Well, I came to the Yellow Door through the back door in a manner of speaking.

No, that's just my little joke. I got involved in 1969 through a coffee house that was then forming, called the Back Door . It was to be a joint venture of the Yellow Door with a Mr. Herscovitch , who had a DoNut King restaurant on Upper Lachine Road. The plan was to have a second coffee house near the McGill University campus, but featuring professional performers, with the restaurant supplying the food, and the Yellow Door the contacts to get the performers.

It was in 1969, as I said, and I had been laid off by CN, and was looking for work. One day I was rather depressed because I wasn't having much luck, jobs being rare at the time. I had seen an advertisement in the paper for a steward in a coffee house near McGill, and interviews were to be held that very day, at two o'clock. But I was rather gloomy just then, and thought that they'd be looking for a younger man than me, perhaps a McGill student, and that there would be no use in my going for an interview. I was just about to buy a ticket to a movie house -- you could buy a ticket for a dollar then, and spend the whole afternoon and a good part of the evening there - when a cloud burst occurred, and my goodness, I swear I heard voice from the cloud saying, Hey, Stanley! What's with you? Get in there, man! You were a steward in the CN, and a damn good one, get in there and get that job! Enough with this self pity! And so I went. And there was no big line up, and no mass of students applying.

The interview went pretty well, but I wasn't by any means sure I had got the job, and figured I needed a reference. And so I called an Anglican priest I knew, Alan McFarlane , who was the chaplain at Bordeaux prison. He sent me to see Roger Balk , who was in charge of the Yellow Door then, and although Roger couldn't give me a reference, having just met me, he phoned Mr. Herscovitch, and they must have agreed to give me a chance, and it all worked out well.

Well, luck or a voice from that cloud, one way or the other, I'm sure glad it happened.

Well, the Coffee House is one key area, and it is the longest running Coffee House in North America. As a matter of fact, we just had a concert to celebrate its thirtieth birthday, and a bang-up concert it was. It far out performed the expectations even of Heidi Fleming, who was the producer. Interest was expressed across Canada, and from the United States as well. We had a full house the night of the concert, and sadly had to turn people back at the door. The atmosphere was electric, it was warm and a little melancholy because the people remembered the sixties and seventies. This was a sign to me that the people had a commitment to the movement, as expressed by the music and the togetherness, their commitment was not to a building, this building, that had been the site of the movement. The Door is and always has been People.

Folk music at its best was one of the mediums of expression for these people of the sixties and seventies. They were people who ran a stage, a show that addressed the issues of the times, that meant something to everybody. Now the baton has been passed to the nineties generation, which is just as committed, just as caring, just as socially conscious as that of the sixties. They believe in their stuff just as strongly as the generation of those days did, they just have a different way of expressing it. But they will express it, and they have started.

Well, to answer your second question first it was in the Prince Edward Terrace at McTavish and Sherbrooke, where the Samuel Bronfman building is now. Through the generosity of the elderly lady who owned the building - she didn't want to see it demolished, and had refused to sell it to Mr. Bronfman - the BackDoor was able to rent the basement at a very reasonable cost.

The coffee shop was open from 8 in the morning until 1 or 2 the following morning. They had shows nearly every night. We served soup, sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, milkshakes, whatever the students, our customers, wanted. We had a microwave oven to heat up the partially cooked food brought in from the DoNut King. We opened in April, and it was a pretty desolate place to begin with. But we got a boost with the first summer session after we opened, because the student cafeterias closed, and business kept building after that, so much so that I hired a helper. I chose one of the boys I knew from Weredale , a home for troubled youth, and he worked hard when he came, but he didn't come all that often, and finally I had to lay him off. It's unfortunate, but sometimes these boys - men, really - have a terrible time giving up their old habits and addictions, much as they seem to try, and much as you would like to help them.

And so it was decided to have two shifts, because I couldn't continue to work such long hours indefinitely, and I managed the day shift and someone else managed the night shift. That worked better, but the performers, and perhaps even the night manager, apparently gorged themselves on the food left there, but didn't deposit any cash. Many didn't run a tab, they just ate and ran, and Herscovitch began losing money. Well, we had other little problems, and when the lease came up for renewal in 1981, Roger decided not to continue the joint venture, and the Back Door closed.

