To Shediac And Back - What A Walk Down Memory Lane!!!

In the fall of 1952, my father got transferred from Montreal to Moncton, NB with Canadian National Telecommunications (a subsidiary of Canadian National Railways).  We took the train from Montreal to Moncton, booked into the Beausejour Hotel.  My parents then took taxis to find accommodations as they didn't have a car until two years later.  Rents were very high in Moncton and someone suggested that they might want to try Shediac.  A quick trip by taxi quickly found them rental accommodation on Pleasant St.

The Shediac Inn
I recall arriving in Shediac in front of the Shediac Inn on a wet-and-cold rainy day in November of 1952 when I was all of 6 years old.  We took a quick trip past Shediac Central School, the school that I would be attending for the next 5 years.  Our furniture didn't arrive from Montreal for about a week so we had to stay at the Shediac Inn during that time.  The Inn was one of those old hotels where people used to spend their summers.  It was built in two sections - one section for those guests who would arrive in the off-season (this part was heated) and one section only for summer guests (this part was very sparse and not heated).  The Inn was demolished some time between 1993 and 2000 as today it's a vacant lot that was converted into a park.

Our furniture ultimately arrived and we moved into one of the apartments on Pleasant St.  Shediac was the ideal place for my parents as we were without a car, the rents were reasonable, and the train station was only one block away from the house.  There was a daily morning and evening passenger train that took the residents into Moncton.  Since 99% of the passengers worked for Canadian National, the train didn't generate too much in the way of revenues as all of these passengers had railway passes.  The train would drop my father off literally in front of his office. 

Pleasant St was an ideal place for a 6-8 year old.  It was here that I built my first "hot rod", got our first cat, got my first rabbits, learned how to swim, and a whole lot of other things.  There's a photo that was taken of me and my father sitting on the front steps in 1953.  And here's a photo of me taken in the same spot about 55 years later.  Not the same steps but you get the idea.

The house on Pleasant St was a 4-plex with two apartments downstairs and two apartments upstairs.  We had the downstairs apartment on the right.

Back in 1993 on a business trip to Fredericton, I returned to Shediac to take a trip down memory lane.  The only other time I had visited Shediac was once in the mid-1980s in the middle of a thunder shower and then only for 20 minutes.   This time, I was going to do it very thoroughly. 

Throughout my life I had always recalled those boyhood memories of living in Shediac.  It was here that I learned to swim, built a raft with my brother, Ed, learned to skate and play hockey, skated on Shediac Bay in the middle of winter, caught my first fish, and discovered trains - the real ones!.

I attended Shediac Central School from Grade 2 to Grade 5.  Shediac Central consisted of 3 classrooms.  Grades 1-to-4 was Mrs Sales classes, Grades 5-to-7 was Miss Coughlan's, and Grades 8-to-12 was a Mr Bowes. Shediac was 99% Acadian Francophone with names like LeBlanc, Cormier, Leger (pronounced "lejeer") and Catholic to boot.  The other 1% was us - Anglophones who attended Shediac Central.  The French attended one of two schools - the "Brothers' school" if you were male, or the "Sisters school" if you were female.  And as usual, there were the "religious wars" - French against English. The photo below is the "Brothers' school.  Our house on Gallagher St was behind me and one block to the right. 

This required that us Anglos have our own club - the "Skull & Crossbones" - "haar, haar, me haarty!!  Avast and lay the landlubbers down!!".  The tales of "Long John Silver" were prominent on TV so it was only appropriate to name our club the "Skull & Crossbones".  We made swords out of old hockey sticks, practiced our wrestling and sword-fighting, and even made flags.  Talk about playing "Tom Sawyer"!  There was John Hannah, Jimmy Morrisey, Boyd Laventure, Peter Smith, Freddy Hamilton, and a couple of others whose names I forget. 

At first our clubhouse was the garden shed in the back of John Hannah's yard which was just across the street from the school.  Later on, it was the water tower at the back of Peter Smith's house.  Peter's dad owned the sandstone quarry where large chunks of sandstone were loaded onto gondola cars for transporting to other provinces.  We tried our hand at snaring rabbits (didn't catch any) and gathering maple sap to boil down into maple syrup (it turned sour). 

