Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. 

On Sunday mornings, as on most other mornings, I would walk to the far side of the island to sit on a black sand beach, swim in the warm ocean and eat a packed lunch with a book as a companion. But Sundays were special. That was when the people of the village attended church and as I walked to the beach we'd stroll along together, would exchange small pleasantries as people do, people of such different backgrounds, cultures, experiences.

 I was known in the village, it was a small place of small woven and thatched homes and the occasional one room, wood framed house strung out along the road and nestled beneath spreading mango and palm trees. In the yards bananas grew from tattered plants, chickens scratched about, goats tied to trees looked forlorn, a dog, always asleep, lay in a yard. Pigs were heard.

There was a store of sorts, the front of a home selling soda and crisps and bags of Nobby's Nuts; razor blades, feminine products, tins of cocktail sausages and a couple of t-shirts. There was a small, local hospital and clinic where one day along with the other gawkers of the village I stood outside and watched an operation through an open window. Nothing major but still, the staff were gloved and gowned and masked and worked to a chorus of owws and ahhs and staccato comments in a language not understood by me.

Everyone was dressed in their finest on Sundays, everyone but me who was on his way to a beach, and the torn shirts and worn dresses of the week were given way to carefully tended and pressed blouses and calf length skirts for the ladies and white shirts and good lap-laps for the men. Everyone carried a pair of polished shoes. 

This was a village where people ate what they grew, ate what they raised in their yards until it could be killed, ate what could be caught on a line tossed into the ocean at dusk or dawn. Work was sporadic, money was got by selling a chicken or vegetables at the market or fruit to the yacht club in the town on the other side of the peninsula. Shoes were an expense, an unneeded item except for church and after a lifetime of walking barefoot over ground soft or stoney those feet had spread and soles thickened until there was not a shoe made that would comfortably fit them. Those feet were entities in their own right, as large as a cartoon rendering and as tough as the bottom of the hiking boots I'd bought from an expedition shop selling durable footwear. And yet, there were shoes, shoes carried in the hand of every man, woman and child. They were not laced together and flung casually over the shoulder, rather they were carefully clutched together in one hand, laces tucked neatly into the shoe and swung as we walked. Or they were clutched to the chest as the precious things they were, not risking a chance at scuffs or dirt. 

We'd walk along, the people of the village and I, in silence mostly, and the mothers, like mothers everywhere fretted over the continued cleanliness of their children and glanced back occasionally at the straggling men. Then, at the edge of the village, was the church. It looked as you would expect a small church in a small village to look. It was small, white painted, shiplap wood, it had a steeple but as far as I knew, no bell. It had an upright piano in one front corner that when played was played with the clunky hesitation of an occasional musician searching for the right key. I only ever peeked inside, never stayed for a service as these seemed to go on forever in the tropical heat.

Outside, on one side of the door and beneath the shade of large trees were two benches and as each woman reached the entrance she would sit and carefully wedge one large foot after the other into her gleaming, black pumps, pumps that were made for the slender feet of city girls who never walked barefoot outside of the boudoir. Flesh puffed out of decorated cutouts, overflowed from the top and once on, the look in each lady's eyes was a mixture of pride, triumph and pain. The men too squeezed into their brogues, the opening spread as wide as it would go and the laces loosely tied. The children fretted and squirmed as their still small feet were fit into shoes they were more accustomed to wearing, they being a necessity for school. And then it was time for the service. We'd bid our good mornings and I'd walk another kilometre or so to my isolated piece of paradise and they would enter the church to hear of a paradise to come.

Once in a while I'd happen by as church was getting out and the now wilted and perspiring women would sit and unfetter their feet from the tortures of fashion and decorum with a look of heavenly bliss the minister could have only hoped for from his sermon. We'd smile at one another with the unspoken "thank heavens that's over with" floating between us.

As I said I was known in the village, known as the white man who walked by everyday on his way to a beach up the coast. I would nod,  say hello or good morning or afternoon to those whose eyes I met along the walk but that was the extent of it. Until one day when a little boy started to follow me.

There was not always a happy relationship between the original peoples of the islands and the Europeans who came to dominate those lands. The Europeans earned the riches, set the rules, made and enforced the laws and and generally lorded it over the local people who saw much of their old ways disappear and their fates held in the hands of these foreigners.

Children were rarely disciplined with physical punishment  but when the "fear of God" was needed to set them straight they were more often than not told to be good "or else the white man will come and get you" and so, children were generally afraid of white people.

The walk from Rabaul skirted along the bases of two extinct volcanoes and as it approached the far coast it passed over a small stream where women washed the family clothes in this fresh water. It was at this bridge one day that a little boy popped out of the bushes and at a good distance behind me trailed me into the village. I would occasionally turn my head and talk to him as we walked but he didn't answer and those times our eyes met he had a look akin to terror.

The next day he was there again, perhaps an act of childish bravado or of curiosity but again he tailed me along the road, through the town to the  outskirts of the village. Again, as we walked I would turn my head and talk to him and as we approached the spot where he had left me I stopped, turned and squatted down to his level. I smiled and said hello and asked his name but the fear of the white man overtook him. His eyes got large, he said something, perhaps his name, then glanced from side to side, hesitated and lit out for the undergrowth. 

The next day he was there again and walking only a few paces behind me where we could talk although it was me asking questions and him giving quiet, one word answers. The next day he again was a few paces behind me, we talked as usual but I also sensed a larger presence of many little feet and whispered voices. I stopped and turned. Directly behind me was the little boy and behind him at a further, and still safe distance, was a group of perhaps eight or ten children. The little boy smiled at me, we said hello and I asked him if these were his friends. He nodded. I said hello to the group of horror struck children, asked how they were but there were only nervous titters in reply. I said a few things and turned to resume my walk to the beach, through the village with my band of children trailing me. 

The fascination that I held for the little children was brief as over the coming days  the crowd dwindled to my usual little boy and a changing venue of friends. After a week or so of this I was on my way home one afternoon when one of the local men caught my eye, said hello and then invited me up to his house. This was relatively unheard of as there was a gulf between the races that was seldom overcome. To be invited to visit a home was a special honour and so I climbed the few steps carved out of the red dirt of the rise leading to his house and we shook hands. We sat on a bench beneath a tree and his wife brought us cool drinks from their thatched home. We introduced ourselves, talked for a bit and he told me the people of the village had been noticing me, had talked about me, I was seen as a "gutpella", a good fellow, someone who was kind to children and in this country like most others where children were loved and protected that was a high praise indeed.

We chatted a while, had a second glass of cool juice and after a half an hour or so I continued on my way to the far side of the peninsula and to the hostel where I was staying but from then on I would always stop and exchange pleasantries whenever I passed his home and he was sitting on his bench. 