Yes it did. Mr. Herscovitch wanted me to work with his DoNut King on Upper Lachine Road, but I decided that I wouldn't do so. I used to come around the Yellow Door , and I saw what was going on here, and Roger found me odd jobs to do to keep the place going. I became sort of a maintenance person here at the beginning, but then the word got around, and a lot of young people began to come here. Some people off the street came, but they were mostly from Weredale, and also from Shawbridge , a boys' farm and training school, located in a town of the same name about 55 km north of Montreal in the lower Laurentians. Nowadays it is part of the Batshaw Youth and Family Centres, and the town's name has been changed to Provost. I got to know a good number of the boys from those places, and quite a few of their families too. Some of them came from big families, and five or six brothers would come here. We used to let them sit upstairs where we had a little TV and books for them to read. Downstairs we had a restaurant - a mini cafeteria - where we served lunch between 12 and 2 or 3. Dorothy Chapman ran the cafeteria, which served soup and sandwiches to the students, and some of the boys worked there. The restaurant wasn't profitable, and the boys who worked there didn't get paid, but they would get a free meal. They also did a bit of work around the place to help us out, and of course they mingled with the students, and saw another aspect of life. That went on for several years, until the mid seventies.

I started getting involved with some of the fellows who got in trouble with the law. They would ask me to try to find them a legal aid lawyer to help them with their problems. I would go to court for them, speak to the judge on their behalf, and help them to get out on bail or on probation. I did quite a bit of that, from about '75 to '78. There were several of them who kept repeating, who were in and out of trouble all the time. On the other hand, there were others who never got mixed up with the police.

I used to talk to people in the neighbourhood who might want some work done such as painting or cleaning, and in this way I would find the boys some jobs. And then we got quite a big job doing some repair work around one of the McGill building. I got lucky one time and managed to get four of the boys work on a project in South America . Their fare was paid out there, and all. They were also sent to Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island in the North West Territories to work with the Inuit and half-Inuit who lived there. They were there for some 6 months or so, and then they came back.

Yes, and these projects gave a bit of a build up to the Yellow Door , and it enhanced our reputation. Then Roger was able to find people who would fund us a little. We had to go through Quebec to the Social Services. They gave us a grant for 6 months to enable us to carry on with the type of work I was doing. The Unemployment Insurance gave us some money too, and this helped. And Place Ville Marie heard what we were doing, and they gave us a year's contract. I was involved with this work here at the Yellow Door until 1981.

Yes it was. Then, in 1981, Roger, being involved with Christ Church Cathedral , heard about a project with the Saint Edward's Association . The Association had a house on Sherbrooke Street. where they were taking care of young people who had gotten into trouble and had been in the penitentiary as first offenders. They would be paroled to this St. Edward's home, which was a sort of halfway house. The church had assumed that responsibility, and Al Backman , who is now our verger at the Cathedral, was working there. I think that he was in charge in the evenings. Unfortunately it didn't last too long. People coming out of jail heard about the place, and some of them were doing things they shouldn't have been doing. They were bringing girls there at night, the furniture was disappearing, and so forth. There just wasn't enough supervision, it was too much for one man, and poor Al couldn't be there all day and night. The church decided to close it, after about two years, and sold the property.

Although the house on Sherbrooke Street had been closed, the Association wanted to continue to help people being discharged from prison. An anonymous donor, through the Gazette , donated $25,000 to support the work for one year, and the Association went looking for someone to carry it on. Roger introduced me to Mr. John Udd , who was a member of our church and was connected with the Association. Roger recommended me to him, and Mr . Udd visited the Yellow Door to interview me. He saw the work I was doing, and he offered me a position with the St. Edward's Association, and I started there just as my unemployment insurance came to an end. Then I was responsible to the Church, no longer to the Yellow Door .

The Association was governed by a board of directors, and I was to continue with the kind of work I was doing at the Door , but I was more involved with visiting prisoners. This was through the City Mission on Duluth Street, which had a program known as the P2 Program , instituted by the Mennonites. In this program, volunteers would take me and others to visit prisons frequently, just as your wife used to do. I visited some of the boys I knew in prison once or twice a month, and it became quite a chore for a while. I would visit Cowansville, Saint Anne-des-Plaines, Donnacona, Kingston. I'm dealing with one prisoner now. He's been in for 2 years and he's going to get out in a month. He committed an armed robbery, because of drugs. There's nearly always drugs behind these things nowadays. I'll take the train to Kingston, see him and get back the same night. I'm still involved.

