I know that some take this year’s Green Christmas as one more sign of the impending climate apocalypse. However, as reader Ken McEwen pointed out to me in a recent email, “The current holiday season, with little snow, is not new.” He remembers in the late 1930s or very early 1940s, going with his father, brother and the family’s hired man and his son, to a Millionaires hockey game in Maxville and “there wasn’t a pinch of snow on the ground,” as he put it. As he recalls, the weather must have been cold for some time, as Maxville’s all-natural Jubilee Rink was frozen solid.
Against all odds, the Jubilee Rink was built at the start of the Great Depression and opened in 1931. It was located at the corner of Alexander Street and Main Street, just east of today’s curling club, and had the distinction of being the first covered rink in Glengarry. For the next 46 years, the Jubilee was the focus of the town’s social life during the winter… with public skating nights, team practices and hockey games. It even boasted a small takeaway restaurant that was open whenever the rink was in use.
In 1977, the Maxville & District Sports Complex was built on Fair Street and the Jubilee was razed. However, before the wrecking ball was swung, a daylong closing event was held in honour of the Jubilee. Ken and his wife Chris were in attendance, and he told me it was a day of mixed emotions and old memories. He was especially touched when a fellow celebrant leaned over and remarked on how much blood Ken had spilled on the rink over the years. Before leaving his family’s farm on Kenyon Concession 7 to join the RCMP, Ken had played hockey in the Jubilee Rink for six years. “It was the price one paid for goaltending in the days before Jacques Plante,” Ken wrote.
But back to the snowless winter hockey excursion. When Ken, his dad and the others reached Maxville, they parked their 1929 Chevy in one of the horse sheds behind Jamison’s general store on Mechanic St. East and climbed from beneath the horse blanket they’d used to stay warm during the trip (the car had no heater). As this was back in the days before the use of antifreeze was widespread, his father had two choices. The first was to drain the radiator and refill it with water from the general store when it was time to go home. The second was to cover the engine with their horse blanket and hope the water in the rad didn’t freeze during the game.
Shortly after reading this account, I too had to head to town. After pushing the car’s ignition button, switching the heater control to ‘auto’ and turning on my seat warmer, the stark contrast hit me. So I took a few moments to ponder how much we now take for granted and reflect on how different life in the country used to be.
Home… but not alone
Baltic’s Corners resident Mac Williamson is delighted to be home after spending Christmas in the hospital following an operation. While in post-op, he and his partner Brenda Kennedy made the best of it by decorating his medication-laden IV pole like a Christmas tree. He admitted, though, that it didn’t come anywhere near the joy of celebrating December 25th in the farmhouse they’ve shared since moving to Stanley MacCaskill’s old place south of Dunvegan in 2000.
Mac and Brenda wish to thank the many friends and neighbours who pitched in to help in their time of need by dropping off food, providing transportation and showering them with countless other acts of kindness. “I should get sick more often,” Mac quipped. When I asked, he was hesitant to name names. “I know I’ll forget to mention someone,” Mac said, “and that just wouldn’t be fair.” However, he did want to single out Ben and Aiden’s three boys: Cole, Dawson and Oakley Williams. While Mac was away, the three lads took over feeding and watering ‘Donald’ and ‘Bob,’ Mac’s pet donkeys. I assumed the name “Donald” might relate to the Donald and “Bob” might be a reference to the former Ontario NDP Premier, Bob Rae. But, when I checked with Mac, I learned that the donkeys came to the barn pre-named.
Welcome home, and best wishes for a speedy recovery.
Snowflake thank you
Almost one year ago today, I reached out to Jeff Manley, North Glengarry’s councillor for Kenyon with a snowflake request. To clarify, I wasn’t asking for more snow. I’d be quite happy if winter ended the day after New Year’s Eve. I was referring to the new ‘snowflake’ power pole decorations the Township introduced in North Glengarry towns, villages and hamlets a couple of years ago. I’d noticed that the decorations didn’t extend very far west of the Dunvegan crossroads. So I asked Jeff if he’d be willing to lobby for an extra “snowflake” decoration in Dunvegan when they went up this December. I thought it made sense to have one on the power pole that’s near the DRA hall… especially considering it was the venue where Music & Mayhem’s infamous “Suzy Snowflake” had made his debut.
Jeff got right back to me and said he’d be happy to enquire about the possibility of an additional snowflake. He told me that they were produced locally, and he wasn’t sure if the Township was planning on ordering more or if they had extras. But he promised to check. And then we ran smack dab into Covid-19 and the world turned upside down.
So, when I drove through Dunvegan one evening early this past December, I was extremely grateful to see that our public works department had installed an extra ‘snowflake’ near the DRA hall. Knowing that our elected officials field many more complaints than compliments, I emailed Jeff to thank him for going to bat for us. He replied that, to be quite honest, he wasn’t sure it would happen given all the changes this year in the public works department. “It brought a smile to my face,” Jeff emailed me, “when I drove by the other night and saw the snowflake.” Thank you Jeff, and thank you Public Works.
Dunvegan codebreaker
The other day, Terry forwarded a link to very interesting post that chronicled the métier of a civilian wireless operator from World War II by the name of Lila Brownberg. Lila, a native of Saint John, New Brunswick, was one of only eighteen female operators in Canada. Her first assignment was at the Ottawa Monitoring Station where she intercepted wireless communications from German submarines in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It was mind-numbing work… hours of listening to nothing but static, punctuated by frantic scrambles to capture the brief U-boat messages which were sent in Morse code… transmissions that could be as brief as twenty-two seconds. And these operators had no iPhone on their desk to record the dots and dashes for later playback.
While working in Ottawa, Lila was offered a post aboard a merchant ship, but turned it down. Wisely, her mother refused to allow her to go. This was right in the midst of the Battle of the Atlantic, a time when U-boat packs roamed the sea searching for merchant vessels to send to the bottom of the ocean.
Instead, Lila moved to British Columbia to monitor Japanese submarines off the coast of Vancouver Island. To do so, she had to learn the Japanese Katakana-based code consisting of 76 characters… a task she completed in short order. For Lila was a force of nature, as evidenced by the fact she rode her Harley Davidson motorcycle from Ottawa to Victoria to take up her new position.
Now what does a young woman who helped intercept coded messages from the Axis Powers during World War II have to do with Dunvegan? Simple. She used to live here. She and her husband Alex Mogelon purchased the north half of the east quarter of Lot 13, Kenyon Concession 8 in July of 1975.
Terry and I met Lila and Alex through a mutual friend shortly after we moved here. The couple threw open their home to welcome us, as they did with locals and newcomers alike. Their hospitality was legendary, as was their eye for Canadian folk art. Sadly, Lila and Alex are no longer with us, but their daughter Ronna still lives in the Fiske’s Corners property. I’m unsure of what happened to her mother’s big Harley.
Happier New Year
Here’s wishing you and your loved ones all the best for 2021.
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