CHAPTER 68 THE MOVE TO TORONTO
(Helen) Early in the spring of 1907 the owner of Peachtree Farm gave the family notice to leave, as he wished to occupy the place himself. No other suitable place was found for rent, so Mother bought a cottage just north of Ontario Street, with a garden and orchard rather similar to that at Peachtree Farm. The house was of brick and had six rooms. She bought it with a little money due on a mortgage she held. Christopher and I painted the kitchen floor dark brown one cold evening. Ironically, the family only lived in it a month, as shortly afterwards Father accepted a post as inspector with his old bank and the family moved to Toronto. At this time both Christopher and Dorothy were at McGill University. I had been sick and was at home. Aunt Dora had a school part of the time, which I attended. Then Dorothy taught me part of the time but mostly Mother. I took the high school entrance examination at a public school in Huntsville after a month there and got the gold medal. I was about thirteen.
(Christopher) Mr. Stuart Strathy, nephew of Mr. H. S. Strathy and General Manager of The Trader's Bank, wrote a letter in his own handwriting to Father, begging him to return to work with the Bank. He was offered the job of Inspector, to be based on Toronto and to visit branches all over Canada.
The Bank of Ontario had failed and a lot of poor people had lost heavily. Father wrote an article on banking, pointing out the weak points in the Canadian banking system and recommending what should be done. He said, amongst other things, that there should be an auditor responsible directly to a bank's directors and not under the control of the manager, who should have the right to inspect any books in any part of the bank. It was probably this article that led the Trader's Bank authorities to offer him this post of Inspector, and afterwards Auditor to the Board. Perhaps it was partly from that article that changes in legislation came about.
The Trader's Bank amalgamated with the Royal Bank later on. The Trader's Bank had no pension plan, whereas the Royal Bank had one. As a result of the amalgamation, employees of The Trader's Bank were given equal pension rights. Father was getting quite a good salary at this time and became entitled to quite a good pension.
(Somerville) As I was to write my senior matriculation that July, I stayed on in Port Hope with Aunt Dora in a very nice house she had recently bought on King Street, half way up the hill of English Town. It was a pleasant interlude and a relief to be free of chores morning and night, and I am sure her advice helped me in my school work. I succeeded in winning three scholarships, from which I chose the Edward Blake in Classics at University College, Toronto, which gave me three years free tuition and a small cash payment in my first year. During this period Helen also stayed in Port Hope with Aunt Dora and went to her school.
(Somerville) In the spring of 1907 Mother and David joined Dad in Toronto, where they rented three rooms from Mr. Bayler, near Gladstone Avenue. At Easter I went to Toronto from Port Hope for a week and on a lovely spring day Mother took us and the two Fleck daughters to Riverdale Park to see the animals. I remember Mary as a golden-haired beauty with the bluest of eyes. I doubt whether she thought much of me, but I fell immediately in love. It was seventeen years before we wed and her spell never left me.
(Helen) I remember our three rooms were very crowded during that Easter visit. Almost every day we went down to the back door of Christie's Biscuit Factory and bought broken biscuits for almost nothing. Mother was not very well.
(Somerville) After completing my matriculation in July 1907 I went to stay with Aunt Dora at her cottage on Fairy Lake, Muskoka. Christopher had obtained a job with Mr. L. V. Rorke on a survey party up the Montreal River. He was able to get me a job as chainman. It was near Elk Lake, about 60 miles north of Latchford. Christopher left towards the end of September to register in Civil Engineering at McGill University. I came out with the survey party about October 4th in a memorable paddle down the river, the last thirty miles in a snow storm. When we got up next day at Latchford there were five or six inches of wet snow on the ground. Because Mr. Rorke had paid us off by cheque, I arrived next day at the Union Station in Toronto without a penny in cash and lugged my kit bag all the way out to 201 Euclid Avenue, where the family had just moved.
(Christopher) I had to leave the survey early but went to Toronto to visit Mother, who was still living in the rooms rented from the Baylers. I got off the train at Sunnyside early in the morning, carrying a big moose horn for Frank Sydney. Mrs. Bayler answered my knock on the door and would not let me in; she thought I was a rag and bone man!
