Tag Archives: Dad

Miami Beach, February 1964

60 years ago tonight, Cassius Clay beat world heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston at a match in Miami Beach. Soon after that fight, Clay would take the name Cassius X and then Muhammad Ali.

A few days earlier, the Beatles returned to England after a successful short tour of the US, the start of Beatlemania on this continent. They appeared three times on The Ed Sullivan Show, the biggest variety program on American television, watched by tens of millions each week. Their second appearance was broadcast live from Miami Beach on February 16.

It just so happened that my parents, Harold and Vivian, took their first vacation to Florida in February 1964 and were in Miami Beach on February 16. They were both 41 and had been married for 19 years. They had worked hard to build up their general store business, so were overdue some fun and relaxation. They travelled with my mother’s cousin and her husband. By all accounts, they all had a marvellous time soaking up the sun and seeing the sights of Miami and Daytona.

Harold and Vivian Phillips, Miami Beach, February 1964. They obviously had a snazzy TV in their room, but my mother doesn’t remember if they watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan on February 16. With few stations on the TV, my guess is they did, but she was more a Perry Como fan and never really got the Beatles.
Bill for nine nights at the Golden Nugget motel, Miami Beach, February 1964.

My father lugged his 8mm Kodak film camera with him, taking plenty of shots of palm trees, orange groves, alligators and swimming pools. He took some footage of BOAC and KLM airplanes outside a terminal somewhere along their Summerside>Moncton>Montreal>NYC>Miami route.

BOAC and KLM planes, 1964

Their handwritten tickets listed their NY airport as IDL for Idlewild, except Idlewild had been renamed JFK in December 1963 just after the assassination of the US president, but obviously the change had been recent enough that no one was used to it.

Moncton to Miami $132.99 return via Tran-Canada and Eastern airlines.
YSU (Summerside) to YQM (Moncton) $14.00 return

One day, the four travellers hopped in their rented convertible and drove around the Miami area, my father aiming his camera at the passing buildings and advertising banner towing planes. When we watched this reel when I was a child, this short sequence would just slip by, but when I had the film digitized, I was able to pause it and have a better look, and quickly fell down a rabbit hole of early 1960s popular culture.

Miami Beach, February 1964, showing advertising banner towing planes, Sonny Liston’s training headquarters at Surfside, Florida, and Hotel Deauville with Mitzi Gaynor on the marquee.

I knew who Mitzi Gaynor was from her movie roles and appearances on television variety shows when I was a child. I looked up the Hotel Deauville and learned it was where the Beatles had stayed in Miami and where their second Ed Sullivan appearance had been recorded, a show that also included Gaynor. Then I read about Sonny Liston’s training camp in Surfside, just north of Miami Beach, and of him appearing on the Ed Sullivan show the same night as the Beatles, and the Beatles also meeting Cassius Clay and posing for a famous photo, and the February 25 boxing match. So much was going on!

The Beatles meeting Cassius Clay/Muhammed Ali at the 5th St. Gym, Miami

I’ve done a few presentations about my father’s film footage to local groups and have used this little clip to encourage people to look at their own photos and videos and to save, document and share what they have. It might take many years before something becomes important or interesting, but if you haven’t saved it, you’ll never know.

What my father filmed isn’t as important as footage of the Beatles or Liston or Ali or even Mitzi Gaynor would be, certainly, but he did capture a few seconds of a time in US history when the country was still trying to come to terms with the assassination of their president only three months earlier, square old Ed Sullivan was kicking off Beatlemania using the huge influence of his television program, and Clay/Ali was on his way to becoming an important sports star as well as a towering figure in the black power, civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements. 

What do you have in that cardboard box in your attic or closet? Nothing much? Look again.

Going Beyond

My father, Harold, would have turned 100 years old today. He was born at home in Ellerslie, PEI, the fourth of five sons of Alvin and Gladys (MacNevin) Phillips. He was a hardworking, honest, reliable, clever man. He spent four years in the RCAF during the Second World War, then became a successful businessman and community volunteer.

