With this new feature, we present some of the wonderful stories that seniors (55-plus) have to share.  Interested in contributing your own memories? Please do! Send us an email!

James FitzGerald: A horse, a vaccine and a laneway

Dr. Gerry FitzGerald’s stable on Barton Ave. in Toronto where he began working on a diphtheria antitoxin.

Crestfallen Lane, which runs behind Barton Ave. near Toronto’s Christie Pits, commemorates an old mare, bought in 1913 for $3 by my grandfather Dr. John (Gerry) FitzGerald.

Crestfallen Lane named for the first horse Dr. FitzGerald bought for producing antitoxins.

Named Crestfallen for her sad eyes, she played a key role in developing vaccines and creating Canada’s public health system.

Gerry installed her and three other aging horses, rescued from the glue factory, in a two-storey stable on a lot beside an associate’s home at 145 Barton. He used $3,000 from his wife Edna’s dowry to build the metal-clad structure and equip it with a lab.

Earlier that year, Gerry had made an impassioned pitch to the University of Toronto to back his vision for making a diphtheria antitoxin and distributing it free to Canadians. The university needed time to consider the unprecedented proposal, so Gerry forged ahead on his own.

 At the time, the country was mired in a public health crisis with disease running rampant against a backdrop of political inertia. Diphtheria was the single greatest killer of children, and the exorbitant cost of imported American medicines left the poor to suffer.

One of the diphtheria horses.

On Dec. 11, 1913, two days after his 31st birthday, Gerry injected a minute but deadly dose of diphtheria germ into Crestfallen’s neck. Her immune system began forming antibodies to neutralize the disease’s toxins.

After four months of incremental injections into all of the horses, Gerry extracted their immunized blood, processed it and proved that the resulting “antitoxin” worked, first in guinea pigs, then humans. Orders poured in from across Canada.

On May 1, 1914, the Antitoxin Laboratories, later renamed Connaught Laboratories, were established in U of T’s Department of Hygiene, now the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. My grandfather’s inspired vision was transforming Canada’s public health system into a world leader.

Vaccine work grew and by 1916 a larger facility was built at 1755 Steeles Ave. W. The site is now owned by pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur, which acquired Connaught assets in 2004. The Barton Ave. stable was moved there and restored. If you visit it or when you walk along Crestfallen Lane, think about the horse who helped my grandfather achieve a “miracle in a stable.”

---

Moving to Toronto in the 1930s was a shock for Betty Ferrie after life on the family farm

Betty Ferrie: A hard time in TO

In 1946 or ’47, when I was 19, I left our family farm in Greenwood just north of Pickering and went to Toronto for work.

I found a job at the TTC paying $19 a week, which was a good salary then. But they warned me to get a place to live before I took the job. In those days, it was harder to find accommodation than work. There were many displaced people in Toronto, and there was a housing shortage.

I managed to rent half a bed in a rooming house near Pape and Danforth. I had to share a bed with a girl I didn’t know. I also had to eat all of my meals out, which was difficult for a farm girl. (A greasy spoon at the corner served meals for 70 cents.) Moving to Toronto was an enormous shock for me, but I could take the train home on weekends. That was the saving grace.

After six months sharing a bed, I put an ad in the paper saying an educated farm girl was looking for room and board five days a week. I found a place in the same Pape and Danforth area.

I didn’t keep up with the girl who I shared the bed with. I was a stickler, who grew up in a church household with morals. She was much freer.

It was interesting working at the TTC. I was in the cashier department. An armoured truck would get the fare boxes, dump the contents into a bag for, say, Runnymede, and they would bring the bags to the TTC cashiers. We would have to count and estimate how many tickets and cash came in on the Runnymede route or Bloor St. — that sort of thing.

It was a good job. I got a TTC pass and was able to ride around the city for free. (Tickets were four for 25 cents.) I learned the names of the streets quickly because of working there, so it was helpful in that way.

I worked for eight years at 35 Yonge, which was TTC headquarters, on the north side of Front. The building sadly was torn down in the late 1950s.

---

Joanne Shimotakahara: How Mom learned to cook

My mother, Esther Kuwabara, was an excellent cook. One summer, when we were living in Hamilton years ago, she made food for 160 children at a United Church camp on Lake Erie. How she gained those skills takes us back to her parents’ story in their adoptive country.

