Breakfast at the Pembroke St. B. & B., Oxford.

    I had spent some time in Wales and the southern part of England and was now slowly making my way back to London where I was to catch a flight to Singapore in a week or so. On this particular evening I found myself once again, after dark, in a strange city looking for lodgings for the night. I was near the historic centre of town, wandering around looking for the usual dimly lit signs that advertised tourist accommodations. I was, as always, scouting out the less prosperous inn or the home fallen on hard times and now taking in visitors as a way to pay off the killing taxes or to supplement a small pension. I happened upon Pembroke Street and it caught my eye, as it was the name of the town of my birth. I looked along a narrow, cobbled street, wet from a recent rain and decided to walk down it just to see where it led. About mid way down the street there it was, the sign that I had been looking for, a weathered shingle, advertising a bed and breakfast and in the type of house I knew that I could afford. It was an old one on a street of ancient row houses that leaned against each other for support. The windows were dark and a dim light inside the front door was the only indication that it was at all inhabited. I rang the bell and waited, rang it again and eventually an old man in a mauve and grey, moth eaten cardigan slowly opened the door, looked at me and asked the question. “Yes?” I explained that I was looking for a room and asked if he had one for rent. It turned out there were several and I was led up two narrow, slanting flights of stairs to a room in the attic. There beneath a sloping ceiling was a room, probably furnished in some distant time of middle class prosperity and now had taken on the look of a faded and failed attempt at some sort of elegance. The bed, which occupied the majority of the room, was an old four-poster, piled high with patchwork quilts that were now themselves patched and torn. It had a definite hump in the middle and I could see that getting into it was going to pose a bit of a problem as the hump was about chest high on me. There was a wood veneer dressing table with a pitted and yellowing mirror and a chair with the frayed remains of a padded seat. The walls and the sloping part of the ceiling were wallpapered in a pattern of large, unrecognizable flowers coloured in a way that was reminiscent of old postcards. A dim bulb with a cracked shade protruded from the wall above the bed. It was perfect. It was run down, down at the heels, musty, light shone through cracks in the wall of the adjoining room and it was cheap. I took it! I was given two keys, one for the front door, one for the room and was told that I had to be in by midnight and that breakfast was served in the basement at seven o’clock.

    I spent the evening wandering about the town, having a bite to eat and as the evening wore on and it began to rain I took in a movie. It was I believe, Hawaii with Charlton Heston. This was the first time I had been to a movie outside of Canada and was surprised that after the playing of the national anthem that there were quite a few minutes of adds on the screen. This hadn’t become part of the movie going experience in Canada yet where it was still felt that if you paid to see a movie then it would be free of advertisements for non-movie stuff. Even snacks weren’t  advertised except in the most general of terms inviting you to have a drink and a candy bar or popcorn in the lobby. There was an intermission as the movie was a long one and I later found out that there was always a break so that young, uniformed girls could walk the aisles selling treats from great trays hung around the neck like the type usually seen on cigarette girls in movies that featured swank night clubs. I spoke briefly to a young man on my right who struck up a conversation with me and we talked of the movie, the town and my recent travels. 

     It was a pleasant way to spend an evening and when the movie ended I walked back to the boarding house and trudged up the stairs to my room. I had begun to unpack things for bed when the door to the adjacent room opened and voices were heard. The old man who had showed me my room was now showing a couple the room next door. It looked as if I might have neighbours and I was hoping that they were going to be quiet as I was looking forward to a good night’s rest. A few moments later I could hear them talking in the hall, thanking the man for showing them the room but deciding against taking it. They were obviously made of more delicate stuff than I. Now ready for sleep I managed to get up onto the bed, which went from a convex shape to concave. I was now sleeping in a hollow, the outer edges of the bed ballooned up around me and I could see a struggle in the morning just to get out of it. I pulled the comforter over me and was pushed farther down into the bed from the weight of it. The thing was about triple the poundage of any blanket I had ever used and I thought that it was probably filled with decades of accumulated dust mite droppings and other assorted debris. Never the less I fell asleep and only awoke to the sound of my alarm in the morning.

    I washed and shaved and finally made my way to the basement dining area where I was surprised to find the place packed with men, mostly of my own age or a bit older and one or two couples, all crowded around a few long tables. From a window at the far end of the room came the sounds of the kitchen, dishes rattling, water running and orders being called. A woman and the same elderly man that had shown me the room the night before were shuttling back and forth between the service window and the tables. There was much bustle and a few of the people had already began to eat their breakfast of fried eggs, a couple of sausages, toast and that English favourite, broiled tomatoes.  It was sunny outside and rays of sunlight streamed in through the windows set high in the basement wall. Motes of dust showed in the cool air and coffee mugs steamed in the sunshine but what most of the eyes were focused on was the old man serving the plates of food. He still wore the same clothes from the night before, the same aged cardigan now looking even worse for wear in the light of day. His balding head was head was bowed as he walked from kitchen window to table bearing plates of food. He shuffled and seemed over worked and harried as he struggled to keep up with the influx of people that had descended to the basement. Those not eating watched only him as they waited for their food to be cooked and served. The middle aged and stout woman that was also serving seemed to be ignored as she went about her business.

    The old man now shuffled back to the window to load up with more plates of food, one plate balanced on each forearm and a plate in each hand. All eyes turned to watch him and at first I thought it was just hungry boarders eager for their food, each hoping to be the next served that kept their attention fixed on him. But as he passed through a ray of sun and turned to show his profile I saw the reason for all the attention paid him. His head was bent over the food, his face directly above one or the other plate on each forearm as he wavered among the tables. Wispy strands of grey hair shone in the light but what now drew my attention was his nose. It was an old mans nose, the prominent feature on his face, long and slightly hooked and in the chill of the morning, held what seemed to be a gleaming jewel at the very end. It was this jewel, this prism that everyone watched. It shone in the light, it wavered with each step and seemed to expand and retreat with each breath, it held the colours of the rainbow and no diamond has ever sparkled with such clarity in the light of the sun. No diamond hung on the neck of a movie star has ever demanded such rapt attention, has ever evoked such interest in a group of hungry diners. The man had a serious case of nasal drip and now with both hands occupied was unable to deal with it. The problem was now beyond the help of a good sniff, it needed a wipe and a blow but until the plates were deposited the large drop of shimmering mucus hung suspended over the plates of our food. We all waited for the thing to take on a bit more weight, to overcome the moment of inertia and fall, to make the trip from comedy to tragedy. As he passed by each table to make his way to the far end of the room all eyes watched the progress of the drip on the end of his nose. The same thought was in each of our minds, whose plate would it land on when it finally fell? Who would be the one that would have to do without his or her breakfast that day? Who would sit, nursing a coffee, looking at the plate before him, hungry but unable to reach for the utensils and dig in to the mornings repast? Which one of us would sit and be mocked by what seemed to be a perfectly good plate of food waiting to be eaten but harbouring a barely perceptible gift that prevented the taking of it? Each of us hoped that it would be another that our breakfast would be spared, that someone else would be the recipient of the tainted meal. But I am also sure that each of us secretly hoped that it would fall, that someone other than us would be the star in this play. We wanted it to fall, we wanted that release that would come in a burst of shared laughter when it sailed through the air and hit the plate. We wanted someone to be the fool, for the old man and the woman to look up and wonder what the laughter was all about, for someone to try and explain why they wanted a new plate of food.

