An easy way to enjoy my area's history (Jan. 8/14 column)

Yes it is nostalgia, but it’s also history

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            For the next month at least, please don’t ask my opinion of the Christmas-New Year season.

            New subject: I mentioned in my last column that my Facebook group “Old Photos of Victoria County, NB” had 1968 members in less than a year, and now we number over two thousand. Just think, that’s more than the population of Kdursk, Poland. Who woulda ever thunk it?

            I think one of my favourite stories gleaned from the 800 or so photos on that FB group was that of Claude Knapp, the remittance man who was thought to be the son of King Edward VII, Queen Victoria’s son, and a housemaid on the Isle of Wight. He lived in the Red Rapids area, and every month he received a very large cheque from England and lived the life of an English gentleman. He was a great golfer and played on the Armstrong course, just upriver from where Hotel Dieu of St. Joseph Hospital is today. Sewell Shaw of Andover used to caddy for him. Here’s part of what Sewell said about Claude Knapp:

               “He was about 13 or 14 when they shipped him out here to Canada. He lived with the Suttherys until he was old enough to go on his own and then he took off. He always drove a big car, he always had lots of beautiful clothes, played golf.

            “He was an excellent athlete. He was over in Caribou celebrating the 4^th of July – an Englishman celebrating the 4^th of July – and he had one of these big 6-inch firecrackers in his hand. He lit it and he held it too long and it went off. He lost his thumb and those two fingers. All he had on this left hand was like a claw. But he played golf with one arm. He hit the golf ball with one arm and by God he played a good game of golf. He would win as much as anyone around the club there, other than the pro. He was a great tennis player, the runner-up to the champion of New Brunswick at one time in a tournament held down in Saint John. And a pool player, my God, he’d go over there and play pill pool – I probably was one of the players too – and he could really play pool.”

            There are dozens of other stories that this Facebook group have brought to light, and the photos from a century ago really put this area’s history into perspective. There are photos of that Perth golf course I mentioned, of Issie Vinegar’s store which, among many other buildings, burned in 1977, of the Perth riverbank buildings that were either moved out of there or demolished in the mid-1950s, and other photos from all over the area.

            I borrowed dozens of photos from Peter DeMerchant of Tobique Narrows, some given to him by Gail and Jim Pickett of Andover, and Doreen Roach of Aroostook also lent me dozens showing people and places from Aroostook. Kip Demmings and Alton Morrell have many dozens of photos of Aroostook, Andover and Perth (the last two became Perth-Andover in 1966) and others keep sending in photos that they didn’t realize were historic.

            A couple of weeks ago I posted a photo that showed a kind of car I didn’t recognize – along with some people, a house, a dog and what looked like a goat. Within minutes Joe Knowles was posting that the car “looks similar to a British made car called a Prefect, which was popular here in the mid 40's to early 50's…” and apparently that’s exactly what it was. I learn something every month or two.

            I posted one 1956 photo that showed my late mother Marjorie (Schriver) LaFrance as she was pouring pancake batter onto a hot griddle while my sister Joan and my father Fred looked on. The photo was taken at our Tilley family home in 1956. Mum (1906-1961) could sure cook pancakes, and her baked beans were the best. Just like mother used to make, as a matter of fact.

            The Facebook site is full of old memories, and many of them involved the legendary teacher Miss Sara Williams, whom I mentioned before. After mother died when I was 12, Miss Williams was very kind to me and I’ll never forget her, but the point is, the FB group let many dozens of people write in to share memories of that great lady, who was as tough as nails. And stubborn! When the staff of Victoria Glen Manor were preparing some sort of celebration for Miss Williams’s 100^th birthday, she must have known what was going on and died five days before that event.

            I posted one photo showing Hotel Dieu of St. Joseph in the 1970s and close to 90 people posted comments about memories associated with the structure. Across the street was Ann’s Hotel and there were 125 comments about that. Many people don’t realize or remember than Ann’s Tea Room near the hotel had been moved across the street and became the Hotel Dieu.

            It’s not just nostalgia, it’s history.

                                                           -end-

Where's my home mail delivery, dude? (Jan. 1/14 column)

There’s gonna be a revolution in 2014

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            The Victoria Star in which this column is to appear will probably be dated January 1, 2014, although it may be later when you read it because the mail delivery on New Year’s Day is usually spotty.

            Which brings me to the first topic of this treatise – home delivery of mail.

            There has been a great hue and cry over Canada Post’s decision to stop home delivery everywhere, which, translated, means in the cities since the corporation has stopped home delivery almost everywhere else under the pretext of looking out for their letter carriers’ safety. That of course was a lie, comparing well to the Canada Post statement that followed every post office closing in the 1990s: “This will not affect mail delivery”. And Goldilocks was an entomologist who would never steal anyone’s porridge.

            Where were all those protesting voices when Canada Post was taking away OUR home delivery a few years ago? I used to walk to the end of our driveway to get our mail (and flyers), but now if I want to get both I have to drive over four kilometres. That’s about 1300 kilometres a year. More taxes out of my pocket and into David’s and Stephen’s.