Her father, Sannosuke Ennyu, was sent in 1894 by the Japanese government to identify fish stocks around Haida Gwaii and Prince Rupert and assess if any species could be introduced to Japanese waters. In his report, he identified some potential fish. He also fell in love with Canada.

Back in Japan in 1902, he gave a speech about the fish. My grandmother Moto Otsuyama attended the lecture, saw my grandfather’s pictures and, I think, fell in love with the fish. Soon they were married.

My grandfather was petite but powerful, with a black belt in judo. My grandmother, the daughter of one of the last samurais, was about half a head taller. She was enthralled by the prospect of adventure in Canada, and the couple returned to northwestern British Columbia in 1903. Some years later they went to Haida Gwaii where they successfully ran a sawmill. Grandmother Ennyu was the camp cook.

She didn’t speak English and, as a samurai’s daughter, had never learned to cook. But she was a natural talent, able to make anything on a wood stove. My own mother learned to cook by watching her mom.

When my mother and two younger sisters were of high school age, my grandfather sold the lumber business and moved the family to Vancouver where he opened three small lunch counters. My mother had a hearing problem and never expected to marry. She took on management of the lunch counters in the 1930s. To attract customers, they offered meat pies, homemade bread and down-to-earth meals such as stews. Many of the recipes came from my grandmother. At one point, people lined up to buy the fresh bread at a premium price of 25 cents a loaf (compared to 5 or 10 cents), a testament to the talent of Grandmother Ennyu and her daughters.

---

Gil Carty: My Great Aunt Jean McKenzie

Gil Carty holds a painting of a house that looks like the house his Great Aunt Jean owned on Beverley St. She used to provide accommodation for sleeping-car porters.

When I was little, I was intimidated by my Great Aunt Jean McKenzie! She seemed so big.  She was experienced with kids – she had been a nanny to Eaton family children – and got a charge out of scaring me. When I called her a giant, she’d take a few steps toward me, threaten to bite my head off and send me scurrying.

She really was a giant in terms of her accomplishments as a Jamaican immigrant to Toronto in the 1920s. By the early 1940s, she had saved enough to buy a large house on Beverley St. She turned it into accommodation for sleeping car porters and others. The multi-talented celebrity Paul Robeson stayed there; he couldn’t get a hotel room because of the racial climate at the time. The porters probably directed him to my aunt’s.

The place was always busy. Our family, which then included cousins and grandfather, lived on one floor in the 1950s while my parents waited to buy their Scarborough home.  My mother was a seamstress in the garment district; my father, a porter.

They had met at my aunt’s house, where my mother came to stay after leaving Jamaica at 18.  My father, from New Brunswick, had left the air force and was living around the corner at University Settlement House. I was born in 1950.

I have some vivid memories of life at my aunt’s. I used to share my mother’s bed because my father was on the trains. Once, I awoke, mistook clothes on the bedpost for a man and alerted my mother. She screamed, and my grandfather came running. After that, I never slept in her bed again.

One Sunday morning in 1955, I awoke to smell smoke from the smoldering ruins of St. George the Martyr, a Black church in downtown. It had caught fire during the night.

I also remember chicken feet hanging in the back shed. My aunt made soup out of them, but they gave me the creeps.

My aunt was a generous, considerate woman. Preparing to return to Jamaica in the early 1970s, she sold her house and left money to a loyal Hungarian tenant to make sure he would be all right.

Lois Broad’s father bought a cottage lot on Lake Simcoe at Oro Station, midway between Barrie and Orillia. It took  4-5 hours to get there in the family’s ’28 Oldsmobile, and chances were they’d experience a couple of flat tires.

Lois Broad: A Cottage Odyssey

I noticed in the newspaper the other day how Oro Station is set to become a destination for car enthusiasts. That’s where our cottage used to be, and let me tell you what it was like driving there in the 1930s

In 1912, my father was persuaded by a friend Mr. Jackson to buy some property from him. He had purchased a farm near Oro Station, which he had subdivided into lots for cottages on Lake Simcoe. He named it Barrilia Park as it was halfway between Barrie and Orillia.

My father, with local help, spent the summer of 1912 building the cottage. He, Mother and my brother, who was 18 months old, lived in the barn. My mother said when it rained, she had to hold an umbrella over the baby because the barn leaked.

I was born in 1927, so my memories of the trip from Toronto to Oro Station came later. My father, who taught at Humberside Collegiate, had a 1928 Oldsmobile. There were no trunks on the cars in those days, and everything needed for the summer had to be transported. A dunnage bag, similar to a hockey bag, was tied to each front fender. The running board, which had an expandable gate attached, was filled. Sheets and pillows were sat upon in the car, three people in front, three in back.

