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VICTORY HEIGHTS “The Story of the Little Town”
By Roland Sherwood 1945
“VICTORY HEIGHTS…” is the name selected for the village of prefabricated houses erected in an area that once was Pictou’s pastureland, spreads over many acres in the East end of Town. Financed by Wartime Housing Limited, under contracts let to Eastern Woodworkers Limited, the houses were prefabricated in New Glasgow and brought to Pictou by the truck load. Here in this area that extends from Pleasant Street back one and a half miles to where extensive woodlands meet the reclaimed pasturage, the houses have been built.
The location is an ideal one. From Wellington Street the village slopes down to the Beaches Road and commands a sweeping view of Pictou Harbour. Wide streets have been built, and lawns, trees and shrubbery add to the beauty of the village. For months, tractors, ditch diggers, steam shovels and rollers, were at work, making streets, levelling off hillocks, filling hollows and multiplying manpower in making trenches for the laying of sewer and water mains.
The Town of Pictou erected a fine distribution line for electric services to the houses. Poplar street, which is the first street as you pass from Pictou proper into the little village, was completed and occupied first. In front of the other houses, not completed, cars of children and vans of furniture stood waiting and as the plumbers, painters, electricians and carpenters moved out, Pictou’s new citizens moved in. Potted plants made their appearance overnight on the front porches of the little houses, and lines of washing flapped their signal of occupancy from the rear.
The side streets were named after trees. Poplar, Cedar, Chestnut, Maple, Oak, Elm and Pine, and the houses were numbered.
Pictou had been feeling the pressure of its increased population, and the city fathers felt the growing pains in the matter of the town’s water supply. In the past, the “Stand Pipe,” where the water reserve was stored, always stood full, measuring just under half a million gallons. But during past summers, it was a rare day when the water level was over fifteen feet in the sixty foot steel cylinder. But the water shortage was overcome by the opening of several unused wells, and three large pumps, began lifting water from thirteen wells at the pumping stations, filling the stand pipe to overflowing.
With the sudden step-up in employment, thousands flocked into town to swell the average population of 3500 citizens to nearly triple. The first arrivals soon took up all available boarding house space, and from then on, a weary day-after-day struggle from house to house went on for those who poured in daily on the trains, and sought a place to stay.
Boarding and lodging were at a premium. Citizens whose homes had never known other than friends and relatives, now opened them to strangers. Large houses were turned into apartments and rents went up. Many who had cars were motoring ten miles into the country for lodgings.
Still the influx continued and housing was an acute headache. The town council undertook a survey and listed all who could and would take the new workers. Jobs were plentiful, but no one could secure work until he had first a place to stay, and very soon every possible place was crowded. Shacks, tents, and trailers blossomed on vacant lots. Overnight cabins were occupied. New buildings went up. Old ones were remodeled. Buildings that had been vacant for years were pressed into service. New stores opened, and additional restaurants sprang up.
The main streets of the town, where any Pictonian could call more than half the people he met by their first name, were crowded with strangers.
Day following day brought more people, while the town officials awaited word from Ottawa on the building of the prefabs to take the overload of the population.
In the meantime, Wartime Housing Limited began the construction of a staff house for the man employed at the shipyards. This grew into two and finally three staff houses, with a large commissary. These three large lodging houses were soon filled to capacity, so that later, two additional staff houses were completed.
Work on the pre-fabs was started in the spring of 1942 and progressed steadily. Every Sunday brought sightseers from the upper towns of New Glasgow, Trenton and Stellarton, as well as from other parts of the country, to see the new village that was being whipped into shape.
The increased population brought new worries to store keepers too. The male clerks left for the armed forces, and girls out of school took their places. Every day the stores were packed and it was one continual struggle for a housewife to get her daily order of groceries
The local switchboard of the telephone company was jammed to capacity by the demand for telephone service, and two additional sections were placed and several operators added, while local and long distance calls reached a new high.
In a town like Pictou where the prenomen, “Mac” is common, the staff at the local post office found they had a real job on their hands, to pass mail into the right “MacDonald” after large numbers from Cape Breton moved into town.
For some time before the pre-fabs were ready, the newcomers who were employed at the shipyards, and who were the only person eligible to rent the houses, were making weekly trips to the site to watch the progress, and were waiting impatiently for the day when they could bring their families to Pictou and move in.
A new school was erected in the little town of Victory Heights, as the town school was crowded.
Ex-Mayor John f. Macdonald became the Administrator for Wartime Housing Limited in Pictou, and worked in close co-operation with the town. He knew the problems the town fathers were dealing with, as he served on the Town council and later was Chief Magistrate.
When construction first began on the pre-fabs, as they were called, many were skeptical concerning the qualities of the new houses. “Tar paper Houses” they were called, by after the doubters were allowed to inspect the completed houses, and after they had been lived in, criticism had given away to admiration for the tidy, well-designed gray houses that stand in neat rows along the wide streets, with ample room between for the making of individual lawns.
Pictonians used to large houses and ample rooms, were wont to say, “Why, everyone will be in each other’s hair, the houses are so close together.” But it was found that the residents had more room than most city dwellers.
The houses of Victory Heights are convenient and are all equipped with lights, bathroom, running water and stove.
It was felt that problems would arise that should be handled by the residents of the little town themselves, so a local committee was formed, with Ralph G. Turner, then general store keeper at the shipyards, as its first chairman. Other members of the committee were Tom Turner, Sam Campbell and Albert P. MacFarlane. It was this committee that selected the name, “Victory Heights” to kill the names of “Pre-fab Town”, “Toy Town,” “Goggins Rent” and other labels that had been applied to the new community.
At the height of the shipbuilding in Pictou there were 400 families living at Victory Heights, according to the official records of the Administration Office, and there were 700 children blessing and vexing these households.
There were five sets of twins, and when a kindergarten was opened at the Community Centre for Victory Heights, 87 children between the ages of four and five arrived to begin their schooling.
Community activities in the Victory heights area were well organized, and the first Community Councilor was Mrs. Ruth Galbraith, while Mrs. Dennis Nichols had the honor of being the first to conduct a kindergarten in Pictou … this was in the Victory Heights Community Centre.
Of the 400 families at Victory Heights, there hundred were from Nova Scotia, five families from Ontario, five from the West Coast, and the remainder from Prince Edward Island and new Brunswick.
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| Tags: | Pictou, East End, housing, houses, The Heights, Victory Heights, shipyards, economy |
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| Uploaded on: | August 25, 2015 |