32 Ontario Street

So read the neatly-written photo caption listing in the Hazelgrove Fonds of the Queen's University Archives. But the slide showed something much more exciting.

Check out the shipyard-to-street gantries that allowed large pieces of equipment to be transferred from the very end of CN's Hanley Spur into the sprawling complex. So much for property values. Now, folks living near the side of the former Kingston Shipyards might complain about the number of storeys, massing or other details of developments along the waterfront.

But in the early-60's, I wonder if these residents of Ontario Street complained about having this very industrial, very gritty operation in front of their front yards. CN drop-end gondola! I can scarce believe that this happened! There are at least three apartment buildings on this site today.

In the late 1950's, this building housed apartments which were heated by coal-fired steam radiators from across Ontario Street. A large pile of coal was kept on the dock, and radiator pressure at the apartments was 125 psi! When R.W. Sutton became superintendent, he reduced the use of coal by putting the yard cranes 'on air' thus 24/7 coal burning was not required, saving money for the struggling yard. 

If I hadn't seen the photo taken from street-level, I wouldn't have believe it nearly as much!

OCTOBER 2024 UPDATE:

I received an email from John Kellar, a former resident at 32 Ontario Street:

Your blog post has provided the only photographic evidence I now have of my residence of the ‘50s & ‘60s. The rattling (as heat cranked up) radiators were by then fueled by an oil furnace located in the segregated basement portion proximal the warehouse. Imagine if you will me attracted to our living room window on a ‘60s dark winter’s night by a fire in the Shipyards across the street. Or so it seemed. Because the Shipyards’ windows were merely reflecting the flames from the warehouse six feet distant from 32 Ontario!

Mr. Sutton, who lived in a similar vintage dwelling on King Street E., said it was arson. I can imagine the dwelling in its heyday, before being divided into our four apartments. My dad turned the backyard ash heap into a thriving garden space, as he did the then fenced front lawn, within which we’d periodically unearth big pennies from the 1850s. 

I saw us as resident in waterfront property, albeit with a train and shipyard in between. I watched the launch of the Locomotive Works’ first diesel engine onto the Spur. Ran to the Shipyard’s emergency whistle of the steam engine’s tumble into the drydock. My dad was the first to operator’s (Ab Mulridge’s)  side.  His family lived in the lower apartment adjacent the warehouse at the time. In the associated duress, Ab’s son Bob, goalie in a local league, wore my dress shoes to his hockey banquet.