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Ted Martin Interview 2006

 

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. 

Jeffrey LeBar interview 2006

 

NIPIGON HISTORICAL MUSEUM               January 20, 2006

Jefferey LeBar

Born: Nipigon Hospital 1955

Parents: Audrey Nona (Atkinson) LeBar, Wesley LeBar

Grand Parents: Vivienne (Van Tassel) Atkinson, Carl Atkinson

                              Elizabeth, Oliver LeBar (Coldwell)

Siblings: Cheryl, Ronnie, Shawn, Allan

 

The LeBar’s moved from Manitoulin to Coldwell.  Wesley LeBar

then moved from Coldwell to Nipigon to marry Audrey.  They were married on June 18, 1951 at the Nipigon Anglican Church.  They had five children all born in Nipigon Hospital.  Wesley LeBar was a war vet and a member of the Nipigon Legion.  He went to the second world war and he was under age, was taken prisoner for a while by the German’s and entered into a prisoner of war camp.  When they were being moved to another camp in railway box cars; they had the job of emptying the latrine pails when the train stopped, so he and his partner found a steel bar that they hid in their clothes and then they were back on the train and pryed the wooden boards off the box car and then jumped out while the train was still going and landed on barbed wire on the side of the tracks.  Thy stayed still for quite a few hours until daylight and then when they knew it was safe they found a house and were taken in by some people.  He was later injured from a gunshot to the leg. 

          Wesley worked as an Engineer for Domtar for 35 years, Audrey worked at the Plywood Mill in the 1960's and also for the Hudson’s Bay Company as a receiver.  Audrey’s father Carl Atkinson owned a beach combing business in Nipigon for many years with his son Rowley Atkinson.

          Coldwell was a commercial fishing town situated on Lake Superior 15 miles west of Marathon, which had a big railway station and railway houses.  There was a school house and small church and approximately 20 houses.  Elizabeth and Oliver LeBar ran a restaurant from their house.  They had five children; Wesley, Elizabeth, Penny, Ernie, and Budd.

 

          When I was a kid my grandparents had a camp at Honeymoon Cove and we went there in Grandpa’s boat and had picnics there.  Then they moved their camp over to Still water and we used to walk down the tracks at the mouth of the Stillwater Creek which came out on Lake Superior.  After they had that camp, they moved one to the Little Mill area and that was the last place they had it because someone shot up their old camp.  I used to Beach Comb with C. Dampier and J. Dampier and Henry Dampier to St.  Ignace Island and there were roads and camps there.  Back then they had dams and they let the water out, the logs would come down the Nipigon river and the men would stand by the sides of the river and push the logs down and then the big booms would catch them. 

          Everetteville was up on the highway and my Auntie Eileen lived there, it was up where the Petro is now.  The houses started at the Petro and went to where the Jehovah’s Witness place is now(2006), Mrs.  Black lived up there too.  The Voyageur was up there and the Shell to when I was a kid we used to walk or ride our bikes to Loftquist Lake and there used to be a road to Loftquist from the Cop Shop road but then they closed it off.  I started beach combing when I was about 12 or 13 with the Dampier’s along with Ricky Dampier and we used to sleep on their boat for weeks at a time.  My Grandpa did Beach combing on  the Nipigon Bay and the Dampier’s ran from the mill to St.  Ignace Island and to Jack Pine.  We’d stay at St.  Ignace Island with Alfred and Cookie Dampier at their camp.  Somewhere towards Thunder Bay there was a Light house and there were two old couples who lived out there and kept an eye on the Light house.  There was one on Lamb’s Island too.  I went to the Nipigon Public School and my teachers were; Mr.  Frankham, Mrs Taylor, Mr Sukomoto, Mr Peele, and Mrs Nyman.  Our family lived across from Hebert’s on Front Street.

Lunch on the Nipigon

 

Photo by E.C. Everett Nipigon River

GOSSIP DAY a poem by E.C. Everett

 

GOSSIP DAY

By E.C. Everett

The little lakes all held a party they called it Gossip Day

Lake Nipigon was the meeting place, near Sunset Orient Bay

Big Chief Bay was staff recorder

While Ombabika Bay called the lakes to order.

Now Josephine was Guard of Honor

Where she lived supreme in the House of Bonner.

They appointed Susie to the chair that day

From Shakespeare Island – assisted by Gull Bay.

Now Jessie came from Poplar Lodge

Through the apostle Islands she had to dodge

Elisabeth and Maria then joined the gossip fray

At Nipigon House they paused a while, then on to deep Grand Bay,

The stream at Pine Portage was so swift and so wide

For six miles of rapids – no canoeman could ride.

Then Split Rock spoke up with head in the sky

To check on foaming Rapids as White Chutes passed by,

The President then was Virgin Falls who held the Lakes at bay,

 and gently poured the Silvery stream that flowed toward Nipigon Bay

with Ruby Lake and Shadow Creek they made a wonderful display

They all joined hands together and called it “Gossip Day”.

Now Polly sailed from Steamboat Bay to join twin Helen on this memorable day

To halt Frazer Lake who was running away

To join the Deer Maidens at Nipigon Bay.

The trout in Bass Lake were alerted as well

Cause these Maidens  were coming their party to swell

At the Chalet Lodge they had a meeting that day

With respect to Alexander those Maidens would pay.

Now what these Gossipers talked about was everybody’s wish

The Tourists came for scenic rides the Sportsmen came to fish

And all have found it worth their while to see these Maiden Lakes

Enhanced by roads unspoiled by Time

They’re yours these “Nipigon Lakes”.

Nipigon's Sleeping Beauty a poem by E.C. Everett

 

NIPIGON’S SLEEPING BEAUTY

The Sleeping Beauty has now been found,

Jist West of Nipigon on higher ground,

In beauty there she lies defiant,

A partner of the Sleeping Giant.

She faces toward the rising sun,

And guards the vallies, till day is done,

A micro-wave tower shines through the night,

To mark the place of her early flight.

In summer she has a coat of green,

From Everettville she can be seen,

In Winter she has a coat so white,

She sleeps serenely through the night.

She flashes her lightning whip at will,

Her roars of Thunder shake every hill,

She kicks up a storm but cannot escape,

From the Red Rock Hill to Thunder Cape.

This “Queen of the North” will awaken some day,

From the beautiful mountain towering Nipigon Bay,

And will turn back again to her place as before,

To her slumbering partner, On Thunder Bay Shore.

E.C. Everett  Nipigon Ontario

MEMORIES a poem by E.C. Everett

 

MEMORIES

Seated by the fireside,

In memories sweet and dear,

Perceiving through the long ago,

Are thoughts I hold so dear.

 

Nor is it yet with fond regret,

I view the scenes of yester-year

For ‘round me now are photos of

The friends I hold so dear.

 

Inspired by scenes of outdoor life,

Good Nature played its part,

I took my camera as a lad,

And made my humble start.

 

After sixty years my dreams came true,

My! How time has gone,

My photos have kindly played their part,

Made friends and memories that warm my aging heart.

 

With hopeful thoughts I now present,

To posterity, I now hand down,

The “old-time” ways in photo style,

Of people, sports, events of life renown.

 

Only a few are left of those earlier days,

When no cars, radio, T.V., nor planes were here;

We travelled by wayfreight, canoe, or skiis,

When work was fun, and all our friends were near.

E.C.Everett  Nipigon Ontario