Mission Church of St. John the Baptist - when religion still shared the Valley with the railroad

The Mission Church of St. John the Baptist on Paradise Row, c1901. This was one of the most difficult churches in Saint John to photograph. Erb carefully composed this postcard shot and he did us a great service because he allows us to see down the alleyway and observe the imposing facade of the Intercolonial Railway Station, (later UNION STATION) which fronted on Mill Street. Erb photographed the station many times in his career and dozens of slightly differing postcard views were published. The Mission Church was difficult to photograph because you had to stand on the sidewalk opposite, and the amateur cameras of that era did not offer wide-angle composition. Notice here that not only has Paradise Row yet to be paved, but wheels and horses hooves turned the dirt over and half buried the streetcar tracks.

In my previous article I discussed post-mortem images of Isaac Erb, a photographer who was the dean of Saint John photographers during the Golden Age of Postcards. That is no put-down or slight because in fact Isaac Erb's photography outlasted the product many other camera workers in Saint John and fact much of what people call the "history of Saint John" is draped around the archive of Erb photographs which survive, mostly in New Brunswick collections. One Saint Johner who makes his living selling modern prints from old commercial negatives recently stated that he didn't have any interest in old postcards. Maybe so, but that doesn't detract from the fact that Erb made great effort to ensure that countless visitors to Saint John mailed away Erb views more often than any others.

This map section, prepared for my family history, helps interpret the Mission Church photo. Mission Church is on the left and we see the commercial alley which lead to the rail track of the station. In the late 19th Century the Harris Foundry, which produced railway equipment and even completed cars, was the property adjacent to Mission Church. The Harris works had direct access to the I.C.R. station yard.

This clipping from 1903 is one of about fifty newsy items I have on file for the old Paradise Row. I think it goes rather well with the Erb photo (above) and it takes little imagination to superimpose the colourful tale of canine combatants on the old Erb photo which is totally devoid of pedestrians.

Today many curious folk are enjoying the use of free online services known as Google Earth, Google Street View and more, to find out how much has changed in Saint John. The answer is that almost everything has changed. The original harbour of our ancestors was always constricted but sequential projects have filled in all the tidal working areas which once hosted sawmills, shipyards and the harbour fishery. From the air the Lost Valley is now in a state which can only be described as "the Asphalt Valley". It's quite astonishing to observe.

Electric lights illuminate the facade of the old train station in the Valley. The clock dial appears to read 11:30 PM and the Royal party are being feted elsewhere in Saint John. In the gloom beyond we can just make out the massive Intercolonial Railway grain elevator. This was once one of the most congested (and photographed) neighborhoods of any Canadian city.

On October 17, 1901 the citizens of Saint John assembled to greet Royal visitors. The train carrying the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York entered the Valley just after 2PM and were saluted by militia gun batteries positioned on either side of the valley wall. It was a joyous occasion and no expense was spared to decorate the city, including the construction of ceremonial arches astride three of the principle thoroughfares.

Isaac Erb and the forgotten Post-Mortem images of Saint John children

Post-mortem photo of a young girl, made with available light in the family home, 1890s. Photographer - Isaac Erb, Saint John, N.B.

Isaac Erb was a commercial photographer who operated a studio from 1877 (the year of the "Great Saint John Fire") until his death in 1924. He was a Saint John icon and most of his work is preserved in public collections or held by discerning collectors. It is impossible to produce an illustrated history of the city without including many of Erb's best photographs, especially for the period 1900-1920. I acquired my first Erb "original " when I was still a high school student in the 1970s. It is a simple portrait of a WW1 soldier, an image termed a "real-photo" postcard, and it has the Erb studio's embossed logo. Since then I've added more than a hundred Isaac Erb photos to my collection and perhaps fifty penny-postcards which I know to be images he sold to card publishers.

