Why Mike?

Ernest Jackson - the Ernest for Dad’s brother and Jackson for Harry Jackson, the husband of Dad’s sister Amy - was born at the Bronte farm on March 31, 1907, Easter Sunday, I believe. So why was he never called Ernie? The story goes that when he arrived a family conference was held to name the new baby. Four-year-old Willie, as he was called then, voted for Mike as he was enamoured of neighbour Will Speers’ horse of that name. And Mike he remained, though some of his teachers made a valiant effort to call him Ernest, and even he himself tried briefly in his teen years - perhaps at Vera’s instigations - but with no success, to have his friends call him Ernie. I remember when I started school I came home bewildered and said, “Mama, why does the teacher call Mike Ernest?”. I had never heard the name. Mike‘s most distinctive feature as a little boy was his unusually large head. Most Cudmores have big heads and faces and short necks, so that our heads appear to sit on our shoulders. It’s a family characteristic that in Mike’s case was noticeable enough to earn him the nickname Head - a nickname on a nickname! This one didn’t last beyond childhood, but it figures in his “cute saying” that has come down through the years. One evening, on hearing that Russell had been appointed to babysit with us, Mike just sighed and said, “That says Head goes to bed.”. I wasn’t so acquiescent. On that same occasion, I believe it was, I made a big fuss and got spanked. Russell was a sterner babysitter than the other older ones were. Mike and I were not close companions in our growing-up years. Our cousin Billy Jackson, youngest of Aunt Amy’s five kids, from Toronto, who was between us in age, spent a lot of time with us in the summers and he and Mike tended to gang up and tease me rather unmercifully. One time, at the end of my patience, I heaved a croquet ball with all my might and caught Billy squarely on the head. I have sometimes wondered guiltily whether that blow contributed to the considerable instability of his character as he grew up.

Early Years

As did all of us, Mike attended the Bronte Public School, but he had the distinction of being the last of the Cudmores subjected to the untender mercies of the notorious John Luscomb, for just one year, I think. That was when it was a two-roomed school, and the brute died just the year before I was to be promoted to his room. I remember Dorothea MacDonald had been in Mike’s class, but had to be held back in the junior room as she was too nervous to go upstairs into Luscomb’s class, and so she graduated with me instead of with Mike. Mike and I both started school with Miss Stewart, who had been naturally left handed, as we were. She said she would never force a child to change to right handedness, as it had had a drastic effect on her and that is why we remained left handed, an unusual occurrence for those days. But at least we didn’t write upside down and backwards as so many “south paws” do. Nellie Heeks of the Third Line Heeks family succeeded. Luscomb, and a superb teacher she was, especially in grammar. She reinforced the good speech patterns we were learning at home to combat the less-than-perfect “English as she is spoke” of the local population. In addition to his lefthandedness, Mike had another problem common to many of our family - an embarrassing tendency to faint at the sight or even mention of blood. I remember in the course of a lesson in Hygiene, I think it was called then, Mike fainted and rolled through the doorway onto the fire escape - a happening very damaging to his masculine image. Mike went to Oakville High School, but the academic life had no appeal for him and he didn’t graduate. Mike was frequently tired. Perhaps some of this was due to the fact that his bedroom window opened onto the balcony over the big side porch and there was a convenient rose trellis that made early “bed” and escape to Bronte attractive. Getting up in the morning was difficult for him, and on many occasions the indulgent Radial conductor held the car for him while I waited and fumed. His performance at school and on the farm suffered for a while, but he made up for it in later years. It was sometimes hard for me, though, knowing that he was sleeping out of sight at the far end of a raspberry row while I was slaving. We seemed for a while to be opposites, I overly conscientious and serious and Mike easy-going and agreeable. I can remember one high school teacher pointing this out. She said, “When I ask each of you to do something, Mike grins and says ‘sure’ and doesn’t do it; you frown and say ‘no’ and do it!”