Inevitably, there would be at least one or two flat tires enroute, which meant the whole car had to be unloaded. My father had to jack up the car so as to remove the tire. The hole in the inner tube had to be found. It was then patched with a piece of rubber, glued in place and then reassembled. (We had an essential tire-patching kit.) Then, of course, the whole car had to be repacked. And we would be on our way.

Sheila McIlraith: Being a “Farmerette” 

Sheila McIlraith, in the back row, far left, worked as a farmerette, picking fruit in Niagara for several summers during the war. She describes the summer at Inniskillin peach farm with the group of girls in the photo as wonderful, despite the hard work.

During the war years in Ontario, girls worked as “farmerettes,” helping to pick the crops. I started when I was 13 in Grade 9.
Before I was old enough to go away for the summer, I remember going to Jane and Bloor and being picked up. We would stand in the back of a truck, maybe eight or 10 of us, and just hold on to the edges as we bounced along to market gardens, probably in the Clarkson area. We cut celery and pulled radishes. Can you imagine letting kids do that nowadays?
The first summer in Niagara I worked at the Inniskillin farm, which grew peaches back then and is now a winery. That was a wonderful summer with great food and long hours. We worked from 7 in the morning until 10 at night, picking peaches during the day and packing them at night. We worked seven days a week, with no days off unless it was rainy. We earned $3.50 a week, with room and board.
Peaches have much less fuzz now than they did. I remember once getting a terrible peach fuzz rash and actually having to go to the hospital. I was sick and feverish. They gave me something, I don’t know what it was, but it worked.
As a treat at Inniskillin, the boss took us to the Fort Erie race track and gave us $5, which was a handsome sum of money, to bet on the horses. I lost all my money very quickly, probably the first race.
I also worked three summers in St. Davids near Niagara Falls. In the third year, they trained a small group of us to do grafting. You could have a good strong peach tree and have different varieties on it. So I remember learning how to graft.
As a farmerette, I never felt hard done by because everybody else was doing it. And you know, even now, I never regret any of the jobs I had. I learned very early on, the value of money and the value of hard work and doing a good job. It’s something that’s central to my whole being.

Helga, far right, and her co-workers wear circle skirts at Sniderman’s music store on College St. in the 1950s.

Helga Schuliakewich: Remembering Sammy

For many years, my sister and I ran the Old Country Shop on Roncesvalles. My parents opened it in the early 1960s when they came from Germany.  Now my niece Sabine manages the store.

I was the first one to come to Canada in our family. I was the runaway! After the war there were so many problems in Germany. I was 18 and wanted something different, so I came here in 1953. I only had 40 German marks.

Helga Schuliakewich still has the suitcase that she brought to Canada when she immigrated here from Germany on her own in 1953. She stands in the store opened by her parents in the early 1960s. It is now managed by her niece Sabine.

It was very hard at the beginning. Two people helped me a lot.

The first was Dr. Morris  Zeidman who founded the Scott Mission. The other was Sam Sniderman – Sam the Record Man.

When I first came, there was a job open at the Scott Mission.  I ended up working in Dr. Zeidman’s home for two years. I was like a daughter. He protected me. They were the nicest family.

He also helped me get a job in 1955 at Sniderman’s Music Hall, which was at 714 College St. It was run by Sam Sniderman and his older brother Syd. Syd was the first to sell car radios on College. Sam later opened his famous store Sam the Record Man on Yonge St.

Sam, I called him Sammy, we got along so well.  I had never had a record in my hand before but he trusted me. I had the whole department upstairs on the second floor.  I had Russian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, German, Polish, everybody, 32 languages. We had a lot of booths that you put your head in there and they played the record. We wore circle skirts with musical notes on them.

I started importing records from Polydor and Deutsche Grammophon. Sammy  never had that before.  We printed our own little catalogue on our printing machine and sent it out to Alberta and other places.

In 1955, my sister Karin came over. Sammy’s wife picked her up at Union Station, and Karin started helping at the store. She became an assistant manager on Yonge St. and met her husband Leonard at Sammy’s. He worked there, too.

Sammy was so kind to us. He was like a father.

Mae Couzens: The Joy of Grilled Cheese

I was born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, until my family emigrated to Canada when I was 13 years old. 