The one-room Ellerslie school only offered classes up to grade eight, but some children moved to larger communities to continue their education. This wasn’t possible for my father as Alvin died when my father was only 13, so the boys all had to find work as soon as they could. My father moved to Summerside and worked at a large store owned by his uncle, but his real dream was to go to business college. His uncle promised that if he worked hard at the store, he would help my father with the tuition for business school. Knowing my father, he would have worked very hard, and was keen to attend school.

The Second World War interrupted those plans, and my father enlisted when he was 19. When he returned to civilian life, his uncle had kept his job open (as was the law, of course), but the offer to send him to business school was no longer there, for reasons I never learned. My father worked for his uncle for a few months until the opportunity to purchase his own business came up, and he and my mother, Vivian, moved back to the community where she was raised and started their general store.

Although my father was successful in many ways, he always regretted not having a more formal education. He spent 13 years on our regional school board, and probably because of his own experience, he was driven to improve school retention rates, which were pretty dismal when he joined the board in the early 1970s. Many students, especially young men, were leaving before high school graduation because they knew they were destined for lives of farming or fishing and thought there was no need for any more education. My father was proud of having been a part of establishing a new high school that offered both academic and trade courses under one roof, and retention rates quickly improved. He wanted young people to have all the opportunities that had not been available to him, and saw education as the key that opened all doors.

My father was able to move beyond any resentment he may have had towards his uncle and made a good and purposeful life for himself, and was also able to help others. To his great surprise and delight, my father was asked by Holland College to teach a business course on Lennox Island First Nation in the early 1980s. He taught a dozen students all he knew about running a small business, knowledge he had to gain on his own, and he was so proud to have something to offer. I was in high school when he was teaching, and remember him organising the graduation dinner for the course, taking care to ensure that the students knew how special they were.

My mother and I decided to honour my father’s legacy in education by establishing an endowed bursary in his name at Holland College for students from our area who will be studying business. The first award was given out last year, and it is thrilling to know that his hard work will ensure that others will be encouraged to follow their dreams. He died in 2008, and suffered with dementia for many years before his death. It has taken a long time for us to get past the heartbreak and struggle of his final years and see again how truly remarkable he was. Time heals.

Never too young to learn about business!

Hook ’em up

My father always carried a notebook and pen in his shirt pocket, even after he retired. At the same time my parents were running their general store, he was also a partner (with his brother) in a garage and car dealership, and he delivered propane gas. There was a lot to keep track of.

I came across a tiny notebook of his the other day that I had never seen before. He had used it to record the sale and delivery of electrical appliances he made in 1958-59, when electricity first came to our area. Inside, in my father’s case-ignoring scrawl, are notes that seem to be for warranty purposes. My mother says he was busy for weeks as house by house was connected to the grid. He would hook up the televisions, install the aerial (I have a box of vintage cable hooks, if you need some!), and help everyone find the probably only one station available! He would explain how to set the dial on the washing machine and how to use the ice-less ice box.

My parents built both a new store and a house next to it in the early 1950s, both optimistically wired for the electricity that they expected to arrive some day. As the volts and watts inched closer through the neighbouring communities, my father was dreaming of the benefits for their store. They could get a new gas pump, so no more pumping by hand.They would be able to install better lighting, coolers and freezers. They had a gas generator to charge a bank of batteries in the store basement for a bit of lighting and to run a tiny freezer, but the generator was noisy and temperamental, so would not be missed.

They could also sell all the things a modern home owner would need: refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, radios, lamps, clocks, toasters, coffee makers, irons and kettles. Knowing my father, he was adding up the sales in his head all the time.

Unfortunately one of the local worthies wasn’t in favour of electricity. “It’s too expensive for people, they can’t afford it. We’ve always gotten along without it, we don’t need it,” he would say, and as this fellow was a Big Deal, Freeland was not going to get electricity. Ever. Or as long as he was alive.

Not one to be kept back from either progress or commerce, my father got up a petition and collected enough signatures to convince the electric company to put the lines through. My mother told me today that Mr. Big Deal was one of the first to sign up, of course! Pretty much everyone eventually hooked up to the electricity, though my parents continued to sell oil lamps, lamp wicks, and kerosene alongside the electrical items even into the 1970s, when they sold the store.