Without question the saddest category of Mr. Erb's work are the many post-mortem photographs he took of Saint John children. In earlier columns I have discussed the high mortality rate of children of the Victorian Era, but in truth epidemic disease and preventable accidents continued to take the lives of children in the Lost Valley up into the 1950s, when the polio scourge was sweeping Canada.

Recently I posted an Isaac Erb post-mortem shot to the FACEBOOK group which discusses old Saint John pictures. I wasn't the first to do so, but I may be the last. I was truly startled by some of the negative comments in the group, although most were as willing as I to discuss a new topic. Fortunately I screen-captured the entire discussion thread before two rather shrill members "blocked" me, so that I can no longer read their pearls of wisdom. The thread began:

I do not profess to have any deep knowledge of post-mortem images of adults or children, although I frequently encounter them in my research. The most famous of course are portraits of Old West outlaws filled full of lead, or deposed dictators who never made it into exile. The Saint John variety are comparatively rare as they were shared only among family or friends. Post-mortem photos sell regularly on Ebay and are also offered by many dealers in antique photography. Collectors in Saint John N.B. rarely buy unidentified Erb portraits found listed on Ebay, but they will certainly pay a premium for photographs of dead children. The offending image (above) sold recently for $59.50 plus shipping, while another (immediately below) sold in July 2011 for $43 plus shipping. Yet another of the genre sold on Ebay in Dec. 2010 but I did not record the price.

Post-mortem of a baby in a casket surrounded by floral tributes, possibly taken in an undertaking parlour. Photographer - Isaac Erb & Son, Saint John, N.B.

Photo of a child taken by illness perhaps, and again unidentified, but preserved for all time by the photographers craft. Erb did not advertise this special memorial service but clearly it was common knowledge for decades that he was the man to go to in time of sorrow.

Post-mortem of a Saint John boy in a sailor suit, and dated 1912. The walls of Erb's shop were always covered with framed photos, but I cannot match the wallpaper here to his studio uptown.

This is a particularly poignant image, and the first Isaac Erb post-mortem I ever encountered. I have scanned it from the special Isaac Erb edition of CAMERA CANADA which was published in 1977. I bought my copy from the gift shop of the N.B. Museum that year. The photo caption reads: " ENTRY IN ERB'S WORK JOURNAL, "DEAD KID" 1912 ". This is interesting because it was the practice of commercial photographers to preserve their negatives for future use. Erb did so many post-mortem shots that it is unlikely that he might try to remember all the names and not record them. He was in the business for almost fifty years and he certainly outlived hundreds of his customers.

Several members of the S.J. discussion group shared insights into the local tradition of funeral practice and even post-mortem photography, so I certainly do not regret having raised the subject. Harold Wright and Grant Kelly volunteered the information that they have more than a dozen examples between them, but I suspect that they will not be web-published any time soon, if ever. It is a sad subject but certainly one that is worthy of attention. Saint John genealogist Darlene Love pointed out that there is a Wiki page for Post-mortem photography. She also pointed to page which is a bit creepy but still historical in nature.

Joe Drummond - the Barbershop Sit-in (1964) and his leadership of the Black Community in Saint John, N.B.

Young Black boxers pose with trophies at the Main Street Forum, Saint John, N.B., in 1954. (Photo available from Vintage Photo & Frame Ltd, Saint John, N.B.)

It was an era when several Saint John barbers still refused to cut Black hair, and when White Catholics were still secretly discriminated against by several local employers. Patterns of prejudice in 1950s Saint John cut across racial and religious lines.

Some memories never evaporate. They are either too painful or too important to let go. This Internet magazine (Blog) is devoted to the memory of the Portland-Saint John Valley, but my own childhood and youth was spent primarily in the Rifle Range (now "Crescent Valley") located much deeper in Saint John's North End. I sometimes teach Multiculturalism (Social Studies Curriculum) here in Vancouver, a city that knows only the legacy of White - Asian animosities, and students are always amazed when I relate stories of growing up in Saint John, N.B. I retain memories of a couple of very serious race-riots on Churchill Blvd and one in St. Pius X schoolyard, battles which always required a heavy police turnout. I have recorded some of those stories but it will be at least a few years before I move to have them published.