. For all his tiredness, Mike was a pretty good athlete. He was a good swimmer and I think came in third to Harold and Bill in at least one race. He was an excellent skater, though not a strong hockey player. His ankles were not very sturdy and he tended to skate on the side of his boats, but I remember at least one speed race he won, at a skating carnival at Appleby. He was a good baseball player, succeeding Bill at first base on the then important Bronte team . He taught me a lot about softball and made me into a reasonably good pitcher. He coached the Bronte girls’ softball team in its early years when Eileen Stansbury was its star pitcher. Years later he coached the Town of Bronte Minor Hockey League team age 12 to 17 years for about six years. As he grew older and spectator sports were all he was able to manage, he became very fond of horse racing and loved to go to Mohawk, Fort Erie and Woodbine, where he usually took a hotel room and made a week-end of the Queen’s Plate. He had a date to go to the races with his good friend Bill Sargent on the week—end he died. When he was not able to get out for reasons of business or health, he was an avid T.V. watcher of racing, football, baseball, and hockey, always with bets, which he greatly enjoyed. It was when they were both fourteen that Mike’s future wife took the town by storm and entered my Entrance class -now known as grade 8 - at Bronte Public School. She was Vera Bayley Hassall, born June 9, 1907, only child of Thomas Bayley Hassall and Maude Ethel Jones. Tom was of English and Ethel of Welsh descent. Both grew up and met in the old country but were married in Canada. They lived in the Beaches area of Toronto before moving to Bronte. So Vera was a city slicker suddenly set down in a tiny village, and the first only-child most of us had met in an area and era prone to large families. She had more and fancier clothes than we had, owned her very own big red canoe, had dancing lessons and had a gramophone and gave parties - with dancing! They lived in a house appropriate to parties the huge square Georgian house on the corner of Jones and Triller streets formerly belonging to the McCraney family and occupied by Squire Williams, both important names in Bronte history. They later purchased the smaller house on East River street from Les Thurston. Both these houses have been demolished this year to make way for a big shopping mall. Mike and Vera became an item immediately and were never parted till Mike's death, except for a part year when Vera went to New York to start a nursing course. As a going away present, Mike gave her a box of stationery with all the envelopes addressed to himself. Vera soon found the nursing school was not her cup of tea and returned home. High school hadn’t been too important in her life either, and she developed many headaches especially on Friday afternoons and was allowed to get away with it. She and Mike were so constantly together in so comfortable a relationship that the gang took to calling them Grandpa and Grandma. When both had left school and Mike had a job as a shoe salesman in Hamilton, he used to go through to Bronte on the bus nearly every evening and visit with Vera before coming home. Vera worked for a few years as a telephone operator in the small local exchange run by Lea Bray, a member of one of the well-known Bronte families. She also worked in her father’s business - a small “cottage industry” - making lampshades on order for stores in Toronto - and beautiful ones they made in the fancy colourful silk and fringed style popular at that time. Vera became very expert at sewing - and fast. One day she brought material home from Hamilton at noon and walked down the street with the dress on at four o’clock in the afternoon. She was also an expert amateur hairdresser, good enough to be a professional and often did my hair. On one traumatic occasion she was asked to dress the hair of dear little Bessie Sargant, who had died of ‘flu at age seventeen. It was a very difficult labour of love for Vera, who was only about twenty herself, and was very fond of Bessie as a neighbour and friend.

