When I was growing up in Saint John NB during the mid-1940’s to the mid 1960’s we lived in the north end of the city. In those days we lived in cold-water flats without central heating. The flats had wood sheds off the kitchen to store our firewood and/or coal supply and/or oil barrel. Our flat was in a building three stories high.
I remember winters when my brothers Norm, Glen and I were little, mom would keep us in the house if it was too cold to play outside. Mom showed us how to make funny faces on the frosted windows in the kitchen with metal sewing thimbles. Pressing the thimble on the frosted windows created a small circle. We had fun making our own works of art.
My favourite time of year, as a kid, were the weeks leading up to Christmas. If we had snow we’d build snow forts, make snowmen, have snowball fights, dig tunnels in the snow banks, and slide down the hills for hours on end beside the Saint John Forum. It didn't matter to us if our knees and mittens were wet, we had fun and we reluctantly went home when it was time for supper.
My dad was a steamship checker and he often worked double shifts in the winter months at the port of Saint John while my mom was at home caring for the nine of us. Looking back over the years, I think my mom and dad did a marvelous job looking after all of us.
In 1950, when we were living at 203 Victoria St. We had a wood burning stove in the kitchen for heat and cooking, and a coal burning stove in the living room to heat the rest of the flat. Our kitchen stove had a water reservoir attached to it to heat water for washing.
Later, in 1955, we lived at 19 Cedar St. where we had an oil burning stove in the kitchen for cooking and heating and a coal burning, potbelly, hopper-fed stove in the living room that our grandmother Nanny Comeau gave to us.
The hopper-fed coal burning stove had mica glass in the two doors around the middle so we could see the coals glowing red inside. On cold winter mornings we stayed in bed until dad had the coal burning stove nice and hot for us to stand around while we got dressed.
Even though money was scarce, Christmas was an especially wonderful time for our family.
The tree Dad brought home often had missing branches, but he would bring extra branches to fill in the gaping empty spaces on the trunk.
Using a manual hand drill dad would make a small hole in an empty area on the trunk and sharpen the base of a spare branch and insert it in the hole. He’d tie a piece of string to that extra branch and secure that to the branch above to provide support.
Once the colourful lights were put on the tree, and the silver tinsel added, along with other beautiful ornaments we’d turn off the living room lights and our tree was always beautiful!
As a young child I could never understand why mom and dad were not as excited as we were when the five of us stormed into their bedroom at 5:30 on Christmas morning and woke them up to show them what Santa Claus brought us.
From my point of view, no one had a better decorated Christmas tree than ours…well, except for our Uncle Hubert Ayles and Aunt Alice.
Uncle Hubert and Aunt Alice were master Christmas tree decorators. Their tree always reached from floor to ceiling and was covered with colourful lights, and every inch of the tree was decorated with silver tinsel; each strand carefully hung straight as an arrow; a masterpiece.
Christmases were always a special time for me. I enjoyed the anticipation and the excitement, the turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and mom’s delicious mincemeat and apple pies.
Raymond Pierce is a Storyteller living in Toronto, Canada
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