Belmont House is a charitable, non-profit, Christian home for seniors offering long term care, retirement living and apartments. On June 24, Belmont House is honouring a number of residents who have reached or passed the age of 100. Bob Rae will be the featured speaker.
Marguerite Davis (Born 1910)
What is the greatest celebration you've ever seen in Toronto?
When the First World War ended in 1918 - at 5 a.m. the whistles blew and the bells rang and my father got us all out of bed, put us all in the car, a big Buick, put a garbage can on the back of the car and we went downtown. We stayed all morning wandering around downtown and a soldier sat on the garbage can and we took him along with us. Also when the subway opened - everybody went out and rode the subway. It was very exciting.
Is there a time when you personally experienced something and thought the city had taken a turn for the better or worse?
Since I was three years old, the change has been gradual. First the streetcars only came as far as Blythewood then they turned around and came back. We used to have to walk to Yonge Street and walk down to Roehampton to go into the North Toronto Collegiate. There was no bridge over Mount Pleasant. I think Toronto is a wonderful city.
What was life like during the Great Depression?
It was terrible. I remember people came to the door begging for sandwiches and hoping to get work. It lasted a long time. We had a man in our house when we moved in who came to paint for us. He turned Communist. He graduated from art college, couldn't get a job, so he was painting. The first part of the Depression was the last year I graduated from college. Then I went out to Winnipeg to live and the Depression was awful out there. The stock exchange closed down, people were committing suicide and we were selling meals for 15 cents and 25 cents after. Pie was a nickel a cut. Coffee and a donut was five cents. It was really a tough time. Because I was young and had four children, I was pretty absorbed in my family. We knew it was going on but we knew we had to go on living.
What is your favourite neighbourhood or place in Toronto?
I was born in Toronto so mostly I've always lived in Toronto. We lived in Lawrence Park and we had wonderful neighbours and children all had great friends. We were living in the same house for 25 years. We had a very happy time there. And it was something like being in the country, up there.
Harry McQueen (Born 1908)
What is the greatest celebration you've ever seen in Toronto?
I'm going to take you back to the year 1918. That was the year the First World War ended. I can still remember, I was in Grade Four or Five, and as soon as we were told that the war was over, we all walked out of the school, teachers and everybody. Later that day, my dad took me downtown, from Eglinton Avenue and Dufferin Street. The streets were filled with people. There were no streetcars running. There were bags of confetti all over the place and everybody was throwing the confetti all over the place. We had to walk home - that was a long walk.
The next day - it was all country up there at Eglinton Avenue and Dufferin Street - some of the men, all British immigrants, they went out and chopped down three or four pine trees and put them in a pyramid. They put a picture of the kaiser up there, and they put an iron cross around him, and then lit a fire. A prize was given to whoever could find the iron cross - it was buried in the ashes and we couldn't get at it until the next day.
Is there a time when you personally experienced something and thought the city had taken a turn for the better or worse?
The greatest change was the coming of the immigrants. I have nothing against them, we need them, but when I was a boy in school, we never saw a black person. For years, my girls didn't see any black people either. In the recent years, we've made great friends.
One of the greatest changes in my life was technology. It was 1917 and we were in school, it was a two-storey school. It's gone now. We were on the top floor. Suddenly, a war plane went past and landed in the field where the troops were. That was the first time I saw an airplane. I've seen the changes over the years. In my last year of public school, we made a radio but there were no radio stations in Toronto. We got one from Pittsburgh. Then, of course, there was the television and now the computer. The computer is beyond me, I'm a little too late for that.
What is your favourite neighbourhood or place in Toronto?
Where we lived were all British immigrants. They were living in shacks but the kindest people you could meet. My father was a carpenter and if somebody needed a carpenter's job, he went and did it for them. If he needed some brick-laying done, someone would help me. We helped one another, we had field days, and we had a great time. We had no money but that didn't matter.
I have a cottage up at Sundridge, Ontario. We have four there now with my grandchildren and children. My wife, who is now dead, said she had seen a lot of the world but if she had to stay at one place, it would be the cottage.
Marjorie Putt (Born 1906)
What is the greatest celebration you've ever seen in Toronto?
When the troops returned from World War One.
Is there a time when you personally experienced something and thought the city had taken a turn for the better or worse?
Everything has changed in Toronto now; it's not the same Toronto. All the murders have made it worse, and the unrest that's in Toronto now, we didn't have it before.
Is there something specific you miss about [old]Toronto?
Definitely - but I don't know exactly when it happened. I can't pinpoint a certain thing but Toronto isn't good ol' Toronto. I came to Toronto in 1907 from London, England.
What was life like during the Great Depression?
It was terrible because you couldn't stir up anything, really. It didn't affect me as much as some people because I was young so I didn't know what it was all about. My parents worried about that. It was a tough time for everybody. They had to find work and it was unpleasant.
What is your favourite neighbourhood or place in Toronto?
I have so many favourite things that happened because a lot of them happened happily.
