Nipigon Historical Museum will be open July and August 2024
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 9 AM to 5 PM
Saturday 10 AM til 4 PM
This is the 20th Year For the Nipigon Museum at this location on Front Street Nipigon
Admission is Silver Collection...whatever you consider your visit worth. If you are short of funds no problem you are welcome to come in and visit us FREE.
We have books and post cards and posters for sale.
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Clara Patton (Randall)
Born -----------------------1925
Father: Roy
Randall,
Mother: Melvin
Theresa
Sister: Dorothy Randall
(Salo)
Date: February 7th
2006
What brought your
father to Nipigon?
My father was a
black smith and had to find work. We came in 1939; I don’t know if he came in 1939
as he was already here when my mother sister and I came. He may have been here in 1938 I don’t know.
You came here
from?
Okay where were we
living oh
Who came with you?
Mother and Dorothy.
What was your
Mother’s name?
Melvina Theresa
How old were you
when you came to Nipigon?
Well I was born in
1925 that would make me 14, Dorothy was born in 1934 that would make Dorothy
five.
Where did you
live?
First we lived
down by the CN tracks, over there under the bridge in a shack. I don’t know how
long we were there I don’t remember being there in the winter so I think we moved
before winter.
Did your Dad work
for someone?
Well he came here
to look for work he was a blacksmith he’d have to work in the bush he worked
for Don Clark that I can remember.
You know that
house where a Borsk girl lives (Marcia) that is where Don Clark lived.
Then I don’t know who he (Dad) worked for
after but he worked on the boats down there at the dock. Dad always wore an
engineer cap. Mac McCullough would be an operator and Carl Ringham would be a
machine operator. We are looking at an old picture of a boat and a few men, one
that is Clara’s Dad.
Did you go to
school?
I went to school
in
Mother did leather work and she made jackets.
She had to use sinue and square needles they were triangular had three sides
she did bead work too. She was a very talented seamstress.
Was you Mom
Native?
Yes she was, she
was my adoptive mother and so was my natural mother native. She was dark so she
had to have some native in her she came from Treherne
I worked at
Zeckner’s and I was a cookie out at a camp in the Black Sturgeon some place for
one winter then came back to Nipigon.
How did you meet
your husband?
Oh he came back
from the army. I guess I used to go down and visit Mrs. Patton before that.
They lived down there in the area where Smutylo’s(101Railway) live. There used
to be quite a few houses in that area. There was Gordon’s she used to be a
nurse. His name was Stan Gordon I can remember his name but I can’t remember
her name.
I can remember
Clyde’s sister Ann lived in
Tell us about work
Clara?
I started at
Once we were done at
I think I was hired in 1975 at the plywood
mill I can’t remember; I had my accident in 1979. I went back after my accident
I had a hook still have it in the drawer I don’t use it any more though I don’t
need it.
You retired in?
What was it like
down town?
Of coarse all the
bars were booming there was the Nipigon Inn, International, the Ovillio and The
Normandie. That’s where we went a lot when
What Year did
I don’t remember I
know he was in that bedroom in there and he was not feeling good. I guess he lay
down and I heard a noise or something and I called the doctor because he would
not answer me. I forget who the doctor
was a tall skinny guy probably Workington, he lived some place up there (points
up towards McKirdy. Probably it was Dr. Workinton because Dr. Harvey was here
at the time. Then they took him to the hospital and I drove there and they
looked at him and he had a ruptured artery going into the stomach or something.
They could not fix him. They took him up town and I drove behind and by six in
the morning he was gone. I drove up by myself then Archie and Dorothy came up
because I called them.
They came and then
Dorothy drove my car and Archie drove whatever they had. I think it was 1975
when he died.
Claira lives at
Claira has two
nephews and one niece through her sister Dorothy (gone) and bother in law
Archie Salo. They are Ron and Jim Salo and Lori (Salo) Davies. Claira also has
relatives in
FLOSSIE
AKA COLIN CAMPBELL
“Upon the wicked He shall rain snares, fire, and brimstone,
and an horrible tempest: this shall be
the portion of their cup.”…Psalm 11
Father of the east, give me strength. …Flossie
NORTHWEST IN ONTARIO
To most people Flossie is a queer. Some of them even fell sorry for him. What they think about him doesn’t bother him
at all, in fact he couldn’t care less.