We were the working poor, often resorting to living on a meagre Welfare cheque, and deeply grateful for the hand-me-downs of a few caring friends. All of us sought an escape from life in a Public Housing project and from the constant threat of being beaten up. It was truly amazing how 6-8 Black families could terrorize an entire neighborhood, but they could and they did. Tough girls and tougher boys. Today I credit a liberal education at UNB with blunting my boyhood resentment of what we were forced to go through. Survivors can forgive but they seldom forget. Ask the Israelis. Old time Saint John policemen will tell you that "7 Beat" ended at Visart and Lansdowne. Beyond that was the Rifle Range. Some S.J. policemen called it the "Combat Zone". In my first year at UNB I attended classes at Tucker Park Campus, where a few cops attended our Sociology seminars. One officer, I recall, liked to refer to Churchill Blvd., as "the Boola boola-vard". That was raw and it caught my attention. He was an official witness to events that the local paper chose to ignore.

A curiosity of our predicament was that the father of a few of the most intimidating street fighters in the Rifle Range was Joe Drummond, the voice of the N.B. Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, and an aspiring politician. The NBAACP held its founding meeting on Waterloo Street in September of 1949 but it had languished until the arrival of Joseph Drummond, its most militant and successful leader.

IN 1964 Joe Drummond and members of the N.B. Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NBAACP) staged a "sit-in" at a barbershop on Haymarket Square. The story went National. It was the beginning of his political career.

The genesis of Joe Drummond's political career was a sit-in protest in 1964 which he organized to put pressure on Saint John barbers who still refused to cut the hair of Coloured men. (The term "Black" was not yet in vogue.) The location chosen for Joe's protest was the shop run by Tom Arbing located on Haymarket Square. A dozen or more Black families lived nearby. The protest might have fizzled but some of the tougher old barbers stood by their age-old attitudes instead of accepting the winds of change. Mr. Arbing was quoted as admitting that he had "never cut a colored person's hair in 55 years". It might not have been true. Arbing might simply have been trying to match Drummond's militancy. Whatever the case, the story went "National" and Joe had come to the notice of the men who ran the city.

As the 1960s wore on Joe Drummond found other opportunities to get press, often working in alliance with Black leaders in Halifax, N.S. In 1968 he made the bald claim that the American Black Panther Party had infiltrated Black organizations in the Maritimes, and were trying to "take over Negro rights leadership from local moderates" like himself. It wasn't true, but it got him national coverage.

In August 1970 the Special Senate Committee on Poverty convened a hearing in Saint John. Joseph Drummond, representing the NBAACP, presented a brief in which it was "pointed out that of 264 employers... in the Saint John area, 228 did not employ Blacks". I was 12 at the time and living in poverty. Joe and his family were neighbours. I wish I could have been there to hear him speak. I recall that Joe sought to get on City Council, but I don't recall any of the adults I knew saying anything supportive. It simply wasn't possible. Overall he made a positive contribution to the City by representing the Black community, but he developed a rival in Fred Hodges, who got elected to Common Council in 1974. Hodges was a founding member of the NBAACP and a native Saint Johner. If memory serves, Drummond was Nova Scotia born.

The one thing Joe Drummond did which I know to have been absolutely ludicrous was to orchestrate the banning of Samuel Clemens' novel HUCKLEBERRY FINN in New Brunswick schools. The book was then on the Grade 12 Curriculum, but when I attended Saint John High it was already gone. A pity. (I do recall LORD OF THE FLIES and assorted Shakespeare plays.) Many scholars consider HUCK FINN to be the most influential American novel ever written, and essential reading for a grounding in American Literature. Since university I've read it at least twice. I still find the characters engaging and I certainly enjoy Mark Twain's humour. The Black community wanted the book gone because of Huck's frequent use of the word "Nigger", a word I heard frequently in North End Saint John... usually as a kid staggered home nursing wounds. I never knew a boy brave enough to use that word face-to-face.

