It was Sunday morning brunch in Mabou. I was SO HUNGRY and the tiny diner we were eating in was packed. I felt that the wait was unusually long and started complaining with such comments as, “What…do they need to wait for the hens to lay the eggs?”

Jo-Anne seemed to know everybody in the diner. “Look,” she said. “Here’s Rodney! Rodney, are you going to finish that toast?”

Rodney looked at us rather strangely and indicated that he was done eating.

Jo-Anne said, “Eat Rodney’s toast!”

I replied, “I don’t even know Rodney….I don’t want to eat his toast.”

Jo-Anne knew how to solve that problem. “Rodney…this is Rose. Rose, Rodney. Now you can eat his toast.”

Luckily, my breakfast arrived and saved me from eating a complete stranger’s leftover toast.

After breakfast we went over to an open market. In the gymnasium (?) was a Zamboni machine. Jo-anne insisted we use this as a photo prop and Gillian, Emily and I took a variety of photos on the Zamboni.

Rose, meet Rodney

At some point Jo-Anne said, “That’s whose toast you wouldn’t eat!”

I said, “Why is his name on the Zamboni?”

Jo-Anne said, “because he’s the premier of Nova Scotia!”

Me, “You mean he’s FAMOUS?”

Jo-Anne: “And you could have eaten his toast!”

Hughie, talking about his parents’ home in Inverness: The only job that I ever did, and it would be kind of a crazy job [today] — see, there were sixty-five windows in the house. And there was I forget how many storm windows.

Dave: Sixty-five storm windows!

Hughie: But imagine going up on a ladder. And I did all that.

Dave: This would be like a wood-framed window, as large as the house window.

Bruce: With one big sheet of glass.

Dave: Or it might have grids in it. Probably it did back then. There’d be the panes and you’d have to put them in with glazing compound. But the thing would be the size of the regular window, so it would weigh a ton.

You remember the Brothers’ place in Alfred? We had those kinds of windows, and at the hardware store you’d get a set of nails with a big wide head. And every two nails would have the same number on them, like “17″ or “18.” And you’d put one nail on the window, and one nail on the storm window, because sometimes it wouldn’t fit…. I remember that because this was a real old place.

(The window in the photo is an example of the old-fashioned storm window.)

Hughie: It was a hell of a job one time. We used to take the storm windows down and put them in the garage. My brother John, he went in and he had a target, he put it over there, and he broke twelve.

Bruce: What was he shooting?

Hughie: He was just trying to practice with a rifle. I had to get six panes [of glass] from Cheticamp, from L.D.’s.

Bruce: All the glass that they had! One summer, didn’t you fix windows at home? Like buy a gallon of glazing compound and replace all the glazing in the windows, especially on the side?

Hughie: Yeah, oh, yeah. It was easier on the front, because of the roof on the little verandah. The other ones there, you’d have to get the ladder, the double ladder.

Dave: And the window would be heavy!

Hughie: Ohhhh, yeah.

Bruce: I wouldn’t want to do that.

Hughie: After a while, we started letting a window or two stay up there. That was just as good, because the goddamned place was cold anyway. Even if we had windows and storm windows on every window, it was still cold.

There was Duncan MacNeil, right across the street from us, he came over. Duncan had kind of a queer limp, you know. Going up on the ladder, and my father came home and saw that. He gave me a going over, “Don’t let that man go up that ladder!”

Dave: When did they move into that house?

Hughie: Our house? Wait now… I was about 12 years old.

Dave: So, 1925 or so.

Hughie: Yeah, ’24 was when they moved down there.

Dave: You said one time you didn’t think of that as your house, but wherever they lived before. Where were you before?

Hughie: Oh, where did we live? Do you know where my dad’s store was? Well, right down that row of houses. We lived in one of them. You wondered how in hell they could ever — with my grandmother, somebody else, and a maid, and all those goddamned kids…

Dave: That was MacIsaac Street, was it?

Hughie: No, no. On the other side, right across the street [across Central Avenue]. My grandmother, after my grandfather died, she came back down. She didn’t go to church, you know. She was Catholic, of course. My grandfather, Hughie, he was the Protestant, like my dad.

My grandmother was with us, and we had a maid, and at least seven kids. You’d wonder where in the hell they would all fit.

Just think in the wintertime when you had to go…they had a coal house, and a shithouse. And that’s where you’d go. And every time I think of — Pa would be taking the toilet paper from the store.

One woman wrote to Eaton’s wanting to get toilet paper. And they wrote her back and they said get the catalog and get the number and everything. So she wrote back and said “If I had the catalog, I wouldn’t need it.”