    Or it could have gotten even better. Someone unaware of the drama taking place in front of them might receive the object of our attention and heartily dig in, not knowing the part they were playing in the mornings farce. Sausages would be devoured, eggs eaten and the yolk wiped up with toast, perhaps even the tomato would be eaten and any hope or fear that the drip was avoided would be put to rest. We would watch in fascination this meal being eaten even as we ate our own. We would be thankful it wasn’t us being the unconscious eater of an old mans nasal discharge.

    The plates now deposited, a cloth handkerchief was brought out and the offending drip was wiped away. He again returned to the window for more plates and once his hands were full the drip reappeared and again the drama ensued for yet another round of servings. I don’t know if the drip ever actually fell. Once your meal arrived safe to eat you turned your attention to it and left the watching to those yet to be served. I don’t think it ever fell, ever made the trip from nose to plate. There was never any outburst of laughter but for the moments before your meal was brought to the table the comedic suspense filled the room and all were brought together in the shared moment. 

    Breakfast over I wandered the town, visited the university, explored shops, took in the sights. But all of that is now part of my forgotten past and only the memory of that rundown guesthouse and the breakfasts served there remain. The town is just another pretty town out of hundreds I have visited but that old man and his problem are a rarer memory than ivy covered walls and the pretty streets of old Oxford.

       

Why I Can’t Hear “Send In The Clowns” without Hearing The Ocean.

       It was August of 1975 and I was standing at the gate of a house on Addison Road in the town of Manley. An hour earlier I had got off a plane from New Zealand and now I was staring at a rather run down house on a quiet street of middle class homes. Homes that were all trying to better themselves except for this one. It seemed to have quit trying some time ago and now was happily drifting into decrepitude. The whole theme of the place was summed up by a Volkswagen Beetle that sat mouldering in the front yard. It was filled, front seat and back, floor to roof, packed to the 'gunnels with empty beer cans. Weeks later when we emptied the car we disturbed a small city's worth of cockroaches living off the stale beer but now as I passed this empty Fosters container I wondered what I was getting myself into. The trepidation deepened as I opened the screen door and entered the porch. It too was filled at one end, floor to ceiling, with empty cases of beer. There was a kings ransom to be had in empties between the porch and the car. Even as an avid beer drinker I was astounded at the number of empties in one small house. I knocked, or I should say we knocked. I was traveling with Linda McNeely, a nurse I had known in Toronto and had met in Auckland after friends we were both writing to told us of the others address. So we'd met, hung around together, traveled together and were now standing at the door of this house in Manley. She had worked with the lady who lived there and was told to drop in if she ever needed a place to stay. 

    So here she was, here we were. No one answered the door. We tried it and found it unlocked. Well she did say drop in and so in we went. The house was what you might expect from the outside. It was clean, well, cleanish. Dishes were piled up in the sink in the small kitchen but the rest of the place was not one that induced revulsion. It was just run down. There were a couple of chairs, a TV and an old leather sofa that was propped up on one end by a couple of bricks. It could have used a brick or two more as the sofa sort of ran downhill. Anyone who sat on it tended to lean a bit to the left. It was dingy inside but then I was used to that. Middle class Australia homes  that I had been in weren't noted for their cheery ambiance. It was as though paint, or at least colourful paint, was an unheard of entity. Most homes seemed to be done in institutional colours, depressing greens from the psych ward or browns redolent of nicotine stained pubs that had last seen paint after Gallipoli. This house was owned, or rented, by a woman and her two grown children. This woman, Shirley, was perhaps in her late forties or early fifties and her children were a boy in his late teens and a daughter in her early twenties which was about my age at the time. The son had embraced vegetarianism while the rest of the family were rabid meat eaters but the food wars that occupied meal times were all done in good fun. To this day I still think of meat as “bad veggies” in the parlance of the son and his grain eating, dope smoking, beer swilling and totally likeable friends. Shirley was the star of the house. There is a class of people in the world who are often just getting by on long hours of work at poor paying jobs, who have had their fair share of bad luck or missed opportunities but who embrace life with a sense of fun and with open arms. People who welcome in another mouth to feed, another body to house in an already cramped dwelling and do it with a joy. People who immediately make you feel welcome and part of the family. Shirley was one of those. The most striking thing about her was her hair. It was a coif that had last seen it's popularity peak before the late nineteen forties. It was dyed jet black and swept up in a wave at the front and long down the back. Service men returning home after the second world war were greeted by girlfriends with this hair. Benny Goodman played his clarinet to young women with this hair. And then it went away. But not with Shirley. Through the hard times of the conservative fifties, through the turbulent revolutions of the sixties and now into the seventies she had stuck with the up swept hair, the heavy lashes and the ruby red lips. She had her look and she stuck to it.

   She was a bar maid in a lawn bowling club. That is to say she had an enviable job. Lawn bowling clubs in Australia are not just sporting clubs. They are that, but as well they are social clubs, a home away from home, a second family, a place where everybody knows your name. A popular bar maid at a club has status, has arrived at the height of bar tending. At one time in her life she had tended bar at a yacht club in northern Australia, in Queensland. There she met the actor Ernest Borgnine who was on a fishing holiday. They had, she claimed, had an affair and so began one of my slight claims to fame. I now have had the honour to have shook the hand that held Ernest Borgnine's…..well, you get the drift. 

    Linda was shown to a bed in her daughters room and I was given an old chesterfield on a back porch to sleep on. Although we had traveled together for months we were just friends. Linda was a  person who, I imagine, had been the homely confidant of pretty girls relating their exploits with handsome boys and had listened patiently when those relationships went bad. That and her job as a nurse seemed to create a no-go zone when it came to men. She was fun to be with but was, for all intense and purposes, a-sexual. It was a perfect traveling relationship, free of fights and jealousies and expectations but based on a need for occasional companionship and the pleasure of having someone to talk to over a meal or on a train going somewhere.

     I loved living in this house with its comings and goings of a variety of young people and the constant laughter of youth. Linda got a job waitressing at the Steyne, a popular bar on the beach and I found employment working in a garlic processing plant where my job was to cut the roots from heads of garlic with a pair of spring loaded shears. At the end of the day I'd ride the bus home reeking of garlic and with a hand so sore I couldn't uncurl it from the shape of a claw. Later I took a job at a warehouse for Avon where I packed boxes for sales ladies all over New South Wales and rode the bus home smelling of every scented Avon product there ever was. Women would move closer to catch whatever odour I was redolent with that day and men eyed me with suspicion. It was a good time in my life, filled with parties and noisy evenings at home watching the telly. There were walks along the beach and night time strolls through the little town just a ferry ride away from Sydney but a world removed from the hustle and bustle of that city. 

