Answers to Doug G.

Marty,

 To answer Doug Garrett's questions. The building opposite the new Town Hall was originally a bakery owned by the Petrie family. It's mentioned in my book. Later it was converted to a house not an appartment. Possibly the last Park family to live there was the MacDonalds. They had at least three boys Cosie, a great hockey player, named for his father Cosmas, Graham, who allowed me to use a lot of interesting photos in the book, and Bruce who was in my class in St. Edmund's School from about 1954-1961. The first library was in the Town Hall but was moved across the street to the old building that had been a bakery in the 1920s. So by 1961 the buildings on that corner were: NW corner - Park (a playground had been here in the early 1950s) , NE corner - the New Town Hall completed for the town's 50th birthday in 1961. (Does anyone remember a worker being killed during its construction when they were raising materials to the roof and everything fell on him?), the SE corner - the former bakery, then house then library, the SW corner a small empty lot then Mrs. Hins store which by that time had been converted to an up and down flat lived in by many people and families.

 

So from Springfield to Empire on the south side of Churchill there were a few empty lots with the creek behind them, then Rousseau's Pharmacy that became Savard's Store before being converted to Primeau's Vespa and Yamaha Motorcycle shop, then a couple more empty lots before we came to the old bakery building.

 

On Empire on the east side going south from Churchill there was the old bakery-library, the creek, Mr. Fred Best's house then the Garrett house which was later owned by Norm Burnett Sr. I might have the Best house on the wrong side of the creek, but Doug will be able to straighten us out about that. After that was a house owned by the Fire Chief in the 1920s - Mr. Jude, then another house whose owner I can't recall followed by the Fishlock house that was doubled in size by its newest occupants.

 

The bakery building and Primeau's Cycle (which by the late 1960s had become a coffee shop called "One More Door" were demolished about 1980 because the town had zoned the area for a Park. I guess they envisioned a park would look nice in front of the town hall. However the need to increase the municipality's revenue trumped the need for a Park and the condominiums that stand there now were constructed sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s. If I've made any errors please let me know.

 

Thanks, John

 

Thanks John R.