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The Seaforth News, 1959-06-04, Page 6We Ali Hove Our Scud Mnments 'While organ music pulsed sub; llnioly through a West of Eng- land village church, Rosemary, the pretty, lair -haired, twenty- two -year-old bride, arrayed in unblemished white, glanced ner- vousl v at the wedding ring in her brid • room's hand„ She saw, to her error, that his hand was peret-'ring and shaking. Then, with e barely audible gasp, she Slid f ntly to the floor uncons- cious The priest, helped by the whit "aced groom and best man, card. •d her into the vestry and sprinh!ed some water over her forehand. When she came to she shivered violently and cried, "I can't ;So through with it! It's so final..,,. Then, gazing at her twenty- eight -year-old bridegroom, a vil- lage grocer's son, she stammered, "Just fancy spending all my life with you!" She giggled hysteri- cally, shot out of the vestry door and ran screaming down the church path, out through the ly eh gate, and into the village high street, with the groom and other members of her wedding party in hot pursuit. She raced everyone to her home, gained the sanctuary of her room, slammed the door and locked herself in. The marriage was never rearfanged. All of us, at some period in our lives, have to face embarras• sing and sometimes painfull, dis- appointments. A Welsh farmer's daughter three times refused offers of marriage in order to continue looking after her widowed aunt "Don't worry, dear," the aunt assured her, "you'll get your re- ward when I'm gone." For eleven years the faithful Dilys toiled, mopped, dusted and cooked 'for her aunt, receiving in return just half a day free each month and ten shillings a week. The aunt, an overbearing, auto- cratic woman, was very fond of a special brand of tea. One afternoon Dilys found, to her dis- may, that she had forgotten to order a new packet. So, as ]t was. early closing day, she borrowed a few teaspoonfuls of another brand from a neighbour. The old lady reacted instantly, with peevish disdain. "This tea's poison," she snapped. "It's not my favourite brand. What have you given me" Dilys then con- fessed. "Very careless of you," said the aunt irritably. "Be sure that it never happens again." The woman brooded over the incid:.it for many months after- warde, Three years later she died, end Dilys, her loyal com- panion and housekeeper, had every reason to expect a suitable financial recompense for her sac- rifices. Imagine her shock when the family solicitor read the will and announced that a total of $50,000 had been left to various chari- ties. Dilys, in acknowledgment of her services, would receive a beggarly $750 and a set of sil- ver apostle spoons to remind her„ as t! a testament, declared, "of her a rrlamented aunt's fa- vourite to and to stir her me- mory over a regrettable in- cident" Q. Is iL proper to repeat a person's name when you are ackn.wledging an introduc- tion? A. Thio is not only proper, but prat :cal, too — because too many prnple fail to remember the name a of persons to whom they are introduced. Repeating the name, as, "How do you do, Mrs. Vence," helps to imprint the nam: in your memory. AT CANNES—The annual film festival at Cannes, France, at heeds many of the movies' lop names. Relaxing at the Riviera resort is actress Dawn Addams. To Thain The Seaway Ile A Way Of Lie In the island city of Valleys field, QUe—the place that water built—one never forgets the St. Lawrence river, TO 27,000' citi- zens the river is a friend, corn- panion, almost' a conscience,. always with them, forever shap- ing treir way of lite. The river hurries down from the Creat Lakes to surround and divide Valleyfield with three ehrnttels. It chuckles under a dozen 'bridges, slips past down- town business blocks and feeds water and hydro -electric power into the city's fast-growing new industries. The river's story is really Valleyfielcl's story in three instalments, To the north of town the river proper tells chapter one. Here it churns over rapids' toward Montreal, 37 miles east. Three hundred years ago French voy- ageurs rested between portages at this point, . before paddling west,. Later a seigneury was here; later • still, habitants laid their little farms against the river's edge; the beginning of a community. In the center of Valleyfield one can read chapter two: Here, part of the St, Lawrence detours through the old Beauharnois canal, symbol of the first transi- tion from agriculture to com- merce. The canal was dug 115 years ago to bypass the rapids and admit the first large lake boats to the west. Valleyfield's first population boom, industries and small hydro -electric devel- opments came after it. South of the city the "new" Beauharnois canal (dug 30 years ago to generate electricity and now, slightly modified, part of the St. Lawrence Seaway) com- pletes the city's girdle of water. This is Valleyfield's unfinished chapter, but one can guess the outcome, The canal puts the city directly on the . ocean vessel route. And, at its terminus 12 miles downstream, it feeds one of the world's largest power