The church wasn't able to carry on with the St. Edward's Association because of lack of contributions, and the program was closed in 1990. The church had lent the Association an office in the Undercroft of the Cathedral, and when the Association folded I asked the Church whether I could use the office on a voluntary basis. I work in the Undercroft three days a week, between 9 in the morning and 1 in the afternoon, and I carry on with the work I was doing with the St. Edward's Association, but in a smaller way. There are still quite a few people who come to see me.

For the last 7 or 8 years I have been involved with the Gazette Christmas Fund. They heard about the work I was doing, and they asked me to assist in distributing their Christmas Cheques . I send in the names of about 50 needy people and families, many of whom I have been dealing with for years - I keep in touch with them all regularly - and the Gazette issues me the cheques to distribute. They used to be for $100, but now they are for $125. I get them these cheques every Christmas. Unfortunately, you give the cheque to some of the people and they don't even thank you for it. They seem to think that the money is owed to them, and some of them even call up the Gazette and want to know if the cheque is ready. It rather makes you feel that although you try to help some people, they are not very courteous. Mind you, the vast majority appreciate the efforts of the Gazette and its readers, and even of me, the humble postman!

In addition, Florence Tracy got me a part-time job at McGill, working in the Douglas Hall Residence . It is easy work. The students have to show me their identification when they come for meals. I only work 6 or 7 hours a week, but it gives me something to do.

Yes, but it keeps me healthy. And I enjoy meeting all the young people. They have me play Santa Claus every Christmas, you know. Of course, I have been playing Santa at the Yellow Door Christmas party for the elderly for over ten years now.

There are a lot of people on the street nowadays, and I've got to know some of them. We have this Drop-in-Centre in the Undercroft of the Cathedral, run by Ron Osachuk , assisted by Jean-Claude - you know them - they volunteer their services there. People off the street come in every day of the week - between 12 noon and two - from Monday to Friday - no, now it's Monday to Thursday because Dean Pitts , the dean of the cathedral, decided it had to close on Fridays, both to cut costs and because it was desired to try to get a program going for young women. We serve soup and sandwiches, whatever food we have available. We pick up this food from different grocery stores - expired food that they can't sell any more at full price because its Meilleur Avant - Best Before date has just passed. The customer does not wish to pay full price for such produce. Why would she or he, when fresher food is available at the same price? The grocery stores give it to us if we pick it up, although they could probably sell it at reduced price

Yes it is. They give it to whoever wants to pick it up and use it. The Dean allows us to use his car, and we have a volunteer driver who picks up these groceries every day. However, the Church may not be able to support the Drop-in-Centre five days a week, even though the need for it increases almost daily.

Besides the groceries that we pick up, Selwyn House School in Westmount donates all the leftovers from their dining hall to us, all we have to do is go in the morning and pick it up. We collect some quite good food from them - soup, roast beef, mashed potatoes, desserts - puddings and such. It is a big help in the wintertime, and goes on until the school closes in June.

We use all the food we pick up from the school and grocery stores for people on the street. Besides lunch we're able to give them some food to take home with them - canned goods and the like. It seems to be working pretty well at the Drop-in-Centre. We average about 75 to 100 people every day. They come in off the street, they all know about us. The panhandlers come in for a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup, whatever we have available. It doesn't last very long. We open at noon and by 2 o'clock all the food's gone. It is a big help to the chaps that are on the street, there's quite a lot of them pan handling. One fellow sings in front of the Simpson's store - Alex is his name - he sings there every day, even in the winter time. I've never seen anybody giving him any money, but he stands there and sings like an opera singer. He doesn't draw much of a crowd, but he does it every day. I offered to get him a Gazette Christmas cheque but he didn't want it. He said, No, no. I like to earn any money I can. He comes around. He stays at the Salvation Army or the Brewery Mission. Through him I told other people about our project.

We also serve 180 people once a month in Fulford Hall at the Cathedral on the last Sunday of each moth. We serve all the food we have picked up. The Drop-in-Centre volunteers do the cooking and volunteers from the Cathedral help us serve it. Some people donate money for whatever food we might need in addition to what we have picked up.. We serve the meal 11 times a year. We stopped doing it on Christmas, because so many organizations serve dinner during the Christmas season.

