POSTING # 17

Plastic Bags on Earth Day in Virgil; He had to Get Out of Tulsequah; Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah Local of the Miners Union; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Plastic Bags on Earth Day in Virgil

On Earth Day, April 22, the Virgil supermarket stopped providing free plastic bags.

Many customers had been bringing in ‘green’ bags and bins well before Earth Day, motivated I suspect by a mix of altruism and guilt. I don’t think the small charge that is now being made for plastic bags was a consideration.

It reminded me of my experience in the first supermarket in Leeds, England back in 1962 (the advertising for the new store called it an authentic American Supermarket). Until the supermarket opened, we customers read or gave our list of groceries to a clerk who scurried around to get our items------just as we had done in Canada before the advent of supermarkets---and placed them in the string bags we had brought with us.

We had had supermarkets in Canada for 15 years or so before we went to England, and we now found it frustrating to wait for a clerk to fill an order.

Soon after the Leeds supermarket opened, I filled my cart and went to the check out. After ringing up my order, the cashier asked if he could have my bags.

I said that I had assumed that the supermarket would be providing paper bags as they did in America (plastic bags came later).

“Supermarkets don’t provide bags in America”, he said.

“Yes, they do”, I replied.

He shook his head.

I thought about the quip we used to hear in Yorkshire about people from Lancashire: ‘You can always tell a lad from Lancashire but you can’t tell him much’.

And then I thought about pots and kettles.

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Looking back, Britain in the 1960s was in many ways closer to the goals of Earth Day than we are today (except for the terrible smogs caused by open coal fireplaces---which were in the process of being phased out).

For example:

Petrol was expensive and as a result cars were small and fuel efficient.

Electricity was costly so home owners used it sparingly.

For short trips, most people walked or bicycled.

Many people grew vegetables in their own gardens or on allotments provided by the city.

But the search for the so-called ‘good life’ in both Britain and North America created trends that have been leading us astray.

A few years ago, a friend from London, England and I were talking about these trends. We agreed that they had to change and each of us could see some promising signs.

I said that some people in Canada were now ridiculing huge SUVs by, for example, referring to them as Mall Terrain Vehicles.

He said that there was an astonishing number of SUVs in crowded London.

The locals referred to them, disparagingly, as Chelsea Tractors.

I loved it!


He had to Get out of Tulsequah

I never learned why Larry (not his real name) wanted to get out of Tulsequah.

But he sure wanted out.

Perhaps he had a really severe case of ‘cabin fever’ from being cooped up in an isolated mining camp in the north-western corner of British Columbia. Or he may have had problems with a wife or girlfriend back in Vancouver---problems that he wanted to get home to try to sort out.

He wasn’t saying.

He was a truck driver, in his late 20s, stocky with a fixed sullenness about him. Like the other workers in the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company (COMINCO) mine, he had signed a contract with the company to stay for a set period of time. In return, the Company paid for his fare from Vancouver to Tulsequah and would pay for his fare back to Vancouver.

The routing was complicated and the fare was not cheap. Workers recruited in Vancouver had to fly first to Seattle, catch a plane to Ketchikan, Alaska, then a seaplane to Juneau, Alaska and finally a bush plane to Tulsequah.

The Company was prepared to let him break the contract, but if he did, he would have to pay the full cost of both the fare to Tulsequah and the fare home.

It was June 1957 and I was on the second summer with Frontier College (see Posting #9, March 1, 2009) for stories about my first summer).

The Company decided that I should join Larry and the other truck drivers who were bringing newly-mined ore from half-way up a mountain---via a gravel road with many switchbacks---to a mill in the valley below. (The mill pulverized the ore and using various chemicals concentrated the ore for shipment by barge to Vancouver and then to a smelter.)

Once up the mountain, we backed in under a hopper that contained the ore rocks that had been dumped by mine railway cars.

Then we pulled a lever that opened a door in the hopper, allowing the ore to flow into the back of the truck. Once the truck was full we closed the hopper door and started the trip down the mountain.

The driving, which went on 24 hours a day, was mainly boring---up and down, up and down---but there were a couple of dangers that could make life interesting.

First, the hopper door could jam if a large piece of ore got trapped in it. There were long steel rods that we had to use to push or pry the rock out of the way. If the door couldn’t be closed, the ore just kept coming, and coming….

The second danger was on the way down the mountain. The driver had to find a way to keep the heavily-loaded truck from running away. The secret was to find the right balance of engine braking and air brakes to control the descent down the switchback road. If one used too much engine braking, by using too low a gear, the engine would overheat. If one chose too high a gear, the airbrakes would have to be used too much--- the pressure would fall and the brakes would eventually fail.

It wasn’t always easy to get the right balance. One night, my airbrake pressure got too low and I had to steer the truck into the bank on one of the switchbacks. I waited there until the pressure had come back up, then carried on down the mountain.

Reporting for work one morning, I was told there would be no driving for a few days. Larry had had a problem during the night. He claimed that while he was loading his truck, the hopper door jammed. He said he hadn’t been able to dislodge the rock. The ore poured down on the truck, burying it. The truck was a write-off.

It was treated as an accident and when the mess was cleaned away Larry was given a new truck, a brand new Autocar, which had just arrived by barge from Vancouver. We were told that it cost $150,000 (that’s about $1.2 million in 2009 dollars!)

