NIPIGON
HISTORICAL MUSEUM MAY 18, 2006
INTERVIEW
Ted Martin
Wife: Elsie
Martin
Siblings: Max,
George, Isabelle, Steve, Jim, Harvey, Bill
Resident of
Nipigon
I was born in Thessalon
Ontario and I was about 16 when I came to Nipigon because my mother and father
had passed away. The boys scattered all
over and there was nothing going on at that time and you couldn’t get 5 cents
but I borrowed 5 dollars from an old chap who was a great friend of my
dad’s. So I thought that if I could 5
dollars I’d leave so I went and seen this old fella and he didn’t say anything
for a while because five dollars was five dollars I’m telling you. So he said yes you go so I went and I went on
the freight but you weren’t supposed to go on the freight so when we got to
Nipigon they threw us all off. So there
were a couple of us who ended up here on the freight and we landed in Nipigon
and we were sitting there all afternoon and a man came along and said to us
“hey you young fellas I want somebody small enough to do some work”. So I said “that’s me!” and he said “you!
What’s your name?. So I told him his
name and he said “are you telling me the truth?” and I said “absolutely” and he
said “well you come with me”. Well that
was because he knew my dad well and I could work because my dad taught us how
to work so we knew how to work and I got along good there. I just soared up from there and it wasn’t
very long until I was running the camp and I did well in there and made money
in there. Then I went in the army I
didn’t join necessarily because I just knew that I was going to have to go in
there eventually so I thought I might as well join up before I get enlisted. So I went right through to Germany and it was
three months going from Canada to Germany. I had a stroke a while ago and so I
don’t recall a lot so if I’ve missed anything it doesn’t mean anything. When we first left Canada we went to Europe
after we landed and we fought our way right into Germany and I was four years
and nine months in the army. When we
came back some of us were in pretty bad shape but we got there and a lot of
them died I sure don’t want to go back there again. I didn’t do too bad though I’m 86 and I’ll be
87 pretty soon and I’m just hoppin’ around just like a young fella. When I come back home from Europe we had to
go where they told us to go at the start.
So I wouldn’t do anything for them I just stopped what I was doing and
they told me that if I didn’t do what they told me to they would put me in
jail. So I told them “put me in jail!” I
thought I’m not going no place with them. Well they fooled around for three or
four days with me and they came in the one day and said “get out of here”. I worked in Thunder Bay for a short while and
then I moved North which was where I wanted to go. I got into a big outfit up North and it
wasn’t very long until I was running the whole camp there were six big camps
and I think mine was the biggest camp. I didn’t get it right on the first try
and then later I had the biggest gang there was and I had about a hundred men
in my camp. In the summer time I could
get around 460 men but then in the winter the number of men would drop because
there wasn’t enough work because of the snow.
I only had about 80 men in the winter and I worked for a camp north of
Marathon into Karamat and Hillsport and I worked there for quite a while. Then later they put me into another camp even
more North. So I stayed there until we
had adopted my brother George’s daughter Donna after his wife died. We raised her from the time she was six until
she got married and then in 1960 we came to Nipigon. Donna’s been in bad shape for the last five
years now but ever since she was about 30 she’s been sick since then and she
has Multiple Sclerosis and she hasn’t been able to do anything since then. Donna has a son Darryl who is in the Air
Force and he’s a whipper snapper and he’s really smart and he’s way up in the
Air Force. There are two or three
different kinds of planes that he flew but he doesn’t fly any more and he’s in
search and rescue now but doesn’t fly as often as he did.
My brother Jim is the
oldest of all of us and he passed away in 1981 or 82 not long after Elsie and I
were married and he was 70 when he died.
My brother Steve died when he was in his 60's what happened to him was
he went in to the hospital to get his teeth fixed and he wasn’t in bad shape at
all but he wanted to get his teeth out.
So in the morning he asked the nurse for something and when she came
back he was dead and that was all there was to it! He had gotten his teeth
pulled out and then he died that was when Dr.
Farley was the dentist in Nipigon. My brother Harvey was overseas with
me and they blew him apart and blew one leg off him so he came home and he
passed away when he was about my age I think he died in 1986 from Cancer.
Harvey’s wife was a nice person and she died of Cancer too. There’s only two of us left now myself and my
brother Bill and he lives in Elliott Bay and he’s 80 years old. Bill did well for himself and he made all
kinds of money mining and his first wife died from Cancer and his first wife
was a school teacher and she worked herself to death. When she was close to retirement I think she
only had a year left to work and then she got Cancer and that was it. Bill got remarried two years ago and they got
along really good and figured they might as well get married and get together
and that’s what they done. So she moved
in with him and she remodeled the house and it’s beautiful in that house
now. I didn’t do too bad myself either
the camp here at Loftquist has been in Elsie’s family since 54 or 55. There was a lot of trees out the front of our
camp here and then they took the trees down and then one year we didn’t come
out because of my Hip Replacement. After
my Hip Replacement I was up the first day walking with it and he told me that
if I did bad I would be bad but if I do the right things that there wouldn’t be
a problem with it so that’s exactly what I did.
