HR&J's President Kennedy Tribute.....and what Fort William and Port Arthur, Ontario was doing on that day....

     Everyone who was at least 11 or 12 years old or older when President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 will pretty much remember where they were and what they were doing on that fateful day.  For myself, I was working at Spicer's Tire Service (my first real job) on May St., and was doing some Friday work in the office when it was announced on the radio.

     I don't have the actual newspaper from the day that President Kennedy was assassinated, but I have two Fort William Newspapers from November 23, 1963, the day after the assassination as well as a November 25th, 1963 front page shown halfway through this post.  I wanted to show everyone a few bits and pieces from the two newspapers just to give you an idea of what was going on in our two cities at the time.  CLICK ON ALL THE ADS AND CLIPPINGS BELOW ONCE AND/OR TWICE FOR SCREEN SIZE ENLARGEMENTS!

 

 

The following advertisements were in the above newspaper.  Some interesting tidbits of what our cities were doing during that era.

Remember the wonderful Chapples
Santa Claus Show?

HELD OVER!

 

Macleods Department Store and Automotive Centre was on 201 S. Syndicate with a MAyfair phone number, and a little further south down Syndicate Ave at Arthur Street was Arthur and Syndicate B/A service run by Terry Lacey and Ken Taylor.

Check out the prices here...Pork Chops 49¢ a pound, and soup at only .09¢ a tin.

You could also buy a '57 Plymouth 2-door hardtop V8 standard transmission for only $475.

Hard to believe!!

 

This next Daily Times Journal was out 3 days after President Kennedy's assassination.

 

 

Two of the major Department Stores of the day were of course Eaton's of Canada and Chapples Limited.  If you double click on these following two ads, you can enjoy seeing some styles and prices of the day.

 


Chapples Limited Victoria Ave.

 Eaton's Christmas Shopping day for these fine items.....
The prices are great!!
































It's great to see the so called ultra-modern ski equipment of the day....technology has completely changed how we even downhill ski anymore in the 21st century...

Buy a new Corvair at Kam Motors
Remember Ralph Nader's book "Unsafe
at Any Speed". 

We watched "Irma la Douce" at the
Capitol Theatre.



ABOVE - George Burke Jewelers was at the corner of Arthur and Cumberland Streets in Port Arthur....now Arthur Street is Red River Road after our two cities amalgamated. 

Wow....you could buy a 3 bedroom cottage for only $5500. which is about 1/5th the cost of an average good car today.

Uncle Franks Supper Club is now Beaux Daddy's today.

......and Gordon Wilson and Mickey Hennessy were running for aldermen on November 25th, 1963...only 3 days after President Kennedy was assassinated.

Hoped you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed doing it.......... RIP JFK.

SODA POP, THE KING AND QUEEN, AN OLD LANDMARK, & Homes I lived in back then......

Here are some more then and now items starting off with The Kakabeka Falls Brewing Co. Ltd. here in Fort William Ontario beginning with Big "4" Line soda pop beverages distributed by the KB Falls Brewing Co.  This is a great logo that you may see with a diesel locomotive or a steam locomotive.  The bottles in my collection have silk-screened labels.   The picture below also shows a reverse colour label from Fort William, and another from Sudbury Brewing and Malting Co. Ltd.
Be sure to click on all items for enlargements.



Big "4's"

"Letterhead"

Here is some Northern Breweries history and also the property as it looks today on the corner of Marks and Cameron St.  Clow Darling presently occupies the old brewery property.

THE ROYAL TOUR 1939

The next items on this post refer to a Royal Tour back in 1939 by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth I.  The tour as you can read here was from May 17 until June 15 back in 1939.

HISTORY

Here is the King and Queen as they arrived at the CPR station on Syndicate Ave. in Fort William Ontario.  In the background is the old Ogilvie Elevator which still stands to this very day.






The next photo is that of the King and Queen's motorcade turning south on Memorial Ave. from John Street road, and by clicking on these photos you may recognize some business establishments or houses that still exist to this day.  This things you see in the sky are all the overhead cables for the street cars that travelled these routes....one can be seen in the background waiting to get through.





The final colour photo here is how this same corner looks today.  Some of those tall peaked roof lines are visible in both photos.




NEXT:

The King and Queen in motorcade in front of Central School, the present day site of Patterson Park directly across from the new court house.

The King and Queen in their McLaughlin-Buick touring coach in front of the Pagota on Water Street in Port Arthur.

These next two photos are of the King and Queen signing the city register at the present day corner of May Street and William street just south of the river and across from the old fairgrounds(present day Silver City parking lot.  You can see the river to the left and the elevators in the background.  Either the "Welcome to Port Arthur" arch was not constructed by then or it is just out of the photo to the left.  One photo is an Internet photo and the other is a family photo...each a bit different.  You can just make out the corner of the old Canadian Lakehead Exhibition Grandstand to the right and near top of each photo. 

The picture here shows the exact angle the two photos above were taken.  Even though the wire fence was probably taken down and removed many times in the past...it still looks the same.







Here is a story of the McLaughlin- Buick that King George VI and Elizabeth I used on their tour above. Click On.