It was a beautiful looking truck, with a luxurious cab. It had 18 speeds and something I really liked, an RPM gauge. The ore trucks had to be double-clutched to shift gears and this was tough when one was going up or down the mountain. Unless one got the RPM just right there would be a damaging (and embarrassing) grinding of gears. The old trucks didn’t have an RPM gauge and one just had to develop a feel for the speed of the engine. With the Autocar, you just waited until the RPM gauge was in the green zone and every shift was perfect.

We were all envious of Larry’s new truck.

I hoped the Autocar would improve Larry’s disposition---which, perhaps, was the Company’s hope as well.

Two days later, as I was having breakfast in the cookhouse one of the other drivers asked if I had heard about Larry. He said that during the night Larry’s new truck had gone off the road as he was coming down the mountain. Larry claimed, apparently, that the brakes had failed. He was just able to get out of the truck before it crashed down into a deep gully.

It was another write-off.

As I started to look around the cookhouse for Larry, my friend said that I wouldn’t be able to find him. A bush plane had been called and Larry was on his way to meet it. The Company had decided that enough was enough.

Larry had finally got his wish--- he was on his way home.

Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah Local of the Miners Union

In July of 1957, the Company announced that it would be mothballing Tulsequah in September---until the price of base metals picked up. Everyone would be laid off except for two watchmen who would stay on-site.

One of the early layoffs was a fellow who was Secretary Treasurer of the Tulsequah local of the union. Knowing that I would be around until almost the end, some workers nominated me to be Secretary Treasurer.

Normally, I wouldn’t have thought twice about accepting. I was paying dues to the Union and had always been a supporter of unions. The problem was that it was the International Mine and Mill and Smelter Union, a union that had alleged links with the Communist Party or at least with Communist sympathizers.

In the end, I decided to accept the post.

After I took over the Secretary Treasurer’s role, one of the workers said that if I didn’t run off with the local’s bank account I would be first one who hadn’t.

I asked him if the police had ever recovered the funds. He said the union never called the police.

“We’ve all been in jail---we would never send anyone there.”

As September approached, I closed out the bank accounts and arranged for all the funds---every last penny--- to be sent to the Union’s regional office in Vancouver.

In agreeing to take on the job, I had not thought that in a couple of years the RCMP would be conducting security checks on me as I applied for entry into the Foreign Service. I had written the Foreign Service exams and had done well enough to be offered a job, subject to background checks.

I don’t know whether my brief stint with the union’s local executive ever came to the RCMP’s attention. If it did, it was obviously---and properly--- treated as something of no security significance.

Still, although I knew I had done nothing wrong I was a bit apprehensive until the Government confirmed the job offer----meaning that I had passed the security check.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


One evening during a holiday in France, we were driving in Paris trying to find our hotel and trying not to hit, or be hit, by aggressive Parisian drivers. Our child was in the backseat.

In the era before children’s car seats, our child wore a harness that was attached to the frame of the car. Believe or not, the harness was a state-of-the-art safety feature at that time, a safety feature that had not yet been adopted by most motorists. It allowed children to stand up and look out the windows but constrained them somewhat if there were a sudden stop or an accident.

As we navigated through the traffic, we heard a little voice from the backseat, “It’s gorgeous!”

A little later, a louder voice, “It’s gorgeous”.

At a traffic stop, we turned around and saw that our child was looking out the back window---at the Eiffel Tower.

And gorgeous, it was--- illuminated against the darkening sky!

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On the same trip, we had to use an elevator and we wondered how our child would react to its first elevator ride. We watched as the door shut and the elevator started to rise.

The child’s face grew puzzled, and then relaxed.

Looking up at us, the child said reassuringly, “Ride in a cupboard”.



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See you next Sunday for Posting #18 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.

Posting #16

Crowds back in Niagara-on-the-Lake; Cash for the Russian Project; Carrying Cash to Russia and Keeping it Safe; Wrinkle Remover;
Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Crowds back in Niagara-on-the-Lake

The Shaw Festival opened its 2009 season on Saturday, April 11.

Suddenly the town that had been snoozing since last fall came alive.

Parking spaces are scarce again. The sidewalks are crowded with ambling visitors.

And the restaurants are busy. For the last few months, we have been able to gossip leisurely with the servers but no longer. We went to one of our favourite places on April 11th and the server took our order and was off. When she brought our food, I said, “The people are back.”

Looking around the room, she smiled broadly, “Isn’t it great!”

Everyone has been wondering about the impact of the financial and economic problems on the Festival and the town.

Of course, one robin doesn’t a spring make, but we hope that all this activity is a good omen.


Cash for the Russian Project

I knew that there would be many challenges in setting up 22 model employment offices across 8 time zones in Russia but I didn’t expect one of them to be finding the cash to pay the bills.

The problem wasn’t ‘money’, money. The project was generously funded, with more than enough money in the budget to pay all our costs. The challenge was in getting ‘cash’ money.

The basic problem was that Russia did not have a trustworthy banking system in the 1990s.

There WERE banks. In fact, each month, a brand new bank would spring up in Moscow with a respectable facade outside and lots of reassuring marble inside. They looked as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.

But, in two months or so, the bankers and the deposits would be sunning themselves in Dubai.

