Petroleum Industry Oral History Project Transcript
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PETROLEUM INDUSTRY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT TRANSCRIPT INTERVIEWEE: Aubrey Kerr INTERVIEWER: Betty Cooper DATE: November 1982 - March 1984 BC: This is Betty Cooper, it’s November 11th, 1982 and I’m at the home of Mr. Aubrey Kerr, at 912 - 80th Ave. S.W. in Calgary. Aubrey I’d like to start right at the beginning of your life, where were you born and when and a little bit about your father and mother? AK: November the 29th, 1915, Orillia, Ont., which is about 80 miles north of Toronto, at home, Laclie St. I think it is. My mother’s name was Vida Mabel McCauley and my father’s name was Samuel Kerr, no other name. My first name is Samuel, incidentally. I was the elder of two boys. My brother was born several years later, but in Toronto in a hospital, but I was born at home. BC: Why were you born at home, was there no hospital? AK: There was a hospital there, but in those days, and I think my grandmother on my mother’s side was right there, I think she had a lot to do with it; she was a very important influence in my life. BC: Your grandmother was with you all the time when you were growing up was she? AK: Quite a bit, yes. And I’d spend summers there, in Orillia, because she lived in Orillia, continued to live in Orillia. I think I felt closer to her than I did my mother. That’s not a very good thing to say but it’s true. Just to give you a background on my father’s family, he was the youngest of 11. His father in turn, was Samuel Kerr, who lived in Orillia, but had immigrated from Ireland in the 1820's. So here we are the three of us, my grandfather, my father and myself, spanning over 150 years. It’s kind of difficult to comprehend. #027 BC: It is indeed. AK: But he came to Perth, which is not far from Ottawa. When we were in Ottawa of course, there was a list of Kerr’s this long in the Perth telephone book, so we didn’t even start to look for them because there was no use, 120 years later. But apparently he traveled someway or other to Sterling, and somewhere or other, he met his bride to be, Margaret Vandervoort, Dutch United Empire Loyalist. And I think they moved to Peterborough. BC: What did your grandfather do, how did he make his living? AK: He didn’t. He was kind of kept by his. .when he got older. What he did in his early days I think, might have been butchering. This comes out on the hides and wool thing, you see. But you see, I didn’t know my grandfather, he died in 1907 and I wasn’t born until ‘15 and my grandmother on my father’s side, she died I think, a few weeks after. So it’s a big generation gap there. In latter years he was a privy inspector. That was his job in the town of Orillia, going around, inspecting privies. It was a kind of a job and he was very, so I’m told, he was quite relaxed and he’d sit out in the sun and he didn’t have any real drive to him. But out of the 11 children you see, there was Albert, George, Fred, Frank, that’s four, William, five, then there were some sisters, there was Maggie, there was two Maggies, there was . .let’s see, if I had the picture in front of me, I’d know. #053 BC: There wasn’t an Annie, there always seem to be an Annie in families of that generation. AK: I think there might have. I think William was married to an Annie. Gussie, that was it, Aunt Gussie, I think. But something that should be on the tape here is that the family portrait is with my sone Ernie in Toronto and all the names are on it. So that should be recorded, I’m sorry I can’t do it, I used to be able to recite them. You see, the interesting part of the thing was that my mother and my father were the same age as their nephews and nieces, because you see George, the oldest, was an old, old man when I knew him. BC: Your father came in what order in the 11? AK: He was the last, he was the youngest. Oh yes, this is what I’m saying, this 160 some odd years gap and then he kind of married late too, you see. BC: Of the children, did they. .you say that the grandfather didn’t have a great deal of drive, he was quite happy to just take things as they came, did that come through in the next generation or did they. .? AK: yes, there was a terrible mixture and Albert, one of the older brothers, was fairly entrepreneurial and my father was probably the most. He was a gambler. One brother kind of took over the butcher shop, there was a butcher shop on the main street of Orillia, on Mississauga St. and they had a butcher shop in there that they shut down, I guess in the 20's. I always remember going in there and there was nothing, they didn’t have it operating but all the hooks and the icebox and everything, and I mean icebox, not refrigerator. And in the back was a hide house and the hide house was the way in which they made their money by going out to the country and buying cow hides and wool and muskrat furs and all kinds of things, even tallow, and bringing it in and salting them down and then shipping them in lots to the tanneries. And this is how my dad got into it, he was right in the midst of it and there was a company formed called the Albert Kerr Co. Ltd. Albert, who was the brother went out to Vancouver and took a less interest in it and he got in with Dumaresq, another company called Kerr and Dumaresq, which was in the timber business, out in Vancouver. #089 BC: This would be at what time, prior to the First World War? AK: That was around World War I, yes, around there. He kind of didn’t take as much interest, my dad was the one who took hold of the thing and ran it. He had different people that he worked with but he would buy and sell hides in large lots in a hide house in Toronto. We had a large, hide house there on 290 Old Weston Rd. BC: Did you grow up helping to work with the hides, this sort of thing or did your dad. .? AK: I spent some summers there, yes. But yes, I did, and I spent some summers, when I was in Orillia in my youth, I would go out with my cousin, who was not really my cousin, he was like my uncle. He was maybe 10 or 15 years older than I was . .oh, more than that. But I would go out in this old Model T, which was converted into an old kind of a pick-up truck and we would go out, start off in the dark and come back at dark, drive out to the farms and pick up stuff and bring it back. And then put it in the Orillia hide house and then they would ship out of there to a tannery. But there was some kind of a linkage there. They ran their own business but they fell into financial difficulties. BC: When was this, would this be in the Depression or. ? AK: Yes, but then they opened. they went. .they thought, we’ll get the meat market revitalized so they started up on that again. BC: Would this be the Depression following the First World War or. .? AK: It was around ‘30, ‘31. And of course, all the time I was going up to Orillia for my summer holidays you see. BC: You had by this time, moved out of Orillia, when did you move from Orillia? AK: Yes, I better clear that up. I don’t remember any of my time in Orillia. I was told. you see, my father wasn’t well and they went to California, I think it was the latter part of the war and he seemed to get better. BC: What was the matter, was it TB, something like that? AK: No, I don’t know what it was but they went down to California and I guess they were looking at property there too. But they came back; it was all by train then of course, in those days. And of course, you see, my grandmother was looking after me. So I guess he decided that he should move to Toronto and open up down there so we moved, I think it was around 1919 or so. BC: So you’d be pretty young, you’d just be 4 years old. AK: Yes. But I remember the house. The first house we moved to was 78 Rosemount and it was right behind the Oakwood Collegiate, where I ultimately attended. I think they bought that house, I’m not sure. It was an old. of course, in those days it wasn’t an old house. Across the street was a fellow named Marmaduke Pearson, some relation of Lester Pearson.