Dave: Was there central heat in the new house?

Hughie: According to what room you where in. Holy Christ, they had a little stove, and out in the kitchen the stove. They didn’t have a furnace, there wasn’t a furnace at that time.

Bruce: That big house wouldn’t have a furnace?

Hughie: We had to get a new one right away — you’d get more heat with a match. With all those windows and no insulation.

I often wondered, tried to figure out after my grandfather died — Grandma came down to live with us. I think it was either six or seven, six kids, and my grandmother, and a maid — in a two bedroom house.

Dave: The maid probably slept in the kitchen.

Hughie: God only knows. I’ll never forget when my grandfather died. My grandmother came out and she stood at the casket, you now, and said the rosary. I don’t think she said it from the time she got married because Grandpa was a real Protestant. And Grandma with no reading or writing. She could talk English and talk Gaelic but that was all.

I don’t know, before we went to sleep they must have given us something so we’d sleep and hung us up on hooks. I don’t know in the name of God — think there were three bedrooms, three small bedrooms.

Dave: So you and Dannie and Roddie and Johnnie…

Hughie: There was myself, and Johnnie, and Danny… and then the girls were Cassie, Mary, Sadie, they were home in the Red Rows.

They must have hung us up on a hook or something. There was nothing but I think it was three bedrooms and a hallway.

My father, he bought that house, the one with all the windows in it, four thousand dollars. Everybody in Inverness thought Pa was a millionaire to pay four thousand dollars for a home.

• Dave, Bruce: two of Hughie Ferguson’s sons
• Hughie Ferguson’s parents: Mattie Ferguson and Sadie MacDougall
• The Brothers’ place: a school in Alfred, Maine, run by the Brothers of Christian Instruction
• “My grandfather, Hughie”: Hugh Ferguson (1856 – 1926), father of Mattie Ferguson
• My grandmother: Catherine MacIsaac (died 1936, aged 90)
• The Red Rows were rows of small, duplex houses in Inverness, most of them originally owned by the coal mine, and most painted red. I was nearly an adult before I learned it was “Red Rows” and not “Red Rose” like the tea. — Dave

For several years I worked for Amtrak, the U.S. rail passenger company. Our offices were at 400 North Capitol Street in Washington DC, just a short walk from the U.S. Capitol.

One day I had a phone call. The caller was very… enthusiastic.

“Hello, Dave! This is Fred Sidecar!”

That wasn’t his name, but that won’t matter much to the story, except that “Fred Sidecar” didn’t mean anything to me.

“Your wife and my wife have worked together for years, and I’ve heard very positive things about you.”

“Nancy Sidecar” (also not her real name) rang the faintest of bells. Finally I recalled that she and my wife had taught CCD classes together at the parish we belonged to. I might have been able to recognize Nancy, but I wouldn’t have wanted to stake a lot of money on it.

That didn’t matter. Fred was off and running. He’d heard I was a successful, respected, and ambitious guy, and just knew I would want to hear about the great opportunity he wanted to tell me about.

Which to me meant only one thing: he was selling Amway products.

He didn’t exactly say that. He asked where I worked (which made me wonder how he got my number) and asked if he could stop by to see me the next day, because it just so happened he’d be in the neighborhood.

I was pretty sure I knew what the pitch would be like, but it was a slow week, so I suggested we meet for lunch at the Dubliner, an Irish pub and restaurant just a block from my office.

And so we did.

The food was good, as it usually was at the Dubliner. The pitch from Fred Sidecar was pretty much a mystery. There was a lot of swamp gas about what a talented guy I was and how he was sure I had many dreams I wanted to accomplish, and how he wanted to share with me an opportunity to help other people accomplish their dreams while I accomplished my own.

This went on in a highly motivational way for at least half an hour.

Finally I said, “Fred, I understand you see me doing all these great things and making a financial success. But it seems to me at some point some goods or services are moving in one direction” — I made a motion with my hands — “and money is moving in the other direction.”

I was pretty sure the money was coming from all these people I’d be “helping,” but I wasn’t sure what they’d be getting for that money.

Fred seemed almost miffed that I would ask, and said that it involved a catalog of “some of the finest merchandise available.” Like microwave ovens and crock pots and hair dryers.

So, it wasn’t exactly Amway, but as I suspected, I’d end up wanting (or needing) to recruit other people to help yet other people achieve their goals (meaning, to sell stuff to others), and somehow I’d get a cut of the action.

I took five minutes or so to try and convince Fred that I really was a person with very little ambition, content to let my family stay in the impoverished state I was condemning them to.

