Robert Wright
AUDIO INTERVIEW
SUMMARY
November 3, 2016
00:05 Raylea’s intro and welcome.
00:32 LIFE OF A CHILD: Bob was born in the town of Weston in a private hospital north of the Humber. His parents worked for Kodak. He discusses various addresses where he and his family lived.
01:27 SCHOOLS / LIFE OF CHILD: He went to kindergarten at Regal Road School. They lived on St. Clair Avenue in various apartments above stores.
02:34 SCHOOLS: Bob talks about how Toronto schools were divided up according to different athletic associations. He walked from Oakwood and St. Clair to Dufferin and Davenport four times per day through his primary school years.
04:07 NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE: Was there a community of families above the stores? Not really, but he had other friends.
04:26 PERSONAL INFORMATION: The family moved to Crang Ave. (above a store) when he was 7 years old. His parents lived there for 25 years. Bob started working at 18 or 19 and still lived at home.
05:20 MEMORABLE EVENTS / WEATHER: Snowstorm: They lived there during the great 1944 snowstorm. The snow was so high they could not get out of the house! It shut down the city for a day or longer.
06:09 DELIVERY PEOPLE: He mentions getting ice from Lake Simcoe Ice and that very few had refrigeration.
06:32 NEIGHBOURHOOD STREET LIFE: Winter: His Mother hung out sheets on a line in the back of the apartment and they froze solidly.
07:10 NEIGHBOURHOOD: The apartments were owned by the Crang family, an old farming family which had an estate at the top of the hill on Oakwood Avenue. They owned a lot of property in the area.
07:58 / LIFE OF A CHILD / RECREATION: What was St. Clair like back then? There wasn’t too much traffic. There was a really good fastball league at Oakwood Collegiate. It was great fun to watch fastball teams from greater Toronto there. There was a good outdoor hockey rink at Oakwood.
09:02 LIFE OF A CHILD: They were given immense freedom as kids in the 40s. A local police officer watched out for them and their behaviour. They walked to school on their own. Bob was an only child. His maternal grandfather lived with them for a time. Living in an apartment, it was more difficult to get the feeling of neighbourhood than for those living in a house. They had to be home when the street lights went on at night. They often used “road apples” as pucks when playing street hockey in winter. He explains that there were lots of horses in those days, so they used frozen horse droppings (“road apples”).
12:00 DELIVERY PEOPLE / LIFE OF A CHILD: Summer Jobs: The milkman, breadman and iceman would use horses. Bob drove a horse and wagon delivering for Brown’s Bread when he was 15 during the summer of 1948. He fondly remembers one of the horses named “Faye”. It was a pretty easy route and he probably had 100 stops. His first delivery would be at 7 am and he was done by 1:00 pm.
15:09 NEIGHBOURHOOD / RECREATION: Bob was a lifeguard at the Oakwood Swimming Pool for a while. The Oakwood Stadium, behind where the LCBO is now, east of Robina, had football games. ORFU played for the Grey Cup in those days. There were also boxing matches in the summer.
18:34 TRANSIT: The St. Clair streetcar went to Keele. The Weston Road streetcar had a trolley at either end. A potbelly stove kept them warm in winter. Sometimes it couldn't get up the Black Creek hill in winter, so passengers would help push the streetcar.
20:09 TRANSIT / LIFE OF A CHILD: Bob sold Toronto Stars and Telegrams at the corner of Oakwood and St. Clair. The Bay Street streetcar went along Davenport to Avenue Road, then up to St. Clair and terminated at Oakwood. The Oakwood streetcar terminated at Keele, and the Rogers Road streetcar terminated out near Weston Road. The newspapers were 3 cents in those days! Bob remembers when FDR died and they had to shout the news out loud to sell more newspapers.
22:09 WARS: WWII: Bob recalls the schools collecting metals that were melted down for munitions. He remembers VE Day and that on VJ Day he was in Chinatown where the celebration was incredible, particularly as the Chinese had been so badly treated by the Japanese during the war.
23:54 TRANSIT: On the Old Weston Rd. the streetcar driver collected the money. They didn’t have to turn around, as the car could be driven from either end. The Bay streetcar was more modern and had a conductor and a driver. It took you right downtown.
25:46 WEATHER / LIFE OF A CHILD / WORK: Bob remembers coping with the heat in the summer. Many residents would go down to Sunnyside Park on really hot nights. It was cooler by the water, so some residents would sleep down there and go directly to work the next day. It was common to see thousands of people sleeping outdoors in the parks. There was very little AC in Toronto at that time. There was no air conditioning where Bob worked in the printing industry in Liberty Village. “It was just hot!”
28:00 ENTERTAINMENT: He remembers The Royal George Theatre and, further east, the St. Clair movie house, east of Dufferin. The Paramount was near Lauder and the Oakwood Theatre near Oakwood. They went on Saturday afternoons to see kids’ movies (serials and westerns). In their teenage years they went to dances. It was the big band era. He recalls going to the Balmy Beach, the West End Y, the Palais Royale and to Masaryk Hall at Queen and Cowan. The Silver Slipper was at Robina and St. Clair on the second floor.