     When I lived there, Manley was an old persons town. It was filled with tottering, grey haired seniors going to the chemists or coming from the take away clutching containers of  fish and chips or soggy, gristle filled meat pies. The Corso, Manley's main street, a traffic free mall, was all but empty after nine in the evening. Years later when I went back it had changed. It was now filled with young south east Asians, the meat pie shops replaced by Thai and Cambodian restaurants and at eleven at night the place was hopping. I think I liked it better in the old days. The Styne was still there, unchanged. But the serious Aussie drinkers had been replaced by a younger and more ethnic diverse crowd. 

    But this isn't about Manley or any of the people in my life at that time. It's about Judy Collins singing Send In The Clowns

    

    I had been in love once. Oh not just in love but in capital L, pulse racing, mind swirling Love. I had lived and breathed love. I had worshiped this woman with a passion that all but stopped my heart. Poets write about such love, painters paint it. People die from it and die happy. We had lived in an apartment on Walmer Road just off Bloor Street in Toronto. There were autumn walks through leaf strewn streets, bundled up against the cold, the feel of a mittened hand in yours. There were nights at the Brunswick Tavern drinking draft beer and singing along with the patrons who staggered up on stage to belt out a tune. Summers were spent on Toronto island eating food from a picnic basket or savouring good ice cream at that old fashioned ice cream parlour near Honest Eds. We hosted parties, went dancing and people smiled at us we were so obviously smitten, so much in love. But then it ended. To say I was heart broken is a cliché and very much understates the turmoil I went through. I would have welcomed death. I drifted through months of despair. My world had collapsed inward and I could hardly breath. I changed jobs, carried on living, pretending I wasn't dying. Over time I slowly resurfaced. I now worked at Mount Sinai Hospital, met Terry Allen and had one of those years that decades later I can still tell stories about. It was one of my better years. But underneath it all I was still in love. The mention of her name could send me reeling. I hated her happiness and I thought peace was lost to me. I resumed my plans to travel that I had harboured since my youth and so bought a ticket to England beginning the great adventure of my life. Months went by, I flew to Singapore, caught a boat to Perth in Australia and long after that I was sitting, reading a letter on the veranda of a bar in the town of Port Villa on the South Pacific island of Vanuatu. Mail had found me here by way of general delivery and a letter from friends in Toronto had made its way to this small island. Buried among the small talk was the news that she had gotten married to a man twenty years her senior and had moved to Edmonton. Now she was lost to me, now it really was over. Now she was someone else's. The  acute pain wasn't there but still, I thought, it should have been me who was the happy groom. We should have been the storied couple. I hoped for failure, for pain and recrimination, for regret at having left me. I hoped she lay in her bed at night, awake as her husband slept, wondering where I was and what I was doing. I stared out over the aqua marine sea, past the palms, looking far beyond the horizon to the other side of the world. To that cold and colourless city where part of my heart  lay fading into memory. 

     I continued traveling, continued having more adventures than I ever could have hoped for. I wandered through the Islands of the South Pacific ending up living with a family in Fiji and now almost a year later I was in Manley. 

    Music had been my companion through all these months. Songs heard on car radios while hitch hiking, background songs in restaurants and bars, songs heard on other peoples stereos. In Queenstown on the south Island of New Zealand I worked mornings in the kitchen of the Ramada Inn, or the ram-it-in as the staff called it. We lived in the staff hostel and afternoons were spent skiing the slopes of  the surrounding mountains. Nights were spent in the local pubs. It was a ski resort town, full of young people, full of fun and over and over again I heard Elton John singing “butterflies are free my love/ fly away/ bye, bye” and I thought that was me. Free, flying away to where ever and whatever my fancy took. I was the one to be envied, I was flying free into the welcoming, open arms of life. I was so glad to be alive and here and with a great unknown off into the future. Glad not to be tied down to marriage and conventionality. Now she was fading into my memory, on the way to becoming a part of my past rather than a constant part of my present.                                                         

   Another popular song of the day was Send In The Clowns. It was played in the background of a hundred places I had been. I liked the song but it had held no significance for me. It was just another pretty song whose lyrics I had never paid much attention to.

    At night, here in Manley I would settle into my somewhat uncomfortable bed on the back porch. I'd pull my sleeping bag and extra blankets up around my chin as protection against the cold night air of an Australian winter and I would drift off to sleep.. Behind the house, unseen through the brush and down a steep hill there was a small, sheltered bay and a sandy beach. Mothers with young children would go there during the day to sun bathe or swim in the safe waters of this little cove. At night I could hear the incoming tide washing up on the shore in a gentle swoosh, an occasional wave would break but it was a kind and peaceful sound. Someone, somewhere in this neighbourhood loved the song “Send In The Clowns” and it seemed most nights as I was drifting off to sleep, this recording would play. It was close enough that I could clearly hear it but far enough away so that it blended in with the sound of the ocean washing over the soft sand of the beach below. It seemed now to hold a significance to me. The lyrics, obtuse perhaps, without knowing the story of the play they were written for, spoke to me and my condition. I had been in love, had lost that love, had felt that peace and contentment were beyond me. Turmoil had reigned, ebbed and subsided into memory. I had come through the fire, not totally unscathed perhaps but not too badly burnt either. The scars were healing, no, healed and I was at peace, not just with the past but with myself. As I lay there, everything I owned in the world in a backpack beside me, I would not have turned back the clock and changed history even if it were within my power. I had an enviable life, had had enviable experiences and was looking forward with eager anticipation to the future. 

    The opening strains of the song wafted in the night air like a fragrance. A melancholic oboe played the opening bars, the almost ethereal voice of Judy Collins singing “Isn't it rich/aren't we a pair/ me here at last on the ground/ you in the air”, the sound of the incoming tide intermingling with the song. I wished she were here with me. Not to rekindle a now dead romance but to show her how well I was doing.  “Don't you love farce/ my fault I fear/ I thought that you want what I want/ sorry my dear”. The song, the ocean breaking on the beach, the smell of eucalyptus in the night air, the snuggled in comfort of blankets pulled up, all mingled in together as I drifted off to sleep.  Now when I hear this song I don't think of love lost and emotional stability regained but I remember a joyous time in my life and the sound of the ocean far in the background below. “Sure of my lines/ no one is there”. Sleep.

                      The Sad Case of Rebecca Jenkins

                                       Pembroke, Ontario 1885-1886

It was 1885, there was war in the middle east. There were tensions between the British and Russians in Afghanistan which would soon break out into armed warfare. In Indochina the French, in their attempts to colonize what would become Vietnam, had suffered a series of defeats and been driven out of the countryside to their garrison in Hanoi.