plants, -capable of generating two million horsepower. Perhaps in time, industry will extend solidly from Valleyfield to Montreal and 40 miles beyond —a region already nicknamed "North America's Ruhr Valley." Already the river has been good to Valleyfield. Each work- ing day, 9,000 men and women walk, drive or cycle into plants that produce such diverse items as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, textiles, whisky; munitions, can- ned vegetables, flour; metal powders, dyed fabrics, church pews and hockey sticks. Most of the industries have come since World War II. Most carne, at least partly, because of the abundant river water and power, • So far, industry has not des trove$ Valleyfield's old-tvorld charm. The factories are well scattered and the city still has the appearance and lively curi- osity of a small town. In the venerable hotel where a moose - head stares down glassy -eyed from the lobby wall, one asks Madame, behind the formidable desk, "How do I find St. Cecile street?" She gives directions, then asks forthrightly, "And to what place were you going?" Along St. Cecile a voluble waitress inquires over your soup, "Your first time i i Valley- field? Ah! First time!" Then, casually over the meat course, "You are a traveller, M'sieur ?" And finally, with dessert, the question she has wanted to ask all along, "And , ... what firm are you with?" There is still much of the old Quebec in this city. Valleyfield is a man with a lunchbox cycl- ing into a chemical plant and donning a yellow safety helmet, But it is also a black-frocked priest teaching Latin and gen- eral- Arts at the 66 -year-old Seminaire, a college affiliate of the University of Montreal. It is a place where late -mod- el cars meet gingerly on narrow side streets that were built foi horse carts, and where the'so- lemn toll of church bells vie with the shrill hoot of factory whistles. On its outskirts are rows of modern bungalows. In the old quarter, regiments of little multiple -family dwellings stand shouidex to shoulder, with the inevitable second - story porch and the bizarre iron stair- case spiraling down the front of each house. And on all sides are the lim. pid canals, lending an old -coun- try air, giving Valleyfield its nickname "The Venice of Que- bec" and reminding the city of everything it was, is or will be. From the beginning of settle- ment, this water system has gov- erned the community Valley - field's first farmers settled along the St. Lawrence about 1813. That was also the year Col; Charles Michel de Salaberry and his little band of Voltigeurs (in- fantry) helped route an Ameri- can army near Chateauguay river, 10 miles southeast of Val - 1r. i,'ld. Atter the war the community wie knoevn as Parish St. Cecile and the St. Lawrence was its 'highway. A flurry of cc,ndl building turned parish into town and city. Newcomers flocked in during the 1850s with the com- pletion of the first Beau'barnois canal. Canal boats were then ' able tc bypass the rapids; until. thein, there were only narrow ditches which admitted the Mealiest bateaux. Within e0 years." the 'Beauhar- nois itself was obsolete, with the building of. the deeper Soulanges canal on the . St. Lawrence's north shore. (The Soulanges, used for boat traffic ever sinal now is also obsolete as ships use the new Beauharnois 'Seaway route.) But befofe it became a mere picturesque stream, the old Beauharnois brought a paper mill and a textile mill. Both had a profound influence , on the town. The Scottish ownerofthe paper mill gave Valleyfield its name, taken from a paper com- pany in Scotland, In 1874 the'. city was incorporated as "Sala - berry de Valleyfield" in honor of the war hero, but "Salaberry" is dropped in daily usage.• The textile mill, Montreal Cot tons Ltd., was the town for more, than half a century. It came to Valleyfield because of the river, bought out the paper mill and small wooden mill, purchased water .power rights on the St, Lawrence and dug its oivn small canal, parallel to the Beauhar- nois, to drive its waterwheels. Around the canal Montreal Cottons raised a sort of feudal castle: buildings of local lime- stone with turreted towers en- closing water tanks for fire fight- ing. The company owned a "town" of some 250 employee houses, provided garbage collec- tion and street lighting, sold electricity to Valleyfield and kept a farm with registered dairy cattle to provide milk and but- ter for employees. For years Montreal Cottons employed 'most of the local labor force. Even now it is not un- usual to find an "all company" family such as the Leonide Em- onds, Emonds, a lean' balding man with a wide grin, lives in one half of an immaculate little semi-detached frame house on one of the -tiny streets that one can almost' reach across. Recent- ly he retired after 51' years with Montreal Cottons. His father worked for the company about 40' years. His wife once worked ,there too; in fact- Leonide mei her there. Leonide's son, Marcel, and a brother, Eugene; still work .for Montreal Cottons.