Interview with Phil and Mae Cox, regarding memories of the Edmonton Public Library

The first topic of conversation that we are going to talk about is the history as Phil and Mae know it around the Edmonton Public Library, so I am just going to have Phil start talking about the Street Car Library and anything that comes to mind.

Phil: I think the Street Car Library operation started in the mid-forties, and it did operate from a streetcar. It went out to various places. North Edmonton and Calder were two of those places, and the idea was that it would take the books to out-lying districts and I think it was very successful. One of the men who operated it was a chap by the name of Jack Nearon, and as time went on the number of stops for the library car increased. I mentioned a few minutes ago the music program that the late Hugh Gordie and a man by the name of Nick Alexeef (who used to be the head caretaker but who had considerable training in the field of music in Russia) put on, with records of classical music. I believe they did it on a Saturday night in the main library, which at that time was near the old Legion or the Edmonton Club.


I was going to ask you - where was this library that you are talking about?

Phil: Right next door to the Edmonton Club. The Edmonton Club is still there but it is a new building now.


Mae: There was a little loop of a road off Victoria Drive, and the library was on the east end of the loop and the Legion was on round of the loop and Alberta College was at the other end.


And that was our first library, was it?

Phil: I wouldn't say it was the first, because that came into existence I think in about 1923, 1925.

Mae: But it was a major building in a major amenity downtown.


Phil: And it was financed to a large extent by a grant from Andrew Carnegie. Then I mentioned the music program, which was also very successful, and I think those are the two programs that I felt were the outstanding programs of the library. Now there are probably many others that I did not know of or just didn't have the register with me.


Mae: A couple of things you could add is that the Edmonton Symphony used to practice at the library down in the music room - which was located down in the basement at the southwest corner of the building - on Sunday mornings. And Leonard Best I believe was the...


Phil: Mr. Fratkin was the first one.


Mae: Abe Fratkin, okay, and then the other thing is the Street Car Library was mentioned in 'Ripley's Believe it or Not.'


You were saying that Alexeef was a musician from Russia-- can you give us a little more information about that?

Phil: As I understand it he had taken musical training in Russia in the field of classical music and from my observation - and I have no training in music whatsoever - but in my observations I knew that they were playing a lot of classical records, and from conversation I overheard from people who patronized these concerts he seemed to be highly regarded. There was a man by the name of Matt Headly, who later went down to California, and he I think had a musical program down in California on the radios there and was well known in his time - and I believe CKUA carried his program.


Mae: Carried that program for years. Matt had a large classical record collection and the Library, you see, had a pretty good one - these were the long playing records.


That's what I was going to ask you - the records, we're talking about the records before the LPs - so were they the 78s?

Mae: It got to the point when we were there that they were LP's.


I wasn't sure when the switch-over happened.

Mae: They didn't go for the little ones, the 45s.


That program continued on and you're not even sure whether it is still running or not, I mean the music program?

Phil: Nick is gone, he died, and Matt Headly went to the States.


I was just going to get you to go back and tell me what you did at the Library, how you became involved?

Phil: I started as a page putting books on shelves that were brought back, but I found I could get twenty cents an hour more if I did caretaking work, so I did caretaking work. I was at University at the time, it was a part time job. I was at that a few months in 1942, 43 and then I went into the airport and went over to England but when I came back and was at University in 46, 48 I again did caretaking work at the Library - and then later I was appointed to the Library Board, so I saw it from a different angle there.


And how about you Mae?

Mae: I was at high school and I took a commercial high school - so I learned typing, book keeping and short hand and so on - and one of my teachers was Duncan Innis and he felt that rather than being a secretary I should be going to University and I said I can't afford it. So he said, 'if I got you a part-time job could you manage?' So he got me a part-time job and I went back to high school for two extra years and got my academic grade twelve and went on to University. Duncan Innis at the time was chairman of the Library Board and the part-time job was as a typist doing up the library cards for the new library books that came into the catalogue room at the Library. So I worked for two years - took schooling until halfway through the afternoon and then went over to the Library and worked from 5 until 9 two or three evenings a week and sometimes Saturdays. And occasionally, very occasionally, if they were short staffed I would work on the desk or paging, but mostly as a typist in the catalogue room.


For curiosity sake is that where you met each other?

