Most apartments were able to demand an initial amount equal to a month's rent which was openly advertised as "key money". Another scam was that of an agency who charged me $20 for promising to match my needs with available apartments; they came up with a couple of perfunctory ones they had on file which did not even resemble what I specified and that was the last I heard from them. They were collecting $20 from hundreds of people looking for housing and not really doing anything to earn it!
Another route I followed was through a war veteran's service bureau who had an apartment development called "Benny's Farm" in Notre Dame de Grace, just a streetcar ride from the centre city. These apartments were reserved for service men who had children, but the catch was they had several month's waiting list. I moved on, but actually heard from them about a year after we had got ourselves a home which I'll tell you about now.
George Morison, who was generally good at knowing what was going on found out there was a new housing development being built in Baie d'Urfe, the next suburb west of Beaurepaire. It was a development under the Veteran's Land Act where builders could obtain land at a reasonable price on which to build homes for sale to veterans. Part of the idea reflected depression thinking that felt if post-war times for veterans were tough, they could use the 1/3 acre lots to cultivate some of their food. 25- year mortgages were available from Central Mortgage and Housing at 4 1/2 %. This was really o.k. but incredibly we found that the Quebec government would pick up 2 % for a net rate of 2 1/2 %. The reduction applied as long as the original veteran owner lived in the house. Even the 4 1/2 % looks good compared with anything that has existed since. Property prices and post-war inflation (mainly after 1970) have escalated so much that my children have had to pay $130,000 to $180,000 for older houses in Vancouver with interest rates from 12 % down to 9 % on mortgages good for no more than 5 years! Even as I write to-day (1998) I still feel the best years during my lifetime for our country were those years before 1970. What was done by governments and industry as a whole in those times was accomplished without inflation, paying off wartime debt, and not increasing the national debt! Since then union and government excesses have driven prices up. Businesses never even felt it was necessary to write inflation clauses into contracts, witness the problem Newfoundland has had in continuing to to deliver Churchill River Power to Quebec at a rate set in the 1960's. Housing, clothing, cars and many other things were not as luxurious as to-day but they were adequate for a quite liveable family life then!
Getting back to what happened to ouselves, we got a nice brick 6- room bungalow for $12,500 with a $1500 down payment. (See photo). The house was finished in April but we were delayed two weeks in moving in because of snowmelt, rain and mud. Anne never saw the house until she got here although I had sent her a picture of it nearing completion. In all of our homes since, Anne or Frances have been able to be the main choosers in obtaining our homes. Anne did of course get plenty of opportunity to make the house liveable and to landscape the property. This included hanging curtains and pictures, building economical bookshelves from bricks and boards and painting the basement floor with concrete grey.
Outdoors it was necessary to get sod and to plant trees. Fortunately, Anne, among her other artistic accomplishments had a love for and a talent in landscaping. She selected the flowers, shrubs and trees and told me where to plant them. Though she, poor sweetheart, is now long gone from this world, the home and lot at 83 Somerset Road is to-day (1998) a wonderful living monument to her skill and industry! It's mature trees and shrubs, dotted about the largest lot we have ever owned are all healthy and beautiful, even though our rough stone wall edging the front patio has tumbled down.
In the evenings we would sometimes entertain friends with the little ones tucked safely in their beds. Anne was always very creative and for house parties she would come up with some things we could do with simple materials. On one occasion it was a contest to see who could build the best peanut man from peanuts strung on a thread with clothing made from available scraps of material. Another time we were given paper pie plates with watercolors to see who could paint the most attractive design for a plate. I believe Ernie Gilliatt won that, showing his own basic intelligence in doing it. On still another occasion we were expected to build miniature gardens from pieces of wood, scraps of sponge, colored cloth and watercolors. These things gave us all some activities in crafts and something to talk about in common. It was amazing in each case to see just how talented many "amateurs" could be in responding to these handicraft contests. Though the TV monster was beginning to emerge at this time (1953-55) we did not as yet own one and so we could still meet with real people for fun, rather than as voyeurs of what some now call the "idiot box".