- ' The company is still Valley - field's largest employer, with 1,700 people turning out finish- ed cloth that goes into name - brand shirts across Canada, and spinning yarns for sweaters and underwear. But the rivez brought other industries to share the skyline with Montreal Cot- ton's stone turrets. Nichols Chemical Company, Which came in to supply acid for - a wartime arsenal (still in Val- leyfield), depends on river water in its manufacture of sulphuric and hydrofluoric acids. Canadian Schenley Ltd., founded in Valley- field in 1945 around a small ex isting distillery, came partly be- cause of the all-important water. "We don't use it to water down the whiskey," grins office mana- ger R. G. Smith, "But we do use large quantities for cooling, in the distilling process." The Duplan Dyeing Company and Merck & Company (pharma- ceutical chemicals) both use con- siderable volumes of water. So does one - of thenewest indus- tries, the Davison Chemical Com- pany, which built a $6 million silica alumina catalyst plant here in 1957, Canada's first In petro- leum refineries silica alumina catalyst, a fine white powder. is used in the "cracking" process which increases the yield of high octane gasoline. Davison, affiliated with W. R. Grace and Company in the United States, decided to build the plant to supply the growing demand in Canada for cracking catalyst. Imperial agreed to take all the silica alumina catalyst required for its refineries across Canada from the new plant, and is its main customer. Thus a new Ca• nadian industry was born—sup• planting imported catalyst, sew ing Canadian dollars and prn• viding local employment. There remained fox Davidson tete matter of a suitable site l as in so many other phase:, c alleyfield's development, the ' T.^.wrence was a deciding fat. i "e looked at' a Lot al iota - i' " says plant manager Bill •:3, a pleasant American with u crew cul. "We had to be r the major centres—Toronto encs Montreal. We wanted to be n :er• sources of our ingrediehtr and near a good labor supply And the needed plenty of water." Vetleyfield measured up ad- mirably on all counts, The river level is almost constant the year round. The water is clear and soft ' companies pump it divot l'v I'r,'o their plant. Others. incli''in.': Davison, buy it from the city, which pumps am average of Fin Iiiallen gallons a clay fel dote:eti- end industrial use. A plant can buy water for as little CASTRO AT THE HOSPITAL — Cuban leader Fidel Castro appears in a Havana hospital operating room where doctors were fighting to save the life of his son, Fidel, Jr:, 9, who was injured in an auto crash. CASTRO'S SON HURT — Fidel Castro Jr., 9 -year-old son of the. Cuban leader, is being treated 'for injuries received in a Havana auto accident, The boy suffered chest, abdomen and arm injuries. as five cents per thousand gal- - Ions, depending on the volume used. The Davison plant set off a chain reaction of business in • Valleyfield. It gave the existing • Nichols Chemical. another market for sulphuric acid. It caused Na- tional Silicates' Ltd. to build g Valleyfield plant expressly to supply Davison with sodium sili- cate.. And Davison adds a $350,000 annual payroll to the community and gives employment to 83 local people. Most of the employees had -pre- vious industrial experience and manager Bill Davis calls them "the best workers. I've seen any- where. They're less sophisticated in their attitude to work. They take pride in the job; it's not just a living to them. They keep this place spotless and you never have to tell them to do it." Later, in the plant, he illus- trated his point. One man was hosing the floor. Another was wielding a broom as though his life depended on it. A third was painting and polishing a row of already spotless green and yel- low motors. "See?" said Davis. "That man's job is servicing electric motors but it doesn't take up all his time. So instead of stretching out the job, he's always cleaning and painting. And nobody asked him!" In such fundamental things— the belief in an honest day's work, the less sophisticated forms of recreation, and the adherence to a faith—Valleyfield is un- changed by the machine age. As centre of a Roman Catholic dio- cese and site of the bishop's palace it is perhaps even more devout than the average Quebec town. Canada's sixth cardinal, Paul Emile Leger, was born here and later served as vicar general for seven years... There are four Catholic churches (and also four Protestant) plus the cathedral, serene and huge on the quiet Rue de l'Eglise, its twin spires bathed in floodlight. In Valleyfield also is the Villa Sancta Maria, a religious retreat Tor women and girls. And behind high walls an the north side of:. town one sometimes glimpses the brown -and -black habits of the Sisters of Clarisse. This 57 -year- old convent is one of five (others are in Sherbrooke and Riviare du Loup, Que., Tokyo and Lourdes) Here, 35 cloistered nuns live in a world far removed from Val- leyfield. Seven hours of their day are devoted to prayer and 61 to 'manual labor. Even their seven hours of sleep are broken: they retire at 8 p.m., rise at midnight for two hours of devotions, and rise again at 5 a.m. for their daily xoutine. They depend on -volun- tary gifts and once, the story goes, lived for years without salt, until someone .thought of donat- ing it. Outside the walls of church and convent the Valleyfielder -- even even in leisure time — is en- grossed with his river. He swims, boats end water-skis with the Club Nautique. He sits in Sauve Park, a finger of green that pokes .into Baie St. Francois, and dab- bles a line for perch or listens to martial music by the 45 blue - clad bandsmen of the Union. Musicale. For two days each July—again, thanks to the river—he joins. 