The Drop-in-Centre in the Undercroft is a great boon to the people on the street, but I don't know how long it will last. The Dean has said that maybe it won't go on forever. It is very expensive, and donations to the church are decreasing. However, attempts are being made to raise more money. They held a couple of music concerts in the church but turnout wasn't too good. Perhaps the organist, Patrick Wedd , will be able to find other formulas, he's very good. We'll see how everything works out.

The Elderly Project was started at the Yellow Door in 1971, and at that time Mary Curry , Nancy Pipe , Elizabeth Cran and others were involved. I was not connected directly with it, but I used to visit an old man who had been in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, but was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. I used to visit him once a week, do his groceries and things like that. The Elderly Project has being going on for a quarter century now. The visitors are mainly students

I was born in Hull, Yorkshire, in 1916. I never knew my mother, she had to leave and go on her own, and she left me in the care of an aunt. My aunt looked after me until I was 8, and then she couldn't afford to keep me any longer. She was a Wesleyian Methodist, and I attended Sunday School at her church, and through the church she placed me in a home for boys, the National Children's Home, an orphanage. It was run by a Dr. Stephenson , and he had several branches all over England. I was there until I was 14. I managed there, and I went to school. I wanted to learn music - I have a musical ear - and I started to learn to play the piano in the boys' home. But apparently I got into some mischief - I don't remember what it was - and the person running the boys' home punished me by not letting me do my music lessons any more.

I think that it was a terrible thing to do, and I have always regretted that I never learned to lay any instrument. I loved classical and popular music, and always thought that some day I'd become notable as a conductor of an orchestra. But instead of becoming the conductor of an orchestra, I became the conductor on a train!

When I was 14 I attended the fall fair in Hull, where there was a tent put up by Canada, because they were looking for immigrants to come here.

Yes, I signed my name, and because of the situation I was in and because the home had an office here in Canada, in Hamilton , it was easy to arrange for me to emigrate. I was eager to come, but this auntie, who had taken care of me as an infant, wanted me to come back to live with her. But I had lost track of her, you know, she had not come to see me very often, and so I thought to myself, I don't know her very well. Why would I want to go to live with her? I also thought of the boat trip - we were to come over on one of those big old ships, a five day's crossing - a thrill for a fourteen year old - and I thought, No. I'll go to Canada. I was horribly seasick when I did get on the ship, by the way, but I came to Canada, to Hamilton to the office of the National Children's Home.

The chap who ran this little place for the National Homes found jobs for us on farms. The first farm they sent me to was with a German couple. They had a farm in Tavistock , the other side of Brantford, and I worked there for a whole year. It was only a 100 acre farm, and they were very poor and didn't feed me too well. They wouldn't put butter on the table, or sugar, or cream for your coffee -- even though we were making cream, we sent it all to the dairy. The woman was quite difficult, and for dessert she would boil brown sugar and water, and that was called dessert. But when we had company - when some relatives would come by - they'd put on a big spread. Then they'd put butter on the table, sugar, and nice mince pies - she used to make nice mince pies. I was only making $8 a month. Of course I wouldn't get paid cash, I didn't need any money, I was on the farm all the time. When the end of the year came the farmer had to raise $96 for my salary. He didn't have it, so he had to sell a couple of pigs to get the money to pay me.

The Home took me away from there, and they got me a job with another farmer. He was a Scotch man, his name was Campbell, and his farm was near Brantford too. He was a slave driver, and I worked hard. I had to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning and milk the cows before breakfast. I used to milk 15 cows before I got my breakfast - by hand - and if you don't think that's a job, I'm telling you it was a big job. Then I'd have my breakfast and take the milk to the dairy, with a team of horses. When I got back, I'd have chores to do. You've got to look after all the cattle and all the horses and pigs, clean the stables, it kept me working hard the whole day. And in the spring, summer and fall, there were additional duties. The farmer paid me $12 a month. It was all saved, I didn't get it until the end. On a farm you don't need money. I worked for Mr. Campbell for a year, and by then I had decided that I didn't want to be a farmer, and I made up my mind to leave and to go back to Hamilton.