There were of course in Montreal a good number of French speaking people, and so we were tempted at times to try out our Manitoba schoolboy and schoolgirl French. As our pronunciation was generally terrible, the results were hard to understand and sometimes downright funny. I tried to translate the popular English expression, "some have it and some don't" (Quelques-uns l'avait et quelques-uns ne l'avait pas). What came out to our listeners was, "Quelques-uns lavait et quelques-uns ne lavait pas" (some wash and some don't)! General hilarity broke out among the true French speakers at the party.
Other activities we enjoyed in Montreal were cycling to the local village store for supplies,(the children were still small enough to take them in our carriers) with only occasional trips by commuter train to go downtown. I should mention here that we did not have a car during our first period of living in Montreal. My CN pass was even good on the CP commuter trains during the first year, but this privilege was withdrawn during the second year. Commuting by CN was still o.k. as CN had good service at rush hour. I used to particularly catch the 5:15 to go home as it did not have any stops beween downtown and Pointe Claire. I loved it when those old 5600 class Pacific type steam locomotives with 73" drive-wheels would accelerate quickly to 70 mph and barrel through the suburbs at this pace! We also attended the annual Engineering Institute dance held downdown in the last century grandeur of the Windsor Hotel.
One thing about Montreal that Anne really liked was the opportunity to study art at the internationally known Ecole des Beaux Arts. There were many good painters in Quebec who specialized in various forms of modern art and Anne enjoyed studying them. I did not like some of this art very much but she explained it to me and at least gave me some understanding as to what it was trying to say. I am glad to carry the benefit of her explanations and her own modernistic paintings to the present time.
I have always felt that although the prairies are harsh in climate and at times lacking in economic opportunity they are still home to me.Nowhere else can you see so far nor is the air so clear. The sun sets in full blazing glory right down to the horizon. This lack of haze (so common in the other parts of Canada) is even picked up by the camera -- photos taken on the prairies will have distinctly clearer images of the horizon and other distant objects than you will find elsewhere. Though I love the prairies I do not expect them to appeal to everyone. They lack the appeal of oceans, mountains and rainforests such as exist in B.C.. In India they say every man wants to go to his home village to die! Perhaps the feeling was best summed up in the poem we had in one of our school readers:
"Breathes there the man with soul so dead Whose heart has ne'er with in him burned When home his footsteps he hath turned From wandering on a foreign strand. And to himself hath never said, This is my own, my native land! If such ther be, go mark him well, For him no minstrel raptures swell; The wretch, concentred all on self Concerned with naught but power and pelf Shall go down to the vile earth from whence he sprung Unwept, unhonored and unsung!"
Practically all of our trips West meant taking a week to go to Laclu, timing it so as to be there when Anne's parents and her brother George, his wife and their children were there. The Dutchers fequently came so we got to know their families and other cottage neighbors. There was of course plenty of opportunity for swimming, boating, campfire sing-songs with Anne's mother playing the ukelele. (see photo). During the day it was usual to go fishing. Laclu itself was considered to be more or less fished out so it was necessary to go to adjacent lakes such as Culloden and rent a boat there. It often meant paddling some distance to get to the known fishing spots and we were often very tired by the time we got home. The best eating was to be had from the Walleyed Pike or Pickerel. They were also relatively easy to fillet which was certainly an advntage in preparing the meals. As time passes and our family grows, I will come back later in these memoirs to give more details on happy vacations to Laclu and the West.
Our home turned out to be newly constructed at 193 West Lane, just behind the Moncton General Hospital. Again I picked out the home myself as Anne and the two young children felt it more convenient to remain in Baie d' Urfe. The house was completely of wood which was the pre-eminent construction material in a land of forests; it was not large but had four bed-rooms. (see photo). It still did not have a garage, but had a very nice wood-burning brick fireplace, something I had always wanted! The construction was of good quality with interesting space saving ideas. For example the carpenter cut the regular full-size closet doors in half and equipped them with hinges so as to fold in the middle. The floors, doors and finish trim were all natural varnished wood and looked most attractive.
Though we did not have a garage we got our first family car - a sensible 2nd hand 1952 Plymouth four door. Though I later found out it had been a taxi it gave us seven years of good service and at $1200 plus the cost of a repaint and a ring job it was the cheapest transportation we have ever had. To-day (1998) you have to pay up to $10,000 for a similar 2nd hand car.