I doubt if Joe Drummond ever read HUCK FINN, but he certainly scanned it to make a count of the word "Nigger". Accompanied by members of the N.B. Human Rights Commission he squared off with Lorne McGuigan, the N.B. Education Minister. [McGuigan, a Saint John Tory, was Ed. Minister from 1970-74, under Richard Hatfield.] Joe Drummond's committee wasn't taking prisoners and McGuigan was no watchdog for literacy. He later told a reporter that the committee "expressed concern that the Negro was portrayed as somewhat less than human, or that it could be interpreted that way".

The Minister insisted that they were mistaken, but nonetheless the N.B. Government took the pragmatic step of banning the book. Said McGuigan, "We told them it would be going off (the required list) in June anyway in the normal course of events." The irony of course, is that we were about to witness the era of the Blacksploitation movie, and eventually the hated word "Nigger" became a staple of fabulous Black performers we grew to love such as Richard Pryor and Samuel L. Jackson. But Joe could not have anticipated the shift in Popular Culture any more than George Orwell could anticipate the Internet.

In his latter years Joe Drummond "went African". He loved to appear in public dressed in colourful and authentic African garb, and as he was tall he was a physically imposing figure of a man. In October of 1972 he represented the Federal NDP in Saint John, pulling in 788 votes, or 2.8 percent of the poll. The Tories took the riding. He continued to advocate on behalf of Saint John's Black Community and also for Black prisoners incarcerated at Dorchester Penitentiary. A heart condition felled him in 1975, and I confess that I did not note his passing. That too is a pity, because he took so much life experience and memories with him.

Postscript: I shared the news clipping of Joe's 1964 "sit-it" with members of a Saint John chat group on Facebook. The image drew a visceral response from Ernie Voutour, a Child Care Worker and ex-Saint Johner now living in Montreal. Extracts from his lengthy response:

" My first reactions were feelings of disgust and anger. A photo from 1964 triggered such reactions and emotions in me, all these decades later. ... It's people like Mr. Drummond who changed the views of discrimination. His 'sit in' sent a message...the ripple effect carried through the Saint John community, giving hope and triumphant acknowledgement for those in the family homes of [the] Black community... During the 60s I've seen the look of hate. I've seen it in the eyes of pedestrians, people in passing as I walked to school with friends of 'color'. ...I was part of that movement too. I was very bold back then, if something wasn't right. I had no problem no qualms, no second thoughts of looking an obvious racist right in the eye and saying, 'go fuuckk yourself'. "

New Brunswick Black History Society

This morning I received an email from Ralph Thomas of Saint John. It reads: "Thank you Ron Jack & Thank you Ernie Voutour. We at NBBHS hope to have some more of the Joe Drummond story from his family if at all possible - Some time soon we hope."

I also had a thank-you from Holly Drummond. Until now, the family did not have any information on the 1964 barbershop Sit-in. Amazing what gets lost over time.

Morgan's Alley - a public right-of-way in the Valley

In 1966 the north side of Main Street below Fort Howe was an aging phalanx of retail businesses, but there existed a few places for local residents to slip through...

Morgans Alley in the North End - a photograph made in 1930 by A.M. Montrose. He was standing between two wood frame buildings on Moore Street. Main Street is at the bottom of the alley and Long Wharf in the distance.

For several years I puzzled over this photograph taken in 1930 by Saint John fireman Allison M. Montrose. I knew it must be on Main Street, but where? I had all but convinced myself that it was taken between Elm and Lansdowne but I lacked maps of sufficient scale to prove it. The best maps we Legion of Saint John Expatriates had to go on is the wonderful set of street plans drawn in the 1920s by the S.J. Public Works Department. These were made available to us on the Municipal website about seven years ago, not long before I started the LOST VALLEY BLOG.

