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......................

 

Broad Perspectives......Then's, Now's and More History From Our Home Towns of Fort William and Port Arthur, Ontario....

Top photo #24 -?, #88 Albert Massaro, #87 Tony Massaro, #10 Don Marsh.......

We love to confront our broad perspective on history by seeing what was and of course what is now.  As historians we enjoy placing pictures over pictures to visualize how it was.  This one of the CLE Coliseum building taken in about 1957 is a perfect example along side the same Coliseum building we can still see on a daily basis if you're so inclined....you can actually go and stand on the same spot today where Albert Massaro's #88 car was.
Double click on
photos to enlarge.








The next photo is a little different....It is John Panvica driving the #83 1952 Studebaker....now John wanted this pretty ugly car mainly because it had a V8 engine 3 years before General Motors started putting them in their 1955 Chevys.
John didn't care what his car looked like.  It was still faster than your typical flathead Ford and faster also because the Studebaker was only one year old.  John had purchased a wrecked newer car and did do pretty well that year, and oh, you can see the Coliseum building behind the fence too.  How his car might have once looked.....is the nice new 1952 Studebaker 4 door sedan below.

The program line-up for 1953 below shows a picture of John and also shows him listed in the roster squared in blue.

A note here is that Jessiman Motors at that time was located on the South/West corner of May and Bethune Street where the new Tim Horton's is today.  Many of you will well remember the names on this stock car jockeys list from 1953.

                                                                             
This is what the SW corner of May & Bethune looked like before the new Tim's was built.....Jessiman Motors was right on this spot.    










Just as all those CLE racers did, many of us young racing enthusiasts had to find some great race car  material when we dug in our heels at Riverview Raceways.  Mind you, the old jalopies at the CLE could very well have been some very cool hot rods today.  Now all these years later we realized that we destroyed some pretty cool cars too.  The nice Teal car top left is a 1956 Pontiac 2-door sedan....the race car of the same vintage is my own that I raced at Riverview in 1968.  I had actually destroyed 4 old Pontiacs, 2 1955's and 2 1956's in total until I retired from racing.  The bottom photo in the left group photo is the location the race car picture was taken, near the corner of Brock and Frederica Street where I lived at the time.
The top of the two photo collage on the right is an advertisement for Bear Safety Service located at 519 E. Brock St.  Sam and Aldo were incredible front end men, and I brought many a vehicle there for a flawless front end alignment.  The building still exists today and near the top left of the bottom photo you can make out a bit of the original sign down at the southern end of Syndicate Ave.

Here's a nice photo of the Uncle Franks's Supper Club sign just before the building and sign were being readied for a total makeover.  My friend and HR&J proof reader Al Yahn and I decided that we should take a picture of our cars in front of the sign before it was gone forever....we're so glad we did.

 

 Uncle Franks was a pillar of the community for many years, and it was very nice to see someone purchase the old building and re-purpose it as another already well known eating establishment, known as Beaux Daddy's Grill House.
It's nice to see that the building was saved from the wrecking ball.
Kudos to Beaux Daddy's.....

Red Top Cabs was located on the north/east corner of Leith and Simpson Street as noted on the business card in the following collage.  I've had the metal flake decal from quite some time...and can't remember where it came from or actually how old it is.  It is quite large and likely would have been used on the doors of the cabs.

The following group of photos are such a part of my younger years.  We lived on Arthur St., about half a block east of Vicker's Park.  The CNR steam trains would go right down Arthur St. from a spur off the main line, and right past the house where I lived, then make a slow turn to the north starting at Marks St. towards the CNR station just before the Fort William Gardens....heading right down Vicker's St and re-joining the main line at the northern end.  The picture is taken just east of Marks St......the little grain elevator in the background is a Davidson Elevator (There were a few small Davidson's around the Lakehead including one on Hardisty St. which is now Boles Feed).  To put this all in perspective the photo below shows Arthur Square on the corner of  Marks and Arthur St. which is the exact location of the little Davidson Elevator.....there were many other small businesses in the area as well.

Continuing on with my neighborhood, I was quite a Roy Rogers fanatic as you can see.  At this young age and as I stood in the back yard of our brand new house on Arthur St. there was nothing to be seen between Franklin and Selkirk....everyone was just starting to do their landscaping, garage building etc.