And the little boy? He still occasionally walked along with me, still a step or two back and still like all children answering my questions with one word replies. I was no longer dangerous and so the excitement of being with me, even at a distance was gone and now, most days, there were better things to do.

My little piece of paradise where I went most days was a black volcanic stretch of beach that was a kilometre or so up the coast. Once beyond the village the road became a path that snaked through the palms and more or less followed the ocean to my left. I would occasionally meet people along this path, a solitary man, always carrying a machete and perhaps herding a small group of pigs to a new feeding spot or carrying a large bunch of bananas or taro tied up in a bundle for sale in the market of Rabaul. Sometimes a woman, undoubtedly younger than the years that showed on her face, carrying a trussed chicken and toting a baby, laying in the woven string bag known as a billum that was strung across her forehead and hung down her back, would pass me with a curt nod and a look of suspicion, another toddler clinging to her as they passed the feared waitman (white man). It was a path of magic to a young man raised in the coniferous wilds of the Canadian shield and the palms trees leaning out over the ocean, the alternating heat of the sun and the coolness of the dense tropical shade and the other proliferation of exotic flora gave rise to a wonderment in me. I was awe struck by the place. I had never been to a place more untouched by the modern world and its reliance on money and the status of things. It had a rhythm that, while no doubt altered by the twentieth century, still had its roots in a time of long ago and a way of life that still today was tentatively clinging to that past. 

Like so many places on the island my beach still had remnants of the Japanese occupation during the second world war. Two tilting, concrete pill boxes were the dominant feature on the broad stretch of sand and carved into the hill behind the beach was a cave that wound its way into the hillside for a good many meters. It was hard to reconcile the brutalities of that war with the tranquility of the place. What possible strategic reason could there be to occupy this island, to level the degree of brutality the Japanese showed to these people? Yet throughout the island there were rusting remembrances of that long ago war when the world came to New Britain with all the cruelty of demons bent on havoc and destruction. This lonely beach at the tip of one island in the Bismarck Archipelago, so remote and unnoticed by the world most people couldn't find it on a map, had been the scene of conquest and domination. Now on a sunny afternoon as I sat beneath a palm and watched the azure sea a small group of teenage girls appeared down the beach, yelled hello and waved, giggled and fell laughing into each others arms as they flirted with this stranger before disappearing into the forest leaving me alone with the incoming tide.

One dayI got a ride in the back of a small pick-up heading down the coast where it would drop me at the scene of another Japanese reminder of the long ago war. In the middle of nowhere the truck stopped, I got out and the driver pointed to a trail heading off into the undergrowth. A hundred yards or so later I came to another cave, this one too dug out of a hillside but bigger, big enough to hold a large boat. There was a full sized landing craft inside, set on a rail cart and poised to be pulled out, down through the jungle to the sea, a kilometre or two away, where it would have engaged the allied forces landing on the nearby beaches. But it had never been used and now for a small price a woman with the lack of a nose, it having been lost to yaws, allowed you in to walk around this piece of history. There was an elevated walkway dug into the earth and the boat now shared quarters with hundreds of bats that squeaked and fluttered around my head and as I gingerly trod through layers of bat guano alive with maggots. As I made my way around the perimeter my imagination ran riot at the effort it must have taken to construct and then have housed in that cave, this steel craft, all done in the draining tropical heat, amid privations  and the spectre of death.

I lived in a student hostel run by a church. I had a room with a bed, a desk, a chair and a brilliant over head florescent light. I don't know how I came to be staying here, that memory has gone but stay there I did in my second floor room that looked out over the grounds of the church. They served breakfast and probably an evening meal because I have no memory of ever eating any where else other than the hostel or from food sellers selling "bakes" and from The Appleteaser. The Appleteaser, my one bit of necessary decadence in what was an almost lethally, healthy life.

  At this church run residence for students and the odd wandering Canadian I don't remember ever talking to anyone there but I do remember sitting alone at the breakfast table each morning with my glass of freshly squeezed fruit juice and staring down at my bowl of fresh fruit all nicely peeled and diced in a plethora of tropical colours. There was mango, orange, paw-paw, pineapple and things unidentified but all good and wholesome, things that today I would pay a small fortune to have placed in front of me. But then, in those days i had eaten my fill of fresh fruit. I daily had pineapple sellers sell me sweet pineapple on a stick. I had spent more afternoons with chin and fingers sticky from the juice of ripe mangos of all types and sizes than I cared to repeat. I had sampled every bit of unknown exotica in the Pacific fruit world and it was all good. But at breakfast what I wanted, no, needed, was something sweet and something stimulating. I needed toast and jam and a cup of coffee or a pastry dripping with sweet icing and a coffee or a doughy cinnamon bun and a coffee. What I had was fruit. A few days of this and i was feeling ill. All this healthful living was wearing me down and I was listless and lethargic. I sat by the ocean and stared out to sea, too healthy to move, a stick of fresh pineapple hanging uneaten, limp in my hand. 

Then, one morning I wandered, depressed and tired at eight a.m., over to the yacht club to look at the boats. And there it was, the Appleteaser. It was a small coffee shop with a counter and a small table or two and was straight out of downtown (insert name of your favourite city here), air-conditioned and redolent of coffee and sweet dough. I sat at the counter, swivelled on my stool and ordered a coffee and the morning specialty, a warm, doughy, cinnamon roll with bits of apple in it. I probably had two. Instantly I felt better and the day now shone before me waiting to be embraced and explored. Just another cup of joe and I'd be off.

Then there were the bake ladies. Bakes are sold in the same basic form throughout the tropics, a wad of dough deep fried with a little something in it. There are sweet bakes with sugared dough and a few raisins  or some other bit of fruit and there are unsweetened bakes usually with a bit of fish mixed in with the dough. I discovered a bake lady on a side street in Port Moresby and ever since had been using these greasy lumps of fried dough as a general antidote to the otherwise destructively, healthy influences all around me. Still, they weren't enough to take the place of that first morning cup of coffee and a dedicated morning pastry. Now with the two of these I was ready to face the day and keep going until dusk.

One morning, filled with coffee and pastry, I was gazing out over the ocean towards a low volcano, smoking in the distance, and wondering how I could get to it when a couple of young fellows about my age happened by. They stopped and chatted and one of the things we talked about was the volcano and if visiting it was possible. A half hour later I was in an outrigger canoe being paddled by these two young men and heading across a stretch of open ocean. We landed on a rock strewn rise and climbed up an old lava flow to the sulphur crusted rim of the volcano and looked down into a caldera perhaps twenty feet or so deep with smoke coming out of the walls all around its perimeter. At the bottom was a pool of rust coloured water and tied to a large boulder and hanging down to the floor of the volcano was a massive ships rope, knotted every three feet or so.