Marriage

Mike and Vera were married by Rev. Alex MacGowan in Walton Memorial United Church on June 6, 1931. They entered the church together because Vera, independent as always, said no one was giving her away; she was entering into the marriage herself. Choosing a simple wedding, without attendants, she didn’t wear traditional white and the lovely heirloom veil that Amy wore later, but chose a pretty figured chiffon in shades of yellow. I remember especially her gorgeous blonde snake-skin shoes, I suppose because I always envied her her attractive shoes, for she had dainty little feet that went beautifully into sample-size shoes. At Mother’s insistence, a small luncheon was held at our house for just the immediate families. They went by bus for their honeymoon at the cottage of Vera’s cousins on Lake Couchiching near Orillia. They had ten dollars spending money, from which they brought home some change, for those were depression times. They lived with us in the “big house”. In order to follow Mike’s career from this point on I will have to go back and outline the history of the Cudmore farm and the building of the house on Number Two Highway, now known as Lakeshore Highway West, which Bill and Sandy and family occupy now. I am indebted to Sandy for the following material, which she researched at the county records office. The farm, to which Dad and Mother and the first half of the family moved from Palermo in April of 1899, consisted of 47 acres excepting one acre” as described in the county records. We don’t know the reason for this wording or what acre is referred to. It had the house on the lake-front, which I have previously mentioned, a:large barn, and a laneway running north and south through the center. It was light sand except for one small clay section at the north end. The first change came when in 1915 one and seven tenths of an acre sixty six feet wide running in an east-west direction was sold to the Toronto and Hamilton Highway Commission. This small section left the old existing dirt road where it hugged the curve of the shoreline and re-joined it where Shell Park is now. The building of the new highway was a wartime measure to link the two cities and facilitate transportation. It was completed in 1917, I think. It was paved with concrete, and we were very much in awe of it at the time. On one occasion when Mike and I were walking with our Collie dog beside the newly poured concrete, the dog walked on it, leaving his paw marks, Grauman Chinese Theatre style. I was horrified, sure that we would all be thrown into jail for permanently defacing such a beautiful piece of public property. A bigger change came in December of 1919 when the section of the farm south of the highway and west of the lane now a public street called Cudmore Road - was sold to Mr. Robert Johston, a well-to-do furniture store owner from Hamilton. This sale included the house and barn and other outbuildings; so a new house and barn were started on the north side of the highway, east of the laneway. This house was and is a big and imposing Colonial style buff brick with red tile roof , front porch with pillars and screened balcony above, huge side verandah with pillars and open balcony with railing above, and big back verandah with enclosed sun porch above. Inside it is centre hall plan with large hall and staircase, living room and library on one side and dining room and kitchen on the other. The ground floor trim was cypress trim throughout, a rich golden colour with amber glass in the French doors. The second floor had four large bedrooms with cream painted trim. An unusual feature was that the third floor was also completely finished with four large bedrooms, with plaster and cream painted trim. This made about fifteen rooms in all. I guess Dad and Mother were still thinking big family, though by that time the older half were already away. It’s no secret that this too big and too elegant set up, Casa Loma like, bankrupted both Dad and its builder, Mr. Carson of Oakville. From then on there were always problems with finances and mortgages until Mike’s success in later years. Mr. Johnston put the electricity in the old house while we were still there, and I remember the thrill of the first time the lights were turned on. We had to vacate the old house in May of 1920, before the new one was ready, and so we moved into the “cottage” with Evelyn and Frank and the two children. Even with Mother’s genius at packing in bodies, it was impossibly cramped. To add to the confusion, that was the summer Russell and Harold were courting Mary and Ruth respectively and bringing them home for overnight sometimes. Also, Harold’s college pal Bruce Cody, was “hired man” on the farm he and Bernice were an item. So the summer was one long hilarious party, and more than once I was tossed into Bert’s crib for the night to make my bed-space available for a guest. When Amy complained that the three couples were having a lot more fun than she was, Mother soothed her with, “Never mind, you’ll have your turn when they’re married and stuck at hone with babies”. And, as usual, she was right.

