Pickerel River 1956-61

We lived at 35 Northcote Ave. for a few years. A couple months after moving in, in early winter my mother nearly burnt the house down. The kitchen of the house was actually a shed type room that had been added to the house, and had a wood cook stove in it, both for cooking and to help heat the house. My mother was boiling potatoes on it one day, and got it too hot, and the wall behind started to burn. Mother screamed and I came running, and when I saw what had happened, I took the pot of potatoes off the stove and threw it at the fire dousing it. When George comes home that day they decide to buy a new electric stove, and get rid of the wood stove. Thirty five Northcote is across from Rathbone Lumber Co, and one day it catches fire and before the fire could be put out, it scorched the paint on all the houses on the other side of the street, so about 12 houses had to be repainted. One interesting thing on Northcote Ave. was the guy a couple of houses down from us had a 1937 LaSalle 12 cylinder car and I loved that car. another was Norm Ellis next door neighbor who was a long distance driver for Loblaws and had a Ariel Square Four motorcycle which I loved, it was bright red, and would just purr like a kitten, and had more H.P. than the Volkswagen bugs that were getting pretty popular at the time. After seeing Norm's Ariel I got interested in motorcycles and bought a CZ a Chech. bike for 35 dollars and had a great time with it. Eventually like most kids I think, thought I would like to see how it looks internally, and start to take it apart, and couldn't figure out how to get it back together properly, so it sat in the basement, until a friend of mine from Kitchener Donald Becker comes down for a visit. Donald's mother was my mothers best friend, he sees the bike in the basement in pieces, and asks me if I think we can get it going, at which I say yes but I can't get the clutch working right. We start to re assemble it and take it to the lane way out behind the house. I tell him to push me and I will pop it into 2nd gear to get it going, then pop it into neutral until he gets his breath, then he can push me to get a little momentum jump on with me and I'll just ram it into gears after that. Donald pushes me we get the bike going, I kick it into neutral until he catches up with me, he pushes it again for the momentum, jumps on the back while I'm revving it up as fast as it will go, kick it in gear, it raises straight up in the air, Donald falls off on his ass in a puddle, and the bike goes crashing through a garage door, on the opposite side of the lane way, and an old man was in the garage washing his car, he looks up in stunned silence seeing his garage door lying across the hood of his new car. I had knocked the door off the hinges, and the door put a small dent in the hood of his car. When I was a paper boy I had delivered papers to a body shop and they were quite good to me, so I told the guy to go over to that shop and have the dent fixed, which he did, and the body shop never charged me for it. Donald went home after that and got very interested in motorcycles, and bought himself a 1947 Harley Davidson 74, and just about killed himself on it.
I had been hearing from guys at work about a place to go fishing, that was supposed to be pretty good, and the Canadian National Recreation Assn. [CNRA] had a Camp there, so I asked Max if he would like to check it out. We had also heard that there was a guy near the station that rented out cottages, and boats and motors. We jumped on the train from Union Station, on the eve of our next days off, using our pass, and Went to Pickerel River not knowing what to expect.
The train was the Transcontinental and left Union Station at 11:30PM. It was also what they called a Milk Train, and seemed to stop for a long time at each station along the way loading and unloading Milk and Bread and took nearly 8 hrs to go 200 miles. When we got to Pickerel River there was a guy [Willard Warren] with a small pick up truck and we ask him about the Cabins for rent and he said to see his father John in the store at the bottom of the road a couple hundred yards away. We walked down the road and went into the store and met John Warren a pretty old man who was the Postmaster as well as owning the store, we had walked through a flock of chickens, it was like going into Ma and Pa Kettles property. We went into the store, and asked John Warren about a cabin for a couple of days and he said it would be 2 dollars each per day, which we thought was a bargain, and said we would take it, and then asked him if he rented boats and motors which he did. We took a boat and motor as well. John takes us to the Cabin and shows us around we stow our stuff, and go to the dock to get the boat. Max and I put our fishing stuff in the boat and off we go down the river, looking for a good fishing spot. We were about a mile down the river on the opposite shore of where our cabin was, and I told