OutOfCoalVille
My maternal grandmother was born in Newfoundland in 1911.
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My maternal grandmother was born in Newfoundland in 1911.
Her husband, who worked for BC Hydro down at the old gasworks on the edge of Victoria's Rock Bay, died suddenly one spring evening in 1966.
Grandpa Al was out cutting the grass at the house we had just moved into on Monterey Avenue when he had a massive coronary.
At the time Ethel, who our oldest kid Bigger E. would much later know as 'Cookie Grandma', was so dependent on her husband that she didn't even know how to write a cheque.
But soon thereafter she learned to drive the brand new push button Valiant that Al had bought the previous fall and, best of all for her grandkids, she got a job at Welch's Chocolates on Hillside near Quadra if I remember correctly.
She even kept living in the big house on Saanich Road above Swan Lake for a few more years and when we went to visit my favourite thing was to have a snowball or three that she brought home from the store.
Second favourite were the glazed donuts from Woodwards that she also always seemed to have on hand.
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Earlier this year Bigger E. got me a sleeve of snowball's from Purdy's for Valentine's day.
Not quite Welch's because the Purdy's cream filling is a little too high class and buttery for my memory bank's absolute liking, but really good nonetheless.
And, because I have a little willpower these days (sometimes), I didn't eat the last one, pictured above, until a couple of weeks ago.
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My Grandma passed away after a long, full life in 2001.
One of the last things she asked me, near the end when she had finally started to lose her faculties a wee bit, was if I was ever going to finish going to school.
At the time I was just a few months away from tenure so I told her I'd probably never finish.
She smiled and said that it was OK as long as I enjoyed it.
Well, I'm not sure I enjoy my job as much as eating snowballs or glazed donuts but it's probably a reasonably close third.
Which isn't a bad way to feel about things now that I can see retirement lurking just over the horizon.
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I had been outside with Grandpa earlier on that fateful spring night but went iinside to watch Adam West and Co. do their thing....Of course, in my seven year old brain I ridiculously thought that I might have been able to do something if I had not gone in to watch what was then my favourite television program.
Speaking of Batman on the TeeVee...Here's something, I bet you didn't know...Lyle Waggoner, later of Carol Burnett Show fame, was in the running for the role of the campified caped crusader.
In the late '70's, I lucked into a summer job at BC Hydro and actually worked as a janitor down at the old gasworks for Hydro..At that time there were some offices, a warehouse, and a bus washing area down there...Because it was a union job the money was good, so good that I almost quit school when they started calling me year round to do fill-in work... I'm not sure that job would come in third behind snowball gobbling and donut consuming if I was still doing it now.
It was my younger brother the fireman who eventually inherited the Valiant, still in pretty good shape in, I think, the late '80's when Grandma finally stopped driving.
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5 comments:
Wow! Your freaking me out Ross. My paternal grandmothers name was Ethel and she too lived in Victoria on Moss street. Her husband, my grand dad that I never met, died of disease just before I was born in ‘62.
She didn’t work in a chocolate shop and we didn’t get snowballs but there was always something sweet around. I remember these little foil wrapped butterscotch candies, gold ones and blue ones. There seemed to always be some in her purse or her apartment.
We lived in Vancouver and I remember going to the Woodwards at Oakridge back in the day and in the basement they had their food service area and the doughnut machine. I loved watching those things get blorped out and fried and flipped and tossed out of the machine and then topped by hand. Delicious.
Thanks for reigniting those dusty synapses.
Small world. My Grandfather was born in 1883, Newfoundland, moved out to this coast
Batman with Adam West and Burt Ward was my favourite show too. Every week it came in two episodes. The first was on Wednesday evening and at the end of the show Batman and/or Robin ended up in some dire situation. The second episode was on Thursday evening and featured the escape and capture of the villain. My brother and I went to Boy Scouts on Thursday evening so we often missed the escape. We didn't like scouts so it was a real bummer. But my brother and I would re-enact the "torture" and escape for the complete episodes that we managed to see. It was great!
Graham--
Now you're freaking me out...I'd completely forgotten the blorping and flipping of the doughnut machine!
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NVG--
I wonder...Was there some sort of immigration process back then or was their free movement?
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Gordie--
Ya, that double night per week thing sure was something.
I wonder if the fact that they stopped doing that in Season 3 was the show's downfall?
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"I wonder...Was there some sort of immigration process back then or was their free movement?"
I'm glad you asked that question RossK because it gave me one reason as to why my Grandparents left Harbour Grace at that time for Vancouver, along with many of their neighbours.
https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/society/other-ethnic-groups.php
Canada's $50 Head Tax?
$300 in Newfoundland!!!
While most immigrants settled at St. John's, smaller numbers moved to Harbour Grace, Carbonear, and elsewhere on the island. Wherever they settled, however, Chinese immigrants entered an almost exclusively white and English-speaking Christian society of mostly English or Irish descent. This created frequent problems for the Chinese, who rarely spoke English upon arrival, often practiced Buddhism or Taoism, and belonged to a visible minority. Children and sometimes even adults threw mud or other objects at them, broke their store windows, and mocked their appearance and traditions.
Some people were suspicious of the Chinese because they did not understand their culture, while others worried the new arrivals would take jobs away from long-term residents. This concern helped prompt the Newfoundland and Labrador Legislature to pass an Act Respecting the Immigration of Chinese Persons in 1906, which imposed a head tax of $300 on all Chinese people entering Newfoundland and Labrador, excluding clergymen, tourists, and members of the diplomatic corps. Students were reimbursed their fee if they studied in the country for three years immediately after arrival.
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