Main Street at Elm - once one of the busiest corners in North End, Saint John

• I thought I would linger on Main Street and discuss yet one more forgotten tradition of THE LOST VALLEY -  crosswalks and crossing guards.  [See my article "Sterile Corridor" March 25, 2012]

Since launching this Blog in 2007 I have gathered the memories and opinions of hundreds of people and it is very clear that there is a wide division of opinion on how the city has been managed and developed since the 1970s.  Those who have a stake in boosterism rather than the plain unvarnished truth, are dismissive of most of the views expressed here. Many of my generation simply mourn the losses and do what they can to preserve cherished memories.  I must persist in searching for patterns among the shards of memory which I must rake with my bare fingers, because it is so easy to miss telltale evidence.

It was long a tradition in the North End that teachers would form their classes up and march them to the nearest intersection, where crossing guards were waiting.  Here, in 1945, was the very busy corner on Main Street, just below St. Peters Catholic School and Dufferin Protestant School. Here we see young Edward Burbridge on duty in front of the wedge-shaped landmark from the 19th Century, which then  hosted QUALITY PACKING CO.  The last commercial tenant was Scotties Sundries (corner grocery). The building was hit by firebugs after it was tagged for Urban Renewal.   Ed Burbridge later made a career on the Saint John Police Force and passed away very recently.

The crosswalk pattern is very clear in this 1959 shot of the intersection.  This was once a booming commercial corridor, with this section of Main Street forming part of N.B. Highway No. 1. There was a painted walkway across ELM ST. dropping down from ST. PETERS' and DUFFERIN schools, and two more in front of the Quality Packing Co. building, and another across SIMONDS ST.   At the bottom of this photo we see bulldozed site preparation for the Lord Beaverbrook Rink.   Every building in this photograph is now gone but one - the tiny bank building on Main Street (above the "CR" in "crosswalk") which I am told is now a Gay Club.

Desolation.  Where once were neighbourhoods, shops, schools and churches - now little remains. St. Peters' (which I attended) and Dufferin Schools were torn down long ago.  There are no longer any pedestrians.  The white roof of the Lord Beaverbrook Rink is seen here. When I attended St. Peters' Intermediate in the 1970s we sometimes walked downhill to take our gym class in the form of a hockey game.  The LBR was where I saw my first rock concert - BACHMAN TURNER OVERDRIVE.

The out-migration from Saint John in the Twentieth Century was huge. Thousands of families departed, many spurred on by the wholesale demolition of neighbourhoods during the Urban Renewal projects, schemes which hyped the benefits of starting over with a blank slate. Gordon Johnson was a Scout Master in Saint John at the time the photo was taken of the crosswalks at Elm and Main (1959). An ex-patriate Saint Johner, he ended up in Windsor, Ontario where he continued working with kids. After retirement from the CPR he volunteered as a ... crossing guard (how ironic) in that city. (photo 1976)

ELM STREET VANISHES - after demolitions cleared all the homes, businesses and schools from both sides of Elm and Magazine Streets, the City of Saint John passed a by-law to extinguish the name "Elm".  Metcalfe Street now extends to include what was once Elm Street.

Murray Street Stairs - a Century of Service to North Enders

No people, no homes... no need for stairs. Jim Welsh took this photo in 1976 of the spot where he, his family and the south side of Main Street used to exist.

In a previous article I wrote about MORGAN'S ALLEY, which allowed residents of Moore Street and Rockland Road to get down to shopping on Main Street and to jobs in the harbour area. There were many such alleys throughout the congested North End and they were essential to the majority working class who could not yet afford to purchase cars. Equally important, the alleys offered escape routes for families who risked becoming trapped by fire in one of Saint John's frequent and lethal tenement blazes. Another much appreciated service to residents living above or below grade along Main Street were the public access stairs. Public stairs still exist in Indiantown but before the Urban Renewal demolitions of the 1970s there were other climbing points on Main Street and further east on City Road. The stairs most frequently mentioned to me by LOST VALLEY readers, are those which once stood at the top of Murray Street.

This 1920 street map shows that the neighborhood below Main Street had one of the highest densities in the city, and the stairs were essential to the residents who climbed up to use public transit, to get to schools, or to do their daily shopping.

Harrison Street and Sheriff Street were already well developed by the 1870's, but while City of Portland staff had laid out Murray Street, construction of shops and tenements on Murray did not begin for another decade. When carpenters constructed a set of stairs in the 1880s local residents rejoiced, especially hundreds of school children who sought more direct routes to their schools. The stairs up to Main Street were so heavily used that by 1900 they were falling apart and there were injuries due to missing steps. The Municipal authorities in Portland had been rather fussy about maintaining streets and sidewalks along commercial corridors but after civic amalgamation the City of Saint John was slow to take over basic maintenance in the North End. It took a noisy public outcry in 1904 and even threats to boycott paying taxes, to get the City to replace the public stairs on Murray Street.

Jim Welsh (R) was a student at VOC when he posed for this picture beside his home at 400 Main Street. He stands here with his best friend, Art Gatien (with hat).

In 2007 while I was planning to launch this Blog I searched the Net to learn which topics Saint John folks enjoyed reminiscing about. The Murray Street Stairs was added to my list. Recently Dan Griffin wrote to describe his life in the North End. He grew up on Elm St. in the 1950s, attended Dufferin School and had grandparents who lived on Sheriff Street, below Main. He asked if I had any information to confirm his recollection of the "long stairs" which once descended from Main Street. I smiled at that because of course I have been collecting stories and story tellers for several years in preparation for a special project. Among the best of them is Jim Welsh, a North Ender who graduated from Vocational School on Douglas Avenue and went off to become a paratrooper in WW2. He moved to the U.S. and now lives in the Deep South. I guess it's to publish some of Jim's anecdotes and a few of his photos.