Max I was pretty tired and would like to go back and have a lay down for an hour or so. Max says for me to go back, to the cabin, and come back and get him when I wake up. I go back and stretch out on the bed, and pas right out. I wake up with the rain beating down on the roof, and after listening to it for a few seconds jump up remembering I left Max down the river, on the opposite shore. I go to the dock, get the boat going and go down to find Max with his line still in the water with about 10 nice fish beside him. I thought he was going to be mad, but he wasn't, we loaded the fish and gear and went back and made our lunch. We liked the place so much we decided to go back at least a few more times. John Warren had a store there so we didn't even have to take anything with us but our gear. After going a few times we met Jack Millar, who had a cabin behind the store, and worked for the CNR in Toronto at the Rip Track as a Carman. Jack had a small cabin behind the store which he owned, but rented the land it was on, from the CNR. Jack told me of one of his fellow Carmen, who also owned one of the four cabins that was in a little cluster behind the store, one of which he owned, who wanted to sell. Duncan McGregor was a Carman for the CNR but had been a shipbuilder in Glasgow, He wanted to immigrate to Canada and was able to, but he also wanted his girlfriend to be able to come, but was not allowed because of health problems. Duncan decided to return to Scotland to be with her and decided to sell the Cabin. The Cabin was about 12'X18' and was divided into 3 rooms, one big room was the kitchen living room and 2 small bedrooms, and there was a small boat about a 12' moulded plywood boat, with a 5HP Mercury motor, and he wanted five hundred & seventy five dollars for it. I decided to buy it before I found out how much the rent was, and when I found out I was shocked. The rent for the land, on the piece of property where the four cabins were was ten dollars per year, and divided by 4 worked out to be two dollars and fifty cents each. I was not the proud owner of a cabin in the bush. Rosemary had met a young man Emile Arsenault who was working at Parkwood Cadilac on Yonge St., while he was laid off as a Sheet Metal Worker, and they start going out together. A while after that Rosemary and Emile decide to get married, and do so in 1958. In 1960 Rosemary gives birth to David. In the mean time George had lost his license after having an accident, and crashing into his brother in law, and for drunk driving. When George recovered his license he bought an Austin A30 from British Motors on Yonge St. and Davenport Rd. After the fire and because of the cockroaches mother and George started looking for another house, which they found at 13 Tyndall a few blocks away near the Dufferin Exhibition Gates, and bought it for $18,000.00, I could hardly comprehend that much money, they had paid $7,500.00 for 35 Northcote. 13 Tyndall Ave was a wide street with boulevards on both sides big trees and was a one way street running south from King to Springhurst, which ran along the CNR Tracks, and the north boundary of the Exhibition grounds.
The house was a wonderful house with a few pieces of furniture left by the previous owners, It was three stories with 5 bedrooms, kitchen, living room, and a huge dinning room, with beautiful wood trim throughout. The house had a fireplace in every bedroom and in the living room, although they hadn't been used for a long time. It was a quiet neighborhood, except in Exhibition time when most neighbors would park cars on their front lawns to make some money, and the neighbors were good. A couple things that weren't so good while on Tyndall was that we started getting parking tickets, something that we hadn't been getting on Northcote Ave, and we didn't have a garage on Tyndall, where we did have one on Nortcote.The other thing was that George was falling further and further into alcoholism. George wasn't physically abusive but was certainly and not to me but to mother, and it got to the point that I said to my brother if it gets much worse, I am going to do something serious to George. Mother had a couple roomers to help her defray the cost of buying the house. Gerald Parsons and Orval Gillis, Gerald Parsons was also an alcoholic, but at least a good natured drunk who would go to sleep when he got to plastered. Orval Gillis would only have the odd beer so was no bother that way, but he was an uneducated guy that came off a farm in Listowel Ont. and used to murder the English language, just like Huntz Hall of the Bowery Boys movies, the most obvious word he would murder was when referring to a septic tank, would call it a sceptic tank, which I used from time to time, and if in your presence when you would relate what you thought was a good idea, he would repeat it as though it was his idea, and he hadn't heard you. Orville was harmless though, Orville also worked with George for the Dept. of Street Cleaning.

