I
was there...• Don Crowdis Recounts Family Experiences.
Exerpts From an interview with Janet Kitz.
Regarding the Explosion
K: Were you badly hurt, cut?
C: No, no, a little tiny bit.
K: Where were you?
C: Well, it’s interesting. Take a look at our house, and you realize
that you are looking towards the harbor in both views. You are looking toward
the harbor, do you notice this house, down this way.
K: And the house was looking towards the harbor.
C: That’s right.
K: And it must have been the suction of the blast…
C: So now when you realize the house was blown, toward the explosion, you
think of a house of cards, you know you build a little house of cards, and
unless it gets shattered, then the cards fall, one way or another, and so
the house fell toward the explosion, and the end walls had to go somewhere
didn’t they? So the south-end wall, apparently, drifted off to the
vacant lot next door, and we were, it was after 9 o’clock. And my
aunt Mary… was dressing my sister, we were late for some reason; I
don’t know why it was...
C: …I was not-four, and she was not-six, so apparently what must have
happened was that the end wall then, as the cards went towards the explosion
that end card went toward the south, fell away from the house. Apparently
we rode down on it. I guess so.
K: Really?
C: Neither of us was hurt. And then downstairs of course, my mother and
my aunt were...
K: I suppose it was the glass that injured them so badly.
C: Yeah, almost, I think almost altogether and a... my aunt...
K: Were they watching by any chance?
C: I don’t think so, Dad had gone up on fort Needham to watch and
I don’t know, I don’t know what Mum and Marj were doing, I think
they were just going about their affairs. I don’t imagine they realized,
who did, realize that there was that there was a boat on fire…
K: Well, the fire was spectacular.
C: Yeah, the fire was spectacular, yeah. They might have no even known that.
I mean they…
K: Couldn’t see well from your house?
C: I can’t even tell you that. I don’t know what was on the
other side of our house. See later on it was Richmond School. But Richmond
School had been up in different location entirely. Those roads were laid
out brand new, the devastation and such. Dad was up on Fort Needham and
apparently the simply rained around him, just a shower of junk.
K: He wasn’t hurt at all?
C: Wasn’t hurt at all, wasn’t touched and the amount of materials
that came down, when I was growing up I had occasion to know about, because
we had a big garden and I was the digger and every spring we would put out
this, what would now be precious of material, we brought out this pile of
twisted iron from the plates of the Mont Blanc... heaps of it.
K: Yes, Eric Davidson talked about that…
C: You know, every spring you would find some more digging up the Rhubarb.
K: And you just threw it out I presume?
C: Absolutely, it was junk. But there was enough of it to let you know how
much of it there was, really.
K: A whole ship.
C: A whole ship shattered.
K: A lot of, a lot of metal in that.
Regarding School and Community
K: When you were at school, surely, the children in your class even must
have been badly affected by the explosion. Like orphans, children with scars
and…
C: Oh sure, but you took it for granted. You see in my growing up the world
divided into before the explosion and after the explosion, it wasn’t
that it did, that was the way we spoke. “Oh that musta been a couple’a
years before the explosion”. And so similarly the crippled or the
blind or whatever, they were all just a part of it; and the foundations
were a part of things, and the “day goes” were part of things,
and the construction workers, and they immediately got categorized and they
were the guys who did the digging… and it was just the way we grew
up. It was only later on did you realize that it was not normal…
K: What about, you were at Richmond school?
C: Not before the explosion.
K: I know, after. The Protestant Orphanage children went to Richmond didn’t
they?
C: Yes.
K: Did you just take orphanages as for granted that it was quite normal
to live?
C: Absolutely, of course.
K: Those children didn’t seem underprivileged or… did you have
friends from there for example?
C: Of course.
K: You just thought it was a normal home for them to have?
C: Well, we knew they were orphans, and foster homes I don’t think
I ever heard of in those days.
K:There were foster homes.
C: But I don’t think I was conscious of them. I don’t that that
we would be as kids, but, no the orphanage kids, sure, I don’t think
they were looked down on or….
K: What do think they weren’t down on as, you weren’t sorry
for them…
C: Not very much, no.
K: You thought they were perfectly…
C: I thought they had their own kind of a life and I never thought they
were badly treated or anything.
K: No, no, I never thought for one minute that they were. But I was surprised
as I was going through some of these records recently. The ease with which
a single parent would consign their remaining children to an orphanage.
C: Oh, wouldn’t know anything about that. We always thought that orphans
were genuine orphans and that was that.
K: A lot of them had one parent alive.
C: Didn’t know it.
K: And this is why I wondered if an orphanage was considered, a not too
bad a place to live.
C: Well, they were little regimented and they didn’t have a great
variety in clothes and so on. But some of them were smart kids and good
kids and so on. There were friends of kids on the outside and so on.
K: You would take them home?
C: Sure! I remember I had a terrific crush on one of the older girls there.