The problem for me was that the charts, drawn on a scale 40 Feet to an Inch, cannot be enlarged onscreen with sufficient clarity to pick out finer detail - such as the names of the dozen or more alleys which traced along the north Valley wall. These alley's are of interest to me, as are the many unmapped footpaths which once existed all over the North End.

Two weeks ago I raised the question of "where" on a Facebook chat site, but alas Morgan's Alley had dropped from "living memory". As I had made the challenge, I felt some obligation to find the answer, rather than let my query dangle. I did at last locate the alley on Sheet No. 54, and was relieved that the members of the chat-group accepted my enlargement of the tiny detail. It was a fuzzy image, and I still had a wee bit of doubt.

I confess that over thirty years I have collected so much material in support of dozens of research projects, that I often lose track of what I have. Tonight provided me a fresh kick in the pants. I stumbled upon a roll of blueprint-copies of the very plan set which I have been consulting online these many years - and my set is FULL SIZE.

Finger pointing. Tonight's photo confirms the link from Moore St. down hill to Main St. a short cut down from Fort Howe to the business level.

Proof positive. This lost alley once connected the tenements of Moore St. to the many shops on Main Street and the jobs on the busy waterfront.

My suspicion is that Montrose took the photograph out of professional interest and concern. He was living at 37 Adelaide Street at the time this street plan was drawn and he worked in the North End. The lives of his neighbours as well as the preservation of their hard-earned property was his duty and he may have walked the streets and alleys in search of dangerous By-Law infractions that might lead to fires. There were fires among the tenements and the businesses on a regular basis, often with appalling loss of life. I still do not know how the alley got its name, but the answer must exist in old property records for that block of Main Street.

I do know that the alley's were a vital part of daily life in the old Valley. Public right of access was essential to the working poor in particular, as automobile ownership was largely a post-WW2 phenomenon in Saint john. The north valley wall in particular was teeming with a population which was largely dependant on walking - the children to school, the men to work and the wives to the grocers, butchers and dry goods merchants who crammed the commercial corridor which was Main Street in its heyday. Morgan's Alley pointed like an arrow to the heart of employment on the Portland foreshore - the Long Wharf and light industry which crowded that section of the harbour. If you look carefully at the Montrose photo you will see vehicle traffic moving on "Long Wharf" - the name of the street which lead down to the pier of the same name.

THE BLACK MARKET BABIES SCANDAL IN SAINT JOHN, 1948

BLACK MARKET BABIES, a 1945 noir film made by Monogram Pictures. It would be fifty years before any movie described a Canadian baby smuggling ring - BUTTERBOX BABIES.

Lost Valley readers have shared many wonderful stories with me since this Blog was launched in 2007. Among the most harrowing were the experiences of young and often desperately poor Saint John girls forced to make the painful sacrifice of giving up their babies to adoption rings. My own mother, a Valley girl, was sent upriver to live with a doctor in Grand Falls when her pregnancy started to become obvious. She very nearly played into the hands of that cunning medicine man who had brokered my sale to a waiting couple. I haven't yet published any of these adoption stories, but I continue to research the illicit market in babies which once blackened New Brunswick's reputation. I knew of Karen Balcom's work, including her 2007 doctoral dissertation, but couldn't access a copy, so I was pleased when it was published last year by the University of Toronto Press as THE TRAFFIC IN BABIES. In this article I supplement Balcom's work with material from my own research files.

THE TRAFFIC IN BABIES was written by Professor Karen A. Balcom, and was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2011. It is essentially an edited version of her academic thesis and lists at $75.

The most infamous baby-selling-ring in Canada operated as the IDEAL MATERNITY HOME (I.M.H.) in East Chester, N.S. from 1928-45. The story was told in a book entitled BUTTERBOX BABIES. which was filmed. The DVD is available on Amazon.ca. It was Balcom who alerted me to a direct connection between the Young's who ran the I.M.H. in Nova Scotia and a Saint John lawyer who first tried to help the Young's save their business, but who finally replaced them with a Saint John baby-ring of his own.