            It’s quite amusing to listen to all the arguments people are using now to protest the dropping of home delivery in the cities. The elderly, the handicapped, and others who will have a hard job getting to a group mailbox which, in the city, could be a couple of blocks away, but not quite 1300 kilometres. Correct me if you must, but when they were cutting off our home delivery nobody spoke up for those folks, and they exist in rural Canada as well as in the cities. Oh wait, there are more votes in the cities, unless you buy that male cow manure about Canada Post’s being a Crown Corporation and not under the influence of the government.

            Moving on from that rant, I now mention the subject in the title of this column. It is a hopeful title, because we do need a revolution and that’s going to be the first New Year’s Resolution I have ever made.

            The revolution to which I refer is not a violent one – unless someone has to fight for the kitchen table – but is a revolution. You know all those family photos you have lurking in boxes at the back of your closets and your attics? Many of them are a century old; I refer to black and white photos of your family’s and your community’s history. Would you PLEASE go to your old photos – Canada’s history – and, with a pencil, identify the people, places and the time?

            It is rather disappointing to be shown dozens of black and white photos with nary a name, year or place mentioned. My Aunt Ella Adams (1905-2004) could identify people back to her great-grandparents, but after she died no one else around these parts could recognize any of my ancestors from those days. From 1988 to about 1990 I wrote a LaFrance family history and if it hadn’t been for Aunt Ella I wouldn’t have known who any of the old codgers were.

For many years I had wanted to write a book called ‘A readable History of Perth-Andover, NB’ but in late 2012 I realized I could not find the $60,000-$80,000 that would be needed for all the research, the time involved, and the printing costs. My decision was to abandon the idea of the book and instead open up a Facebook Group called ‘Old Photos of Victoria County, NB’. I doubted if more than a few hundred people would be interested in the group, which was really focussed on southern Victoria County; Plaster Rock and the Tobique and other areas needed their own groups.

            Surprise! As of this week, my group has 1968 members. I won’t say that I am astonished, because it’s well beyond that, but what pleases me most is that it is INTERACTIVE in a way that the book could never be. I put a photo on there and quite often, within a day or two, there are 20+ comments outlining many details of the unknown person’s life.

            Here’s my New Year’s Resolution: I am going to try and keep southern Victoria County’s history alive, as are those who have groups from the Rowena, Carlingford, Plaster Rock, and other areas. This is real history. Any photos I have, I am going to print (lightly in pencil) on the back just who’s who and what’s what.

                                                                      -end-

Shoe polish is not quite 'organic (Dec. 25/13 column)

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan!

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            I hope everyone has a joyeux Noel and all that stuff, and I wish I could get this shoe polish off my good pants – trousers, whatever they’re called these days.

            Enough on that subject for now; I will surely find a way. Shoe polish is an organic product, right? So…

            “Bob, shoe polish as about as organic as an aluminium car bumper. Why don’t you just face the fact that your only pair of pants is ruined and go buy another pair just like them? She may not notice.”

            Flug, being single, had just spoken the four words that husbands the world over have uttered since Adam said: “She may not notice that it’s from the tree of forbidden fruit”. Wives notice everything that we husbands don’t want them to notice and I have the rolling pin scars to prove it. It’s a phrase like: “I know a shortcut”. Watch out!

            Some readers might be asking if I really have only one pair of pants – trousers, etc. – but it’s true. One pair of pants that, until yesterday, weren’t stained, torn or otherwise mutilated. Now I have an entire wardrobe that’s ready for the ragman, until I remember that a ragman is someone from a by-gone era. He won’t be by to help me out, but I will soon need the services of a good bandager.

            (I just remembered why I thought about ragmen. About a month ago I read a book called “The Ragman’s Son” by the actor Kirk Douglas, who was born Issur Danielovitch Demsky, the son of an illiterate immigrant Russian-Jewish ragpicker and junkman.)

            Back to my dilemma about my pants: what am I to do? Flug offered to lend me a pair, but since he’s about half my size and much taller, that might not work to perfection. By the way, I am not going to explain how I got shoe polish on my only good pair of pants, so don’t bother trying to find out. Let’s just say lemonade was involved.

                                        *****************************

            Still on the subject of clothes, I wonder who came up with the idea of ties for men?

            I have thought about this for several seconds and cannot come up with any reason why a human being should be required to take a piece of narrow cloth and tie it around his neck in a certain way, then appear in public like this. It doesn’t meet the requirements of my ideas for fun.

            Indeed, I would cheerfully throw my tie into the river or burn it, but Environment Canada has issued strict guidelines for that sort of thing. Seriously though, are men’s ties just something the ‘clothing industry’ came up with so they could sell them and make big money? I remember when I was a kid I would usually buy my father a tie for Christmas – or maybe some after-shave lotion – because it’s all I could think of. By the time I was 25, he took all the ties in his dresser and made a warm blanket for his horse King. As to the after-shave lotion, he used dump that, three bottles at a time, into the tank of our 1957 Chevvy. True stories.