This, I was told, was how you got in and with luck, out of this smouldering pit. The air was sulphurous and hot and after a moments hesitation I thought "Ah well. In for a penny, in for a pound", grabbed the rope and over the edge I went. The walls were hot to the touch and at each vent mounds of bight yellow sulphur had accumulated which crumbled to the touch. At the bottom the pool of water was close to boiling. I walked around, took a picture or two, saw what there was to see and then with much effort climbed the rope to the rim. The three of us walked around for a while on this desolate landscape and for a souvenir I took a lump of sulphur with me. This lump travelled with me for the rest of my trip and lasted a good few more years until bit by bit it got smaller and smaller until one day it just disappeared.

That evening I noticed the soles of my boots had cuts in them from the sharp edges of the rocks I had walked across that day and yet the two young men had walked barefoot over the same ground, had leapt from rock to rock with never a wince or trepidation as to where to put their feet. Truly testament to how tough the soles of your feet can get when used to the daily rigours of going without shoes.

Almost exactly twenty years later this smouldering volcano erupted sending a huge cloud of ash into the air, burying Rabaul and destroying the town. 

I left Rabaul and the island of New Britain one morning, flew out over the Solomon Sea, over Bougainville Island, Choiseul Island to the island of Guadalcanal and the town of Honiara. Some time later in a small single engine aircraft with a few seats I landed on a grass airstrip on an island who's name I have forgotten. Landed as men, naked except for small loin cloths leaned against long spears and watched us taxi to a halt.

But there was never an island in the South Pacific that enthralled me like New Britain. Perhaps because it was my first island of that fabled part of the world but I like to think that it was a special place, apart from all others. It is surely that in my heart.

Eulogies

Charlie

In Fond Memory of Charley Kilby

Before West Side Story and Grease turned them into soft hearted singers and dancers, before the Fonz turned them into loveable characters there were the toughs of the fifties. They were the post war rebels that ganged up, carried switchblades and brass knuckles, fought with baseball bats and bicycle chains and had wars on the streets of the cities. They were the Rebels Without a Cause and the delinquents in High School Confidential. James Dean and Marlon Brando portrayed them. Jerry Lee Lewis sang their songs.

Even Pembroke had its own rebel, Charley Kilby. He was a fixture on the downtown streets when I was growing up. Always in “uniform”, a pair of red tab, riveted Levi's rolled up at the cuffs and as tight as jeans got in those days, a white tee with a pack of smokes rolled up in a sleeve (and one fag bleeding smoke, stuck in the corner of his mouth), a black leather jacket with the collar turned up when the weather got cool and a duck tail oiled back into perfection with a pompadour on top. He was great.

 He never walked, he strolled, he sauntered swaying to his own beat at a casual pace that said “don't mess with me”. Mess probably isn't the word he would have used though. Us kids both feared and loved him. We'd often see him in the pool hall up opposite the O'brien Theatre, sometimes playing a game, sometimes just slouched against a wall watching the goings on. We of course all thought he was involved in some underworld adventure, had a moll somewhere waiting for him and was avoiding the cops. Probably he was just passing time. I have to say that for someone who looked like he'd give you the taste of a shiv if you wronged him he was good with us pests. We'd summon up the courage to go say hi, he'd grunt a reply and we'd stroll along with him past the Beamish store with the penny weigh scale and the nickel a ride mechanical horse outside, past Bailey's Sporting Goods with the giant pike hanging outside and on for a few more stores until he got tired of us and told us to scram. True to character he was pretty well monosyllabic when we did have a conversation. Questions were answered with yeah's or grunts or just a look that told you back off and you did. He wasn't a big or tall man but he had presence and was one of the characters that populated the streets of Pembroke in those perhaps not quite so innocent days.

I don't know what ever happened to Charley. Rumour was for a while he was doing serious time but nobody really knew for sure. If he's alive I hope he's enjoying his old age. If he's passed on I hope he's sitting on a lunch counter stool in that great 50's in the sky; the clacking of ivory balls in the background, Duane Eddy playing Rebel Rouser on the juke box, a smoke near at hand and a chick that looks like Mamie Van Doren coming in through the doors to meet him.

Clayton

 Television was at that in between stage back then. Not quite just a novelty, not quite totally ubiquitous. But owner or not, everyone knew and loved Lucy. My family had yet to succumb to TV, or was still saving, but either way we too loved Lucy and so once a week we'd trundle next door and spend a half hour with the neighbours watching Lucy and the gang get into and out of predicaments. 

The neighbours were the Petigrews and the two families, ours small, theirs large, would somehow cram into the darkened living room of a wartime house and together watch I Love Lucy. As wonderful as experiencing this new media was there was something even more wonderful about going to the Petigrews. That was Mr. Petigrew's ash tray. It was one of those shiny pedestal affairs but more than that, it plugged into the wall and hovering atop of it was a sleek, chrome airliner. In the darkened room, it's windows all lit up, I could almost hear the drone of the engines as it took well dressed adventurers to exotic destinations. Some times I'd be lucky enough to sit in the chair that was next to this marvel and my attention would be torn between the madcap antics of Lucy and the lure of that airplane and my imagination.

Below the airplane was a platform holding three round containers. One was the ashtray receptacle. You could rest your du maurier or Export A on this and when the ash piled up you'd press a plunger and the offending bits would be lowered and spun out of sight. Could anything ever be more sophisticated than that. 

I coveted Mr. Petigrew's ashtray and about twenty years later I thought of him and it and it's promise of adventure and exotica as I sat, sipping a drink at the Long Bar in Raffles Hotel in Singapore. The dreams of a boy sitting next to an ashtray in a darkened room had been more than fulfilled and I raised my glass and thought “Here's to you Clayton” as a Casablanca fan stirred the humid air overhead.

Kevin

Remembering a Childhood Friend, Kevin Donahue, 1949-2012

As kids, Kevin and I would often go to the Saturday matinee at the O'Brien Theatre. Then on the way home, if we had any money left we'd drop into the lunch counter in the Beamish store or perhaps go farther up the street to the lunch counter at O. Zanders Tobacco Shop and there, spend what we had left on treats. At either one of these we'd linger over our cokes and talk about whatever it is boys talk about, probably going over the highlights of the movie, how a bad guy got shot and fell off the roof  into the horse trough and how great it was that there was no kissin' until the end.

 One afternoon all we had left, after the movie and popcorn and drinks, was a dime between us, enough for one coke at the Beamish lunch counter. So in we went, sat on the red leatherette stools and drank our shared drink. As we sat there sipping the glass of coke we started to read the lunch menu posted above the grill. 

“If I had ten cents I'd get another coke.”

“If I had fifteen cents I'd get a plate of chips.”

“If I had a quarter I'd get ....” and on it went, each of us spending our imaginary money on would be food. 

