Dr. G.E. Young annual Christmas display delighted children of all ages plus letters to Santa Claus from 1948

Harriet (Newcombe) Bouillon collection

Whenever the subject of favourite memories of Christmas arises among those of us who go back to at least the 1950s, someone, or most likely everyone, unanimously will declare, "Dr. Young's Christmas display".

It was a highlight of the season for all ages to visit a magical land right in the heart of Chapleau. As I write, I am preparing to leave for a pre-Christmas visit to Orlando, FL, where Disneyworld is located. It just struck me that we had it, thanks to Dr. Young, for many years.

Dr Young 2005 by John Theriault

After Dr. Young returned to Chapleau for "six months" in 1944 to replace Dr. Crozier, he practised medicine in the community and along the CPR line and the outlying areas for 50 years, he bought a Buick car and  the residence of G.B. Nicholson, Chapleau's first reeve, and in due course, built over it to create his medical centre and apartment complex. For almost all the rest of his life, it was his unfinished masterpiece.  

Jean Newcombe and Doc (red jacket) with friends Harriet collection

Soon after moving in to the Nicholson residence he started the annual Christmas display that delighted children of all ages for years.

When I asked him one time why he bought the Buick, he replied, "I thought I should because all the doctors I knew drove Buicks". 

Just recently, Harriet (Newcombe) Bouillon was in touch to let me know she has some photos of Dr. Young's display, and I immediately asked if I could use them. Harriet agreed, and I thank her very much for sharing some moments from Chapleau's past that were so much a part of our lives.

Harriet (Newcombe) Bouillon collection

As I reflected on my own years growing up in Chapleau, I think the display and the lights and the music were most meaningful as we walked from our home on Grey Street South on usually bitterly cold Christmas Eve's to the midnight service at St. John's Anglican Church.

Along the way, and on the way home we would meet and greet folks from Trinity United Church and Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church, and when I was a teenager, I would run between St. John's and Sacred Heart to attend the service there with some of my friends.

Harriet (Newcombe) Bouillon collection

All these years later, although Dr. Young leaves a legacy as a medical doctor who cared for so many of us, memories of his Christmas displays permit us as adults to enter again into a child's world. And indeed, when we do, we are homeward bound.

George Edward 'Ted' Young, M.D. died at age 95 on December 14, 2010 in Chapleau.

Let me move on to The Kiddies Corner, a popular feature in the Chapleau Post and as Christmas approached, it contained Letters to Santa. The Chapleau Santa Claus Parade was scheduled for December 11.

Harriet (Newcombe) Bouillon collection

Here are some of the letters in the December 2, 1948 issue of the newspaper.

"Hello. It's good to hear that you're coming back. We were good kids and we know you'll bring us lots of presents, candies and nuts. Also we hope to see you at the Christmas parade to shake your hand and say hello." -- Dee, Cheryl and Jack Byce

"Heard you were coming. I have not seen you in 6 years. Last time I saw you was in Toronto and I had my picture taken on your knees. Wonder if you could give me a steam engine or an electric motor for my mecanno set. I would like you very much and I would appreciate it. So long for now. Hope I'll be seeing you on December 11th." (the day of the parade in Chapleau) -- Leo Vezina

"Dear Old Santa: You will soon be here now. So long since I saw you. Four long years. Wish you would bring me a sewing machine, a sweet grass sewing basket, printing sets, story books and a game. Thanks a lot." -- Doreen Cormier

"How are you? I am looking forward to seeing you. Santa I am a pretty good boy so would you give me a pair of skis about 4 ft. long and a pistol with two cases, and a little milk truck for me. If you come to my house I will leave you some cake and tea." -- Clarence Edwards

"Would you please get me from toyland a little doll and a high chair to go with my doll. I am three years old and I like dolls very much. I do not know how you'll get in my home because it has no chimney but please get in some way. Maybe by the keyhole. Thank you Santa." -- Ginette  LeBrasseur

"I am a good little boy six years old. I would like you to bring me a box of large tinker toy or anything that runs alone. Don't forget to fill my stocking. Thank you very much." -- James Schafer 

"I'm only a little boy so my mama is writing for me. Now for Christmas I would like a tricycle. My brother Emmett would like a train and Baby Brian wants a dolly. I'll be waiting for your airplane to arrive..." -- Joe Connelly

"I would like from you a big kiss but I guess I can't get that so I want a dolly's stroller. I like you Santa and a beautiful doll bed with covers, and believe in you."  --Geraldine LeBrasseur