Balcom describes how in 1944 an amendment to Nova Scotia's adoption law forced the Young's to begin working with lawyer Benjamin R. Guss, who began processing all their cases through the New Brunswick Court, where there were few impediments to rapidly placing babies with willing buyers. By 1946 Guss, who was Jewish, was a "partner" in the Young operation. Guss had a pipeline to firms in the New York area where it was very difficult, almost impossible, for Jewish couples to adopt across the religious divide. He was not required to disclose what he charged American couples but it was alleged to be several thousand dollars - a great deal of money in the 1940s. When it became obvious that the Nova Scotia government was going to shut I.M.H. down permanently, Benjamin Guss urged the Young's to move their business to Saint John. They declined, and as Balcom writes, "Guss became an independent operator, building up his own black market baby business out of Saint john, New Brunswick."

In the absence of photographs U.T. Press included graphics such as this one showing that the customers for Saint John babies were families in Delaware, New Jersey and New York.

So who was Benjamin R. Guss ? If you read tribute pieces, and "ethnic history" published in Saint John, you get a portrait of a man who devoted his life to the public welfare. Yet behind every carefully crafted profile there are less noble motives. Balcom's findings exist in three versions. When Ms. Balcom submitted an initial article to UNB's ACADIENSIS in 2001, she may have been cautioned to avoid digging any deeper. For most of his career Benjamin Rex Guss was a member of the Saint john monied establishment, and he ended his days as a retired judge and legal advisor to the provincial government.

Ben Guss was born of Lithuanian Jewish parents in 1905. The family of eight arrived in Saint John in 1907, first settling on Chapel Street and later on Acadia Street. (This was a Jewish neighborhood which I have previously discussed in a Blog article.) His father worked hard as a junk dealer in the North End and later established a scrap metal business. Guss attended Dalhousie University and got his Bachelor of Laws in 1930. He was called to the New Brunswick Bar in November 1931 and immediately began to work at shaping a political career. He started by joining the Zionist Council, canvassing for the United Palestine Appeal and becoming active in the Conservative Party of Canada.

Guss made a point of travelling to regional and national events and he secured his first party position, election to the post of Vice President of the National Young Conservatives. [He later competed for and took the presidency.] At the 1938 Conservative Party Convention in Ottawa Benjamin Guss was one of 3000 delegates to salute outgoing leader R.B. Bennett, "We are losing a true Jewish friend." and to pledge allegiance to the new Tory leader, Dr. Robert Manion. It was the genesis of the era of the so-called "Progressive" strategy of the Conservative Party and Dr. Manion in his speech won the hearts of Jewish Canadians by claiming "Conservatives were always progressive since the days of Benjamin Disraeli." Disraeli was Britain's first and only Jewish Prime Minister.

Guss had done so brilliantly well in Saint John political circles that he felt confident enough to reveal his ambitions to a reporter for a Jewish press. His plan was published. "He is slated to become the next member of Parliament from his city, and, if elected, he will be the first Jewish Conservative M.P. in Canada." The final step to complete the political profile was a bride, and on Dec. 2, 1938 he was married in a ceremony conducted in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Clearly lawyer Guss believed he had control of the nomination inside his riding association, and by supporting Dr. Manion in Ottawa he could be assured that the Party Leader would sign his nomination papers. But fate intervened - and we call it World War Two. We all know the rest of the story - Liberal leader W.L. Mackenzie King, the creepy oddball who travelled to Berlin to meet Adolph Hitler and found him worthy, retained power and was our wartime Prime Minister. The P.C.s were banished to the political wilderness and Ben Guss did not become Canada's first Jewish M.P.

Well, a man of energy whose ambition is thwarted is prone to redoubling his efforts, and directing them elsewhere. Ben Guss chose to make money the old fashioned way - he earned it, client-by-client, and he quickly built up his business with the same dogged effort he had put into networking the Tory archipelago. During the war he fell in with the Young's and their baby selling business. In that era all the larger Maritime towns and cities in Atlantic Canada had Maternity Boarding Houses, and Saint John was no exception. Much is made of the Catholic Sisters' work with orphans and unwed mothers, but in fact the nuns had plenty of organized competition. At some point, and I'm thinking it was around 1944-45, Ben Guss opened one of his own. He kept his personal residence at 70 Orange Street from 1946 - 1974.

