NIPIGON HISTORICAL MUSEUM March 28, 2006
Elsie Gagnon
Resident of
Nipigon
Parents names: Ida
and Ed Oja ?
Siblings: Shirley,
Donny,
I came to Nipigon in 1940
with my twin sister and my two brothers.
My sister lives in Dorion now and her son Kevin Maloine was the Reeve
there for a while. We came from Silver
Mountain in Nolalu which is by the bridge at Kakabeka in Thunder Bay. My mother’s family grew up there and she had
fourteen in her family so I have a lot of cousins. My dad worked in the bush camps and that was
the reason why we moved here because we didn’t have a vehicle in those days and
it was too far for him to come home so he moved us here. He first worked in the bush camps and then he
worked for Nick Salo and he was the truck driver for him and I worked there
too. My mother worked there for a while
too and then I worked at Consumers-Co-Op in 1948 until it closed. I was working there first and then worked for
Nick Salo and from there I worked at the Hudson’s Bay Company. At the Consumers Co-Op I worked with Archie
Salo and he drove for them and used to do the deliveries for Pine Portage and
Cameron Falls and I used to fill all of the orders for them and it was the
truck drivers who would bring the groceries to them and would come back with a
new list and I think they went twice a week.
We’d fill the orders and then they would haul out the groceries to them
and you had to write out all the orders by hand in those days and even with
those tiny little notepads and the same with Zechner’s until they got those
tills that you just put everything for and everything is itemized. I worked at Zechner’s for 20 years and I had
to write everything out by hand you know all the fire orders and it was pages
and pages of orders. Then I worked for
Alec Fraser too and he had a television repair shop and he sold licenses there
too and I don’t know how long I worked there and then went over to work at
Zechner’s. I think when his wife came to
work there was when I left Alec’s and his store was right beside Doc’s. My father worked in Beardmore and my mother
worked in the Bush too and they were both working in 1952 when I got married
and worked there and then I think when that was all finished they ended up
working for Nick Salo first for a while.
After working for Nick my father worked for the Department of Highways
until he retired which was here in Nipigon.
I don’t really remember how many years it was he worked for the
Department of Highways but he retired when he was 65. I was 19 when I got married and he was 25
years older than I am so he must have been there for about thirty years and he
drove truck for them. He was there when
they put the highway in and he did the shoveling at the gravel pits. He also worked for Paju’s too and he used to
crush rocks on the Cameron Falls road where they used to have just before where
the old dump was and there was a gravel pit there. Paju’s used to own that gravel pit there and
my dad worked on the rock crusher for quite a while and he worked in many
different places. Back then you didn’t
have to stick to just to one job, you could move around and do different jobs
and I know he drove taxi also. You
didn’t have to worry about it if one job was finished because you could always
move onto another job not like today which you don’t dare quit your job.
When I was sixteen I can
remember Nipigon was a pretty busy place and all the bars were going strong and
the bowling alley and everything. It was
always busy on the main street not like now.
We had a really good Hockey team then too which was the Nipigon Flyers
and I have pictures of them. My husband
played hockey too until he got water on his elbows and had to quit because he
said it wasn’t worth it to play and get injured. My husband and Marshall Borsk played defense
and Marshall was really tall and was about 6'4" and my husband’s only
5'7". I got engaged in the outdoor rink
here when my husband was looking after it which was the one on first
street. If we wanted to go and skate on
the rink we all had to go and clean the ice off before we could go on. When they closed the place up we would go and
sit where the players box was and would take our shoes off and would skate in
the dark. Berube’s lived next door to
the rink and we used to dig tunnels and we had a tunnel underneath there us
girls and when I stop to think about it now it was really dangerous and we’re
lucky it never collapsed. We had
tunnel’s all over the place over there and we used to go under them and crawl
all over the place. I would never let my
kids do that but that’s what we used to do back then but the snow was really
hard but when you stop to think about it we could have suffocated underneath
them if it would have collapsed. We had
heavy snow back then but now looking back it wasn’t the smartest idea we had
going. We used to go to dances which
were called Teen Town and they used to have them at the school auditorium and
we were young when we went to those and then they eventually closed them
down. Then I remember when they brought
in a band which was playing all over Canada and they came one night to the
school auditorium and that place was just packed and it was really nice. I guess that would have been during the war
when they came and I was about fourteen or sixteen. I was nine when I came in 1940 and I went to
the Nipigon Consolidated school and Miss Ryerdon was one of my teachers and I
had her in grade eight. I quit school in