First Night in the New House

When we finally moved into the new house in September, 1920, the first night was traumatic. Dad’s brother, Uncle Jack, was driving home to Toronto from a chiropractic convention in Hamilton and about two in the morning had an accident in which he broke off a pole, cutting off the electricity to the area. He phoned Dad,. who not knowing his way around the new house in the dark, draped himself over the railing at the turn in the stairs and knocked himself out before finally making his way to the phone. Of course that would be the night our Bill had decided to stay, with the family car, with his bosom pal, Bill Sargant, and so the whole Sargent family had to be wakened to get Bill to collect Uncle John and bring him home, fortunately not as badly damaged as his car was. We can’t seem to find a record of the sale of the portion of the farm south of the highway and east of the laneway, but I think it was not long after 1920. I can remember only one occasion around that time, on the twenty fourth of May when Dad promised to take us all to a movie in the old Victoria Hall in Oakville if we would work hard all day planting a huge field of corn on that parcel of land. We did, and he did. It was a big thrill, as there was no regular theatre yet,and there were movies just once or twice a year. The next transaction seems to have been in 1923, the sale of 4.2 acres with right of way. I think that was the cherry orchard at the north of the farm, which was occupied for a number of years by a dear old Scottish couple, the Pattersons. Apparently after that another parcel of four acres south of that was sold and repossessed and there was a series of sales and re-sales and mortgages too convoluted to follow. On Mother’ s death the remainder of the farm was run by Dad and Mike in the name of her Estate. This was from March 5, 1935 till Dad’s death in July of 1944. Then Mike and Vera bought 15.57 acres plus 4.13 acres, all the part north of the highway, from the estate, with Bill and Amy as executors. I think this was for the consideration of assuming the existing mortgages. This was settled in July of 1945.

A Happy Life

Meanwhile, the great stock market crash of 1929 arid the ensuing depression had a drastic effect on farming as well as other businesses. In the summer of 1930, Mike decided that the only way to make a few cents profit on farm produce was to eliminate the middle man and sell directly to the consumer. So he gambled so to have the local handyman, Orange Ribble, build a triangular display stand, which he set up to display his boxes of berries and baskets of potatoes. This was on the property bordering the highway east of the house, the site of the present highly successful and widely known Cudmore’s Farm market with permanent buildings and paved parking lots. A new addition this year is a greenhouse for the many plants and flowers now an important part of the business. But Mike had to learn merchandising the hard way, and it was an agonizingly slow process in the beginning. Cars sped by, their occupants oblivious to the new business, till Mike gradually learned to force them to notice it. By degrees he moved the stand forward and built more and spread more produce out over a wider area, almost on the shoulder of the road. Mike’s vision was eventually justified, and only his death in 1978 stopped the plans for what was to have been in 1980 a gala celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of its implementation. Plans for this threatened to upstage plans for a fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration which would have been in June of 1981. While Mike was building up the business, he and Vera were also making much needed improvements to the house, such as a badly needed new roof, new furnace and storm windows. They were also carrying on the family tradition of hospitality. The house was always open to a host of friends and many happy parties were held. Mike didn’t take a very active part in public affairs, his only venture into municipal office being to complete Mother’s term on the Bronte School Board after her death in 1935. He followed his father’s footsteps as a loyal supporter of the liberal party, though the distaff side had definite Conservative leanings. Vera was interested in politics at a municipal level, too, making a very good run for township council against the prominent Don Bath and losing by only a small margin. On the social scene, Vera joined the prestigious Oakville Club, and Mike was persuaded to join some years later. She was also active in the realm of social service. As a member of the Angela Bruce chapter of the I.O.D.E., she was a big help in its Opportunity Shop. She was a member of the Oakville Hospital Women’s Auxiliary and contributed many hours of volunteer work in the hospital. She was a regular Red Cross blood donor, the first woman in the area to reach a certain recognized volume of donations. Fairly late in her career, she entered the business world as a real estate broker, for a while with Lloyd Utter’s agency but mostly on her own. A major coup was the sale of the former Major Osler farm, then the Miserabi Jewish Foundation property, to Shell Oil as part of their holdings for the present refinery. Another big transaction was the sale of the then Petrie house, the former McCraney house which her family had occupied on first coming to Bronte, to Joe Kleinstein as part of a parcel on which the new shopping mall was opened this year. Her most enjoyable transactions were re-sales of older houses to young couples just starting out, and getting good deals for them. Meanwhile, Mike and Vera had started holidaying in Florida, renting efficiency apartments. Then a major change cane when in May of 1968 they sold the remainder of the farm except the approximately four acres containing the buildings and the market , to Real Mar Holdings. They then bought a co-op apartment a Pompano Beach and started their Florida wintering in earnest. For the April to November stay at home, they had the huge side porch made into a cosy enclosed sun room. where Mike could sit and watch the bustling activity of his beloved market and happliy observe the money rolling in. By this time he was in rather poor health, with emphysema and a tired heart. He suffered an aneurism during the Thanksgiving weekend and died on October 11, 1978 after just two days in hospital. He would have been gratified by the size of his funeral, and especially by the great number of ”his kids”, former employees who gathered to pay their respects. Vera’s death just a few months later cane as a great shock, because she had seemed to be in good physical condition. She was at her apartment in Pompano Beach, where her good friend Dorothy Eames was spending the Christmas vacation with her. She seemed in the best of spirits during a Christmas Eve phone call to Bill and family, but suffered a stroke just a few hours later. She lived only the few days till December 30, 1979. She was flown home for burial beside Mike in the Cudmore family plot at Palermo.

