Podcast

Peter Handley:
Hi there, good day. Welcome to North Bay’s Heritage Diary. Listen up and we shall weave for you tales of days and times gone by, which can inform today and show the way to tomorrow. This Municipal Heritage Committee podcast looks at our town, our people and our stories. This time we open our diary of voices from the past for a conversation with the late Lorne Fleece. This was originally recorded for the Cogeco Cable TV production ‘Life Is’ and is rebroadcasted in this format through the courtesy of Cogeco Your TV. Lorne Fleece was born in Kirkland Lake and spent almost 40 years with the ONR as a communications troubleshooter, among other things. Long interested in history, he was an avid researcher, author, and in fact a lecturer and worked with several North Bay area museum curators over the years, while also serving as the ONR archivist. Lorne passed away in 2015, at 82, not too many years after this Cogeco ‘Life Is’ episode was recorded. Please excuse any outdated references. Lorne Fleece wanted to work for the railroad and as a young man passed a 150 question examination in order to get hired.

Lorne Fleece:
They gave me a ticket to go to Ansonville. That’s where I started out.

Peter Handley:
Okay, now you went to Ansonville. What exactly were you doing, you use the term troubleshooter?

Lorne Fleece:
We had telephone equipment like telephone lines going from all the communities to North Bay to go to Toronto to the long distance. Then there was teletypes and their numerous telegraph lines that were going back and forth for telegraphs so but the job I got at the beginning was to work outside digging holes for the telephone poles. The ironic part of it is Pete that 40 years later when I went to retire there and I was at a party here, the superintendent at the time said we got the message back in North Bay that that hole was done the fastest they ever saw.

Peter Handley:
Okay so you had stuff to do with telephone lines as well as railway communications? It was just general communications right?

Lorne Fleece:
That’s right.

Peter Handley:
Where did you learn your skills to troubleshoot. I mean, did you have a clue?

Lorne Fleece:
Not really in that sense, but if you take an electrical systems technician job training in high school, like they had at the time you learned a lot of the basics.

Peter Handley:
Okay so you took shop.

Lorne Fleece:
We took shop – we worked in the electrical shop and graduated out of grade 12. At that time, in 1949, that was a fairly good education beause there was no college – the only college was way down in Toronto. So anyway, and what they would do at that time is they would put young fellows like myself outside and learn from the ground up so you dug the hole, then you learned to climb the pole, do the wires and then inside. So that's how it went and progressed at that particular time.

Peter Handley:
You didn't do the job for very long?

Lorne Fleece:
I was outside for a year. About 11 months and then they brought me inside to do the clerk work that they need for technical application and different records and that sort of thing - cable records, telephone line numbers and all this material.

Peter Handley:
Did you – you actually were telegrapher for a while weren’t you?

Lorne Fleece:
Yes. I want to bring that in. When I got inside after being there, I worked at night shift and we would learn telegraphy because at night we would get messages from CPR and the CNR in North Bay and Toronto and there would be trouble we would send the message by telegraph because they had no telephone lines into our office. We had the long-distance line but they didn't have it because they weren't in the telephone business for long distance. They were for themselves.

Peter Handley:
Right. By telegrapher what exactly do you mean?

Lorne Fleece:
Well is that used to send and receive messages for commercial uses like ordering material and also for meat. They used to send meat messages by the hundreds up to Winnipeg at that time from Kirkland Lake, Timmins and North Bay.

Peter Handley:
What’s a meat message?

Lorne Fleece:
They would send a five digit code message like number 97541 or something like that and that would mean “Send 10 pounds of bologna to a certain store”.

Peter Handley:
All right, so it was coded rather than using the words. Okay, now were you Morse coding?

Lorne Fleece:
Yes. I did when I would reply to the CNR in North Bay and Toronto and CPR in North Bay, but because I was limited in the speed and I would hold the fellows up, I would phone them and talk to them on the phone because I had access to telephone line, which they didn’t. But, I did learn enough that I could send some messages, but I never became real proficient because I didn't use it enough, but I understood enough to get the call letters and also to send short messages.

Peter Handley:
When did they stop using Morse code?

Lorne Fleece:
It was and 68-69, that’s when it started phasing out. They had gone into teletypes because teletypes you could send the message on a teletype tape machine from around the teletypes and then you’d paste that down on a piece of paper. So, but telegraph was very good for short messages between stations like North Bay and Temagami or North Bay and Cochrane or North Bay and Timmins because they could send them real fast and they’d take them down and the use of them and it was also a backup if the teletypes fail.

Peter Handley:
Okay, did you have an emergency that you…?

