The K-CLUB Army Camp - Echoes of WW2 in the North End

Since my article (below) was web-published six months ago, a sharper version of the SHAMROCK PARK photo has come to light. We now know this photo was taken by Saint John photographer Joe Michaud in 1954. I wasn't too far off in dating it as "Circa 1950". Vintage Photo & Frame Ltd have the original negative and can sell you a print.

So much interesting correspondence was generated by the previous article on Main Street in the 1950s-60s and the arrival of the Fairview Shopping Plaza, that I felt I should do a followup. Today I concentrate on what was there before a wide swath of Crescent Valley was paved over for Fairview Plaza parking. I suppose I am not straying too far off topic, because the postwar reality was that hundreds of working class families, including my own, left the tenements of the Portland Valley and foreshore and took up residence in the government housing projects built in the Rifle Range (later termed Crescent Valley).

Air photo of the "K-CLUB" army camp, taken August 4, 1942. The vehicle entrance was at the end of Lansdowne Avenue, which is easy to see here. In the 1930s the local chapter of the Kiwanis Club maintained a sandlot ball field /circus ground between Lansdowne and Adelaide. A rifle range and war gases range was built for the training of infantry housed at the camp, which is why the postwar neighborhood took on the name of the "Rifle Range". (I have a photo of an old blue S.J. transit bus with RIFLE RANGE displayed above the drivers head.) A trimmed version of this photo resides on a website run by staff at a S.J. community college. The photo credit is - Directorate of History and Heritage, D.N.D., Ottawa.

This shot is fabulous because it shows St. Lukes Church from the air, before Metcalfe Street was put in between Adelaide and Lansdowne. That really bothers me because the 1925 street map clearly shows that block of Metcalfe already existing - and fully 60 feet wide. This aerial photo shows a stretch of winding dirt track. That would make the photo pre-1925, which I doubt. The photograph illustrated a memoir written by the late Harold McQuinn, which was published by the Times-Globe in 1996. The pen lines across the image are detailed annotations made for me the parents of Paul Cusack, who for 17 years operated a Florist business across the street from Fairview Plaza.

I have never seen ANY photographs taken from the spire of St. Lukes, and yet any North End photographer might have begged for the opportunity to shoot from that vantage point. The bell tower would have been the best position prior to WW2, from which to photograph the old Kiwanis Grounds and the adjacent Shamrock [Baseball] Club Grounds. The problem was that the old facilities, including the older Dominion of Canada Rifle Range, were not attractive to the camera, in spite of the large crowds which used to gather for events. In the photo we can just see the bleachers of the K-Club, a field which was completely fenced in, as well as the intersection of Lansdowne Avenue and Main Street which was discussed in the previous article.

I tentatively date this photo of the old Shamrock Park, as circa 1950. When the municipality took over the land after WW2, the first thought was to revert to its old use - recreational activities. An oval track was laid out and playground equipment installed. This is an "event" photo, with almost 40 children visible, under magnification, and cars in the parking lot. The cluster of tenements in the background, festooned with lines of wet washing, are on Metcalfe and Adelaide Streets. This corner of the playing field is well to the west of the acreage covered in the 1942 aerial photo of the army camp. By the 1950s government housing projects were going up from one end of the valley to the other, and then the city approved redevelopment of the park as a shopping centre. Shamrock Park was relocated a few blocks beyond Adelaide Street. [Photo - Wesley Foster]

Earlier this week I discussed this photo with a few LOST VALLEY stalwarts and I couldn't resist pointing out the boy climbing the swing set. Note that the chains and seats are either missing or haven't yet been installed. North End kids, its so true, were always very rough on playground equipment and public monuments. I thought of that when this past spring the press covered a new aqua-playground which was installed in the Courts off Churchill Blvd., at a cost of over half a million dollars. I noticed that it was engineered to resist the destructive capabilities of today's urban youth. Of course when you over do the child proofing, you sometimes end up with a playground that looks like the steel and wood obstacles Albert Speer used to defend the beaches of Normandy.