Another William!

To return to the happier subject of birth, following that of the business in 1930, a very important one was that of Mike’s and Vera’s only child, William Bayley, on April 24, 1932. Amy and I went to see the new baby in hospital and were somewhat shocked to see that his eyes appeared quite slanted and his little face so fat that they were just slits - definitely oriental looking. He came home from hospital and I from the Ontario College of Education on the same day, both of us unemployed. He was a darling baby, except that he had a tendency to cry between four and six in the morning. Mike had a novel way of dealing with this problem. Instead of carrying the baby, he walked up and down in front of the crib. This seemed to have the desired effect, with less effort. Billy was a loving and sunny dispositioned child. When he was barely three years old and Mother had a tooth extracted, he started tugging at his own, to give her one, and when after her death Mike and I were redecorating her room, he ran in and said, “Won’t Nana be pleased when she came home?” He had been sent to stay with his Grandmother Hassall for a few days and told that Nana had gone away for a while. Billy spent quite a bit of time with his maternal grandparents, especially on weekends and was much influenced by his grandmother, who was a fine lady with regal bearing and manners. She was on a friendly basis with members of some of the leading families in Oakville and a member of the Christian Science church, where she took Billy for some of his early religious education. When Billy was six, he was ill with infected tonsils. Vera and Mike went for advice to their friend the renowned Dr. Snirle Lawson, former star of the U. of T. football teem and then chief coroner for Ontario, who had an estate in Eronte. He took one look and operated immediately on the kitchen table. Then scarlet fever developed that summer. This was an anxious and busy time for all of us, as Vera, who had been doing the housekeeping, was quarantined with Billy for two or three weeks. Dad was doing most of the general farm work alone, as Mike had acquired a beat up old dump truck and was doing road work on the new Queen Elizabeth Way to augment the family income. I was managing the berry patches, as well as doing my newspaper reporting. I would dash in from the field to toss some lunch on the table and prepare Vera’s and Billy’s food and put it on the stair step, where Vera would come and get it. As a complication from the scarlet fever Billy developed a heart murmur and Dr. Wilkinson decided that he must stay in bed for six months. He was the world’s best patient. He played contentedly with his colouring books, bird manual, puzzles and games and records. I never heard him whine or complain, and when it was time for him to get up, Vera had to force him into the new way of life. He finally got started to school when he was seven. When he wanted to play football at high school at age seventeen, there was still a murmur and he had to sign that should any trouble arise, the school board would not be responsible. When he was eighteen an examination found no detectable murmur, just as Dr. Wilkinson had predicted. Billy had had another serious illness at age fourteen, this time acute nephritis, but he recovered from this too. Also, when he was fourteen and in grade nine he had his arm broken playing hockey. The cast was taken off too soon and the arm was injured again, and is still a bit crooked. Bill’s first love was hockey, He played minor hockey all through his teen years and then with the village of Bronte team in an Industrial League for the ten years 1949 to 1959. After receiving his High School Graduation Diploma, Bill worked with B.A. Oil, now Gulf Oil, for six years. He then quit to join his father in the family farm market business, and through the years made many contributions to its success. Figuring largely among these contributions was using his own money to convert the former barn and double garage into market use. The ground floor garage section was made into a cold storage plant, the barn section a packing area, and the loft over both a dry storage area. Bill tended to specialize in the farm and wholesale part of the business while Hike managed the retail market. To this end, Bill took a big gamble in buying a $40,000 apple orchard for $1 down and selling it in four years’ time for a handsome profit. He then leased it and continued to crop it. In addition, he leased the Fisher orchard in Burlington, growing apples,cherries, pears, and plums. He now has a large outlay of spray equipment, madhines and vehicles, including refrigerated trucks, of all kinds useful in the business. Leasing investment