Lorne Fleece:
Well with you and the emergency mostly was when there was a train wreck. If the lights went out and we had to get out and test with the linesmen to get the lines repaired and get them back up. If the backup I member Hurricane Hazel in ’54, the lines went out between Timmins and Swastika and Swastika was the centre test point for Ontario Northland in the north because the lines come in there from Rouyn-Noranda, from North Bay and from Timmins and Cochrane so they could test all these different directions in Swastika.

Peter Handley:
I remember Mike Rodden telling stories about the value of the railroad in Northern Ontario.

Lorne Fleece:
Well it was very valuable.

Peter Handley:
And there were a couple of major forest fires that the railroad was the only way for people to get out.

Lorne Fleece:
Well in Cochrane itself, the station saved a whole bunch of people. It was the only building that was survived the fire in 1916. They all gathered in there and then it was the place people could stay while they got aid and that because you're in bad weather, and it was place to feed everybody.

Peter Handley:
Okay so 37 years. What did you spend most of your time doing? This was with the ONR right? And it used to be called the T&NO.

Lorne Fleece:
By 1946 it had been changed to Ontario Northland.

Peter Handley:
Most of the time, what were you doing?

Lorne Fleece:
Well after working at Swastika for a while they sent me on the road. I worked out of Cochrane for a couple years, then I went back to Swastika. Then it was up to Timmins and there was a new office there in Timmins. The office had been opened in 1950 new building brand-new on Cedar Street in Timmins. Then in 1954 they opened a new office in Cochrane - beautiful building there and in Rouyn-Noranda had opened in 1950 as well. That was a very unique thing Ontario Northland had telephone communications in the Rouyn-Noranda, Québec because it was so convenient to bring the lines in through from Rouyn-Noranda to Swastika to Montréal. Then from there I was asked to take over supervision at the New Liskeard office. Then it was from New Liskeard to North Bay to Cochrane, back to North Bay and here I am.

Peter Handley:
Over the time period - your work time and your retirement time. When you started you you talked about when you were a kid and how important the railroad was, to see the decline of the railroad over the ensuing 40-50 years… How do you feel about that?

Lorne Fleece:
Well I feel sad about it, but also we love our cars so much. When you’re 18, 19, 20 years old – boy do you just love to have a car. You have the freedom of being able to go across the country anywhere you want at any time you want. So, railways served the purpose when there was so much isolation, but it time has gone for passenger service but will always be here for freight and for big products. There is no more economical way to transport material, than by train.

Peter Handley:
Why then, why don't they use that that more often than the transports on the highways?

Lorne Fleece:
Because of the coordination between the railways and transport companies – they just all want their own territory. Your own turf.

Peter Handley:
You don't you don't sound bitter. You don't sound disappointed. You sound as if that's the way it is.

Lorne Fleece:
That’s right because I study history so much, and I've seen so many changes over the history of Canada. You know, we had the waterway before the canoe, then we had canals, then the railways and now we have the car.

Peter Handley:
What's the next step?

Lorne Fleece:
For the railroad?

Peter Handley:
No, you talk about the logical progression of events from the to railroad the car. Is there another step?

Lorne Fleece:
Well I guess that's for the scientists to figure out. Well we see a man flying in his car on the TV this morning.

Peter Handley:
Towns along the railroad line existed because of the railroad, right?

Lorne Fleece:
That is right and also for farming. We must remember that because there was a farming community in New Liskeard at the time in 1934. It started in 1896-97, but anyway they petitioned to get better communication to the south. There was a toll road from Widdifield Township right through the bush to Lake Temiskaming and then they would haul stuff through there but that was very rough because it was mostly used in the wintertime to haul supplies and the transport during the summer was the waterway from Lake Temiskaming to New Liskeard, so the government was petitioned and then finally in 1902 they put the act together and said will build a railway from North Bay to some point on the Abitibi. They didn't know where were going to go exactly, but they had to name it something so they said ‘Abitibi’. Lake Abitibi was the big centre in the far north that was the place you went to shop for 200 years.

Peter Handley:
Wade Hemsworth was working on that when he wrote The Black Fly Song because he sings ‘writing on the little Abitibi’.

Lorne Fleece:
That’s right.

Peter Handley:
Okay, the towns along the line – do you have a favourite?

Lorne Fleece:
I would say New Liskeard.

Peter Handley:
Okay and it is now what?

Lorne Fleece:
It's Temiskaming Shores. You have Cobalt, Haileybury, New Liskeard because of its set up… it’s view and also the area is great. I like the farming country. It’s very, very colourful and beautiful farms. To see all the silos they have and the progress over the years of the wealth and the economy of the area. It's amazing to drive all the way up through the rock from Cobalt and then through beautiful lake country. Then all of a sudden you climb the hill you see the valley. It’s something to behold. There’s a nice look out on the right-hand side at the top there. It's wonderful.

Peter Handley:
Okay, when did when did history start playing a role in your life?