In Moncton we made many friends. Our neighbors on one side were Kelly and Doreen Coulter, who knocked on our door one night soon after we had moved in. They were a lovely couple, also with a young family. They had come from Thunder Bay where Kelly had worked in the tire business. Sumner's Tire and Automotive had hired him for their operation in Moncton. He stayed and rose to become General Manager of an expanded operation. A friend of Kelly's was Jock, a pianist with the local radio station. He had sung with a well-known English choir in his youth. He liked a good drink of good maritime rum to lubricate his pipes which Kelly would supply when inviting Jock over for a sing-song. He was also a staunch Anglican as were Kelly and I so when Jock would play the old hymns, such as his favorite "Hark, hark my soul"; we all joined in and sung them with great fervor! We still seek out the Coulters whenever we visit Moncton and they still live in the same house on West Lane!
On the other side of us lived Henri and Rita LeBlanc. Moncton is the capital of modern Acadia so they spoke French as well as English. There are as many Leblancs in the Moncton phone book as there are Smiths anywhere else. Henri was a construction foreman and was away for weeks at a time on such large developments as Seven Isands and Port Cartier in Quebec. Rita stayed home to raise the family without any complaint. This was common in post-war Canada, and if it were not for both married and single men who were prepared to go into the wilderness construction camps we would none of us enjoy the wealth brought by mines, paper and lumber mills and power plants of Canada to-day! Later, Henri was able to get more local work and stay in Moncton where he and Rita still live in retirement.
Another family we got to know were the Lockharts, who were native Monctonians. I met Owen in Montreal through the good offices of Jack Sylvester who was an all around electrical engineer with the railway who hd taken me by the hand and guided me through all railway things electrical in the Montreal terminals! While Owen had worked a couple of years in Montreal, he and his wife Betty had returned to Moncton about the time we moved there.
They were the ones who took us in hand to visit such places as Fundy Park where we could go picnicking and enjoying the bayside scenery including the land-mark "Owl's Head" promontory which Anne took delight in painting. Owen and I were meanwhile able to do a round of golf while the children romped in the park. The Lockharts had a son, Douglas, who was the same age as Robin.
It was during our first stay in Moncton that Robin started school; I well remember the first day taking him by the hand and leading him blinking in the morning sunshine to the door of Queen Elizabeth school, there to turn him over to his first teacher. What a momentous step it is in family life not only for the child but for the parents as they release their first-born on his first big step to leaving the protection of his home to the uncertainties of growth and life in general!
It was also in Moncton that our second son and last child, James William was born, April 6, 1957. I had been working for several weeks on an overall study of Maritime passenger services which entailed a good deal of travel from Montreal through to St. John's Newfoundland, and when Jim decided to arrive I was on the the Ocean Ltd. enroute from Montreal to Moncton. The Limited arrived in Moncton about 11 a.m., but Jim had been born at 7. When Anne had gone into labour she simply walked across the street and through the boiler room door to get to the maternity floor.
It was an easier birth than Robin's had been and I went direct from the train to the hospital to see them. As the photo shows Jim differed from the other two children in having very little hair at birth. He inherited that Tivy trait from me and his grandad Tivy. He was named after Anne's maternal grandfather, James Aitken and my maternal grandfather William Harrison.
When it came to places to go, Moncton was great. In addition to Magnetic Hill and Fundy Park we were within easy reach of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Our favorite destination was P.E.T.'s Cavendish Beach near the famous home of Anne of Green Gables. (Anne herself was named after that Anne because her mother had so enjoyed the story portrayed in the book). To get to the Island we had to take the car ferry (then operated by C.N.) either on the modern "Abegweit" (cradle of the waves) or the older, but more Edwardian ornate "Prince Edward Island". The Beach had campgrounds close to the shore with a lovely gradual sloping sandy beach. While Bay of Fundy water was too cold for bathing Cavendish faced on the Gulf of Saint Laurence which had 70deg. water in the summer and thus fully comparable to Florida! It was the most wonderful place for water sports and sand castles and ranks very high in my happiest memories of family life together! I will have more to say about other great Maritime vacations as this chronicle moves on, but for now will turn to the railway work aspects of Moncton.