 Irish nationalist were setting off bombs in London and in Canada a firebrand by the name of Louis Riel was talking rebellion on the prairies. As that rebellion intensified troops were sent west and Pembroke became one of the stopping points for the trains to pause and take on water and perhaps fuel. One of the first troop trains to stop here was met by a number of the local citizenry and even the town band came out to entertain the boys. The “boys” also availed themselves of the goods at Mrs. Little’s grocery store on the  north side of the tracks at the foot of Mackay Street and when word of this filtered back to town the good lady was once again hauled up in front of a judge and convicted of bootlegging.

The Quebec winter carnival was being advertised in the town papers, with this being the second year the popular toboggan slide was featured. However its popularity among the young led to a condemnation of the slide and its excitements by a couple of Ottawa priests who saw it as leading to immorality when ladies and gentlemen enjoyed the sport together. This most Canadian of outdoor, winter activities along with skating parties were said, by the good Fathers, to be “not so innocent as generally imagined.”

The old wooden bridge on the main street over the Muskrat River was the object of much debate both this month and continuing for the next of couple of years. The “old eyesore” as it was known was in a deplorable state of repair, horses had to be led across it and indeed fines were levied to anyone driving across the bridge at a rate of speed. This year $100 was set aside for some much needed repairs along with money allocated to construct a new bridge with the ongoing debate of whether it be made of wood, steel or stone.

In town that year Mr. Robert Menzies was opening a new bakery and confectionary store that “could be seen from the Post Office” with “Brides Cakes Made to Order.” 

Mr. Solomon Leveille had taken over the old stand of Mr. Stanley at the corner of Pembroke and Commercial Streets and was busy with his carriage, sleigh and buggy manufacturing business.

R.B. Gray’s Drug Store had in a new shipment of German Singing Canaries, honey in the comb and American and Canadian coal oil.

 And tragedy struck the manufacturing section of the main street when McAlister’s Woolen Mill was destroyed by fire with a loss of over $18,000 to the business.

All of this probably went unnoticed by a lady by the name of Rebecca Jenkins and her two children, Thomas, aged 15 and his brother Robert, aged 10 who were inmates at the local jail. Rebecca was what we would now refer to as homeless although then she was classed under the rather catchall name of vagrant. Her children, would now be referred to as  mentally handicapped or delayed but then, in the parlance of that time, were called idiots. Both were deaf and one was blind. 

Aside from court appearances the first reporting about them was when they were mentioned in November, 1885 at the Renfrew County Assizes. The following item appeared in the paper as to what was said at the the Assizes.

                        “We wish to draw your Lordships Attention to the fact

                         that Rebecca Jenkins and her two illegitimate children

                         have been confined to the gaol for nearly six years and

                         strongly recommend that some steps be taken for their 

                         removal to some more suitable place.”

And so they were released but it would appear that aside from gaining their freedom there was no provision made for their well being.  A month later, along with a slate of drunks, bootlegger's, wife beaters, animal abusers and street fighters, Rebecca and her children were once again convicted of vagrancy and given six month in jail with hard labour. The Pembroke Standard had this to say about their imprisonment:

                         “Again committed,__Rebecca Jenkins and her boys

                          have again been committed to gaol as vagrants by 

                          the police magistrate. This time their sentence is six

                          months with hard labor. It is not easy to see what hard 

                          labor these poor creatures are capable of doing. The boys

                          are idiots and mutes and one of them is blind. The mother

                          and  children have now been some six years or so in gaol 

                          here. They are not criminals; they are helpless waifs 

                          incapable of supporting themselves. There should be some 

                          provision made for a county workhouse where indigent and 

                          helpless persons, who cannot take care of themselves, might

                          be decently supported at the public expense instead of sending

                          them to gaol as criminals. This is a question we think the county

                          council should take into consideration without further delay.”

In February of 1886 the town council, between a motion concerning the hiring of a shorthand reporter for the court and sending a representative from the county to the Colonial Exhibition in Toronto  mentioned that:

                          “every effort be made to have Rebecca Jenkyns and her

                           children placed in a proper asylum;”

The asylum they would have been referring to was the Rockwood Asylum for the Insane in Kingston, Ontario, perhaps only a slightly better solution than confinement in the local jail where at least there was hope of eventual release.

There was, finally, in 1905, a workhouse for eastern Ontario located in Perth and called the House of Industry but this came too late for Rebecca and her children.

Only months later, in May of 1886, there was this notice in the Standard:

                                 

                          “Died In The Gaol___Thomas Jenkins, one of the

                           lunatics in the Pembroke gaol died yesterday afternoon,

                          aged about sixteen years. The unfortunate lad had 

                          been confined there about seven or eight years and

                          his sad death may be considered a great blessing.”

Again that September at the County Assizes the case of the remaining Jenkins boy was raised with hopes of having him examined by a doctor and placed in a more suitable place as he was not deemed to be a fit subject for the common jail. 

But just a week later on September 14, 1886, in the local news column of the Pembroke Standard, just below an ad for a cheap excursion to North Bay, there was this notice:

                        “One of the waifs of the Jenkyns family confined in

                         the jail here, a little boy, died last week from natural causes.”

That was the last that was heard of Rebecca Jenkins but it was not the end of incarcerating those individuals who through mental illness, despair or just bad luck found themselves penniless, homeless and friendless on the streets of Pembroke. 

Just two years later, in June of 1886 

                                   “A STRANGE PROCEEDING

                       Last week a German girl named Gustie Wilkie came from

                       her home in Wilberforce to town and entered the employ of

                       a family in the east end. When she had been at work for two

                      days she packed up her belongings and left. She traveled

                      through the town until she reached the extreme West end,

                      and there she sat down by the roadside and remained for

                      twelve or fifteen hours. She refused to speak and kind-

                      hearted residents of the neighborhood became alarmed

                      at her friendless condition and strange conduct and 

                      represented the matter to the authorities. The girl was

                      brought to the Police Court on a charge of vagrancy, and

                      was sent to jail for one month.”

Perhaps she was just a homesick girl, overwhelmed by her new duties in a strange house. Now with no money and no way of getting home she became a criminal for want of a friend to take her in.

      A Brief History of Michael Addleman & His Businesses

                                            1899 - 1950's    

Written for Addleman family after a query as to whether I had any information on Michael Addleman                    

                

The Pembroke of 1899, the year Michael Addleman arrived in town, was well into its transition from a lawless outpost where the Shiners who had ruled the lumber trade from Ottawa to Mattawa were long gone as was the wisdom, as one physician wrote to his parents in England, of the necessity of carrying a revolver. Money had been made in the past decades, lots of money and it showed in the magnificent brick homes that became a feature of the town. It also showed on the main street where two and three story businesses, crowned with fancy pediments lined much of the commercial section. 

A couple of years after Michael arrived he was joined by his wife and perhaps wanting to show off their new home to her they would have taken a stroll up the main street.

In that year of 1902 there was a new addition to the main street, the Freeman Block, seen below, which had just been completed and would have been a “must see” on their walk.

                                                      

Unfortunately by the end of the decade this building burnt to the ground but within a year or so was replaced with this block of buildings, seen below to the right of the photo.

