Home from the War

St. Catharines' Wartime Houses
About Me

This year marks 65th anniversary of the end of World War Two
Between 1941 and 1947, the federal government’s Wartime Houses Ltd. constructed 32,000 rental homes for the benefit of munitions workers, servicemen’s families and returning veterans. In St.Catharines, there are more than 1,700 of these homes still standing.

1.1 million Canadians served in the armed forces. Thousands more worked tirelessly in factories to provide the much needed war supplies and made sacrifices at home to ensure that those overseas were cared for. Wartime Houses are a constant reminder of this era and generation. With this project, we hope to remind people not only of their sacrifice but also their incredible success and accomplishments.

If you lived or live in a Wartime House share your story. Email us at post@wartimehouses.posterous.com or contact@wartimehouses.com.

To learn more about Wartime Houses in St. Catharines visit our website at: http://wartimehouses.com.

Contributors
Archive
2010 (6)
 

Planning

I was a wartime housing child, but not in the usual way. I never lived in a wartime house. My dad was one of the architects with Wartime Housing.  Architects and employees like my dad, Bruce Haken Wright, 1898-1971, didn't specifically identify themselves as this was a war effort and they operated  as a team.   About 1941, when I was 13 or 14, I'd see my dad in the evening, sitting in our lopsided armchair sketching and drawing. "What are you doing Dad?" I'd asked  "Designing a couple of houses," Dad said. "See, here's a two bedroom bungalow and here's a four bedroom story and a half."  I looked at Dad's shaky angular draftsman style of work while he explained the terminology and architectural symbols to me.  "Are they for us?" I asked.  "No" Dad said, "They are for the munitions workers.  Going to be built all across Canada."   Dad loved this government job. It was Dad's 'cup of tea'. He was a residential architect. I loved his job too. On weekend Dad would take me out with him, out to various job sites around Toronto. He'd let me drive our 1936 Plymouth over the fields and rough roads while he sloshed through the mud and melting snow, checking on the house being built.  He explained, whenever I took a minute from my driving, that these houses were very suitable to our Canadian climate.   Another benefit of Wartime Housing were the stories Dad told of his travels across the country. Stories of a fire in one of the engines in a DC3 or Viscount aircraft. Or the story of a railway crash just west of Toronto where an injured passenger drank all dad's flask of whiskey.   Drafting, design and construction skills I learned as a teenager, thanks to Wartime Housing being part of our lives, later lead me to building and designing on my own. Wartime Housing was an unique service to Canada and Canadian families. For my part it gave us an income, pulled us out of the depression and was a life changing interesting war time experience. 

Posted by email 
 

My story

My Mom and Dad, Peter and Katherine Zaluski moved from Sudbury, Ontario in 1939 and purchased our Wartime home shortly after.   The address is 45 Sandown St.  It is on the corner of Carleton St. and Sandown.  The house was always hard to find as it faced Carleton St.  My niece Kerri Zaluski lives there now.  She purchased the home after my parents passed away in 1999 and 2003.  My parents lived in their home for 63 years.

  I was born in Sudbury, but my two brothers, Roy and Allan Zaluski were born in St. Catharines.  My Mom and Dad actually rented out ''one'' bedroom of the tiny three bedroom house which helped subsidise the mortgage on the house.  Our family of five slept in the other two bedrooms.  I don't remember being crowded.  My mother worked everyday in the ammunition factory making bullets (some of which we still have), during the war.

I remember the windows being covered with green pull down blinds once the lights went on at night.  I also remember the tokens we used to buy groceries from the corner store.  The Szymanski's were the owners of the store.  They also owned a farm across the street on the corner of Wood St. and Carleton St. where my Mom used to work as well.    During the war our neighbours would trade tokens with each other depending on what they used up first.  I remember going up the street to trade tokens for sugar.  Mr. Szymanski would also give credit on groceries.  We would have to pay up by the end of each month.  He kept a book names and crossed off the list as we paid.  The tokens had little holes in the middle of them and some were blue in colour.

The day the war ended I was taken out of my bed and brought outside.  The people  were banging pots and pans and making all noise they could.  There was singing and dancing on the streets.  The noise was deafening.

Most of the families who lived on Sandown and Doncaster Streets were friendly.  As children, we walked into each other's home without knocking.  Doors were never locked.  Windows were left open day and night. Even the ones without screens.  No one was afraid.  People sat on front porches and everyone knew what was going on.

All the kids on our street walked to Victoria School on Niagara St. together.    We played on the streets in the evenings.  We played hop scotch, two balls, roller skated, skipped rope, rode our bikes and played cowboy and Indians  and until dark.   When the lights came on we knew it was time to go home.  There was no television waiting for us.
My mother would preserve fruit and vegetables and keep them under the house.  No one had a basement in those little houses.  There was just a crawl space. 
We had a wood stove in the kitchen and a icebox for our food.  There were coal bins by every back door.
The coal man would come and deliver coal.  The ice man would deliver ice with a horse drawn wagon.  We would follow and eat the ice chips from the wagon.  The milk man came every morning.  The horse would know enough to stop at every home.  The milk man would just carry the bottles to each doorstep and the horse would move on.   Empty milk bottles would be left to be replaced with full bottles.  In the winter the cream would rise out of the top of the bottles.  I still have a paper bottle stopper.

All the houses looked the same and we all  had a back shed.  Our's stored wood for the kitchen stove.  We also had a heater in the living room to heat the house in the winter.  During the winter months clothes would be hung around the heater to dry when the washing was taken off the clothes line outside   My mother didn't have a washing machine for quite awhile, so the washing was done in the bathtub with a wash board.  In the summer clothes were hung on a clothes line outside.  Mondays were wash days and every housewife had clothes hanging on the line.

This was life during the war years.

Eleanor (Zaluski) Leemet

Posted by email 
 

Recollections from living in a wartime house by Jim Chess.

    Hope you receive these alright and will consider them for inclusion in your project. My brother, sister and my wife and I are planning to visit City Hall tomorrow afternoon to view the exhibit.

   Thanks. Jim.

Click here to download:
Wartime house story.doc (24 KB)
(download)

Click here to download:
Ode to Imperial Park0001.pdf (55 KB)
(download)

Airport_apartments0001

Posted by email 
 

Wartime houses shaped city - St. Catharines Standard - Ontario, CA

Wartime houses shaped city If anyone has a deep, personal connection with a St. Catharines wartime house, it's Darlene Erskine.

When she was born in 1945, there was only one telephone in the neighbourhood surrounding her parents' house at 21 Sandown Street.

Her mother went into labour that summer and gave a female neighbour a nickel to call a doctor at the phone booth at Rolls Avenue and Doncaster Boulevard. "She put the nickel in her pocket and jogged to the phone booth on a hot July 21 day," Erskine said, taking in a photo exhibit of wartime houses at St. Catharines City Hall. "When she got to the phone booth, the nickel had jumped out of her pocket."

Read more at: stcatharinesstandard.ca

 

Posted by Wartime Houses 
 

The McPhersons - Sandown St.

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In 1947 my Nana and Papa (Mary and Bill McPherson) moved into their new house on Sandown St.  Mary and Bill raised their 3 children in the 1 1/2 story, 3 bedroom house and this past December my Nana turned 95 and still lives in that house.    The family has grown to include grandchildren and several great grandchildren and this is still the place where we gather as a family. 

The house has had some changes: the basement was added in the 50's along with a new front entrance way, a larger back porch and the slate shingles were covered with pebble dash and now stucco, but the original wartime house can be seen and the interior has remained the same.

Family2

Posted by robin mcpherson