old Galt Terriers baseball club in the 1930s,” George says, “and the only performance-enhancing drug they ingested was called ‘beer,’ and they never ingested it before or during a game, only after, usually on the bus.” This might explain why some of their post-game performances exceeded anything they did on the playing field.
George Brown recounts the time that Dave Johnson, who claimed to be a pitcher, humiliated the team by bombing out in Hamilton. Johnson, who pitched the ball the way he did the dice, ran an illegal gambling den under a grocery store on Dickson Street right across the road from the Galt Police Station. He was so bad in Hamilton that when the Terriers returned to Galt they stopped the bus at Soper Park so that four of the players could throw him into the creek above the dam. They then drove off and left him to soak.
One time in St. Thomas the Terriers’ coach, “Bush” McWhirter, who never used or needed performance-enhancing drugs at any time, got into such a row with the umpire that he was ordered off the field. He kept shouting from the stands, however, until two policemen carried him out of the park. The team, which had lost, picked him up at the courthouse on the way home.
On the bus McWhirter reviewed the game at the top of his lungs, ticking off all the umpire’s bad calls and stolen-base tag-outs. The players, fired up by McWhirter and a case of beer, began to boast about how fast they could run. Before the bus reached Paris they were running the bases in the aisle. At the south end of the Paris main street, by the cenotaph, McWhirter ordered the bus to stop. He declared there would be a race to see who was the fastest man on the team. It was 8:00 p.m. on a hot Saturday, and the street was crowded with pedestrians. Because of the heat the players had stripped down to their shorts. Young George Brown, who was the Terriers’ bat boy, was in constant fear that the whole team was about to be arrested, so he hid in the back of the bus.
“Eight or nine guys piled out,” George said, “and when McWhirter hollered, ‘Go,’ they streaked through the traffic a full block to the Arlington Hotel with the bus in pursuit.” As he recalls, George Heggie won the race. Boyd Shewan was a close second.
I can’t imagine Boyd Shewan running up the Paris main street in his underwear, especially since he became my morally rematrixed drill sergeant principal at Central School in Galt and would lecture the boys against peeing behind the trees in the playground.
Before he married Marjorie Dykeman, George Brown settled down to run a cycle shop and developed into a tempestuous athlete on the ball field and ice rink. His goaltending on the ice might have landed him in the National Hockey League today. George says he brought his temper under control by learning to play the violin. His brother, Dave, a Galt firefighter, was musical, too, and sang so that he caused people to cry. George gave up the violin one night when he smashed it over a friend’s head while watching a Toronto Maple Leafs–Boston Bruins hockey game on television. No telling when he’ll give up beer.
Back in those golden days no one ever got arrested for running down main street in their underwear. Now you can get arrested for carrying a cream pie within l00 yards of the prime minister.
21 George Recalls Scott’s Opera House
When George Brown’s violin was in for repair, he found peace and diversion at Scott’s Opera House. The flaking brown playbills of Scott’s Opera House in the archives at Galt City Hall reveal there was indeed entertainment before television. Dated from 1903 to 1918, the playbills are loaded with famous stage names that make one swoon with nostalgia. Who can forget Mortimer Ellingham, Adelaide Eaton Colton, and Lonnie Lorrimer Deanne? And how about Mack Sennett, Bessie Smith, Billie Burke, and Sophie Tucker? Mack Sennett played a minor role in the musical comedy Wang, but later became Hollywood’s king of slapstick and creator of the Keystone Kops.
George says he went to the movies whenever he wasn’t playing hockey. He saw his first movie at Scott’s. It was called Wings, not quite silent because a man behind the screen reproduced the sound of airplanes with a vacuum cleaner. George played goal in a tough intercounty league and once punched out Howie Meeker, which was directly responsible for Meeker’s lifelong crusade against violence on the ice. But that’s another story.
Maude Adams, the leading lady in American theatre, played Scott’s in the role she immortalized in Peter Pan, flying over the audience suspended in a harness hooked to an intricate network of wires. Special effects rivalled anything you might see onstage today. After the performance of Queen Zephra in 1903, the stage was showered with 40,000 yards of serpentine confetti of every colour.
And there was suspense. A note in heavy type on the playbill of That Imprudent Young Couple warns: “Owing to the very unusual and unconventional ending of the third act, it is desirous that the audience remain seated until the descent of the curtain.” Management didn’t want a riot. The titles of many of the productions, not yet controversial in 1903, would surely cause homophobes to picket with bullhorns today: The Gay Mr. Goldstein, The Gay Musician, The Fairies of Ireland, When Women Love, and Mutt and Jeff’s Wedding. Scott’s was way ahead of its time.
Playbill advertisements for local businesses didn’t waste words: “Smith Can Press Your Clothes Right.” This ad appeared unchanged from 1903 to 1908 when Smith disappeared. The Imperial Hotel on Water Street rented rooms for $1.50 to $2 a day and offered “free sample rooms,” possibly code for something that led to the hotel burning down.
Stage equipment suppliers advertised their wares, too. A note in the playbill for Over Niagara Falls in all versions A, B, and C reads: “Boats supplied by King Folding Canvas Boat Co. of Kalamazoo, Mich.” Another ad reads: “Pistols used in Within the Law supplied by Maxim Silent Firearms Co. of Hartford, Conn.” The whole back page of a 1904 playbill carries an invitation for anyone who can make it to the wedding of Mary Ellen Carruthers and James Robertson and the reception in Glen Morris, June 1, Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. For every performance of Ten Nights in a Bar Room, a lucky ticket holder won a ton of coal.
The variety of entertainment was unlimited. Right after the great Ed Hoyt (who can forget Ed?) did Hamlet, Joseph Sheehan, America’s greatest tenor, starred in Salome with a cast of fifty. Next came the Tzigani Troupe of acrobats accompanied by “the world’s greatest singing chorus.” Clarence Bennett, as Native chief Tabywana in The Squawman, spoke entirely in the Ute language under the tutelage of Baco White of the Ute reservation. The audience, until informed of this, just thought he had a speech impediment. The renowned hypnotist Sevengala carried a special note in his program: “Persons who cannot be hypnotized … idiots and lunatics (except in special cases), children under the age of three and persons under the influence of alcohol.” It had to do with their attention span.
Local talent performed at Scott’s, too. The YMCA annually staged a Grand Gymnastic Exhibition, including stunts on a real horse, a ladies’ physical culture and Morris dancing demonstration, and Sebastapol playing on a guitar. The Dumfries Foundry Benefit Society held a concert and minstrel show after which A.E. Williams, year after year, played “The Death of Nelson” on the trombone.
A wealthy cattle drover named Scott built the opera house in 1889 because he believed the district could do with a bit of class. Scott made the ushers and orchestra members wear tuxedos and stiff white shirts, and every playbill carried the warning: “The by-law against spitting on the floor of any public building will be strictly enforced in this theatre.”
With the Great Depression ending and World War II looming, five girls who worked at Dominion Woollens in Hespeler decided to have a long-deserved fling. Ethel, Margaret, and Isabella Wilson, daughters