Jim's Mom and two uncles step outside for a photo - at the bottom of the path on Murray Street hill. Jim's family lived at 400 Main (just to the left) and had many friends on the block including the Lawson 's (right of lot) This vacant lot was a pedestrian corridor for almost a century and offered both stairs and dirt path.

Jim Welsh has a number of memories of the Murray Street stairs, the earliest of which he terms a "curbside of history" item. That was the morning, during the height of the Great Depression, that the German airship HINDENBURG overflew Saint John. He should have been in school that morning but he was at the base of the stairs when the giant threw its shadow over North End Saint John. The stairs were on the West side of the lot, attached to the house Jim lived in. The configuration offered pedestrians just a little protection from wind and blowing snow, but also ensured that residents were constantly exposed to the boisterous throngs which passed by, night and day. The "plaza" he refers to was a slight widening of the sidewalk so that bus passengers did not block the sidewalk.

"Looking out our back (kitchen) window of 400 Main Street, we could see the bottom portion of the stairs as well as having a pretty clear view down most of Murray Street – at least the houses on the east side of the street.

The stairs, of course, are etched in my mind – but with them also is the “hill” down to Murray, between old 400 and the Lawson house next down the street, AND (while I don’t recall we had a name/term for it) the small railed-in “plaza” with one or two benches where the same bunch of “old fogies” gathered and sat whenever the weather permitted. That plaza, and the hill behind it was often a “treasure trove” for we’d often discover small coins in the dirt, spend hours buffing the dirt off, then running across the street to Fred Watt’s Hardware to buy some small novelty. Some of the coins came from the pockets of the old fellows sitting on the benches, no doubt. Yet occasionally (frequently) we’d find an old English “tuppenny”, sixpence and the like. Who knows but that Fred Watts got his REAL start toward millionaire-status selling old coins we brought him!

Another memory of “the hill” was going down it with a load of us kids on a toboggan, and riding up a guywire to a lamppost, almost to the top before being dumped off and falling to the ground. No serious injuries, as I recall.

I did, however, one time slip in the snow at the top of the hill, flying and tumbling thru the air and landing down the hill on my right shoulder. To this day, I occasionally feel an occasional pain in the right shoulder and attribute it to that day long ago!

Aah but “those stairs” themselves!

Most of all – the “sound”! The sound of a sled and a daring rider bellyflopping down the stairs: “Buurrrup, silence,WHACK!; Buurruup, silence. WHACK!; Buurruup, silence ,Whack!” – the “Buurruup “ sound caused by the wooden “mats” the city put on each step in the winter to prevent a person slipping – the “silence” as the sled flew off , missing several steps – and the “WHACK” when the sled briefly hit a flat area between flights.

Returning momentarily to the “plaza” it was the source of a large portion of our “education”! Oh what tales of worldy travels and adventures we heard (tales of dark-skinned beauties with “tits big as pails” for instance). No wonder I was a Nordoff and Hall reader at an early age! [Authors of THE MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY]

Jim wrote several several other exquisite anecdotes about the Murray Street stairs but that will suffice for now. As for my own recollections of that piece of real estate... I'm sure I never descended the stairs, as I had no reason to... but I well remember sweaty summer days waiting for the bus to go "uptown". The old Blue GMC buses which still ran in the late 1960s blew disgusting clouds of black exhaust which was so thick I sometimes felt I was chewing it. Thank gawd for modern engines and cleaner fuels!

THE LAST PEDESTRIAN? - Donna Briggs sent a response to this article. She attended St. Peter's Elementary School starting in 1969 and daily walking up from Murray Street. Later her family moved to "the bottom half of Metcalfe Street". Donna may have been the last of the neighborhood kids to use the stairs. "I came down the stairs after school (St. Peter's GR1) the day the stairs were being torn up. I froze and the man on the machine adopted to let me by but I thought the machine would start when I was in front of it, even though he told me it was off. I called to my Dad - he worked nights - and it took him some time to convince me it was safe. I still didn't trust the machine so I ran as fast as my 5 yr old legs could carry me!"

Sterile Corridor - many loved it but most left it - Main Street, Saint John, N.B.

McDonald's restaurant, (399 Main St.) corner Main Street and Lansdowne Avenue, Saint John, N.B. Of interest to expatriates is FORT HOWE hill looming in the distance. [Paul Cusack photograph, March 2012] we can compare Paul's photo to the nearly 200 year old painting by Joseph Comingo, (top) which has been the LOST VALLEY masthead since 2007.

One of the LOST VALLEY's most supportive readers, Paul Cusack, just sent me a selection of photographs which he took in the North End of Saint John. I found this photograph of the McDonald's restaurant on Main Street particularly startling. This after all was once the busiest traffic corridor in Saint John. Urban Renewal in the 1970s decimated the businesses and neighbourhoods of the old North End, but it was the construction of the East-West "Throughway" which stole the automobile traffic from the North End and ensured that decline remained permanent.

Driscoll's Drugstore (centre of photo) occupied the N.E. corner of Main Street at Lansdowne Avenue in the 1950s. City engineers realigned the intersection after Urban Renewal demolitions "improved" Main Street in the 1970s. Again, of interest to expatriates is Fort Howe in the background, which allows a scale comparison of these two photographs.

The intersection (M-L) of Main Street and Lansdowne Avenue in Saint John is now a hundred feet further West than it was in my youth, and widened. Construction of Fairview Plaza [now Lansdowne Plaza] began in the late 1950s on the site of the original Shamrock Grounds. Recent air photography shows us that much of the old North End is under asphalt, the cumulative product of over 30 years years of paving contracts.

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.