Phil and Mae: Yes


Mae: Phil wasn't at University at the time; he went out to teach. I went to University and then he came back to the city and we ended up teaching at the same school - Bennett School, near the Muttart Conservatory. I was receiving 65 cents an hour for my work as a typist and when I was ready to go to University the Dean asked me to go and see him and he asked me if I would like to work in the University Office. I said 'no thanks, I have a part time job,' and he said 'how much are you getting?' and I said 65 and he said 'well, we will give you 75 cent an hour.'


Phil: That was M.E. LaZerte of the M.E. LaZerte High School. Then when I was on the Library Board I ran into problems there with the director of libraries, in no uncertain terms. But I was the lone person [until] M.E. LeZerte was appointed to the Library Board. He backed me, and then finally the director and his two assistants resigned and the Library Board accepted their resignations. Now they are not here to defend themselves so I guess I had better stop at that.


We could maybe talk about the board - was that a paid position to run the Library, or a volunteer position, to oversee what is going on?

Phil: Yes you oversee what is going on.


How many years where you on the board?

Phil: I took over from Iver Dent. He had been appointed for I think a three-year term and then he went down to finish his Ph.D., and I took over from him. I can't remember whether I was given another appointment, I don't think I was, I think I just served the two years and they had enough of me, they didn't want anymore of me.


You were one of those disturbers?

Phil: Yes very much so, because you see I used to hear stories about different senior members of the staff who had resigned and when I raised the question the director would say 'you come and see me after the meeting and I will show you why they resigned' and they would show me, and one of the things that did annoy me immensely was that they had their personal assessment or psychological assessment, and this lady (as she was the head librarian on the south side at the Strathcona Library) got a what I would call a stinky report. It was a very thick file and I went through the file and there were two earlier ones that gave here a glowing report so there was obviously something that caused a change and then I found out that it was a personnel thing.


So you got that straightened out?

Phil: We never got her back on staff.


Mae: She went and eventually worked in the University Library. It was their gain.


You were both teachers for many years until retirement - was that your main focus I guess?

Phil: I went out and taught at Wabamun on the Jasper highway 4850 and then Ross Sheppard wrote and asked me to apply for a city position, which I did -- I taught in the city from 1950 until 1960. In 1955 the secretary of the Elementary Local, Tom Baker, was appointed as a Deputy Superintendent of the school system and so he resigned as Secretary of ATA Local and I took his place. It was a part-time job and then in 1958, 1960, I got half a day a week to do the work. By that time what was three locals had been amalgamated into one local. Instead of the elementary, the junior high, the senior high it was just the Edmonton Local. They decided to open up their own office and I was their first full-time executive secretary of the whole province of a local.


So ground-breaking things happened during that time, I can only imagine.

Phil: Yes, yes.


Mae: I went to university for the two years, 1948 and 1950, and taught only from 1950 to 1952 because we got married and had children on the way, and I was a stay at home mom and did volunteer work. I eventually went back to university in 1978 and completed my education degree in 1981.


Phil: She completed with honors.


Mae: So we had six children and I did things like home-school. And I was active in the Memorial Society, a volunteer organization, which is a consumer advocate group that helps people pre-plan simple low-cost funerals, and I am still involved with that. I also established an organization called Organ Donors Canada, which still is listed in the phone book - if you ever need information about organ donations you phone up, and you get me.


That was something you were able to do at home?

Mae: Yes, able to do at home.


Phil: It's on a volunteer basis.


And that has been around for many years then.

Mae: It was established in 1974.


Very active people in all sorts of different communities.

Phil: I was on the Historic Board for three or four years and I enjoyed that immensely.


Would you like to tell me more about that?

Phil: I volunteered because of my interest in Edmonton history. It's a city appointment and it was a completely different experience from that which I had at the library where I was the odd man out. I am not crying about it, it's a statement. On the Historic Board I got along well with the people, and I thought I was working with very fine people and I thoroughly enjoyed that.


Mae: He has done a lot of photography, taking pictures of the gravestones of some of the pioneers and of some of the old historic buildings, some of which have been used by the archives people for their purposes. He has also kept a lot of historical records and old clippings and he has got them all filed and indexed.


Oh that is fascinating

Phil I learned a lot of the history of Edmonton going through the cemetery and spotting people.


