Our 8mm Films | Our 1st TV
4 minute Sample of films of my family

Our 8mm Films

1952 - My parents bought a very special lot on Islington Ave north of Dundas St in Etobicoke, west suburb of Toronto and built a 2 storey square redbrick home on it. Special because the lot was/is about 50 feet wide by about 400 feet deep with the Islington Golf Course at the back. A whole bunch of lots the same size border the 3rd fairway.

Our neighbours, Joyce and Lily Medforth,  had an 8mm film movie camera, and shot quite a few rolls of us during the 1950s and early '60s. We went to visit Joyce in a seniors' home in 1992, and she said the films must have gone to the dump.

Joyce passed away in 2001, and at her memorial, those I talked to, knew nothing of the films, assuming too that they were gone.

For 16 years I could not stop hoping to find those films.

Mid 2008 - I was given Joyce's 2001 Church Memorial pamphlet which listed one of her nephews, George Cann, who gave her Eulogy. I began phoning all the George Canns in the Ontario phone directories, and found him in Sarnia, and just in time for me, and others, as it turned out, he and his wife being quite senior and not doing too well by this time.

George led me to another nephew, Bob Elliott, who - miracle of miracles ! - still had some of the old films.

I transferred them to DVD, weeping, and we gathered at Christmas to enjoy our memories that we had not seen since the mid 1960s.

Now I know the pain of lost memories AND the ecstasy of found memories, and I want all the more to continue to help others relive and share and preserve their memories too

Our 8mm Films | Our 1st TV

Our 1st TV

8mm movie-film shown on a big white screen was KING for home movies  from 1935 until the early 1980s ! but comparatively few people had 8mm home movies. Even fewer home movie'ers had 16mm film.

I just recently transferred a 1947 16mm home movie which included a shot of a big sign declaring a "Television" Exhibit at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. It truly was a monumental event. Many 1,000s came to the CNE to witness the history of the birth of 20th Century Television in Canada

My grandfather and his generation declared that TV would never last.

My dad 1st saw Television at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto in 1947, and got the first TV on the block way back in the early 1950s.  Television had been around for some time before that, and Hitler TV had broadcast the first big event, being the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. 1939 was the year Television was first exhibited at the CNE, but, then World War II began, and delayed it's introduction till the late 1940s.

1952 was the year that Public Broadcasting by the CBC began in Canada. We were the first on the block to have a TV in the early 1950s.. I was born in 1950, and cannot remember a day without TV, except at the cottage or camping of course.

I well remember the day my dad brought the 1st TV on the block home and hooked it up in the basement. It was a little boxy thing, no outside casing, so all the innards were exposed and accessible to anyone, very hot, and very dangerous, including the real threat of being electrocuted.

People back then did not put their kids inside safety-bubbles, no helmets, no training wheels. Anything we could climb up, as far as we could, we'd then jump off, or fall off of, to get back down. No anti-bacterial hand washes, we wallowed in and ate a lot of dirt.
Big fun was driving the old rust bucket along 'backwater' dirt roads - underage. No computers or game stations or cell phones or ipods. We used to pretend we had walkie-talkies by using 2 tin cans and a string. Everywhere you went the other guy had to go too, and, what you heard, wasn't via the string. The two kids would be close enough to punch each other when one of us yanked too hard and broke the string. We spent most of our time outdoors, the only rule being, be back in time for supper, or you don't get any. If you didn't show up for breakfast the next morning,

only THEN
somebody might come looking for you.

One customer's old films I transferred, there was footage of the Dad towing his kids and neighbours' kids on toboggans and skis - behind his station wagon on a snow-covered road at their cottage !

When they reached the corner - all the toboggans flipped over and bodies went flying every which way - end of film.

LOL !!!

You'd get arrested for doing that today.

Kids today have no clue what real fun is. I am actually quite depressed by this.

We didn't have portable DVD players to keep us quiet on long car trips. In fact, we were just the opposite. We sang songs and played 'I Spy, with my little eye, something that is red', and counted out-of-province licence plates, and many other games !

Today playing hockey seems to involve zillions of parent hours and big bucks. Way back when we had 2nd hand skates, or 3rd or 4th or older, and a frozen pond or creek, or backyard. We walked there - and back - froze our little tootsies off, and had a ball.

My generation experienced probably the biggest youth rebellion in 2,000 years. We threw off the shackles of 'establishment', and declared ourselves FREE. Today there's different 'politically correct' shackles that are far stronger and more debilitating than anything that existed when we were kids.

Anyways, back to that first TV.