The main participants in our team who roamed over the whole region with me on Dynamometer Car 69 were two Road Foremen of Engines, David Shaw and Sherwood "Chief" Rideout along with the only diesel supervisor on the region, Blair Bain. The latter had some mechanical knowledge of the new beast because he had been reponsible for some years to maintain the handful of diesel rail cars used on some branch lines since the 1930's. We could eat and sleep on car 69 which was equipped with a steward and we had some great times as we set up and conducted tests on the various types of new power all across the region. We were usually accompanied by the local Assistant Superintendent or Master Mechanic and sometimes by the manufacturer's representative so we got to know them all. This proved a valuable asset for me in being able to advance to further responsibility on the region as we shall see.
Dave and the Chief (so-named becuse his dad had been Chief of Police in Moncton) had worked their way up from being locomotive firemen; they had worked all over the region during the war and had all sorts of stories they could relate about happenings on the region, some of which were quite scatalogical. I really enjoyed working with them and still remember much of the local lore which they imparted. Blair was quite a large man and he lugged around a large suitcase which mainly held enough tools to do a reasonable repair job on the spot. I remember his holding up the passenger train we were testing on so he could respond to and fix a compaint voiced by the engineman on one of the little Caterpillar diesels operating into Lunenburg. On another occasion after we had had several days of concentrated work we were tied up in Stellarton overnight and it was snowing. No way did Blair want to go out for our scheduled test on the line going to Oxford Junction. They needed to plow the line so we left car 69 behind with Blair while David and I rode the engine and the snowplow. That was the only time in my entire career that I rode a plow, and I can tell you it's exciting. First, you cannot see the track because of snow, second you have to go at full speed to be sure to get through the drifts and lastly you are travelling in a full blizzard all of the time, hoping the plow foreman knows the location of all switches and crossings and cattle guards so that the plow apron can be raised by its air valve before it tears out the crossing or derails you. One thing we did learn about diesel-electrics on that trip was that the traction motors get wet and tend to flash over. On account of this we had to lay over an extra day after we got back to Stellarton so as to re-adjust and dry out the engine we had been using. I gues Blair was right in not wanting us to take "his engine". Gradually over the years of course, they have found ways to overcome most of the sensitivity to snow; the ultimate is the current trend (1998) toward the use of Alternating Current traction motors which do not have commutators.
One of the more interesting tests we ran was on locomotive No. 3000, which was the latest design put out by Firbanks-Morse (the successor firm to my old steam-bound Canadain Locomotive in Kingston, Ont.). This was a six axle engine which at 2400 horsepower was the most powerful single unit produced up to then; it was in effect equal to 1 1/2 of the 4-axle engines up to then used on our main lines The local Master Mechanic got us to set up a test for a full train with tonnage for one Mikado steam locomotive on the 1.2 % grade west of Edmundston, N.B. where the line climbs out of the St. John River valley. The line climbs steadily for 14 miles and it was designed to have a Mikado helper so our test meant we were asking 1 1/2 diesels to do the work of 2 steam. The fireman was willing to bet the 3000 would do it, but my slide rule calculation showed it was dubious. Well, everything went fine at first as we got a bit of a run leaving Edmunston, but later we were gradually losing speed. Below 9 miles per hour we were still going, but the engineman's ammeter was increasingly going into the red zone where prolonged running would overheat the traction motors. The engine was not slipping, and even at under 5 mph it did not stall, but the ammeter said we were in the 15 min. overload zone. The Chief was getting nervous, so he went out to see if the motors were hot enough to smell. However, it was snowing slightly, and by hanging his head over the front platform he could see the snowflakes were melting as soon as they hit the lead traction motor, so we shut her down and doubled the rest of the hill, i.e., cut the train in half and took it to the top in two pieces. CN never bought any more 3000's although our test proved it could pull what we expected. However, CP and some US roads bought more of them. In a sense the design was ahead of its time, as later on 6-axle units produced by both GM and MLW have become the standard, but with increased power (from 3000 hp to 6000 hp to-day).