properties awaiting development has proved profitable. He presently has a large acreage of tomatoes and corn and even some grain in the Bronte Provincial Park area, and on the Bronte Road Ontario Government property earmarked for the Ontario Sports Complex. He also buys a great deal of produce; for example, he has contracted to take the entire asparagus crop of a farm at Simcoe. He combines the wholesale and retail aspects of the business by taking or sending a truck at five o’clock every morning to the Ontario Food Terminal on the Queensway to sell what he has grown and buy what he needs for the market. To keep this huge operation going he works in cooperation with the government to use seasonal workers brought in from Jamaica and housed on his various properties. He also continues to hire many school boys and girls, as Mike had done through the years. In the family tradition, Bill has been very active in municipal affairs, having been a member of the Oakville Town Council for three terms, from 1964 to 1971. For his first term he was by far the youngest ever elected to that position, and on his second and third terms he headed the polls. He has been involved in many boards and commissions, including the Tree Committee for seven years amd the Street Naming Committee before, during and after his term in office. The latter committee was a very important one because of all the changes required by amalgamation. For example, Trafalgar Road in Bronte had to become Bronte Road because Trafalgar Road was already the name of a main street in the old town of Oakville. Other committees Bill served on were Parks, Recreation, and Arena Board and he is presently treasurer of the Harbour Authority. His longest term of service has been as a volunteer firefighter, beginning in 1953 with the old village of Bronte. If he hangs in there till April of 1983, he will have completed thirty years in that service. Now it’s high time we got Bill married. Vera said she knew as soon as he had found the right girl for him. He had been in the habit of discussing his various friends and asking her opinion. This time he didn't. She was Sandralee Speer, born November 30, 1936, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, daughter of Joseph Theodore Speer and Elizabeth May Griffin. She was educated in various schools in the United States, but took her last year in Canada, at Port Credit High School. She took shorthand and typing there, and was later employed as a stenographer at the Ford Motor Company of Canada at Oakville. She was just nineteen when they were married in St. Jude’s Anglican Church, Oakville, on November 3, 1956. The reception was at the Oakville Club, which Bill had joined. Sandy doesn’t remember much of the festivities, as she was quite ill at the time. She had been in hospital with a severe case of ‘flu and the ceremony had had to be postponed from the intended date, October 20. Since Bill was working at home with his father, and the house was certainly large enough for two families, the upper floors were made into a separate apartment for Bill and Sandy. The south west bedroom was made into a dining room, the north west into a kitchen and the north east into a living room. The back stairway was opened onto the back porch for a separate entrance. On the ground floor the dining room was made into a bedroom and bath and the kitchen remodelled and modernized for Mike and Vera. The big living room was panelled and decorated in Colonial style with braided rugs and was used for entertaining the friends of both generations, who mingled freely at the many parties. Sandy had expressed the ambition to fill the house with children, but stopped at four, and as they arrived the third floor was used for their bedrooms. Since Vera’s death the house has been reconverted to a single family dwelling. The ground floor bedroom, bath, and kitchen are once more dining room and kitchen and the big living room has been brightened up with oriental rugs and flowered drapes and chesterfields. The upstairs dining room is once more the master bedroom. Sandy worked successfully for a number of years as Mike’s bookkeeper in the family business. During this time she was interested in horseback riding, had two horses, and taught riding for three years at the Burton Stables on the Dundas Highway. She is an accomplished dancer and for a number of years has been the load dancer and taught be routines to the chorus for the annul Oakville Club Cabaret. She loves to cook and entertain at dinner parties and is an avid bridge player. Sandy did not accept Canadian citizenship, as she could have when she married Bill, and lived with the frustration of not being able to vote for him when he was holding municipal