KAWARTHA LAKES-In the 1940s, the concession lines of Fenelon, Verulam and Somerville Townships were populated by family farms. Just about every farm kept pigs, cattle and chickens. They grew potatoes and kept a vegetable garden. “There wasn’t anyone in the country that didn’t raise their own food.” Living off the fruits of their own labour, there certainly was no shortage of work to be done: “Most nights parents were working until it was time to go to bed. Even for a kid there always seemed to be something to do: chores, working on the farm, bringing in wood and your school work. Often you were getting over the measles, mumps, chicken pox or whatever else you brought home from school. But Saturday night was a special night, to go to town or to a party.”
On Saturday night the farmers came to town as the stores stayed open late, and people visited with friends they otherwise would not have the chance to see—chatting on the street, or around the stove in their favourite store. “You would go to town early in the evening. Gas was fairly scarce at one stage (it was rationed during the Second World War), so you made sure that you got everything when you were in Fenelon. If you wanted something else, you would get it the next weekend. When the Fenelon Theatre came in, it became a real point of interest—there were no other theatres around here. It showed current movies like the Three Stooges and Ma and Pa Kettle.”
“When we got home from Fenelon on Saturday night, we would listen to Hockey Night in Canada on the Radio with Foster Hewitt. We would also listen to country music on the radio. It was battery powered. We got electricity when I was young.”
Every once in a while, one family in the neighbourhood would host a party, which was truly a special occasion. “There would only be a few parties each year, maybe two or three in the fall and two or three more in the spring. Everyone had so much work to do in the summer that there wouldn’t be any parties. You’d be house bound all winter and you’d get sick of putting wood in the stove to stay warm—stoking the stove, taking all the pipes down and cleaning them out so they didn’t take fire.”
By the 1940s, many families had an automobile and homes were starting to be connected to the electrical grid—which gave then new freedoms that would not have been possible in the era of horse and wagon and coal oil lamps. It was a lot of work to care for a team of horses and hitch them up whenever families travelled—and likewise it was laborious to keep the lamps filled, carry them around clean the glass so they produced light. These new conveniences allowed the house parties of the 1940s to be the joyous occasions they were. “I don’t remember any house parties where we had horses—a farmer wouldn’t have anywhere to keep all the horses during the party, if people had brought their teams. All the parties that I remember were in a house where the host had electricity. It would be pretty hard to house party when everyone had to use a lantern—and they were liable to start a fire.”
“The house parties generally started around 8 or 8:30, and would last until 11 or 11:30. Often about 30 or 35 people would attend—kids, parents, the whole works. I’m sure there were some people who never went to dances—they didn’t enjoy it. It would likely be hosted at a different house each time. Stan Smith’s House was a pretty big house, so it was a good one for hosting the party. The dancing would take place in the kitchen or living room, whichever was larger, and the floor would be full of people who were dancing—about ten people would dance at a time, and you would take turns, the others would be sitting and visiting. It was a very social event. Everyone in North Verulam knew what was happening in Baddow and vice versa.”
“There would be four to six people there who could play an instrument. A violin player would play for half an hour, and then another would take a turn. The odd time, someone else would play with a second instrument, like a guitar, banjo, or piano. Very seldom would someone play at all night, they just played for a little while. They played Old Time music—that was the genre of music played well into the 1950s and 1960s. The quality of the playing wasn’t a major concern. You didn’t need to be a professional, if you played you were accepted.”
In the 1940s, the North Verulam and Somerville musicians included fiddlers “George and Bill Schell; Gardie and Doris Gransden; Mary and Gifford Gransden and Geordie Armstrong. Mossom Junkin played the banjo. Fred Watson played the violin, with Thelma Watson on the piano. Just about every house had a piano that someone would chord along on.”
“When people arrived, they would meet, come in and round dancing would start the evening. Over the course of the evening there would be two or three square dances—and it would take about 30 or 40 minutes for each square dance. There would always be a square dance caller there. My dad, Harold Hopkins, called from the time he was 15 or 16 until he was 80. George Armstrong and Jack McGee (worked at Jubb’s Lumber Yard, now MR Flooring) were callers.” Jim followed in his father’s footsteps, and became a square dance caller at Coboconk’s Wonderland Dance Hall when he was 15. “That’s how I paid for my first 1951 truck—calling square dances four nights a week. I was making $25 a week calling square dances. Sometimes, Cedar Villa would phone me at 11 pm, when I was in bed, because they needed me to come down and call. They would give me $50 for half an hour’s work. That was good money for me at that age.”