                                             

This first block of Pembroke Street west would have been all too familiar to the Addleman family as it was the  beginning of the main business section of town and looking eastward, as we are, it would have been a familiar sight to any family member returning home after shopping or from school. The tall, brown building behind the telephone pole is the White Building which was situated at the corner of Pembroke Street east and Mackay Street and this is the corner where any of the family returning home or to the store would have turned left, went a block and a bit and been at the front door.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. This, below, is the main street as Michael would have shown it to Golda in 1902 on her introductory walk up the main street.

                               

Here on this block was a grocery store, a druggist, a paint and wallpaper store, a men’s clothing store, an insurance company, offices and if you notice the lower of the two signs on the side of the building there was Dr. McKay who would pull a tooth for a quarter. Just off camera to the left was the flour mill and behind the low building on the left of the photo were the woollen mills where raw wool from the local farmers would be turned into cloth. 

 Continuing their walk up the main street of Golda’s new hometown they would come next to Albert Street where they perhaps stopped and turned to see the Bank of Ontario building with its arched windows. Across the street and just this side of the Freeman block is the three story Copeland Hotel where he may have stayed when he first arrived in town. But with limited funds the one dollar a night the Copeland charged may have been a little steep for the young Michael Addleman and he may have selected one of the several other good, but less expensive hotels the town had to offer. 

               

 Turning now to continue their walk westward up the main street the next intersection they would have come to would have been the Prince of Wales Street, now called Prince Street. 

In the photo below, looking west up Pembroke Street, they would have seen this, the heart of the business section and an area that in less than twenty years, in 1918, would be levelled by fire.

The Royal Bank is on the corner with the O’Kelly Building behind it where you could buy a hand rolled cigar, made by one of Mr. Kelly’s employees and perhaps buy a bottle of Topaz or Radium wine to enjoy with that cigar.

                                

Next door is the Murray Bros. Department store, one of several big stores of that time.

Across the street is the Pembroke Hotel with its many balconies and all you can eat meals for a quarter.

Continuing up the main street they would come to the corner of Pembroke and Moffat Streets and here again looking back they would see Fenton & Smith’s Department Store to the right with Beamish’s Dry Goods across the street.

             

Farther down the street was a hardware store, a grocer, a tailor, two barbershops and the inevitable tobacconist that was a feature on every block of the town. Just off camera to the right was the Albion Hotel that along with the Copeland were the two main hotels of the town. 

Turning again to look westward they would have seen this, the last couple of block of Pembroke’s main street. 

                                            

Here they would have seen the Oak Hall Men’s Wear to the left of the photo who’s owners, the Cohens, they would have undoubtedly come to know. Farther up the street on the right was the Grand Opera House and at the near right was Stewart & Bowden's Hardware. Here too was Dr. Josephs office, a butcher shop and higher up a variety of other businesses. Here as well was a lumber mill, a foundry, the offices of the Pembroke Observer newspaper and at the end of the street in among the distant trees was one of the old, original homesteads.

At the very top of the street was Mark Cardiff’s, one of the prominent old businesses that still carried on the trade of carriage making and repair and horse shoeing. This type business and its appearance, an anomaly perhaps to the modern main street, was a common sight on the side streets of Pembroke where the old industries still held sway.

                                  

For the first few years after Michael arrived there are few details of his life in Pembroke. There was a scrap metal business that, if it operated in the town of Pembroke did so quietly. His business may have in fact have taken place outside of Pembroke as In the 1904 Ontario Business Gazette he is not mentioned in the section for Pembroke. However he may have opened his business too late to be included in that years edition because on the eleventh of May, 1904 this ad appeared for the first time in the Pembroke Standard newspaper.

                                                              

Just an item on the front page of the Pembroke Standard. There was no street address given as that innovation was almost two decades away and as was the custom in those years it’s location was given in relationship to another well known business, in this instance the Manitoba House Hotel and as many small hotels were in those days it was probably little more than a house that rented rooms.

Here is the same ad from July of 1904 showing other ads above and below it. His ads in the paper were either on the front page or on the fifth page where most of the small, local advertisements appeared and I have the feeling that ads were placed at the discretion of the typesetter to go where ever they would best fit. 

                                                       

This small ad as seen above was placed, without change, every week until a few weeks prior to the eighteenth of April, 1906 when this item appeared in the local news column of the Standard:

                               

And their ad in the same issue of the paper reflected that change.

                                              This new site at 159 John Street is just a block east of their old location, on a side street off of Pembroke Street east, just a block down from the Queens Hotel which was located on the corner of Pembroke east and John Streets. They also kept their building on Mackay Street and were about to open another, different business at that location.

The photo below is of their building on John Street with 159 being to the left side of the building. The right side of the building was a home.

                                           I have the feeling this building, or at least their half of it, became the Addleman home. It’s reasonable to think that until they bought this building they were living in the apartments over the store on Mackay Street. There’s a large time gap between the purchasing of this building in 1906 and the publishing of the first street directory in 1925 but in that first directory all of the business concerns of Michael Addleman were listed as being at 137 Mackay Street. John Street is only listed as being a residence and in 1925  A. David, J. Michael and Michael Addleman are listed at this location. In 1927 there are, in addition to the above, Abraham D. (perhaps A. David?), Ann, Harry and Joseph all listed as living at the John Street location. Harry is listed as being a student, there is no designation for Ann (perhaps a school age child?), Abraham and Harry are listed as being clerks at M. Addleman Ltd. and J. Michael is listed as being a manager for that firm.

 The home on the right side is listed in 1925 as belonging to H.R. Mackay and in later years Edward Poupore. By 1938 the Addleman's are gone from this location and Mr. Lorne G. Fraser resides there with A.E. Marcotte living next door.

As mentioned this new location was just down the street from the Queens Hotel that was on the corner of Pembroke Street east and John Street. Once called the Metropolitan Hotel it was the finest hostelry of its day in the town of Pembroke. Below is an artist's rendition of what the hotel looked like in its prime.

                                                 

But it had fallen on hard times, had been renamed the Queen’s Hotel and in 1906 at the time of Addleman Brothers moving to their new location the old hotel was poised to  become the new location for Lee Manufacturing, makers of the Peerless Incubator for the poultry industry. After Lee moved in, the sloping roof of the building was taken off to create a flat roof and in time, when Lee relocated, the building became the home of the new Superior Electric Company.  

At the time of his move to John Street. This is what Michael would have seen as he stepped out of his new business location and looked left, up John Street towards Pembroke Street.

                                                     

During the period after the move the ads for the scrap business became less frequent in the paper, eventually disappearing altogether for a time until this ad appeared in 1909.

                                      

The location was the same but now Addleman Brothers had become Michael Addleman alone.

The change doesn’t seem to have affected the business as he continued to place regular ads in the paper for the next several years.