office. It was later, when she became interested in Federal politics, that she obtained her citizenship in 1970. She really took the plunge into politics when she joined a group of local Conservatives who were not satisfied with the then candidate and went against the local association to have Otto Jelinek, formerly M.P. for High Park, chosen as candidate. He was eventually elected member for Halton with the Clark government. Otto, as .you know, as a youth was World Pairs Figure Skating Champion with his sister Maria, and the pair thrilled local audiences again this year, performing together at the Oakville carnival. Sandy did such a good job in Otto’s campaign that as a result she was offered two positions in the business world. She accepted one of them, as secretary to lawyer John Ford. There she became interested in title searching and took that on as a sideline. She eventually gave up both these jobs to become secretary in Otto Jelinek’s constituency office, and has recently hired an assistant so that she can have more time with her family. Bill and Sandy have an active social life at home in Oakville as well as spending some time in the winter at the Pompano Beach apartment. They also for about six years had an interesting experience each spring. As friends of Kelly New, they went as invited crew on the Ceramic, the National Sewer Pipe Company luxury yacht, bringing the vessel back from Miami Beach to Oakville.

More Cudmores

In the midst of all this activity, Bill and Sandy had time to produce four lively and ingesting kids, a well-balanced arrangement of boy, girl, boy, girl. The first, William James (Jim), was born August 18, 1957. I remember that night, as the expectant grandparents, Vera and Mike, were at a party at my house, where the happy news was phoned to them. Jim attended Westbrook Public School and Blakelock High School. He quit just short of his diploma, but went back two summers ago and completed it. He was an excellent hockey player from age six to eighteen, his sturdy build and strength making him a natural for defence. He had the potential but never quite made it to Junior A because he couldn’t be pinned down to taking it seriously enough. He was a very strong swimmer and won awards in Oakville Club competitions. Jim should have been named James Adventure Cudmore, as adventure is his operative word. He is a motorcycle aficionado and has traveled on his machine through most of Canada and the U.S. He suffered the loss of his right index finger last year. He caught it in the chain while lubricating his motorcycle in preparation for a trip to the East coast. A valiant effort over a long period of time was made to save the finger, but it eventually had to be amputated. That didn’t slow him down much, however, and he made the trip the following year. He has had an incredible variety of jobs, sometimes two at a time, in various places, working at the market with his father in between times. His early career included one summer with the Army Cadets at Churchill, Manitoba, during which he was chosen as best cadet, though he was a year too young. Two more fascinating summers were spent as a fishing guide at Pangmirtung, N.W.T., three hundred miles north of Frobisher Bay. He became very knowledgeable about the life style of the Eskimos, even learning to converse with them. He actually spent some time between trips in Eskimo homes and played basketball with them. I saw some excellent pictures he took of these experiences. His next jobs were as a salesman with a lumber company in Burlington and with Oakville Mercury dealership, but these were a little too tame. More in Jim’s style was the winter of 1979 in Florida, when he crewed on three different boats. One was the Jungle Queen tour boat, another a forty-two foot Morgan sailboat, and the third a forty-five foot deep sea fishing boat as general factotum to a rich Millionaire, till he actually became sated with the high life! On two different occasions he has worked in Calgary. The first time, he started slinging hamburgers in MacDonald’s and worked his way up to assistant manager. On his next stay he worked heaving sides of beef in a slaughter house 6 A.M. to3 P.M. and then acting as banquet bartender in the Calgary Inn in the evenings. In December 1981, while hang gliding near Calgary he had an arm badly scrambled when he slammed into the side of a mountain. He had to fly home to have it put back together, and it is doing nicely. He had his motorcycle shipped home in a crate, where some of us hope it will stay for a while. Through all this, his main ambition has been to be a firefighter, and he has had his application in with the Calgary and Edmonton, and lately the Oakville, Fire Departments. His