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Archibald Alexander’s Family Story
Archibald Mirk Alexander returned to Stalybridge to marry Mary Bailey, daughter of Joseph and Eliza Bailey at St.Paul’s Church, Staley Parish, on December 29th 1907. Their attendants were his brother George and sister-in-law to be Emma Blacker. Both bride and groom wore a sprig of white heather to show they were abstainers. George and Mary had five children: John born 20 November 1908 in Sheffield, England
When they were married Archibald was working as a ticket collector for the London Northeastern Railroad in Sheffield. He was making about One Pound (about $5.00 at that time) per week, and after they were married they scrimped and saved every possible penny. At the end of a year they had saved one pound and this convinced them they had to find better prospects for the future. They decided to move to Canada where some of Mary’s family was living and where Archibald’s brother William had moved to the west. Archibald came first in August of 1909 and his family followed in October. With Mary and her infant son, John, were Mary’s mother and father, Joseph and Eliza Bailey and her brother Joseph. They arrived in Montreal on the Laurentic on 29 October 1909. The family settled on St. Urbain Street in Montreal.
(In 1981, George wrote about his parents, Archibald and Mary, for their grandchildren. Much of the following information comes from that story.) Winter was coming on and Archibald needed a needed a job and took one at $10.00 a week on a firewood sawing machine. All went well until Grandpa made a double cut- the log and the end of his left thumb! He also worked at the Brandram-Henderson paint factory, as did all the Baileys at some time, and later in the pattern shop of Dominion Bridge Company.
For much of their three years in Montreal they lived on St. Urbain Street where they seem to have had more Italian neighbours than French Canadian or English; in fact when they moved west, Mary said Johnny spoke better Italian than either other language. Besides Archibald’s loss of part of his thumb, Mary caught diphtheria or Scarlet Fever and was left with some complications that took months to clear. Archibald joined the choir at the large St. James United Church in downtown Montreal.
Archibald’s brother Bill was urging them to move west where a great land boom was in progress as well as the oil boom in Alberta. Saskatchewan and Alberta had not long since been carved out of the Northwest Territories and set up as separate provinces. Building was going on at a furious pace in Winnipeg and the future seemed to have no limits. In February 1913, after three years in Montreal, Archibald left by train to establish a place for the family in Winnipeg. Mary followed a few months later with all their belongings in a large wooden box, traveling with great enjoyment with two model children via colonist coach. The wooden box sat on the upstairs landing at 159 Ferry Road for many years.
The boom was still on when Archibald arrived in Winnipeg and he soon had a job at $25.00 a week with Charlie Young, owner of a leading garage on Cumberland Avenue just west of Donald Street, repairing tires. He learned the business there and stayed until 1920.When Mary arrived the domestic side was set up, in a small frame house on Toronto Street close to St. Matthews Avenue. Before long they moved to a similar house on the east side of Toronto Street near Portage Avenue. There Bill joined the family.
A year or two later they moved across the street to number 254, a nice two storey house. The eaves troughs there drained into a huge storage tank in the basement and provided a supply of soft rain water as a welcome alternative to the hard well water, which was Winnipeg’s public water supply then. Marion was born at 254 Toronto Street.
They lived on Toronto Street for about four years. Archibald took an interest in photography using a postcard sized folding camera he obtained from Mrs. West upstairs, she having worked for the Eastman family at Rochester New York. Occasionally the family was all subjected to the ordeal of having their pictures taken and later he got Uncle Bill Alexander’s camera equipment including a camera set up on a tripod and equipped with a cloth hood under which Archibald had to disappear from time to time while taking a picture. Also at one time he set up his own darkroom for developing and printing.
Meanwhile the First World War was going on in Europe and cars and trucks were being used for the first time, therefore tire repairmen were needed. Recruiting officers came to the house to enlist Archibald but the Boer War had been enough for him. Also he now had a growing family to raise and they could not persuade him into the Army again.
The children had few recollections of Archibald in their early years probably because they did not spend much time with him. He worked six days a week for long hours. Children then went to bed early, summer vacations were not then a custom. There were three moves and two new babies in that time. They sometimes travelled by street car for picnics at City Park or nearby St. James Park.