Lorne Fleece:
I would say in 1972-73, when I went to back to Cochrane to work for while as supervisor and I used to travel around the countryside there in the abandoned farms in places where the rivers went. I said there’s got to be stories here because the people lived there and there’s signs of civilization. So what I would do is my holidays or in some time off. I would go to the archives every year to Toronto and to Ottawa and over the next 20 years, I copied material on the Abitibi area of the lake and the rivers and the countryside around Cochrane.

Peter Handley:
Okay, is that with these Goodwin papers are that you that you’ve got here?

Lorne Fleece:
Yes that is a result of some of that, but that came about actually in North Bay when I was in the archives here in North Bay. This chap came to visit me from the Los Angeles area and he was looking for a doctor that had been in the in the Cochrane area in 1989 and he took a bunch of notes down. He was talking and I said well I haven't heard about this doctor, but I'll take an address and everything and he mentioned that there was a Goodwin family at the time and I never tweaked to it, but I had heard his name in my research in Toronto and Ottawa. Anyway, to make a long story short, I said mackerel, I missed it and has been a trap questionable to Goodman. So, I wrote him a letter saying I hadn’t found out about the doctor yet but could he tell me more about the Goodman family. So he replied back and he said, “On my way back to California, I went to New Brunswick and I visited the Goodman family and they have papers like you wouldn't believe about the early days, from 1905 to 1910 about the early days of the Abitibi region. The things that they probably will share”. So anyway, I wrote a letter to the address he gave me and I think a Goodwin lady there replied back and that was the start of the book. I think there are 93 letters in their from Lake Abitibi now. Now, Mr. Goodwin, Ernest Goodwin had come to North Bay in 1905 and was at the Pacific Hotel, across from where this transportation building and where a little park is between were Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is. That used to be the transportation building that had burned down in 1962, so the transcontinental railway people were there organizing all the buildings up north from Cochrane. So Ernest Goodwin came there and he got instruction to go to Englehart so we had to go to Engelhart on the work trains because the railway wasn't open yet. This is April 1905-1908, so should I continue?

Peter Handley:
Yeah!

Lorne Fleece:
Okay so anyway, he was go up there and he was in North Bay and is writing back to his wife and is describing all the country. So he does this for the next three years and these are the letters in the next three years.

Peter Handley:
You were lucky to get that.

Lorne Fleece:
That is true because there was a chap from the archives in Toronto was trying to get those paper for about 10 or 15 years and they wouldn't release it to him.

Peter Handley:
Why’d they give them to you?

Lorne Fleece:
I think that the timing was right because the way I wrote the letter and expressed how the people in northern Ontario would enjoy having access to the knowledge of what they knew in the early days.

Peter Handley:
It would paint a picture of not only society, but what's going on with the weather's like and all sorts of different things.

Lorne Fleece:
Yes oh yes because Mr. Goodwin was a very highly trained person and he recorded the weather, he recorded the plants, he recorded the animals. The little ordinary things that normally you wouldn't put no letter and he did because he was trying to tell his wife how things were on a daily basis when they were working in the bush there surveying.

Peter Handley:
Is that the first time you did anything like that?

Lorne Fleece:
Yes, it is. I printed 12 copies of that report and I gave them from Cobalt to Cochrane because McDougall shoots or Matheson was the centre point of where they work from the I gave three copies of that to the Matheson area because of the importance of it.

Peter Handley:
So are you going to do anything like this again?

Lorne Fleece:
I'm trying to do a little one on Temagami because in 1955 I was here in North Bay in March and he asked me to cut over the dial exchanging Temagami and for Magnetawan to log me there and while I was there I was writing my girlfriend, who is now my wife, Rita, and she saved 23 letters that I wrote to her from Temagami to North Bay in 1955 so I’m going put that in the little manual for their hundredth anniversary.

Peter Handley:
Okay, you're interested in history and you’ve done some research on the history and you know the story. The ONR itself used to have that beautiful building on Oak Street as the archives and you worked in the archives that are no longer there.

Lorne Fleece:
The telecommunication branch in there. The Ontera is in there – they’re using it now.

Peter Handley:
What do you with all this stuff? The newspapers and these papers… Are they going to continue to exist or are they just going to moulder away and disappear?

Lorne Fleece:
Well, I would say would still exist because the two such an important part - they play such an important role in northern Ontario and their telecommunications and transportation. It doesn't seem like anybody else is interested in taking over because at times it is not very profitable but it's a very essential thing.

Peter Handley:
It takes up valuable space. I know Bob Surtees wrote a book on the ONR and I don't know how much time in the archives researching.

Lorne Fleece:
I took him on a tour of the Ontario Northland when he started that book to different places. We interviewed about 10 at 15 people.

Peter Handley:
Do you think the railroad can ever make a comeback?

