Interview with Bart Fulcher, April 1996, Tape 1 Side B
Description
- Audio (MP3)
-
Audio (MP3) - Creators
- Gary W. Muir, Interviewer
- Bart Fulcher, Interviewee
- Media Type
- Audio
- Item Type
- Interviews
- Description
- Bart Fulcher describes his experience growing up in West Brant, working as a foreman at Scarfe's paint factory, and later working as a travelling salesman. He also describes his pet goat who would follow him all the way downtown, Market's street always smelling like peanut butter, and daring to ride ice floes down the Grand River in wintertime.
- Notes
- Subjects, with timestamps:
0:00- Great depression, unemployment
• It was unusual to find a good job at the time Fulcher did, 1933
• People used to sleep on cardboard under the Market street bridge
• Scarfe’s (his workplace) got busy in spring and fall
• He tarred rooves for a living, putting tar in a tar pot and heating it up to spread on rooves
2:00- Employment
• He had to compete with many people to keep his job, so was a hard worker
• In addition to tarring rooves, he cleaned “all the sludge” out of the solvent tanks
• He was taken on originally as casual help in the spring [1933]
• Only two employees were kept after this casual period, and he was one of them
• Once he started there in 1933, he was never laid off, never had to get unemployment relief
• He was married in 1938
4:13- Social life outside of work
• Growing up in West Brantford, he traded pigeons and chickens
• He had a pet goat in West Brantford, who used to follow him down Oxford street and wait for him outside of Calbeck’s Store to go back home
• Sometimes, he would go down on the weekends to Port Dover
• Spent a little time at Mohawk park
6:04- Changes in West Brant
• Recalls when they took the streetcar tracks out
• A lot of old families went out of business, like the Suddabys and the Welshes
• The first radio store opened toward uptown
7:25- Recollections of West Brant
• Still lived in West Brant up until he was married on Walnut street
• Oxford street was paved at the time, but most other roads weren’t
• Remembers being four years old and standing at the corner of Market and Colborne, and seeing the market and city hall
• Remembers Ryerson making peanut butter in a shop downtown and selling it in “little boats” like you would have gravy in
• You could smell peanut butter all down Market street
• He always felt like Brantford was a “monstrous city”, very large compared to the town he came from in England
9:25- The Market
• Remembers that there was a delivery stable belonging to (Eisenbach(?)) where a parking lot is now, between Market and Queen
• He always liked horses, and owned many of them throughout his life
• Remembers Eisenbach’s store, with a big wooden counter on the left
10:54- Movies
• There were a lot of theatres in Brantford: the College, the Esquire, the Brant theatre, the Capitol theatre
11:40- Wife
• Everyone was out at the Saturday night parade, walking around looking to meet people
• Most people went clockwise
• He said hi to her, at the time he was 18 and she was 16
• He walked her home, which was up on William street
13:42- Immigration
• There were a lot of immigrants around Pearl street
• There were not too many immigrants in West Brant
• There was one Hungarian man, from whom he bought a baby goat
14:16- The pet goat
• The goat couldn’t be kept by the original owner and he bought it
• He just wanted the goat because he loved animals
• It was a doe
• He originally bought it from Tony [inaudible]
• His dad let him get it as long as he looked after the goat himself
• He found out that the goat was following him when he once tried to bike through the field near his childhood home, and she got free of her rope and stake to pursue him
• States, “I’ve always kept animals… guys would be fixing bikes and cars and I’d have pigeons and chickens”
16:30- Family life
• He was married in September of 1938 and Wayne, his son, was born in December of 1940
• Brantford during the depression
• He witnessed guys go into Massey’s and get laid off or sent home, and they would have to go back home
• He wanted work to “provide him with some stability”; he did not make as much money as some of the other people in town who worked in Cockshutt’s and Massey’s, but “[he] was still working, it was steady”
• He recalls seeing people sitting and waiting on their front porches
• He had some friends on relief, and recalls men working for city to find whatever jobs they could, including sweeping the street and snow shoveling in the winter
• He remembered men going to Quebec to work in “lumber”, “that’s how bad it was, that was in the thirties”
18:03- Homedale beach
• Homedale had the best beach
• Recalls when the city put sand in for the beach in Homedale, which was reportedly better than the beach in West Brant
• “I think they were a little ahead of us”
