Christmas Memories in our Home Towns of Fort William and Port Arthur Ontario plus a few others...

Here's my annual Christmas Post with some familiar local photos and also some familiar memories that we likely all will remember.  The past year has been up and down for us and many others, but as Christmas draws near we try to calm ourselves and try to remember the things that made us happy throughout the years.

With that in mind, I start off with my annual FAKE NEWS magazine by taking a vintage magazine and make it look like a tongue in cheek edition of Hot Rods and Jalopies, a magazine that never was.

Note:  Try single or double clicking on each of the photos for good enlargements....

The next two photos many of you have seen before, but are two of my favourite local pictures from our storied past.  The first is how I remembered our city hall in Fort William, on the same property as the present one now in Thunder Bay.

 

 

 A holiday truth to remember.....

 

 

The following is a very typical seasonal Coca Cola advertisement from the 1960's

   

                                                         I just title this one "Oh nooooo!"

 

                  A very typical Street Scene in the 1940's anywhere in Canada or the USA......

Getting your Christmas tree in those days meant heading out to the bush to cut one down.  It was an annual event in our household to bring home as many as you could stack on your car for your families and or your neighbours too.

Most kids today never share in the enjoyment and excitement heading out to the bush for Christmas trees. 

You may remember seeing photos like this of your parents or grandparents with a tree on the roof of their Model T Ford.

Here is a small town shopping district on a winter's evening looking very cold, but your family may have been out looking for a last minute gift for someone special....and the weather wouldn't have mattered.

 

Treasure Chest Comics were a staple around our house at Christmas or any other time of the year.  They always depicted typical family stories and gatherings all year long

Every adult seemed to have smoked back in the day and Santa of course always smoked a pipe....so of course you'd see many pieces of advertising similar to this one.

A typical scene long before Mom and Dad were up.....and I'm sure you remember doing this, or maybe sneaking a peek or two at what was right under the tree from Santa.

Long before computers and the like.....I remember getting a Telegram from Santa.  How many young people even know what a Telegram is?

A television set in the house in the early 1950's was a rarity, but by the end of the 1950's almost every home had a typical Dumont, or maybe a Sylvania or RCA black and white television set.

                                  Or maybe mom or dad got a new Nash in 1951

                 Or a new Plymouth in 1948.....things were getting better after the war was over......

I'm coming to the end of the 2021 Christmas Post, but I would be remiss if I didn't post this great photo of my daughter-in-law and my granddaughter volunteering for this year collecting for the parade of lights.....what a beautiful pair and a beautiful moment.  We are so proud of you both for doing this.💓💓

                   Merry Christmas to all......and to all a Good Night......................

 

First 2015 Christmas Post...tongue in cheek magazine cover...etc. in our home towns of Fort William and Port Arthur, Ontario...

I'll start off by wishing everyone a Very Merry Christmas Season, and as we warm up to the Christmas shopping nightmare, we always need a little comic relief or at least something to get us in the mood for the business at hand.

Last year HR&J made up a vintage tongue in cheek Christmas magazine cover...and this year is no exception.  Here's the first one....click on everything in this post to enlarge.

Now...old car magazines of which I have hundreds of (duh...as if you didn't know) always have some pretty cool and interesting cartoons.....but as a kid, no wonder we didn't know how to spell anything correctly....they used incorrect spelling for tons of cartoons just like this one..... 

"ENDEERING THOT"....I hope that means "Endearing Thought"?.....LOL

This next little piece isn't a cartoon at all....Just a nice little drawing advertising Ford V8 Trucks, doing all that is needed to do for the Christmas season.

Here's a very seasonal and favourite picture I have posted before....but it is of my uncle Henry taken circa 1940 sitting on the hood of my dad's 1928 Studebaker Erskine, after loading enough trees to take home for the whole family...apparently it even had a heater.... You could have bought one Erskine in 1928 for under $1000. 

Getting Christmas trees in the day was always quite a challenge since many of the country roads were not looked after very well.  This is not a family photo but it is pretty old.  The title said it was a 1915 Chevrolet Series H-2 Royal Mail Roadster.  A summer picture of a similar model is also shown here

Here is my dad and as usual we are out for trees..... He is loading enough trees for the whole family back in 1958 using his Kam Motors Company Car...1958 Chevrolet BelAir.  This was an annual event from as far back as I can remember until he wasn't physically able to do it anymore.  

Sadly this is the first Christmas we are spending without my dad as he passed this past January at the ripe old age of 95.   Love you and miss you POP...

Here's a shot of how the BelAir would have looked from the rear.  The car above was "Forest Green" however.  The next item is how the invoice might have looked for dad's car in 1958

The next few photos are not local but gives you an idea of how crazy Christmas Shopping always was throughout the 20th century....enjoy...

Window shopping in the 1940's

Here's a couple of Christmas season shopping photos which could actually have been taken in any town USA or Canada in the 1960's.