Dad had to attach a bare wire for a TV antenna that he ran up the wall, across the ceiling, thru the foundation, up to the roof, and out in to a tree, the screen was so small you had to put your face right up to it to see anything, but all there was to see was snow, because, nobody local was broadcasting a TV signal that Dad's setup could receive in those days. Dad kept trying different antenna arrangements to catch a TV signal.

I watched that little box for hours every day, for weeks, probably months, before I finally gave up waiting for something to see.

When finally there was a TV signal to watch, it was only the very snowy Broadcaster's Logo, from Buffalo !  not the local CBC in Toronto, which would not 'come in', for 4-8 hours per day, for a very very long time.

That's my dad, always ahead of his time, but nothing to 'show' for it.

Dad was forever replacing vacuum tubes in it, till finally, before there even was something else to watch, the poor little thing blew itself up

and almost burned the house down.

THOSE were the good old days !! - ?
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4 minute (4 meg) sample of my family 1954-1964

hartwell-films-54-64.wmv

The clip looks somewhat motley in places because quality was sacrificed to keep the filesize as low as possible for quick viewing.

In the clip you will first see me in a red hat on an orange pedal-tractor at age 4. Then my older brother Lee with the older lady neighbour, Aunt Lily Medforth, and their dog Puggy. Next comes my younger brother, Dan, just baptized at Anglican St. Georges On-The-Hill. The woman in blue who takes Daniel from the minister is the lady who shot the films, Joyce Medforth. She is joined by our mother, (also) Joyce, in green on the right of the screen. Followed by a short shot of me sitting with my cousin Susan, and our Uncle Bob at the Grandparents' house. Next is our Dad, Doug, pushing me and Dan on the swings while brother Lee swings himself in the background. After that comes Dad and me doing hoola hoops, well, me anyways. Dad never could keep his going. Then me again a few years later, next door for Halloween. I was a fussy kid, still am, and as usual, didn't see anything in the basket I liked. Next you'll see a 2nd storey winter shot of our backyard. We lived on Islington Ave north of Dundas in Etobicoke, a district of west Toronto (Canada). Dad and his brothers built the house in 1952. Islington Ave was a dirt road at that time. We had a 400 foot backyard to play in as well as neighbours' yards, but if that wasn't enough,  there was the 3rd Fairway and all of Islington Golf Course beyond it. During the summertime we constantly got golf balls in the backyards which we'd collect and sell to other golfers, (and sometimes we wouldn't wait for the balls to find our backyards). Then when older we often caddied at the course. Other fun involved hiking around the perimeter; climbing trees; golfing between groups playing the course; playing hide-and-seek; apple, firecracker, and snowball wars, or cowboys and indians, or WW2 allies vs axis; snatching a lemonade dispenser; plus either picking worms at night, or harassing the worm pickers; and later years the odd skinny dipping the pools around the golf course. A miraculous fantasy 'world' to grow up in.  I still keep a golf ball in one of our gardens where we live now as a memory of that, and every spring when the snow melts, I exclaim to everybody - LOOK there's the 1st golf ball of the season - Spring has Sprung !  At the end of that part is me coming down the iced-over golf course hill in a cardboard box. And the next part is our Dad, along with Bill Tenneson, as scout masters, directing a group of young scouts to perform the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Musical Ride, using homemade box-horses, which they later took 'on the road' for awhile. My Dad kept a 16mm film of the show in Buffalo, which got reported in the Toronto Telegram Weekly Magazine. I put that film on to DVD a few years ago as a Christmas gift. My older brother, you'll see, was the shortest and youngest, no doubt via nepotism. A little kid walks across the view, stops, does a little hop, then carries on. That's Dan again. I am after Dan's hop, walking around following the prancing scouts, wearing my cub hat. One part I left out to keep the file viewing time to 4 minutes, was Christmas tea and we'd watched the films with our neighbours, the Medforths, which we did every year. FINALLY, comes all of us in the car towing the old house-trailer out thru our neighbours' (the film shooters) driveway. The story with the song, Hernando's Hideaway, is that we used to sing songs in the car on the way to the summer cottage and winter chalet, including that song,
but, we had a different name that we sang.

There is - a place - that we all know
It is - a place - that we all go
Where - it is - we'll never tell
it's -- called
THE Hartwells' -- Hideaway

OLE !

It was embarrassing decades later that I found out the song was Hernando's Hideaway, but I still prefer our version,
and I cry every time I watch that part.

Those were the days ...... memories are the most powerful emotion ..... you know ?!