Thursday 30 December 2021

Season's Readings!

City truck 356 collecting Christmas trees Jan. 5, 1966 - Queen's University Archives photo

As the Christmas trees start to come down, I rejoiced when I received several messages from satisfied readers of one, or both, of my books on Kingston's waterfront. It was nice to hear from those who gave as well as those who received! Thanks to all of you for your support! 

If you have Christmas money burning a hole in your pocket, Novel Idea Bookstore on Princess Street, and your humble blogger, both have copies of both books still available. 

All the best for 2022! 
--Eric

"Dear Mr Gagnon, I just wanted to say thank you for writing both Smoke on the Waterfront and Stories on the WaterfrontMy wife got them for me for Christmas.  I have read them cover to cover! I love the history of our great city!" - P.

Merry Christmas, Eric. I was lucky enough to be gifted both of your books." - S.S.

"I just wanted to let you know my husband was very excited to receive your books.   It is the gift he has spent the most time with so far.  Thank you so much." - G.

"Thanks again for your 2 books. We are enjoying them & I especially like the early photos of you at the train station." - D&K

"The books were a hit. Dad will be in touch." - H.

"I received your book by mail so promptly, and gifted it to my Dad for Christmas. He was so happy to get it, and is having much enjoyment reading and reminiscing. Of course I had a quick glance through the photos before I wrapped it, and now I am looking forward to having a thorough read and discussion with him. Thank you for the memories of our time in Kingston and the perfect gift!" -S.

Wednesday 29 December 2021

McKelvey & Birch and MacPherson - History

This 1876 British Whig ad for McKelvey & Birch on Brck [sic] Street (top photo) was certainly not their first. The firm was named for its founders - John McKelvey and Samuel Birch. Birch reportedly installed the first hot-water heating system in London, England! A Kingston presence since 1854 as advertised in the Daily News, the company's presence downtown was first at 75 Wellington Street, then 186 Wellington Street, then 69-71 Brock Street in 1869. (Initially with partner George Chown, the business was known as Chown & McKelvey for the three years until partnering with Samuel Birch in 1865.) Mr Birch died some years before Mr McKelvey's retirement in 1917. Imagine...bell-hanging and steamboat work were among their advertised specialties. The firm also sold Quebec and McClary heaters and stoves. One of their portfolio of services was snow-shovelling, as in this 1920 Whig ad (below). The Whig is the source of most items in this post.
The firm was sold to a joint stock company in October of 1916: John McKelvey, Daniel Smith, President C.A. MacPherson, Manager James Druce and Secretary William Warren. Treasurer was A.M. Clark. C.A. MacPherson was president in 1926, when the firm had 150 employees. 

Their subsequent Tank Factory was at 468 Rideau Street, a vacant building (Monarch Battery?) for which they paid $27,000. This building was also known as the John Litton property, bought in 1926. J.W. Litton was the contractor for the building, though this was NOT the Wettlaufer Factory referenced in some accounts. It was actually to be known as the Thomas Watson Co. (Manufacturing of tanks had begun in the rear of their Brock Street property in 1924 before outgrowing it. That location had one 5 HP motor and a few machines. For a short time, moving manufacturing also took place at a property on Princess Street.)  The finished products became so large and involved that they could not be moved out the door, so the subsequent move to Rideau Street was overdue. Mr. Litton impatiently waited for the  city to approve a rail spur, as it was hampering work at the factory. CP was authorized to construct a spur to Watson-Lytton [sic] by CP on August 29, 1922.

The building was a 100x70-foot foundry and a 170x70-foot machine shop. Concrete construction, reinforced with 60,000 lbs. of steel, the first storey was surrounded mostly by windows, and a second elevation with additional windows for more light and for ventilation. Foundry capacity was reported to be 12,000 tons for casting work. Anticipated completion of construction was for October 1, 1926. One-hundred workers were expected, with preference given to married men.

A major campaign for a fixed assessment of $10,000 was a political story in Kingston in the mid 1920's, such as this ad published on December 1, 1926 which reads like a bit of business blackmail (below). Initially producing crushers, mixers, screens and other iron and steel work, the firm was also in the construction business, building the Imperial Oil limestone warehouse and Ontario Hospital boiler house, among many other projects. Apprentice plumbers were paid $7 a week in 1923. The firm also supplied boilers to the Kingston Collegiate Institute.
And another campaign ad from 1931:
On August 11, 1933 the firm became C.E. MacPherson, a bookkeeper with the former owners. Their products were stamped with the company's name and location, purchased by companies from Newfoundland to the Prairies. They had six travelling salesmen across the country. The McKelvey & Birch name died away in April 1, 1936 becoming Crane Limited of Kingston, a branch of Crane Ltd. of Montreal. McKelvey & Birch and Crane were both suppliers of pipe for the construction of Kingston gas utilities in the 1920's. A 1938 Crane ad still gives 71 Brock Street as the address: 