He was pretty disappointed in me.

About that time the waitress brought the check, which she set on the side of the table, close to me and far from Fred. I took out my credit card and put it on top of the check.

Fred made some gesture to pick it up, but I waved him off. It wasn’t that big a deal, and this way I knew I’d clearly be ending the meal and getting out of there.

He made one more effort to convince me to accept the opportunity, but I just kept saying, “I’m sorry, I really don’t think I’m the kind of guy you’re looking for.”

The check came back. I signed the credit card form and peeled off my copy, then started toward the exit.

I looked back to see Fred standing at the table. He’d taken the restaurant check (not the credit card slip) and was tearing off the receipt portion.

In other words, his current business opportunities were so good, he was going to save a receipt from a meal he hadn’t paid for.

That told me all I needed to know about Fred Sidecar and his wonderful opportunities. On the other hand, the lunch probably didn’t come to $20, and I’ve had fun for years telling this story.

The first time I visited Detriot was the summer of 1963 if I recall correctly, when Greet and Hughie bundled me amid all the other children in the station wagon and set off from Cape Breton. This was an adventure for me, including one of my boyhood’s most memorable moments. I was a fierce baseball fan and rooted then, as today, for the Cleveland Indians.

One day while I was in Detroit the Indians were in the city to face the Tigers in a doubleheader. I was given enough for a fare and directions on the bus (the city was that safe then) and found my way to Tiger Stadium where I watched Rocky Colavito and Al Kaline change place in centerfield in the slow ballet that is baseball.

But another sports event stands out as well. When I left Cape Breton as a green teen for the streets of Detroit I couldn’t imagine what summer heat actually was. It was terrible, day and night of unrelenting 90 to 100 degrees.

A street away from Cherrylawn I discovered a bowling alley, my first experience with air conditioning. I would go there almost daily and roll balls down the lane. Before this, I had never been in a bowling alley or picked up a ball.

As the days passed with me bowling against myself (all the Ferguson kids seemed to have jobs) I imagined I was getting pretty good at the game.

One day, when I was the only bowler, a taxi driver came in, guiding a man on his arm. He spoke with the manager who then came down to talk to me. The taxi passenger was a blind man who wanted to bowl but needed to bowl with someone who could tell him the story of the pins after each throw. Would I mind if he bowled with me?

I said yes, but was already embarrassed for this poor handicapped man and decided that no matter how many gutter balls he threw I would tell him they were strikes.
He sat beside me then , opening a sports bag from which he pulled a bunch of aluminum pipes and connected them one to each until he had built a rail. He asked me to set it up in the middle of the gutter line and from there he picked up a ball and gauging his distance from there to his chosen place on the lane fired a ball.

I told him it was a strike because it was.

I told him what pins formed what splits as we played and at the end of our first game he had beaten me by 100 points. It didn’t get any easier after that although I nobly refused to lie when he hit a strike by telling him his ball went in the gutter.

The blind bowler never returned while I was there that summer, but he left a lasting impression that I still try to evoke when meeting with or dealing with other people with disabilities.

Greet: Greet Macdonald, Frank’s aunt
Hughie: Greet’s husband, Hughie Ferguson

In the spring of 1967 I arrived in Detriot, a hungry relative who had failed to find work in Vancouver, barely worked in Sudbury and had the idea that I would make my way to Boston. I only had enough money to get to Detroit but I had this aunt and uncle, eh?

So I welcomed into Hughie and Greet’s, offered a bed and since I was looking for work to earn my fare to Boston Hughie offered to put me to work painting his house. We agreed on a price and I undertook the contract.

Unfortunately for Hughie, I also discovered that summer all-night television, so most nights I was sneaking off to bed just as he was rising to go to work. Several hours later, Greet would wake me with, “Hughie will home in half an hour,” and I would scurry to the garage, get the ladder and paint and be high on the side of the house by the time he got home.

The flaw in my deception was that I would be high on the same wall of the house just about every day, and Hughie would count the singles that had been freshly painted. Five or six.

The spring moved along and after two or three weeks one side of the house was almost finished. Eventually, probably fearing that I was there for the winter, Hughie presented me with an air ticket to Boston and a few dollars to feed myself when I got there. I might even have promised to come back and finish the house, but I think he asked me to promise that I would not come back to finish the house because he wanted it painted, all four sides in the same decade.

This was just one of a number of trips I made to Detroit as guest of Hughie and Greet, but on none of those other trips was I ever asked to take up a task.