Saint John lawyer Benjamin Rex Guss was a lifelong Tory stalwart. He is shown here in a portrait made c1960. His political ambitions stymied by the 1948 baby selling scandal, he concentrated on his legal career and ultimately was appointed a judge. (Lost Valley Collection)

The Saint John police became aware of the baby smuggling ring sometime in late 1946. Provincial authorities and even the RCMP were made aware of it by the Saint John City and County Children's Aid Society which privately demanded a halt to babies being processed in the city for export to the U.S.A. Mum was the word until Society President Travis W. Cushing decided to expose the traffic to the media. The ring was disclosed at a meeting on May 20, 1948 and it was a bombshell. He said that the C.A.S. had become so distressed by the shear volume of the traffic in Saint John babies, that his group had "snatched" five children from the ring during the previous month. The press came running for more and Cushing played a careful game, only providing names off the record, or in private correspondence with investigators and with the Premier's office. (Premier John McNair was also the Attorney-General of N.B.)

The market was entirely profit oriented he said, with no consideration for the needs of the children, with babies sold for an average of $1,500. He estimated that the leader of the baby-selling-ring was pocketing $1,000 per week, after expenses. The ring had its own boarding house and had insinuated itself inside Saint John hospitals. The C.A.S. reported that at least fifty babies had been sold to Jewish families in three American states, and that the ring had all the advantages - using careful contract language with clients, while maximizing on lax wording or non-existent protection in provincial statutes. Privately the police acknowledged that Guss and his associates could not be charged "since the selling price for children could be described as a high legal fee for arranging adoption."

Travis Cushing and the C.A.S. had made their point and the government was stung. With both the RCMP and FBI actively investigating his baby racket, and the Legislature working to plug the more obvious loopholes, lawyer Ben Guss began to rethink his business strategy. More to the point it was the end of any political ambitions he still harboured. From that point onward he became heavily involved in local causes related to child welfare, cultural development, and Jewish philanthropy, but he knew people in his home town had long memories. He was appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1952 and in August of 1971 he was made a judge of the Family Court Division of the Provincial Court. Today he is known for what he did from 1950 to 1974, the date of his retirement from the practice of law, and nothing is said of the 'Wonder Boy' years when he was expecting to represent his community in Ottawa.

When the Wicker Shopping Basket was King in Saint John

Before the brown paper grocery bag or the infamous plastic sack, the wicker basket was King in Saint John.

When I was growing up on Churchill Boulevard in the North End, one of the many household items hidden away in our cubby hole was a brown wicker basket. It rarely got used, but it might one day be needed, and therefore we held on to it. I suspect the basket was borrowed from my grandmother, and never returned. My guess is, it got the toss when we left our flat in the Rifle Range, but I recall it was virtually identical to the one above.

Out of curiosity I did a little research, and found more than I can use in a Blog article. Our basket was well travelled. It was made in a little town in Poland, imported into Canada through the Port of Saint John, shipped to Toronto by train, and then sold back to Saint John by a wholesaler. When I was a toddler living on Taylor Avenue, that happy wholesaler was selling 5,000 Polish wicker baskets a year into Saint John. Saint John, N.B. was his top market, and the reason was that Saint John women had grown accustomed to using grocery baskets in the 19th Century. You can find many newspaper accounts of Indians bringing large bundles have hand crafted baskets downriver and selling them wherever crowds gathered - the ferry dock in Indiantown, along Main Street and across Portland Bridge to Saint John street corners.