Mae Couzens always keeps a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup in her house.

My memories of the war years are vivid, and I now wonder how my parents managed, with five children, all born in our two-room flat. Mostly, I remember I was always hungry, even after meals. 

Dinner was served on a small side plate, not a usual dinner plate, and meals were “one-pot” size to feed us all. Lentil soup and veggie stew were frequent. Occasionally, chocolate biscuits were served with our mug of tea, which was finished with the milk the milkman had left outside the door that day. 

In 1952, we sailed for Canada with a new addition to the family, a baby boy born to my 42-year-old mother after my dad had already left for Canada. On the ship, we gathered at the railing, all standing by mother.  She took off her wedding ring and threw it overboard, saying, “Here’s to new beginnings in Canada.” When we arrived, my father had a new ring for her.

We lived in Malton in a not quite straight frame house my dad had built without blue prints. I went on a school bus to Brampton High School, and soon I had a little part-time job at the local pharmacy. It had a ‘50s soda fountain, where I learned to make a mean milk shake and fell in love with grilled cheese sandwiches. 

My weekly pay was $28 a week. One day near Christmas, I stopped to look in the hardware store’s window. There it was! A bright and shiny sandwich grill. I was excited that we could make grilled cheese at home.  I went into the hardware store, clutching my pay packet and asked the owner, Mr. Madgett, “How much is that cheese grill?” He told me, and I must have looked crestfallen. It was too expensive for me. Then, Mr. Madgett said, “You could get it on our lay-away plan!” Yippee!  I gave him a $5 deposit and continued to do so every payday until the cheese grill was mine, wrapped and decorated with a red bow!

I gave it to Mom for Christmas, but, really, it was for me. Now I could have my own grilled cheese every dinner along with my daily purchase of one tin of Campbell’s Tomato Soup. 

My mom would buy a big slab of Cheddar cheese when she went to the groceteria. Using one of those cheese slicers with a wire, I would shave off thin slices, put them between two pieces of white Wonder Bread, delivered by the bread man to our back door. I’d lightly spread margarine on the top and bottom pieces so the sandwich would toast beautifully.  It came out of the grill golden  brown, oozing with melted cheese. It was to die for. 

I continued making my cheese sandwiches and tomato soup every day for a very long time. Buying that cheese grill to make my own meal was my first independent decision outside of the family circle, where the boys were served first and the girls were always hungry.

Charles Hefferon won silver in the most dramatic Olympic marathon ever run. Although he raced for South Africa, he could also be considered a Canadian, having served in the North-West Mounted Police, Canadian forces in the Boer War, the Royal Canadian Dragoons and was killed on duty as an OPP officer.

Colin Hefferon:  My Grandfather Charles

On July 24,  113 years ago, my grandfather Charles Hefferon ran in the dramatic Olympic Marathon in London. He won a silver medal, but would likely have earned gold had it not been for an unfortunate incident near the end of the race.

On that fateful day, my grandfather was ahead by four minutes at the 24-mile mark when he gulped a drink of what turned out to be champagne from a spectator who was believed to be Toronto Star journalist, Lou Marsh. Deathly allergic to alcohol, my grandfather fell to the ground, and remained there for several minutes before he was able to get back up.

Close to White City Stadium, where 70,000 spectators waited, the Italian Dorando Pietri passed my stumbling grandfather and staggered into the stadium. He collapsed several times and was dragged by supporters across the line, only to be disqualified. Meanwhile, American runner Johnny Hayes came from behind and was subsequently awarded gold. Some commentators say that my grandfather would have regained his lead had the race continued another half mile.

I have a scrapbook full of fragile newspaper clippings about my grandfather, including an article written by Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who described him as “a perfect specimen.”

My grandfather is largely forgotten in Canada, his adopted country, because he was running for South Africa in the 1908 Olympics. He had gone there with the Royal Canadian Dragoons to fight in the Boer War, married a young Afrikaans woman in 1902 and stayed until 1912.

Born in England in 1878, he emigrated to Canada at 18. He served with Canadian forces in two wars, the Boer War and WW I. He joined three police forces, including the North-West Mounted Police and the Ontario Provincial Police. He was killed in Brampton while on duty as an OPP officer when a driver collided with him on a motorcycle.

Charles Hefferon is named in a memorial for fallen police officers at Queen’s Park in Toronto. But he has never been recognized here for his extraordinary athletic achievements that put him on the Olympic podium on July 24, 1908.