Here is our house, how it looked in about 1954....my kid sister is leaning out the window as I stood on the train tracks across the street and took this picture.  Try to stand on Arthur St. on this spot today and you'd be run over.  My dad's mint refurbished wreck 1952 Chevrolet midnight blue, parked in front of our home.  If you go by there today, nothing much of the house has changed.

In the last two pictures taken from our doorstep facing north, you can see the train tracks across the street as well as a good view of the south side of St. Joseph's Boarding School as it was called then.  In the distance in the black and white photo to the right was St. Patrick's high school where I went for 3 more years after Selkirk High and where I met my future wife.
With my dad being the body shop manager of Kam Motors, he was able to fix a few wrecks for himself, but the '57 and '58 Chevrolet's you see below were actually company cars....the managers would get a new car to drive in the day...soon to end when the 1960's came along.  Oh, by the way, that's my little sister Daryle sitting on the hood of the '57.....she wasn't quite 5 years old.

Hope you enjoyed this new post....
Dave

113-119 Leith St., 234 Park St., Destroying Vintage Cars? and The Powder Puff Girls in our Home Towns of Fort William and Port Arthur

I am off to a great start in the last few days doing posts for my own facebook page and the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition Memories facebook page, but MOST importantly my premier site HR&J desperately needed this post that I have been working on for quite awhile....it is fairly lengthy but interesting with 25 photos.

The first photo here is extremely interesting.  The photo actually came from Richard Mark's FB page and as soon as I saw it I instantly knew what it was.  Sellers and Jones was an automotive dealership back in the late 1910's and into the 1920's.  I vaguely remember my father telling me a bit about the history of the original Kam Motors Limited building on Leith St., and the words Sellers and Jones had come to mind.  Incredibly the tall part of this building still exists to this very day, and through the years it was doubled in size by getting rid of the Sellers and Jones old wood tire store structure and adding an identical structure to the west of the original, making the address 113-119 Leith St.  That address is the same today.  The cars you see in the photos are likely 1918 Studebakers, or maybe Essex, or maybe Willys-Knight....it is truly very difficult to tell as many looked so much the same near the end of the Brass era.

However, before this became Kam Motors Limited, it went through another era from which there are no photographs or at least none found as yet.  I do have a few old invoices that tell their own stories as you will see.

Caption: 113-119 Leith Street, Fort William Ontario.  At the very end was a large Elevator and where the street lights are is Simpson St.

This is how the modern building looks recently and you can still count 6 large windows across the structure, and 3 across the old photo above, because as I mentioned, the building was doubled in size.  The only difference in the new photo to an actual today photo would be that the old Palace confectionery building still stands down at the corner of Leith and Simpson St.  That spot is a Used Truck dealer now.

OK...here we go...If you click on this 1927 Grain Port Motors Limited "Ford" Dealership invoice it oddly reads 113-119 Leith St. as a Fort William address with a phone number of S.1000.  Therefore Grain Port Motors occupied this space for awhile in and around 1927.

Grain Port Motors claim to fame was that it was likely a sponsor of sorts in the day for the famed local race car "The King's Special" a story about this car was written on these pages some time ago.

Below is a close-up of whats called a Moto Meter and sometimes called a Motor Meter, vividly displaying Grain Port Motors, Fort William and Port Arthur.
The photo next to it is none other than Frank Colosimo driving the "King's Special" here in the 1920's, sporting the Moto Meter shown below from the restored Kings Special.

So here is a pretty fuzzy photo of what Kam Motors looked like after Grain Port Motors short lived time there.  The building of course, as mentioned above is the Sellers and Jones building when it was doubled in size, but taken from a different angle.  It lived to be Kam Motors Limited owned by the Hubert Badanai family for well over half a century until the family decided to close the Kam Motors and Port Arthur Motors and open a new establishment on Memorial Ave. called Badanai Motors.  The very rear portion of the building today houses the Badanai Motors Auto Body Shop.
The Kam Motors Building still stands today even with part of the original signage and original wall on the east side of the building still showing as seen in the photo to the right.  It's still 113-119 Leith Street, and owned by Diamond Taxi.

