Credit: Sault Ste. Marie Public Library
Aerial photo from 1950. Waterfront in foreground, Monterey Gardens seen in the back ground on top of the hill
Our family moved into 53 Oakwood Drive when it ended at the bush before Brian Avenue existed. Those were the days when five year old kids could leave home in the morning by themselves to play with the many others on the block and show up for lunch a few hours later. We were told you had to have children to move into the area. The bush was our world until the bulldozers arrived to prepare the site for Brian Avenue and the next installment of houses. I can’t forget being caught behind the massive piles of burning trees with the twins Heather and Arthur Roy whose house was the last on the street. We thought we were doomed. We found our way out through a narrow, unburned patch of earth to return home. I don’t think my Mom even asked what I’d been doing. We were there as well when Glen Gibson had the grocery store at the corner. Mom could call up and have her groceries delivered for free. The Gibsons became good friends of the family one New Year’s Eve when neither my parents’ guests nor theirs could get up Pim hill in the snow so they partied together anyway.At that time the other building that I recall on Poplar was Bouchard’s Bakery, operated by our next door neighbour, an opera singer manqué whose “La Donna e mobile” resounded from his living room during CJIC’s Saturday afternoon broadcasts. When he closed that business and sold it to Mrs. Sanderson for a confectionary store, he opened a dry cleaning establishment beside the Precious Blood Church. For years afterwards, my mother baked bread in the tins he gave her.
When Sam Manning built his barbershop, I remember how wonderful it was to chew the tar the roofers left behind. It was just as good as gum and it was free. Like all the other merchants, Mannings lived in the neighbourhood behind us on MacDonald. They were great friends of my parents all their lives. Perhaps that was why Sam gave me a brush cut no matter what I asked for.
I think that Mrs. Frazer was the first merchant that didn’t live nearby. Then George Grant opened his pharmacy and our family helped him to stock the shelves. The final business I recall opening along the street was Bud’s restaurant and corner store at the end of the block. It had a magnificent Wurlitzer jukebox and a constant supply of pink Lucky Elephant popcorn. At last we could get a milkshake in our own neighbourhood.
Credit: file
As Clergue hadn’t opened yet, we began school in the basement of St. Steven’s Mission across from King George School, taught by the wonderful Miss Beck, my first love affair. After Christmas, the class moved over to the new King George kindergarten. We were thrilled to be in the same building as the big kids. It was in grade two, I think, that while walking home alone through the bush behind the school, I realized that black caterpillars were dropping all around me. Panicking, I ran to the safety of the street only to discover that the sidewalk was black with those same beasts. I just stumbled into the great army worm invasion of 1950. It was the one that stripped trees, stopped trains and blanketed black the asbestos shingles of our house.
Later in our more mature years, the guys used to climb trees and play guns in Holbrook’s bush, fly model planes with Mike Day’s dad, take annual spring walks along the railroad tracks and practise smoking in our most secret place using tree bark wrapped in newspaper. Yuck! Yes, Monterey Gardens was certainly the best place in the world to grow up.