201 Euclid Avenue was not a very nice house, in not a very nice district and the family was there for just a year. It was one of a pair of old brick houses just south of Dundas Street. It had three storeys and was a great improvement on the rooms. To Dorothy her mother wrote, in November, 1907:
"The white cat is quite sick again. She grows so sweet and wise I feel quite distressed. I gave her the liver of the chicken the other day, cut up, and left her in the kitchen to eat it off a piece of paper. Presently she came trotting in carrying paper and liver to eat it beside me.(The white had belonged to little Hope, and was very special)"I have just had a long interruption from a friend who calls on us twice a week. His name is Hoi Ching and he is most friendly and gentlemanly. He always sits down in the hall and has a long discourse in broken English. Helen showed him the Chinese tract tonight and he read it through with great interest. He quite understands the Gospel and I think he said his father turned him out because he would obey God and not the devil. It is difficult to follow him. He told me he had 200 cousins in Canada; they must be a large family. Of course his secondary reason for coming is to get the washing. He is so gentle and speaks so softly."(Somerville) As I was only sixteen, it was felt wise for me to spend a year in business before entering the university. Through Dad I secured a place as a junior with The Trader's Bank, a useful bit of experience for which I have often been thankful in later life. My salary was $100 per annum, but while in Toronto I received a living allowance of a further $100.
In the summer of 1908 I was transferred to a newly opened branch of The Trader's Bank on the Bruce Peninsula, at Lions Head. This place was at that time pretty well cut off from the rest of the country, reached either by a small steamer from Owen Sound, which ran twice weekly, or by stage coach from Wiarton, 20 miles away. My duties were, those of junior and ledger-keeper. The branch opened in an old frame store and the accountant-teller and I slept in a room behind the office. We got our meals at the local hotel, for which we paid $2.50 a week. Fortunately I had had an increase of $100 per annum, otherwise I do not know how I could have subsisted. Our Branch Manager, Mr. Pringle, had held a much better post with the Sovereign Bank until its failure the preceding year and was very anxious to make a good impression in his new post. We worked hard to win customers, amongst other things deciding to keep the branch open to suit their convenience. At first we found they all came in just as we were about to close at 3.00 p.m., so Mr. Pringle decided to remain open until 4.00 p.m., with the natural result that nobody came in till 4.00 p.m. By the time we had finished balancing the books it was usually 5.00 p.m. However, taken all in all, it was a very pleasant summer, embellished by the fact that Dad and the family came up for his vacation. I remember our flying kites in a big field above Georgian Bay, from which one could always count upon a stiff breeze.
When we first went to Lion's Head the Branch had no safe and it was the responsibility of the accountant, Mr. Morgan, and myself to keep the cash overnight. Sometimes it amounted to several thousand dollars. Each of us had a revolver but neither of us had ever fired one and mine was so stiff that I could scarcely pull the trigger. Fortunately we never had to make use of them.
After hours Morgan and I got hold of a boat and had some good fishing for lake trout in the deep water off the Head. All summer trout formed the chief item on the hotel bill of fare and excellent it was, always sweet and fresh.
(Helen) When Mother first reached Toronto, Mr. G. W. Allen, who was gifted in speaking with his hands to the deaf and dumb, had started a class for them in the meeting room on Elm Street. There was a Mr. Montmarquette in the meeting who was deaf and dumb. He had a boy and girl and another brother had two boys. Mr. Allen asked Mother if she could have a Sunday School for them and the other children of the deaf and dumb. She used to see children playing in the street, so she invited them in. There was a boy called Buckles, who used to wear one sweater over another, all of them full of holes. But each sweater would cover up the holes in the one underneath, so that by wearing seven or eight of them he was decently covered.
(Christopher) I remember Mother telling them about Heaven. Buckles listened most intently and then he said: "Oh Gee, wouldn't I just love to sit up there and dangle my legs over"!
(Helen) Then there was the boy who remarked about the Sunday school tickets of Joseph being sold, "I suppose it was the Midianites who took the photograph"! Mother taught those boys for some years and was very interested in them. And when we bought the Swallows' Nest property in Muskoka from John Hamer she invited them up for the summer. We had the Boathouse, and we bought a Kenyon house; but it spent the summer travelling from Toronto to Parry Sound and Sault Ste Marie - any way it never got to Gordon Bay that summer. We all, including all these boys, slept in tents that summer of 1913. They had a great time. David was about the same age. That was the summer Gertrude Ulrich was there - she was about ten; she was most efficient. Milk came from the Hamer's cow. One of the city boys said loftily, "We get our milk out of a nice clean bottle, not out of a cow." There were two boys called Mooney and the younger one, always called Fatty, fell into the water off the wharf. I jumped in and fished him out once and Dorothy fished him out another time, until finally Mother couldn't stand the responsibility any more and the next morning took them back to Toronto.
(Christopher) Ray Clark and Geoffrey Dodds and Walter Pengelly came up with me from McGill the first Christmas we were at Euclid Avenue and the Toronto University students looked up the McGill list and found that we were living in Toronto and going to McGill. They regarded this as a great crime, so they arranged to come and shout Toronto University yells outside the house. But, for some reason we had all gone to bed early and were sound asleep and never heard a thing. Mother heard and prayed that we wouldn't wake up.
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