While the whole family would enjoy the televisions and radios and electric lights, and certainly there would also be improvements for both farmers and fishers, women probably derived the most benefit from rural electrification. No more cleaning and filling kerosene lamps or beating rugs. Refrigerators and freezers meant replacing the blood-pressure raising staples of salt meat and fish with healthier fresh and frozen options year round. The back-breaking labour of washing clothes would be eased with an automatic machine, and ironing became a breeze.

It was fun to look at all the familiar names in the notebook, see what they bought, and imagine the excitement when those televisions and washing machines first sprang to life. All of the people in the notebook have passed on, so I hope they’ll forgive me for publishing the serial numbers of their also long-gone Philco TVs and Firestone refrigerators for all to see.

70 Years

The Stewart Memorial Health Centre officially opened in Tyne Valley on this date in 1951. It rained that Victoria Day Thursday, so people sat in their cars to listen while speakers addressed them from the 7-bed hospital’s verandah. After the official ceremony, hundreds of people toured the building, and no doubt the ladies of the community provided ample and delicious refreshments.

Much of the money to build the little hospital was raised through suppers and bake sales, concerts and fundraising drives. The building was constructed by local contractors, and when we held a 60th anniversary celebration in 2011, a couple of the men who attended told me about working with their fathers to help with the initial build.

My mother tells of going to Stewart Memorial with a friend to help clean the rooms after construction was completed. The Women’s Institutes would answer their roll calls with canned goods that would be given to the hospital to provide food for patients, and they sewed curtains and johnny shirts. Farmers would donate eggs and meat, fishers would drop off trout and cod and lobsters.

Stewart Memorial had its own board until 1995, when amalgamation fever was high on PEI and regional health boards were formed. By that time, two building additions had added 16 more beds for a total of 23.

Over the years the hospital had provided almost every service except for major surgery. Many babies were born and cared for, there was an emergency room (and staff would attend accidents before there was an ambulance service), outpatient services, acute and later long term care. It provide generations of local residents with good jobs. It was the place where members of Lennox Island First Nation would come for medical care, first by boat or on a potentially hazardous trip across ice in winter, and later via the causeway built in the early 1970s.

After the regional health board was established, services at the hospital were gradually decreased until the government announced in 2013 that Stewart Memorial Hospital would close and be turned into a nursing home. Many of us fought to save our little hospital and the valuable services it provided to our area, spending thousands of hours in meetings. I’ve never really gotten over the closure, and trying to save it consumed my life for a couple of years.

Today I spent a couple of hours looking over old documents and thinking about all the people connected to our hospital. My grandmother was the first cook, my father served on the board of directors for many years. I went there to receive medical care, to volunteer, to visit sick relatives, so say goodbye to loved ones. My father lived there for a couple of years while dementia slowly took him from us, in a wing of the hospital he helped to raise the money to have built. He died there, as had his mother, his brothers, his friends and relatives, all cared for by people who knew them.

Soon there will be a generation of people who won’t know that we once had a hospital, that it was a focus of community pride and energy. I suppose it won’t matter, but I’ll never let it go, because it was important, despite what the Capital City bean counters told us. Closing Stewart Memorial didn’t fix the out-of-control health budget, it didn’t solve provincial health care staffing issues, it certainly didn’t improve health outcomes for my friends and neighbours. I’m not sure what closing it achieved, but I know what the hospital achieved while it was open, and that was life, and death, and everything in between.

Retention Rate

My father, Harold, served on the regional school board for western Prince Edward Island from 1975 to 1987, and was chair for seven of those years. He and my mother sold their general store in 1971, so both had ample time for volunteer pursuits. For a few years, my father was in meetings nearly every day as the school board worked on the creation of a new amalgamated high school.

That school, Westisle, was created to achieve many goals, both educational and fiscal, but one my father often cited was to improve student retention rates. I had never known exactly what those rates had been, but he gave an idea in a speech he made at the fourth Westisle graduation in 1983:

I would like to very briefly outline some of our achievements since the completion of the MacDonald “Drop Out Study” in 1974. 10 years ago, this study showed our retention rate to be only 31% (for every 3 children who entered grade 2, only 1 completed grade 12), whereas most recent figures show it now to be the reverse, which is very close to the national average.

