"And Now He's Gone Aloft": Schooner Days DCCCLXXIV (874)

by C. H. J. Snider

THEY can talk as they like about Slabsy, that waterfront hero of 90s and, believe me, they do, believe me, enough to fill pages instead of a column, so here is where we draw the line. But he did have his good points. If he tossed future citizens into the Bay like a heathen feeding babies to the crocodiles, he was first in after them if they couldn't scramble out. There was the awful time when two young shavers broke through the rubber ice in the middle of Grenadier Pond. No adult could get them from either side because the ice gave way under their weight, and there was neither raft or boat. Slabsy hurled his 180 pounds against a plank shed of the Grenadier Ice Company and grabbed two long boards before they could fall on the snow. These he slid on the treacherous ice and wriggled himself along on them like a walrus on skis till he reached the youngsters and hauled them aboard. Somehow he navigated back with them on the planks to where the withered bulrushes thinned out at the shoreline the assembled crowd was praying and shouting for the police, fire brigade and the Humane Society medal for the hero.

"Shucks!" was Slabsy's response to this suggestion. "What fer?"

IN THE GYM

Fred Myers, also a graduate of Toronto waterfront of the 1890's, confirms an unsuspected breadth of view in matters of religion on the part of our hero. Generally considered a member of St. Mary's Parish he did not scorn the Presbyterian society of the old Dorset gymnasium on Adelaide street west "nor at St. Andrew's Institute, whichused to function on Nelson street hard by the four "-Ation" Corners of King and Simcoe streets—Salvation, Legislation, Education, Damnation. Those who don't know may guess why so called. The Institute, original home of the Penny Bank, still functions, but the four corners have lost their names though keeping the church.

Fred recalls a hard basketball match in which Slabsy was his opponent. It was in the crowded Institute gym, and every time Slabsy, 30 pounds heavier, threw him into the a wall, a rain of wooden dumb bells and Indian clubs descended upon the pair of them. He was gratified to hear Slabsy mumble, "That kid's got the stuff in him. I giv'im all I got, and he took it all an' kem backfor more."

Mr. Myers contributes a choice collection of pet names of rugged amateurs of the 90s to whom the waterfront, the Institute, and St. Mary's Literary and Athletic Club ministered impartially. These sound much better with their surnames attached, most of them being Irish, but as the late Aid. Bill Stewart of the First Ward remarked when he made a slip and described one of his henchmen as "incapitated," "Don't quote me on that, boys,—his family mightn't like it!"

So for Slabsy's family's sake, and the sake of all families of 50 years ago, we must forego the complete directory of waterfront heroes and mention only a few by their "first" names.. There was "Yellow" Blank, and "Fatty" Dash, "Daddy" Whosis and3 "Gawky" and "Bung" and "Panface," "Pikepole Joe," "Kag Rag," "Patsy", and "Stoney" So-and-so. "Stoney", would be followed by Jackson, of course, just as in the length and breadth of Britain Nobby is the: inseparable penultimate of Clarke, whether the latter reclines on flowery beds of e's or ends with a k, period.

GOOD MAN UPSTAIRS

Slabsy wasn't much of a sailor in some ways, steering a wake that would give a lamprey eel the back ache to follow. But we remember with gratitude even the clean pink shirt he wore, when he and his gang extricated the Wood Duck for us when she was in a jam, through our ignorance, at the foot of Jarvis st. And he was civil about it, too.

Knucker Kelly, of the Dundee, and other masters of three-and-afters and fore-and-afters will confirm that if Slabsy wasn't always perfection at the wheel he was a good hand aloft. No topmast head was too high above the level of the water or the eyes of the last leg of rigging for him to shin up to reeve off signal halliards. The only difficulty was keeping him from tightrope walking the triatic stay without a balancing pole. According to waterfront tradition he had "gilded the cross on St. James Cathedral" when none other dared climb and work 300 feet above the pavement on King st. This overlooked the irrelevant detail that no one could point out where the gilded cross was on St. James but it was true of the iron grey weathervane which still noses to the wind high up in the clouds, and Slabsy was the boy who wasn't scared to paint it to keep it from rusting, even if it was a Prawtestant do-da. He was very tolerant in the matter of religion. Perhaps too latitudinarian.

The late D. A. Carey did a blessed deed for the youth of lower Bathurst st. sixty years ago when he founded the St. Mary's Literary and Athletic Society to take the boys off the street corners. The society started through a Father Matthew temperance meeting being broken up by young hoodlums. Dave suggested this antidote for the devil, and the present splendid club is the result. Slabsy would have done well to stick to it, on the theory that mixed drinks are apt to be muzzy. John Knox, Saint James, Monsignor McCann, Rev. D. J. MacDonell, Dave Carey and Canon Dumoulin were all excellent, but the prescription compounded from them was perhaps too potent for a patient of Slabsy's simple tastes.