Are you still involved in that?

Phil: Because of the arthritis I don't get around as well now, but I do a lot of clippings of papers and so on, trying to fit them in with information on other things. And I try wherever possible... I finally got a chance to meet a woman by the name of Sylvia Evans. Her dad was the mayor of Edmonton for a number of years - Evansdale School is named after her dad, and Evansburg, the town, is named after her dad. The Evans' home still stands just on 102 or 104 avenue in the west end. She held a very high-ranking position in the air force during the war, and she was aid to Princess Alice. I finally met her through Muriel Clark whose dad was Joe Clark, after whom Clark Stadium was named. He was the mayor too you see, and Muriel has been very good to me and to Mae. She also introduced me to Grace Blanchford , after whose dad Blanchford Field is named.


Mae: That was another Mayor


The connections are amazing. Do you feel that we have covered the library?

Mae: I can tell you one little incident. One of the pages at the time that I was there invited me along with some other friends - she had friends in Calgary; there were four boys and seven girls, and one of the girls, Nellie McClung, the granddaughter of the Nellie McClung - to go to Banff for the weekend. This was just before university started and that was just sheer fun. The father of two of the boys was the manager of the CPR station in Calgary and was given the use of two bungalows in Banff. Jean and I had to be back - it was the long weekend in September - we had to be back in Edmonton to start work by 9 o'clock Tuesday morning. We tried to get a flight out and there were no flights from Calgary - they were running back and forth, almost airbus type arrangement at that time, but they didn't have anything available until Tuesday morning so we came up by the overnight train. If we had flown we would have flown past the Leduc #3 well that blew -- they had to divert the flight about 200 miles around on each side. Now, Jean Rogers, who became Mrs. Peter Lougheed...


Phil: When she was on one of these trips with the 276 [Richardson singers], we were staying at a home south of Calgary.


Mae: What happened was we were with the mixed chorus - 70 of us traveled after classes were over and before convocation. Two busloads, and the drivers were also university students who had free boarding for the summer with their occupation. We toured the south of the province for ten days singing in the various places and staying as pairs in host homes along the way. After we'd traveled early in the day and arrived at our destination in the middle of the afternoon - it was Pincher Creek and Blairmore and McLeod, Medicine Hat and Carstairs and all these places around the area there - we'd have a rehearsal, we'd go to our host for supper, put on the performance, and quite often go to an after-concert sing-along coffee party at one of the host places. When we were in High River, we went to the home of the editor of the High River Times and his wife - a whole bunch of us, probably twenty of us there. They had two sons, nine and seven, and the two boys were upstairs asleep. The editor of the High River Times was Charlie Clark and the two boys were Peter and Joe.


If you are comfortable with it why don't you finish the library information with that lovely story about the screaming woman?

Phil: When I first went to the library the head caretaker was a man by the name of Nick Alexeef -- he was the one that later took over the music program. He told me of an incident that happened to him. He was on the night shift and heard the screams of a woman obviously in great distress, and he found that the screams were coming from within the women's washroom He didn't know quite what to do about it, but he finally went in and she was still screaming, but what had happened is that she had gone in apparently to comb her hair and she sat at the edge of sink and the weight of her body caused the sink to collapse. When he saw her she was sitting in the sink, which was on the floor, and to make matters worse the single pipe - there was no hot water, it was just a single cold water pipe - had broken and was gushing in behind her head. Instead of getting up she just sat there and screamed blue bloody murder.


Mae: With the library door opening all the time, it was quite cold on the main floor at that time during the winter, at least cold for some of the staff. The reference staff were on the southwest corner and fairly near the main desk, the reference desk was fairly close to the door there, and one of the staff got chilled and complained about it. What she finally did was go and get some snow and pack the thermostat with this snow so that it would turn the temperature up.


That is wonderful. I have been told that we need a wonderful air force story and I understand you have some history around World War II, so perhaps you could give us some information.