Because there were no reliable banks, all transactions in Russia in the 1990s had to be in cash---no cheques, credit cards, bank drafts, wired transfers or lines of credit.

And the cash had to be in US dollars.

Furthermore, the US bills had to be totally pristine, with absolutely no identifying marks. I had never paid any attention to markings on bills until I had to sort through stacks of bills to find some that would be acceptable in Russia. I was astonished at how many bills had been ‘defaced’---bills with scribbled numbers on them, staple holes, tears and even badly dog-eared corners.

Exactly why Russians insist on pristine bills is---as President Obama would say---beyond my pay grade. I suspect they are worried that someone may try to track financial transactions by using marked bills, perhaps the police (secret or otherwise), tax inspectors or even criminals. Whatever the reason, Russians wanted clean bills.

And that was that!

I found it was hard to convey the need for clean bills to Canadian bankers. When I tried to get the US$25,000 needed to open the project, I went to the foreign exchange department of a large charter bank in Ottawa.

The clerk listened to me and then said that there would be no problem. Any worn or torn bills were returned to Washington to be destroyed. To demonstrate, she pulled out a stack of US 100 bills. “\See, these bills are fine”.

I leafed through the bills. Pulling out several with handwritten numbers and small tears, I explained that they would not be accepted by the Russians.

“What’s wrong with those Russians? These are perfectly fine bills!”

I sighed and went to the Civil Service Co-op (now called the Alterna Bank). I knew that the Co-op didn’t usually handle large amounts of US dollars---just enough to provide members with a few hundred dollars for trips to the US---but the clerks were generally more helpful than their counterparts at the ‘real’ banks.

I found a wonderful clerk who actually listened to my plea, and understood.

“So, you want me to launder some money for you”, Deidre chuckled.

She told me she would request brand new bills, which would arrive in about a week.

When the money arrived, she and I went into a back room where she ran the bills through an automatic counter---twice. Worrying about me walking on the street with all that money, she found an anonymous looking envelope. “People will think it’s just mortgage documents”, she said.

Whenever we needed more money, Pat or I would call Deidre at the Co-op.

“How much laundered cash do you want this time?”, she would ask.

It is wonderful to find someone who knows what she is doing, and does it with a sense of humour!

Carrying Cash to Russia and Keeping it Safe

Once we had clean bills, Pat or I had to carry them to Russia. On my first trip to Russia, I carried US$25,000 (made up of 100s, 50s and 20s), in two bulging money belts.

Pat brought over US$10,000-15,000 each time she visited me.

(She once startled a friend who was seeing her off at the Ottawa Airport by asking her to keep an eye on her (Pat’s) carry-on case while she went for a magazine. “It has $15,000 in it.” Pat says the friend gasped, and then kept the bag squeezed between her legs until Pat came back.)

Once the cash was in Russia, I had to find a way to keep it safe.

My office manager said that Russians have a saying that locks keep out only honest people. He argued that small safes and filing cabinets with locks were useless---that would be the first place thieves would look. The secret was to find a place to hide the money where no one would think of looking.

Where could that be?

After mulling things over for a while, I came up with a solution. My furnished apartment had a small room with shelves of hundreds of double-banked Russian books. I hollowed out a large old book, stored the cash in it and placed the book on the third shelf behind a red book.

After I did this, I was worried that if anything happened to me, the money might never be found.

I couldn’t figure out how to tell Pat---who was back in Ottawa---what I had done with the money (I assumed---not unreasonably as things turned out---that emails and phone calls would be monitored and that the apartment would be bugged).

I decided that I just had to live with that worry, but one of the first things we did when Pat came to visit was to go for a walk in a nearby park so I could tell her where the money was stored.

Later on, whenever we needed some cash, we would write notes to each other and one of us would go to the stash.

All in all, the systems we developed to deal with cash worked well---no money was ever stolen. But there was a cost in worry and inconvenience. We kept reminding ourselves that this was a cost that all Russians had to bear, day in and day out.

They couldn’t get on a plane and in a few hours be back in a place where banks worked.

Wrinkle Remover

My first trip from Moscow to a proposed model employment office was on an overnight train. When we checked in, my interpreter and I found that we would be sharing a four-berth compartment with another Russian and a fellow from the newly-independent nation of Georgia.

As soon as we heard the fourth person was a Georgian, the interpreter dragged me into the corridor, outside our compartment. He hissed that we had to be very careful with the Georgian.

“They are all thugs”, my interpreter said, “Don’t tell him anything, and above all don’t show him any money”. (I had US$2000 as backup funds in a money belt plus more money in my billfold.)

I learned that there were centuries of bad feelings between the Russians and the Georgians (bad feelings that continue to today, witness the recent border fighting).

As we got ready for bed, I found that the clasp on my suitcase had jammed. The interpreter and I took turns trying to free the clasp but with no luck.

The Georgian, who had been watching us, pulled a 9 inch hunting knife from his suitcase and offered to use it to pry the clasp open. Just then, the clasp came free.

Looking at me, the interpreter nodded almost imperceptibly toward the Georgian, as much as to say, “Didn’t I tell you?”

When I went to the washroom at the end of the corridor to brush my teeth, I put my passport in my money belt with the $2000. Usually, I took the money belt off at night but not that night!

