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.]
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.