“If I had sixty five cents I'd get the daily special.” We must have looked quite the pair, a couple of curly haired boys, probably with dirt on us from reliving the cowboy adventures of the movie in the back alleys of down town Pembroke or down around the boat houses by where the ferry docked and the winos hung out. 

As we were finishing, a couple of elderly women who had been sitting near by got up to leave and as they passed us they gave us a quarter each, enough for a coke and a plate of chips and told us to enjoy ourselves. Hallelujah, we'd struck gold, and latched onto a pretty neat scheme too.

After we got home we recounted to our mothers what had occurred and both of were told that it was a very kind thing the two women had done but we were never to do that again, ever...understand. We understood and that was our first and last go at larceny.

   One other time after another matinee we again romped through the back alleys of the town playing cowboys and Indians. Down town Pembroke was a boys delight in those days. There were old boat houses and train stations, a mill by the Muskrat River, stores with toy departments to explore, roofs to climb on to and then get shot off of and when all that was finished we could play under the wooden platform at the old CNR train station at the corner of Pembroke and Mackay Streets. There, with any luck we could find some change someone had dropped. Then it was onwards home. First however we had to swing on the gates of the fences along Mackay Street, zip over to Montaigne's and peek over the fence to see if we could see anyone in the pool and then rest for a bit on a bench in that little park on Mackay and Herbert Streets (the bench, by the way, is still there). 

This particular afternoon we must have lost all track of time because as we sat on the bench a car pulled up and a man yelled out the window, “You boys had better get home, the police are looking for you.”  Seems our mothers had reported us missing since we went to the show at noon and here it was after supper and we still out and about. So home we trotted where trouble was waiting for us but from then on we always made it home on time.

Sleeping at the Sailors Home

    I had spent the summer in Europe, travelling, sight seeing and by some fluke, working for some weeks in the Bavarian Alps. But that’s another story. 

    Now I had taken the overnight ferry from somewhere on the channel coast, my memory fails me here as to the port of embarkation, and had landed in the morning at Lands End in the south of England. It was early autumn and the sky was very un-English, being sunny and bright but that was more than okay. I was about to resume hitch hiking around this part of the country for a couple of weeks until it was time to leave. In early summer I had booked a flight to Singapore and I had time to kill until it came due. So I set out walking away from the ferry terminal and towards the main roadway. Here again the exact details of the day fail me. I remember getting a ride with a man in a small car and us driving through narrow roads and picturesque villages. I also remember him as having the most, foul breath of anyone I had ever met. It was a small car and he was an inveterate talker of the type that has to turn to face you with each utterance. His face, scant inches from mine would go on about the history or the nature of the region while I felt the stench of a particularly bad foundry with each sentence. He was, as I recall, a nice and courteous man and was kind to give a lift to a stranger with a large backpack but still, it is his breath that I remember and the small car that was filled with it. 

    It was perhaps the next day or it may have been later that one that I got a ride with a young man of about my own age. He was a glazier and was on his way home from doing a bit of work away from the town he was based in. He had a wife of a few months and a row house and this job. We chatted about whatever it is that young men chat about and, as we were going through the region where Stonehenge is located he detoured so I could get out to see the monument. We spent perhaps an hour there that is only in my mind as the camera I had was in my pack and I wasn’t about to go looking for it. We must have hit it off as in my old address book I still have his name, Jim Yates of number 2 Shoreham Court, The Close, Shoreham By Sea, Sussex. I remember nothing more about him other than he gave me a lift, we saw Stonehenge and I was to write him but never did. These two were the first in a series of people that would show to me the kindness of the human heart in the treatment of a stranger passing through.

    The ride that led to the title of this piece happened on an early afternoon some time around the events of the previous two rides. I honestly can’t say which rides came first but on this day I was walking along a four-lane street or roadway on the outskirts of a town. I was at the base of a small hill walking up it, turning to face the traffic with my thumb out whenever I would hear a car approaching. I turned at the sound of another car only to see a medium size bus coming towards me. I waved at the driver and as he passed hands and arms of young women waved from the windows. I waved and laughed, as I knew that this was a no-hoper. I resumed my walk up the hill and was surprised to see the bus, which had crested the hill and gone out of sight, now backing up over the same hill and stopping when it got to me. The door opened and I was invited in. It was filled with the members of a Welsh girls school and a couple of teachers who were on their way back home after competing in a choral concert. I sat on a jump seat in the well of the entrance near the door and introduced myself and in turn was introduced to the choir of the school located somewhere along the English/Welsh boarder country. We chatted and exchanged histories and stories and for a while the girls sang Welsh songs as we drove along through the countryside. The whole afternoon was one of an almost surreal experience for me. It was the stuff of impossible to believe stories. A mid twenties young man being picked up by a bus load of young women and then being serenaded by old folk songs sung in an unfathomable language as we drove through rolling green hills. For an hour or two or perhaps more we motored along, going father north and inland towards some small town where the girls and their chaperones lived at a boarding school. I knew that it was a boarding school and a religious school at that when the girls started to pester the adults to let me accompany them so I could stay there overnight. It was momentarily considered and then the spectre of the chief nun raised its head and the idea was quickly vetoed. Of course no one was more disappointed than I.

    Since a night at the school was out I decided to head for Swansea in Wales and so at the turn off to that city the bus pulled over and I said my goodbyes to the girls and watched them drive around a bend as they continued their trip home. It was also time for me to get on with the rest of this days journey as it was getting late in the afternoon and the skies were turning grey. A road sign said SWANSEA 11Km and so I resumed walking and hitch hiking. Not long after I began to walk the rain began in earnest and since a wet hitch hiker has all the appeal of a wet dog when it comes to the thought of one getting into your nice car, the hopes of my getting a ride were rapidly diminishing. Few cars passed me and none of those stopped so I walked the entire distance. 

    It was dark when I got into the city and I hadn’t a clue as to where I was or what the availability of cheap accommodations were. I stopped a man on the street to ask if he knew of any hostels or cheap B & B’s. He didn’t know of anything in the area but he stopped someone else to ask them, they asked another passer by and soon there was a small crowd of men and boys gathered around me. None of this collective brain trust could come up with any ideas of anything that suited my needs. Then someone suggested that I go to the local barbershop. The barbers apparently were a font of local knowledge and if there were any rooms to be had they would know of them. So a young boy was dispatched to take and show me the way and off we went. 

    The part of the city I had stumbled into was one of the poorer areas and so changes had been slow to take place here. The streets were narrow and winding and in general had the feeling of olde Britain, a poor and down at the heels olde Britain but still, charming to a lad from the colonies. The barbershop was a small affair from the outside, one large window with the name on it, a striped pole by the entrance and a bell that rang as the opening door hit it. I opened the door, the bell tinkled and I stepped back in time. 