I didn’t sleep much. I felt I had to keep an eye on the Georgian and his knife. And the lumpy money belt prodded me every time I rolled over.

To make matters worse, the train was too hot. Now, the heating in Russian trains is something like the jibe about the army having two sizes: too small and too big. The train that night was definitely too hot. On top of that, I am a ‘hot’ sleeper, in other words, I perspire a lot at night.

In the morning the money belt was damp, very damp.

We had breakfast with the Georgian fellow and he seemed fine, after all---a businessman trying to sell Georgian wines. (I have no idea what he was doing with the hunting knife---perhaps it was protection against Russian thugs.)

We were met at the train station by local employment officials and our visit went well.

The return trip was uneventful.

When I got back to the Moscow apartment, I pulled out the $2000. The bills had dried by that time but were badly wrinkled. No Russian would have accepted them.

That evening, I sent the family an SOS email telling them about the wrinkled bills and asking for suggestions. Daughter Jennifer replied immediately saying that when she was studying fashion design the students often had a problem with wrinkled patterns. A professor taught them how to iron the patterns, using paper above and below and a low-medium setting (no steam!).

I spent a few hours ironing bills on the kitchen table. It was amazing---the wrinkles just disappeared.

The next day, on my way to work, I used one of the ironed bills and it survived the usual thorough screening by a shop keeper.

The next time Pat saw Deidre at the Co-op, she told her that we were no longer just laundering money, we were also ironing it.

Deidre laughed and shook her head as though to say, ‘What will these crazy people be up to next?’

Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Cassidy in Quebec

This is still another story about Cassidy, our golden cocker spaniel (I am afraid of boring people with stories about Cass----I promise I will give the old fellow a rest for a few postings).

In 1976, the whole family, Cass included, moved to Quebec City for a year.

One of our neighbours, Pierre, (not his real name) fell in love with Cass and his tricks.

One of the tricks was the old standard, ‘shake hands’. Pierre decided to try the trick in French. He said to Cass, “Donne-moi ta patte”. Cass paused for a moment, then seeing Pierre’s outstretched hand, reached out his paw. Pierre was ecstatic. “He speaks French!”

Now a cynic could say that the outstretched hand was a pretty big hint---that it wasn’t much of a stretch for Cass to figure out that he was expected to hold out his paw.

But after Pierre had played the game several times for his family and friends, Cassidy did indeed learn that “Donne-moi ta patte” meant ‘shake hands’. He would lift his paw even without an outstretched hand.

Pierre had less luck with another trick. Cass hated baths and we would tease him by saying “Have a bath Cass”. He would growl and shake his floppy ears.

When Pierre tried the French for that, Cass just stared at him. There were no cues, no signals and Cass was stumped.

Pierre tried a different tack. He tried to repeat what we said but with his strong accent it came out something like, “Hab a bat Cass”

We wondered what Cass would do.

Cass stared at him for a couple of seconds and then the light came on. Cass growled in the most satisfying way.

Pierre was delighted.



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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #17 will include some stories about a summer I spent in a mining camp at Tulsequah, British Columbia. If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or you can email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.

POSTING # 15

Return of the Robins of Virgil?; Enrolling at Queens; Padre Laverty; Moving out of Residence; The High Cost of Alcohol; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Return of the Robins of Virgil?

In Posting # 10 (March 8, 2009), I told about our battles last year with robins who were determined to build a nest above our front door. After many attempts to discourage them, we finally succeeded with a strip of plywood with projecting nails---the kind used by carpet layers for wall-to-wall carpets---duct-taped to the ledge above our door.

The nail strip is still there, but we have been apprehensive. Would the robins figure out a way of building a nest on top of the nails?

This week, a male landed on the ledge, to scout out the situation. He looked in at us through the transom window, looked at the nails, thought for a while and then flew off.

A short time later, a female robin landed on the ledge. We assume that her mate had told her, “Yes, we can”.

We could see that she loved the location. Sitting on a nest, hatching eggs must be pretty boring stuff but from a nest on our ledge, she could watch both us and the activities on the street and sidewalk. And be safe from cats, crows and other pests.

She gingerly tried the turn-around maneuver that robins use to shape straw and mud into a nest. We could almost hear her wince as she ran into a nail. After thinking about things for a while, she flew off.

We hope she told her hubby that if he wants a nest on the ledge, he can build it himself.


Enrolling at Queens

My wife Pat and I are preparing for our respective 50th university reunions to be held next month. Pat’s is at Smith College in Northampton Massachusetts (she started university at Trinity College, University of Toronto, went on an exchange to Smith for her third year, and decided to stay there and graduate) while mine is at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Here are some stories about Queen’s---there will be tales about Smith in a later posting.

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In September 1955, after making French fries for the summer in Port Stanley (see Posting #8, February 22, 2009), my brother Jim drove me to Kingston to register at Queen’s.

I was more than a little terrified. It wasn’t the prospect of living away from home---I had spent all my high school summers away---but the thought of being at a university. Coming from a small town and a small town high school, I wondered whether I could cope with the courses, professors, essays and examinations.

(Over the last few years, I’ve been leading tours of foreign employment officials to Canadian universities and I’ve been enormously impressed---as have the visitors---with the orientation programs now offered new students---including trips to the campus several months before enrollment. I wish they had had something like that in my day.)

