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06 – EARLY DAYS – Chapples & Rexall

When our family arrived in Geraldton in ’53, both Chapples and Rexall Drug Store were thriving businesses on Main Street. Chapples department store utilized a cash railway or cash carrier system. Here is one description of it: ‘[It was] a Rube Goldberg-like contraption of overhead wires, springs, turnbuckles and rails that could zipline money from sales clerksContinue reading “06 – EARLY DAYS – Chapples & Rexall”

05 EARLY DAYS – First Wooden Sidewalk

When our family arrived in Geraldton in the summer of ’53, some sidewalks were wooden. There was stretch on Main Street between Wardrope and McKenzie, and the walkway on both sides was suspended over the creek (locally called S**t Creek, now called Hardrock Creek). From that point, south to Jonesville, on the east side wasContinue reading “05 EARLY DAYS – First Wooden Sidewalk”

LAHTI’S LOGGING OPERATIONS

In July 1936, a forest fire threatened the town of Geraldton and nearby mining operations and townsites. The aftermath was thousands of acres of standing fire-scarred timber. A local entrepreneur, J.L. Lahti, applied for a permit to salvage the spruce and jack pine before insects damaged them. The Department of Lands and Forests issued himContinue reading “LAHTI’S LOGGING OPERATIONS”

04 – EARLY DAYS : Favourite Products

When I was a kid, we lived in a second-floor apartment in Sherbrooke. We had cold running water and we heated water on the woodstove. Our refrigerator was called an ice box, because it was a box into which we placed a block of ice ̶ ice which someone had cut from a lake andContinue reading “04 – EARLY DAYS : Favourite Products”

150 YEARS? MAYBE.

Sunday afternoon, June 23rd, at Waverley Park. About 200 people turned out to celebrate its 150th Anniversary. People sprawled in fold-up chairs or on the green sward (that’s a word that’s at least 150 years old). About a hundred metres from where we (sister Sue and I) sat, Roy Coran’s Big Band was belting outContinue reading “150 YEARS? MAYBE.”

3 – EARLY DAYS : New Home

from The Big Move In 1933, the Kenny family moved from tents at Hardrock to their new log home in Geraldton. Their old home became a woodshed. It had had a single room on one end for the Kennys and another on the other end for the Delbridges. “Our new house had three rooms-aContinue reading “3 – EARLY DAYS : New Home”

02 – EARLY DAYS : Arrival

from Prologue “This part of the story came from my mother’s memories. She told them to me. I was there but too little to remember. My dad and his partner, George Delbridge had staked a claim in Northern Ontario. It was a mile to the mine, Little Long Lac. They worked there and built homesContinue reading “02 – EARLY DAYS : Arrival”

01 – EARLY DAYS : Book & Author

If followers express an interest, I plan to post extracts from George Kenny’s little book published in 2013. George moved with his parents from Port Arthur in 1932 to where the town of Geraldton would soon be established. He tells his story from the perspective of a child. We readers learn what he learns aboutContinue reading “01 – EARLY DAYS : Book & Author”

YIKES! KITES!

For a few hours on Sunday afternoon, kids and grown-ups slipped the surly bonds of Earth and trod the footless halls of air. My apologies to poet John Gillespie Magee, but his words convey some of the exhilaration of players and observers today. In a large treeless field at Chippewa Park, Thunder Bay, kites rose,Continue reading “YIKES! KITES!”

Sapawe : Village of Memories

In my casual reading today, what should pop up but the names of Tom Johnson and Tony Oklend. Johnson and Oklend, discoverers of the Little Long Lac gold mine in what is now called Greenstone. A week ago, I picked up a volume at a book fair: The Sage of Sapawe: Woodland Writings. It wasContinue reading “Sapawe : Village of Memories”