Prince Edward Island was the first territory to be completely dieselised. It already had a number of small Caterpillar diesel engines, but to complete the job we wanted to use a new standard light branch line type, which was 1200 hp with 4 motored axles and 2 idlers which helped cut the average axle weight to what light rail use on P.E.I. and elswhere could withstand.
Newfoundland also had some diesels; they were General Motors 1200 hp six-axle (2 idlers). The job for us was to calculate how many of these special narrow gauge units would be required to complete dieselization there. This we calculated by drawing speed distance charts showing train movements required to handle expected peak traffic plus spares and that was what was ordered. I found Newfoundland to be a most interesting place on my several trips there. The railroad was rugged with grades of 3 % and 16 deg. curves. It ran across the centre of the Island where the summit was near a rock formation called the "gaff topsails", a nautical term no doubt related to the country's sea-faring and fishing heritage. Anyway, the gaff was above the tree line and as Ed. McInerney told me "it's about what I would expect hell would look like". I came over it riding in the cab during a blizzard one time and it certainly was a daunting trip. Even in my time, during the early '60s we had the "Newfie Bullet" stuck up there for a week. No wonder that in winter they usually posted a rotary snowplow up there for several weeks. It was finally fixed when the engineering dept. raised the level of the track across the gaff by three or four feet whch caused the snow to blow off the line in the steady winds so prevalent there!
The other most noteworthy job during these times was to undertake siding extension studies. These mainly applied to the main lines where there was enough traffic to justify hauling longer and fewer trains to save crew expense and reduce delays due to meets on single track territories which most of the Maritimes was. An engineering formula existed whereby the "grid time" between trains could be calculated based on maximum running time between sidings from which siding spacing could be determined. The formula could be re-worked increasing the train length by two cars at a time and calculating the resulting reduction in the cost of operating fewer train miles equated aginst the carrying charges of capital cost to lengthen all sidings by 2 car lengths. In general we found this permitted us to go to a maximum of 115 carlengths on our main subdivisions whereas 70 cars had been what existed in the steam days.
An on the ground experience occurred in the spring of 1956 where the rush of winter traffic when the seaway was frozen caused a backup of freight that was not being moved currently. For reasons not known to me, the local officers did not seem to be able to take action on this and when it reached the point where there were 1100 cars tied up between Truro and Sydney and the hospitals in Quebec City were within a few days of running out of coal the System office reacted strongly. The Vice-President of Operations, S.F. Dingle sent Sherman W. Firlotte, ( a former crack line Superintendent who was on staff at headquarters) to come down with full powers to break the log jam. He asked for someone from the region to accompany him to the field, but I suspect pride on the part of long-time local officers prevented them from volunteering so Frank Ward, who was General Superintendent of Transportation for our region appointed me to go with Sherman. My main contribution to this at this stage of my development was only that I knew or could quickly calculate the tonnage which any class of locomotive, steam or diesel could haul over the ruling grade on any section of track. First we went to Truro where we spent about one week. Sherman would hit for the roundhouse in the early morning and in the mid-afternoon to find out what motive power was available and how more could be made available through repair or servicing. I would give him the tonnage and he would go to the yardmaster to plan for train tonnage and ordering time. He knew every trick in the book and got the crews to co-operate in things outside the union rules which they would not ordinarily be expected to do. Every engine pulled its weight and he even got a crew using a spare yard engine to make two round trips per day with tonnage up the ruling grade to Folly Lake from where it could be picked up by the through crews for the rest of the trip to Moncton.
When the week was over Truro and East were fluid, but Moncton was starting to get plugged to the extent where they were setting off trains on the branchlines east of Moncton. I rode the cab to Moncton on the day that we moved our efforts there and I never saw so much traffic in my life. With the movement out of Truro which we had started there were trains to meet in every siding and a later inspection of the CTC train sheet showed the subdivision had moved 35 trains that day, which was something for a basically single track territory. At Moncton, Sherman got them to open another yard which was not normally used. With just an old shack for a yard office we started to move trains in and out and thus reduced the pressure on the regular Marsh yard. About a week there and the worst was over. It was one of the most interesting and valuable experiences of my life and what I learned from Sherman served me well to qualify me to move on up in railway operation in the future!