grade eight and didn’t quite finish the year but in those days you didn’t have
much of a choice because you had to quit school and go to work. Mrs. Swain was a teacher there but I never
had her, Miss McDonald, I had Mary Meyers, and Miss Ryerdon, Miss Newton. Miss Ryerdon taught grades 7 and 8. I have an old newspaper here with some of the
other teachers who taught there and it’s the Nipigon News and Sy Copps used to
run the paper then and he came here to run the paper. The Roxy Café was where the Library is now
and Reliable Launders and Cleaners was a drycleaning company right next door to
where the Nipigon Café is now. A lot of
the businesses like Hudson’s Bay Company, E.C. Everett and the Big 6 was
Anabelle Lee’s place. Mike Borsk used to
own the International and then Nick Salo and there was the Corner Coffee Shop
and then Kriff’s was where Jackie Oja has her tax office now. Consumer’s Co-Op was where Zechner’s is now
and Florian Zechner was where the drug store is now, Thompson’s Drugs was in
this building here where the museum is now which was the L&L before
that. Frank Atwill had the bowling alley
and the Pool Room which is where the China Gardens is now. Then the Nipigon Inn and A. Kriff had a jewelry shop beside that on the
corner and the Municipal Office and Palm Dairies and the International
Hotel. William Bravo and Grant Willan
had a business fixing small motors which is where the Silver Club is now. The Bottling Works was where Zechner’s is now
and it was in behind there where the trucks unload they used to make their own
pop and it was really good pop too. Then
the Ovilio Hotel which is gone now too but then there was Fred and Jean’s Taxi
Company which was owned by Fred Schwetz and Jean Choiselat. Julia Marciski was a Schwetz and that was her
father who owned that. Crescent Taxi was
owned by Charlie Choiselat, Whimpy’s taxi was over and across from the Nipigon
Café and then Dr. Jefferey had his
office down in the basement of the museum building here. I had Dr.
Davies when I had my first baby and I was shy because I was only
nineteen and he said to me “well my wife never wears fancy panties like those”,
well was I ever embarassed I could have dropped through the floor! Then when I had my second child who in fact
will be 50 in May, I went to Dr. Somerleigh and he was telling me about protection
and he says “those condoms are no good you know because they store them up on
top of buildings, and garages and roofs and everything else and they break when
you go to use them”!. I didn’t want to
discuss it with him but he was so forward about it. Then after that I couldn’t get pregnant
anyways and it took me eleven years to get pregnant after that. I always wanted six kids but we ended up
having three and we lost the fourth child when he was two and a half. I’ve got a daughter living in Manotick
outside of Ottawa and then my son lives in St.
Paul, Minnesota and he married an American girl and they’ve been married
now for eleven years. He was married once before when he was a young kid here
in Nipigon and he was only 17 and she was 16 but she was pregnant and that
marriage didn’t last. I knew it wouldn’t
last that first marriage because they were way too young but he has a nice
daughter and now she got married last August and is expecting and that’ll make
me a great grandmother. When she was
pregnant with my grandchild her father wanted her to get an abortion and I was
against it and I told my son that I’d wonder for the rest of my life about the
baby. So anyways, she was lucky she had
the baby because it was the only child she had and she started having problems
and I think ended up having a partial hysterectomy on her. If she would have gone through with the
abortion she probably would have never had another child. I always felt like when they lived here that
we had our grandchild until she was about two years old and we had her it
seemed every single week-end and sometimes my husband would tell me “we’re not
going to take her this week-end”! Come
Friday night though he would tell me to phone and tell them we’d take her for
the week-end. She is really close to us
though and I’ve always felt like she was my daughter. My daughter has three kids too but she’s
always lived away from us and they’ve lived in Thompson, Manitoba and then they
moved to Terrace, B.C., and then to Yellowknife, then to White Rock and then to
Manotick. So I was there with her when
she had the babies and I saw two of my grandchildren being born.
My two kids grew up here
and went to High School there in Red Rock and my daughter married Mike Zeleny
from Red Rock. They haven’t ever been
close to Nipigon and her husband works for the R.C.M.P. and they just got back
from a trip to France. My daughter knew
I was going to be worried about her going to France so she didn’t tell me about
the trip because she knew I would worry and I shouldn’t worry but ever since we
lost our child I always worry. For their
25th wedding anniversary she won a cruise from the Royal Bank a few
years ago.
When I was young my friends were Verna Manilla who
stood up for me when I got married and Anita Hanes. They were the two I hung around with the most
and in fact they worked at the Theater where I worked too which was the Plaza
Theater. One sold tickets and the other
made popcorn and I was working at Consumers and would meet them after work and
we would go in the evening to see a show there.
