David Goss: Not much trail info, but good tales told

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The announcement last week that funding for the NB Museum’s upgrade at its Douglas Avenue site reminded me of a Walk ‘n Talk I once conducted on the embankment between the museum and Marble Cove on two trails in the scrub woods between Douglas Avenue and the St. John River.

I wonder if the trials might be reestablished. One was a native portage, and the other a popular shortcut from Marble Cove -St. Peter’s Park area to Saint John Vocational School which is now Harbourview High.

Recently, I learned a few things from Irene Schell about the trail and the north end in the 1940s that would make good stories to share on the trails if they become useable.

Of the Marble Cove to Vocational School trail she said, “I only used it once, and it was not a good experience for me. My brother Gordon did it daily going to school and had gotten skis one Christmas. I borrowed them as my friend Glenna Ring had skis and we decided to use the trail. What a mistake. It was very hilly, ups and downs. It was like Mount Everest to us. I never went there again, so can’t help you much on that.”

I had assumed Irene had gone to Voc, but she soon corrected me on that, and gave me great glimpses on life in the old north end where she had grown up after moving to the city from Boston.

“I went uptown to high school,” she said. “I walked back and forth every day. This was before school buses. Once in a while, we might ride the streetcar. It went right up Main Street. I can recall it turning at Main and Bridge. The conductor would walk from one end of the car to the other and switch the power pole and we’d change direction just like that.”

One of the places the streetcar passed was the old forum skating rink.

“We had lots of adventures there,” she laughed. “We learned how to get in to the hockey games as a friendly gate keeper told us to just hold our hands as if we were passing him a ticket, and walk in with a crowd. Once I saw Jean Belliveau there with a Quebec team. Another time, I saw champion figure skater Barbara Ann Scott, when a neighbour, Mr. Hickman, had somehow got tickets to that show, and he took me in.”

She added, “We skated there when we were not able to skate on the rink on the river at Marble Cove. Even indoors, sometimes there would be puddles of water on the ice, and if you fell down, you had to go home right away soaking wet.”

Another place for skating was on the ballfield at St. Peter’s park, where the parish kept an ice oval, and there was a warming shack with a caretaker. She was not a member of that church, but of Main Street Baptist, where her recollection of riverboat trips for Sunday School picnics at Sand Point on the D.J. Purdy and Majestic steamers were recalled as we chatted.

That memory brought forth stories of summers spent at Grand Bay at what she described as the “oldest house in the village.” She called it the Hamm house and explained it was not far from the Jewish Communities’ cottages in Pamdenec, and also close to the Gyro Club camps. That was where she was a camp counselor for two years while in high school, and later became director as a young adult. A few stories followed before we went back to north end tales.

The first was a story I’d been told about the city owned instructional swimming scows in Marble Cove area that I thought she might comment on.

“We were aware of them for sure, but they were off limits to us. Dad warned us there was raw sewage that drained into the cove, and banned us from the scows,” she said. She was surprised that a story I had collected was that the lifeguard’s first duty of the day was scattering the eels in the scows on-deck diving pools before his students could get into the water. “No doubt another reason we were banned,” she laughed.

Though I didn’t pick up much detail on the embankment shortcut paths, I sure heard some good background on life in the north end in the ’40s. And there were lots more tales told as we moved into her working years that will certainly be a good reason to visit with Irene Schell again. It will be good to see if more memories come to mind that I can use on walks if these trails open for exploration.

David Goss is a local tour guide, story teller and author. He appreciates comments on these columns, and suggestions for topics he can explore at gosswalk@nbnet.nb.ca.