In 1917, they moved to 211 Langside Street and lived there for four years. The house itself was a typical Winnipeg house of that time, frame with a small dugout basement, heated by a Quebec heater plus a coal and wood range with attached water heater in the kitchen. The upstairs was heated by a stove pipe passing through the bedrooms plus open grills in the floor. The lot was a good size with fertile black soil and Archibald and Mary had a productive garden while they were there. They soon built a chicken coop from a couple of piano boxes, and Mary had about twenty chickens for both eggs and the table. Some of the eggs were sold for the fabulous price of $1.00 a dozen. Behind the house were open fields almost all the way down to Westminster Avenue and the Assiniboine River. There were mushrooms in those fields and the boys were out after every shower collecting bags of them.
At the back of the house, an unheated shed was attached and in winter this was a great storehouse for food. They would get ten bushels of potatoes at a time, ninety-eight pound bags of flour, and one hundred pound bags of sugar. Archibald would get half a pig from a farmer and Mary would pickle part of it in brine and salt down the hams. Once frozen, early in the winter, there were not many worries in Winnipeg about it thawing until the following April, or maybe May, or maybe June! When it got really cold, the potatoes went down into the dugout cellar, reached through a trap door in the floor. Eggs, when they could afford not to sell them, also went into the basement to be put down in isinglass in big stoneware jars. Vegetables from the garden were left in the ground as long as safe, some of the parsnips until the following spring, the rest kept at a cool temperature.
Washday was something else. The washing was done by boiling in big oval tubs on top of the stove, agitating occasionally with a perforated copper cup on the end of a handle. In summer it was hung outside to blow in Winnipeg’s non-stop breezes, hung inside in winter sending the humidity up to about 150 percent. Mary was using sad irons then, heated on top of the stove, picked up with removable handles and used until they cooled and needed changing.
The Hecia Apartments at Landside and Broadway were heated by wood-burning boilers and their woodpile provided a good place to play. In the autumn they would get the winter’s supply of cordwood and it would be piled about eight feet high, four feet wide and a couple of hundred feet in length. The caretaker’s two boys would hollow out an area big enough to conceal three or four children and it made a dandy fort. The caretaker was a woman and, with help from the boys, moved the wood, as required, across the street, into the basement and fed the fires as needed often re-charging during cold nights.
The Alexander’s house was close to Broadway and there were far more horse-drawn wagons on the streets than cars and trucks, so all day long they could hear the jingle of harness bells from the traffic along Broadway. The Legislative Buildings were under construction about half a mile east at Broadway and Osborne. They could hear the noise of riveting and hammering and could see the building rising above the intervening houses. The site of the Legislative Buildings was formerly used for Army barracks and was probably the origin of Fort Osborne Barracks, the headquarters for Military District 10. There was an Ice Palace. The Carnival ended with that construction, but nearby, on the Assiniboine River were the toboggan slides, a great thrill to ride and they may still be located there in winter.
Archibald decided he should bike to work and bought a bicycle and set himself to learn to ride, something he showed no signs of having done while younger. The bike came with a short extension stud on the back axle. He would put one foot on it and pump with the other until he got enough speed to vault onto the seat. The learning process went on for a long time but the riding to work was short lived.
Archibald also bought a gramophone, the old-fashioned table model that used to appear with a white terrier in the ads of His Master’s Voice (later R.C.A. Victor). The records for this were not flat disks but round cylinders, the speaker was a separate large horn and the machine was run by a spring which was wound with a handle on the side. He soon had some of his favourite songs by John McCormack the great Irish tenor, and the opening notes of “Somewhere a Voice is Calling” still bring an instant recall to his sons of Archibald with his elbows resting on the gramophone listening to and singing along with John McCormack. Johnny had a good boy soprano voice and used to imitate Archibald. Archibald joined the choir of Young Methodist Church and the older children were soon attending Sunday School there. Archibald kept up his choir activities as long as he could walk to church and music was a very important part of his life.
Archibald believed that his home was his castle and he was entitled to peace and quiet when he got home at night. If this was not forthcoming, and generally it was because the children were indoctrinated with the “children should be seen and not heard” theory, then there were loud threats of dire action seldom exercised. However they apparently went too far one night with a pillow fight upstairs when they were supposed to be settling down, for up the stairs Archibald bounded removing his belt as he went. He got in couple of good ones. Going to Mary for sympathy got the boys that but also confirmation that they deserved what they got. Searching his memory, this is the only occasion George could recall of physical punishment by either Archibald or Mary. Really discipline was maintained because Archibald was regarded as the lord and master of the household and was to be obeyed, and Mary was his chief lieutenant.
