From the archives of the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library:
Before Remember This came, “I Remember When”
It seems Saultites were interested in reminiscing about bygone days long before our Remember This column began.
In 1923, The Sault Daily Star (later becoming The Sault Star) ran a recurring column entitled “I REMEMBER WHEN.” On Friday, April 6th, 1923, the first I Remember When article was published. The caption read: “Mayor Dawson Recalls How Prin. Bassingthwaighte Used Strap On Him.”
The column’s preamble stated: “Mayor James Dawson has contributed a very interesting collection of gleanings from his recollections of early days in the Sault to start off the Daily Star’s ‘I Remember When’ Column.”
James Dawson, then Mayor of Sault Ste. Marie reminisced about the Sault Ste. Marie he remembered from the previous century. His musings included “when the district from Queen Street West to the rapids was a succession of splendid trout streams before the construction of the International Bridge” and “when Lieut. S. L. Penhorwood, under the late Major Wilson, marched his twelve red coat volunteers down Queen street with his old iron cannon, to the foot of East Street, every first of July, and fired a royal salute…”
Mayor Dawson concluded his reminiscences with a final memory. “And when James Bassingthwaighte was principal of the school, and gave me a good licking with a rubber strap. Yours truly, James Dawson.”
On Tuesday, July 10th, 1923, Dr. W. E. Gimby submitted his own lengthy ‘I Remember When’ column, beginning with his arrival in the Soo in 1879 on the St. Francis Smith, a side-wheeler.
Dr. Gimby wrote, “Our boat did not call at Canadian Soo. So I was landed at Soo, Michigan. They were building a ship canal there at that time. It was made mostly of wood…Soo Michigan just then was a lively village, but my impression of it was not favourable. There were many soldiers hanging around, many saloons, much beer and small churches.”
Dr. Gimby further recalled that on the day he arrived in Sault Ste. Marie, on the Canadian side, he was able to walk “the whole village on foot by 7 p.m, the same day.”
He would not stay in our little town for long, however, telling The Sault Daily Star that he “decided after wandering around for the day that the sidewalks were too few and too dangerous…and the village was too small for me to open up my carpet bag and become a citizen of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.”
Dr. Gimby would return to the Soo twenty-two years later, as he recalls in his I Remember When column. He decided to stay as “the little uninviting hamlet in the bush had grown to be a prosperous town of about 10,000 happy people.”
City Clerk R. G. Campbell also ‘remembered when’ on July 14th, 1923, in The Sault Daily Star. Interestingly, however, his first memory came with a rebuttal!
Campell began, “I remember the first time I saw Mr. James Curran…He was sitting on a packing box at his print shop….on East Street on the site which is now occupied by the Bell Telephone Company.”
Mr. Curran, the editor of the paper at that time, inserted his version of that same remembrance below Mr. Campbell’s. “[Pardon me, R. G., you are in error. I was unpacking the box, so that I could not have been sitting on it. It was my brother Jack who was sitting down. And besides that, the Bell Telephone Building is next door…I distinctly remember you standing around watching me work because it irritates me to work if anybody else is idle. - J.]”
So, it seems memory can be a fickle thing, and when you are the editor of the paper featuring the I Remember When column, you have the last word!
In 1931, there were many I Remember When columns as well as advertisements from The Daily Star asking to hear from the adult citizenry of Sault Ste. Marie.
The requests appearing in the paper would include a sample and a form that could be cut out. This form started with the words “I REMEMBER WHEN”, followed by blank lines, and ended with a place for Name and Street Address. Fascinating samples were published, including one from Bill Jones, residing on Queen Street. Bill wrote, “I Remember When Toronto sent us 1,200 soldiers to quell the paper mill riot in 1903, and I heard Mayor Plummer ask the colonel what he came to town for. The conversation took place on Huron Street. At the time, the old Algoma Inn on Hudson Street was commandeered by the town to house and feed the lumberjacks who came after their pay.”
Long before social media and digital news sources, Saultites found a way to reminisce about the good ol’ days through newsprint. Our current Remember This column is in good company with the bygone ‘I Remember When’ articles, and hopefully, one day in the future, the Soo will continue to learn about its past with yet another new medium for news.
Each week, the Sault Ste. Marie Public Library and its Archives provide SooToday readers with a glimpse of the city’s past.
Find out more of what the Public Library has to offer at www.ssmpl.ca and look for more "Remember This?" columns here.