Hughie: Hughie Ferguson
Greet: Greet Macdonald, Hughie’s wife

Hughie talked a few weeks ago with a former boss from his time working at Chrysler’s Warren Stamping Plant on Mound Road in Warren, Michigan.

It reminded me…this was quite a while ago. It was on my birthday, so I decided that I wouldn’t work Saturday and Sunday, you know. One of those days was my birthday.

Saturday, they were working — we used to work seven days. “Oh, Fergie must be sick or something. He didn’t clock in. Didn’t clock in yesterday or today.” [So Al and another supervisor put in the paperwork.]
On Monday, when I came back to work, I got my pay, and here I had a full week, seven days.

So I said to Al, “God, I don’t know. I’ll have to go up and tell them that they made a mistake.”

He said, “You better not — there’ll be three of us on Mound Road.” They would have fired the three of us, thinking it was all a put-up.

When Al came in [the other week], he reminded me of that.

My cousin Frank once wrote about a report issued in Scotland that projected that in the future everyone in the world would be named Macdonald or descended from a Macdonald. “In other words,” Frank wrote, “they’re predicting the best of all possible worlds.”

That world just came much closer.

On my mother’s side of the family, the Macdonald connection is clear. And if anyone were uncertain about it, the spirit of Jack D would likely appear to set things straight.

On my father’s side of the family, though, I’d known about MacDougals and MacIsaacs and MacFarlanes. Then, just a few weeks ago, I came across a family genealogy posted by a Donald MacFarlane.

The extensive family tree he’s created shows, first of all, that he has a connection to Mrs. Mattie (born around 1890). Her parents were John MacDougall (born around 1870) and Catherine MacLennan (born around 1870).

And Catherine’s parents were Roderick MacLennan (born around 1850) and Catherine MacFarlane (born before 1847).

The significance is that Catherine MacFarlane (Hughie Ferguson’s great-grandmother), according to Donald MacFarlane’s website, is a direct descendant of Ranald MacDonald (1352 – 1389), the son of John MacDonald, Lord of the Isles. Ranald is the namesake of the MacDonalds of Clanranald.

Ranald’s father was John, Lord of the Isles; John’s father was Angus Og MacDonald; Angus Og’s father was Angus Mor MacDonald.

And Angus Mor’s father was Donald, son of Ranald, who in turn was the son of Sorley (or Somhairle, or Somerled). Even that Trump guy would have to concede that this is THE Donald of all Donalds.

That Donald (1190 – 1269) is the namesake for all of Clan Donald.

If all this research is right — and you can’t always be sure they kept meticulous records three hundred years before Columbus — then it’s 21 generations from the father of all MacDonalds to Mrs. Mattie.

Frank: Frank Macdonald, son of Freddie Macdonald and Catherine Gillies
My mother: Greet Macdonald, daughter of Jack D Macdonald and Annie Belle Rankin
Mattie: Mattie Ferguson, father of Hughie Ferguson
Mrs. Mattie: Sarah MacDougall, wife of Mattie Ferguson
John MacDougall: father of Sarah MacDougall
Catherine MacLennan: wife of John MacDougall, mother of Sarah MacDougall
Roderick MacLennan: father of Catherine MacLennan
Catherine MacFarlane: wife of Roderick MacLennan, mother of Catherine MacLennan

To visit Donald MacFarlane’s genealogy site, click here.

I moved from Detroit to Washington DC in 1977. For many years afterward my parents would visit us from time to time.

During one trip, in 1983, Dad said one day that he’d like to go into Washington with me (I was going into work part of the time while they were visiting). He said he wanted to do some sightseeing.

I thought this was a bit odd, because I never thought of him as much of a sightseer. I asked if there was anything in particular he wanted to see. He said yes: the Canadian embassy.

That wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it was fine with me. At that time, the embassy was on a part of Massachusetts Avenue that the tour guides call “Embassy Row.” I gave him some directions as well as the address and phone number of my office near Union Station. Cabs in D.C. are fairly inexpensive, so I told him that he could flag down a cab to 400 North Capitol Street any time he felt like it.

As I remember, I dropped him off at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, just off Dupont Circle and not that far from the embassy:

Here’s what I found out later about his sightseeing:

He did walk from the cathedral up to the Embassy. When he got there, he went up to the Mountie on duty. (At American embassies, security is provided by the United States Marines. At Canadian embassies, it’s the Mounted Police.) The Mountie asked if he could help him. Dad said yes, that the Mountie could tell him his regimental number.

(As I understand it, the first Mountie ever would have had a regimental number of 1.)

The man told him the number, which was somewhere around 49,000 or so, and asked why Dad wanted to know.