Jim helped me carry my stuff to my room in the newly-finished McNeil House Residence and made sure I was settled in before he took off for the long trip to his home in Guelph.

Jim and his wife, Fannie, encouraged and supported me in so many ways during my years at Queen’s. I will always be grateful to them!

Padre Laverty

As I adjusted to life at Queen’s, I gradually figured out who did what---the Principal, the Deans, the Departmental Chairs, and the professors in various shades: full, associate, assistant, and lowly lecturers.

But I had trouble understanding the role of Padre Laverty.

The formal duties of the Padre, who was in his early 40’s, dark hair, with some gray, a mustache and a military bearing, seemed to include conducting a church service on Sunday mornings in Grant Hall and providing prayers and invocations at official functions.

But he appeared to me to spend most of his time wandering around the campus, chatting with students. Later on, I realized that he was trying to ensure that the 2800 full-time students had a successful stay at Queen’s.

In a sense, he was trying to provide the advice and assistance that today’s well-staffed and trained Student Services departments offer.

By himself.

To establish a rapport with students, he tried to memorize the surnames and home towns of all the 2800 on campus.

Walking along the street, he would sort through his mental index cards and greet a student, “Well Jones, how are things in Gananoque?” Or, “Well Smith, how are things in Guelph?”

You just had to look at a student’s face to know that the greeting meant a great deal. The student wasn’t just a file in the Registrar’s office, he or she was SOMEONE.

Unfortunately, the good Padre had trouble with my name and home town. We had met at one of the home gatherings that he and his gracious wife, Frances, held for new students. As the books on memory recommend, the Padre had made sure he used my name (Hunter) and hometown (Arthur) a couple of times during the gathering.

However, when we ran into each other a few weeks later on the street, his greeting came out:

“Well Arthur, how are things in Hunter?”

I explained that I was Hunter from Arthur. He looked embarrassed and a little surprised that his system had let him down.

Whenever we met later on, I could see his eyes moving from side to side as he tried to figure out which name came first.

To tell the truth, I still felt good---during that first year at Queen’s---to know that two bits of information about me were stored away in his head, even if he sometimes mixed them up.


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Later on, I got involved in student government and met the Padre fairly often at different events. (By that time he had sorted out Hunter and Arthur.)

During a break in one of the events, he leaned over and whispered, “We are going to have to keep an eye on (the name of a student). I’m afraid he’s a bit of a bounder.”

I looked at him with surprise. I knew the student but he didn’t strike me as a threat to the virtue of the Queen’s coeds. He was bright, self-confident and more affluent than most of us---judging by his clothes---but he didn’t fit the image I had built up of the serial seducer.

That person was usually a jock, especially a football player, from a Toronto high school (can I make it clear that I am NOT saying that all football players from Toronto high schools fell into that category!)

I said I would keep my eyes open. When I checked with friends, they all had the same reaction as I had had---they didn’t see that student as a seducer.

But none of us dismissed the Padre’s concern. We had grown to respect his intelligence network---he knew what was going on around campus. There were things that showed up on his radar that just didn’t appear on ours. (For example, we could never figure out how he managed to include dating couples in his get-to-know-you gatherings. How did he know who was dating whom?)

Fifty years later, I am still wondering whether the student he identified was one of the most successful and secret seducers ever? Or was the Padre wrong?

I will be making discreet inquiries next month, at our class reunion.


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As I was writing the above story, Pat and I tried to recall what these Don Juans were called in our day---we certainly didn’t use ‘bounder’. Pat remembers Smith Students warning each other about fellows who were ‘operators’, or, even worse, ‘smooth operators’. Smithies also had the expression, “He has laid everything but the Atlantic Cable.”

At Queen’s, I remember people referring to someone as ‘a skin man’---graphic but a bit crude.

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I was delighted to learn some years ago that Queen’s had honoured the work of the two Lavertys, Marshall and Frances, by creating the Laverty Bursary to provide support to third or fourth year students in any faculty or discipline.

A fine tribute to a fine couple.

Moving out of Residence

In the 1950s, Queen’s turfed male students out of residence after two years to make way for incoming frosh.

Four of us decided to rent a small house but ended up renting roughly half of a large house. We had the downstairs (living room, dining room---which had three beds---and a large kitchen. We also had a small bedroom on the second floor.

There were two other tenants in the house: a retired Alcan worker who spent an astonishing amount of money on liquor; and a not-yet-retired Alcan worker who worked nights.

Finally, the landlady---who was a ‘Mrs.’ but with no husband in sight---had a large bedroom on the second floor. She was in her late forties, managed a store downtown and left the house each morning well-dressed, coiffed and made-up.

Like all successful Kingston landladies, she had perfected a ‘look-students-don’t-mess-with-me’ voice when talking to her young tenants. She could be cold and tough.

We had been in the house for a few weeks when she asked one morning if she could talk to us. We steeled ourselves for a blast about something or other.

Instead, she said she wanted a favour. She had a friend coming to see her that evening and she wondered if we could entertain him while she changed after her day at the store. She handed over a bottle of rye, and said her friend’s name was Frank.

