Arthur Henry Haynes - 1910-2008
Peggy and her husband Ken had emigrated to Canada in 1949. They had first come to Little Current Ontario but eventually found themselves in Sudbury Ontario to obtain employment. By 1951 her marriage to Ken was over and they had separated.
For about six months Art and Peggy lived in Toronto on Jameson Avenue. Art suffered from a bad back problem after wrenching it at work. After some persistence he received a small amount of compensation from the Workers Compensation Board. Peggy was employed by Singer on Bloor Street at Roncesvalles.
Art was again employed by Belyea Plumbing and Heating in Toronto. Art grew increasingly frustrated living in Toronto in part due to the large numbers of parking tickets he was getting while out on service calls. Art and Peggy returned to Sudbury, Ontario.
Visitation was not as regulated then as it is today. Elizabeth (Beth) had custody of the boys in Art's marriage and Peggy's ex-husband Ken had custody of their girls Sandra and Carol.
In early 1955 Arthur was summoned for jury duty and found himself on the jury of a murder trial. An unemployed man had been befriended by a schoolteacher in Dalton, Ontario. The schoolteacher was subsequently found shot dead and concealed in a woodpile. For two weeks the jury was sequestered while they mulled over the evidence. One of the other jurors owned a local restaurant "Cassio's" so they ate very well those two weeks. Eventually the accused was found guilty and became the last person to be hung in the Sudbury District jail in 1956.
Son David Arthur Haynes was born in August of 1955 in Sudbury, Ontario.
In 1956 Art and Peggy purchased a house on Long Lake Road (now Paris Street Sudbury). As soon as they took possession Art set about to add two bedrooms and a bathroom to the rear of the house.
In the fall of 1956 he received a call from Dr. Morgan who's toilet had plugged just before he was expecting guests for dinner. Art could never turn these types of calls down went out to the doctor's house. He quickly found that the toilet had been plugged up with the guts of a turkey and in short order it was working again. The doctor was so thankful he told Art that if ever needed any help he would be there for him. Within a few months he would need that help.
Meanwhile Peggy's divorce from her first husband Ken was in progress. The first decree (interim) had taken place and they had to wait 3 months for the second (absolute). In the meantime things were not progressing amicably. In order to expedite the process Peggy scraped together enough money to obtain the final divorce decree in December 1956. Within days Art was involved in a life threatening accident with a train.
One fateful evening in December 1956 Art approached Lorne Street from Douglas Street in Sudbury Ontario. It's an odd T-intersection with train tracks that parallel one street. As he approached the intersection, lights from a gas station across the road, traffic lights, and train crossing lights dominated the view of the intersection. Art failed to see that the railway crossing lights were activated and when he approached the intersection his truck was struck by a train. The train hit the truck with tremendous force and the truck shot back and slammed into a telephone pole. The truck bounced off the pole and back into the train and then ejected Art from the truck. On the last bounce the truck trapped Art underneath. A number of passersby scrambled to help him and with concerted effort were able to move the mangled truck off him. He suffered a broken pelvis, a dislocated hip (which would bother him for the rest of his life), numerous lacerations and spent the next 3 months in hospital. His almost new truck was a write-off which was particularly bad because he didn't have any insurance. Most of his tools and parts disappeared from the truck after the accident. For some time the doctors didn't think he would make it.
Beth brought the boys to the hospital to see him after the accident.
Over the few months before the accident Art had done plumbing work in both a Presbyterian church and a United church. The United Church minister agreed to come to the hospital to marry them. Evelyn Vesterfelt and Ronnie Smith attended as witnesses. The floor nurse, who was a friend of Peggy, kept watch for the hospital's nuns as they were not supposed to have a Protestant marriage in a Catholic hospital. They married on December 22, 1956. At the same time Art signed a Power of Attorney so Peggy could continue to operate the business and pay bills.
In February 1957, two months later, he was released from hospital. As they were leaving the hospital a police officer staggered in and collapsed in the entrance, leaving a trail of blood all over. Sudbury was a rough town in those days and there had been an incident where one police officer had been shot and another had been stabbed.
With virtually no money in the bank and on crutches, Art bought a new truck and went back to work.
After Peggy's divorce was final and the accident Peggy wanted to regain custody of her girls. Unfortunately they were not in the financial position at that point to be able to sue for custody. Peggy's ex-husband Ken eventually moved the girls to Carleton Place where visitation was much more difficult.