Chances are he doesn’t even bother to think about it. But this doesn’t mean that he doesn’t think,
because he does.
As Flossie crunched along the gravel roadside he couldn’t
help wondering why the town clerk had been over to talk to him today. The fellow usually ignored him, but today he
had stopped to ask questions. Now,
Flossie didn’t mind answering questions, but he often wondered why people asked
them. This fellow, Tort was his name,
wanted to know how many relatives he had and if Flossie had any dependents,
it’s a darn good thing he didn’t have any either, Flossie thought, because they
would be starving right along with him.
Right then a pickup truck pulled over just in front of him and the man
poked his head out the passenger side window.
“You want a ride the rest of the way?”
The two men sat in the truck as it picked up speed, neither
one of them willing to start the conversation.
Flossie looked out his window at the grey leafless, poplars and birches. Only the Evergreens didn’t seem barren, only
they could hold enough moisture in their trunks to outlast this cold, dry
winter. There was enough precipitation,
no doubt about that, but it was all frozen. Suddenly the driver broke into his
thoughts, “You’ll want off at the
crossroads eh?”
Flossie answered, “Yes if the wind doesn’t blow us off the
bridge.”
“Or we may get hit by a flock of geese,” the driver chuckled
This wasn’t as funny as it seemed, because at this time of
year, with everything flying south the wat it does, and with them flying down
the valley of the river, they’d have to
climb pretty quick and pretty high to get over the bridge. One Indian fellow got fined just last week
for hunting on a government bridge.
As they drove along Flossie began to talk to his
companion. “Guess we’ll be getting a lot
of frost this winter.”
“Yes,” answered the man, “ The Indians say there’s gonna be
a lot of snow too on account of the geese took flight so early.”
“Guess the cold gets you pretty hard down there by the
river,” he added.
“Your health is your wealth, “ Flossie responded. “If you’re
healthy you don’t need wealth.” “Your
sins are the cause of your bad health.
Look at me, I’m sixty-three, and I get up at 4:30 every morning to chop
my wood, then I have to walk into town.”
The way Flossie rambled in, it was not hard to see why
people wondered.
Flossie was about to tell him how he was a member of the
Round Church and how the devil couldn’t back him into a corner, but the fellow
was slowing down for his road so he didn’t have time.
His gravel toad petered out and the old logging trail was
clothed in deepening shadow as the old man shuffled off into the dusk. In the
distance he could hear his river as it boiled and eddied on its way to the
great fresh-water sea. Directly across
from the town, his settlement clustered on a slanting deposit of river silt.
Slowly his buildings settled as the back on which they were perched slid towards the river. The old man turned off the road and down his
trail. His cabin had been built far back
from the river by the first of its many occupants. In the Spring, when the river was in flood,
the rotting west wall was in danger of
being washed at high tide. As he
unlatched the plank door he became aware of the sweet raw odor of blackberries
and honey that spoke of bear. He had likely frightened it away when he came
down the path.
After eating a plate of noodles and drinking a cup of coffee
he went out to cut the wood for his night- fire. As he lifted his axe from the splitting
block, he thought, aloud. “This old axe has done many a job for me. Thank you axe, for you saved my life from
cold and taught me to laugh when your head flew off and put a hole in my
outhouse roof – but what a job it was to
fish it out of there.”
The old man chose a straight-grained block as his first victim. They are much easier to split than the ones that are knot-twisted. The twisted, branching birch grew around
close, but he had to go a long way to find a straight, fat swamp- birch.
As he chopped, he thought.
Those kids were a lot of trouble to him whether they meant
to or not. He would never be able to
forget the time last winter when one of them put some soap flakes in his
salt. Kids are usually that way
when they’re young; but it had been pretty hard on him for a couple of weeks until he found out
what was wrong. He had to ask Joe at the
garage to leave the toilet door unlocked, and even then he didn’t make it in
time a lot. Wore out four good pairs of
drawers that winter. But, he was
happy to have the kids come in when they
got cold skiing. Some of them must have
been in a fix like he had been, because they had drunk his coffee.
Flossie never seemed to have time to get married and raise
kids. It seemed inly right that he
shouldn’t pass out of life without
loving children and having them love him in their own uncertain way. He knew that he loved them in one way,
because on weekends when none of them
came over to visit him, he got desperately lonely. He could never be sure of them; maybe it was
hoping where hope had no right to be.