"I am a little girl five years old and I would like you to bring me a nice big doll, a pair of skis, an umbrella, doll clothes, plastic sets and a paint book." -- Jo Ann Moyle

"Will you please send me a cap gun and two boxes of caps please and a belt for the guns. Will you please send me a truck. Bye-bye, hope I see you at the parade." --Bobby Pountney

"I heard you were coming to Chapleau. I hope you won't forget to bring me something and also to my two sisters: May, three years old and Lauraine, two years. As you know Devon is not far from Chapleau." -- Helene Gionet, Devon

Thanks to Harriet (Newcombe) Bouillon and Ken Leclaire who sent me the Chapleau Post. My email is mj.morris@live.ca

Harry 'Butch' Pellow recalls Chapleau in Winter and Hockey on its Rivers about entertaining ourselves, laughter, being out of doors, pushing limits, building relationships

See names at end.Click image to enlarge

Harry 'Butch' Pellow is one of my oldest friends and recently I sent him an email asking if he had any memories of us playing hockey on the front river as opposed to the 'pond' on the back river. As he notes in the following reply, not too long ago we had chatted about hockey on the pond. Now he takes us to the front river.

Imagine how wonderful it was to grow up in a place with two rivers on which you could play hockey, and you could go "down the lake" by either one to a bay called Mulligan's. In Chapleau, you could go from your home as Butch notes through other people's back yards, up or down back lanes as the case may be, across lanes to that place simply called "the arena" or if you were old enough to recall, the old old arena was "the rink".

Harry is a member of one of Chapleau's early pioneer families, and was the architect for the Chapleau Civic Centre, Chapleau Recreation Centre, Cedar Grove Lodge, Chapleau General Hospital, the golf club house and the Trinity United Church. He is also a great storyteller.

Here is Butch with Chapleau in Winter and Hockey on its Rivers. Thanks Butch for the memories.

Chapleau in Winter and Hockey on its Rivers

By Harry 'Butch' Pellow

Not that long ago we chatted about hockey on the pond over the old wooden bridge and across the back river, over a hillock and north of the old sewage treatment plant. Who can forget it when your best recollection was that your hands were blue, your laces were frozen (maybe from Saturday morning’s practice) and your skates unrelentingly accepted your now almost frozen foot. But it had its moments and the braver amongst us endured. I have said before I was not one of the brave.

Harry Pellow 2012

But there was another venue too and it was on the front river just west of the concrete swimming pier where so many gathered this past July during the Chapleau High School 90th Anniversary Reunion to celebrate the homecoming and watch the fireworks. 

Like the pond, it arrived when the ice did but it was far more accessible, and collecting a group required far less planning and organization to pull together enough players for shinny. It was often after school and on weekends and as you recall surfaced one Christmas holiday and maybe because “Ice” Sanders was unable to make a rink on the ‘clinker’ surface of the public school grounds. 

Pickup included anyone who could get enough equipment together to make it worthwhile and at the same time wear warm clothes. Warm clothes because the west wind, however mildly blowing, was cold on that open river front and by the end of a school day or an early winter weekend evening the sky was grey, sunless and foreboding; and, had it not been for wild enthusiasm why would anyone choose the river over The Boston Café?

Harry 'Boo' Hong, Roger Mizuguchi, Butch

Well the Hong brothers did as you and I did Mike, and what greater motivation should there have been than that?

What made river hockey exciting was its spontaneity, the boundlessness of the perimeters of the playing surface, the almost undefined roll of scraped-off snow and ice along the edges; and that you always had to watch out for the ripples that had been created in the surface by the last breezes that sculpted the ice before it froze.

Boo and Butch 1947

Think of that slap shot by Hong, Hong, Hong, or one of the really big guys when it accelerated over the ice ridges and soared away out over the river; or at you directly, then veered away as it embraced the ripples. Can you recall the sound of the skates cutting through the crisp surface as they raced for the puck, can you recall the whack, slap, and clicking of sticks on each other and on the ice? 

What about the yelling and chanting and the code words that defined the play. “..over here” “…pass it, pass it”; “…go, go go”; “he scores!” etc….; wild enthusiasm and true abandonment because it would be dark very soon and there were very few lights to mark the way home.

Tee Chambers, Butch, Aldee Martel 1954

There was a collective enthusiasm to make the most of every minute and everyone was in sync.

Remember how difficult it was to take a breath in the cold air, how your breath made fog as you skated up the ice or paused for ‘a breather’? Wow! Your eyes were often half frozen shut and the ice crystals on your mitts made it impossible to swipe your nose. Never to be forgotten.