Phil: Well I'll tell you some of my memorabilia. I did not go over to England until fairly late in the war. I was young at the time and I instructed here in Canada before I went over to Bomber Command. I would like to tell you a story which is a little different, it is very personal. When we went over we landed at Liverpool, then went down to Gloucester in South West England where we met some of the fellows in our own group that we knew in Canada and who had gone over a week or two ahead of us. They told us we should see this, we should see that, we should see the next thing. Another chap and I went into the Cathedral on a Sunday evening - there was some church program on - and when we left we saw two girls in uniform, it was the ATS, Auxiliary Territorial Service, and they were on anti aircraft duty and being good Canadians it didn't take us too long to hit up a conversation with them. The lady that I was associated with was a young woman by the name of Iris Pierce and I don't think there was any love interest there on the part of either of us, but we liked each other. I used to take her to a show now and again and then she got moved to Sidcup in Kent and I visited her there. When I came back to Canada she would send me Christmas, Birthday and Easter cards, and I think she must have had them specially ordered because they were plain cards, embossed, and she would mount a picture on the front of each card which was a picture of a church or a castle in the area where she lived because she knew that I was interested in history. Then in 1951 she informed me that she was getting married. Mae and I were getting married that following year and I thought maybe we should drop the correspondence, which we did. When I retired from my job as the executive secretary at the ATA Local in the city I was given two return tickets to England and a car rental for three weeks, and living expenses. I was treated right royally. Mae could not come because she had just taken a job at the Lion's Eye Bank so our oldest son bought her ticket and he and I went to England because we get along very well together. We were in London, and we were going to go through the west country to Gloucester, Devon, Summerset and Cornwall to visit friends and to see the place I was first stationed. I thought I would like to look up Iris Pierce and I knew where she lived, a place called Ramsey , the ancestral home of the Von Battons, and when we got there I said to a young policeman or asked a young policeman if he could help me. I said I was wanting to find a woman who I knew during the war and he asked me what her name was and I said 'I don't know, she got married on me and I don't know what her name is. And he said 'well what is her address?' and I said 'I don't know' and he gave me a funny look, to say the least, but then he said 'you go into that Sally Ann Shop [Salvation Army]. A lot of the women there have been all their lives in this area and they might help you.' So I went in and gave them my little sob story and added that as I understood it, Iris' father had a very well-known baking establishment there and was noted for his pastries and bread and so on. This woman looked at me and said 'oh you're speaking about Iris Harris. I go past her house twice a day every day, and I'll take you and your friend to her house as soon as I get off work.' So I met Iris again after forty years, and met her husband and saw pictures of their three grown up daughters, and when I came back to Canada she again began to send these cards maybe once or twice a year, same type of card. I tried to phone her, well I had phoned her on a number of occasions - I tried to phone her in the year 2000 and got a recording of her voice but she sounded, to put it bluntly, like death warmed over. I phoned again and got a recording of his voice. I identified myself and said I would phone again, because I did not want to put him to the expense of a transatlantic phone call. He called me that night and he said 'Phil, I am very sorry, I should have called you but Iris died. We were on a holiday on the south Coast and she fell out of the bed at the hotel and when we got the medical staff in she had gone. It was a heart attack. I apologize for not letting you know, however my daughters and I have gone over her belongings and we found a lot of pictures that you have sent her, and we wondered if you would like them back.' I said 'that's very nice of you Roy.' When I got off the phone I was a little bit bewildered, as I did not have a camera in those days. The pictures arrived on November 10 th of the year 2000, a big envelope and a lot of little snapshots and one big picture, an enlargement in a cardboard frame. A lot of them had writing in the lower right-hand corner, to Iris with love from Phil. I phoned her husband and said thank you, and he said 'you've got them already.' I said yes, he said 'were they in good condition?' and I said, 'they were in fine condition, but I think I'd better tell you they are not my pictures; they are somebody else's pictures.' He roared with laughter, 'wait till my daughters hear about this.' He said 'you're the only Phil that she spoke of,' and I said 'there is another Phil in the woodpile somewhere, let me assure you, because that man is in an American uniform and I was with the Royal Canadian Air force.'


Mae: One of the experiences I remember him talking about was the time that there was a fire at the station and he was wanting to go over and look at it.