Two things Archibald started then and continued for some years. The first was a night at the show for the family and this was most often to the Capital for a suitable picture and good organ music and probably not more often than once a year. The second was a day’s excursion to Grand Beach each summer. As they took all their food, this was a major project to get all seven ready and down to the station in time for the morning train. They probably did not change into bathing suits though no doubt they paddled along the beach. Children kept disappearing and search parties had to be sent out. Those excursions to the beach were probably the most exasperating occasions of Archibald’s years as a father and each one probably took a year off his life.
They all went under when the 1918 flu epidemic struck Winnipeg and some were very sick with it. They even had to have the doctor come to the house. The War raged on in Europe and some of the news was very grim. Mary’s brother Jim was buried alive, then rescued and recovered but his second son, Joe, was killed in France and another son, Arthur, was badly wounded and gassed. Worst of all, late in 1918 word came that Archibald’s brother Bill had been killed in France. Sad news indeed.
The War ended in November 1918. Then the following year brought the Winnipeg general strike by soldiers returning from a terrible war to find no jobs available for many of them. This strike became an important event of labour history in Canada and contributed to the later formation of the C.C.P. now known as the N.D.P. Street cars were not running and private cars were running a jitney service (a nickel) operating down Langside Street past their door.
In 1919 Grandma’s brother Eph came to stay with the family after getting his discharge from the Army. He got a job with Archibald at Charlie Young’s garage and he continued to board with them until he got married about ten years later. Early in 1920, Archibald and Eph left Young’s and went into business as equal partners under the name of “A and B Vulcanizing Co.” They went heavily into debt for curing moulds and a boiler which they installed in an old house on Adelaide Street, later adding the house next to it. Before there was any money available from the business there were some real tough times and Mary vowed she would not eat plum jam again as long as she lived. But the hard times were endured and the business progressed. The debts were cleared and the partners were modestly prosperous until the depression years starting in 1930. During the early years of A & B, sixteen hour days were usual in summer so there was a tremendous effort put into establishing the business, leaving Mary to raise the family and take care of the chickens and garden and all the things that went into running the house.
When they had been four years on Langside St., some kind person who wanted the house told their landlord that A.& B. wasn’t doing well and they would not be able to pay the rent so he gave the family notice. They moved then in 1921 to 752 St. Matthews, one of six or eight houses joined in a row, built tight to the sidewalk and to the lot line at the back. No garden or lawn, a nearby vacant lot their playground as the road was graveled and there was a lot of traffic.
During the summer holidays the older boys walked to Olman’s Creek about two miles away to swim in muddy, stagnant pools left after the spring runoff. It’s a wonder they lived! Whether or not the swimming was a factor, Dr. Knipe took out George’s tonsils and adenoids in 1922 with the kitchen for an operating room, and Mary for his assistant. You had to be sick to go to hospital in the Alexander family but Mary wished over and over that morning that the operation had been done in hospital.
The A. & B. bought a car, the family’s very first, a McLaughlin touring, about a 1917 model. It was soon recognized as a lemon and they got rid of it and bought a maroon Gray Dort 1920 model which proved to be a good car for the several years they had it.
Mary’s nephew Arthur who was gassed during the war came to stay with them for some months and brought some kind of machine that he used for home treatment. He recovered to live a normal life, have seven children and live to age seventy so the Winnipeg air seems to have done him some good.
Archibald was working late quite often and Mary would send his supper down to him, usually Johnny and George going by streetcar carrying a hot meal tied inside a large white cloth which had to be carried by the top knot. For lunch Archibald took sandwiches and for both meals they made tea, using a small saucepan set inside the door of the boiler on the hot coals. When it boiled, loose tea was added and stirred and placed back on the coals. It made the worst mixture ever,, black and bitter as gall, served minus milk and sugar.
Radio came to Winnipeg while they were living on St. Matthews, first to the Alexanders on a crystal set Johnny made in a small wooden box, on which they could pick up stations by moving the tip of a wire “tickler” on the piece of crystal. One listened through earphones and it was a big thrill to hear for the first time sound that had traveled through the air without wires.