Do you remember how the Hongs played hockey and skated? Yen sprinted, was light on his feet, very fast and dipsy-doodled like no one else (except maybe Max Bentley). He even bore the nickname “Ziggy”. Jim was a powerful steady and fast upright skater and a great stick handler as I recall; and our friend Boo skated low, took long steady deliberate strides and always made skating fast look easy; he also had his skates rockered so there wasn’t more than a couple of inches touching the surface.

Butch and Boo

When you think of the sound of skates on natural ice, you can’t help imagine these really great players doing their stuff can you? Wouldn’t it be great to experience it all again?

I recall one other particularly relevant experience on the front river Mike and that was when I was in grade seven or eight. There had been a fast freeze, the ice was smooth and crystalline, there was no snow, and along with a few others including Tiny Martin, Charlie White, maybe Boo and you too, we all ventured onto the ice oblivious of the danger. It was the beginning of an event that could have been catastrophic if one of us had walked too close to the edge and what a sad night that might have been.

I vividly recall Vern Goldstein clambering down through the snow from the Town Hall office where he had seen us from the Clerk’s north-eastern window and then called us off the ice and sent us home. I knew we had done something wrong but it was the threat of Police Chief JackAngove calling my home that gave it meaning. This was an experience I have never forgotten and the beginning of a long list of confrontations with nature that have caused me to be very respectful of it, and the dangers that lurk in its beauty. 

When I got home that evening Wilf Simpson had called my mom, Jack Angove had called my mom, and she was prepared for me when I arrived very cold, very afraid and very apologetic. I’m pretty sure that was a Friday evening because I have a vague recollection of being told “no more hockey unless..” as I dressed for practice the next morning before making my trek in the dark through Evans' backyard, through McKnight’s, down Lansdowne, through Therriault’s, and to the front door of the old unheated arena for a much different experience.

The wonderful thing about river hockey in Chapleau that I think we all need to think about a lot as we get into the season of joy and remembrances is that it had no religious, racial, language or nationalistic perimeters; there were no upper town or lower town distinctions and I don’t recall there being good players or bad players; albeit there were little ones and big ones too. We were all players and it was a game, a spontaneous moment, a gleeful opportunity to engage in role playing and in doing what northern boys and girls and their parents had done for decades before us. It was about entertaining ourselves, laughter, being out of doors, pushing the limits and building relationships.

Was it Joseph Conrad who said

“youth…. the glory of it!”?

A few names who might have been on the river ice at any time: Jim Evans, Boo, Jimmy, Yen, Ian Macdonald, Dave McMillan, Gilles Morin, You, Me, Jack Poynter, Terry Shannon, Tony Telik, Leo Vizena, Charlie White, and more.

(Note: Likely all the players on the 1956 CHS hockey team in photo, at one time or another)

A highlight of the year for the Chapleau High School team of 1956 was a trip to Terrace Bay. Back row from left: David McMillan, Doug Sleivert, Stan Barty,Thane Crozier, Clarence Fiaschetti (teacher and coach), George Lemon (principal) Second row: Doug Espaniel, Roger Mizuguchi, Bill Cachagee . Front are Jim Hong, Bert Lemon, Harry Pellow, Ken Schroeder, Robbie Pellow (Mascot) Marc Boulard, Harry Hong, Jim Machan, Ron Morris. Most would have played river hockey.

Thanks for the memories Butch. My email is mj.morris@live.ca

BUTCH ON ROAD HOCKEY  http://michaeljmorrisreports.blogspot.ca/2010/03/harry-pellow-recalls-enthusiasm-at.html

BUTCH WITH MEMORIES OF 'THE BIG ROCK' http://michaeljmorrisreports.blogspot.ca/2012/11/harry-pellow-shares-memories-of.html

Moment of childhood ecstasy for Neil Morris riding in steam engine cab with his Uncle Nick as engineer

IAN TELLS ABOUT ENGINES BELOW!!!!!!!

When Neil Morris was 11-years-old, he took his first ride on steam engine with his uncle F.A. 'Nick' Card, a Canadian Pacific Railway engineer in Chapleau.

Years later, Neil, no relation to me, a reporter at The London Free Press, wrote 'Moment of Childhood Ecstasy' after his uncle had retired from the CPR in 1978. It appeared in the Chapleau Sentinel, and is a wonderful heartwarming story about a child's trips in the cab of steam and diesel engines with his Uncle Nick as the engineer.

Neil wrote that his uncle to him as "a giant of a man."