Phil: It was a grey day, a very grey day, it could only be grey in England in the wintertime. I noticed the whole place seemed to light up.It was obvious it was a flash of some intense light, and when I looked around the corner of the hanger there was a plane, a heavy bomber, on fire. What we call a gas [? unclear] - it was a truck which was used to fuel the aircraft, and it too was on fire. We asked someone to drive us out and he wouldn't drive us out and someone said, 'are you scared?' He said 'you can call me what you like, I am not taking you out there, I'll take you to the far side of the air field.' In time the fire became so intense it caused sixteen 500-pound bombers to blow at once. Even at a considerable distance, while there was no danger, it did pretty well knock us off our feet. I think it taught me a lesson to be careful.


How long were you over in England for?

Phil: About 22 months, I was not there very long. The other thing was - and here I show a little bit of pride - when the war was over we were asked whether we wanted to get our discharge, whether we would be prepared to stay with the army of occupation in Europe, or whether we would go to the Far East, because the war with Japan was still on. Then of course with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the war in the Pacific suddenly came to an end. As a result there were all sorts of service men over in England just waiting to get home and get back to civvies street. The thing that caused complications for us was that those who had volunteered for service in England had been sent home with the idea that they would get leave and then could come back again. Then the Canadian government did not want to bring them back when the war was over. It caused an awful lot of dissention and hard feelings. We got telephone calls from some of our other stations - I think we were reduced to three RCM stations in England by that time - and they asked if we would care to join them in a sympathy strike to try to focus attention on the fact we wanted to get back to Canada. The rumor went around that there would be a meeting in a certain hanger that night at eight o'clock and the place was packed. Just as eight o'clock came around the Commanding Officer came on the public address system and read the riot act to us. The riot act does not spare words - if you are found guilty of instigating a mutiny you can face the death penalty. They had a young fellow who was a RAF chap come and pass out what he referred to as the "morning paper", it happened to be the riot act in print. That of course did not go over well with the men. He tried to speak, but this fellow that was so distributing they booed him and hissed him, and he said 'well if you can do any better you get up and speak,' so I got up and spoke. I tried to advance what I thought was a reasonable argument and when I was done the Station Sergeant Major came and took my name and regimental number, and he asked if we would be prepared to meet with the Commanding Officer. Well, three of us did meet with the Commanding Officer. It wasn't a very nice meeting., It was about midnight, and he asked in a very haughty manner what we wanted, and [whether we would] like him to get us an interview with our Air Officer commander in London. One of the fellows said yes we would. He phoned the Air Officer commander, his name Godwin, as I recall it, and asked if he would entertain a visit from three people. The answer was yes, and they said without retaliation, and they said yes. They asked us, 'do you three want to go?' and we said we'd think we'd better let the people on the station decide that, so there was a meeting the next morning. The three of us were picked to go to London. We meet with the Air Officer commander, and it turned out very well, and we got coverage in the Maple Leaf, which was the Canadian Military Publication. Apparently, there was a report in a number of papers right across Canada because a friend of mine in Vancouver mentioned he'd seen my name. We also got, without being named... the incident referred to in Time Magazine. I think that was probably one of the most memorable experiences that I had. I did not know anything about it at the time, but after the First World War, there was a very similar incident with Canadian Troops in a place called Rhyl in Wales. There was less diplomacy exercised and they machine-gunned the Canadian troops and a number were killed and they were buried in unmarked graves. Those graves today, as I understand it, are still unmarked in Rhyl in Wales .


I have no comment because I don't know what to say to something like that. It is fascinating, but how sad - and those are all those hidden stories that nobody ever hears about.

Mae: The other one was about the food and the time that you challenged the meal that you were given.


Phil: We had a strike because of the food. When I first went over, the complaint was we got nothing but spam, spam, spam and spam. There were so many complaints that they changed our diet and then we got nothing but mutton, mutton, mutton, and that too wore thin. There was a rumor that went around one morning that there would be spam for dinner that day and it was surprising how many people turned out to have a feed of spam because it was a treat after not having it for a long time. However, by and large the situation got worse and the sanitary conditions were poor and they would bring the carcasses of the sheep in and take the meat off them, but they wouldn't get rid of the carcasses and in the month of April the smell got rather high. So there was a strike at noon and no one went to the messhall to eat. There were meetings and they did smarten up - they tried to help things out then they gave quite a bit of attention to salads. I was in the messhall one day with others and the Orderly Officer of the day came in with the Sergeant and the usual cry of any complaints went out and normally no one ever answered such a call. This time I rose and said 'yes sir,' and he came over and said 'what is your complaint?' And I pointed to my salad because there was a huge slug sitting on top of the lettuce. The officer just smiled and said to the Sergeant, 'get this man another plate of salad!'