    It was a small, square room, bare except for a row of seats along one wall and two antique barber chairs in the centre. An elderly client occupied each of these chairs and an even older barber tended each of these. The chairs were not the chairs that I remember from my youth that were old and the worse for wear when I was young. There were no high backs with papered headrests for when you were reclined and lathered in preparation for the razor. There were no carved hand pumps on the sides of the chairs to raise or foot pedals to lower them and they seemed to be fixed in place. There’d be no spinning around when finished, to look at the results in a mirror. In fact I don’t remember a mirror in the place although there must have been one on a wall somewhere. The chairs were clad in the prerequisite red leather and had the ornate foot rests you would expect but the backs only reached as high as mid-spine. Each customer sat bolt upright and stared at the facing wall where a large open fireplace housed a pile of grey ash, above which hung a blackened teakettle, suspended on a swinging arm. Poor lighting completed the scene and only accentuated the greyness of the place.

   The barber farthest from me stopped his work and I began to introduce myself and to explain what I wanted. I was told to speak up, as both he and his partner were hard of hearing. This turned out to be a bit of an understatement. I stepped closer and spoke up. Still I was not heard and after several attempts to make myself understood I ended up screaming into the poor mans ear. This seemed to work. I asked if they knew of a place in the area where I could get a cheap bed for the night. He turned to his partner who was still cutting hair and the two of them began a high decibel conversation. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. Eventually they seemed to agree on a place that might be suitable and the first man now proceeded to tell me what they had decided upon as though I hadn’t been able to hear them. People on the opposite side of the street could have heard them. He motioned me close and then pulling me down to him he began to yell at top volume in my ear, working I suppose, on the premise that if he couldn’t hear neither could anyone else. This done and my hearing now slightly impaired the two of them revised the instructions, again at window rattling volumes. Then again I was drawn close for the new instructions to be given and my future hearing to be yet again compromised. Through all this the two customers sat motionless, never changing their poses or expressions as the walls reverberated with the goings on. I thanked the two old men, took one last look around the shop and retreated through the door back into the damp, night air and the narrow streets. 

    The place I was looking for was a few blocks from the barbershop but was not difficult to find and within a short time I was standing in front of a two story, long, rectangular building that sat directly on the sidewalk. Two steps leading to the front door jutted into the path and these I mounted and opened the door of the Sailors Home, or as it had been called by the barber, the Home For Homeless Sailors. I entered a room, painted institutional green if I recall and which seemed to be the lounge/registration area. There was a desk in one corner, which I suppose was where you signed in and a number of chairs of varying degrees of comfort centred around a television. From these chairs faces turned to look at and a man stood to greet me. I explained to him that I was looking for a room for a night or two and this place had been recommended by the barbers. When I mentioned the barbers the mood, which had been cautiously curious now became friendly and welcoming. The two old boys seemed to be highly regarded by the residents of the home and the mere fact that they had suggested it to me and had given me instructions on how to get there seemed to be all the recommendation that I needed. I was welcomed in and was introduced to a couple of the men around the TV. I was then taken upstairs to the sleeping area and shown where I could put my stuff and which bed I could have. After stowing my gear I excused myself for a while and went out to get a bite to eat at the neighbourhood greasy spoon. When I later returned to the home the same men were in the same chairs watching the same black and white TV. I was again greeted with enthusiasm and as we stood talking watches were checked and it was noted that the pubs had now opened from the dinnertime closing hour. I had been introduced to one old gentleman when I first arrived and he now insisted that I join them for a drink at the local. I tried to beg off pleading poverty and a lack of fondness for English beer but there was no dissuading them so we set out for the pub, which it turned out, was only a few doors up the street. 

   In the nineteen eighties there was an advertisement for a brand of breaded fish sticks called Highliner and the spokesperson for this brand was a character actor who went by the name of Captain Highliner. In later years this character was slimmed down and trimmed up in response to a heightened awareness of calories and cholesterol but in the original he was a large, full bearded man made even larger by wearing a bulky, cable knit sweater. He had white hair and beard, high cheekbones and I think, smoked a pipe. This was, to a tee, the gentleman at the home. He was perhaps a bit more weathered than his TV counterpart and the beard was stained in places by the smoke from his pipe but he was the archetypical old sailor that is housed in our minds. There is a painting by one of the Weyths of a sailor on a pier that is this mythical old salt. My new found friend and potential drinking buddy could have posed for that picture, right down to the appropriate sweater.

     So with me in tow the trio of men from the home set off up the street to the local pub. There is another image that most of us carry with us of the cosy British drinking establishment, all aged wood and stained glass, the cheery publican and his wife serving drinks and dispensing chit chat to the regulars, all on a first name basis. I’ve been in such places, chatted with the bar keeps and waitresses and once or twice in a burst of camaraderie the place broke into song with most joining in. This was not one of those places. This had more in common with the “beer parlours” of protestant Ontario that were the “men’s rooms” of my youth. This was a utilitarian drinking room, a large rectangular hall, brightly lit by fluorescent tubes, it’s dingy walls housing a multitude of small Formica tables and hard, uncomfortable chairs. It seemed huge and cheerless and just after opening was already packed with men being served pints of beer by harried waiters. 

    We found a table, sat down and within moments had mugs of warm, dark beer plunked down in front of us. This was to be my first taste of beer drunk as it has been drunk in England from the earliest years, at cellar temperature, which would be warm, dark and thick to my taste buds. I sipped at it. The others quaffed and chided me for not keeping up. I made up excuses, pleaded lack of drinking expertise, told them I was used to colder, lighter beer, used the no money ploy but all to no avail. I was one of them and was expected to match them pint for pint in a contest that was sure to have me begging for mercy. Still sipping my half finished beer another round was ordered and a fresh pint was put before me. I struggled to finish the first pint, as they were finishing the second one and a third beer was placed in front of me. I told them I couldn’t afford this but was told that my money was no good, the evening was on them. I drank and listened to the stories and the gossip, the tales of being at sea on trawlers and freighters and the tales of the road told by one of the men who was a long haul truck driver now on meagre times. 

    At some point in the evening a fight broke out between two men in the centre of the hall and the waiters converged on them. There was a moment’s stand off and then the two men left by the front door. The normal hubbub of the place resumed and was scarcely broken some time later when the two men re-entered the room and strode to the table, which still held their drinks. One mans shirt was torn and both had blood on them, they were dishevelled and sweating but it seemed that what ever had caused the fight had been resolved. They stood at the table drinking the remainders of their pints then both turned and went back out the door, presumably to resume the fight. Later on they both returned to the table and sat together, blood stained and worse for wear but whatever was bothering them now out their systems. My friends had continued to order drink after drink but by now they had come to the realization that I was a lost cause as a serious drinker. With only the occasional admonishment to “drink up” I was left to my own pace, which had now crawled to a halt. At some point in the evening I begged off and left them to themselves. There were still a couple of hours until closing and I was spent. I made my way back to the home and went straight to my bed. At one point during the night I woke to use the bathroom and saw the trucker sprawled on a cot near mine. Where the rest were I didn’t know or particularly care, I was still woozy from the drink and the room spun as I made my way from the toilet to the bed where I once again passed out.

