FIFTY YEARS of Blowing in the Wind

Happy Birthday to our Flag...some fifty years young yesterday.

Raised first on February 15, 1965 on Parliament Hill after the red ensign had been lowered at noon in Ottawa

Wow...hard to believe it...for it seems like, not so long ago, we had this major rift and the designs were all over the map. What we settled on, was not what was originally proposed, or even roughly thought about initially. We have survived...my, how we have survived. And what a nice flag it is. It's still a very clean and crisp design, fifty years later. I didn't always feel this way.

I was a newsboy, then, in the early sixties. Lester B. Pearson was a new Prime Minister having defeated John Diefenbaker from out west in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. Pearson lead the Liberals as they won the election in the spring of 1963. John G. Diefenbaker had lost over a number of issues. The cancellation of the AVRO ARROW had cost thousands of jobs in the aerospace industry with brightest of those folk heading to Florida to work with NASA to form a nucleus of the U.S. Space program. Then there was the failure to allow/disallow the BOMARC atomic bomb missiles into Canada from our neighbour to the south. The waffling got the better of him.

Perhaps, you've heard of the Diefenbunker, built deep in the ground, outside Ottawa, to shield top national leaders in the event of a nuclear attack. This was a time of extreme cold war politics, the Cuban missile crisis and U.S. ship embargo surrounding Cuba, hoping to prevent the delivery of Russian missiles. The U-2 photos recon photos showing the silos that were already under construction. Civil Defence drills with us kids having to go into the central halls of schools for drills where we would line up or sit quietly on the floors or huddle under our desks (as if that was really going to reduce our injuries). The yellow air raid sirens that were put up in strategic points in St. Catharines...one being just off the north side off the Connaught schoolyard where I attended until June of '63.. Another was installed on Queenston street near the Kernahan Park baseball diamonds...with a third that I remeber down near York and Carlton, I think.

“Diefenbaker appointed the first female minister in Canadian history to his cabinet as well as the first aboriginal member of the Senate. During his six years as Prime Minister, his government obtained passage of the Canadian Bill of Rights and granted the vote to the First Nations and Inuit peoples.”* (*Courtesy Wikipedia).

Carrying the six-day-a-week late edition of the St. Catharines Standard, owned by the Burgoyne family, you became familiar with all the front page news as you biked or walked your route depending upon the weather. Sometimes it was late arriving as the early edition cylinders on the presses had been changed to update a late-breaking story. That usually brought the ire of some of your customers as their papers hadn't been received “on time”.

My route had cost me $17.50 and I had bought it from Ricky Weaver's older brother who lived on Ida Street near the General Hospital on Queenston Street. In those days, you paid 50 cents for each customer on your route and had a contract that you signed with the Standard and the carrier. When I left the newspaper business a few years later, I had built the route to around a steady 96 customers (sometimes we had up to 105). More importantly, I had not purchased any additional customers. Just providing good prompt delivery combined with a dry paper was the key. The rest was good people skills which took some guts and learning at the age of 11. Slowly, over time, people switched to me as I built the business. I delivered for almost 5 years.

I first tried to get their names for my collection book...not just their address. I called them by name...they responded and treated me well especially with my tips at Christmas time. ...I only had a couple of times that they didn't pay or moved out without notifying me. I was under contract with the Standard and had to pay for each paper whether I had collected eventually or not. Cash...35 cents a week. On a week with a stat holiday the price was reduced by 7 cents....then it climbed to 40 and a new section was added on Saturday that made it 42. That new section had to be manually inserted by the carriers...and we were given an extra penny per paper for that trouble. It also made the paper

Paint it solid red...add "The St. Catharines Standard" in Old English lettering

heavier to carry and many times delayed the 4 p.m. weekday drop-off from the big, red, square box delivery vans similar to what UPS or FEDEX uses today.

Trucks, with drivers and tossers on board, would be lined up on William Street awaiting their deposit of papers as they came off the press room, were counted, bundled, and labelled for each carrier. Yes, each vehicle had a driver and a tosser. No seat belts, as they drove with the sliding doors wide open. The tosser standing by the open door hanging onto a handle for support after getting his next toss readied from the back of the truck while it was moving.

At each stop, a series of bundles of newspapers would be thrown by the side of the road, as the driver would cross the street to deliver a batch to the local variety store along the way. If there was no coner store the truck pulled to the curb and hardly stopped as the bundles sometimes rolled to a stop. At Christmas, you might have two or more bundles as the extra advertising swelled the size of the paper. Wednesdays usually had a larger paper as well with the grocery ads.

What am I leading to? In those days, we got our news primarily from a news paper. Sure local AM radio stations had their major newscasts at eight, noon, five or six and eleven...but anything with “in depth” coverage began with the newsprint manufactured either in Thorold South by the Ontario Paper or, in Merritton, at the Alliance Paper mills (although they specialized in more fine papers than newsprint). A lot of ink and paper were used to vent. LETTERS TO THE EDITORS abounded daily.

People were set in their ways. They had gone to three major wars under the Union Jack and Red Ensign and were not about to pledge allegiance to another. It was our Canadian Civil War. Families and members of families at loggerheads. What would be accepted...Union Jack vs. Red Ensign or a totally new design were the options.

Wave the flag proudly...a 50 year old classic.

Colour, style, intricate or modern, stripes or solids, vertical or horizontal, emblem or shield...wow, the list went on and so did the debate by ALL CANADIANS...young and old.

Next Up: THE FLAG FLAP