Then Eph bought a radio, a seven tube super-heterodyne in a big metal cabinet and with a speaker which normally stood on top, alternately earphones could be used. They were able to get stations from far away, like Denver, Pittsburgh, Schenectady, and the boys often sat up late searching the dials and reporting to the family in the morning the distant cities to which they had listened.
In the spring of 1923 they moved to the country, all the way out to St. James to the first house south of Portage Avenue- No. 199 Roseberry. This seemed a bigger house and probably it was. It had a back shed and a front porch, room for a back garden and some land at the front. There was a large empty lot between the house and Portage Avenue and the same thing across the road.
Moving to the suburbs was a big event. It was early springtime with snow still on the ground. They moved via horse drawn sleigh with two men. All their belongings went in one load with the blankets and mattresses used for padding and most of the children riding the load. How exciting to move four miles, having a sleigh ride in the process and going to a part of the city where they had never been before. On arrival, the first thing was to get the kitchen stove into place and the stove pipes connected into the chimney and braced with wire, the fire going and the kettle on. The house was heated with a hot air furnace so there was no problem getting the house warm. Next priority was beds for eight, the family plus Eph. The other furniture followed and was put roughly in position and the sleigh was empty before it began to get dark. The movers were paid then Archibald (virtually a 100% teetotaler) produced a bottle and poured drinks for the movers while Mary rustled up tea and sandwiches. Night was falling as the movers pulled away by then old friends of the family.
Mary got an electric stove, a mottled blue and white Westinghouse with a high oven on the side. She still had it 30 years later. That meant the end of the kitchen coal and wood range and water heater, which were great in winter but slow and much too hot in summer. It also meant going to a flat rate electric water heater-no energy shortage then. She already had a hand operated washing machine with a wringer on top of the tub and this was disposed of in favour of a good electric. So the benefits of industrial progress and labour saving devices came to their home.
Johnny started grade 8 at Linwood School but before long went to work full time at A & B. He stayed there for 55 years, the whole of his working life. George finished out grade 6 at Assiniboine School, went on to Linwood and to St. James Collegiate. Bill, Marion and Jim followed the same path but of course were at Assiniboine School for much longer periods.
Archibald joined the choir of St. James Methodist Church (soon to become St. James United) on Parkview Street and the family went to Sunday School there. Archibald was active in the choir for 25 years and if there is anyone in the family who did not know the Messiah, they must have had their ears plugged as it was practiced over and over again in preparation for the annual Easter services. Marion continued for a long time very active in the Girl Guides.
There were still public water taps here and there in St. James and some houses without sewer and water. One of these houses was across the street from the Alexanders and there being no nearby tap, the man offered George fifty cents per week if he would bring him two pails of water a day and he did that for a year or so. This man was a photographer who set up a small store on Portage Avenue and later gave Archibald a special price to have the children’s pictures taken. There are prints of Johnny and George but the others have not been found.
When George was twelve, a friend asked if he would like a job working Saturdays delivering for the local butchers, Chamberlain and Miller. The job paid $3.00 a day, working not only Saturdays but also the day before a holiday and relieving for a week or two during the summer. The $3.00 was well-earned between 8 am and 11 pm, riding a bike and carrying a old-fashioned news paper bag over one shoulder. In winter, it was a cold job bucking the snow and wind on the roads. Chamberlain and Miller were good people and there was always a small parcel of meat along with his pay at the end of the day. Sunday, when he got up after a long sleep, George’s pay went into the household pot and he got back a quarter for his allowance. Of course Johnny was doing the same with his pay, that’s the way things were done then.
The Gray Dort was a touring model which meant it had removable side curtains with clear plastic windows sewn in. Besides transportation to work, it was often used it for Sunday drives in the summer. Country roads in the 1920’s were graded to a high crown in the middle and had deep ditches on both sides, sometimes with a top layer of gravel but paved roads didn’t go far out of the city. Tires were poor in comparison with today’s and a lot of people fixed their own flats using cold cement patches which would loosen and leak when the tires got hot, so there were always lots of cars pulled off to the side changing tires. Archibald would never pass without asking if they needed help and the family spent more time helping others than making the trips they had planned; not as tire repairmen looking for business but as “Good Samaritans” and at no charge.