Around that time, Dad got involved in building a race track for us students in the old ballast pit alongside Shediac Central.  In those days of steam locomotives it was easy to get a load of cinders for the track.  I remember a day of track-and-field where several other schools were invited to compete on a Saturday.  Dad also staged a play as a fund-raiser with several other parents.  It was my first time on stage.

We had a music teacher (I forget his name) where I tried out for the school choir.  I remember singing a song with the words "As I came down the cannon gate, the cannon gate, the cannon gate.  As I came down the cannon gate, a lassie I espied.  Oh merry may the keel roll, the keel row, the keel row.  Oh merry may the keel row the ship my lassie's in....."  "She wears a blue bonnet, blue bonnet, blue bonnet.  She wears a blue bonnet......the ship my lassie's in."

It was also where I met my first love - Miss Coughlan, my grade 5-and-6 teacher.  Rita Coughlan!  She had just graduated from teacher's college and this was her first school.  For the first term, Jimmy Morrisey and Peter Smith used to give her a hard time.  So, being a bit bold, I thought that I would try my luck at the beginning of the second term after Christmas.  I got told to stay after school.  My punishment was to write something out 50 times on the black-board.  I made some comment and out came the strap.  "Whap!"  Right in the palm of my hands!  It was more the shock of getting the strap than the punishment itself!!  I bawled like a baby!  First and last time I ever got the strap. 

Today, the Anglos (if there are any left in Shediac) are bussed to Moncton to go to school.  Shediac Central is now "Le Club d'Age d'Or Acadien".

Just one block from the house at the end of Pleasant Street was Shediac Beach.  This was where I learned to swim.  The beach at Shediac (now it's all part of the Shediac Yacht Club

The House on Gallagher St (the train tracks ran right alongside the house on the left side)

The driveway where we made a rink in the winter (flooded with hot water, no less!)

The place where Ed and I kept our first raft (next stop is PEI!) only back then it was a sandy beach without the rip-rap (rocks). 

Those buildings on the horizon from the middle of the photo above to the right is the wharf at Pointe-du-Chêne (we pronounced it "point duh sheen") where the pulp boats would periodically pull into the wharf and load up with pulp logs for the pulp-and-paper mills around Bathurst/ Newcastle way.  The pulp logs used to be stored about a mile down the tracks between our house on Gallagher St and Point de Chine.  One night around 1957-58 the logs caught on fire.  It lit up the sky for miles around. 

Mrs Sales' House (my grade 1-4 teacher.  I was the only boy in the class with 4 (or was it 5 girls.  Let me see.  Dawn Lynn Gildart, Betty-Lou Crossman, a Poirier girl (Roger Gallant's cousin))

While the Town of Shediac was predominently French Acadian and Catholic, Shediac Cape was predominently English Canadian and Protestant.  In Shediac, there were two churches - the large Catholic church (with the Sisters' school next door and the Brothers' school two blocks away) and the United Church.  When we first arrived in Shediac, we attended the United Church which was at the eastern edge of the downtown one block from the train tracks.  I remember that Allan Tait was my Sunday school teacher.  Allan Tate owned Tate's General Store and lived in a large mansion on the western edge of the downtown as you entered Shediac (more on Allan Tait later).

There were two Protestant churches in Shediac Cape - the Anglican church and a small Baptist church.  When we got our first car two years later (a 1950 Austin), we started to attend the Anglican church in Shediac Cape.  It was here that Ed and I attended Cubs.  The cubmaster was Mr Hannah (John Hannah's father) who lived across the street from Shediac Central School).  He owned a Morris Minor (a very, very small car) and would drive about 4 of us over to Cubs every Friday night - John in the front, me and Ed and Jimmy Morrisey (I think) in the back.  When we later got our first bike (Ed and I had to share it - we alternated days), we would drive over to Shediac Cape and back on our bike.  Here's what the hall looks like today.  While it is under major renovations (a $1.3 million project and all paid for!), the wood is still the same.