From 1952 to 1960 Art and some of the boys came down to the Canadian National Exhibition almost every year. It was a long trek down from Sudbury to Toronto but he consistently did it for many years until the boys tired of it.
On a fishing trip to a friend's cottage someone had setup an animal trap. Sure enough one day he trapped something but the animal had crawled down a hole and all they could see was a black furry foot. The group of men huddled around to see what had been caught. Fortified by too many beers, the owner of the trap reached down, grabbed the animal by the foot and dragged up the largest skunk known to mankind. He promptly dropped the skunk into the middle of the group and they were all immediately sprayed.
On one particularly cold evening Art received a frantic call from a desperate homeowner who's oil furnace had broken down. The man had been trying for quite some time to get it going but the house was growing colder by the minute. Sensing his desperation Art drove his truck down to the man's home in the middle of the night. The problem was quite minor and within a few minutes he had the furnace roaring again. In fact the furnace began to really roar quite loudly. Art quickly realized that there was a problem ... the homeowner had been trying to restart the furnace for quite some time and had literally filled the bottom of the furnace with fuel oil. The roaring continued and the pipe connected to the chimney began to glow cherry red. Art went outside and saw flames shooting out the house's chimney. He returned to the house's basement and nervously watched the furnace creak and moan. For an hour he watched the furnace and gradually the roaring died away as the excess fuel burned off. He bid the homeowner his goodbyes and beat a hasty retreat.
In 1958 Art's son Bill entered university and began taking political science. The course load was very heavy and stressful for him. Through a series of events he eventually was diagnosed with schizophrenia and hospitalized in North Bay Psychiatric Hospital where he remained until his death. Art was very upset with the treatment Bill had received and the lack of space in Sudbury for psychiatric care. With Peggy's help Art composed a letter to the Minister of Health complaining about the fact that no psychiatric care facility existed in Sudbury and about the poor outcome for Bill. As it turned out a short while later a floor of the Sudbury Algoma Sanatorium (TB) was dedicated to acute psychiatric care.
On a nice spring day in 1959 the family went fishing on the Magnetewan River at Highway 69 just downstream from the new bridge that was under construction. A few hours after the family began fishing a body was recovered from the pool to the right near where they had been fishing. A car had driven off the incomplete bridge in the background and a couple had drowned.
1959 - Magnetewan fishing trip
From 1958 until 1983 Art and Peggy frequently went to Florida to vacation. They traveled all around Florida but spent the most time in the Bradenton and Anna Maria Island areas.
1960 - Paul Burlinghoff worked for Art in his plumbing & heating business from the mid-fifties until the early sixties.
While Art was operating his business he employed Andy Provincial as a plumber's helper. Andy was a happy go lucky fellow with a very large family. On a few occasions however Andy made some errors that could've had major repercussions. On one occasion Art came into a worksite to discover Andy busy heating up a pipe with his acetylene torch. Art aged a few years when he noticed it was the gas line.
On January 14, 1961
Art's father Harry Haynes passed away in
Toronto at the Sunset Nursing Home on Lauder Avenue. Harry's
burial spot is in Prospect Cemetary, Toronto in
Section 39, Grave 777.
On the first occasion, on a hot summer day, a flagman being killed as a race car left the track and hit him squarely. The poor man was killed instantly as he was tossed like a rag doll 30 feet into the air.
On the second occasion the weather did not co-operate and it was somewhat rainy. During a lull in the race due to rain the group sheltered in a very steamy car. Art grabbed his raincoat and threw it over his head and went for some hot dogs. He returned with the food, and opened the door of the car. His raincoat began to fall off his head so he took the food he had brought and stuffed it under his arm and grabbed his coat at the same time. Safely in the car he discovered that he had squeezed the food a bit too much and now there was mustard and relish from his armpit to his waist. As only sons can ... they howled with laughter at his predicament.
In 1966 Art began to look at building lots for a "camp" and on one trip came out to Manitoulin Island. On the former site of a trailer park, Art met the Rowe brothers, and shortly thereafter purchased a cottage lot for the princely sum of $1000.
In 1966 Art, Peggy and son David went almost every Friday night to the New Sudbury Shopping Centre. It was more like a large strip mall but it was a very big deal then. They would walk up and down the mall, and grab supper in a large restaurant beside Woolco. On one particularly memorable night in Woolco Art happened on a rack of barbells and proceeded to demonstrate how to pick up the set. The weights were brightly painted steel discs and the bar had a brilliant chrome finish. He manipulated the barbells as weightlifters have done for years and then it happened. He tilted the set to one side and to his shock the entire assembly of weights slid off the end of the bar and hit the floor with a tremendous clang. While he struggled to hang onto the remaining bar and weights the freed discs rolled and created a racket beyond belief. They quickly gathered the weights up and slunk from the store.