Eph, being a gung-ho bachelor bought himself a nice Studebaker and established a base at French’s Café on Notre Dame Avenue close to the shop and across the street from the Winnipeg Theatre perhaps with the girls from the shows in mind. Several years later this theatre burned and several firemen were killed when the roof collapsed, a disaster still talked about in the Winnipeg Fire Department. The houses where the A & B were located were being torn down and they moved to a store on the west side of Hargrave Street just north of Portage Avenue and continued to be reasonably prosperous.
For many, many years Edgar Thorpe came two or three times for Sunday dinner generally bringing a bag of butterscotch candies for the children and often copies of the “Stalybridge Reporter”. From his arrival until it was time to go the talk was all of the area where all three had grown up and any scraps of news they had to exchange. After about 25 years or so Edgar took offence at some remark and never came again. There also were two or three widely separated visits from Billy and Buckley Dawson, also from Stalybridge, who went to the Klondike to seek their fortune. They got good paying jobs with room and board and saved every penny except one holiday trip back home. They came again when they had their nest egg and were on their way home to stay. Their savings rated them well-to-do. They both married and bought homes and settled down on their native heath.
In 1925, Archibald and Mary bought 159 Ferry Road from the original owner, a Mr. Zilinski, who had built it a year or two earlier acting as his own general contractor. They bought it with a fifty foot lot with almost all the spare land lying on the south side. It stands on the top of a gentle rise, has four bedrooms, a kitchen big enough for a farm threshing gang, basement walls two feet thick of solid stone. It had a full width open porch across the front- a big, substantial house, bright and clean and nearly new. When they bought it, there were about 200 feet of open space on the south side, down to Church’s at 127. Across the road was Bourke’s 27 acres of farmland not in cultivation, so it had a great view south and west, almost country living. For both of them it was the home of their dream, all they had worked and hoped for and more –Shangri-La indeed. They lived the rest of lives there, for Archibald that was 44 years, and Johnny and Bill lived there much longer than that. Improvements were made to the house: the porch was enclosed with screens and windows, the top soil was restored and the excavation clay reburied, shrubs were planted and the vegetable garden developed. The red burlap covering the lower part of the downstairs walls was removed and the red paint on the pine floors was covered. Later, the walls between the living room, hall and den were taken out to make one large living room across the front. The kitchen was modernized and then beautifully tiled one Christmas Eve.
A chicken coop came with the house and Mary was soon back in business. The chickens didn’t last long, likely because of Archibald’s problems with slaughtering. His method was to chop the bird’s head off with an axe, a process that took him a couple of hours and a month’s supply of good temper. When the chickens went, the coop was converted to a garage, and with improvements, is still in use.
Archibald liked having a nice lawn; he enjoyed raising flowers and was proud of his dahlias and gladiolas. These used up the energy he had left after working a long day in a hot shop- and it was a hot shop with a steam boiler and a row of holt molds giving off lots of heat in a small area. He worked hard and steadily, he was nearly 50 when they moved to Ferry Road, he took no vacations, rarely missed a day at work and had been working since he was 12. The vegetable garden, and to some extent the flowers and shrubs, were Mary’s department. They disagreed strongly about gardening and it was one of the few subjects where they did not see eye-to-eye. Archibald had a theory he preached for many years to the effect that the perfect life would be to have a few acres of land, some chickens, a cow or two, a litter of pigs, a garden and some fruit trees and live off the land. He had worked at Dominion Bridge in Montreal with a Mr. Brown, who moved to Winnipeg and later to Vancouver Island where he bought a small fruit farm. He was getting on in years, had no farming experience. He found the life much harder than anticipated and the returns meager. They had to sell out at a loss and so ended Archibald’s plot of ground theories.
The Gray Dort was replaced by an Oakland with glass side curtains. Archibald got a newer gramophone and added to his collection of John McCormack records. He fulfilled another wish by getting a German Shepherd dog and kept one pretty well the rest of his life. His efforts to sell Mary on the dog were wasted but in the long run, she accepted it.