Frank rang the doorbell at 7.30 pm. We told him that Mrs. XX was tied up but would he like to join us in the living room for a rye and coke. And then we tried to think of things to talk about. We soon exhausted the weather, where we were from and what we were studying. He clearly didn’t want to talk about himself---about all we got was that he was in Kingston on business.

The silences were getting longer and more painful. Then, the landlady came to the top of the stairs. Dressed in a frilly dressing gown, with her hair untied, she said in a sultry voice that we had never heard, “Oh, there you are Frank. Why don’t you come up?’

And as an afterthought, she added, “Could you bring the rye with you?”

Every few weeks we were asked to entertain a different friend.

Kingston landladies were---and perhaps still are---interesting, fascinating, memorable …(my thesaurus fails me) people.


The High Cost of Alcohol

I am not sure whether there is a statute of limitations for offenses under the Ontario and Federal liquor laws so I am going to have to be a little vague about the details of the next story. I hope you will understand.

There is a story that one of several students who had rented a house had a friend who liked to stay with him on weekends, especially during the football season. The visitor was a friendly and personable guy and the students enjoyed his visits.

But there were two problems---he liked to drink and he was always broke.

He would go through whatever beer or rye the students had been able to afford out of their tight budgets.

What to do?

One of the room-mates---with some knowledge of chemistry---suggested that they make some alcohol and put it in a vodka bottle. The visitor would never know the difference.

Gallon jugs were obtained and filled with water, yeast and various ingredients. The jugs fermented merrily, hidden under a blanket in a corner of the kitchen.

The story is that after the fermentation had ended, the brew was poured into a large pressure cooker, a coil of copper tubing was connected to the spout on top of the cooker, and the tube was circled down through a basin of ice water. After some heating of the fermented mix, a little stream of clear liquid emerged from the end of the copper tube.

“We have to test it”, someone said.

A match was brought close to a tablespoon of the liquid. It burned with a satisfying blue flame.

At his next visit, the friend complimented the students on their fine taste in vodka---as he poured a generous quantity into some orange juice.

I am told that the students felt great satisfaction from having solved a problem.

If only---they thought---essays and exams could be mastered so easily.

NOTE: I have to say that this story may well be apocryphal. It is hard to imagine that Queen’s students would ignore the country’s liquor laws in such a blatant fashion. I also have to say that there are real dangers in distilling spirits, dangers that range from explosions to the production of toxic liquids. Today’s Queen’s students should stick to the good old LCBO.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


Another story about, Cassidy, our golden cocker spaniel.


We had a tradition when the children were young of having popcorn during the television program ‘All in the Family’.

Cass adored popcorn. He would be lying on the floor of the television room asleep but as soon as he heard the opening bars of the program’s theme song, his head would come up and he would do a count of who was in the room. If anyone were missing he would go on what we called his ‘Paul Revere’s ride’---up to the third floor, down to the ground floor and the basement rounding up his people.

We would all watch the opening segment of the program, and then someone--- accompanied by Cass---would go to the kitchen and make the popcorn.

Bowls of the warm popcorn would be passed around. Cass sat close to whomever he thought was the softest touch. He would get a handful of popcorn, wolf it down and then wait for another handful. If the wait became too long, he would gently scratch the person’s arm with his paw---don’t forget the dog.

After ‘All in the Family’ went off the air, we still made popcorn but Cass had lost his trigger, his Pavlovian stimulus.

He soon found another.

He would listen for the heavy popcorn pot being taken from the cupboard in the kitchen. Once he heard that sound, his head would pop up. With his ears cocked, he would listen for the rattle of popcorn going into the pot. As soon as he heard that sound, he would start his race up and down the stairs, telling everyone that popcorn was being made.

Every time we have popcorn, I think of Cass’s wild races up and down the stairs, his floppy ears bouncing.

And I smile---and then sigh, as I think about how much we miss him.

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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #16 will include some stories about Russia.

POSTING # 14

The Welland Canal is Open; The Hunter Family and the ‘Gypsy Gene’; The Hunter Family Goes from Wales to Australia; From Australia to Wales and then to Canada; The Hunters in Toronto; Uncle Syd and the Hangman; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)


The Welland Canal is Open

The St. Lawrence Seaway, which is 50 years old, officially opened this year on March 20, tying 2007 for the earliest opening.

This means that the Welland Canal is open and the boats are back.

We have missed standing by the locks and watching the behemoths enter and leave. We have also missed the awesome optical illusion that occurs when one sees the ships from a distance appearing to sail through vineyards and fields.

We are glad to have the boats back!

The Hunter Family and the Gypsy Gene

A psychologist friend argues that some families have a ‘gypsy gene’. According to the theory, persons with this ‘gene’ love to take off for what seem to be greener pastures, while neighbours who lack the ‘gene’ are happy to stay put.

At the one extreme of ‘staying put’, there is the example of Adrian Targett who lives in Cheddar, England. Researchers discovered a 9000 year-old skeleton in a cave near Cheddar and when they compared the DNA in the bones of the remains with that of some of today’s residents of Cheddar, they concluded that Mr. Targett was a direct descendant of that prehistoric person. Some 300 generations later, Mr. Targett’s family is still living in the same location!

On the other hand, there are the Hunters---or, at least, the Hunters to whom I’m related---who must have acquired this ‘gypsy gene’ at some point in the 1800s.

