Life in the Point

Here's an excerpt from Frederick T. G. Lear's nostalgic In My Day The Point Was a Very Different Place, which he permitted The Gazette to publish on Dec 12, 1992. He'd be 96 if he's still going.

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At the outbreak of World War I, my father joined up with the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada and, in August 1915, we moved to a tiny, five-room flat at 426 Magdalen St., now Ste. Madeleine St., in Point St. Charles. My father could not stay with us, however, but had to live in barracks with his regiment until it left for France in March 1916.

   The flat was heated with a kitchen stove and a large space heater. We had running water and electric light. (The house next door had gas lights.) There was a toilet in a "cupboard" between the kitchen and the dining room, and we used pieces of newspaper cut into squares for toilet paper.

Another baby boy, Hughie, was born in October 1916, and without our friendly neighbors I do not know what my mother would have done. We children had colds, measles, mumps, and chicken pox; there were a bungled tonsils operation, a threatened case of tuberculosis and Hughie caught meningitis. But our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Keith, was always there. She even removed some boards from the fence separating our yards so she could come at a moment's notice without having to "dress."

There was a weekly occurrence on our street that we children called the Grand Trunk Races. The Grand Trunk Railway's main shops were in Point St. Charles at the foot of Sebastopol St., only two streets over from Magdalen, and these shops employed a few thousand men. At the top of Magdalen, about a half a block from our house, was a Bank of Montreal.

On paydays, at the sound of the closing shop whistle, the men would literally run up Sebastopol, along Favard St. and past our house to the bank. The younger men and those in good physical condition would outrun the older men, and often there would be some pushing and shoving as they tried to break into the line entering the bank. It was quite a sight, and we looked forward to it.

I must mention a store at the bottom of our street, not because I often went there but because of something that befell its owner, Mr. Hadley.

He was about to retire and had bought himself a brand new car, a rarity in those days. One Sunday, shortly after he had received it, he was driving slowly up our street where three little girls were playing in the centre. On seeing the car approaching, two of the girls ran to the sidewalk on one side, while the third went to the other; but the first two, not realizing the danger, kept urging her to come to their side. She started across, saw the car, hesitated, then ran right in front of it and was killed instantly.

   As was the custom in those days, her body was not laid out in a funeral parlor but in her own home and, following the example of hundreds of others in the neighborhood, I went to see her. Not knowing what to expect, because I had never seen a dead person, I was greatly affected as I gazed at her little white, bruised face lying so still. Poor Mr. Hadley was so distraught that he sold the car and never drove again.

   At the corner of Fortune and Wellington Sts. stood Grace Anglican Church, and in 1915 I was enrolled in its Sunday school. My first teacher was Edith Powles, whose brother was a missionary in Japan. On his sabbatical, he would come to the Sunday school and tell us about the work of the missionaries in this "heathen" land, and how important it was to fill our Lenten boxes, to help carry on this work.