At the same time it would appear that the Mackay Street location has become Addleman's Men’s Clothing store. There seemed to be no formal announcement in the papers of the day of its opening nor were there the usual opening week specials that often accompanied the arrival of a new business. The first ad I found for the new clothing store was this one, placed in the November 4th, 1913 edition of the newspaper.

                                         

However in December of that same year there was this notice advertising their fifth anniversary sale which would put the stores opening in the fall of 1908.

                                            

Earlier, before there were any ads for this new enterprise there was this in the section for Pembroke of the 1910-1911 Ontario Gazetteer and Directory, which was a listing of businesses  by town or city:

                                              

So we know for sure that by 1910 he was in the clothing business. In the 1906 edition of the Gazetteer there was no listing for Addleman other than as a junk dealer.

After placing the two ads above there were regular weekly specials and reductions that were the hallmark of the clothing business throughout the town in those days. Although the term “Slaughter Sale” may seem almost off putting to our modern sensibilities it’s use was not uncommon in those days. 

Prosperity must have been smiling on him as on April 10th, 1913 a new, larger ad for his other businesses was drawn up and became a regular feature in the paper. The ad also heralded another change, the return to Mackay Street for all his business concerns and a new name for a new and apparently dominant facet of his business, dealing in raw hides and furs.

                        

The location this time noted as being next door to Cecile (sic) Hotel as are the ads for  the clothing store. The Manitoba House was no more and the dominant feature of that street would have been the Windsor Hotel owned by a Mr. Moleon Cecile. In those days hotels were often referred to by the name of the owner rather than by the name of the establishment and throughout his ads at this time, and for decades to come, the Addleman business was listed as being next to Cecile’s hotel, near the C.P.R. Station. This definitely places his business in the building that became known, and is known still by the older people of the community, as Addlemans. The building still stands today and is used as an apartment building at 137 Mackay Street as seen in the photo below.

                                     

Although there are no buildings to the left of the store in this photo at the time Michael had his business here there were three other buildings between his store and Nelson Street ( called Wellington Street until the early 1920’s) seen at mid photo, left. The C.P.R. railway station mentioned in his ad would have been located approximately where the unidentified white object is at the left of the photo.

The old Windsor Hotel has long since burned and unfortunately there are no known photos of it but it was a medium sized building of two, perhaps three stories with an enclosed balcony at the front extended off the second floor. Behind it were stables that had been advertised as having room to accommodate 30 span of horses.

On the other side of Addleman's was a store that was, at different times, a tobacconist, a grocery store and a tea room. Next to it was a home and on the corner was a grocery store that eventually became a private home. 

 I should mention here that the corner grocery store was owned by a Mrs. R. Wolfe whose husband Mr. J. Wolfe also owned a grocery store in town. They were Russian Poles who undoubtedly were well acquainted with the Addleman family as they were not only neighbours and fellow business people but shared a common faith and perhaps a common language. The Wolfe’s as well as the Addleman's also adopted a child from Russia, a little girl who they brought to Pembroke and raised as their daughter. This child was one of over one hundred Jewish children who were rescued from post war Russia by Mrs. A.J. Freiman of Ottawa and brought to Canada.

As Michael stepped out of his store on Mackay street and looked across and to his right he would have seen, on the corner of Mackay and Nelson Streets, a livery business that later, with the increasing popularity of the automobile, became Fraser's Red Arrow Taxi Company and this was a constant business throughout the entire history of Addleman's on Mackay Street. The photo below, taken in 1928, is what Michael would have seen in those years.

                    

Looking to his left, across and up Mackay street he would have seen this building which was there when he came and remained unchanged throughout his time in Pembroke.

                                     

This was the Pembroke Laundry, Cleaning and Dyeing Company which not only did Pembroke and areas laundry but had it shipped in by train from as far away as Chapleau, Ontario. If the Addleman family had their laundry sent out it may have gone to this business or to one of the several Chinese hand laundry businesses that were located in town.

Now with his men’s clothing a success there were weekly ads like the one below which firmly placed Addleman's in the realm of selling inexpensive clothing for the working man.

                                                               

At a time when the average working man earned less than a thousand dollars a year he would have appealed to the men who worked in many of the industries that once populated that area of Pembroke. 

One of his main competitors for the working man’s dollar in those days would have been a store run by Mr. W. Luxenburg, located at the west end of the main street who also sold inexpensive mens and boys clothing. In 1914 Mr. Luxenburg retired from the clothing business but in his place was a new competitor, a Mr. Mendel whose shop was in the heart of the business section close to all the other stores one might frequent when downtown. Perhaps this was the incentive for Michael to divert from his usual practice of placing a medium sized ad and for the first time to succumb to the lure of a full page ad in December of 1914.

                                                    

And of course now, in December of 1914, the first world war had just begun. Aside from some new defence industries coming to town and an influx of men to the military base at Petawawa some ten miles west of Pembroke there was little change in the routine in the lives of the  citizens of the town or in the businesses. The newspapers of course were filled with war news and there were letters from the front written by local lads that were published fairly regularly telling what they could of the fighting in Europe and of their experiences.

As in most, if not all communities, there were drives in Pembroke and area to solicit money for the war effort and in this the Addleman family were regular and generous contributors. Below is the results of one such drive published in the paper in the waning months of the war in June of 1918. To the left of the notice you can see an ad for Addleman's who were advertising sailor hats.

                                                                        

As evidenced below, the donation by Michael Addleman was exceedingly generous as that $100 would be worth in excess of $1,700 in the currency of 2016.

                                      

With the ending of the war there was continued prosperity in town with most of the industries still paying “war time” wages to their employees, an issue that was to become a bone of contention in the early years of the 1920’s. However it did put extra money in the pockets of the working man and woman and the businesses of the town seemed to flourish in the continuing post war boom. 

Addleman's continued to advertise both their clothing and raw fur concerns and although it still continued to operate, the scrap business never made it to the paper.

Then in March of 1920 this notice appeared in the local papers.

                              

Addleman's were getting out of their clothing business. There was a piece in the local news that Michael Addleman was selling his business to Mr. Charles Shore and was moving to Ottawa. He assured his customers for his other concerns he was going to continue the raw hide and fur business as well as the scrap business and these would still be located at 137 Mackay Street in the Addleman building. 

And so that spring Addleman's became Charles Shore Mens Wear.

                     

It was apparent from the ad, seen above, that Mr. Shore was going to aim at a bit higher market than had been the case for Addleman's. This however seemed to be a bit of a hard sell to the townspeople who were used to buying cheaper priced clothes at this location. With these prices he was going up against at least two of the old, established “Gentlemen’s Clothiers” of the town, Watters & Bodell and Oak Hall Men’ Wear and was even pricing himself above the mid range stores such as Kennedy’s and Fenton & Smith and a host of other family clothing stores. This, of course, did not work as planned and almost immediately he dropped his prices and began, as many stores of the day did, accepting produce in lieu of cash. More price reductions and weekly sales ensued but it still appeared that he was struggling to lure in the customers. 

Then in July of 1921 there was a fire.