My father gave Kam Motors Limited 33 years of his life as the Body Shop Manager.  The body shop was originally upstairs and there used to be a huge automobile elevator to bring the cars to the top level.  You can imagine dragging a total wreck onto the elevator and having to drag it back off once upstairs.  Kam also sold thousands of Chevrolet's Oldsmobile's and Cadillac's, but actually once sold Fords in the beginning and Hudson and Essex cars before General Motors cars were sold.  Kam also sponsored and built a Jalopy, or stock car which was driven by a few different guys in the day such as Canary Trevisan and Bill Chepil.  My father even raced it a couple of times.  In the photo to the right note the large doors that were for repairing large trucks, which you can see in the photo with the #34 Chevrolet 6 cylinder powered Jalopy below.

Here's a photo of my father taken in the brand new body shop which was built behind the main Kam building with none other than and Oldsmobile Tornado in the background.  My dad always wore a hat and a tie while at work managing the shop.











OK...here we go again...what was at 234 Park Street in Port Arthur.  From the following invoice it says Campbell Motor Company of Port Arthur, Limited....Central Garage.  The Invoice was made out to Pigeon Timber or in long terms it should say Pigeon River Timber, as in Pigeon River Minnesota.....or at least named after that.  Campbell Motor Company did reside at 234 Park Street as mentioned which is now the North parking lot for our Casino.  You can click on all these items to enlarge and see them better.

This is the logo for Pigeon River Timber...the client shown on the invoices.

Here is another invoice for Campbell Motor Company on 234 Park Street and shows that they sell Dodge Brothers Motor Cars and Graham Brothers Trucks.

Here are two advertising pieces that would have been in Campbell Motors Showroom in the day, as of course they sold these vehicles.  Check on the above invoice for this data.

.....and this is what 234 Park Street looks like today

Stock Cars:  In the early days of racing here especially the 1950's, so many possible hot rod projects got destroyed on the race track such as '32 Fords, '40 Fords and many old Chevrolet's, Chrysler products etc, but in the day that was only considered junk in someone's back yard.  When I started racing at Riverview raceways, the junk in the back yards were '55 to '57 Chevrolet's, Pontiac's early '50's Fords etc., and we destroyed those vehicles then just as they did in the '50's.  I destroyed 3 '55/'56 Pontiac 2-door sedans, one of which was so nice, I drove it home before we proceeded to tear it down for a race car and weld in roll bars.  I also did that to a '66 Dodge Charger in the early 1970's to race at Riverview.......here are the examples.  Now everyone wants these cars....the cycle will never end....BUT, what cars from today will people want in 20 or 25 years.  They all look the same just as they did in the 1910's....funny how history repeats itself.

Finally:  A subject in this post that I always wanted to bring up...that is, The Powder Puff Gals from the 1950's.  The promoters from our Canadian Lakehead Exhibition race track always wanted to please the fans....they never wanted fans to get bored just watching the same old thing, so they promoted events such as stock car drivers staging fights in front of the old grandstand that sometimes turned into the real thing or grudge racing between two rivals...and it kept the fans coming in and proof in the pudding was that there were many race days with five to six thousand fans in the 1950's.
One of my favorite promoted events was Powder Puff Racing.  Some brave young women, some being wives or even mothers of the drivers there at the CLE would take to the track in their sons or husbands cars in all out daredevil competition.  I was great to see but in the mind site of the car owners and drivers they were sitting on tacks hoping that their cars wouldn't be destroyed before the race was over, as they had to continue racing the same day.  Eventually they would race last on race days so that if there was ever an accident, the car could at least be repaired for the next race day.
The first photo series is actually a page out of the 1953 racing program at the CLE showing those brave gals putting the pedal to the metal in those Jalopies...click to enlarge.

The second one here is a newspaper cut out showing a nice photo of the winner of the day Leona Baarup.  Another newspaper group photo is shown below.
How I miss those simpler times and days and many times wishing they could still be around....but thank goodness many photographers took pictures and many writers for the newspaper wrote incredible re-caps of the racing days back in the times of Hotrods and Jalopies.

The writers of these articles were fabulous.....you can see in the top corner here July 9/1953

Hope you enjoyed this post......let us know if you did, and join blogger so you don't miss any posts.  Thanks, Dave