The Zaluskis – 45 Sandown St
From Eleanor (Zaluski) Leemet
My Mom and Dad, Peter and Katherine Zaluski moved from Sudbury, Ontario in 1939 and purchased our Wartime home shortly after. The address is 45 Sandown St. It is on the corner of Carleton St. and Sandown. The house was always hard to find as it faced Carleton St. My niece Kerri Zaluski lives there now. She purchased the home after my parents passed away in 1999 and 2003. My parents lived in their home for 63 years and the house changed in appearance year by year.
I was born in Sudbury, but my two brothers, Roy and Allan Zaluski were born in St. Catharines. My Mom and Dad actually rented out ”one” bedroom of the tiny three bedroom house which helped subsidise the mortgage on the house. Our family of five slept in the other two bedrooms. I don’t remember it being crowded. My mother worked everyday in the ammunition factory making bullets (some of which we still have), during the war.
The windows were covered with green pull down blinds once the lights went on at night. I also remember the tokens we used to buy groceries from the corner store. The Szymanski’s were the owners of the store. They also owned a farm behind the store across the street from us on the corner of Wood St. and Carleton St. My Mom used to work there as well packing fruit. As children we would hide in the fruit trees and eat the plums, peaches and pears that were grown there. During the war, our neighbours would trade tokens with each other, depending on what they used up first. I remember going up the street to trade tokens for sugar. Mr. Szymanski would also give credit on groceries. We would have to pay up by the end of each month. He kept a book and crossed off the names as we paid. The tokens had little holes in the middle of them and some were blue and yellow in colour.
The night the war ended I was woken up and taken out of my bed and brought outside. The people were banging pots and pans and making all noise they could. There was singing and dancing on the streets. The noise was deafening. Everyone was so happy.
Most of the families who lived on Sandown and Doncaster Streets were friendly. As children, we walked into each other’s home without knocking. Doors were never locked. Windows were left open day and night. Even the ones without the little half screens. No one was afraid. People sat on front porches and everyone knew what was going on.
The kids on our street walked to Victoria School on Niagara St. together. We played on the streets after school and in the evenings after supper. We played hop scotch, two balls, roller skated, skipped rope, rode our bikes and played cowboy and Indians until dark. When the lights came on we knew it was time to go home. The streets were not paved. There were ditches in front of our homes. When it rained we put on bathing suites and waded in the ditches. Hoses and pails were used for play during the hot summer months.
My mother would preserve fruit and vegetables and keep them under the house. No one had a basement in those little houses. There was just a crawl space. We found a mother cat under there one day with a litter of kittens.
We had a wood stove in the kitchen and a icebox for our food. There were coal bins by every back door. The coal man would come and deliver coal. The ice man would deliver ice, with a horse drawn wagon. We would follow and eat the ice chips, as he chipped apart the huge blocks of ice with an ice pick from the wagon. The milk man came every morning. The horse was smart enough to stop at every home. The milk man would just carry the bottles to each doorstep and the horse would move on. Empty milk bottles would be left to be replaced with full bottles. In the winter the cream would rise out of the top of the bottles. I still have a paper bottle stopper.
All the houses looked the same and we all had a back shed. Our shed stored wood for the kitchen stove. We also had a heater in the living room to heat the house in the winter. During the winter months clothes would be hung around the heater to dry when the washing was taken off the clothes line outside My mother didn’t have a washing machine for quite awhile, so the washing was done in the bathtub with a wash board. In the summer clothes were hung on a clothes line outside. Mondays were wash days and every housewife had clothes hanging on the line.
Dad’s went to work and came home and drank beer on the front porches.
This was life during the war years.