The square "Hollander" type basket was preferred by my grandmother's generation of women in Saint John because of its exceptionally rigid frame and reinforced handle. You could pound it with canned goods for years, and it would never break down. It's a thing of beauty, light weight and durable. My ancestors immigrated from Sligo into Saint John in the 1830s, and the only change for them was buying baskets from the Indians, rather than using the traditional Irish version.

This photo from 1910 shows a variety of wicker baskets hanging above the canned goods and produce. The grocer made a buck or two for a basket that would take a decade of hard use.

When this photo was taken of Dunham's store in Saint John, round baskets were still the most common. The square Hollander basket became popular in the late 1940s.

This lady, crossing at the head of King Street in 1955, had about all she could carry, but the basket handle kept one hand free. [detail from a photo owned by Grant Kelly in S.J.]

I collect anecdotes about any and all aspects of life in old Saint John, so I had to smile when I read one recently that complimented my research into wicker baskets. Janette Lachance was attending St. Vincent's, the Catholic High School, in 1955. (The year the photo above, was taken) She had a basket on her arm, when she caught the attention of some American sailors in port. They teased her about carrying a "lobster trap". Says Janette, "I used a wicker basket to carry schoolbooks all my years in St. Vincent's."

Heavy canned goods, or a load of text books - all in a days work for a wicker basket.

1908 Birds-eye-view of Saint John, N.B. - when commerce was dramatic

Visible in this 1908 (BEV) map of Saint John, N.B. are:

A) New Brunswick Cold Storage Co. Limited

B) The Patrick Brown residence, 92 Paradise Row

C) Intercolonial Railway (ICR) Grain Elevator and conveyor line over Mill Street

D) the dome shape of Victoria Skating Rink

E) Union Station, with a streetcar passing in front

F) the Hospital

[scanned by Doreen Hayes]

Everyone loves to pour over antique Birds-Eye-View maps of their city or town. In the 19th Century the B.E.V. was a much desired trophy for successful men of business to hang on the office wall - because the salesmen who canvassed for the Lithographer ensured that every prominent business was drawn in. Even the stately homes were drawn in, with much detail, in the hope that proud homeowners would buy a copy of the B.E.V. portrait of their town. Today, every tourist district from Mexico City to Ottawa offers reproduction B.E.V.s to visitors looking for a quality souvenir.

Several B.E.V. portraits of Saint john were drawn over a 75 year period, and I think the hardest to find is the 1908 view published by James Lovell Wiseman, a Montreal Lithographer. I have never seen an original, but I like it because the Saint John Valley (THE LOST VALLEY) is pencilled in with such dramatic effect. My other favourite is the view of the docks of Montreal Harbour, produced by Wiseman but I am only hunting for an original of the 1908 Saint John map. Until I find one, these scans provided by Doreen Hayes will do.

I do not know what, if any, subscription fees Wiseman charged the businesses which were given prominence in this 1908 map, but I do see that commerce in the old valley was prominent. Saint John had just gone through a building boom, which added approximately $2 million worth of new commercial buildings, and upgrading of the port infrastructure. The port was heavily subsidized by Federal policies and rate structuring, which did promote an air of confidence - that is until a brief economic slump just before WW1.

When one enjoys these old charts, we should not assume that what we see is literal truth. These are promotional products, not faithful renderings. Often these B.E.V.s deceive as much as the old postcards of that era, which removed the poorly dressed pedestrians and the horse apples dropped in front of a proud man's business. For example - "INTERCOLONIAL ELEVATOR". When our ancestors walked down Mill Street they would actually read INTERCOLONIAL RAILWAY on the massive wooden structure. Note that the tenement houses on the north Valley wall are depicted as neatly terraced, but of course nothing was ever so neat on either slope. Folks crowded in wherever they could acquire a lot of sufficient square footage to be able to squeeze in another structure.

1908 Birds Eye View of Saint John, N.B. which was produced by J.L. Wiseman, a Lithographer in Montreal. (This section is the left third of the chart.) This surviving copy of the map, somewhat damaged, was reproduced in the 1970s and given out to retail customers. [These scans provided by Doreen Hayes]