“Well, my regimental number is 12375.”

The Mountie was impressed — a number that low meant someone who’d been in the force well before 1939. (Dad joined in 1934.) He excused himself and made a phone call.

Within twenty minutes, the Mounties had taken Dad inside the embassy, into their own offices, where he spent the morning having tea and telling stories. In other words, he felt right at home.

They offered to arrange a tour to the FBI, and would not hear of him taking a taxi to come meet me for lunch. Instead, they drove him in an embassy car, and gave him an LP of music from the RCMP band.

I visited Mom and Dad this past July. One of the things he showed me was this notice clipped from the RCMP Quarterly magazine. The date is spring or summer of 1983.

Here’s the text in case you find the image hard to read:

Veterans’ Affairs: Among the recent visitors to the RCMP Liaison Office at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, was Reg. No. 12375, ex-Cst. Hugh J. Ferguson, who dropped in on February 28, 1938, to say hello during a visit to this area. Born on April 1, 1913, ex-Cst. Ferguson joined the Force in 1934, took his training in Regina and his discharge in 1935. Reenlisting in 1941, he served in Halifax until leaving the force in 1946. After two years as Chief of Police at Inverness, Nova Scotia, Hugh worked for Inverness Coal Mines until settling in Detroit, Michigan, in 1951. He retired from Chrysler Corporation in 1976 and resides with his wife and two of their five children in Detroit. His many travels during retirement include trips to three of his children throughout the United States.

• Mom and Dad: Greet Macdonald and Hughie Ferguson, Dave’s parents

One of the things I remember about Inverness was the times we spent on vacation there. Mom and Dad would farm out the five kids to various relatives so that we wouldn’t be such a burden to one family. John would stay with uncle Danny, Art would stay with uncle Roddie, Dave would stay with someone else(?) and Anne Marie would stay with aunt Billie. I spilt my time between aunt Billie’s with mom or with dad at Grandma and Grandpa’s.

As a young child, I was fascinated with the idea that the hot water heater was connected with the stove. Aunt Sadie would be up early to fire up the stove for breakfast. After breakfast, there would be enough hot water to do the dishes, do the laundry and begin to prepare for supper. She would roll out the wringer washer and do the laundry in the kitchen. She would utilize her time during loads to bake the world’s greatest sugar cookies! The laundry would then be hung out on the line. (It was summertime and it wouldn’t take long to dry. During the winter it would be hung in the attic.)

After supper, which would include vegetables, gravy, meat, rolls, and etc., the entire kitchen would be cleaned up and everything put away. Then the hot water would be turned off. Dinner would consist of biscuits, cookies, fruit, cheese and whatever happened to left over.

As a kid, not having to take a bath at the end of a long summer day was something I was not used to.

• Mom and Dad: Hughie Ferguson and Greet Macdonald
• John, Art, Dave, Anne Marie: Hughie and Greet’s kids
• Aunt Billie: Greet’s sister
• Aunt Sadie: Hughie’s sister
  
• Uncle Danny: Hughie’s brother
• Uncle Roddy: Hughie’s brother
• Grandma and Grandpa: Hughie’s parents, Mattie Ferguson and Sadie MacDougall

During the Second World War, Canadian citizens sacrificed much in order to assist and support the many young men and women who were called upon to defend our country. Women left at home soon found themselves filling the void in the workplace. This indeed was the birth of women’s freedom groups.

Life as we knew it changed radically; food was rationed, money was scarce, and ladies’ undergarments sported buttons where elastic once was.

Halifax Harbour, opened year round, was an important and busy port during the war years. Streets were forever filled with servicemen awaiting their departure for overseas. The young women of Halifax became accustomed to the unsolicited attention they received from young servicemen.

One warm afternoon my sisters, Evelyn and Anna, strolled along Halifax’s main thoroughfare. Following closely behind them, were several young sailors making polite asides to one another concerning the demeanour of the young ladies in front of them. The girls, quite aware of the attention they were getting, pretended to ignore it. Occasionally, one of them finding a remark captivating, looked over her shoulder and smiled at the handsome young men while the other looked down her nose.

All was well in heaven and on earth until Evelyn felt the button on her undergarment loosen. The undies fell to her feet. Immediately stepping out of the unmentionables, she astutely retrieved them and with great presence and with a flourish she passed them to her sister saying, “Here!!! Don’t ever let that happen again!!�

Flabbergasted, Anna stood scarlet-faced, stuttering, and stammering… to the great delight of the laughing sailors.

Anna, Evelyn, and Janet Stubbert are daughters of Jack Stubbert and Mary Rankin.

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