• There were rented canoes on one end of it, and “a sports shop or something” near the beach
• It was a big destination, simply because “there was no place else much to go”
20:54- Riding the ice floes down the Grand river
• Occurred when Fulcher was a kid, about 9, 10, or 11
• All of the West Brant boys did it
• “The ice would break up and get a great big piece and we would get on it and be out in the middle, and they crushed together”
• They would go up about as far as the Bell Homestead, where the river would “start to tighten up”, just past Bert’s lane
21:29- Jumping the train
• People used to jump the freights and ride up to Burford
21:50- Brother’s death
• He died two years prior to the interview, when he was 75 and Bart was 77
• He had eight siblings
• Grew mushrooms and potatoes in the garden
22:30- The welcome home committee
• His father was in the welcome home committee for the troop trains
• He belonged to the legion, which organized it
• He used to belong when it was the “G.W.V.A.” (Great War Veterans Association)
• Sometimes, Bart’s mother would go with his father to meet the trains
24:11- Bart’s mother
• She “never turned anybody away that needed a meal”
• “If she was nervous to bring it in the house, she would take it out on the step and give it to them”
• They used to get a lot of people knocking on their door for help and for meals
24:42- Service in World War Two
• Went into service in ’42 or ‘43
• Joined the air force, and originally waited to join because of the recent birth of his son
• Things started to get a little better for Brantford at the start of the war
• Remembers “camp 20” being opened
• Recalls watching drills happen with new soldiers in front of Scarfe paint, in the parking lot
• They had a camp 20 band which would come with them, and he “used to look out the window of the plant, [he] thought it was great seeing them when they first started”
• Two of his brothers joined the first division and went to Italy, and then on the continent
• Visitors would come to the city to see where the soldiers were stationed
• A lot of civilians worked at camp 5, including Fulcher’s dad, who was a plumber by trade
7:08- Scarfe during the war
• Made “a putty-like substance” called “luting” (spelling given in recording) to be used for shell casings so that they wouldn’t rust tight
• The factory had to hire outside help during the war
• For example, Fulcher was a foreman and another guy had to be hired to do his job during the war while he was in service
• There were no women working there, however, only in the office
• Fulcher states that it wasn’t the type of work in the paint plant that women normally took on, it was “hard work”, and there were more women working with airplanes at Cockshutt’s etc.
• There tended to be more distinct gender roles in terms of employment back then
• 29:09- Returning home from the war
• He went back to work in the plant again when he got home
• The government guaranteed their job back
• “In those days, the arcade was a busy place… people would be rounded up on the corner”
• “Those [next] 25-30 years were the best times we’ve ever had, and people got accepting that as normal, and I don’t think it’s been, I think more normal is like it is now”
30:05- Sales career
• Started in sales in 1956
• [inaudible] Hill, who “died a while back in Brantford”, was the sales manager for Cockshutt at the time
• He came into the factory and spoke with all the foremen, including Fulcher, and looked into the company’s records
• He asked Fulcher what he “wanted to end up doing”
• He was given a “psychology check”, where he got “real high marks”
• He requested to go into sales, and was taken out of his department and made superintendent for 8-10 months before starting as a salesman
• He does not regret his choice and enjoyed sales very much
• He first sold wood finishing for furniture and did “all the furniture companies in Ontario, pretty well”
• He worked in Georgian bay down to Lake Erie, in Sarnia, and to Hamilton
• He then went into metal sales, and went from Toronto to London
• After this, he specialized in “the school bus business” and “school bus companies”
• He drove 40,000 miles a year for over 26 years doing sales
33:10- Hockey and employment
• In the 1930s. it was easier to find a job if you could play hockey for the company team
- Date of Original
- April 1996
- Date Of Event
- 1920s through 1950s
- Playing Time
- 34:36
- Subject(s)
- Corporate Name(s)
- Cockshutt's ; Ryerson's ; Massey Ferguson ; Scarfe's Paint ; Calbeck's
- Language of Item
- English
- Copyright Statement
- Copyright status unknown. Responsibility for determining the copyright status and any use rests exclusively with the user.
- Contact
- Brantford Public LibraryEmail:b4@brantfordlibrary.ca
Website:
Agency street/mail address:173 Colborne St.
Brantford, ON N3T 2G8
