Kingston Whig-Standard - May 23, 1975

A school trip to the Whig-Standard included a tour of all the major departments including the printing presses in May, 1975.. As a souvenir of our visit, we were given a small sample of lead type comprising our name. Of course I have it tucked away in a safe place! Today I came across the copy of the evening paper printed on the day of our visit - according to my Dad's inscription at the masthead! 

This post is a sample of what each day's paper brought into the home, and includes some sample pages, news stories, human interest and advertisements - while there was still a robust Classified section! Also, Friday's entertainment section with TV listings. I've minimally formatted the images. To see a (much) larger version, just click one!

A review of Ernestown High School's band concert, showing my two siblings!

It Happened in Canada was a syndicated daily history lession:

The Montreal Olympics were a year away, with Kingston providing the sailing venue:

Dangerous due to location of gas tank, but cheap - Ford Pintos!

Check out the inexpensive subscription prices. Before there was the Internet!

Controversial move at KGH:

From the Woolco advertisement:

The boy's missing arm is cleverly not visible to the gentle readers:

Fifty-seven channels and nothing on? Try eleven channels!

Adam-12 and the TV listings:

Steal & Run, aka S*** & Rubbish, in the colloquial...

And then, it was time to line the bird cage. Or provide nets and pads for road hockey. Or into the front hall to protect the floor from slushy winter boots! Kingston's Oldest Daily lives on!
 

More Billboards

 

Driving around Kingston, one does not see a plethora of billboards. But they're there - wherever there is unused land, a vacant lot or an overpass. Modern-day Division Street overpass over CN:

In a previous billboards post you'll see two locations along Montreal Street that are highly visible and lend a sense of place to the layout. I recently used Microsoft Word and Paint to transform some online images into billboards. More billboards means more variety on the magnetic-backed billboards I have in place:

Another set a few days later. Thanks to Randy O'Brien for image expertise with the Trade Fair billboards:

Modelling the Provincial Tire Garage

Montreal Street is home to lots of automotive businesses: body shops, garages and auto supply houses. Now that I'd moved the Swamp Ward house over to Wellington Street, I had a vacancy on Montreal. One day, driving past Madeley Automotive on Bath Road, I noticed that it was a characteristic garage that would provide a plausible prototype. Trying to keep my pandemic projects affordable (if not profitable!) I recycled this structural flat into this garage:

A train show-find Durango enginehouse, I'd turned the enginehouse inside out. It was a structural flat on my Vancouver (Vancouver Iron & Engineering Works) and Vermont layout iterations, early on this layout it was Presland Iron & Steel. It's grey exterior now became the garage's interior. The wainscoting on the exterior became the cladding, and I built up the front, while fireside:

I recycled some factory windows into the waiting room/counter. After trying a couple of colour combos, I went with a medium blue/light blue. The roof was a kit floor turned into a roof, with stacks and exhausts added:

Building up the garage door (always rolled up so far) dividers, I started adding signage. All these are copied/pasted/printed from the internet:

The main signs are from this archival photo of a 1952 trade show held, appropriately, at the Montreal Street Armouries, sharpened and coloured:

Front view. Notice the all-important Motor Vehicle Inspection Station green sign (still unilingual in my era). The above-door signs can still be seen at King Street Auto Centre on Days Road!

There are two photos of Provincial Tire operations in Kingston in the Queen's University Archives. Above Provincial/Dominion in January, 1949 (above) and a different location in June, 1951. Check out that pickup and service van. And the signage!

In place on the layout edge. You'll notice the garage bays actually open to the rear. Otherwise, all you'd see is the back of the garage and I so badly wanted to include those King Street Auto Centre signs, so this shop has rear access:

I built the tire rack from strip styrene and inaccurate Matchbox-style tires removed from improved vehicles. Along the street views:

A little scenicking-in needs to be done:

Shipping News - 1946, 1956, 1957, 1965, 1913

 

The Whig-Standard posts a weekly History As We Saw It page of pages. This week's pages highlighted two Kingston marine-related events from December, 1965. The inadvertent severing of the Wolfe Island phone cable during the mooring at Kingston Shipyards of Canada Steamship Lines' Midland Prince, a 1906-built laker that would be scrapped a mere four years later. 

It's this type of photo-news correlation that I'd like to undertake, once renewed access to the Archives is available. The problematic Protostatis was also in the news on this December day:

The Protostatis was being lightered by a HALCO vessel in January 1966 (Queen's University Archives)

Ferry news! November, 1946 the Wolfe Islander leaves Collingwood. A former landing craft modified to beome a ferry.

A Shipyards strike in November 1956:

A November, 1957 pilots' strike stranded six vessels off Kingston:

In 1913, the Gales of November came calling:

Digging the Music to my Ears

 

There is rightly a renewed interest in indigenous affairs in Kingston and throughout Canada. Knowledge of our history can inform our future, be it indigenous or post-contact. This interesting Cataraqui Archeological Research Foundation website explores many sites and phases of Kingston's unique archeology.

The slow-moving Cataraqui River was a natural nexus of transportation, travel and trade. The top photo (Queen's University Archives Kingston Whig-Standard fonds, call number V142.2 Envelope 27, labelled November, 1964) shows twentieth-century trade underway - Music Boats at the eastern end of Elliott Avenue! Two of the more northerly archeological sites surveyed are the Outer Station and Music sites:

Located on the western bank of the Cataraqui River some 200 to 300 meters north of John Counter Boulevard, the Kingston Outer Station Site comprises two significant archaeological sites. These two sites are an aboriginal fishing village dating to approximately 1200AD, and the Music Site which was an early settlement site on the lands south and west of the Kingston Outer Station Site. The area of the site is approximately 235 square meters, and is situated on a narrow plateau (50-60m in width) that is approximately 2 meters above the summer low water mark, and bordered on the north by a marsh, and on the south by a marina and boat building establishment. It has also been monitored on a casual basis for the past 40 year by an avocational archaeologist and the materials collected being held by the Cataraqui Archaeological Research Foundation. The finds form the early 1950s excavations are held at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa.

The Kingston Outer Station, along with Belle Island and Fort Frontenac represent the only known Native sites within the city. Late Woodland pottery found during excavations at Fort Frontenac indicates the presence of a native population at the site prior to the arrival of the French. On the site of Belle Island, there are indications of an extensive camp site from the Middle to Late Woodland transitional phase (1000-1400 year old site), and is one of the best preserved sites of its time in Eastern Ontario. The Kingston Outer Station, although it was discovered by a local collector some 60 years ago, and tested in 1952 and 1953 by archaeologist Dr. James Pendergast, relatively little is known about the site. The nature and distribution of material recovered from the site indicates that it had been used on a sporadic basis from the Late Middle Woodland Period (700 AD) to the present day. The more recent activities being fishing and riding dirt bikes. The most significant use of the area however, appears to have taken place during the late pre-contact period (700-1500 AD).

-CARF 

Posting to the Vintage Kingston Facebook group revealed some interesting information about Peter Music and his boat business: working on wooden boats, his story of fleeing from his native Yugoslavia by rowing to Italy! Even his daughter Maryann Music-Jansen joined the discussion,  "It was nice to stumble across this article with a picture of my Father that I had never seen before. Growing up at Elliott Avenue was like a little hide-away. We were surrounded by trees, an open field and water and so close to the city. My sister and I grew up at the marina playing in old boats and meeting some incredible people who were friends of my Dad."