It probably had more nutrition in it than the spam.

Phil: I went down to Wales on a anti-aircraft course - it was a Royal Air Force Station - where the food was suppose to be poor but it was actually very good food. I mentioned it to an RAF chap and he said 'of course - don't forget it is a small station, and one of the girls in uniform who work in the mess hall is looking for a mate and is a Canadian [who] is considered a good catch. Another story that I think is humorous and, I didn't catch on to this at first, but the kids would come and they would always say to us, and we had heard this story so often, "any gum chum?" They wanted to know if we had gum to give them, and the service men, the American Commonwealth Troops, would give them gum. Yet at this one place that I was at these kids would ask two questions: "any gum chum? And "have you got a sister mister? I couldn't make out why they asked if we had a sister and then it dawned on me they had tried their "any gum chum" question on another air man and the airman would retaliate by saying "have you got a sister mister?" They didn't realize the significance of it so they put the two together and they would turn it around on us all the time.


Those are great stories. You know what else I want to talk about is what you shared with me earlier about the fact that you have been in this area for so long, and the fact that you had to move from your original home because of the Capilano Freeway?

Mae: We moved to the boulevard in 1958, we bought a home privately from personal friends - the owner, the wife taught with Phil at Wabaman. You think when you get a scenic place on the boulevard that that's going to be it for the foreseeable future. We had three children ranging in age from one to five, and it was heavy, heavy work to move. We received a notice in 1967, the centennial year, right at the beginning of the year, that the city was expropriating our house because of the freeway and we had to be out in two months. Now fortunately we had clear title to the property, and they were going to give us market value So Phil, and Ivor Dent who was on city council and who lived on the south side and was being affected on that end of the freeway, they went through and traced the three routes and found out that basically the number of houses and businesses to be taken out by the freeway, whether 50 th , 66 th street or 72 nd street where it ended up, would be more or less the same, so the decision was a political one. Phil asked Ivor what to do and Ivor said 'get an independent assessment and if you find they have assessed it at a higher value then come and talk to us about it.' Well they assessed it at 100 dollars lower than the city was offering and it did end up that the city gave us a little bit towards our moving expenses but basically it was just the value of the house and that was it. Fortunately for us, Phil and our son, Jim, were out one day and noticed this for sale sign. In those days houses on the boulevard didn't have for sale signs out - they were sold by word of mouth because there just weren't that many being sold along the boulevard. Later you began to see the odd for sale sign because of the mortgages involved and the changes in peoples' circumstances. After negotiations we ended up buying this house, and because we had cash for the other one it gave some leverage in purchasing this one. It ended up that the two houses were built the same year, 1952, by contractors working for the owners who had used, we believe, the house plan from the same magazine because the two houses were almost identical in design and it meant all our furniture fit. By this time we had six children ranging down to one year of age, and it was a big ordeal to make the move.


Phil: Then we found out what was causing the trouble, and we didn't have any more children.


It was about time after six - I only had three and figured it out.

Mae: This boulevard was originally the Indian Trail that followed the top of the riverbank. The two houses that were built first were the McGrath and Holegate homes in 1910. The road was paved to the corner of 53rd Street in 1914, and there was a streetcar line - the old white streetcar that ran over the High Level Bridge came out to this end and turned a loop at 60 th street. That loop is still there. There was a turn-around loop on 112th Avenue, and that was to service these two homes -- they were more or less in the sticks at that time. Well then the place filled after the World War Two in 1952, and we got the house at that time. We enjoyed it with the hillside for the kids, and Saskatoon bushes on the other side, and we used to play kick-the-can and go sledding over there. One of the things that happened, it's kind of interesting - when you come to a new place the local kids take your kids out and show them the sights around the neighborhood. They took ours kids down to 50 th street, down to the riverbank, and there is an abandoned coalmine just west of that 50 th street walk-bridge now. They collected pieces of coal and picked up a couple of railway spikes from the mine carts and brought them up. I set up the BBQ and put the coal on the BBQ, and burned that instead of briquettes, and that's the first time our kids had ever smelled a coal fire. That was so much a part of the early culture.


