By Karen Miceli
“In my day we made our own entertainment. There was no such thing as televisions,” says Albert. “We could swim in the bay. It was still good then. We made our own baseball league and our own hockey league.”
Adds Jack, “Alderman Frank Dillon was a good friend of my father, and he was responsible for getting a pool and ice rink at Eastwood Park.”
However, some of the entertainment for adults at the bay was frowned upon in the eyes of the law — like the string of boathouses in which North-Enders would drink and play poker. The police would raid them from time to time, so Albert was hired as lookout. “If I saw the police paddy wagon come down,” says Albert, “I would have to run in all the boathouses and tell them, ‘hide the cards’, ‘hide the booze’, and they paid me 25 cents to do that. Back then, a quarter was really something. I could go to the show and buy candy. We didn’t have an allowance so we had to come up with some money to do something.”
Jack, who got a job at 14 delivering prescriptions on his bicycle for Fox’s drug store, recalls playing hockey between the boathouses on Saturdays and Sundays. “They were like a hockey rink for us. We’d go down there and play all day.”
Albert continues: “The big thing about the bay in the winter time was that it would freeze over solid. There were big barns in the North End where they would cut big blocks of ice, store them, and deliver them to houses (for refrigeration).”
The North End was surrounded by plenty of industry — Stelco, Dofasco, Otis Elevator, Westinghouse, Firestone, to name a few. “We could get a job there,” says Albert. “They would hire you right away. And we lied about our age because they weren’t supposed to hire you until you were 18. “There wasn’t a company that didn’t make a product that was actually in the home. And they were all here in Hamilton — places like Proctor and Gamble.”
The brothers emphasize how the North End was a shining example of a community coming together. Except on Orangemen’s Day, July 12, which back then was an Irish day of conflict between Catholics and Protestants. “They used to have the Orangemen’s Parade,” said Albert. “My grandfather, Andy Smith, was a proud Irishman and he was Protestant. He would dress up as King William, and he would cover one of his horses with whitewash and lead the Protestants down James Street.”
On the sidelines, the Catholics would pelt them with rotten fruit. “But that would only last one day,” says Albert. “Those same people, whether Catholic or Protestant, would be friends the whole rest of the year — but not on that day.”
Then there was the cock-fighting. Roosters, outfitted with spurs, would battle to the death while onlookers cheered for the bird they had wagered on. Andy, who sometimes hosted cock fights in his backyard barn, bred a special breed of rooster that people would come from the United States to purchase. But cock-fighting was illegal in Canada because of its cruelty to the roosters and for the gambling involved. Hence, police tried to shut them down. Jack remembers one raid where people were scrambling out the windows, but not everyone was able to elude the police, including his father. Jack got the call to bail him out of jail. “I went to the courthouse and the smoke was so thick from the men smoking cigars all night I couldn’t see two feet in front of me,” says Jack, a former pilot. “I had to call out my dad’s name to find him.”
Albert recalls how he didn’t feel like he was at home until he crossed Barton Street at James Street. “The boundaries for the North End started at James and Barton. When you got to the other side of Barton you felt good because you were home.”
So, what are the brothers’ wishes for the North End today?
“Is it ever going to be possible for the bay to return to what it was when we were growing up? It was great for fishing, swimming and other water activities. But it would take all levels of government to make that happen,” says Albert.
(Editors note – we thank Karen Miceli for interviewing her father Albert and her uncles and sharing this. The North End is changing again, as is good and normal, but memories like this give a depth and texture to our experience of our neighbourhood. And who doesn’t share Albert’s wish?)