When first occupied by McKelvey & Birch, a bit of creative retouching was done to this photo of the plant, published in a 1929 publicity brochure on Kingston: 
A 1955 photo of the Rideau Street plant: 
The photo is from this Whig ad, which gives details on the specialized equipment, products, their destinations and the plants then-40 workers:
A 1949 aerial view of the plant by George Lilley (from the Queen's University Archives) shows the plant spur at left, Rideau Street, then the diverging CP and CN branchlines at right:
Kingston Police have rolled up on a Volkswagen driver who collided with a utility pole on December 2, 1968. The photo as published was cropped tightly around the constable and the VW, with little of the background shown and no location given, but it looks like MacPherson at left! (Queen's University Archives photo):
An expansion in 1969 added 5,000 square feet to the plant for production and storage, with equipment from Germany imported to produce larger and heavier tank heads. The shop's 35 employees could see as many as 20 new colleagues as a result. A 1980 strike, the first in the company's 47-year history gives us this Whig clipping showing the end door and lettering on the building:
The article notes the death of the last MacPherson family member closely involved with the plant and its sale to TIW Industries in 1973. The building was demolished sometime between 1998 and 2004.

Farm-Fresh Ferry Tales

                                      

Some recent posts on this blog have been all about connections, but here's one that just about knocked me over! Researching some of my wife's mother's father's* history, we found an interesting connection. It all started with a photo posted to the Vintage Kingston Facebook group, discussing Kingston Transit's 1972-1982 Dial-A-Bus service. This on-call bus service used RekVee fibreglas-bodied converted recreational vehicles with Dodge 440 engines and 17-passenger capacity. This Whig-Standard clipping showed them upon arrival on August 13, 1974 (top photo). Some suggested that my wife's mother's brother Lloyd Snider was in the photo. Lloyd was a bus driver and became a part-time supervisor. Then, Wolfe Island ferry captain Brian Johnson said, "Lloyd was also a driver at my dad's car lot - Johnson Motors - for years. Bringing cars back from Toronto area auctions. I knew his dad Mervil as well. And I know Lloyd's son Ed too. Just GREAT guys!"

*Mervil was a farmer and ended up operating farms for Brian's family. Brian was his 'apprentice' at the tender age of 11. 'Merv' taught him all about farming: cutting, raking, haying, and Brian said he looked up to him!  Brian's dad Jack operated Johnson Motors, then at Princess and Regent Streets:

(Photo from Brian's story in Thousand Islands Life)

Brian's dad then becamed with the Kingston tour boats and Brian followed. The rest is water under the bridge! Back to the story, when my wife got involved and things got even more interesting.

We asked if Brian remembered the pastureland where the Cataraqui Town Centre currently sits, because my wife remembered it. Of course he did! That's where Brian's dad kept his herd of Hereford beef cattle and Brian was constantly there with Merv. Jack rented the pasture; it would have been too expensive to buy. I can recall coming to the T-intersection of Highways 38 and 2 and seeing an old stone house there with a sign, "Vote J. Earl McEwen" in the middle of the former farm, soon to become home only to mall-rats! When I showed her one of Brian's posted photos of Jack, she remembered him. It's very possible that my wife's dad did cattle trucking or car delivery and would have known Brian!

The great thing about all this is: in my second book, there are several mentions of Brian in the harbour section. He has a ton of old tales of the harbour, the lake and the ferry, and those that sailed them. He's also a local historian and story-teller and our paths cross occasionally in that realm. But we never would have suspected this connection between our families. And if it wasn't for a decades-old bus photo, we never would have made it!

Thursday 23 December 2021

When Photo Meets News

A major challenge to my research using Queen's University Archives' photos is that they're not connected to anything. There is perhaps a date or a brief caption. That's all. Did the photo appear in the Kingston Whig-Standard, and if it did, what is the rest of the story?

I was drawn to the above photo, 'Drowning search Anglin Bay with Bajus and Anglin in background June 3, 1949', for two reasons. One was the quality of the photo, taken on what looks like an overcast evening. The other reason was the Bajus and Anglin buildings on the shore of Anglin Bay. I was much less interested in why the boats and policemen were being photographed.

Now I know the rest of the story. In June 4th's Whig-Standard of that year, a sad story of an accidental drowning of a 10 year-old boy, Wayne Hepburn. The lad had been throwing rocks at bottles with his friend, Bobby Forbes. They'd been warned by their parents against 'playing near the Rideau River'. Interestingly, Wayne was identified in the news story as a grade 1 student at St. John's School.

The recovery, in the era before police dive teams, was described as a dragging operation. The water is shallow and the light was fading until the boy's body was located after one hour. The photo used in the paper was much smaller and tightly-cropped than the version that caught my eye. There was more news, and less room for airy, uncropped photos or full-page ads by telecom companies back then!

A sordid story, but an interesting connection and one that I'm sure won't be the last connection I'll be able to make! After all, there's a long winter ahead!




