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oQn Monday, Jan. 2,1995 Fresh garden vegetables fed hungry hoboes in Belleville's reputation as The Friendly City was built on good deeds done by city resi- dents like CNR Car Foreman Bertram James "B J" Theobald. In the first few years after the Great Depression, hoboes who continued to travel the railway looking for food and shelter quickly realized they had a friend in Theobald. When these hungry men tum- bled out of their boxcar homes and onto the streets of Belleville, Theobald never turned a blind eye. Instead, Theobald and his wife, Mabel, took it upon them- Hielves to feed the hoboes a goodunch. Barb Bertrim, theirdaughter, remembers • her mother putting food on the porch of their 240 MacDonald Barb (Theobald) Bertrim and husband Keith at their garden wedding reception, Sept 8,1951. Ave home for the drifters ev- ery day. ,, "My Dad was a car foreman. 11 he saw (the hoboes) gat off the cars, he would tell them where to go, he'd call my mother and she would prepare the sandwiches and get the vegetables ready and put them on toe porch," Bertrim recalls. The vegetables that fed the rheobalds and the drifters came from the huge garden they inherited when they bought the house, she says. 'She never invited them in, but they came every day. She was very thoughtful that way because she was very thankful we had food on the table." Perhaps giving away food was easier for the Theobald family than for many others. It was 1942, and they had just moved into the house that was apparently the home of James Roy's gardener. Roy, whose 245 Victoria Ave. home was re- cently featured in Remember When... (Dec. 12), was a promi- nent and well liked brewer and maltster in Belleville at the turn of the century. And his garden was, report- edly, magnificent. By the time the Theobald's moved in, Roy had died and his house burned down. Bertrim remembers her father bought the gardener's house from Dr. Tennant, who sold the Roy house (before the fire) to the Catholic nuns for $1. Without the Roy house/the Theobald home was the only house on the block. "We had quite a bit of land there...We had the whole block to ourselves. You wouldn't be- lieve the trees, huge trees...Kids had a lot of fun . there/1 Bertrim recalls. I "It was really a fabulous place to grow up," she says. To Bertrim and other chil- ™ lrLthe area, the remains ot the Roy house were a great exploring ground. Although they never found anything very valuable, Bertrim remem- bers finding a piece of ame- thyst which she held onto for years and later gave to her daughter. "There were places where you could see ruins of carriage houses. It was a fun place to explore. We found the usual things -- broken dishes, cut- lery, burnt things," Bertrim says. Neighborhood kids held ball games on the land, and across the street (which was still part of Thurlow Township at that time) they played at the figure skating club, the tennis club and in the hills. The house itself was triple brick (Bertrim's husband Keith believes), and Bertrim remem- bers all the rooms were big. "It was plain, but it was nice. We were sorry when he sold it," she says. Bertrim, however, has espe- cially fond memories of the garden. She compares it to an English country garden. Both Bertrim and her younger sister Lois (now Lois Taylor of Shan- nonville) held backyard wed- ding receptions at the home. Bertrim also has three older brothers, Gordon, who still lives in Belleville, Harvey and Alan, and a younger brother Stuart, who lives in Addisoi Illinois. Theobald sold the house to| t. Miranda in the late 1960s.about 1980 the house was sold to Edward and Suzanne Bowen, and around 1984 it was sold to Dr. Bert and Lois Conn. David and Helen Buffett moved in around 1986, and Stewart Stanley occupied the house in 1990. n Prior to Theobald, in 1940 the house was occupied by Fred Devenish, a clerk at the Bank of Montreal, Mrs. JB Freeland and G.B. Carrier oc- cupied the house in 1938, and W.C. Ristow, a purchase agent for Stewart-Warner, lived in the house in 1936. ^ From at least 1899 to 1934, E.H. LaRoche, a Custom House broker and general in- surance agent, lived in the tiouse. Who exactly was Roy's gardener is not known. ConT