Phil: One other thing I was going to mention to you, this is very petty with me: In 1953 we were not out in the Highlands, but on June the 30 th in 1953 a little girl disappeared in the Highlands golf course here. There was a massive search conducted for three or four days - I don't think that there had been a search of that magnitude. Finally it died down. Donna Mason was the girl's name, and no one seems to know what happened. The Baptist Church on 55 th street was used as a command post to prepare lunches for the searchers and so on and so forth. In recent years, a local gentleman, a retired City policeman, Joe Tidridge, was doing research on the history of the Baptist Church and he knew that this church had been used as a command post, and he tried to get some information on the disappearance of the little girl. The City police have no records, the RCMP have no records, and I have often wondered what that was all about. He told me one of the stories - now this is just gossip, a rumor - that the adopted girl and the Mason's were Protestants and the little girl came from a Catholic background, and one of the rumors was that one of the nuns had taken the little girl to place her in a Catholic home and that's why she disappeared. Whether this is true or not I don't know, but there are no police records according to Mr. Tidridge.


Ada Boulavard

Mae: Mrs. McGrath's name was Ada.


Thank you, and those were the original two houses?

Phil and Mae: Yes


Phil: I don't know why McGrath and Holegate are both buried in the Mount Pleasant Cemetery, and their gravestones are the same style.


Mae: That has been converted to a bed and breakfast. Very tasteful, it had the parquet flooring, tapestry walls, and nine bedrooms. Very suitable for a bed and breakfast. When our kids were small an insurance salesman and his wife owned it, and they had nine children - it was the perfect house for them.


Phil: What was his name again, Mae?


Mae: [? Kunkey]


Phil: I think he had the reputation of being a very fine gentleman. He was an insurance salesman. I knew him on the south side slightly during the war, and he sold to an individual who I felt was very high and mighty - he ridiculed [Kunkey] for not maintaining the home when he really maintained it put it in beautiful condition. The only thing is the authorities descended on him because he had absconded with money - I think from the Citadel, one of the cultural organizations, and he got sent to jail.


Mae: The McGrath house was up for sale recently - had been owned for a long time, and gone back to the city for taxes at one stage. And the Ukrainian Catholic Church was the Bishop's residence for a long time. They sold and it needed a lot of refurbishing by this time. This Los Angeles film company had an option on it and I understand that the price was $1,100,000. Then the Alberta government stopped giving grants for films and so they let the option drop, and it was eventually was bought by a couple who specialized in refurbishing old homes, and they bought it for about $850,000 and put a tremendous amount of money and effort into bringing it back up to snuff. They have held an open house a couple of times and invited the local neighbors to come and see what they were doing - they had the first floor done and were not letting people upstairs and so on. They had repainted and reroofed, and done the eavestroughing and so on, and gradually pulled it up into shape. For a long time, people used to rent it for photography for weddings on the grounds. Our son as a photographer did that occasionally, and it got that it was so shabby that he wouldn't take pictures there, so it's nice to see that it is being brought into shape. 1910, it was built.


Do you have any other stories about anything in the whole world that you'd like to share before we finish up?

Mae: Well I can tell you one more about the Fullers. The family came over in 1913. Mrs. Fuller was my grandmother's sister; my grandmother and granddad came over in 1919, Charles and Sally Gander, bringing their six daughters with them. In 1920 or 21 the older brother Billy Fuller established the first Boy Scout Troop in the city. The girls went to him and said 'would you do something for the girls, Billy, please?' He asked 'would you like CGIT or Girl Guides?' and they opted for Girl Guides Company in Edmonton. This was 1921, my mother was 20 and that time the Girl Guide Company leader had to be 21, so another lady was the first leader for the first year and then my mother was leader after that. This is written up in the Girl Guide history book. I was a Girl Guide - I was ten and a half when I went to Girl Guide Camp, and Betty and Peggy Martin were still involved at that time. My mother was a seamstress when she was in her nineties, and had been given Barbie dolls to dress. We went to Girl Guide headquarters and got a catalogue of the uniforms and she dressed the Barbie doll in Girl Guide Leader uniforms. She was invited for many years - they were very proud of her and they invited her to pour tea at the Spring Tea. She was ninety-three or four when they were selling Barbie doll clothes that she had made for the tea table.