50,000 others in watching one of Canada's best -attended regattas Baie St. Francois loops into the heart of -town, making a natural amphitheatre. While onlookers line the banks on three sides, as many as 200 speedboats from many states and provinces com- pete for trophies and cash, When the canals turn to ice, every small boy dons skates and a Canadians' sweater, and every father becomes a hockey fan. For 10 memorable years Valleyfield .had its own professional team, the Braves. In 1951 when the Braves, coached by Toe Blake (now coach of Montreal Cana - diens) won the Alexander Cup, 250 Valleyfielders travelled 320 miles to Toronto for the final playoff game. To make it an all -Valleyfield feat, the champions used sticks manufactured by the local Bel- ler'ivc industries Ltd., which, turns out some 400,000 sticks p . Year; Ie also makes dwell pews, A co-owner of the eornpaiay is Albert "Battleship" Leduc, a lo- cal heso who played defense for Montreal in the days of Howie Morenz, The financial burden of main- taining professional hockey flu- ally proved too much for Valley- field. But no matter—one can still huddle over the TV on Sat- urday nights and cheer the in- comparable Canadiens. Indeed, even in the Braves' hey -day, the fans' loyalty ,sometimes wavered. "The Braves never played on - Saturday night 7tnd they had to stop the Wednesday night games," explains Jean-Claude Lefebvre, editor -manager of the local weekly, La Gazette. "On those nights, you see, everyone watches the Plouffes or the Ca- nadiens on TV." Lefebvre, with his excellent English, typifies Valleyfield's trend to the second language. The brothers Andre and Jean- Pierre Wallet, editors of the 81 - year -old French weekly Le Pro- gres, are also bilingual. An ,Eng- lish weekly, the St. Lawrence Sun, first appeared in the ]3eats- harnois - ValleyfieId 'district in 1954. Most local businessmen now speak two languages. Meetings of the local Rotary are a conver- sational jumble; French-Canadl`- ans practising their English and vice -versa, The lilting French is still the first language and the Valley - fielder is not relinquishing his identity, He is merely trying to accommodate the newcomers. Managers of the dew plants are impressed and even astonished by the co-operation of church and, civic leaders. The church is glad to see industries that will keep young people at work near the home parish. The city has spruc- ed up streets end expancled ser- vices. In the case of Davison Chemical the city took on the tedious task of obtaining title to 30 acres of land, and offered it to the company in one neat peck - age. Mayor Louis Quevillon, s .tall and earnest market gardener at .1 greenhouse operator, tells vi tors, "If you see anything , ou do not like in our town—:n,y- thing—please tell us." The younger of Valleyticid's two bishops, Bishop Percival Caza, a straight-backed man wit' - iron -grey hair, was born in ,tae nearby farm community of St. Anicet. He has seen both the old and the new VaP.eyneld. "There was a time when we in Quebec—yes, in the Church, too —liked to say that our people should hold to agriculture" he says. "But in those times there was little else but farming. Times are changing. Oh yes, I am wholeheartedly in favor of in- dustry. I hope we see more." With the Seaway, Valleyfield may indeed see more. Ample land and water is available. Several lots along. the new canal are re- served for wharves big enough to berth ocean-going vessels. In late 1958 the city was buzzing with rumors that one large in- dustry had already agreed to move in. An excited restaurateur along the Rue du Marche summed up the gossip one night, rapidly sketching the new Beauharnois canal on a serviette as he spoke. "We see the big cars with chauffeurs around town," he said with a knowing wink. "They say this large company will move in . right here . . . along the canal," He studied his crude map. In- stinctively he had shown the canal and the St. Lawrence sys- tem as the key to his city's hopes. And indeed in this, as in all things, the river is king in Val- leyfield. "They say maybe three, four thousand people come in with this factory," he murmured "Af- ter that, who knows? We can dream, eh . .? —From IM- PERIAL OIL REVIEW. DENYING THE RUMOUR — In San Francisco, Teamster President James Hoffa called a press conference in his .hotel room tq deny he was u rging a lotion -wide strike if Congress applies anti-trust lows to unions. Hs claimed to have be en misquoted by a reporter in Brownsville, Texas.