    I was wakened in the morning by my sailor friend calling me for breakfast. Light that was much too bright streamed in through the uncurtained widows that faced the street. I felt unwell, really unwell and it was only with an effort that I was able to rise and descend the stairs to the dining room. I could have used a couple of strong cups of coffee but it was weak tea that was served. Not being a tea drinker I managed to choke some down. I knew that I needed something on my stomach, if for no other reason than to have something to throw up; a case of the dry heaves had accompanied my morning ablutions. I was shaky but stable and only a little green when the breakfast meal was brought in and laid before me. My guts tightened and I fought the urge to leave immediately. The men had, out of kindness for me made a substantial breakfast of bacon and eggs and that English favourite, fried tomato. The two eggs stared up at me like great jaundiced eyes floating in a liquid slime of half cooked egg white. Greasy, fatty bacon, again barely cooked, sat beside the shrivelled slice of tomato. They stood and beamed, telling me that they felt I probably needed something to settle my stomach, all of them proud as punch at their effort on behalf of this pitiful Canadian lad. I thanked them and began to eat, each forkful was an effort to choke down but I managed to do it with liberal helpings of dried toast to sop it all up. So far so good but the day had just begun.

    I had envisioned a day of recovering in bed until noon or so and then seeing a bit of the town, taking the afternoon to recover from the abuse of the night before. The men had different ideas. I was told to hurry up and get cleaned up as it was getting on ten o’clock and the pub was soon opening. Again I tried to beg off but it was not to be and so I found myself, hung over and unwell standing in a line up of the same men from the night before waiting for the pub to open its doors. The morning sun, the bad food and the effort of staying upright suddenly caught up with me and I hurried back to the home just in time to reach the toilet and then flop on the bed for a much needed lay down. I spent the day then much as I had planned. That evening the men seemed to realize that I had years of training to go before I could ever hope to reach their feats of intake and so I was let off the hook from being one of the boys. For the next couple of days I came and went as I pleased and would join them for a beer or two in the evening. The expectation that I was a junior version of them was gone and we enjoyed each others company knowing that we were not just from different places but also from different times as well. I eventually moved on to other places and at least one other memorable morning meal but over the years I often thought of the men and in particular the old sailor. He was a kind, old man who had lived a rough life around and on the sea but whatever he had been, whatever led to his living in a home for indigent sailors he liked me and I liked him and was more than appreciative of the help and kindness that he gave. 

Eddies - A letter written to a man asking if I had photos of the old Windsor Hotel, Pembroke, or of the barber shop of that establishment.

  I don't have any photos of either the old Windsor Hotel in Pembroke or of  Eddies barbershop but I do have memories of both. As a shy young boy in the fifties Eddies was my window, my introduction to the world of men. I would go up the steps of that old hotel, walk past the reception desk and lobby where invariably sat a guest reading a paper, past the smoke shop and down the hall to the barbershop where I would enter in to one of the mysteries and delights of the adult world. 

   Here was Eddy as I remember him. A large man standing by his chair, always with a customer having  his hair cut and one or two others waiting their turn. As often as not there was one old man sitting, not wanting service, just there to pass the time of day by chatting with Eddie or with the other customers. It was not unusual in those days to have one of the waiting men to pass his turn in the chair so he could sit a while longer and talk with Eddy or the other lads of a certain age before heading home to women and chores and things to be done. Or perhaps postponing going home to a lonely room which may have been just up the stairs as the Windsor rented inexpensive rooms by the month.    

  This, to me was all a bit foreboding but enticing. I lived a “Leave It To Beaver” sort of life then, of middle class normality, of sit down suppers at the dinner table, of church on Sunday and a dog waiting at home for my return from school. A polite world where bad things never happened. 

Just entering into the hotel was, in my mind, stepping away from that world. Eddy's barbershop had the hint of cigar smoke mixed with the smells of talc and spicy aftershave that'd be splashed on his hands and rubbed on the face and neck of a freshly barbered customer. There were chairs covered in red leatherette and spittoons and a large centre table with magazines to read while you waited. Oh those magazines. These were things never seen in my home or the homes of anyone I ever knew. True Detective, True Crime, Argosy and all that ilk with lurid covers of  crime scene photos or staged scenes, invariably of a woman with the back  of one hand stifling a scream while the other fends off a man with a five o'clock shadow and lust in his heart. And the newspapers, no New York Times here. Here were more crime stories, boxing and wrestling horrors of bloodied faces and mangled bodies all printed on yellow or pink newsprint. 

There were posters on the wall of past teams for the Maple Leafs or Montreal Canadians where the players, now of legend, would be posed with the Stanley Cup. 

The ads too, for Clubman Talc and aftershave, Wildroot Hair tonic, Brylcreem – a little dab'll do ya! - and although I don't recall I hope there was at least one calendar with a picture of a pretty girl demurely displaying more of her charms than my mother would have approved.

Eddy's was the only place I have ever seen, outside of the movies, a man with his face wrapped in a hot towel, awaiting a shave. And then the preparation for that shave as the straight razor was honed to a gleam on a long leather strop, as lather was whipped up in a mug and generously applied to the face and neck of the waiting man and then the first swipe as that thin blade scraped away lather and whiskers and was wiped clean on a fresh towel draped over an arm.

I liked going to Eddy's because even though I was a boy he was never condescending, never talked to you as other than man to man. Leaving there I always felt I was one of the boys in a club I didn't understand all the rules for yet but bit by bit I was learning.

 There are three barbershops of note in my life. A small place on a back street of Swansea, Wales where Dickens would have felt at home, a chair outside on a cobbled lane in Xilitla, Mexico and Eddy's.

They say we live on until all memory of us has faded. Well, Eddie, long past on and the old Windsor Hotel, long since burnt to the ground still exist, still are there, if only in my memory.

Buying a Beer In Kuala Lumpur

    At the end of most days I enjoyed the pleasure of a cold beer. The heat and humidity of the day would fade and I would rest, away from the dust of the street and the rigours of an idle life. Here in the quiet of a local restaurant, I could sit and watch life around me unfolding as it did, day in and day out, whether I was there or not. I took this time out from sight seeing or exploring the city or countryside and found some cool, dark place to sit and enjoy one or two cold drinks. Sometimes, when I was in a city of some size I would change my usual clothes, don something that was as close to respectable as I could muster and would visit some up-scale hotel. There, amid the air conditioning, the potted plants and the piped in music I would sit and watch the tourists coming and going in their crisp, clean clothes. I could only imagine the lives of the men, all shaved and cologned and the women perfumed, not a hair out of place and wonder what it was like to have such money to afford this existence. I knew that I could watch it but that I would never live it. I lived in hostels and cheap hotels that had toilets down the hall. I washed my clothes in the sink at night and ate from food stalls, flirting with dysentery with each bite. A cold sore from a dirty glass was the worst I ever had to bear. I count myself lucky. But here in the lap of luxury I could only be amazed as I was treated with deference by waiters dressed in stylized local costumes who would bow at the waist, take my order and accept my money. They were aware of my charade. I looked the life I led even when dressed to try and disguise it. After an hour of this I would have had enough and would head back out to the heat and the dusty streets that were my part of the city.