George my stepfather was scared of boats and the water because he couldn't swim so for a while I could not convince him to go up north with me to the cottage. By this time a lot of the times going up I would drive up Highway 69 and go to Everingham's Marina just off the highway. Eventually though I convinced George to go, and perhaps it was because of my mother wanted to see the place he decided to go. At the time that he decided to go he had calmed down a little bit on his boozing, and wasn't so bad. We decide to go and ask everyone in the family who wanted to go, could go. It turned out Mother, George, Max, Rosemary who was pregnant with David, Emile, Orville, and myself went. We rented a 16ft moulded plywood boat so that all of us could go together, and used the new 10MP motor that I had just bought. When we drove we had to go nine miles down the river by boat to where the cottage was. We went down and had a great weekend, even though there were seven of us fishing out of the same boat. George went on the wagon, and took a great interest in fishing, bought himself a fishing box, pole, and reel. Mother was quite happy at that result. Mother loved to go fishing and was quite competitive while doing so especially with George, and the trouble was that she had to ask George for a lure, and one day when she asked for a particular lure, George snapped at her, for asking, and I snapped at George telling him that she should have her own box anyway. A short time later she got a new fishing tackle box. An interesting thing about George's family was that his brother Robert was a Sheriff, and had been fired for allegedly falsifying a report. The discharge was being appealed by his Union and while he was discharged he became a Chauffeur for a VP of Sears. Robert's discharge was eventually overturned, and he was awarded back time for over a year, but decided to keep his job at Sears. In the mean time the little cabin at Pickerel River was really getting well used what with us all taking some of our vacations there, lending it out to a few selected others from work, Max and his friends, and Emile and his friends. I was driving up more often because it was just a lot faster, even though I had to go 9 miles down river by boat. I could leave work at 11:30PM and be in the cabin having my breakfast when the train came in. The CNR was making it more difficult as well, as it became a flag stop, and you couldn't flag it down for a pass. What we would do is get a half fare order between Parry Sound and Pickerel River thereby having to buy a ticket, albeit half price, and that allowed us to stop the train to get off, and flag it down to get on. One day when I didn't have a car I had gone to the cottage and on the way back I was waiting and waiting and it seemed like the train would never get there. We called on the dispatchers phone to Capreal to find out what happened. It seems the southbound train was stuck on the other side of a derailment and was going to be very late, so they ordered and extra, which got to Pickerel River 3 hours late. They still had Steam at that time and that is what it was. When the train pulled in I noticed that it had a caboose on and the Conductor, Pilgrim was one I knew very well, as he would normally work 473 a freight out of Mimico, that would always lift at Bathurst St. When I got on the train, the Conductor told me to go back to the caboose, and lay down, that they would call me when we got to Union Station, I said that I wanted to stay on the Caboose and get off at Dufferin St. quite close to my house, a half block away. On our way southbound that train went as fast as any train I had been on, and in fact it was flagged down at North Magnetawan, and it got to South Magnetawan before it stopped, and had to be backed up. The train pulled into Union Station on time, a testament to both, it's normal slow schedule, and how fast we were going. At that time there were at least 25 stations between Parry Sound, and Capreal, and they all had operators, and crew, and would all be serviced at least 4 times a week. There was a mixed train, that would leave Parry Sound twice a week going north and stop at every Station, and even stop between Stations letting hunters and trappers on and off with their canoes game etc. and do the same southbound as well. There came a time in 196o when the CNR closed the Station at Pickerel River down as well as many other stations, and decided to sell the land that the cottage was on. On visiting The Sportsman's Show in Toronto on many occasions I saw a booth by the Provincial Government advertising Crown Land for sale and had been thinking about buying a piece. I asked Emile, Max, and George if they wanted to go in on a piece with me. Emile said no as they had just bought a house and that was what they had to concentrate on, and Max was going out with Hilda Graciano, and they were going to get married, but George said he would like to go halves with me. I went to the Ministry Offices at Parry Sound and told them the piece of land we were interested in, which was approximately one mile east of the CNR Bridge where we were and on the South side of the River. The Ministry people said that they had surveyed six lots approximately one mile west of the highway bridge, and wouldn't consider opening up another piece until all those lots were sold. I told George and said I would buy one of those six, and he said go ahead that he was in, as he was driving up anyways and it was much closer by boat. In early September we got in my 1951 Buick and went north to choose the lot we wanted, and as none were yet sold we had our choice of the six. On our way up just south of Parry Sound we put a rod through the pan on the Buick, and had to call Orville to come and pick us up and take us up to choose the lot, and arrange for a guy to come and take the car to the wrecker as it wasn't worth fixing. I sure loved that car though, even though it only got about 10 miles to the gallon. When Orville got there we continued on our way and when we got there went down to have a look at the lots and decided on Lot #4 as there was minimal clearing to be done, and it had a great view in three directions. I then decided to take the little cabin apart, bring it down the river until we could decide whether we would buy a new one or just add to the cabin. Emile, I and two other friends went up in early December rented the barge from Everingham and towed it down with my boat, with my 10 HP and Emile's 18 on it. We cut the roof in half and carried it to the barge in four pieces, took the two ends in one piece each, and cut the front and back walls down the middle and carried those four pieces down to the barge, and towed it up to the site. We spent the night in a tent, and it snowed that night, so we had a bit of trouble off loading the barge the next day, which we did complete, and decided that was all we could do for that year, took the barge back and went home for the winter.