A & B started to give customers advertising calendars with reproductions of oil paintings by an artist by the name of Dobson. The subjects were family scenes in highland crofts and were attractively produced by Brown and Bigalow of St. Louis, Mo. These were very popular and they had requests far exceeding the quantity they could afford. Archibald had one of each framed and they hung for years in the living room at 159.
Archibald frequently advised the children to stay in school, that that they would never regret getting an education or learning a trade. But beyond grade eight the only courses available in St. James were the classical Latin, French, Maths, History and Science; there were no trade or commercial classes available. These subjects probably seemed as irrelevant to Archibald and Mary for earning a living as they did then to their children, and as one by one the children wanted to leave school they met little resistance. If anyone had wanted to go to University Archibald and Mary would have tried to find the money but they never indicated any such ambitions for their children, nor did the teachers encourage them to go further or to advise them on future employment or careers.
The A & B had a fire and moved to another store on Hargrave Street closer to Portage Avenue. Their earlier location was next door to a Donaghue the locksmith and they must have been friendly neighbours for in 1929 Eph married Gladys Brown, sister of Donaghue’s assistant.
The farmer’s field across the road from 159 covered about 27 acres and had the Bourke’s house and barn near the centre, screened by a grove of trees. They were descendants of some of the earliest settlers and the family had been prominent and wealthy. Their house was built in 1865 and much of their furniture had been brought up the Red River from Minneapolis. Soon after we moved there they turned the field into a nine hole golf course and it was very popular for a few years, however, the municipality took it over for taxes and the Bourkes were dispossessed- the equity of the tax system is sometimes in doubt.
Art Bourke and Bill became close friends and did some good things together. They built a canoe from plans in a magazine, later two or three more canoes and a good motor boat. They had no place to use the boat due to the frequent sandbars in the Assiniboine but sold it for a good price. These projects started in the Burke’s barn and required the boys to become handy with tools and to learn something about carpentry, which they did from Audel’s textbooks. Jim and the other Bourke boys, Tommy, Eddie and Tren, became active in these projects too and over the years they built a large cave in the riverbank, skating rinks on the river, then a bobsled slide that started with a 40 foot frame at the top of the bank, ran down to the river ice, across the river and around a banked turn, a great run of about 200 yards with a top speed of 60 mph. and some hazard to one’s skin and bones. Later they built the shack adjacent to the slide starting with an old boxcar they wheedled out of the CNR and ending with a large two room cottage. By that time perhaps a dozen other local young men had a part in the work and activities at the shack, lasting over a period of 15 years from 1928 onwards. The skills thus learned were also used at 159 Ferry. Some of the projects there involved Johnny and George so they could pick up some of the skills second-hand. It was just as well they didn’t need to learn them from Archibald because he just had no touch at all when it came to painting, carpentry or the general run of repairs around a house.
The depression ended a period of seven or eight years in the Alexander family history during which the A & B was being established and the children growing up and going to school. They were peaceful and hardworking years for Archibald and Mary, years of progress and satisfaction for them, the years of their prime that took them through their 50’s.The depression of the 30’s was a world-wide financial crisis, which started with the stock market crash of October 1929. On the prairies the problems were multiplied by drought conditions. Thousands upon thousands of farmers lost everything they had. The cities that depended on the farm trade were badly off, their unemployed doubled by the farmers who moved into town when they lost their farms. Many people lost and never recovered an established position in life. At the best, it was a period of no progress, of holding on to what you had if it provided a living from day to day.
As a family, the Alexanders were fortunate to come through these tough times better than most. A & B had been going for 10 years and had built up some capital. Archibald, Johnny and Eph continued to draw salaries but scaled them down to subsistence levels to keep the company solvent. Even so, by the depths of the depression in 1933, some other action was necessary and they moved to King and Notre Dame, renting the BA station there, with the oil company adding an extra shop to house the tire business and renting an additional lot on Notre Dame to provide some parking area. The A & B rented a large lot adjacent to the station from Winnipeg Hydro. They got extra sales in regular service station products and built up revenue from monthly parking spaces with heater outlets, and so survived. At home, Archibald and Mary paid off the whole cost of 159 in six years and so kept their housing costs at a low level.