Looking in the picture above you might find a 1936 Chevrolet to which Dad could have added all the accessories below.....and the same thing goes today.  When my wife asks me what I want for Christmas you already know what the answer would be................

"CAR PARTS"

Hope you enjoyed the first Christmas Post.....There will be another soon staring none other than my friend Roger Rickards and all the great under the tree items he and his brother got for Christmas back in the day.....

Christmas Season Post #4 - Roger's Childhood Christmases 1948-62 here in Fort William and Port Arthur, Ontario......

All of you may recall that last Christmas I did a few posts as well, one featuring my good friend Roger Rickards and all the wonderful toys he received when he was a child here in Fort William, Ontario.  Have a look again at last years post (link below) then come back to see more of Roger's childhood at Christmastime.
Last Years Christmas Post - Roger
....then scroll down for some more photos and we will decipher what is under the Christmas tree as well as a surprise way down at the end of this post.

Here is Roger in 1948 about 1 year old and under his family's Christmas tree opening up his treasures..... In Fort William and Port Arthur, Ontario back then, times were simpler, and of course as a child you had nary a care in the world....but like any child then and now, you could barely wait until Christmas to open up your presents.

The first of the toys Roger unwrapped was this wooden toy...I think every child must have had one of these at one time or another.  They were made by many manufacturers as well and called a toy lawn mower, clickety clack toy or whatever.

Be sure again to click on all the photos in this post once or twice to enlarge....

In this next 1948 photo Roger has many more toy presents opened including a whistling top, a riding steam engine and a wagon full of great treasures....some to be explained below....

The following collage is that of a number of riding steam engine toys of the era, and none of which were actually identical to his....

...Then the whistling top.....every child had one or more of these in their lifetime....

I have always appreciated vintage ornaments, especially the blown glass ones.  The vintage pine cone ones shown below were quite common for their day, but when my kid brother Corey was little, our parents put only plastic decorations on the bottom two feet of the tree, because there would be none left intact by the time Christmas came.

Here's Roger looking totally content riding on his train.... and look at all the wonderful items in the background....The American Beauty wagon, the tree light reflectors, the vintage (likely Zenith) upright radio that the family gathered around to listen to Christmas music and shows, and the toys inside the wagon.

Lastly, the icicles on the tree (we called them tinsel) that actually had lead content.

My uncle Wally had the most perfect tree of anyone I ever knew.  year to year he would actually iron the tinsel so they hung perfectly straight.  It would take him weeks to finish decorating the tree.

Below is a colour photos of what the American Beauty wagon would look like, and in the wagon was this fantastic little Ferry Boat toy complete with little 1940's plastic toy cars.  We're not sure exactly what the other items in Roger's wagon are.

The next two items are fairly close to what is shown in the black and white photo above.  Here we have a Zenith upright radio, which was an absolutely beautiful piece of furniture in the day, where the family would gather round every evening, sit together and enjoy all the excellent broadcasting that was available in those days.  Then there were the light reflectors (metal of course).  You would unscrew a bulb, place the reflector over the base of the bulb and screw the bulb back in.  I was always leery about getting an electric shock from these babies....and as I recall my dad did once or twice.

In this next photo, we are jumping ahead to 1953....Roger's brother Bob was just an infant (I don't see any toys for Bob...I guess Roger got all of the incredible toys shown here.  Bob was even too young for an abacus....well maybe the Bobo Clown was his....LOL

Their dog Panda also raked in a ton of his favourite canned treat "Pard Dog Food".

OK...here's the abacus and the slush cast RED tractor, likely by the Tootsie Toy Company.

.....and here is the Junior Doctor Kit, the Binoculars and the Bobo Clown which might have been Bob's...

Finally from the picture above we get to the PARD dog food....I'm thinking....could this be Roger'stoo?  Roger said his dog's name was Panda, but I don't see any dogs in any of the photos.  

                                              Forgive me Roger, I couldn't resist.... :-)

For these final few Christmastime photos and graphic items we jump to 1962...Roger would be about 15 years old, smack dab in the age of adolescence.  Yes...now we have colour photos.  

I truly loved the decorating in that era here in the Lakehead cities of Fort William and Port Arthur.  I remember my parents home looking almost exactly the same inside...similar nick-knacks, furniture and draperies.

BUT.....look what is just to Roger's left on the chair... It's an AMT model kit.....not just any model kit, but George Barris' New for 1962 Ala-Kart double kit....build the Ala-Kart and the stock model A in one kit.....WOW

We all loved our model car kits....so much so that I still build 1;25 scale model cars to this day.

OK....there is one more photo below.........SCROLL DOWN to see how we view Roger today........

WE HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS 2014 - There will only be one more small post before Christmas Day - from Dave and his entire family at Hot Rods and Jalopies!!!