On Thursday evening, the Bradford Local History Association met for their monthly meeting at the library, featuring four local residents with a bit of town history to share.
Facilitator and member of the club, Mikki Nanowski, welcomed all guests and introduced the four “storytellers” of the night: farmer, Bob Wood; successful businessman, Bob Watt; BWG’s "first lady," Jean Keffer, and retired health care professional and artist, Stella Wadsworth- recounting some of their memories on “why they love BWG the way the rest of us do,” said Nanokwski.
Wood started off the evening with memories of life as a kid on the farm in BWG.
He recalled the story that “shattered the community” in August 1962, when nine-year-old Peter Langford and his friend John Stiles were walking along Highway 88 and struck by a drunk driver.
Langford was killed instantly and Stiles was left in a vegetative state. Langford’s mother, who had been driving back home at the time, saw police and immediately recognized her son. She drove back to the family home to share the devastating news with the family.
Langford was a happy kid, who loved to help on the family farm. The turnout for his funeral was one of the largest the town had ever seen, showing how touched everyone was touched by this tragedy.
Wood also reflected on happier stories, like in 1967 when his school created a float, for the Bond Head Parade with donkeys on board.
“All the kids from the school participated in it, we won first prize at the Bond Head parade,” he remembered fondly.
Later that year, they decided to replicate their float for the Santa Claus Parade in Barrie. They harnessed the donkeys in a field, preparing them for their big debut, but “that’s as far as they got, they wouldn’t go out the doors,” Wood said. “They had to load them on the truck and send them home.”
Next to speak was Watt who recalled a time when everyone in BWG was using telephones and “party lines,” sharing telephone service with all his neighbours.
“It was always interesting to see whose conversation you might land into when trying to use the phone,” he said.
He told the story of being six-years-old when his grandfather died and the wake being held at his house. When the visitation was over, he remembered going back to bed with the casket still in the house. A customary tradition that is not common today.
“At that point, I thought I was ready for anything,” he laughed.
He recalled his school days at SS#5 in Bond Head, sitting next to a freestanding stove to stay warm, and “toasting your sandwiches.”
Next to speak was Keffer who told the group a little bit about her Great Uncle Douglas Rothwell.
Keffer grew up on a farm in Gilford across from the go-kart tracks. Her paternal grandmother was a Rothwell, who came from Ireland. The Rothwells had several farms in Gilford, including a 150 acre apple orchard.
Douglas was the youngest of 11 children. He was born in 1889, and known as “Doc” or “HD.”
By the time he started high school, he had become interested in mechanics. By the time he was 16-years-old he had built one of the first rural telephone systems in Ontario, and the first in Simcoe County, made from second hand equipment from Montreal, insulators, side boxes and wires, and cedar posts. In spring 1906, it was the first rural telephone conversation in Simcoe County and possibly Ontario.
When he was 19, he extended his telephone service to Lefroy, with a connection to Bell, allowing residents to make long distance calls to Toronto. He then travelled to New Jersey to learn more about electrical work, from the famous, Thomas Edison. But it wasn’t an easy feat. After a few failed attempts at getting into his lab, he eventually made his way to the man’s home, knocked on his door, where they discussed electrical work.
“Edison was extremely deaf and had a hard time hearing Uncle Douglas,” explained Keffer.
Edison told Rothwell to come to his lab the next day, and found himself a job there, developing a storage battery at the rate of $7.50 a week.
Later that year, Edison encouraged Rothwell to go back to school to finish his education and go to university. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1914, and a month later was employed as an engineer with Ontario Hydro.
One of his first jobs was to travel with Sir Adam Beck, founder of the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario.
In 1921, the government had a plan to take hydro to the farming community and pay 50 percent of the cost, but there was great opposition and it was Douglas’s job to get them on board with the idea.
“The first night he was sent out he had every farmer signed up,” said Keffer.
At the same time, Beck wanted to introduce electrical radio cars in Ontario but there was strong opposition from the government, and the automobile was coming into play at that time.
In 1953, the same year Keffer was born, he was made the liaison engineer to mastermind the implementation of the St. Lawrence Power Project between Ontario Hydro and the Power Authority of the State of New York.
The area to be flooded covered 20,000 acres, displacing 6,500 people. Seven communities and a third of Morrisberg, disappeared under the water of the new St. Lawrence Lake. A new community was created, and the people accepted him and his name will always be remembered, because one of the schools is named after him, “but to me he was my Uncle Douglas, the guy who worked with Thomas Edison,” remembered Keffer.
“Well I might as well go home now, because I can’t top that one,” joked the next storyteller, Wadsworth.
Wadsworth shared stories of her earlier life in Bradford. She was born in Leamington, Ontario and moved to Bradford in 1946 with her family.
She remembered walking to school everyday “regardless of what the weather was,” and wearing tunics with garters, black stockings and bloomers.
She loved to shop in town, “where you could buy everything on Holland Street and knew everyone you met, that was a good thing,” she remembered.
The families on her street, Morris Road consisted of “a diverse group of immigrants” from Japanese, Polish, Ukrainian, and Latvian background, “and we all managed to get along,” she said.
Driving to work at the county hospital took her only 20 minutes, with only one stop light on the way. “It was fantastic, you can’t do that anymore.”
She reflected on the day Hurricane Hazel blew through Bradford in October 1954 when she was 11.
“I can recall the fierce rain, the darkness, there were no stars, no moon, no lights, and no reflections anywhere, and no one was prepared.”
Eventually everyone on Morris Road vacated their houses and went into town on higher ground, except one gentleman who stayed in his house all night long.
When they returned the next day, there was no water in the house, the onion crop was just as the edge of the water. She remembered going rowing in a boat on the fields.
A few days later on Oct. 19, her nephew Paul Novosad was born, after a long and complicated trip to the hospital after trying to travel through the damage caused by the hurricane. “Each year around his birthday, I have a brief moment of memories from that time,” she said. Although it was a devastating moment in history, she noted the birth of her nephew brought through happiness for their family.
The Bradford Local History Association usually meets once a month at the BWG Library, and host other events throughout the year. Membership is $10 a year for a single person, or $15 a year for the family. To get in touch with them, contact the Chair, Jan Blommaert at [email protected]