NEXT:  I am reversing the order of the following two photos to show the huge difference in this piece of property. 

We all know this as the present day Kam River Park, but it was once a very bustling place.  It used to be the Canadian Pacific Railway freight sheds.  I spent many a day as a kid riding my bicycle down here to see all the beautiful cruise ships that came and went such as the S.S. Assiniboia and the S.S. Keewatin. 

Kam River Park

Here is a wonderful photo of my future mother-in-law with a friend(circa 1940), standing on the pier and behind them is the Canadian Pacific Railway freight sheds and further in the distance is one of the cruise ships mentioned above and also Elevator "B" which would have been at the foot of Victoria Ave.

Next and Finally for this post - "HOUSES" then an now!

The above photo is of the first home my parents purchased at 432 E. Francis Street in Fort William, and this is how it looks today.  It's the only house in the area that has that strange little sloped roof-line in the front.  When we lived there, it had a dug-out basement and I thought it was pretty cool that I could go downstairs and play with my toy cars all winter long.

This is the last photos on this post and showing the home we lived in on Arthur Street in Fort William until I was married.  The old photo above has my dad's '52 Chevy in front with my little sister peering out the window.  I remember actually taking this photo myself in about 1954 and standing pretty much on the train tracks to take it.  The steam engines ran right up Arthur street in those days.  I helped my father build an upper level in the house which would be my own bedroom.

A BIG THANK YOU to all those who loaned or donated photos to this post, previous posts and ones yet to come.  A blog such as this could not happen without great PHOTOS! ☼☼☼

"ALL GAVE SOME, BUT SOME GAVE ALL"....Remembrance Day in Thunder Bay, Ontario - Monday Nov. 11 2013....

We only have a few veterans left from the second world war and none from the first world war so if you encounter a veteran be sure to thank him or her for their sacrifice so that we may enjoy the freedom we have today.  "All gave some, but some gave all!"

The first world war, "A WAR TO END ALL WARS" was sadly not enough of an impact on Canada and its allies to actually make it such, as on Sept 11, 1939, Canada again declares war.















Below are two articles firstly from the Port Arthur daily news and another article from a Fort William newspaper both printed in August of 1914.  If you click once or twice on these and all the other pictures, they can be read and seen in better resolution.

Canadian Soldiers in the trenches....would you want to be there?

"THEY DIED THAT WE MAY LIVE"

"A different 9-11 back in 1939"

     This is an incredible photo of the Algonquin Regiment leaving Port Arthur, Ontario on June 4th 1941.  In the background is a steam engine at the Port Arthur Canadian Pacific Railroad station torn down many years ago and today, Water Street near Marina Park runs right through this property.  Off to the left in a gold square is the Hydro sub-station which still exists today as seen in the next photo.  Look hard and you may recognize someone you love....also look at those young faces heading off to fight for our freedom.  Click on photo for a closer look!

The Hydro sub-station as seen today.

The following picture is an unknown regiment.  They are gathered to march in McKellar Park.  McKellar Park's present location is where McKellar Park school is today, just to the north of the Fort William Curling Club...be sure to look at the rest of the photos below.  These soldiers are marching with Lee-Enfield British rifles (a closer photo of one is below). 

When I was in sea cadets back in the 1950's we would shoot these in rifle range at the old Fort William Armory which would be located to the right and behind in the following photo. 

These rifles weighed 8.8 lbs...so imagine carrying one of these around on parade or in the battle field with all the other gear a soldier would have to wear.  I could barely lift it to take one shot!

This McKellar Park field was used for local baseball, football, and was the starting point for many a Fort William Parade.  Off in the distance with a gold square is the Sweet Caporal score board for the sports field...more data on that below. 

 

Below is an old Sweet Caporal cigarette package which actually displayed WWII planes so as to help identify what you may see flying overhead.  My father(still living today at 94 years) was a Sergeant in the Canadian Army then and stationed in Victoria, BC. where they were guarding the west coast after Pearl Harbor was bombed.  They thought the Japanese were going to do the same to Canadian Naval bases along the coast.  While there, he also taught an aircraft recognition course.


McKellar Park and school as it looks today.

Sweet Cap aircraft recognition package WWII.

Here is a colored picture of a Sweet Caporal Cigarettes scoreboard.

THE LEE-ENFIELD BRITISH BOLD ACTION RIFLE.

If you want more data on the Lee-Enfield, you can go to Wikipedia here then come back to view the rest- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee-Enfield

 

You can also view other years of Remembrance Day posts with some incredible local photos on this blog as follows -

2009 - http://hotrodsandjalopies.blogspot.ca/2009/11/lest-we-forgetremembrance-day-november.html

 

2010 - http://hotrodsandjalopies.blogspot.ca/2010/11/lest-we-forgetremembrance-day-november.html

 

2011 - http://hotrodsandjalopies.blogspot.ca/2011/11/lest-we-forget-remembrance-day-2011-20.html

 

2012 - http://hotrodsandjalopies.blogspot.ca/2012/11/remembrance-day-in-thunder-bay-ontario.html

 

A HUGE THANK YOU TO ALL OUR VETERANS OF ALL WARS