Kingston Centenary Whig Ads, 1946

A selection of advertisements from the special commemorative edition of the Whig marking Kingston's centenary in 1946,








 

Wednesday 22 December 2021

Switching Sowards Coal Trestle

When I modelled the Sowards coal yard on Place d'Armes for a second time I didn't even photograph the track leading to the unloading trestle. Mainly because I wanted to do a better job on it. Now it's more camera-ready! The challenge to modelling this unique structure effectively is to deal with the height of the track, its curvature, what it's built on, and the dearth of prototype photos. (Gordon Smithson's book includes two, taken in 1973 and 1979.) Also, the dynamics of a full-sized locomotive pushing a loaded hopper car up the trestle do not match the space available on my layout. Compromises!
I'm pleased with the results so far. Smithson's photos show the piers quite well: poured concrete. So, I used the Atlas trestle set and covered in the wooden detail to represent concrete. But there was still the track. I had simply shoved some lichen pieces under it to fill it in visually and look like some modicum of support underneath. A little more effort was expended on the 'inside' of the curved track - it's more reachable and more visible.
I picked up a pack of plasticene at Dollarama, filling in the embankment with it, then adding scenic material. I also painted the rails brown, and touched up the ties as well. My arrangement differs from the prototype location, but it abuts Anglin's yard here:
Finishing off the track, I filled in the spaces between ties with loose ballast - it's actually real Kingston gravel, collected at the VIA station parking lot! A loaded car is visible inside the shed:

It's challenging to correlate just what part of the track was covered. It seems that loaded cars were tied down with their handbrake on a grade. The track seems to go past Sowards office on the level, so it's likely that most of the grade was covered. In either case, some of the cars were level, up on the trestle, and my HO-scale hoppers need to be. That's because they don't have handbrakes, of course! The prototype shed was also longer - of course the layout is space-challenged.

Friday 17 December 2021

Pickup Pick-me-up

 

Today I learned more in five minutes than I would have in 30 minutes doing my own research. Tom T. stopped by in his pickup to pick up both books on Kingston's waterfront. Of course we socially-distanced, but our chat on social history was not distant.

He worked at Anglin's on that same waterfront for 38 years! He mentioned that 100 men were on the union rolls at the height of the Anglin operation. He raced his soapbox car down the the front of North Street. He remembers the houses that stood and the ones that were knocked down, around North and Rideau Streets. He mentioned that Anglin's worked cheek-by-jowl with Shell Oil and of course, 'The Dredge'! That Shell tankers partly unloaded at Millhaven before negotiating the sharp turn and silty bottom of the Inner Harbour. That some of Anglin's tanks ended up storing road oil for a firm from Breslau, ON for summer application. That's all I can remember.

Once again, I'm amazed and humbled at the connections of which this process is chock-full!

Tuesday 14 December 2021

Serendipitous Skeleton Press

 

The connections made through my research/blog/layout/books on Kingston's waterfront just keep on coming. YGKNews and Kingstonist have kindly come calling, and today it was The Skeleton Press. I'd seen their newsy, free local publication, and frankly was unaware it was in print, too. Not distributed in my part of town, but I enjoy reading it online. Issue Eight is out now, and I'll be proud to be in Issue Nine.
The Skeleton Press grew out of the Skeleton Park Arts Festival. I had the opportunity to meet Lawrence Scanlan, a well-known local writer and editor. I've read his byline before, as far back as his eight-year tenure at the Whig. Though I don't hear from the Whig, I am happy to hear from local, grassroots and increasingly online media presence truly interested in profiling local people. Lawrence suggested meeting at the Juniper Cafe - a location I'd often walked by during my last few years at work, but never sampled. The coffee was good, the baked good selection interesting and the view, unparallelled. A constant stream of tomorrow's young minds stopped in while Lawrence and I chatted lakeside.
I did my best to explain what the heck I'm doing on the Hanley Spur. Since I'm one of the few people in town doing what I do, I just do it and don't really ever think about it. Until today! Lawrence's questions were perceptive and I trust my answers were...helpful.
Adirondack chairs, paper and pen, hot coffee (and my former place of employment in the distance, and in the past) and conversation? Priceless!
Ellerbeck Street parking - free and proximal. A North Roast Coffee hybrid vehicle stopped by to do a curbside dropoff. But first, coffee! The city of watchtowers:
Thanks to Lawrence, Vince and Laura, and The Skeleton Press. I can't wait to see the results in print and in pixels!

Friday 3 December 2021

New Houses on Wellington Street

Second-storey view of both houses

Having placed my two new 'dollar store' houses nominally at Wellington Street and Place d'Armes, I used two cameras to show them in place. These first few are taken with my Nikon point-and-shoot. It has so-so depth-of-field and is nice and small so it actually fits into the streetscape.
Anglin coal truck heading out for a delivery

Rooftop view with Bajus Brewery in background

Looking along Wellington Street

The other side of Wellington Street
The photos below are taken with the iPhone's camera. The iPhone is a little longer and more difficult to fit into some tight spots. However...a big bonus is that with every placement, you can get up to four 'views' due to the corner location of the camera lens.
The new houses sit cheek-by-jowl with fuel dealers

The Bajus Brewery still stands today

Place d'Armes coal unloading trestle

Coal delivery time

Wellington Street leading to Canadian Dredge & Dock

It's a workaday neighbourhood

Ladies run some errands as coal rolls

The lowest possible angle with the iPhone camera.