On one outing to the New Sudbury Shopping Centre Art had an unfortunate close encounter with a merchandise display. It was spring and Woolco had setup a large display of fishing gear with boards covered in bright and shiny lures. For reasons only known to him, Art backed into a display and was promptly skewered by a dozen small fish hooks. After attracting a salesgirl's attention she attempted to extricate him from the display but was a little timid to remove the hooks from his backside. The store manager was called and he came down and removed the remaining hooks from his posterior. After the giggling had subsided he slunk away.
On yet another shopping night Art was looking at new lawn furniture in Woolco and decided he would try out a new lounge chair. He positioned himself, sat back, and the chair promptly folded sending him backwards over the chair onto the floor. After some blustering he decided he didn't like that particular chair.
Around this time Art thought he would purchase a pocket knife for son David. He began to show David how to be careful of the blade so that he didn't cut himself. He positioned the blade so it was partially closed and placed his thumb in the gap. Never, he told him, should you put your finger in the gap like this. The knife blade suddenly closed with an audible click. The colour drained from his face as he rushed, with accompanying laughter, to get first-aid.
In 1968 Art ended his plumbing and heating business and went to work for the Board of Education maintenance department in Sudbury. I'm not sure why he wanted to stop the plumbing & heating business but it was highly competitive and the hours were long. I'm sure he wanted a job that had more regular hours. For the next seven years he worked for the Board.
One day Art was working on a construction site at a school. He was signaling a truck to back up to unload. As he was waving his arm he noticed a large german sheperd galloping towards him at high speed. The dog kept coming towards him and when the dog was close the animal leapt up at him. Art spun around to protect himself from the dog whereupon the dog bit him squarely in the gluteus maximus. Art drove himself to the hospital where he had to have a number of stitches in his rear end. To add insult to injury he then had to wait for the quarantine period to expire to see if the dog had rabies as well. Fortunately the dog was OK and Art escaped having a series of painful rabies shots. At his insistence the owners eventually agreed to have the dog put down. It came out later that the dog had been abused and would attack the moment an arm was raised near him.
In one dramatic incident he recalled going to one school at the end of the school day. There was a report of a slight smell of gas so he investigated. There was a crawl space under the school so he opened the access cover. He jumped down into the space, realized the crawl space was full of propane, and quickly jumped back out again. Within the hour there was a lot of attention to the problem.
I'm not sure what possessed him but one day he showed up at home at the end of the day with an original oil painting. Just like the "starving artists" promotions of today he had run into a vendor on a street selling "original" oil paintings. I'm sure he didn't pay very much for it ... he never owned up to how much. Peggy did not like it and had no idea where she would put it. It contained every colour in the rainbow. It hung in their living room for years and when they moved it was given away.
On August 20, 1970, an F3 tornado hit the city of Sudbury, Ontario. Considered unusual because tornadoes of this strength rarely occur in Northern Ontario, the tornado touched down in the suburban community of Lively. The tornado tracked quickly eastward into the city. Six people died and 200 were injured in the tornado, which caused an estimated $17 million in damage. It is currently tied for the status of the eighth deadliest tornado in Canadian history. Art was in is truck at the time heading out on a call. The weather deteriorated to the point where he swung his truck in behind a coffee shop he frequented and took refuge from the storm. All manner of debris flew by and after the storm subsided he headed home to see what had happened. Fortunately his home was not in the path of the tornado.
By 1970 Art had completed "the camp" as he called it. He had a love of square structures ... he thought of them as the most efficient way to build. And so his camp was no different ... multiples of sheets of plywood across the length and width ... with no cutting. The roof was flat too ... the easiest to build without power.
Art and Peggy also sold their home on Paris Street in Sudbury intending to summer on Manitoulin Island and winter in Florida.
They flew from Sudbury to Toronto and then Toronto to Los Angeles. During taxiing on the ground in Los Angeles Art said the engine sounded like it had a bad bearing. It was making howling noises. Within a few minutes the pilot came on the intercom to advise them that they would have to stay at the airport hotel overnight while they changed the engine.
On the return leg they stopped in Fiji and Vancouver.
Rotorua Park
Wenderholm Beach, NZ