Westisle Composite High was built to accommodate 810 pupils. However, due to the great flexibility of this facility in being able to offer a fairly comprehensive program to our young people, our high school enrolment reached 872 this past year, compared to 610 [at the three separate high schools] one year before Westisle opened.

Of all the things my father accomplished as a school board trustee, keeping young people in school for as long as possible was the most personal and made him most proud. He had to leave school at grade eight and always regretted not having been able to further his education, so he was happy to have helped others achieve that dream.

Hon. George Henderson, Unit One School Board Chair Harold Phillips, and Hon. Robert Campbell (aka The Great West Wind) turning the sod for what became Westisle Composite High School circa 1978.

It is regrettable that this item is undeliverable.

My mother, Vivian, has always loved writing letters and still writes a couple each week, as well as sending lots of birthday, anniversary and thank you cards. It takes much more effort at age 97 as her fingers don’t always do what she wants them to, but she takes her time and gets the job done.

Here’s a letter she wrote to her friend, Lance Corporal Harold Bulger, who was serving with the Algonquin Regiment of the Canadian Army during the Second World War. “Hally” had worked for her father, Wilbur, before the war, helping with farm chores like making hay and bringing in grain. As people were fed their noon meal by their employer in those days (and up into the 60s and 70s in our corner of rural PEI), my mother got to know Harold well. She doesn’t remember why she referred to him as “This Place”, but guesses it must have been something he said often.

The letter is dated September 15, 1944, eight days after my parents were married in Summerside, PEI, while both were serving in the RCAF. My father, Harold Phillips, was stationed in Summerside, and my mother, Vivian Hardy, in Sydney, Nova Scotia. They were both 22, so I’m not sure why my mother thinks she waited so long to get married! Her reference to being “posted back to Canada” is because her 13 months serving in Torbay, Newfoundland was considered an overseas posting as Newfoundland was still under British rule until 1949.

Vivian and Harold Phillips, September 1944

Harold Gabriel Bulger was killed in action in Belgium on September 10, 1944, one day after his 26th birthday, so he never got to read this cheerful letter from his old friend. He is buried in Adegem Canadian War Cemetery.

The letter was stamped and written on a few times before finding its way back to my mother on PEI, probably in 1945: 10-9-44 for the date of Harold’s death, Deceased both written in wax pencil and stamped, just to drive the sad point home.

I can’t read all the cancellations, but my guess is the letter travelled Sydney> Europe> Sydney> Ottawa> Conway Station. I suppose there was a general military post office in Ottawa (OTTAWA M.P.O. 318, maybe?) to redirect mail to service members as they moved between postings and back to civilian life. Someone wrote my grandfather’s name – Wilbur – and Conway St., PEI in red pencil, and that was all the address needed to reach its final destination.

Harold Bulger’s parents, Annie and Gabriel, lived in Foxley River, about a mile from my grandfather’s house in Freeland. They had 17 children, 14 girls and 3 boys, who all lived to adulthood (a true miracle in those days). Harold and another brother, Lawrence, both joined the army during the Second World War. Like my parents, and many others who volunteered, this was as much a way to make money to help the family as it was about patriotic duty, and their large family could no doubt have used the financial injection in a community where jobs were scarce.

Lawrence was killed as his unit, the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, were advancing towards Berlin on March 25, 1945, less than two months before Germany’s surrender. Lawrence was 20 and is buried in Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery in the Netherlands.

Two sons killed within six months, buried far from home. Poor Annie and Gabriel.

Their names are read out at the Ellerslie Legion Remembrance Day service as part of the long list of those from our area who died in the line of duty. Each year I think of this letter when I hear Harold’s name, just a newsy note that would likely have been long gone if he had received it. I can imagine him reading it while having a smoke and a mug of tea, maybe telling a pal the news from home, then using the paper to light a fire or even roll a cigarette if rolling papers were scarce. Instead, it has become a treasure.

(With enormous thanks to Clinton Morrison, Jr., for his excellent book, Along The North Shore: A Social History of Township 11, P.E.I., 1765-1982, the top source of historical information on our community and past residents. It is known as “The Other Bible” in our home, and many others, as countless discussions and arguments have been resolved by pulling Clint’s book off the shelf.)