Many Pioneers Among Visitors for Home Week,”The Nugget, Aug 9, 1935.

[Transcribed by F. Noël with permission.]

Many Pioneers Among Visitors For Home Week

Former Resident Comes from Wisconsin to Renew Acquaintances

ENTHUSE OVER PROGRESS

The Old Home Week registration office in the Tourist Information Bureau is an interesting place this week as former residents of North Bay make it their headquarters during their return to the city.
Meeting one another, old-timers enjoy interesting chats of the old days when North Bay was nothing more than a spot in a wilderness touched by the C.P.R. main line.
Among the many who have returned after long departures is Patrick Stone, of Tomahawk, Wisconsin, who is visiting in the city during Old Home Week. Mr. Stone left North Bay more than 25 years ago and is spending his holiday renewing acquaintances.
His two sons, Judge P. Stone and John, who accompanied him, have never before seen the city. Mr. Stone is en route to Ottawa to visit Michael Brennan, a former mayor of North Bay, who is ill.” While in the city he is the guest of Dr. E.J. Brennan.

Pioneer Women

“North Bay wasn’t much of a place when I came to it 50 years ago this month,” Mrs. Harry Washburn, an old-time resident of the city and now a resident of Ottawa, reminisced Thursday.
“A month after Mr. Washburn and
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MANY PIONEERS

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I came to North Bay we bought a house at the corner of Cassells and Main streets, and that was out in the bush almost, for those days. There was nothing but a little narrow path, lined with stumps and rocks between our home and the C.P.R. station. I can remember going to St. John’s Anglican Church when Rev. Mr. Gilmour was pastor, and carrying wood and oil to light the fires when we got there. We had a lot of fun in those old days, though.” Mrs Washburn smiled.
Leaving here on the death of her husband about 20 years ago, after 30 years residence in the city, Mrs. Washburn has since made her home in Ottawa.

Absent 22 Years

In 1900 Robert Wallace came to North Bay as a C.P.R. railroader, and although he remained in the city only eight years, Mr. Wallace retains a rich store of memories of the old city. In 1906 with the opening of the Parry Sound branch of the C.P.R. Mr. Wallace moved to Mactier, where he still resides, retired on a pension early in 1935. He is paying his first visit to the city in 22 years, and is the guest of Mr. and Mrs. J.B. Allan, 11 O’Brien street.
A real North Bay native is D.J. Bernard, born 53 years ago in a boarding car in the C.P.R. yards, son of the late Mr. and Mrs. Paul Bernard. Those were the days when the spot on which is now Main street, in front of the Bank of Nova Scotia, was merely a pool of water. Doyle’s and McFarlane’s boarding houses were the principal gathering places for the pioneers, and Rev. Silas Huntington and Rev. Father Bloem were conducting their early missionary labours in the little settlement.
When North Bay’s first fire department was organized, Mr. Bernard was one of the members, and he made the fighting of fires his work in the intervening years. Joining the Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company’s fire department at Kapuskasing shortly after his return from overseas, Mr. Bernard is present chief of that unit. He has been with it 15 years.
Registration in the official registration book since Wednesday included…