Welcome to Wayback Wednesday sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab! Every week, we’ll be sharing a vintage photo and asking our readers to chime in with anything you can recall about the photo, other related memories, or even a funny caption. Have some vintage photos of your own? Send them to [email protected] and we may share them with our readers!
Scroll down to see last week’s photo.
Huntsville’s historic Town Hall was constructed in 1926. Did you know that its clock is from the old Union Station in Toronto, which was being torn down at the time, and was a gift to the town by resident Charles Paget? (Photo from Huntsville: With Spirit and Resolve)
Wayback Wednesday is sponsored by Cavalcade Color Lab
Last week we shared this photo of the old Boley’s Bakery with you:
Several Doppler readers shared their memories of Boley’s. Here are a few of them:
Pat Allen: Best milkshakes ever?
David Johns: Boley’s and Parker’s, I had to walk past the two Bakery’s on my way to H.P.S. every morning. What an incredible aroma it was! By the way, look at that beautiful Union Jack in the window.
Andy Hanna: Boley’s had the best chelsea buns ever. Now you can’t find a real chelsea bun anywhere. Sunday breakfasts at the cottage were always made more special by a chelsea bun from Boley’s. Their milkshakes (real, traditional milkshakes, made behind the counter) were also among my strongest childhood memories.
Sharon Cutting: Best banana splits ever !!
Wendy Brown: They made these pastries called flying saucers at least that’s what they told me. I’ve looked for them ever since. Haven’t found them. My mom’s cousin Phyllis married Lyall Parker. They were lovely, quiet, kind people.
Arvina Bennett: I enjoyed working there two summers when I was 13 and 14 in the late forties. Albert’s and his summer chef’s cream puffs melted in your mouth–have never found anything to compare anywhere.
Carol Corry: I remember Boleys Bakery really well my mom sister and I all had worked there. I started out as a dishwasher then painted pies for Emil Favro. Then waitresses at the horseshoe snack bar in the back room. Worked at the soda fountain with “nanny” he was a nephew of Boleys. Their cream puffs were to die for and the Boley Brothers were great to work for. Great memories.
Nancy Rogers: I have a vague recollection, from the mid 1940s of a mechanized donut machine along the side wall. Donut dough was dropped into and floated along a vat of cooking oil, flipped half way along and then raised out of the fat to a conveyor belt. I am assuming this was at Boley’s Bakery. Fascinating to a small child.
Thanks for sharing, everyone!
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Purchase and Installation of the Huntsville Town Hall Clock
My paternal grandfather, Edward Hugh John Briggs, emigrated from England in 1908, and was watchmaker and jeweller with the Harry Booth store in Huntsville, until he enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1916.
Upon returning to Huntsville in 1919, and being discharged from the army, he opened E.H .Briggs Jewellers (where Muskoka Jewellery Design is now, at 68 Main Street East).
1927 saw the completion of the Municipal Building (Town Hall) on Main Street. During its construction, the question of a clock to go into the tower came up. The Town Council had heard about a clock due to be removed from the old railway station in Toronto, slated for demolition, to be replaced by the new Union Station on Front Street.
My grandfather was asked to go to investigate the clock’s size and suitability for relocation. It would be quite an engineering job to modify the clock to fit the clock tower in Huntsville, but my grandfather decided it would be possible, and Mr. Charles Paget bought the Toronto station’s clock as a gift to the town of Huntsville.
Councillor Tom Millest, and George Ralston, the town’s engineer, accompanied by my grandfather Edward (Ted) Briggs travelled by train to Toronto, where Ted took charge of packing the clocks parts to bring carefully to Huntsville. He carried the more delicate parts home with him.
It was indeed quite an engineering job to install the clock in the new Town Hall tower. New dials, hands, connections, and mainly the motive power weights had to be done, and Ted used special tools for those purposes, with the help of his sons Harold (my father) and my Uncle Ted.
What is really interesting to me is that in getting the correct weight, assorted pieces from old car crankshafts etc, were used.
The clock was officially started at 11 a.m.on October 11, 1927, where the Briggs family maintained it and made sure it kept as close a time as it was possible to get in a tower clock at that time.
Mr. P.W. Ellis, the dean of jewellers, pronounced the work of installing this clock “A magnificent job!”
(This piece of writing is taken from various written accounts by my Uncle Rixon (younger brother of Harold and Ted Briggs, as well as my Uncle Ted’s wife, Hattie Briggs, and also my memories of the story told to me by my father Harold).
My Memories of the Town Hall Clock
Although I always knew the story of the purchase and installation of the clock, I regret that I didn’t question my dad more about the thoughts and feelings of the mayor, H. E. Rice, the town councillors, my grandfather, the Briggs family…as well as ALL the other people of the town, and the excitement that must have been in the air!!!(For that reason, I have written and continue to write MY memories and thought s and feelings about my experiences…so that some day, when they are interested, my sons can read this kind of stuff and not have the regrets that I do!!)
My Uncle Ted, watchmaker par excellence, made sure that the Town Hall clock kept meticulous time. For that reason, he walked from Briggs Jewellers, at 68 Main Street East, to the train station in the west end, to set his pocket watch at the official time. He in fact did this at the same time every day, so people en route would indeed set their clocks according to my Uncle Ted’s passing their shops or homes!
He and my Dad took turns changing the clock’s time from EST to EDT and back…the official time to do that is 2 a.m., and so that is when the Town Hall clock’s time was changed. On occasion, my dad would wake my up to take me with him. It was just magical for me to be able to climb the iron staircase up to the tower to see all the wheels, the pendulum, the weights, and all those metal bits and pieces tick-tocking away (especially in the middle of the night!).
Every time I look at that clock now, I am so grateful that it continues to run, second by second, and to Terry Smith, who maintains the clock now, as well as the Town of Huntsville for refurbishing the tower.
If that clock could only talk, and not just tock!
Martha Briggs Watson
October 9 2013
WB Wednesday is a great feature of Doppler. Lots of interesting history. Thank you to Cavalcade for sponsoring.
Cheers
Larry