Mr. Myers was an eye witness of the redoubtable Slabsy's leap or leaps from the Northern grain elevator. His recollection is that Slabsy first took a running jump from the lower roof of the elevator, about fifty feet above the water, on a bet of $1. The running jump was necessary to shove him clear of the railway siding below. Having collected his wager someone bet a keg of beer that he dasn't jump from the top. He then climbed to the upper storey or cupola of the pagoda-shaped elevator and made his all-time high dive of 70 feet, popped up like a cork, and treated the crowd from his keg.

It was one of the ironies of fate that Slabsy, to whom the heights of elevator cupolas or schooner's main-trucks or flagpole tops were merely seats of ease, should come to his death by a three-foot drop from the tailboard of an express wagon on Yonge st. The last words he spoke were "St. Michael's," as the police ambulance picked him up, his last glimpse of light the sunshine on the great golden cross of St. Michael's Cathedral, across the way from the hospital where the black-gowned coifed sisters gathered, in this battered battling son of the old Esplanade.

ISLAND PAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE EARLY GAY 90's

ONCE, during school vacation, I took a summer job (mother called it "a position") at Hanlan's Point. My concessionaire's racket was a wooden silhouette of John L. Sullivan with the head on a hinge. "Three shots for nickel. Knock his head off and win a stink-eroo." My job was to replace the head and retrieve the baseballs, a comparatively easy task except when some cockeyed guy tossed the balls over the backstop netting.

Incidentally, the concessionaire forgot to pay off at the end of the term. Mother, a trusting soul, said it was just an oversight and that he would send me my money. He never did. However, the job had its compensations. For instance, when I arrived early I could go fishing in the lagoon with Pawnee Bill, the long-haired "cowboy" who operated the shooting gallery next door. Whenever they were not biting, Bill would say: "Kid, the fish have all gone on an excursion to Centre Island." And who was there to doubt the wisdom of Pawnee Bill? Hadn't his trusty Winchester caused lots and lots of pesky Redskins to bite thedust? Bill hailed from 'way out west'—in New Jersey.

Slugging frogs on the sandbar was another island diversion. The chubby legs came out of the smoky driftwood fire underdone but palatable. Who, in those days, ever dreamed that the sandbar would become an island airport?

Daily travel on island ferry was broadening. One got to know the skippers well enough to call them "Cap." Occasionally an invitation to ride in the wheelhouse was extended. You stood right by the door, anyway, ready to take the wheel should anything happen to Cap.

One night a dense fog enshrouded the bay and Brock st. wharf (foot of Spadina) had to be abandoned. "I'll try and make Yonge st. dock for you," said Cap. (There were other passengers aboard, but he was making the trip for my special benefit.) "You lay hold of that whistle cord and when I say 'blow'—you BLOW." To what greater eminence could a 12-year-old rise than to be appointed first mate on the whistle cord of such a leviathan of the deep—the island ferry Luella? I gave it everything. Well, nearly everything, until the fireman stuck his head in the door, "Ease off on that whistle, I'm only showing fifty pounds of steam on the gauge."

"Pay him no heed," said Cap— "b-l-o-w!"

About mid-ocean (beg pardon, middle of the bay), Cap suddenly turned, grasped the cord, and sounded three raucous blasts. The lights of a giant liner appeared dead ahead. Cap threw his helm hard aport. It responded readily, enabling us to just leave room for the paint on the stern of the Niagara liner Chicora.

"If anything happens," said Cap. mopping his brow, "you grab that life preserver overhead."

But nothing happened and then Cap gave me the history of the Chicora. "She was a blockade runner during the American Civil War. After that, they sawed her in two, brought her up the St. Lawrence, nailed her together again and there she is, good as new."

At long last sickly wharf lights struggled out of the gloom, but the sigh of relief was short-lived. Cap rang the "stop" signal and then three for "hard astern." "Geepers" (or a word to that effect), "that's the Church st. coal wharf and you want Yonge st., don't you, son?"

Yeah, ferry-boating in those days had its perils, but that was back in the B.R. period—before radar.

—C. A. CULBERT.

BACK COPIES OF SCHOONER DAYS

George H. Terry, 217 Toronto st.J Barrie, asks: "Is there any way in which a person may secure back copies of Schooner Days?" The answer is yes; recent ones are obtainable through the circulation department of The Telegram, if you know the date you want and we still have them. Older ones may be available in book form soon. Let's have your order.

QUEEN OF THE NIAGARA FLEET in Slabsy's childhood—the old CHICORA

BOARDING THE OLD LUELLA FOR AN ISLAND JUNKET SIXTY YEARS AGO—An Island idyl by ROWLEY MURPHY, ARCA, himself a veteran voyager. With customary historic accuracy, his background sketch of the contemporary Oriole, second in the Royal dynasty of yachts and then new, under her racing clubtopsail of the 1880's.