Editor,
I lived my “formative years”, from age 11 to 18 on High Street during the 1950s. I was the go-to kid to help store owners with odd jobs like cleaning basements, shovelling snow, organizing storage areas, washing windows and a wide variety of tasks including putting window awnings down and up on Sundays for those owners who did not live on our main street.
To say that I have witnessed change on High Street would be an understatement.
Just to name a few:
a) Our popular public parkette on the northeast corner of High and Grosvenor was eliminated, and a gaudy government building was constructed to house a regional customs and excise office as well as an upgrade to our quaint little post office that today is Thorncrest Outfitters. In 1953, the federal building did not fit into the architecture of the time;
b) Next to go was our community cold storage. It was always a special treat to go in to the freezing big room with the family locked boxes with all of brown wax paper packages of meat we got from Jack Davies cutting or the quarter of beef we bought from a local farmer. Plenty of people in town were buying those new deep freezers so the rest of us had to buy one as well when they closed the cold storage. Eventually a new building was built, and it now has a long-term insurance office on its site;
c) My favourite was the next to go. Our blacksmith shop had continued going after the age of the horse and buggy had passed and he had added metal repairs including metal bending, welding and soldering. They had kept the wide doors out front and I would always peak in to see if the forge was going and the hammer was being used on the anvil which always made the sparks fly. Today you can order or pick up your pizza in that locaiton;
d) Across the road Reg and Tommy Lee had been repairing cars since autos first came to town. They owned and operated the BA gas station. When they closed it took a few years and a few other businesses, but eventually we got a great bicycle shop;
e) Next door was another one of my other favourites. In 1955/56 I worked for Ross Fowler in the last dry-cleaning plant in town which also housed a “do it for you” laundry. It was here that I washed dirty diapers for tourists with young babies. Yes, this was cr*ppiest job I ever had, pardon the pun. Today it is our bakery.
I could go on but hopefully I have made my point about change. Today you can count about eight to 10 storefronts that are either closed or significantly under-utilized.
We now have a wonderful opportunity to embrace a marvellous new project that could and should revitalize a rapidly dying main street. The plan for the expansion of our Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre coupled with the brilliant idea of including a nuclear innovation centre that provides excitement and opportunity for this, and future generations is an exciting event that everyone of us living in Southampton and in all of Saugeen Shores should embrace.
Regards,
Bill Streeter
See also: A statement from Luke Charbonneau on the Nuclear Innovation Institute
Send your letters to news@saugeenshoreshub.ca