"His engineer's cap shoved shoved back on his prematurely balding head he'd toss that enormous plumber's tool box that was really his next 24 hour's meals onto to the steel doorway. Then he was up the ladder and through the doorway."

Then it was time for Neil to join him.

"Up you come fella," his uncle would say "with a grin, arms reaching down to me when what I really needed wasn't a help up the ladder but something to hold a kid's pounding heart from exploding."

Nick Card was born in Lady Minto Hospital in Chapleau in 1914, and served the community as a councillor and reeve as well as being active in other community organizations throughout his life. He attended Chapleau Public School and graduated from Chapleau High School in 1934. His father, William Card, also had served on Chapleau council.

Neil continues: "Inside the warm cabin with its throbbing steam guages, his fireman smiled my way while swinging huge shovelfuls of coal into the gaping firebox.

"The engine lurched as my uncle's gloved hand eased the throttle lever open. Steam blasted from the cylinders behind the cowcatchers. We were moving."

Neil explained that for an 11-year-old it was a moment never to be forgotten, "a thrill relived every time I see a huge steam locomotive on display for a new generation of children to stand in awe over, albeit never to ride."

I contacted Ian Macdonald, now professor emeritus and retired head of the department of architecture at the University of Manitoba and a great railway buff to ask if he knew the type of engines being used by the CPR when Nick was an engineer. Ian also worked on the CPR and received training on both steam and diesel engines.

As always, Ian was back to me quickly: "Steam engine 5433 was actually a Winnipeg locomotive but this locomotive type was the dominant locomotive type on the Schreiber Division during the time Nick was on the road.  This is what makes it the  most appropriate locomotive to preserve. Kudos to Art Grout."

Steam engine 5433 has been on display in Chapleau Centennial Park since 1964 when Mr. Grout, the president of Smith and Chapple Ltd.,  arranged to get it from the CPR. N.R. Crump, then CPR president, was on hand for the ceremony.

As a matter of historical interest, when 5433 was being moved to the site on a temporary track, J.M. 'Bud' Park was the engineer and Earle Freeborn was engineer on the yard engine.

Back to Neil's story. Although he wasn't there  when that "giant of an uncle" retired, others were, nephews like himself who had "enjoyed their moment of glory in one of his engines in their childhood. Each in his turn had climbed that ladder first of steam engines then later of those diesels with their strangely different sounds and smells."

He explained that the diesels were never like the steamers with their familiar pant, hissing jets of steam and huge clouds of smoke billowing upward as they strained to tug a long freight" out of Chapleau.

Referring to his uncle's retirement:

"Gone are the days when an engineer's heart was in his mouth as his own headlight reflected back at him of a snow-covered evergreen on a curve  - his moment of  terror that he was meeting another engine head on.

"Gone are the days when he climbed back into an engine, his coveralls ice coated after a water tender spout took a crazy turn and drenched him in freezing  January weather.

"And gone are the nights of the 'call boy' shouting at the front door that he was called for this train and that.

His Uncle Nick would be home for Christmas when Neil wrote his article and would not have to leave when his 'call' arrived just as the aroma of turkey was starting to emerge from the oven.

"And then he would be gone into the snow without a grumble - just a grinning wish for a happy Christmas for all"

Neil noted this was the railroad life and his uncle loved it adding he hoped other uncles or dads would continue to slip a son or daughter, a nephew or niece onto one of those big diesels for Their "moment of childhood ecstasy."  I don't know if it would be possible today but Neil's story sure brings back memories of train travel.

Neil concluded: "To me, my uncle was a close kin to Santa Claus. Perhaps, in away, he was the spirit of what Santa Claus is all about. And not too surprisingly his name just happens to be Nick."

F.A. 'Nick' Card died in 1986.

Ian sent me other photos and explained: "There are two types of Alco locomotives.  Both were of the earliest type used on the CPR in the 1950's and 60's.  The two road engine consist is pulling a freight train over the trestle into Chapleau. The other more typical locomotive onsist is sitting outside the Chapleau shops.

"2841 is a classic Hudson locomotive was used mainly on the transcontinental trains before they were replaced by diesels. 2841 was relegated to freight service in the late 1950's before being scrapped.

"I include an image of the GM demonstrator locomotives which were the first through Chapleau in 1949.  I include the image because it shows the complete train including the dynamometer car immediately behind the locomotives that monitored locomotive performance. I attach another image of the same GM type in CP paint sitting outside the Chapleau shops."

Thanks Ian as always for your assistance. I received the Neil Morris story from the late David McMillan, who gave it to me when he came to visit me in Cranbrook.  My email is mj.morris@live.ca