The swamp-birch were something like sheltered people. They grew straight=grained and were not wind-twisted and branch-broken like the hill-birch; but the trees on the hill didn’t die or rot
nearly so quickly as those down below.
Being sheltered and well nourished wasn’t nearly as important as being
able to stand up to, and to recognize
something as being evil. Sometimes the
poorest of people are the most
healthy. Flossie figured that he was the
healthy one.
Flossie had what he thought was one of the most important jobs in town. What do people prize more than their children? His job was their protection; both parents
and children Public school children from
down town were his friends. They were
the only ones who had to cross the highway that bisected the town. He took their small warm hands in his large,
rough ones and guided them across safely.
It was then that he wished he had many more hands; the little hands felt so good in his he thought ge would burst and overflow
with happiness.
As he put another block on the stump, he thought of the time
they had surprised him and how happy to tears he was to know that some of them cared that he was
alive. He swung his axe up and brought
it down on the wood, splitting it almost
in two halves. It had been the same day
that he got the letter. The two things
balanced out and, in one day, he felt pain of love and the burn of hate for
those people who cared only for themselves.
On that day the
principal had stopped to tell him that he wanted to see him at the school at
3:30. Flossie had wondered why, but
quite often people asked him to come
over to pick up old clothes. At 3:15 he had gone up to the school. The principal had taken him to his private
office to wait. He came back and led him
down the two flights of stairs to the
auditorium. The place was full of students and he could see his
friends in the front rows. They all
clapped when he came in and he couldn’t understand it all . He was led up to the platform where six large cardboard boxes were
piled. Flossie was in a daze. The principal told him that all the children
had given something to Flossie, for the long cold winter was close.
At the sight of all the canned food he broke down. All he could do was cry.
Flossie put his axe against the wall and gathered up the
split wood. As he lit the night-fire he
remembered the letter that had come on that same day. The town clerk and the reeve had signed
it. It said that they were taking two cents each day away from his dollar; in case he
should die it would be used to defray expenses, it was a cold letter and it
made him mad when he read it.
Forever, people have failed to realize that love is a many
splendored thing -Prometheus
INTERVIEWS – VIDEO LIST NOW ON YOUTUBE Nipigon Narrations
1. Anna Bellin
2. Barry Frankham Brian Davis
3. Bill Harmon
4. Billy Milne
5. Cookie Dampier
6. David Crawford
7. Dianne Maurice and Linda Elliot
8. Eadie Finlayson
9. George Borg and Art Laframboise
10. Gerry Blakely
11. Glena Clearwater
12. Glena Clearwater
13. Gord MacKenzie
14. Gwen Nyman
15. Irene Luce
16. James Foulds
17. Jeannine Moore and Roland Choiselat
18. Jerry Larson and Tim Harper
19. Jim McCullough
20. Anne Kovacs
21. Joanne and Jerry Larson and Linda Harbinson
22. John Ahl and Grant Williams
23. Paakanninon/Seabrook/Jarvela/Huls
24. John Petrick
25. John Pothoff
26. John Zechner Sr.
27. Levina Collins, Vince, Irwin and Shorty Nicol
28. Linda Robinson and Donny Ruoho
29. Louise Pelletier Dupuis
30. Maria Ray
31. Mary O’Donnell
32. Maryanne Oraszewski
33. Norman Sarrasin and Billy Milne
34. Omer Belisle
35. Peter Elliot
36. Phyllis Gauvin and Ethel Martin
37. Ray Dupuis Sr.
38. Ray Dupuis Sr.
39, Ray Huntus
40. Rosemary Ray, Bonnie Broughton Zach Cheetham
41. Ruby and Rosealee Dampier
42. Sharon, Jim, Donnie and Arnold Ruoho
43. Shirley Nelson and Donna Smith
44. Steve Harmatiuk
45. Sumiye Sugawara
46. Susan Cantley
47. Ted and Gwen Nyman
48.Thomas R. Hebert
49. Ulysses Landry
50. Velma Harmatiuk
51. Vern Ray
52. Albert Brennan and Mike Parkinson
53. Clara Dupuis and Roy Mannila
54. Kornelia Zigmont Newbrand
55. Dan and Jim Dampier
56. Joy and Marvin Johnson
57. Judy Wawia
58. Larry Rowley
59. Lorrie and Diane N.
60. Sally Aubut
61. Terry Winfield
62. Urban Luce.