As far as we know, my ancestors lived for centuries in the Scottish Lowlands, baking bread and getting along.

(A colleague in the government, Bill Stewart, who was Scottish-born---and had the accent to prove it---, told me I should be proud to know that the Clan Hunter was a sept of Clan Stewart. When I asked him what in heaven’s name a ‘sept’ was he explained that the Hunter Clan belonged to the Stewart Clan although it didn’t share the name. Apparently this meant that the Hunters fought with the Stewarts whenever the Stewarts felt it was necessary to crack some skulls, or whatever.)

Then, around 1830, the ‘gypsy gene’ seems to have come into the Hunter genetic makeup. My ancestors moved to northern Wales to bake bread for the workmen who were employed in a huge infrastructure boom, as companies rushed to build canals, aqueducts and railways.

In the early 1880’s, as the boom was coming to an end, my grandfather took his wife and two daughters to Australia. Then he moved his wife and four children back to Wales. And in 1907, he moved his wife and seven children to Toronto.

You can see what I mean by a ‘gypsy gene’.

Here are a few stories about the Hunter travels but I have to warn you that the stories are not backed up by much documentation. (What little we know about the Hunters is set out in a family tree website that my brother Jim and I are working on.)

There is, on the other hand, a fair bit of documentation for my mother’s family and for Pat’s family. I once told my father that I thought I would try to do some research on the Hunters, thinking he would be pleased but he said, “Do you think that’s a good idea?’ I tried to explain about the importance of documentation but he said, “Every family has skeletons in its closet. It’s better not to disturb them.”

I wasn’t sure then and I’m not sure now what kind of skeletons he was referring to.

Of course, one person’s skeleton may be another person’s amusing case of human frailty.

That reminds me of a visit I had from a genealogist when I was working in the Canadian Immigration office in Leeds, Yorkshire. He told me he had a client, a prominent Crown Attorney in Ontario, who wanted to know more about his British ancestors. My visitor told me that he had traced the family back to a man born in the early 1800s. The problem was that some of the man’s birth records were missing while others were incomplete.

The genealogist said that he had encountered that situation before and it usually meant that the person concerned had been born out of wedlock, had become prosperous and then arranged to have some of the records ‘disappear’.

The genealogist had come to see me to find out how I thought a Crown Attorney in Canada would react. “Would he be upset if I told him that it was likely that one of his ancestors was a bastard?”

I said that it would depend.

I, for example, would be amused but if the Crown Attorney was hoping to be able to tell his friends that he was descended from royalty, he might be upset.

My advice was that he should get his fees before dropping the ‘B’ bomb.


The Hunter Family from Wales to Australia

Grandfather Hunter went ahead to Australia, leaving his wife and two young children in Wales. He seems to have done well in the new country and regularly sent money home, some to be used for daily expenses and some to be banked for the eventual purchase of tickets to Australia.

Grandmother Hunter was impatient to join him but he kept arguing that he wasn’t well enough settled to welcome them properly. Finally, Grandmother, prompted probably by some understandable fears about what could happen to a ‘single’ man in a strange country, decided that the time had come. She wrote a letter telling him that she was packing, and gave him the details of the ship she and the children would be travelling on.

Unfortunately, the letter and the girls traveled on the same ship.

Grandmother and the children arrived but there was no husband or father to meet them. According to the story, it took a few days to track down Grandfather.

And shortly after that, the letter arrived.

We are not sure exactly how long they stayed in Australia, but it was probably about 6 or 7 years. Two children were born during the stay and were named after Australian cities, Sydney (Uncle Syd) and Adelaide (Aunt Ady).

From Australia to Wales and then to Canada

In the late 1880s, the Hunters returned to Wales to take over the family bakery in Cefn Mawr (the name means the top of a large hill, in Welsh) and using money made in Australia built a reasonably substantial family home with bright red, glazed terracotta bricks. Dad and my aunts and uncles would often talk about the glazed bricks---it was, they claimed proudly, the only house in Cefn Mawr with them.

Pat and I visited Cefn Mawr in 1962 and the house was still standing, with its shiny glazed bricks. We learned that the house had been taken over by the village as part of their housing for low-income persons. The council had called it Toronto House, in honour of the Hunters who had immigrated to Toronto.

In doing some research on terracotta bricks, I was fascinated to read in Wikipedia that “The colour of terracotta varies with the source of the clay. London clay gives a pale pink or buff colour, whereas the Ruabon (North Wales) clay gives a bright red.” Cefn Mawr is next door to Ruabon.

The encyclopaedia goes on to say that normal, soft-surface terracotta bricks absorbed soot and over time became permanently blackened. Glazed terracotta bricks were introduced around 1890 and soon replaced the older ones because they could be cleaned.

So Grandfather Hunter seems to have moved quickly to take advantage of the new bricks.

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On our visit to Cefn Mawr, we met a retired school teacher who had grown up in the village and knew my grandfather and some of my aunts and uncles. He said that the village children liked to visit the Hunter Bakery and watch my grandfather at work. I gather grandfather liked to put on a little show for the kids. One of his tricks was to use his elbow to make dents in pans of freshly-risen buns so he could add a raisin mixture.

