Bakery Barrage - Recalling the old Valley Cake Shoppe and the June 1939 Royal Visit

A component of the Lost Valley project is recovering the experiences of children, decade by decade. I am working toward a profile of interesting Valley individuals and families, most of whom left Saint John years ago. It is possible for me to describe childhood in the Portland Valley from 1860 on, but it gets really interesting with my mother's generation, because I can collect eyewitness accounts. Orin Manitt, now living in Quebec, is a retired educator. In the early 1950s he lived at 166 Paradise Row, a few doors east of my mother's large family. In our correspondence he digs deep for memories, and puzzles over the instincts and motives of the Valley boy he once was. Here is an anecdote which recalls the VALLEY CAKE SHOPPE, a bakery which once flourished in the second last building before the Wall Street Bridge.

The Wall Street Bridge once allowed automobiles and streetcars to pass over the railway tracks leading into Union Station. During the 1939 Royal Visit the King and Queen drove along Paradise Row and over the bridge, waving to adoring subjects as their motorcade advanced uptown.

ORIN : "...Walk eastward on Paradise Row, to the corner and the J. & F. McCullum Grocery, turn right, pass the hardware store and the barber shop (first lady barber in Saint John) then enter the bakery. Perhaps you remember "Dot," the lady who always seemed to be on duty? She was quite thin, as I recall, and always friendly. And she loved to gossip with her customers.

Frankie O'Brien, a neighborhood boy, was returning home from the VALLEY CAKE SHOPPE with a bag in his hand. I saw him from a distance on Paradise Row. We met just about in front of his door, and I asked him what he had in the bag. Now, he and I were often involved in an altercation for one reason or another, and he may have made a provocative comment (nothing new in that neighborhood in those years!). But whoever said what, for whatever reason, made no difference at all. My immediate reaction was to grab the bag and open it. I could see at a glance that he had apple and raisin squares, six of each, twenty-five cents a dozen. And they were a good size too (at least to me then, when I was about nine years old).

Frankie was bigger than me, but a bit ungainly - and I have to admit that I rather enjoyed 'pushing his buttons', as we might say today. He lunged at me, but I dodged him and took one of the squares out of the bag. I'm certain that I was going to take a bite, but he lunged after me again, so I threw it at him. Rather than come after me yet again, when I would have given him back the bag, he ran to his doorway, yelling at me all the while.

And then I experienced an unholy epiphany. I remember putting my hand in the bag, pulling out a juicy square - apple, I think it was - and throwing it at him with all my might! He was agile enough to side-step the fast-approaching missile, and it splattered against his front door. Then it slid down the door, leaving an ungodly gooey mess in its path. Seeing that, and the shocked expression on Frankie's face, I was absolutely enthralled! So there's my hand, into the bag again, and I let fly another juicy square! He ran into the house, still yelling at me as he went, but he did not close the door all the way. I was still interested in getting a good one in on him, but there was an unexpected thrill seeing that door being splattered - so I continued throwing squares. He continued yelling at me from behind his door, and before I knew it, the bag was empty. But I was really in a state of excitement, enjoying every second.

I decided to head down Lombard Street, but when I finally went home to 166, I began to have grave second thoughts. I walked into the house, and my mother was in the kitchen. She turned around and stared at me. "Mrs. O'Brien just called. What have you done?" she asked quietly. In a shaky voice, I confessed. "I threw squares at Frankie." "In that case, you're going to the bakery," she said, without once raising her voice. "You will buy squares for Mrs. O'Brien. Then you'll go over, tell her you're sorry for the terrible thing you did, and give her the squares. Do you understand?" The question did not require an answer, nor was one expected. And my allowance for the week had just vanished.

On the way back from the bakery, I died a thousand deaths. The O'Brien's lived upstairs which meant that I would have to climb to the top. Mrs. O'Brien was staring down at me as her five children crowded along the upper railing. She was not above giving a swat to a misbehaving child, and I was not really sure she wouldn't come down on me with an almighty whack, given the circumstances. In a high voice, she hollered, "You bad, bad boy!" I cringed, in an effort not to get any closer to her, then handed her the squares and stammered an apology. I was already retreating down the stairs when she told me to go home and not come back.

All I can tell you, Ron, is that the compulsion to keep throwing those squares was totally overpowering, and a kind of lascivious pleasure that I had never felt before. But it was an ecstasy - and an agony - of my own making. The biggest surprise to me afterward was that I could derive pleasure from such an act, aware all the while that it was all very wrong."

My mother has many stories of going to the small groceries on Paradise Row and Main Street in the 1940s -50s, but never mentioned the VALLEY CAKE SHOPPE, closest to home. Asked about other bakeries in the immediate neighborhood, Orin adds, "There was Hart's Bakery, if memory serves, at the foot of Main Street, on the south side, at the corner of Long Wharf, but it was much too far away from Wall Street - Paradise Row.

The VALLEY CAKE SHOPPE survived until Urban Renewal. It was on the west side of Wall Street, just before the Bridge. In the photo we see surviving evidence of the old cobble stones and the streetcar tracks. The curved steel rails were removed from the Wall Street Bridge years before. The last streetcar ran in the Valley in 1948, when the system surrendered to competition from a new city wide bus service.

One of two handcrafted McLaughlin Buicks prepared for the Royal Visit to Canada in 1939. One limousine currently resides in Ottawa, and the other near Vancouver. The King and Queen rode through the Valley slowly and with the top down, confident that they were among loyal subjects and as such very, very safe.

Look into this 1939 McLaughlin Buick touring car and note its polished wood interior and the BIG radio. (There were glowing tubes in that radio as it predates transistors.) I cannot help picturing the nose of this gleaming beast as it rolls over the hump of the green painted Wall Street Bridge, giving the monarchs a momentary thrill. Then its engine growled and the car climbed out of the Valley.
The June 1939 Royal Visit to Saint John, N.B. Here King George VI and Queen Elizabeth paused for an event at Government House, near the corner of Coburg and Garden Street. This after having driven down Main Street, up Paradise Row and over the Wall Street Bridge.
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