“A square dance is made up of three sets, with four couples dancing in each. The head couple always stood with their backs to the music. The couple to the right was couple number 2, the one across was couple number 3, and the one to their left was couple number four.” All of the calls assumed that a lady was dancing with a gentlemen and over the course of the square dance the couples would switch, so that each person would dance with all four people of the opposite gender. Three changes, would make a complete set, with the caller announcing each of the moves and practically everyone attending would know what all the calls meant.”
“The music generally had a smooth beat that is easy to dance to. There would be four couples dancing at the same time. When the fiddler started playing, I would start the square dance off by calling “‘All join hands and centre fold,’ all couples would move to the centre and raise their joined hands, then step back. Then I would call ‘Once more for the good of all,’ they would step to the centre again, raise their hands again, and once again step back. I would call ‘Allemande left on the corner.’” Each man would turn and hook left elbows with the lady on his left. Then he would do one half turn round and face his partner. He would meet his partner with his right hand. Then I would call the Grand Change: The couples would be holding right hands. The ladies would go around counterclockwise, while the men moved clockwise. Each would then move in opposite directions in a circle, with the man from one couple meeting the lady from the next by their left hands; then stepping to meet the next with right hands; then stepping to meet the next with left hands; before returning to your partner. Then you would swing your partner, which I would call as ‘Promenade to your Places All.’ When the man met his partner, he would take the lady’s left hand in his left hand, and put his right hand over her shoulder. She would reach up and take his hand to promenade. They would step together in a circle back to their original starting place. Next, I would call what the change would be, which would be a call like ‘Dip and Dive on an Ocean Wave,’ the head couple would dip and dive through the other three couples. Then the second couple would go through the other three couples, then the third, then the fourth. Then all four couples would come back to where they started and I would call the Allemande Left and Grand Change, again.”
“I knew about 22 or 23 difference calls that you would use to call the square dance. These included ‘Dip and Dive on an Ocean Wave;’ ‘Dip for the Oyster, Dive for the Clam;’ ‘Lady ‘Round Lady and the Gent Also;’ ‘the Grapevine Twist;’ ‘Three by Three and the Waltz Saw She;’ ‘Head Couple Down the Centre and There You Divide;’ ‘Place Your Ladies Back to Back;’ and ‘Lady in the Centre and Three Hands ‘Round.”
In between the square dances, couples would round dance. “You knew how to hang onto someone properly, and everyone did the steps much the same. People would waltz and polka to the music, and everyone would know how the steps.” Smile Awhile AKA Till We Meet Again was a popular song that was played at many gatherings, as was Darling Nellie Gray. “You could tell it’s a good song or music because everyone gets up and dances.”
“I remember when I was about six years old, while they were playing and dancing at Stan Smith’s house, Bill Schell just fell off his chair dead. I remember that quite clearly, because I was standing right beside him when he fell off the chair. Then the party was over, just like that.”
“When the dancing ended at 11 or 11:30, everyone would gather for a lunch before they left. The host family would prepare a meal, and everyone else would bring something with them, like sandwiches, cookies, cake or pie. It was all homemade, the produce of their own farms. The pork in the sandwiches would be their own, or ham that they smoked themselves. There would always be egg sandwiches. For beverages there would be tea, coffee and water. Most people drank tea. Yes, people were drinking tea at 11 o’clock at night. Very seldom would there be any alcohol. I’m sure there was the odd one with some alcohol then, but it was not out in the open like it is today.” In the 1940s, many of the municipalities in the area were dry—notable exceptions being Lindsay and Bexley.
Jim’s parents, Harold and Maude Hopkins completed in square dancing at the Royal Winter Fair in the 1950s. “There were other local couples who went to compete, they had applied for a spot in the square dancing competition.”
In the 1940s, neighbourhoods were very close, much like an extended family. “They would have box socials (women would prepare boxed lunches, then auction them off as a fundraiser, often for the local church), quilting, wood sawing, turkey plucking, goose plucking and thrashing bees. There was a strawberry festival at the Baddow United Church. But in the 1950s, the house parities slowed down because dance halls opened. Once there were dance halls, these neighbourhood social rings were no longer the same. Before long, the neighbourhood dances ended.”
