It’s Wayback Wednesday, sponsored by Pharmasave Huntsville!
This photo once hung in Baker’s Barber Shop. It’s a view of Main Street West from Centre to Lorne, date unknown. What can you identify in this image? (Baker Collection, Muskoka Heritage Place)
Last week we shared this photo:
In this undated photo, participants try their hand at log throwing during a former winter carnival. Can you add any additional details? (Photo courtesy of the Cline Collection, Muskoka Heritage Place)
Doppler readers were able to add a few details, and take guesses at others:
Terry McCaffery and Fred Hall identified teacher Harold Leslie as the person tossing the caber. Terry also thought that the two people on the left are Bill Anderson and Rob Main, while Susan Godfrey wondered if second from left might be ‘one of the Ham boys’. Can you add any additional details?
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That upper photo folks, is Hwy. 11. Traffic is at an ebb, and you could have fired a cannon up the street and frightened (maybe) only that lady. She is just passing the old Bell office and in front of one of the little store front shops(5? of them) that nestled under the old hotel. Winter is either just coming or just going.
The theater was built in 1945 and the Cottrill Block (the garage) was coming down in ’53/ ’54. The Post Office going up late in 54.
On the north side of the street there was the grocery store, the Grill restaurant, an alley, a barber shop and a variety store; then the gas pumps and service station.
What stands out for me is the car parked in front of the Grill. It is one of the automobiles built after the war, with names such as ‘Streamliner’, ‘Torpedo’, ‘Styline’, and ‘Dynamic” that featured the long, sloping back. I think the one in the photo is a Pontiac, but I’m sure there are those out there who can pinpoint the make, model, year and maybe the mileage on the odometer. Dave Johns or John Holinshead, perhaps?
The style disappeared in the early ’50’s, but I remember them fondly. I was not very good in cars, especially if I was relegated to the back seat. Bad things would happen in my stomach.
But those big old cars had a shelf behind that rear seat. With a cushion, I could lay up there and travel anywhere. Beautiful!
The only drawback was a panic stop. Some animal on the road; a car with no lights; someone backing from a laneway and my driver was stomping on the brakes! ‘Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion’ is basic physics that I learned early. I would come sailing off that shelf, barely awake but hoping the brother or whoever was asleep on the back seat, had already left for the floor!
I suppose now they can give you a pill for ‘car sickness’, but back then, all I got was a cushion and a shelf behind the seat.
I don’t think my brothers or cousins held a grudge.
Reading and looking at the HHS winter carnival pictures You will notice in the background the studded frame work a structure. This part of those doings were of the Building Construction class taught by Mr. JohnVerbeek, the Drafting class was Mr. Merv Bowers. When finished they were offered for sale to the public. I gained much education from those two, in fact it enabled me to build most of my brick home of over 50 yrs ago and still live in it today, much thanks to those 2 teachers.
As for the wood working class & overseer of all the technical classes it was Ken Kline. We use to call him Clicker Kline as he held a camera club afterschool program.
Winter Carnival at the HHS, Some memories, I blew up the engine on my Moto-Ski Zephr showing off on Fairy Lake, In the picture the first guy I noticed I believe is big Andy MCEACHERN from out Dorset way. During George B. Phys Ed Class , in doing wrestling techniques , my all of 120lbs Andy was no match for me. Lol In the Main St. picture the Grill is shown. My Uncle visited it every time when doing business in Town every one, two or 3 weeks.
Some times after getting his whistle wetted a little too much, and after having a bite at the Grill and heading back to the farm quite ill , he would blame his illness on the food he ate at the Grill, they all knew it was from how much he consumed at the watering hole.
The Garage at Centre St and Main St. was Casselman’s and Fetterly’s, part of beside up Main st a bit was one of the first blacksmith shops where my Great Uncle Tom Millest worked blacksmithing and shoeing Horses.
Neat pictures. I can’t add much data to these. I thought it was spelled Kline not Cline and I sure should know as he was my teacher but hey, I’ve lost my grade 9 notes and was never that good with spelling. Maybe somebody can remember and set us all straight.
The picture of the main street, I do have an interesting little note to add. You will note that there are no stoplights in this picture. Well at some point in the 60’s the stop lights were installed at Main and Centre streets. I remember that my father loaded us all in the old station wagon and we drove all the way to Huntsville, a trip that on the old highway 60 prior to the 1969 reconstruction took nearly an hour, and why did we do this you may ask? Well we drove and parked on the Main street and just watched the stoplights change from green to orange to red and back again, endlessly! What a sight for a country kid. Our town’s first stoplight!! Things have been going downhill ever since.
This was in the time long before cell phones, a time when you just picked up the phone and a kindly voice asked you for the “number please” and you just told them and they did everything else. Heck, if you did not know the number they’d look it up for you. This was in the days when Wardell’s store had the enviable phone number of “1”. You better believe it, that was their phone number. No such thing as a dial or area code! Algonquin Outfitters occupies that building now.
Gas station White Rose, now Shell. What is now the post office is likely an affiliated garage. West of there now the Capitol cinema. I think the cinema was south side near the town hall. Guessing early 50’s.