The Orillia Spirit: An Illustrated History of Orillia by Richmond Randy

Author:Richmond, Randy [Richmond, Randy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2017-07-08T04:00:00+00:00

At exactly 2:09 p.m., the experiment began. Alexander took a deep breath and concentrated on the cloud. It enlarged slightly, then began to twitch. At 2:11 p.m., it showed unmistakable signs of thinning. At 2:14 p.m., it had been reduced to wisps. By 2:17 p.m., the cloud was gone. Observers applauded. Alexander repeated the experiment several times, and each time, the cloud disappeared while adjacent ones remained intact. A few observers claimed Alexander knew which clouds were going to disappear, but that did not explain how he wiped away clouds others had chosen. One enterprising reporter contacted the Weather Bureau later. A dry front moving in likely broke up the clouds, said a weather forecaster, but he doubted anyone could predict which clouds would break up and when.

An exhausted Alexander quit after about an hour, but the news spread through Orillia the next day. Reporters from Toronto, then across North America, picked up on the story as interest in his experiment and book grew. Unfortunately for the Alexanders, the radio interviews and magazine articles drew the attention of the federal immigration department. Government officials checked out Alexander and found his visitor’s visa had expired. He and his family were forced to move to England, and he eventually died in Florida.

Alexander’s experiments were the strangest but not the only sign things were a little different in Orillia after the war. The industries that boomed during the war continued to thrive. The leading companies were still owned by the founding families: the Longs at E. Long Ltd., and the Tudhopes at Tudhope Metal Specialties, for example. Other owners had run their plants since the 1930s. But the men who returned from overseas soon learned the boom gave them jobs but not necessarily a fair wage. They were ripe for unions, and the Canadian Congress of Labour responded, sending the tough George Brough to town in early April 1949 to organize six to eight of the leading factories. Brough found willing workers at the Heywood-Wakefield plant on the northeast corner of Forest Avenue at Atherley Road, where founder Jim Lloyd oversaw about 110 employees making the Lloyd Baby Carriage. Workers like Kenneth Howes were making 65 cents an hour to chrome-plate carriage handles. That seemed like good pay at first, recalled Howes in an interview for this book. But, after a while, workers realized others in Barrie or on provincial highway contracts were making $1.25 an hour for similar work. Within a month, Brough signed up about seventy employees of Heywood-Wakefield to the Orillia General Workers Union. Lloyd gathered his workers together and told them he didn’t mind if they joined a union. Then he laid off eighteen employees, most of them with long service, and all but one a union member.

“We put two and two together,” remembered Howes. Without Brough’s knowledge, a group of workers met Sunday, May 1, 1949, and voted that night to strike. About seventy employees walked off the job Monday, circling the plant and blocking the main entrance off Forest Avenue.

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