Rosemary McNaughton- Little Red Door Arrives at Bates and Innes

The drive to target women began before the Second World War and gathered pace throughout the rest of the 20th century. “Women are paying a deadly price for being targeted by tobacco advertisers in the post-war years, health experts claimed yesterday.”

Women were targeted but, according to the graph on the CRUK website, their smoking prevalence remained fairly constant between 1948 and 1975, whence it began decreasing. Obviously the advertising campaign wasn’t too successful! Yet here we have ASH creating the impression that it was, trying to deceive us that it’s now the “pretty” packaging, covered with health warnings and gory images, that is “appealing”.

All photos Ottawa Journal April 20 1960-Carleton Place Bates and Innes Mill

In April of 1960 millworkers walked through the doors of good health in Lanark County. Rosemary McNaughton was part of the Canadian Cancer Society’s Little Red Door program. On April 20 the workers at Bates & Innes in Carleton Place shared McNaughton’s films, literature and words of advice.

The registered nurse set up her movie projector in an unused wool- carding room on an uneven floor. She laid out pamphlets in vice president’s Jack Stewart’s office and talked to everyone about what she knew about the truths and the myths of cancer. She visited with workers and even spent and hour with worried staff that had stricken family members.

By closing time the folks that worked at the Bates and Innes mill knew all about the seven signs of cancer. That was 1960, and here it is 2017 and there is still no cure.

As mentioned in the The SAGE Encyclopedia of Cancer and Society

Part 21—February 12, 2014 — Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep– from my book “Cancer Calls Collect”

As I watched him search for eternal sleep, his life seemed to be passing him by as he whispered names from time to time. I have seen death many times, but I cannot imagine what it is like to experience it. My late sister needed permission to die during her last hours and I was chosen to give her the peace she needed. Why do we need permission if the end is near? Our mortality is finite, but the experience of passing is so different for each individual.

Does cancer carry any dignity at all?

We are all born and will all die – no getting out of the fact. Our culture’s dread of mortality keeps us from experiencing all that life has to offer by making us terrified of confronting the final nature of our existence. Everyone does it differently, even from death to death, and we can never really know how we’ll deal with it until we’re confronted.

In the end nothing could bring him back because I tried. All those weeks and months, yet all I have left are the tears and memories. He said when he asked the final questions to those in charge he was confused. Answers were given quickly, but he wondered if they were the correct ones, or were they just covering up what they didn’t know? They can tell you anything, but the end result of impending death is always the same.

Dying is such a private and very lonely process. The stages of emotions that I have witnessed my loved ones experience from the time that they receive the horrible news, up to the time of their last expiring breath, never gets easier for me to witness.

As far as those dying from cancer, the mortality rate of cancer has been on the rise for many years from 79 deaths per 100,000 in 1914, to over 350 deaths per 100,000 recently. It is a horrible disease and the toll it takes on not just the individual, but all their loved ones is incredibly hard. To this day the FDA has yet to license a cancer remedy on the basis of improved quality of life; so we continue to share cancer with  courage, dignity, and above all, love.

Be at peace my love.

“Cancer is such an ugly bully!”

Quote left by former CTV-Ottawa news anchor Max Keeping on one of my husband’s Obituaries..

My son Schuyleur, Max Keeping, my late husband Angelo and son Perry at our home- January 2014

Angelo Seccaspina 1949-2014

Max Keeping 1942-2015

Information where you can buy all Linda Seccaspina’s books-You can also read Linda in The Townships Sun andScreamin’ Mamas (USA)

Come and visit the Lanark County Genealogical Society Facebook page– what’s there? Cool old photos–and lots of things interesting to read. Also check out The Tales of Carleton Place.

Cancer and Family 1903- Almonte Gazette

My Pink Frying Pan that Cooks Nothing but Hope For Breast Cancer

So How Much Time Do You Get for Stealing Wool?

Bates and Innes staff, 1936 from the  Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

 

Three Carleton Place men named Josiah Evoy, Wesley Evoy and George Craig were arrested for stealing wool from the felt mill of Bates and Innes. They were brought before Police Magistrate McNeely one Friday morning and committed to Perth for trial. The wool in question had been washed and oiled in preparation for the cards.

Four parcels were found– three in Evoy’s cellar and one in Craig’s attic. When brought before Judge Senlkler on Tuesday, January 1902, the trio pleaded guilty. Josiah Evoy was sentenced to 23 months in central prison; the others got 2-4 months in gaol with hard labour.  — Almonte Gazette 1902

Of course it is wrong to steal, but you have to remember times were tough. There was a population explosion, immigration both foreign and domestic – added up and resulted in a scramble for any job available.

Large numbers of both skilled and unskilled people were looking for work, so wages were low, barely above subsistence level. If work dried up, or was seasonal, men were laid off, and because they had hardly enough to live on when they did work, they had no savings to fall back on. Long tedious hours working in our local woolen mills were harsh realities. In the case of Evoy, he had a barely year old daughter to support.