                                                             

This seemed to be the final straw for Mr. Shore. There were no closing out sales, no last minute bargains, nothing but this announcement in the July, 1921 edition of the papers.

Although it is hard to read here it stated that Michael Addleman was returning to Pembroke and was going to reopen his old men’s wear store in the old location.

                                                        

And as any good businessman would do he had a grand re-opening sale.

             With this Addleman's was back in the men’s wear business. The raw fur concern was still in business but ads for this were few in these years. As an established buyer of furs and hides there was probably little need to advertise what the farmers and trappers of the area already knew of and had a long relationship with. That his raw fur business was still flourishing became evident in 1925 when one of the premier manufacturing concerns in town went into receivership. The Pembroke Woollen Mills had been forced into liquidation along with a host of other woollen mills throughout the country. Canada had removed the 11 ¼ % tariff it had placed on  woollen goods coming from England and with these cheaper goods now flooding the market many local mills were forced to close. At its peak the Pembroke mill employed as many as 130 men and women and at its closing was employing 75 or 80 people adding about $60,000 to the local economy ($814,000 in 2016 dollars). In March of that year when the assets of the mill were sold off Mr. Addleman bought the entire stock of raw wool, nearly 30,000 pounds worth and was able to resell most of it almost immediately.

There was one other change around this time that had to do with the Addleman business enterprise. Like the opening of the clothing store years before this new business had no opening advertisements, indeed it never advertised at all, and would have gone unnoticed as being part of the community of stores on Mackay Street if, in 1927 it hadn’t been included in that years Mackay Street  listing in Vernon’s Directory.

                                                                         

Addleman's now ran a grocery store. In 1925 the listing for this store at 135 Mackay Street was Morris Barnett’s Tobacco Shop, now it was Addleman's Grocers. 

But here is another mystery that I cannot put a location to. In the 1916 edition of Vernon's Directory there was this:

                                                  

So as early as 1915 Michael had, what probably was the general store that Katherine mentioned in an email to me. I have never come upon any advertising for this although for a small, family run grocery store of the day that wasn't unusual. We know that by 1906 the family, or part of it, lived and worked on John Street. We know that by 1908 the Mackay Street store was a clothing store so where, in 1916, was the grocery store located? Also I should say that in the 1925 Vernon's Directory there was no listing for grocer under Addleman and there was no Addleman listed under grocer, either wholesale or retail.

It is perhaps not surprising that Michael or one of the family decided to open (or re-open or move) a grocery store, probably in late 1925 or in 1926, just doors away from what was and had been for years, an established grocery business. One of the strange facts of business life in Pembroke was if there was a successful grocery business in an area soon other entrepreneurs would open one near by. In the case of Addleman's there was not only Gorman’s grocery but a block and a half away on the corner of Mackay and Pembroke Streets there were, within sight of one another, at least five other grocers and at least two of these were popular, long established concerns. So this was almost preordained to fail and by the next Vernon’s Directory we have which is 1929, it was gone and the store was vacant. In 1931 it was listed as Gervais’ Tea Room.

Just a note here. In the 1929 edition of the Business Gazetteer Addleman's is still listed as having a grocery as one of their business concerns but the street listing had this building, at 135 Mackay Street, as vacant. As I've discovered the business listings were often less accurate than the street listings and so I tend to believe that by 1929 and probably in 1927, the grocery business had closed.

So the grocery store at this location probably lasted but a year or two and by 1927 it was undoubtedly gone as that was the year another huge change was about to happen to the Addleman businesses.

There was this item, part of a larger ad, in the September 1st, 1927 edition of the local newspaper.

                  

In the same issue of the paper there was this eulogy and a statement from Michael Addleman.

                                                       

Now of course the advertising began and ran over a couple of months until November 3rd, 1927 this final ad for Addleman's Men’s Wear appeared in the paper.

                                

Ever the businessman Michael had one last trick up his sleeve to lure the customers to his store. He advertised that on a particular Saturday in October he would, at times throughout the day, climb up onto the roof of his store and toss handfuls of one dollar bills to the crown below until he had disbursed all of one hundred dollars. There is no report on how this went off but I have no doubt that it drew in the crowds as any public event in those days would pull in people by the hundreds.

During all this he again began advertising for hides and fur on a more regular basis than he had done for the past number of years. 

During the war there had been a huge demand for hides which had driven up the price for which they could be sold. But at the end of the war this enormous stockpile of leather that had accumulated in the government stores was flung back onto the market depressing the price farmers were paid and which dealers could sell for. By 1927 however the price had stabilized and was back to pre-war levels and indeed now there was a shortage of hides. There was also a renewed demand for furs as the post war boom continued and after some years of few and sporadic ads for this side of their business Addleman's were once again back, full force, in the fur and hide business. The ad below is from 1928 and is a new and larger ad than had been seen for some years.

                           

If you note the small print at the bottom of the ad states he has been in business for 25 years and this tallies with my earlier guess that he started business in Pembroke in 1904 at the time of his first advertisement. 

During the 1920's the original scrap business seems to have evolved into a more specific metal recycling business. The Vernon Directories no longer had Addleman's listed under scrap but were now listed under Iron and Steel Merchants

Then in 1929 the depression hit.

It took a year or so for the full effect of this to hit Pembroke as initially that mainstay of the local economy, the lumber industry, continued to send men to the winter camps and the mills continued to run full shifts but even these, by late 1930, were feeling the effects. By 1931 and onwards fewer and fewer men went into the bush and the mills either shuttered their operations or severely cut back the hours of operation. Most of the local industries remained open but either reduced their hours or, in an effort to keep as many men as possible employed, had two shifts of a few hours each so at least what little work there was could be divided between all their employees.

This economic catastrophe was reflected in the ads that were placed in the papers of the day. Those stores which had once placed weekly ads of a half a page or more now would place an occasional, small ad although the large, chain stores such as Friedman’s and the Canadian Department Store (Eaton’s by another name) still placed full page or two paged ads and undoubtedly helped keep the newspaper in revenue.

There was an item in the paper from this time of a farmer coming to town with a load of sheep skins for sale and after receiving an offer of ten cents per hide returned home with them as this wasn’t enough to cover his cost of bringing them to town. This drop in demand for hides of all sorts of course had to affect Michael Addleman's business and this was reflected in an almost complete cessation of any advertising. Throughout these years there were few and sporadic ads for his business except for each April, at the end of the trapping season, when an ad or two or three like the ones below were placed. The ad on the left is from 1931, the one on the right is from 1934.

                                                     

  Towards the end of the 1930's the economy of Pembroke was recovering. This could be seen in the new, larger and more frequent ads that were run in the local newspaper. Their tone was more aggressive and up-beat and luxury goods were again advertised. Addleman's however had pretty well stopped placing ads altogether. In my scanning of the Standard-Observer in the late thirties there was only this one, small ad I came across, placed in the April 18th, 1937 edition of the paper.

