the Spindrift. There were very few power boats because they used to have the power boat club. There was the odd one. I know Byron Harrington had an old fashioned boat called the Oh Yes and he had it out in Milledgeville because that’s where he lived.

Did you ever go out to Long Island or Mater’s Island?

You mean out here?

You didn’t do anything like a picnic with the family and go out on the boat or that kind of thing?

Oh no. We were just kids in school and we never came up the Kennebecasis. Always the Saint John River up Long Reach. Because all the dance halls were along the river and this was always the weekend and there were dances at Kennebec and Grand Bay and Westfield every Saturday night, so when I went to high school, Saturday night was dance night for everybody. As a matter of fact, Otty Norwood was the principal of Beaconsfield School and Otty and I were good friends. We used to go to the Old Trading Post every Saturday night, that’s the Reversing Falls, that was a dance hall.

Oh, the tourist bureau at Reversing Falls?

Yes, that was called the Trading Post and it was just a dance hall and we’d have a nickelodeon and sometimes you’d have a band. But Otty and I went every Saturday night but then we had to stop going there because some of his students from Beaconsfield started showing up at the dance hall and he was the principal of the school so we had to go elsewhere.

????????????? this is a separate short little dictation but labeled McKnight, Bill – 2 on the CD ????????????????????????????

And the lights of the truck, you could see in the lights eyes of deer, ok, there were deer here all the time in the back field and in the barn, when Ron Bovaird took his stuff out he said did you mind if I had one car in the left of the barn to keep the deer antlers and I said sure. So, there was a pile of deer antlers in the corner of the barn that would’ve been that high and I think that most of them were shot off the back step here out in the back fields. He had a camp up around, what’s that lake up around Sussex? Anyway, he came here one day and said can I have my antlers and he nailed the antlers to all the trees around the lake up there but there was a whole pile of them here.

Ok, so maybe, do you have ……………. Cut off

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