I think, you know, when you ask questions like this, when you’re a
little kid growing up, how do you know the world is any different than your
world and once more you know your getting into the whole business of.. Well
I think I told you that one states the gain in my memory because we had
that gymnasium built into the church that we quite often had the championship
basketball team, there were leagues around. And as I remember one year our
best team was made up of two Catholics, one Black, one Jew, and one of our
boys. Yeah, and that was our team.
K: In your church.
C: That was our team, that’s right.
C:Father Curran and Reverend C.J. Crowdis, really put the North End back
together and kinda held it together through the depression years, the early
depression years. And so there were no hard feelings of that kind, we all
were survivors. And you know, Thanksgiving dinners at the Church and Catholic
women would bring turkeys and that sort of thing. And, Dad and Curran would
get together you know, some common things.
K:Well I know about, that Rockhead Prison was actually emptied out more
or less and survivors stayed there for two or three weeks.
C: Oh sure, oh yeah.
K: And the Upham‘s were there.
C: Yeah, very civilized, that’s right.
K: And it was because of Mr. Grant, who was a Presbyterian.
C: Sure he was one of Dad’s, you know that was part of the Church.
And down over that was the hospital and that’s were Dad took my mother
and me in a wheelbarrow, with my sister Jean running alongside. Oh mum was
very badly cut up and that’s where we went, and we were out in the
snowstorm when it hit.
C: Just to wander a little bit, oh, I was talking about the congregation,
and how we got along. Up in the north of the hospital, of course down over
the slopes. Was Africville, no one owned anything but they had been squatting
there for generations and they had a culture of their own, and unless you
knew them before the middle thirties, before the middle thirties. It would
be very hard to get the flavor of what that area was like. There was no,
as far as I remember, there was never any Black and White hostility. There
wasn’t resentment.
K: That’s what everybody says.
C: Those was their homes, they belonged there.
K: People visited, you could go along there you were welcomed and...
C: Yes, that’s right. The first boat I ever had any share in I owned
with a fellow from Barbados, Clarence Farrell was his name, he used to do
some work for Dad. And we were the best of friends, and later on he went
to the hospital…
Yeah, and I learned to swim I think up there, as much as anywhere. And Dad
looked after them whenever they would be without a minister or whenever
the minister…
K:Oh did he? He would service the church there?
C: Oh yeah, when they needed something, you know if the minister was not
there, or if they were between ministers, or if the minister needed any
kind of help or whatnot, Dad was there again. I’m talking about Dad
really, and so he was you know a colleague of the Curran and as far as the
Blacks, we didn’t call them blacks, I don’t know what we called
them, colored I guess or I don’t know if we called them anything.
K: We would taught “Negro” when I was young, I don’t think
you used that much here…
C: I don’t think so, I guess they were “Colored”. Anyway
as far as that was concerned we were all buddies, really, I’m serious
you know we were friends. If you were friends, you were friends, but you
didn’t make friends with them all anymore than you made friends with
every Scott…
Regarding His Father
C:Ok then, Rabi [Schlosberg], do you know the name.
K: I have found it yes.
C:Ok, ...And this is kind of a weird sort of a story. Dad was a farm boy,
never got it out of his system. He always... he kept raccoons or he kept
pigeons you know he was an animal character. And there are people up in
the north end today who are now in their 50’s or 60’s who remember
Dad when he was retired and the kids would be going pass the place on their
way to school and how he would look after them, take them in and show them
stuff and so on. But anyway after the explosion he figured he would raise
a few hens, you know within the city then I didn’t matter, and so
he got a dynamite shed, little dynamite shed about the size of this room
here. And did very well and had eggs to spare and so on so we started selling
them. I was kind of the... not slave but I hauled the water you know, did
that kind of stuff. But he was the... he was a biologist, in a way. He could
go out to Sackville to a farm and you know pick up hens and feeling them
around he could just toss them right and left and the ones that he took
way for a buck a piece they were laying no fooling about, he knew, so all
our hens laid and the ones that didn’t, you know, ended up in the
pot. Well he did very well with that and so he had a carpenter extend that
and make it double then it was extended again and made into a long one,
then it was extended the other way and made a broad one. Then he got a garage
hauled from someplace or other and that became another hen house, and then
he had that propped up and built underneath and made a two storey hen house.
He was apparently the first hen keeper in the province to have two sets
of electric lights, you know the brights and the dims so fooled the chicken
and he had something like 600 hens there.
K: Did he?
C: Yeah, at the height of the thing.
K: What date would this be?
C: The twenties.
K: Food was scarce anyway.
C: Oh yeah, it was a very sensible thing. Ok, well Rabi Schlosberg was his
friend and the Jewish people we amongst his very, very best customers.
K : Yes, of course because they didn’t have chickens.
C: And, and the chicken the chicken fat for the cooking, all the bits and
pieces for the soup. Now we come to the interesting part of the thing, that’s
right, so there was a corner, not a corner but about half of the furnace
room, it was a big Manse. And half of the furnace room in the United Church
Manse – was a kosher slaughterhouse. These two characters had been
down there killing hens and talking philosophy…
… So any who you know, this is all talking about Dad and talking about
the way they got on after the explosion….
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