                                                                    

Although I've looked through different years of the newspaper, right through until the 1950's, I never again came upon an ad for Addlemans. In the Vernon's directory they are listed right up until 1950 but in the next available edition, which is in 1960, they are gone.

In 1931 both Joseph and J. Michael Addleman are listed as living in the house on John Street with the business still on Mackay street and I would imagine that some time after the clothing store closed in 1927 Michael Addleman probably returned to live in Ottawa. By the 1941 edition there is just Joseph M. Addleman listed as manager for M. Addleman & Co. with the notation that he lives in Ottawa. 

Addleman's fur business continued on into some time in the 1950's when it ended its business concern here and in the 1960 address listings there was no longer the name Addleman listed in the directory.

From the end of the depression they still dealt in furs, still kept their store on Mackay Street open but I have the feeling it may have been open only occasionally or perhaps seasonally.

Although the last ad I could find was for the iron and steel business this side of their was never again listed in the Vernon's business directory. They were, throughout this time, still dealing in hides and furs and on a couple of occasions when I've mentioned Addleman's to some of the elderly people in town they always remember it as "the fur company."

                                                              Life in Pembroke

After her move to Pembroke where does Mrs. Addleman shop, lets say for groceries? In the second photograph I mentioned the brown building at the corner of Pembroke and Mackay Streets. Below is a drawing of that building and as you can see it held a fairly large  grocery store. If she didn't want to shop here she could have turned either right or left and within less than half a block been at another grocers all within easy walking distance of home. The building beside it with the steep pitched roof was a harness dealer and if Michael ever owned a horse he may have bought a harness or had it repaired here. The building beyond it was a private home and is still being used as an apartment building. 

                                                      

Or she may have shopped here, at Martin's Grocery Store (as seen in 1903) of which the interior would have been typical for that time. The advent of self serve, where you roam the aisles picking items and placing them in a basket did not come to Pembroke until the mid 1920's.

                                                       

She may have, if down town shopped at Fenton & Smith's Grocery store (below, as seen in 1902) which was part of their larger department store. Here there was free home delivery of your purchases if you spent over a dollar and if you spent less, a fee of ten cents would get you the service.

                                                                      

Perhaps a new coal scuttle was needed and so after shopping at Fenton & Smith's she could have went next door to Dunlop's Hardware store. If it was winter she could have warmed herself momentarily by the stove, seen in the foreground of the photo, before having one of the clerks fetch her a new scuttle from the end wall.

                                                       

Then she might cross the street to have a quick look in Murray Brothers department store…….

                                                                 

…..up the street and a pop into Harrison's jewellers because, well, just because……

                                                            

…….a glance across the street to Fraser's wondering if the kids need new shoes or scribblers for school from Grigg's…..

                                                             

…….perhaps a new broom from Gardener's (note the wooden sidewalk)…..

                                                                               

……then down the last block, cross the bridge, go by the post office, turn left at Mackay Street and home.

As the years passed and the Addleman family prospered and became well known and undoubtedly part of the social scene of the town Mrs. Addleman may have indulged in a dress from the Ritz Ladies Wear seen here in the early 1920's.

        

Perhaps Mr. Addleman wanting a suit that was commensurate with his status in the town would have dropped into Watters & Bodell to have one fitted from a bolt of cloth of his choosing.

                                                

And his first car, a new Model T would have been bought from Pinks, Ford dealership

                                                  

                                                                The Kids

If they were born in Pembroke or needed to visit a hospital in the first year or two after Golda arrived this hospital, the Pembroke General, run by the Grey Nuns, would have been their  only option. 

                                

However within a few years the new Cottage Hospital, seen below, was built. Generally regarded as a protestant or non-secular hospital this probably would have been the institution of choice for the Addleman family. This building is now, among other things, the home of the Upper Ottawa Valley Genealogical Group.

                                 

Living where they did there is a good chance that the children would have went to the Centre Ward Public School on Isabella Street. The school, seen below, still stands and is an office building. 

                            

Later, as they moved on to high school they would have only have to walk down  Isabella Street to the next block where the high school was located. 

                                                       

A new high school was finally built in the late 1920's, too late I would imagine for any of the Addleman children to use.

Perhaps, once in the upper grades of elementary school, third or fourth book as they were called in those days, rather than going straight home they might have succumbed to the lure of Hunt's Cafe on the main street. 

                                                             

Here among the cool marble and polished glass they could have sampled the ice cream delights of the local dairies or indulged in one of Mr. Behan's  liquid concoctions.

                                                                     

And for fun. Well for the boys at least, being boys, there were two nearby train stations with regular steam locomotives coming and going, there were lumber mills and manufacturers of wooden products, a boat builder or two, carriage makers and machine shops and all this, if it were then as it was in my childhood, would be open to a couple of young boys who could wander around at will among the machinery and working men and teams of horses so long as you kept out of the way.

 Every year at least one circus came to town and when it unloaded all of its wagons from the train at the nearby C.P.R. station there was always a parade that would have went right past Addleman's store on its way to the fair grounds. What boy of any age can resist a circus and for the concerned parents it was always advertised as "good, clean fun."

In winter there was skating and tobogganing, there was a children's fair held each February and of course there were the movies. Both the Grand Opera House and the Casino Theatre ran Saturday serials to the furious playing of the piano as it kept up with the action of the silent films of the day. 

As they got older the children may have indulged in what their parents had already partaken of, and that was a summer cruise up the Ottawa River in the Steamer Oiseau. 

                           

This was such a big part of the social life of young people in Pembroke that in 1920 the stores on the main street decided to close half days on Wednesdays so their young employees could indulge in an afternoon cruise up the river to Fort William, an old fur trading post of the Hudson's Bay Co., or perhaps beyond. 

                     

All of this, the coming to Pembroke, the beginning of that humble first business and then the other businesses, the becoming part of the business community, the Jewish community and the wider community of the town, to become a widely known and respected member of the business and of that wider community who people to this day remember, all of this all took place in a time of prosperity and in a time that we can scarcely imagine. This was a time when electricity although widely available was not universal throughout the town. This was a time before television, even, until the mid 1920's, before radio was available in Pembroke and this lack of ready made entertainment at home flung people out into the wider community. There were weekly dances, there were movies that changed features three times a week, there was little theatre with local performers and there was vaudeville. The Grand Opera House had, at least monthly, a play or a minstrel programme and revues with, as the ads were always sure to point out, "lots of pretty girls." 

The depression of course changed all this but by that time the Addleman family had pretty well moved to Ottawa where I have no doubt Michael Addleman and his children were able to weather that storm and return to prosperity.

It's been fun delving into the business life and times of Michael and bringing to life, if even a little bit, his Pembroke story to his family. 

There was a mention that Michael Addleman had some connection with the Superior Electric Company of Pembroke. I could never find any connection although being a known and successful businessman he may have been on the board of directors or the fact he dealt in scrap iron and steel meant he could have been the man to whom Superior Electric had a contract with to sell their scrap metal.

 November 10, 2016