I can go anyplace now with that old fella and I feel good now.
It was funny when I was
about 6 my dad’s violin was up on the wall all the time. When he told us to do something let me put it
this way there was eight of us and my dad never touched one of us in his life
he’d get pretty yolkey but when he told us to do something we done it, I’m
tellin yah but he never touched us. So
when I got his violin down and he was away at work so I thought I’ll try the
violin out and my dad came in and he heard me scratchin away at this thing and
I don’t know why I stopped or whatever but he said “well that ain’t too bad
son” well sir I could have went right through the roof! Was I scared of him but he never touched none
of us and I was just shakin’ and that was when I started playin’ the Fiddle and
I didn’t do too bad when I was very young.
Then after that people had passed away and I was around 16 when I went
on my own. I was about 8 or 9 when I
would go and play at dances with my dad and him and mother would get up and
dance with the rest and then me and my sister Isabelle would play and she would
cord and I would fiddle. I didn’t do too
bad either and that was hard times and they would go from one house to another
in two weeks just to have a dance there was no whiskey or drinking or
anything. Dad and mother would play and
then Me and Isabelle would play on the guitar then I got good enough to play
the fiddle so that they could get up and dance a little bit. I learned to play by ear and I think most
people learned that way but there was only one of the boys in our family other
than me who played an instrument and that was Bill and he corded and sang too.
I’ve had a great life I guess but I don’t
want to go back to the war but I had to go and there was a hell of a lot of
people who wouldn’t go over. I don’t
think that was right I think they should have cut them off especially out West.
Those people were workers out there and they used to make them come in and do
as much work as we did but we never did any work when they came because they
made them do it. We didn’t stay very long after that and I think it was in May
when we were out West and then come September we were in England and we went
about two or three months in England and one time we started going
overseas. Anyway, we started out to get
close to Rome and as soon as we took about half of our crew out of there in
came the Germans and they found out that we were coming and they took half of
us and sent us back. Soon as we came
back in they didn’t offer to come back and that’s why the place where we should
have been was where the Italians were who were no good for nothing. We took an
awful beating at the first place we went and I was in for four years and nine
months which was a long haul.
Then I ran the sawmill
outfit after that in Thunder Bay for a while and then I went and worked in the
bush camps. When my first wife and I
took in Donna and she was finished school in 1970 so we came out of the bush
after that. We tried to get Donna to go
to High School but it was too far when we were way out in the bush and things
weren’t going good for some reason and I was fed up so I said one day to my
boss to get another man. So my boss told
me not to go and that he would get me more money if I wanted so I told him I
was leaving. So I came back and for
about another three or four days I went over to the mill at Domtar in Red Rock
and one of the guys says to me “do you want a job?”. So I said “yah that’s what I’m here
for”. So he said “do you know where you
want to go?” and I said “I don’t know where I want to go”. So he said “how would you like to go out and
work at the gate house?. I had lots of
fun doing that and I liked it and that was shortly after I came out of the bush. So it was a good job and I had lots of fun
doing that and I made fairly good money doing that job. Then I got remarried in 1979 to Elsie her
husband had died of cancer and my wife died of cancer she died in 1977 just a
few days after Elsie’s husband died.
Then we got married in 1979 and now I have lots of grand kids I think it
was only about two years that I actually cooked for myself. It was eleven years ago that I had the brain
aneurism and I had been in a coma for two months and had lost everything. I wasn’t even able to say my name and I had
to learn how to walk again and talk again but I can remember things now. I can picture myself now in a lot of places
overseas which I couldn’t do for a long time but I know now and lots of things
are coming back to me. I couldn’t play
any songs or anything but I just kept at it and eventually got some of those
songs back. My brother Bill came up one time and he brought me my fiddle and
asked me to play but I couldn’t play nothing so when he went back home again I
was getting bored and so I picked up the fiddle and didn’t do too badly at
first but then all of a sudden it just came back to me just like a big
wave. Now I’ve been playing with the
Land of the Nipigon Fiddlers for about a year or so now and I really like Jimmy
he’s nice to play music with. It’s funny that when I first started to play here
I had asked the guys who knew how to cord to cord for me but I couldn’t do it
with them but they were no good to me.
So I asked Jimmy and he is always improving with his guitar
playing. Jimmy’s dad and I were in the
service together. Jimmy was a long time
learning but he’s really coming along now.
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