Season’s Greetings
Our Local Heritage
Ethel Hamilton, nee Sullivan, has been a lifelong resident of the Eastern Ontario area. She remem- bers Christmas as a girl over 60 years ago as very different than Christmasses now. “No one had much money then,” she says. “But whenever all the family was together that was all we wished for.” They would go down to the bush and pick a Christmas tree. “Not a very big one, one no one would want to use,” she says. Then they made decorations and ribbons for it and placed it in the dining room. That roomwas the winter gathering place because the coal stove there made it the warmest room in the house. Her family included a twin sister, Edith, and eight siblings. Sometimes they would visit rela- tives as part of the Christmas festivities. Aunts, uncles and cousins lived nearby and there was plenty of fun, and food. “When everyone came tomy grandma’s place, there were so many pies, it was just great.”That was inMarvelville, which Ethel says got its name from something her grandmother said. “The postman didn’t know where to bring the mail,”Ethel says.“My grandma, Phoebe, said, ‘Oh, it’s a marvelous place here,’ and that’s how Marvelville was named.” Music was a big part of Christmas. Ethel recalls dancing to theVictrola with Edith, and the whole family enjoying their mother’s piano playing. When the cousins started getting older they attended the Vars Christmas Eve dance. “We’d all share our money so there was enough for everyone to get into the dance.” Christmas morning wasn’t about presents. “We’d get apples and oranges, and often my aunt wouldmake something for Christmas.”She recalled one year she and her twin each received a beautiful blouse and skirt her aunt had sewn, and how happy they’d been. After Ethel married she and her family con- tinued to go to her mother’s for dinner. “We all
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VINETTE COLLISION CENTRE INC. 525 Landry St. Rockland ON K4K 1K7 She recalled being a young married woman and helping in the kitchen. “They had gravy on the stove and another pot with sauce for the mincedmeat tarts. I thought they were the same so I mixed them together. At dessert time, when they asked where the sauce was, I told them. They said,‘We wondered why the gravy was so sweet!” If the weather was nice, they would go down to a little place in the field where water pooled, near where Don Hays’house had stood near the former quarry on North Russell Road. “At night we would skate and sing songs.”She pauses for a moment, and with a smile in her voice says,“It didn’t cost a cent, but we sure had fun.” —Candice Vetter took food so mother didn’t have to do every- thing.” Dinner, the main meal of the day, was held around what we think of as lunchtime today. Ethel and her family would eat there, then go to another relative’s for a late second Christmas dinner.
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En cette période de réjouissance, Stéphane Poupart et son équipe vous souhaitent un Joyeux Noël et une bonne et heureuse année! During the Holiday Season, Stéphane Poupart & his team would like to wish you all a
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