For the children, it was a time of standing still, of no progress. Johnny and George were fortunate to work all through the depression though their pay went down not up. Bill also joined A & B where he also spent all of his working life. George worked those years for a sales agency. Marion helped at home for a long period until she found a job as a telephone operator. While still in high school, Jim injured a leg playing football. This developed into a bad case of poisoning and it was about two years before he recovered. Then he started as a carpenter apprentice with the Manitoba Government. From the worst conditions of 1933 there was a gradual improvement. Moisture conditions brought an end to the drought and improved the lot of farmers. Then the start of the Second World War in 1939 brought an increased demand for food and many manufactured products, and for the construction of training facilities for the Armed Forces. It also brought basic and rapid changes to the family.
Johnny was the first of the brood to go. He married Julia Couchman and joined the RCAF in 1942, was posted initially to Brandon, assigned to MP duties and was away from Winnipeg most of the time. Within a short period, the other boys got into the services. George got into the Army, first assignment to the offices at Fort Osborne Barracks where he got living out allowance and continued to live at 159 for some months. Then he went on course in Artillery to Brandon, to O.T.C. Gordon Head, to Brandon, to Brockville, to Debert and on to a succession of Army camps in England. Along the way he married Ruby Patterson. Jim joined the RCAF also and was posted to the training centre at Portage la Prairie, much later sent to the depot at Biggins Hill just outside London, England. Bill joined the Army ordinance Corps and was posted to Shilo Manitoba, as a tire repairman with trade rating, and he stayed there for the duration of the war.
With the end of the War in Europe in 1945, Johnny returned home to Julia and to work at the A&B. George had already taken his discharge in Toronto and Ruby had joined him there. Bill was back at 159 and working at A&B. Jim got out of the Air Force, enrolled at the University of Manitoba and then a couple of years later moved to Toronto to work with George.
While Johnny and Bill were away from A&B, Archibald and Eph ran the business and got other help as needed. Archibald was then 66 and seemingly just about as active as ever. He developed problems with leg cramps in his late 60’s and they ended his long years of walking to choir at St. James United. He had some heart disease and dropped the physical work at A&B when he was 70. He continued to go in half time until he retired at 74 in 1952. His share in the business was then sold to Johnny and Bill and it was incorporated as Alexander and Bailey Limited.
In 1955, Johnny’s wife Julia died. Mary and Archibald made room for him and his three children at 159 and it became a busy household of seven people once again.
All the children and some of the grandchildren gathered at 159 Ferry to celebrate Archibald and Mary’s Golden Wedding Anniversary-50 years of marriage. Many personal and business friends came to the reception to extend their congratulations and best wishes. It was a gala occasion in their lives and a good party. Archibald said he had been married to Mary for 50 years but he still didn’t know her and she continued to be a surprise to him after all those years together.
At the time of the Golden Wedding Anniversary, it was obvious that keeping up 159 was more than Mary could manage. After long pressure from the family, she agreed to have some help. In 1959, she had a serious heart attack, was in hospital for a month and then insisted on going home. The following day she got out of bed, saying her work was far from finished. She collapsed then and died at 78. Apart from the fever she contracted in Montreal nearly 50 years previously, Mary’s health had been excellent throughout her life. A little rheumatism or arthritis, never in hospital until then and only minor bouts with colds and the flu, she lived an active and healthy life.
Archibald was 81 when Mary died, generally in good health, declining gradually in physical activity, getting a little deaf, but with a clear mind and good vision and able to look after himself. With the house and garden, he had lots to do if he wanted to be active, but nothing to which he was committed beyond his personal care. With Johnny’s children there he had lots of contact with young people to keep up his interest in life.
A&B weas finding the space at King and Notre Dame limited and business in the area declining as companies moved out of the city core. For a couple of years, they operated a branch shop at Portage and Burnell but BA oil sold the property and they had to give that up. In 1961, they bought a good property on Notre Dame and went back to solely tire sales and repairs. Eph reached retirement age and then some, and sold his interest to Johnny and Bill. To complete the record on A&B, it was sold in April 1978 as a going concern. Johnny then retired after 55 years and Bill also retired after 45 years with A&B.
Archibald was wearing out. He continued to live at 159 and Bill and Johnny looked after him until he went into hospital not long before he died on September 12, 1969 soon after his 91st birthday. He and Mary are buried together in Chapel Lawn Cemetery, graves 61 and 62. |
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