Demise of the Neighbourhood

Speaker 1:    

There’s a lot of politics. 

Speaker 2:    

Yeah yeah. 

Speaker 1:    

A lot of politics. 

Because of the strike and 46. Okay. 

We went on strike and there’s a lot of politics involved to get rid of Brightside. I believe that so do most of the older guys. 

Speaker 1:    

One theory in terms of like why the neighbourhood was maybe, um, dismantled, that your brother, ah, actually, that Ernie advanced last month, was they were just fed up with people going on strike and Brightside was a hotbed, and it all goes back to the ’46 moment. 

But, do you think there’s anything to that? He says that that’s what an older generation kind of felt. 

Speaker 2:    

I, I don’t think so. 

I think it was booming. And there were no parking. The employees had to pay to park. 

We had an empty lot right across behind Johnny’s house. And they charged, whoever owned that, and they charged people to park there. 

And other, um, like Andreatta’s business, if you wanted to park there, and the Yachetti business,  you had to pay. 

Now most of them you say had a good size parking lot, but it wasn’t enough. 

And then they changed to Gage and those streets to one way. 

So, these, these guys all raced up our street. Going south. And they needed parking. They needed parking spot. 

Speaker 3:    

But was that the reason why the destruction.  

Speaker 2:    

I think so. 

Speaker 3:    

Well. 

Speaker 1:    

That they what. 

Speaker 2:    

That they expropriated; that they needed the land. 

For parking. 

Yeah. 

Speaker 1:    

Were the memories of Brightside always tainted by the… 

Speaker 2:    

Bad things.  

Speaker 1:    

…having left or were there happy memories? 

Speaker 3:    

My mother didn’t resent leaving but she did resent how the city, or whoever, did it to her because she hadn’t sold their house. She had moved out of there but they rented the house. 

Speaker 1:    

Okay. 

Speaker 3:    

But she resented the fact that they came down hard on her and she had no choice 

Speaker 4:    

Yep. 

Speaker 3:    

And price wise or anything like that you know there was no question, ‘that’s what you’re going to get and you’re going to leave. And that’s it.’ 

Speaker 4:    

That’s it. 

Speaker 1:    

Yeah. 

Speaker 4:    

‘Take it or leave it.’ 

Speaker 1:    

Yeah.  

And that’s the only thing that really bothered her. 

Yeah. 

Speaker 5:    

Tell her about the relief. 

Speaker 6:    

I don’t know, I think my father was a little different. I seem to remember, but I am not too sure about him holding out… 

Speaker 7:    

Well, there was a difference Vince between someone acquiring your house through purchase then someone acquiring your house through expropriation. You guys were on a different tract. 

Speaker 6:    

Yeah. 

No fault to you Ern.. 

No. No. 

Speaker 7:    

But it just… So you know it was just a little different. 

Speaker 2:    

No no. 

Speaker 3:    

Yeah, he loved his home. He built that home there. 

Yeah sure. 

He …  it to, I don’t know if it was Stelco or the city, and then he built his own home, right on the corner. 

Speaker 1:    

I haven’t found any evidence that this was happening in Brightside. 

Speaker 1=2:    

The hidden stuff. 

Speaker 1:    

And I think that much of it has to do with the notion that, and you can see it in that document that he has got, the sense that this is a community that ‘ought not to be there.’  

You know, how Flatt ever got - and you had said this some time ago - how he got that land developed in that Survey No. 453, um, is kind of a mystery.  

But it’s interesting…