   It was nice, upon occasion, to be treated as if I belonged and not as if I were sent as some cosmic test upon the owner or waiter of some back street food stall. At these places, where I more often than not would go in the late afternoon to quaff a cold one I seemed to be a phenomenon encountered for the first time. I was a white person, a white person who sat at a table and appeared to want something. Deference was not on the mind of those who were about to assume some sort of responsibility for my being there. This scene played out all over South East Asia and was played out with little variation regardless of the country or the number of white tourists in the vicinity. So long as I chose a place to have a drink that was a couple of blocks away from the main tourist area it ran true to form, as though there had been a script handed out for just such an occasion. 

    There were two main brands of beer that I remember, Tiger and Anchor and they came in two different size bottles, large and small. Every place had at least these two different brands and had the two different sizes. I, for whatever reason happened to favour Anchor brand beer and for economy of time if not cash would order the large size. The script was, as I said, always the same. The location and ambience of the place were the only variables but these didn’t matter. 

    I would see a place on my route back to the hostel/cheap hotel and decide on a beer. I’d walk in through the open door to the gloom of a small room lit only with the light from the window and a florescent tube at the rear of the establishment where a small group of men were engaged in a conversation. All but me were oriental, all but me spoke Chinese. I chose a table by the window so I could watch the street and waited. The conversation, which had been in full swing when I entered, now stopped and the only sounds were those from the street and the hum of the cooler full of beer. If I had looked I would have seen all heads turned, all eyes on me and then one short, staccato burst of Chinese would be spoken. There would be a reply or two and again silence. More words and then in the silence I would hear the slap, slap of a pair of thongs coming my way. A slight, middle aged Chinese man would appear wearing the national, cheap eatery uniform, a white undershirt called a singlet, a baggy pair of pants too short by correct sartorial standards, the thongs and a cigarette held in the lips and bleeding smoke into one eye. And the play would begin….

“What you want?” This was as much an accusation as a question as though I were there to cause some sort of, as yet undiscovered mischief.

“I’d like a beer please, a large Anchor beer.” I held my hands up indicating the size of a large bottle while I carefully enunciated ‘beer’, aware of the language differences.

“You want beer?” It was again more of an accusation than a question. There was a murmur from the back of the room and then once more, silence.

“Yes please, an Anchor beer,” my hands rose, “a large Anchor beer.” and now were held between us, shaking back and forth slightly to indicate the size of the bottle. 

“What kind of beer you want?” Now the tone changed slightly from pure accusation to part challenge as though if I ordered the wrong type of beer he’d have caught me dead to rights in some sort of conspiracy.

“I’d like an Anchor beer please, a large Anchor beer.” I glanced at the cooler. 

“You want Anchor beer?” His tone was now close to hostile as though the whole plot, the whole reason for my being there, was about to be revealed.

“Yes, a large Anchor beer.” My one hand held at the approximate height above the table my other indicating a drinking motion. 

“What size Anchor beer you want? You want large Anchor beer or you want small Anchor beer?” 

I thought I’d better get this right as it would be my last chance to get what I was after. One wrong word and I’d end up with nothing or a small coke. “I’d like a large beer, a large Anchor beer please.” My hands once more were held to indicate a large bottle. The group at the back were so engrossed in the play that a cigarette burnt down to the fingers of one man and a flurry of words and activity suddenly erupted. My waiter turned and for a moment I thought that I was about to be out of luck at this place but he once again resumed the script.

“You want large beer?” He forgot to say the brand. Did this mean that we’d have to begin the whole thing over again? 

“Yes please, a large Anchor beer.” This was the pivotal moment, it all was about to happen or was going to fall apart and I’d be told that there was no beer even as the cooler hummed away in the distance. 

“Large Anchor beer?” For the first time I thought I might be winning, it was a statement that verged on being a question. 

“Yes.” It was all in his hands now. Would I drink or move on, parched, to the next place I could find? He looked at me as though trying to decide what to do or if he had heard me correctly and then he turned and walked away.

    The conversation at the back of the room once again began in earnest. My waiter spoke with the group, all looked at me, a man spoke and gestured, I smiled. Then he walked to the cooler and took out a bottle of the beer I had been asking for. A glass was found, one of those small, firm glasses usually seen in the bathrooms of hotels and both would be brought to my table and laid before me. An opener was produced and the bottle uncapped. I tilted the bottle, already laden with dew in the humidity of the afternoon and poured a glass full as the waiter retreated and for the moment I could be ignored if not forgotten. 

    In the street outside nothing of consequence took place other than the daily routine of a world that was fascinating for me because of the unfathomable secrets that it held. If I lived there for the rest of my that life I felt I’d die an old man still trying to figure out the mysteries of the place. 

    Some times as the sun would begin to set and as my drink was about to finish I would hear the sounds of the kitchen. Pots and pans would be set heavily down and something would be tossed into a heated wok and the hissing and spluttering of cooking would remind me that I hadn’t eaten yet and so I would begin act two of the play. 

    A look at the back of the room revealed a menu in two or three languages hung on the wall. Usually I could figure out what was being offered and so would decide on some special of the day. After some studious ignoring I would finally get the attention of the same benighted man that had first been forced to deal with me. He would slowly disengage himself from the rest of the group and make his way to my table. 

    “What you want?” He was as eager to serve as always. I would point to the menu and ask for the meal of my choice. He would turn to gaze at the board as though it were the first time that he had ever realized it was there. He paused as if contemplating some greater reality and then turned again to me. “No got food!” Dishes clattered beyond the beaded curtain that separated the two rooms. I would begin to protest but a wave of the hand and another “No got food!” would dismiss me and he would turn to rejoin the group. I was left standing in the middle of the room, the smells of spiced chicken and sesame noodles wafting on the air and I would turn to leave, defeated at last. Just then an old man bearing a tray of food would come through the curtain and into the room. Some, if not all of the men would turn to look my way, hoping perhaps that I was gone or at least dull enough to not realize what was on the tray. I’d look and smile and all would turn again to the task at hand and I would be forgotten. 