I clearly remember playing "British Bulldog" - sort of like "Red Rover, Red Rover, come on over!".  It was in a field behind the church that I had my first camping experience - I lasted all of one day and got homesick - and first played softball.

Mom was brought up in the Anglican church - or rather  the Church of England as she was born and raised in England.  Being true to her roots, she attended the Anglican church.  Shortly thereafter, Dad attended the Baptist church.  On a Sunday, we would drive over to the Anglican church and let Mom and Jen off, then we would drive back a ways where Dad, Ed and I would attend the Baptist church.

Here's what the Anglican church looks like today - St Martin's-In-The-Woods.  It was a very rich parish as it owned land along the beach in Point-du Chene.  The land was divided up into tiny postage-size lots and rented out to people who built little cottages on the land.  They would travel up from Moncton on the train on a Friday night in the Spring and Fall and then back to work on Monday morning.  During the summer, they lived at their cottages all the time.

By comparison, the Baptist church were the poor cousins.  All they had was a small building on about half an acre of land.  I visited the church back in 1993 where I met Dick (I forget his last name but he delivered the Toronto Star Weekly when the Toronto Star Weekly was the Canadian equivalent of Life, Time, and Cosmopolitan magazines.  The church was sold some time in the late 1990s as there were very few parishoners.

The church is now a private residence. 

After touring all of the old places that my brother and I inhabited, we then drove down to Point-du-Chene and Parley Beach.  Back in the 1950s, there were a number of dance halls along the beach.  One of these was owned by the CNR War Vets - much like the Legion.  Dad ended up being the Secretary of the club which required him keeping track of the money and what was going on at the dance hall.  I clearly remember the juke box, the old 1950s songs, and the young teenagers jiving to the music.  That music has stuck in my memory for a lifetime.

The Captain & Mrs Hubley's house where we got our first "kitten".   Living in Shediac was a great place if you loved the movies.  For 25 cents we got to see the Saturday matinee at the local movie theatre.  It always started off with a cartoon or two - Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang.  This would be followed by a "serialized" short movie - the Little Rascals, Lone Ranger, The Three Stooges.  And then came the feature film - usually a western starring the likes of Audey Murphy, Randolph Scott, and other famous "oatburner" actors.  It was here that I developed my love of the movies and of musicals - Rogers and Hammersteins "Oklahoma" with Joel McRae.  The only time that we got to see a movie at the theatre in the evening was "Oklahoma" - right after we had seen it that afternoon at the matinee.  Mom and Dad wanted to see it, we had no babysitter, and it was cheaper to bring us 3 kids to the evening movie than to pay a babysitter.

Anyhooo............  I digresss.......................

Yes, the photo below is where the Captain and Mrs Hubley lived.  One Saturday afternoon as we were walking back from the matinee, Ed and I spied a cat on the porch of the house in the photo below.  We stopped to pet and stroke the cat and as we did, Mrs Hubley came out to speak to us.  She invited us inside to see the kittens that her cat had delivered.  We wondered if we could get a kitten (I don't recall how that conversation came up) but we would have to ask Mom and Dad if we could have a kitten.  We raced home where we got our parents approval, returned to Mrs Hubley's who then brought the kitten over to the house.  Well, the kitten was more like a cat and we named it "Tommy".  It was a tabby cat that was a real lap cat.  At the same time, it was also a mouser who would go across the street to the open fields and come back with a mouse in its mouth.

A few months later, there was an orange-and-white cat at the door which was obviously pregnant (but we didn't know what that was at that time).  We woke up one Christmas to find a whole bunch of kittens in a cardboard box next to the wood stove in the kitchen.  Here was the orange-and-white female cat in the box with her kittens and Tommy was climbing into the box.  Wow!!  A real cat family with the mommy-cat, the daddy-cat and the baby-cats..................

It wasn't until about 10 years later that Mom told us the whole story.  Seems as if Tommy was really a Tessie.  She had had her litter but they were all still-born.  Mom got rid of the dead kittens.  At the same time, the orange-and-white cat had her kittens and so the job of feeding the kittens were shared by both cats.  

The Crossman's house (where Betty Lou and Rodney Crossman lived)

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