Not long ago I came across mention online of Larry Hotti (sometimes spelled Hottie), who built several airplanes in Sudbury, Ontario in the 1930s, and even designed a biplane (two copies of which he built, the second using parts from the damaged first). There was even a Sudbury Flying Club, of which Hotti was a member. Very little of this is posted online in places one can readily link to, but you can find reference to the biplane here, and a photo of one of his constructions, built in the garage of a house on Regent Street, here.
At the time, Sudbury was a fairly remote but substantial city. You pretty well had to get there by train or float/skiplane, and Canada's arguably first airline was based there in that era, so important was aviation in northern Ontario. I didn't learn as much about Mr. Hotti and the Sudbury Flying Club as I'd hoped, and I think that will require some deeper investigation into the local library's holdings of the Sudbury Star and perhaps the Inco Triangle. (The latter mentions the club in the description of a horrifying incident on the last page of the November 1938 edition.)
But the search did lead me to a collection of photos from that era, originally taken for the Sudbury Star (and sometimes republished elsewhere). So while I wait to learn more about the flying club, here are a selection of images from a bustling mining city, some 400 km north of Toronto, in the late 1930s and early 1940s. (Italicised text is from the image captions in the archives; each image is hyperlinked to its source in the archive.)
Albert Vaillancourt on a sled being pulled by two seven month old moose named Moose (left) and Silver (right) at his farm near Chelmsford, Ontario while Vaillancourt's pet fawn named Patou stands nearby.
Chelmsford is a village just outside Sudbury. Inside the impact basin, it's a place where you can eke out an existence as a farmer. How useful moose are as draft animals, I'm not sure, but almost a year later, Albert, Moose, and Silver would be featured in the paper again.
Winnabelle Merrifield operating an Orford locomotive at an International Nickel Company (INCO) mine in Sudbury, Ontario after being awarded $5 by the company for suggesting that the locomotive cabs be lengthened to stop water dripping from overhead bins into the locomotive cars.
I don't know if women like Winnabelle were driving locomotives a few years earlier, or if this was a wartime thing.
Airman Bill Stovin of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF)
Bill here seems to be the classic example of the career trajectory of a skilled young man of his day. A little searching reveals he came to Sudbury to work at CKSO radio, before becoming a radio mechanic in the war, and afterward running radio stations in Belleville (near the big air base) and then near his home town in Saskatchewan, eventually becoming head of the association of broadcasters.
'Miss Sudbury' winner Lillian Ruel standing on a dock at Bell Park in Sudbury, Ontario while holding a bouquet of flowers.
According to the archive entry, Lillian was a stenographer and hairdresser, and "the first place prize was a $100 Victory Bond, the Rotary 'Miss Sudbury' ribbon and a bouquet of roses." The previous year's winner was June Elna Holnuty.
The Admiral Mountbatten Sea Cadet Corps, lead by Lieutenant Spencer Beaver, marching down Elm Street in Sudbury, Ontario to attend a showing of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) film "Corvette K-225."
The Corps is still active in Sudbury - my Air Cadet squadron shared a facility with them. Another image from the same event.
Captain C.E. Read (right) presenting a Sudbury High School cadet with an award at Sudbury Mining and Technical School in Sudbury, Ontario during Captain Read's annual inspection of Sudbury local cadet corps.
One wonders what award this cadet earned, in what I'm pretty sure was a predecessor to the modern, non-school-affiliated, Army Cadet corps.
Lance Corporal Jack Berry of the Canadian Provost Corps (third from left) and Assistant to the District Registrar Catherine Berry (née Catherine Keaney) (third from right), at their wedding reception, which was held at the Inco Employees' Club in Sudbury, Ontario.
I want to know what colour that obviously luxurious wedding dress is. The bride's sister seems to have worn one of the same fabric for the occasion.'
Robert Forsythe (left) and Karl Luoma operating a mechanical mucker underground at the Ontario Nickel Corporation mine at Moose Lake in MacLennan Township.
Maclennan Township abuts the south side of Lake Wanapitei. I wasn't able to find the mine site in the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines GIS system, nor could I find it in McKinnon Township, which contains a Moose Lake.
Delbert Kohlsmith, wearing coveralls and a miner's helmet, standing over a metal scoop bucket full of rock at Creighton Mine in Creighton, Ontario.
Creighton is one of the most important mines in the Sudbury Basin, and one of the deepest in the world. It's still active today.
A street car stopped on Elm Street in Sudbury, Ontario, allowing several passengers to board
Sudbury had several streetcar lines at one time, running through the downtown and all the way out to Copper Cliff. Like most places in North America, they were lost to the rise of automobiles. Even before the streetcars were gone, automobile congestion in the downtown led to the city installing Canada's first parking meters, including in front of, and near, a Chinese restaurant called the Manhattan Grill, known as the "gayest spot in town".
Lockerby school students, Geraldine Whitehead, Norma Johnson and Helen Saikkonen, sitting on a couch and holding a knitted blanket and layette set that they won through a Red Cross raffle held at a dance at Cass Park in Sudbury, Ontario.
I want to know how they shared the prize. And how long it was before any of them had use for the baby clothes.
A group of Wolf Cub Scouts performing a hunting dance during a Cub Scout rally at the Scout Hall on Spruce Street.
I was in the Wolf Cubs, and I even had a little hat like that. I don't remember this particular 'dance', though.
Margaret Watkins holding a 19 inch speckled trout on a hook, which had been caught by her husband, William T. Watkins
From an article titled "Here's One Beauty That Didn't Get Away", which I will assume is referring to the fish. My guess is this was dinner soon afterward.
A baseball game between the Copper Cliff team and the Frood senior team at the baseball field in Copper Cliff, Ontario during Victoria Day celebrations.
Copper Cliff, as can be seen in the photo, is the neighbourhood right beside the nickel smelter.
Roland Boileau and Donald Stager pulling old tires out of Nolan Creek in Sudbury, Ontario, which they later donated to a salvage drive for the war effort
The same week, another group of boys collected scrap metal.
Sudbury district secondary school students, Agatha Moncion, Gaston Lalancette, Anne Lalonde, Jack Newton, Rae Osborne and Ted Flanagan, attending a dance held by the Hi-Y Club at the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA)
Agatha and Gaston, in particular, look to be having a fun time.
Austin Airways airplane 'CF-BDV', fitted with pontoons to land on water, docked at the Austin Airways base on Lake Ramsey
From the archive entry: "Austin Airways airplane 'CF-BDV' was the first airplane of the spring/summer season to fly after the winter skis were changed to pontoons." The plane appears to be a Waco ZQC-6. I know the location well.
The "Gareau Challenge Cup Island Swim" silver trophy.
According to the archive entry, "the trophy was donated by Connie Gareau for an annual swimming race from McCrea's Island to the landing dock at Bell Park". That's a distance of about half a kilometre. The end point is not far from the Austin Airways floatplane base.
The next month, there were more trophies handed out, this time for gardening.
So that's a selection of what Sudbury looked like in the 1930s and 40s, at least as viewed in the local newspaper. For a different, and more recent, look at Sudbury's history, check out the documentary The pINCO Triangle, by Patrick Crowe and Tristan Whiston.
Altadena
2024-03-28