    The street corners were occupied with men selling chicken satay cooked over charcoal fires or roti makers tossing and stretching the dough in the Asian way and so tonight I would eat standing up on a darkened corner of a side street in Kuala Lumpur. 

1973.

 The second in a series written for the newsletter of the Upper Ottawa Valley Genealogical Group. Published in a slightly shorter form, July, 2016.

The Hesitant Beginning of the Pembroke Collegiate Institute.

It all began with an innocuous little item in the April 6th, 1922 edition of the  Pembroke Observer,  “School Problems Were Discussed, Committee to Locate High School Site.” A committee was indeed formed to “go into the matter of locating a site for a New High School.”  With this seemingly simple task began three years of debate, fighting, government intervention and more newspaper ink than had ever been used on one story in the history of the paper.

The old high school on Isabella Street was overcrowded and the new head of the fire department, Chief Blackler had inspected the building and essentially called it a fire trap that was not suitable as a school without major repairs. Something had to be done.

It all seemed so easy. By the first of June two sites had been selected, one at the corner of Peter and Herbert Streets on a piece of land that was owned by the Public School board and was about to be used by them for the proposed new East Ward School. However they were willing to sell off three acres at a reasonable cost to be used to build the high school.

The other was at the end of Moffat Street on the parcel of land known as Moffat’s Point. Neither was deemed acceptable.

For a year things sat at an impasse. Meetings were held but nothing of note reached the press until the first day of school in the fall of 1923 when there were more students than there were places to put them. A temporary and  wholly unsuitable arrangement was made to have some students attend classes at the town hall but a  week after this began Trustee, Mrs. Gus. Schroeder, visited the temporary school and declared it a “tragedy” that was fair to neither the pupils, their parents or the teachers. Classes were separated by thin cotton curtains strung on wires, there were no suitable washroom facilities available and the noise of multiple lessons being taught at the same time was not conducive to learning.

An option had been taken out on the O’Kelly Park site for $20,000 but when this price was accepted the nitpicking began and at the next council meeting the O’Kelly site was rejected and so as the season turned to winter the situation remained as it had been in the spring of a year and a half ago.

While all the debating and the bickering was going on over the high school the East Ward Public School had been proposed, designed and built and was, as 1924 began, about to be opened to the students who had been in the old school on the corner of William and Alfred Streets. This old school that had been in too poor a condition to fix was now going to be partially taken over by the students of the high school as their new temporary classrooms.

By March the town had been visited by a high school inspector who had handed into the board a report that “is said to be a very black one.”  An ultimatum was given, if a new high school building wasn’t soon begun there would be a withholding of all high school grants. Then the principal quit. Mr. U.J. Flach, feeling he did not have the confidence of his staff as teachers were threatening to resign due to the stress of overcrowding, handed in his resignation and it was accepted by the board. The Premier of Ontario, had by this time, heard of the Pembroke situation and at the request of the local Board of Education he sent a representative here to meet with the board.

Six sites were reviewed, and although it was deemed to be too far in the east end the board eventually asked the town for $4,500 to purchase the W.R. White property on the southeast corner of Cecilia and Esther Streets. This, along with the O’Kelly site were the only two deemed suitable by the government but now the council vetoed the request with the excuse that the cost of leveling the site and installing water and sewer lines would be too costly. Now a new location was put forward, the Miller-Munro site and although this never seemed to get serious consideration it was, from time to time brought up as an alternative site to whatever was being proposed at the moment.

September opened with two hundred and forty boys and girls registering in the high school. A week after the opening bell was rung the board was once again debating the merits of different sites.  One sticking point was the policy of the provincial government that a high school needed at least three acres of land to be situated on. Every suitable site in town that had been suggested was less than this minimum and so a delegation was formed to meet with the Minister of Education in Toronto to see if this rule could be bent a little, given the local circumstances. However Premiere Ferguson said there was little he could do and suggested that the town leave off the matter of a new school for a year or two or to perhaps renovate and enlarge the old school by expropriating adjacent homes.

Meanwhile the new principal, Mr. Willoughby, met with the board to discuss his school. He told of a lack of proper equipment for teaching chemistry, of overcrowded classrooms and conditions that “startled his hearers.”  of having only one working typewriter out of eleven in the commercial class and of teenage students attending the east ward annex having to sit in seats meant for junior pupils.

The year closed with no movement towards a solution of the school question and by the first meeting of the board in February of 1925 it was hoped that this would be the year of success. But instead the first meeting ended in disarray with members hurling insults and accusations. The next session again met without success at deciding on a location but did throw in two more properties to consider. One was the Hale-Scott property on Pembroke Street east but this was eventually vetoed due to the fact it would be located opposite a factory, the Superior Electric Company. The other, mentioned for the first time was the Mackie property at the other end of the main street near the corner of Christie Street. This was thought to be not an appropriate site as it was on the main street and the government wanted schools to be located away from busy thoroughfares. A vote was held to try and select a property and in the end all five properties were voted down.

Meanwhile the fire department was looking into taking over the old high school to be used as a fire hall but when this was found to be economically unfeasible the board once again began looking into expropriating the surrounding properties and fixing the old place up.

Then around the first of April, 1925, after two years of debate a property was decided upon. The Mackie property was purchased, the old school was sold to the Separate School Board, by the end of the month architect's plans were being inspected and one was selected. By the end of July all the contracts had been awarded and by mid August excavation work had begun. Then, as work was progressing, some of the trustees, while strolling past the construction site, thought it would look better if it were set back another ten feet. And so a new excavation was begun.Then as it progressed it uncovered an underground stream that ran through the property,  went under McGaughey’s corner eventually finding an outlet in the hill behind the library. This new development required building a cofferdam around part of the excavation, adding time and cost to the building of the foundation.And so a new excavation was begun adding time and cost to the building of the foundation but it was built and the school would be open it time for the new academic year in September of 1926.

The school year of 1925/26 ended and on the evening of July 2nd the students of the old high school met on the grounds to reminisce around a bonfire. Wet wood forced them into the building where they rounded up the High School Orchestra and held an impromptu dance. Old students and teachers from years gone by dropped in to chat and at midnight a farewell cheer was raised to the old school, the National Anthem was sung and the old building ended its career as a public high school.

On September the seventh the new school welcomed its first students. Later in the month, on September twenty fourth the official opening was held with a host of dignitaries attending the event including the Premier of the province who was undoubtedly happy to be hearing the last of Pembroke and its high school woes.

During that year and in the years that followed the high school auditorium became the venue for plays, talks and meetings. The students began writing a weekly column in the Standard-Observer and that first spring saw the beginning of a long tradition with the printing of the first edition of the Nexus.

Now with the high school problem solved the town council could turn its attention to that other perennial problem that seemed to defy a solution. Where to relocate the town offices?

The Sad Case of Rebecca Jenkins

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 (addendum - Thomas Jenkins died on May 21, 1886)