< Previous A Most Tragic Fire The early years of the subdivisions were dangerous ones. The First World War was raging in Europe. Some men joined the forces. Women were left alone with the children and had to do all the chores associated with manual housework. As there was no electricity, there were no motorized appliances - everything was done by hand. Every house was heated with a wood and coal stove or Quebec heater. There were a few coal oil stoves around. All lighting was done by the use of oil lamps. I did all my school work and homework by the light of an oil lamp. I can still see about a dozen boys and girls standing on the station platform, each with a lantern to light their fathers home across the muddy fields. At that time there were neither streets nor lights. House fires were frequent (at least one every winter). Stoves overheated [or] oil lamps were knocked over by children. One such fire I remember distinctly. We were all in school in the station house. We were kept in and told nothing, door locked. At a nearby house, Mr. Gregory had gone to work, leaving his wife and four children. Mrs. Gregory was sick in bed. The children, playing downstairs, knocked over an oil lamp, which set fire to the tablecloth. The frightened children ran upstairs to their mother, who couldn't move. All five were overcome by smoke, and the house burned to the ground. None was saved. Electricity Comes to Pinehurst Electricity came to East Greenfield in the early twenties, but there was none on Pinehurst for another ten years. The Montreal Light, Heat & Power Co. said they could not get permission to pass over the M&SC because it was an electric railway with overhead power lines. This was their excuse at the time, but after my father bothered them for half a dozen times at their office at the tramway building on Craig St., they finally said that they had permission to pass a cable under the track and would supply power... if we would guarantee three houses. This we did, and they put a pole on our land to short cut the line to the other two houses (Stockley and Morris). In 1930, I wired our house by running two separate wires through the ceiling from room to room. This wiring [was] still there, fifty years later. Next >
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