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It is not clear why Grandfather decided, in 1907, to move the family to Canada. There were financial and economic problems in Britain about that time and these caused a huge surge in immigration to Canada. Perhaps that was the motivation for the move. But here is a story that my mother pieced together from hints and clues dropped by Dad and his brothers and sisters---who never talked openly about the reason for the move to Canada.

According to the story, two poachers from the village had been killing deer on the estate of a local squire when gamekeepers spotted them and chased them into the village. They were found hiding in Grandfather’s barn, taken before the local magistrate and found guilty of poaching. The penalty for poaching in Wales in those days was ‘birching’ in which the offender was struck with a cane until the back was covered with welts and blood. Then the offender was dipped in a vat of brine. The brine was to increase the pain of the punishment and also to make sure that the back would be covered with heavy scars.

A false rumour spread through the village that Grandfather had squealed on the poachers. Although the rumour wasn’t true, people stopped shopping at the Hunter Bakery.

According to this story, the family had no choice. They had to leave.

The Hunters in Toronto

As in the move to Australia, Grandfather went ahead but this time with three working-age sons (including my father, who was 14 at the time). They lived in rooms until my Grandmother and the girls arrived. The reunited family found a house in a low-rent area of the city.

The first summer after the family was reunited; Grandmother Hunter decided that the family should grow cabbages and store them for the winter, as they did in Wales. The growing weather was ideal and in the fall they stowed a huge crop of cabbages under the front porch of their rented house. The winter was much colder than in Wales and the cabbages froze solid.

My father loved to tell how the cabbage turned to mush in the spring and then, as the weather warmed, to sauerkraut. He said that many British immigrants made that mistake during their first year in Canada. As you walked along the street, you could tell the houses of new immigrants from Britain by the sauerkraut smell.

The part of Toronto where they first lived is now known as Cabbagetown, and is, of course, anything but a low-rent area.

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Once when I was young, I was looking through a box of books in the attic and found a book with an inscription, “To Alexander, good luck in Canada.”

I showed it to Mom and asked who Alexander was. She looked uncomfortable, and said that he was my Dad’s brother, my uncle, but that he was ‘bad’ and that he had “gone out west’. The family had no idea what had happened to him.

That was strange. I had never heard of an Uncle Alexander. Checking birth records recently I found that Alexander had been born in Wales in 1890, shortly after the return from Australia, and three years before my father was born.

He is shown in the 1911 Canadian census as living with the Hunter family on Oak Street in Toronto.

For years, I assumed that Alexander was one of the skeletons that Dad had talked about and I wondered what sins or crimes he had committed.

Recently a cousin told me there was nothing wrong with Alexander. She said she understood that he simply got fed up with the nagging of his mother and his sisters---usually about how much he could spend from his earnings, and how much he had to hand over to the family.

One day he set off for work with his lunch box, and never returned.

So, we are left with a mystery. What happened to Alexander?

My mother wondered if Tommy Hunter, the country and western singer, might be the offspring of Alexander. I sent him an email but never received a reply.


Uncle Syd and the Hangman

Uncle Syd was head of the Ontario Provincial Police detachment in Perth Ontario after the Second World. One of the people from the area had been convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. The Warden of the Lanark County Gaol asked Uncle Syd to meet the hangman who was coming on the train from Toronto.

Uncle Syd met the hangman, took him to the Gaol so he could drop off the rope he had brought in a large suitcase (he preferred to use his own rope), and check out the gallows.

Then they drove to the hotel and the hangman asked two favours. First, could my uncle have a piano moved to his room, and second could my uncle spend the evening with him. Uncle Syd agreed with both requests.

While the two men were having dinner, the hotel staff moved a piano into the hangman’s room. The hangman and my uncle went up to the room and for the next two hours the hangman played classical music. Uncle Syd said that he played well, and with feeling.

The next day, Uncle Syd drove the hangman to the courthouse. The hangman did his job and Uncle Syd drove him back to the train station.

They shook hands and the hangman climbed onto the train. Uncle Syd handed him the large suitcase, and the train pulled away.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

I mentioned in last week’s Posting (#13) that Pat loathes camping. I enjoy it and used to take the children off for a few days in the Gatineau Park, outside of Ottawa.

We camped several times in one of the ‘civilized’ sites in the Park (with flush toilets, showers and stone fireplaces). I then thought it would be fun to try one of the ‘wilderness’ sites. As usual, Pat would drive us up and drop us off.

As we drove to the Park, Pat asked whether there would be bears. I said I was sure there wouldn’t be.

As we drove into the wilderness site, there was a huge cage with steel bars resting on a trailer. The door of the cage was open and a large slab of raw meat was hanging from a hook attached to the roof of the cage.

A bear trap!

A good dinner was followed by a very nervous night of fitful sleep and wide 'awalkefulness'.

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On another camping excursion, we packed carefully, taking everything we could possibly need. At the site, I showed the kids how to lay a fire with dry leaves, twigs and branches and I asked one of them to get the matches. They looked at each other, and then at me. We had forgotten the matches. (We found a kind camper who shared his matches with us.)

The next time we went camping, we packed matches into every bag and box we took. And daughter Jen, who was very young at the time, coined the expression that has become one of the family’s sayings: “It’s better to have too much, than none.”

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See you next Sunday for more stories from our family’s universe! Posting #15 will include some stories from my years at Queen’s University.