Henry Mayhew argued that:

“since crime was not caused by illiteracy, it could not be cured by education … the only certain effects being the emergence of a more skillful and sophisticated race of criminals.”

In those days the only solution to poverty was to put more family members, even children, to work in the mills, or in the Bates and Innes case- steal wool.

 

Photo of Bates and Innes calendar– Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

Josiah Wm. Evoy

mentioned in the record of Elmira Evoy

Name	Josiah Wm. Evoy
Gender	Male
Wife	Mary Ann Falls
Daughter	Elmira Evoy

Other information in the record of Elmira Evoy

from Ontario Births

Name	Elmira Evoy
Event Type	Birth
Event Date	11 Apr 1901
Event Place	Carleton Place, Lanark, Ontario, Canada
Gender	Female
Father’s Name	Josiah Wm. Evoy
Mother’s Name	Mary Ann Falls
Certificate Number	021593

 

Historical Fact

1907 – Bates and Innes Co. Limited bought and equipped the former Gillies Woollen Mill in Carleton Place as a knitting mill.  A Quebec company, the Waterloo Knitting Co. Ltd., similarly re-opened the Hawthorne Woollen Mill.

Charles Bates

Charles Bates was born in 1873. He was a textile manufacturer and part owner of the Bates and Innes Woolen Mill. He died at the age of 90 in 1963.  Carleton Place Chamber of Commerce.

 

 

Roy Bates and His Dog Named Taffy— ahh Paddy

Roy Bates owned a spectacular Airedale dog. He was the pride and joy of the family, and Pat or Paddy as he was called, would follow his master every day to his office at the Bates and Innes mill. One morning on their daily walk, the Airedale came across a ball of taffy on a plate cooling on a back step. The dog had no idea it had to be fully cooled and needed to be pulled. He didn’t think twice, he  just grabbed it and ate it whole. However, the taffy never made it down the dog’s throat, and the dog’s jaw became clamped together. Paddy instinctively ran his head along the ground, but nothing was going to dislodge that sticky stuff.

When he saw his method was not going to work, the dog quickly ran home. As soon as Mrs. Bates saw him she was horrified and called Roy and told him to come home at once. It was immediately decided, and assumed, the dog had gotten into some glue. After repeated applications of warm water the dog was finally able to open his mouth again. A few days later Roy found out what had truly happened, and I bet that dog never touched taffy again.

Roy Wallace Bates – 1887/1963

Mayor of Carleton Place – 1918 to 1920 – Textile Manufacturer.

Files from the Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum

Buy Linda Secaspina’s Books— Flashbacks of Little Miss Flash Cadilac– Tilting the Kilt-Vintage Whispers of Carleton Place and 4 others on Amazon or Amazon Canada or Wisteria at 62 Bridge Street in Carleton Place

We Can’t Move our Carleton Place People Out!

Photo of the Construction of the Findlay Plant on High Street in Carleton Place 1901- The Carleton Place and Beckwith Heritage Museum. The brick construction was built on land sold by the Canada Lumber Company.

Sometimes we think things are really bad until we see times were just as tough years ago. In April of 1954 three industries were struggling. Bates and Innes Textile Mills were hurting, Renfrew Woolens had closed and Findlays was beginning to decline and would end up closing in 1974.  In 1954 a total of $15,000 of week was being paid out in unemployment in Carleton Place that would last 313 days for each employee. Payments varied from $17.10 a week per single man to $24 for a married man.

R. Vernon McCarten of the Carleton Place Chamber of Commerce said,

“We can’t move our people out; we’ll have to move something in.”

D.D.Findlay president of Findlay’s Limited voiced his concern about the town. His firm had been making stoves since 1860 and had 319 employees on the payroll in 1953, but it had presently dwindled to 234. He attributed the loss to competition from the United States. Also use of coal and wood ranges on the farm had diminished as propane gas and electric stoves were becoming popular. Bates and Innes were getting very few orders and only operating at 2/3 capacity. Renfrew Mill closed down when the men went on strike putting 75 out of work. Findlay hoped that new business might come to town and pointed out the new 36 bed hospital was opening up and almost entirely paid for and half the cost of the furniture and equipment underwritten.

Some hoped the new shortening of Highway 7 might bring people to live in Carleton Place. The town however applied to the OMB for permission to spend $30,000 to buy 5 acres of land on the east side of town for industrial purposes. When the mills all finally closed it affected people who had never worked at anything else but textiles. There were three generations of Fergusons that worked in the textile industry, and what would their future hold now.

The Findlay Plant closed in 1974.

Bates and Innes ceased operations in 1963, due, in part, to the introduction of synthetic fibres.

Renfrew Woolen Mill closed that year.