Having a car made it convenient for neighbours to gather for a dance party, but they made it even more convenient for hundreds of people to gather at a dance hall for a much larger gathering. At the Wonderland Dance Hall, which was just west of Coboconk, Jim would call square dances for about 25 years. “When you called a square dance there, and there were 600 people there, it would just fill the floor. Everyone knew the calls, and there were couples that came there every Saturday night just to square dance. They would round dance too, but they were dedicated to the square dancing.”
There were dance halls all over the era, including Cedar Villa (on Balsam Lake near Rosedale), Fenelon Falls’ Cameo (which was ballroom dancing), the Embassy in Lindsay (near the present day shopping Plaza that includes Food Basics, Canadian Tire and Your Dollar Store with More), Edgewater in Bobcaygeon, the Greenhurst Dance Pavillion (Thurstonia) and the Pig and Whistle (on Highway 36, east of Lindsay). Schools hosted dances for their students, and there were dances at community halls in Burnt River, Norland, Kirkfield, Cameron and Cambray. There were dances above the firehall in Bobcaygeon. I also remember calling at the Bobcaygeon Arena for a dance with Don Messer and the Islanders.” There were dances at the Legion, with bands.
“The music was a step up from what there had been at the house parties. Often, the bands had a drummer, which would not have happened at a house party. At the dance halls there were top notch fiddle players like Oscar Stewart, Tommy Teatro (from Lindsay), a Mr. McNish and Wes Lee.” In the 1950s, new types of music started to become popular, with songs like Pick Me Up on Your Way Down (Harlan Howard/Charlie Walker), Young Love (Sonny James), Cold Cold Heart (Hank Williams), Sixteen Tons (Tennessee Ernie Ford), Since You’ve Been Gone (Clyde McPhatter), Pretty Little Black-Eyed Susie (Guy Mitchell), Blue Moon, Crystal Chandeliers (Charlie Pride) and Lonesome Me (Don Gibson). Hits by Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley became favourites. “Rock ’n’ Roll came in in the late 1950s. By the 1970s, disc jockeys were starting to become common in place of the live music that had once been universal.
At the dance halls, the crowds were much larger, numbering in the hundreds. Between the different dance halls, there would be dances multiple nights a week. “They did not have the same luncheon at the end of the night. At Wonderland, there was a snack bar, where you could buy hotdogs or hamburgers. You had to pay to get into the dance halls—at Wonderland it was one dollar per person. There wasn’t the same spirit where everyone contributed to making an event together, it was a business.”
In 1954, when Jim was in Grade 10, his family got their first television. Initially, it made little difference in their lives, “because there wasn’t much on it.” But as time went on, families started staying home and watching television, rather than getting out and enjoying themselves at the dance halls. By the late 1960s, the crowds were a fraction of what they once were. One by one the dance halls closed.
“Square dancing was popular with the generation that was born in the 1920s and 1930s, or their parents. For people born in the 1940s and 1950s, Rock ‘n’ Roll was popular and not many would learn how to square dance. To be able to square dance well, you have to learn a lot of steps, and if you didn’t grow up learning it, it would be hard to learn all the steps. And once no one knew the steps, it became a forgotten art.”
Later in life, Jim would teach square dancing at public schools in Dunsford and Kirkfield. “The kids loved it. I had it as Phys Ed at lunch hour, teaching Grade 7s and 8s. It took a few sessions get past the awkwardness of holding hands.” To the extent that square dancing is still practiced, it has changed. “Modern square dancing uses less energy, it is a less strenuous way of square dancing that older people got into in the 1980s—they found the traditional ways of dancing too challenging. People were in better physical health because of their farming background—kids worked, parents worked, everybody worked.” The dances were part of the active lives that most people didn’t think twice about. “It was a completely different way of life back then.”
This story is a memory and nobody’s memory is perfect. Sometimes details get a little mixed up, things get forgotten or overlooked, and the perspective is inevitably subjective. If you notice something that not right, have something you would like to tell us, or a memory to share the museum would be happy to hear from you: [email protected]
This story is part of our partnership with Maryboro Lodge, The Fenelon Falls Museum and was written by Glenn Walker.
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Maryboro Lodge Museum
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