30:55 LIFE OF A YOUTH: A boat called the Cayuga went every Saturday at midnight over to Port Dalhousie and got back at 5 am. They danced all night to a big band on board.
31:39 SHOPS: Bob remembers a shoe company near Crang called Calderone Shoes and two meat shops between Appleton and Crang. The drug store at the NW corner of Crang and St. Clair was owned by Abe Goldblatt. Bob rode a bike and did deliveries for him.
33:15 LIFE OF A CHILD / RAVINES: There used to be a bridge over the ravine at Bathurst and St. Clair. They would play games all day long there in the woods. Now it’s all fill down there including St. Mike’s field.
36:03 He recalls that on Eglinton Ave., when he was three or four, they would go over the “thunder” bridge. It was built with timbers and made a rumbling noise as you drove over it.
37:58 Bob remembers tobogganing at High Park and at Riverdale, as well as at Winston Churchill Park.
39:35 SCHOOLS / RECREATION: Bob was on the swim team at Oakwood Collegiate. There was a 20 yard pool. Mr. Reynolds was his coach. He was a rebellious youth and “didn’t aspire to scholastic norms”. He attended Oakwood for three years then switched to Western Tech. He was on the championship West End Y swim team located at College and Dovercourt. They competed against other YMCAs and some private schools. Bob received good training in marketing and accounting at Western Tech. He took the Annette bus to school.
42:50 RECREATION: There was a huge roller skating rink on Christie Street where the big apartment building is now. They had wonderful music. He was 12 or 14 years old at the time. Bob’s father was a championship 5-pin bowler and Bob used to set pins at the Dufferin Bowling Alley at the corner of Dufferin and St. Clair on the west side. There was also one called the Bowl Away at the corner of Bathurst and St. Clair, but it burned down in the ‘70s. It was a spectacular fire because of all the hardwood in the alleys.
44:30 PERSONAL INFORMATION: In 1955, Bob went to England for 2 years to further his education, then came back to work in the printing industry here. He met his wife in Winnipeg and when she came to Toronto, they lived in various areas of the city before moving back to the St. Clair neighbourhood in 1970.
46:05 LIFE OF A CHILD / NEIGHBOURHOOD: A lot stayed the same in this neighbourhood for a long time. His grandfather used to go every afternoon to the Chateau Dufferin for a beer. Near the Dufferin Library there was a big fountain for watering horses back in the day.
48:17 SHOPS / VENDORS: He recalls Brown’s Bread and various milk companies (Borden’s and Silverwoods). Brown’s Head Office was on Eastern Avenue.
49:25 SHOPS: Loblaws used to be at Oakwood and St. Clair. The Bank of Nova Scotia at the corner of Oakwood and St. Clair has been there forever. There was a United Cigar Store on the NE corner of Oakwood and St. Clair.
50:48 NEIGHBOURHOOD: This area felt like part of the suburbs when he grew up. It was considered a “streetcar suburb”.
51:20 NEIGHBOURHOOD: He recently read a book on the Group of Seven and they were talking about a poverty stricken area at Lansdowne and St. Clair in the teens and 1920s. Some members of the Group of Seven did some paintings there.
52:13 PARKS / LIFE OF A CHILD: At Earlscourt Park they used to get a dollar on Sunday nights from some of the local roustabouts who played crap games which were, of course, illegal. The gamblers “paid four of us a dollar each to go to all four corners of the park with a whistle” and let them know if the cops were coming.
53:25 PERSONAL INFORMATION: Did your family belong to a church? No. Bob gives a bit of his parents’ history.
54:14 WARS / MEMORABLE EVENTS / LIFE OF A CHILD): Bob recounts a funny story about the Oakwood (Crang) Swimming Pool. Men and women were working 12 hour shifts in munitions factories, and when their shifts ended at 9 or 10 at night they would come to swim in the dark. We would all go over to the YMCA (on Robina) and look down at the swimming pool and watch 200 or so factory workers go swimming in the buff! Munitions factories were all over the city, especially in industrial areas along the rail lines.
56:43 WORK / WARS: The building that he worked in for 50 years down in Liberty Village, The Liberty Building, was used to make automatic machine guns that were used during World War II. During the First World War that area was used for making shells, which were shipped to Halifax, then overseas.
57:56 WORK / LIFE OF A CHILD: Bob worked one summer for St. Clair Ice Cream at St. Clair and Lansdowne. He made ice cream, which was really fun. It was a great summer job because it was cool. They discuss his other summer jobs for awhile. He had to be 15 when he worked at the ice cream shop because he got a chauffeur's driver’s license when he was 15. This allowed him to drive any type of vehicle. There were lots of jobs after the war. “I grew up in a fortunate time.”