In 2000, the city's Millennium Project allowed local neighbourhoods to put together a "memory book" for each area, and the West End Residents' Association - along with the neighbouring Connaught Heights area - took full advantage.
West End association president Elmer Rudolph, along with Nory Johrden, helped collect stories and anecdotes from local residents in a book called Memories are Made of This.
Here are some charming stories taken from this collection:
Rozel Amy Evanson remembers when Eighth Avenue didn't even run from 18th Street to 20th Street.
"It was all bush around here in 1930. As a five-year-old, I played in a deep ditch that ran the full length of 20th Street on its east side. Although the water really rushed down here after a rain, it was a great playground. We'd float boats down the ditch, holler through the culvert that went under Eighth Avenue and had great fun in the "swinging maples" on the other side of 20th Street."
. Lou Treslove on the great groceries you could buy in the area: "We did all our shopping at Arnold and Jimmy's Dogwood Market. Jimmy (Niven) was the only butcher who guaranteed his meat. If I got a tough steak, he gave me another one, no problem. His double-smoked bacon was the best. I was always after him to tell me who smoked it, but he never let on. His old cheddar cheese, cut off a big round, was really nippy on your tongue. You know, you just can't buy it like that any more."
Sharmaine Ritchie on how Lord Tweedsmuir has both changed and remained the same:
"Spring 1938. When I was a young girl, Dad and I used to go for leisurely walks on Sunday afternoons. ... We would eventually reach the land where Lord Tweedsmuir Elementary School stands today. The area was wooded, but not heavily treed. There was scrub, maple and
blackberry by the patch. Eighth Avenue was paved, but the side where Lord Tweedsmuir stands today wasn't. I remember you could follow a dirt path and a trail that perhaps kids made, and then down Seventh Avenue towards home."
Ken Winslade on how basketball became popular in the West End: "We neighbourhood kids couldn't afford our own individual basketballs, so we'd pool our money for one ball. But we did have one real luxury. Roy Bell, an electrician, wired up outdoor floodlights at his place at 1511 Dublin St. so we could play after dark. That was something in 1950."
Ken McDonald on trips to the butcher: "When I was five years old, my mother would take me along to Bennett's Meat Market on 12th Street, where the butcher always gave me a raw wiener. I loved those wieners, so she never had to do much talking to get me to go along with her. But one day, he stopped giving me wieners, so that was the end of my trip to the butcher, as far as I was concerned."
Ken McDonald on the Metro Theatre on 12th Street:
"As a kid, I spent many an hour at the Metro Theatre. It was 15 cents to get in and 10 cents for a box of popcorn. Of course, we took marbles and water pistols, too. The marbles were for rolling down the floor, all the way down so the marbles would go plonk. The water pistols were
for, what else? Shooting at people in the dark during the show. How many times did I get kicked out? Once or twice."
Greer Draney on the best eats: "The best cherries in the West End during summers in the 1950s were in the Pierce's backyard at 1703 Edinburgh St. They were fantastic. The biggest, sweetest, most delicious cherries ever. As long as we asked Mr. and Mrs. Pierce's permission, it was OK for the kids to climb that tree and eat as many cherries as we could pick."
Arnold Bush on the "haunted house."
"An old house, sitting on three lots at Seventh Avenue and 14th Street, right across from us, was already deteriorating in 1945, so it must have been built before 1900. It had a red slate roof, pieces of which we used to pick up when they broke off and slid to the ground. ... It had a mysteriously decrepit look about it, so we called it the 'haunted house.'"