In fact, I remember one time we were in there and it was a midnight show
and we went in at about ten o’clock that night to go and get things ready and
there was a mouse in there. Well you
should have seen those two girls, one was on the counter and the other was on
top of the chesterfield and I said “what’s wrong with you”? And they said
“there’s a mouse” so I said “it won’t hurt you” so I grabbed the mouse by the
tail but it curled up and bit me. So I
had to drop it but I ended up getting it but there were the two of them scared
as anything!. The Plaza was owned by the
Airchuck’s then Nester was his first name and he came from Beardmore I think
and they lived in the house where Roe and Hilja Skillen live. I think they had three kids who are somewhere
in Southern Ontario now because I had asked Verna Taisey if she heard that they
were still living and she said as far as she knows they are. Nester was in a partnership there with a short
man but I can’t recall his name. Bill
Dwyer had it last and they bought it off of Airchuck’s and they ran it for
quite a while and then Carol Zechner took it over and then Don Martin and his
wife and I think there was someone before them even but nobody really kept it
as long as Airchuck’s did. In fact the
guys who were building the Plaza at the time one of them was Johnny Poho’s
brother and nephew worked on building the theater.
We used to go to Pine
Portage all the time too and I used to go there with Johnny Yuhl who used to
drive the Imperial Oil truck and Verna Taisey and I used to go for a ride with
him all the time down to Pine Portage to see what they were doing there with
construction and everything. That was on
my day off because I was working at Consumers then and you couldn’t just go
whenever you wanted to. There used to be
a lot of people living at Pine then and even at Cameron they had a little
village there and my cousin used to work there too Ray Koitonen and his wife
Helvi and they had three kids. They
lived there too and Mary and Joey Reno used to live there too and Bev Lynch and
the Hill’s, there were quite a few that lived there in that little village and
they used to come here on a Saturday night to go bowling and would go to the
bar. Lots of them would drink and then
drive home on that road and that’s where John Sharp and Oville had that bad
accident on that road they weren’t drinking because John never drank but he was
more crippled up after that accident then he ever was. John’s wife got injured too and I don’t think
she ever completely recovered from her injuries and she had her ups and
downs. John was the book keeper at
Zechner’s and he was a member at the United Church and then they moved to the
Baptist Church. A lot of people left the
United Church when they started to bring in women ministers there and they were
against it.
There used to be a dance
hall just at the beginning of the Cameron Falls road on the left hand side on
the corner and Allan Hannula’s mother ran that place. Kilborn’s live there now but we used to go
there and there was another dance hall where Dr. Somerleigh used to live which was Paju’s
house on Hogan Road. Mikko Lespi’s
brother lives there now and there used to be a garage there and that’s where
there was another dance hall. Art
Sjollander and his wife Marie owned it and Goesta Sjollander and his brother
ran it and we used to go there to dance and they would have more or less like a
hoe down and what not there. Once you got
married that was the end of going to those sorts of things. Going with Buster, he was never a dancer but
I loved to dance so we used to go to Hockey games before we were married. He used to phone me at the Hudson’s Bay and
say “you wanna go to the Hockey Game tonight?” and I’d say “yes” and he says
“well be ready because I’ll be there a little after six to pick you up”. So I’d run home like anything and get changed
and away we’d go. We used to go to
Marathon, Terrace Bay, Geraldton and all over the place to watch the games and
there were good games and it was good hockey.
My brother Donny played and he got a broken nose one time in Marathon
from a guy hitting him with a stick and he finally ended up having to get
operated on because he couldn’t breathe right.
I still don’t watch hockey
now because I can’t stand to see anybody getting hurt and it seems so rough
today. We have a camp out at Polly which we’ve had for 38 years now.
When I worked at Consumers
I remember the manager was leaving and they held a party for him and so I drank
wine that night and we were playing in one of the base ball tournaments up at
the school the next day because we had a girls team. I was hung over pretty good and wasn’t paying
attention and someone called out my name and the ball came flying at me and I
put my hand up to deflect the ball but I even surprised myself that I caught
the ball and somebody got out. We always
held our games at the Public school and I played for about three years which
was up until I met my husband and then I didn’t play anymore. I used to skate a lot and I loved to skate
and my husband and I used to both love going skating all the time. I would love to skate now but I have
Osteoporosis and I can’t take the chance of falling down.
My husband Buster worked on the boats here at the water front on the Anisse Lee and he was the captain on that boat for a long time. He worked in the bush camps too and then got transferred over to Red Rock when both of my kids got married. So he asked if he could get transferred into Red Rock at that time because both of my kids got married in a three month span. Then he retired from the mill there but he worked there from 1947 and was retired since he was 65. He will be 84 in May and there is ten years difference between he and I. When I was working in the Theater in 1951 I said to Buster “save me a seat” just for the fun of it and I don’t think he thought I meant it. I think I had been taking tickets that night and when I was finished and the show started I was just lucky that there was a seat beside him. So then he asked me if I wanted to go to Winfields where they played cards down the basement in the rumpus room. So I said “sure” and I didn’t get home until by six o’clock in the morning and he took me home by taxi anyways. We’ve been married for 54 years since Feb. 20th.