            I often think about the uselessness of things like neckties, and the vast sums of money spent on other useless items, like high-end pet food. Whether this is high-end food for pets or food for high-end pets, I can’t even guess, but I do know that some people spend a lot of money on their dogs and cats under the impression that they’re human. These same people don’t have any qualms about buying a chicken at the grocery store, or chowing down on a hamburger, but I suppose hens and cows aren’t human. It’s all part of the giant con jobs we live with, like bottled water.

                                       *****************************

            Along the same line of useless items, or at least items that, once purchased, do not get used, I include treadmills and other exercise equipment. We had an exercise bicycle AND a treadmill here at our estate for years, until finally someone noticed that nobody here likes bicycles and when we walk we actually do it on the road. We own raincoats and snowcoats.

            If you don’t believe that everyone in New Brunswick already owns a treadmill, put an ad in the paper for the one behind your basement door. You can start out at $100 and go down to a dollar seventy three and you ain’t gonna sell it. Everyone else has one they want to sell you.

            Here’s how I know for sure: I wanted to GIVE AWAY our treadmill, so I put it on several Facebook sites for two weeks. I am not joking, I received not one call even though all they had to do was drive here and pick it up. Finally I gave it to an itinerant ragman and junk picker. I believe he said his name was Demsky.

                                                             -end- 

We're all drones anyway, let's fly (Dec. 18/13 column)

Everybody wants a piece of Mandela

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            There is no doubt that Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, was as close to a saint as we’re likely to see in human form, but I have to say that the news coverage after his death was a little over the top.

            It reminded me quite a bit of television – especially CBC television – during the Stanley Cup playoffs, at least up to this point, after which Rogers will run the whole shebang. During the playoffs, one could tune to the CBC and even if it were three o’clock in the morning, there would be the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And they went on from February to October.

            Look in the TV guide and see the word ‘News’ at that time of the year and then desperately go there. “Good evening,” says the Talking Head, “today in the Stanley Cup Playoffs…”

            AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!

            Except for CTV. Since they didn’t win the SCP broadcasting rights, they’ve been sulking and don’t even mention the playoffs. It doesn’t matter a whole lot anyway, because CTV is almost wall-to-wall American programming anyway. In fact, I’ve heard rumours that some American networks are studying CTV to learn how to become more American themselves.

            Back to the point: during the coverage after Mandela’s death, news programs interviewed every person in Canada, the U.S. or other countries rarely heard from to desperately find some connection to Mandela. There was a 12-minute interview on CBC Radio with the janitor of the Toronto building where Mandela used the washroom in 1993. “I didn’t clean that washroom for a month,” he said, “but on the other hand, that’s more often than I usually do.”

            For some reason, on short acquaintance, the premier of Nova Scotia decided he should go to Mandela’s funeral in South Africa. When I say ‘short acquaintance’ I mean he waved to the great man from among a crowd of homeless people. This happened in 1996, before the premier entered politics. He told the legislature. “And not only our meeting (?) in 1996, I also saw him twice on television.”

            I’m thinking some people are a little cynical. Of course, some could say about me that I’m rather sarcastic.

                                        *****************************

            One of the biggest news stories this Christmas season was the announcement by Amazon.com that, sometime in the near future, they will be able to deliver some of their books and other orders by drones, which are of course remote controlled helicopter type aircraft as small as a shoebox or as large as a fridge.

            Since the ones flying around the mountains of Pakistan deliver 400-pound bombs to their favourite targets, I think we can guess that the Amazon.com drones are a little smaller. Surely the aircraft needed to deliver five of the latest sex novels by Dominique de LaHaze or Nora Roberts wouldn’t be quite that big.

            But let’s just think. What if there were a mix-up and the drone intended for delivering a 400-pound explosive device, sometimes called a bomb, to an Al’quiada base in Istruama, Pakistan arrived at (for example) Flug’s house? I can picture his annoyance already, but it would be a bit diffused since Flug would be here, and there, and over there.

            Amazon.com has opened up a can of worms. Sooner or later other companies will be wanting to deliver their products by drone. Suppose my Husqvarna tiller needed a new engine? I could email the company and give them my address and risk getting a block of metal landing on my cranial area…or I could give them Flug’s address.

                                           ******************************

            I shall devote the rest of this column to asking some serious questions of the readers. Since I rarely know the answer to any question (I have been told), I feel it behooves me to put the queries to those who read this column on a regular basis. Of course, the fact that you are reading this column in the first place doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in your perspicacity.

            We had a flood in Perth-Andover in March of 2012, but it will never happen again, because Murphy’s Law dictates that when houses are moved out of flood zones there are no more floods. True or false? Imagine moving your house up on a hill only to find that Perth-Andover didn’t flood again? That would be a rip.

            There are lots of high-tech gadgets we can use to make sure we can get our car unlocked when we leave keys inside. Why is all the information in the glove compartment?

               Since most cars now have ‘keyless entry’, do we still say we ROLL down our windows? It’s like referring to the latest DvD rock album as a ‘record’.

            A Toronto polling company gave their results and said they were accurate to within 3.5% 19 times out of 20. Does anyone outside of Ga-ga Land have any idea what this means?

            Finally, in this Christmas season, hundreds of Victoria County residents will be flying into and out of various airports in the province. Is it humanly possibly to have a plane leave at some time other than 5:00 am?

                                                               -end-