Mrs. Jean Borden (Born 1905)
I came when I was quite young. My father was taking a law degree. He changed his mind. He was an assistant professor at Princeton University in the United States and he decided he didn't want to do that, he thought he'd like to take law. So he came to Toronto. But he was married then. I think I was probably about five years old.
We used to go over to the island in the summer for picnics.
I went to Halifax in 1914 for school. When I was done, I came back to Toronto and worked in the Toronto Public Library in the children's library. It used to be on St. George Street, next to the reference library. I took my library course here at the university. I worked in the library until I got married. Nobody was allowed to work in any government job once they got married, it was taboo. You were not allowed to work. You had to give up right away.
I was about 23 years old when I got married. I knew my husband in Halifax but we got married here in Toronto when he got back from Oxford University. Our wedding was small because I didn't have many friends here.
My husband was Prime Minister Borden's nephew and since he had no children, they were like father and son.
The explosion in Halifax was in 1916 when I was still in school. It was terrible. I remember hearing the big bang and rushing to a window because they were changing the station from the north end to the south end, you could hear the ships coming in. When I would hear a big blast, we were on a hill on the south end of Halifax. I was practising at the piano, as little girls had to do, and school didn't start until 9:30 a.m. then because they were saving money because of the war. So I ran to see the rocks go up but there weren't any. The Halifax explosion was the largest man-made explosion that had ever happened.
Dr. Madeleine Field (Born 1908)
I came to Toronto as an adult. I was a dentist in California but I wanted to open a flower shop.
I came from San Francisco and lived in Rosedale where I would take my pug for a walk in Chorley Park. I lived in San Francisco in its best days, in New York in its best days and now in Toronto in its best days.
I was a part of many committees including the Toronto Humane Society, the National Ballet, and the Royal Conservatory. I'm the world's worst harpist but I was trained by Eloise Davis. I also belong to the Arts and Letters Club.
When I was a dentist in San Francisco, Eleanor Roosevelt was one of my patients and she was wonderful. She would come in and say, "I'm exhausted. Can I rest?" I would tell her to sit in the chair and close her eyes and I'd wake her up when I'm through. Twenty-five minutes later I'd wake her up and say, "Mrs. Roosevelt, I'm finished." She would say, "Oh, that was so pleasant. I had the best dream."
John Ford was also a patient. He wanted to make an actress out of me. He said, "Why don't you stop this dirty work and I'll make you a star." I didn't know he was so good. I said, "Look, I went eight years to college to learn this and I don't know the first thing about acting."
I chose dentistry because I thought I would be a good dentist, and I was. It was practical, I made good money. I should have become a fashion designer or an interior decorator because that was my natural talent but it wasn't practical. I was impractical but I'm practical now.
Dr. Edra Ferguson (Born 1907)
I remember clearly, before I was born and I was in the womb, my father and mother were talking about whether I was going to be a boy or a girl. My father said of course I'd be a boy because I would be a lawyer.
I grew up in St. Thomas. I moved to Toronto after I became a judge. I was the first small-claims judge and the first woman appointed. Small claims were a waste of time to many but to me, they were very important and important to many people.
I lived on Links Road, south of 401 and Yonge Street.
I organized a bridge group at the St. Thomas Golf and Country Club.
I first learned to skate in my father's backyard on bobskates. I skated on them until I was a good enough skater to try single blade. My father was very fond of his garden and he wanted us to stay home, so we had a rink in his garden.
It was very unusual for a woman to become a lawyer. I went to Osgoode Hall, the first law school in Canada. There were five women in my class.
Toronto has changed. There is a greater population and there are many industries.
The Great Depression didn't affect me too much but it affected many of my clients. It was terrible.
Women wore long hair. I wore mine in braids over my ears.
I lived in St. Thomas and practised law for my father. I tried to get in an office in Toronto but I couldn't because I was a woman. My father asked me why I wanted to go to Toronto and I said I wanted to experience things that didn't happen in St. Thomas because it was a small city.
So he called his friend in Toronto and said I'd like to have experience in Toronto because they have bigger and more frequent cases. His friend said, "I'll never remember her name so don't bother telling me. There aren't any women in law but she can work in my office for nothing. She would be very useful if she were a man. She can carry my books and remind me where I'm supposed to be."
He said to me, "Woman - come with me. Woman - where am I going?" I would say to him, "I don't know, ask your secretary."
In 1913, I was at a station for officers and I used to spend my time dancing with them. We had a big dance hall in Port Stanley. People who liked to dance preferred to walk along the boardwalk to get cooled off. There was no air conditioning then. It was a hot night like this, we would walk on the boardwalk, and the waves would be crashing. It created a movement of air. We would get ice cream and orangeade. No alcohol. We would enjoy a drink of cold orangeade.
In Toronto, we would go dancing at the Palais Royale and the Old Mill. My favourite dance was the waltz.
I had a standing appointment at Eaton's on College Street.
I was a member of the University Women's Club and lived there while I went to Osgoode. I would walk to school. I got married at the University Women's Club in 1940 and then went to Niagara Falls on my honeymoon. My husband Donald wrote books and I have two of them in my room. I have three children, two sons and one daughter.