wish has just been fulfilled and he has been taken on with the Oakville Department, and everybody is happy. Bill and Sandy's second child, Elizabeth Janina - Elizabeth for assorted grandmothers and because Grandmother Vera was especially fond of the name Beth, and Janina for her mother’s obstetrician - was born on July 8, 1959. Beth attended Westbrook and Eastview Public Schools and T.A. Blakelock High School. Dancing, especially ballet, which she began at age four, is her forte. At age eleven she took up modern, national, jazz, and tap dancing. At age fifteen she received her Intermediate Ballet Certificate from the Royal Academy of Dancing with the highest marks in Canada. Later she received her advanced modern and elementary tap and national dancing certificates from the R.A.D. She has received honours in all her major exams. Her technique is superb but her body structure not quite right for stage dancing, as she is too petite. Along with the dancing she found time to get her Red Cross Bronze Life Saving medal in swimming and recently sailing certificates in levels one and two. After high school Beth attended the University of Western Ontario for a few months, but found it not to her liking. So she came hone and worked as her father’s bookkeeper for a year and a half. She is now in her third year at Waterloo University in a four year honour course in Human Kinetics and Leisure Studies, majoring in her first love, Dance. This could lead to a variety of careers, such as administration, teaching, or choreography. She made the Dean’s list in her first two years and there is every indication that she will continue to do so. Beth has already had considerable practical experience in her dancing career, the last two years as choreographer and teacher for the annual Oakville Club Cabaret, taking over some of her mother’s duties. She also teaches a class of fifteen year olds and does some substitute teaching for the university. But more important, she’s engaged and has the ring to prove it - a la Lady Di; a sapphire surrounded by diamonds! The lucky boy is Dean Nadon, a member of her class at Waterloo, majoring in Recreation and Administration. He is of Sioux Indian and French Canadian parentage, son of Delford and Jeanne Nadon, formerly of Kapuskasing, now of Brampton. His mother is head of customer relations for Polaroid of Canada. Bill says he’s pleased that the boy has street smarts as well as academic ability. Number two son, John Bayley, was born on December 23, 1961. He attended Westbrook and Eastview Public Schools and is now in Grade 12 at Queen Elizabeth Park Secondary School. He was originally in the four year stream, but wisely decided to upgrade his marks and get into the five year course and is doing very well. A career in business seems most likely for him - perhaps as a chartered accountant. He is the quiet, solidly dependable type and is a wonderful help to Bill in the market. He is good at all branches of the business - books, payroll, trucking and buying and selling. He can be counted on to get up at five in the morning for the daily selling and buying at the Queensway Market or for longer trips, such as Simcoe. He has a great respect for money, and already has a very healthy personal bank account. Johnny is also good at sports, especially hockey. He was captain of the school hockey team last year, but had to settle for coaching this year. In the summer of 1980 he injured his hand playing football but the x-rays didn’t show a break. Then while skiing in Vermont last March he injured it again and new x-rays revealed that it had been broken all along and a bone graft was made from his hip. The hand was in a cast from June till September and in a brace till Christmas, but is gaining strength now. Catharine Jill, the second daughter, was born on September 8, 1966. “Chatty Cathy” got a head start, attending Nursery School at the Church of the Epiphany. She then went to Westbrook, St. Mildred’s private school and Eastview Public School, and is now in Grade X at Queen Elizabeth Park High School. Following in Beth’s footsteps - or rather dance steps - Cathy also started Ballet at age four and is still studying it along with national, tap, jazz and modern dancing at the Fleming School of Dance in Oakville, loving it and doing very well. She is also a dedicated sailor. For the past four summers she has taken lessons at the school sponsored by the Bronte Harbour Yacht Club and already has her Silver Sail, a certificate held by very few her age in Canada. Cathy is in the aquatic course in school and expects to get her bronze swimming medal this year. With all of the activities, she still finds time to take her turn working at the Cudmore Farm Market.