Happy Birthday to our Flag...some fifty
years young yesterday.
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| Raised first on February 15, 1965 on Parliament Hill after the red ensign had been lowered at noon in Ottawa |
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
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| Paint it solid red...add "The St. Catharines Standard" in Old English lettering |
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.
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| Wave the flag proudly...a 50 year old classic. |
Next Up: THE FLAG FLAP
