My first memory of Fairview was the Bedford Naval Magazine blowing up. I was 3 and 1/2 years old, all the windows in our house broke and the fireplace never was used again because of damage. We were evacuated to Timberlea on the Bay road. I have a vague memory of being in a big building all night. I think it was where the legion is today in Timberlea.

I remember the Fairview overpass, when it was the Fairvew underpass. It flooded so bad, water would come in car doors trying to get to the city.

We carried golf bags at Ashburn for eighteen holes for fifty cents.

The students at Mt.Saint Vincent Academy had chores before and after school, they had to collect eggs, milk cows, and hoe the garden, the Mount was self -sufficient like most institutions in those days. I remember the Motherhouse burning down in the early fifties, it was so cold that night, the water from firehouses was freezing, before it got to the fire.


We skated on Deals Pond, where the Bayer's Road Shopping Centre is today. We also skated on a pond at the top of Melrose ave. That pond no longer exists.

Bad Catholic boys went to St. Patricks Home for Boys where the Halifax shopping center is today on Mumford road, bad Protestant boys went to Shelburne, later they all went to Shelburne.

I remember the Queen as a princess, newly wed, driving by in a glass top car at the bottom of Evans Avenue.

We sometimes took the train to go shopping at Simpsons where the West -End Mall is today.
Us boys took the train to the movies at Armdale, but we rode the rails, just like railroad bums.
Sometimes we even walked on top of moving boxcars, just like the cowboys in the movies.

In the summer we often hitchhiked to Horseshoe Island on the North West Arm to swim, or we hitch-hiked to Bedford to swim at Moir's Dam.

We swam off the rocks in Fairview Cove right behind White Rose Oil , we were always in the water on May 24th week-end. There was much more sewage in the basin in those days than now, we just pushed it aside and jumped in!

The Wandlyn Motel was once called Middlemore Home, a home for British refugee children?


Bob Cole, owned " The Biggest Little Service Station in the Maritimes", he usually had a parrot or monkey there to entertain kids, it was located across from the quarry, now a car dealership.

We would think nothing of going to the top of Main Avenue (Geizers Hill) where the TV tower is, then through the woods to Suzie's Lake to swim.

We followed the garbage man,doing his rounds with horse and wagon while reciting this little ditty:" Sam, Sam, the garbage man, washed his face in a frying pan, combed his hair, with the leg of a chair ,and died with a toothache in his ear."

We hunted, fished and snared rabbits where Clayton Park is today. I remember Mr. Snyder shooting a deer off his back doorstep where Sobey's is located.

Many Fairview men worked for Canadian National Railways, the roundhouse where locomotives were serviced and repaired, the Rockingham yards with hundreds of boxcars, also Fairview train station. Many single men from out of town slept and ate at Brown's Resthouse in Fairview Cove.

Irving oil had a jetty in Fairview Cove and storage tanks on the shore. I remember it blowing up when we were kids in school.

My father and his brother owned a store at the entrance to Africville, they sold it to Allen O'Neil
who later opened a store on Dutch Village Road.

Ashburn Golf Club had a pro named Kas? Zabowski ?? He had a son Raymond , it was said before he came to Halifax he used to golf in tournaments with a bag over his head. The Unknown Golfer?
Does anyone know the facts of this????

The Surburban Hockey League played it's games in the old Shirley Street Arena, us kids would always get in free and have our hot dogs and fries bought during the games, all we had to do, was smuggle a few quarts of beer in ,under our winter clothes, and place them in the toilet tanks to keep cool, this beer was for dedicated drunken Fairview fans who will go unnamed. The players managed to smuggle in their own beer with their gear and enjoyed it, before, during breaks and after games. They played three complete games of hockey, cleaned the ice between periods and we were home shortly after midnight. No advertising and no TV bullshit in those days. Also, most of those players would have worked a full day Saturday before playing. Many, if they didn't work saturday, drank beer from ten o'clock until five o'clock, then went to the arena with beer in their hockey gear. Some, did not drink or smoke at all !