Lorne Fleece:
Not the way we knew it. It will never make a comeback like that, but it will always be there as a transportation arm. Like the Kid Creek Smelter in Timmins - it wouldn't exist if the railway wasn’t there. It has to have that product of sulfur used up in manufacturing and all the material that goes in and out of that smelter is by the railway. It can’t be handled by cars and driving trucks because it would just pound the roads to nothing.

Peter Handley:
You’re interested in the history of the whole area right?

Lorne Fleece:
Yeah.

Peter Handley:
Okay, are you going to – I mean the you’ve done this and the Goodwin papers and you’ve done Pioneers of Kirkland Lake and that was that the street that you basically grew up on in Kirkland Lake, which included the Duff family. What else is Lorne Fleece going to do? Or is he going to do anything?

Lorne Fleece:
Well, I’m going to keep going because I find it keeps me active. In fact, I’ve found that now in my memory is better than it was 20 years ago, because I am so active in research. The thing is on my computer, I have about 270 entries, and these are telephone calls or letters or emails from different people from 1990 to 93 to the present. I pass on information and I record that almost like a diary or yearly diary of our contacts and that is very valuable information, because it also contains a lot of material about different things in northern Ontario. I liked the whole north because I worked all North. When I was a troubleshooter and maintenance requirements and that in Ontario Northland – I worked from North Bay to Attawapiskat and from Val D’or to Long Lac. I worked the whole system and I worked in places that the railway didn't run because we had communications and I have a love for northern Ontario because it's a tremendous place. There are places that people have never seen and they are so unbelievably colourful and interesting, but the thing is that I'm only one person, but the point is, I get these recalls and I try and help people on a volunteer basis and I give them leads and so on.

Peter Handley:
So, you’ve set yourself up, and rightfully so, as a resource right rather than going ahead and doing a major project for yourself. You will help Joe or Sam or Abigail to work their Northern Ontario project?

Lorne Fleece:
CBCs Dan Bjornson came to my place and CBC came and photographed and videotaped a bunch of my material for a thing they were doing on the Ontario Northland. I was very pleased to meet Dan Bjornson because he’s a tremendous announcers like in the old days and he’s retired now, but they came to the house because of that. I’ve met some very interesting people and they appreciate what you try to do for them because the history of Canada should be recorded and kept because it allows the younger generation to understand what happened in the past.

Peter Handley:
I noticed that you're working on the computer too so you're not a luddite, like I am.

Lorne Fleece:
Well I use it mostly as a word processor, but I use it actually for email because it's so handy.

Peter Handley:
Is there something that you want to do for yourself - some project that you really want to work on that you think…?

Lorne Fleece:
Well, I would really like to finish this Temagami one with the letters - my wife's back-and-forth in 1955. I'm working on that now, and I have a lot of material gathered but I have to sit down and start writing. I’ve added a lot of material.

Peter Handley:
What do you enjoy doing most, the gathering of your research material which you can file away and help other people with or do you get any enjoyment out of writing these things down?

Lorne Fleece:
I have a very difficult time with writing. I'm a researcher, like Christopher Columbus finding North America. When I find something that I'm looking for - some unique idea or subject I think I've just conquered the world. It's there and I can pass it on, and I can record it.

Peter Handley:
Can you remember something that you found it gave you that feeling? That feeling of joy… something you were hunting for for a long time, and finally found a key to.

Lorne Fleece:
A while back, I was finding out different members of the family that way back like the great-grandfathers and their names and some of the material on them in the archives in an Ottawa – the geneaology.

Peter Handley:
So that's another branch of what you’re interested in?

Lorne Fleece:
Yes, but I’m not into it to a large degree because it's a massive subject and in itself.

Peter Handley:
What's been the reaction to Lorne Fleece the historian?

Lorne Fleece:
I think that most people have appreciated what I’ve done and I think that a lot of senior people like somebody will listen to their stories and to appreciate what they have gone through. We are all are unique. Every one of us has a story to tell, and it might be very humble, but in that very humble story you make find something that really sets up the story for you and everybody's important and from the lowliest man to the highest.

Peter Handley:
This edition of our Heritage Diary: Voices from the Past was originally recorded for the Cogeco Cable TV production, ‘Life Is’ and is rebroadcast in this format thanks to the courtesy of Cogeco Your TV. Again, Lorne Fleece passed away in 2015. Thank you for spending some time with us and listening to our stories. These productions are put together by the North Bay Municipal Heritage Committee not only to retell old tales, but hopefully to kindle interest in area history. Local lore is important to any community and we should not let it go unremarked and unremembered. Views expressed in this podcast, not necessarily those of the Corporation of the City of North Bay or its employees. Join us next time when we flip another page of the diary of our shared past. You can reach us at peter.carello@cityofnorthbay.ca. Production – Kealey Ducharme. Pete Handley speaking.