In Hamilton the Great Depression was on, and so the office of the National Children's Home closed and I had to fend for myself. It wasn't easy. I was only 17 years old, and I didn't have any money, I didn't have anything. I got acquainted with a cashier in a theatre, and she felt sorry for me because I didn't have a place to stay, so she arranged with the theatre manager that I could sleep in the basement. They had two shows in the evening, and I had turn the lights off when the movie started, turn them on when it was over, and see everybody out after the last show. They let me sleep there just for doing that. They didn't give me any money, so I had to look for odd jobs to get money to eat. I would cut people's grass, and such like. Then I managed to find a small job working in a silver plant. That was a little better. I got $11 a week, and I used to get room and board for $6 a week, which left $5 over to eat and to see a movie or something - you could go to a movie for 25 or 35 cents in those days.

I was in Hamilton for ten years, and I hung around the theatre for a good part of that time. I wanted to learn to be a projectionist. They used to have two projectionists in the booth, you know. It was a big deal in those days, when the talkies came out. I really wanted to learn that trade, but with the Depression on, and with my situation, I could never get into it. You needed to be the son of somebody or related to somebody to get the job of learning to be a projectionist. I met a theatre manager who was running a theatre for second-run movies down the street, and I told him my plight, and how I would like to learn to be a projectionist so I could get into the union and make good money. I told him my story, about immigrating and all, and he said, Well, I can't afford to hire anybody, but I'll let you come on as an apprentice, if you want. I'll only pay you a few dollars, but at least you'll get a start, and you'll learn the business, and as time goes by you can join the union and then you'll be able to get a job when people retire or quit. I was so happy to know that it was going to happen. He told me to report at the theatre the following Monday, but I read in the paper just before then that he had dropped dead from a heart attack.

Yes it was. Well, finally World War II conscription was announced by MacKenzie King, and so I joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in Hamilton. They sent me to Montreal, to Lachine, where I did my basic training and I learned to be a wireless operator. Morse code was quite popular during those days, and I did 20 words a minute. I flew on a Liberator, delivering supplies overseas. I was in the Air Force from '42 to late '45, and then they gave me my discharge because the war was over with Germany, and because of my age. They didn't want me flying because they figured if you were 22 years of age or less you're not so apt to blackout as you would if you're over 22. So they encouraged me to take my discharge, in Hamilton.

When I got my discharge I didn't have a heck of a lot of money, because they don't pay you big money when you're in the army or air force, or whatever. I had a few savings, but only a couple of hundred dollars or so. I didn't know whether to come back this way - I certainly didn't want to stay in Hamilton with what I'd gone through there with the Depression and everything. I happened to find a railway ticket to Gananoque on the sidewalk, so I took the train there and then I hitch hiked to Montreal. I decided to see how I could make out here. You didn't have to worry about speaking French in those days.

I was wandering through Central Station - it had opened up in '43 - and I decided to see if I could get a job as a Morse operator for the railway. The railway was using Morse code then. I went to see the man in charge and he said, Well, I'd be interested to give you some work, but you have to go back to school for a month to take up the international code. That was because we had a code in the Air Force which didn't fully apply to the railway, there were a few characters different. So you had to go back to school to pick up the railway code, which wasn't too much to do. He said, Come back to see me in a month and I'll try to find you a job. You may have to go out in the country and live in the sticks somewhere. They would use operators to go in the bush where you'd live by yourself in a little cabin, and there would be freight and passenger trains go by and you might have to give them a message now and then. I don't know whether I would have liked to have done that or not. You'd have bears for company and you'd have to have the freight trains bring out groceries for you there.

It was just by luck that when I came out of that man's office, as I started to walk back down to Central Station, this guy passed by - I had my tunic on then, and he knew I had been in the Air Force - he passed right by me. All of a sudden he turned around and he said, Hey, you! I looked back and I said, Yeah? What can I do for you? He said, How would you like to have a job? I'm looking for somebody to wash dishes on the train all the way to Winnipeg tonight. And I said, Well, you put me on there! Then he said, When you finish your trip, come and see me and we'll sign you up, and everything. And so that's how I got my job with the railway.

I was kept really busy. I worked in the kitchen for 2 or 3 months, and then I asked to be transferred to work as a waiter in the dining car. I did that for 3 or 4 years, which was quite a different kind of a job. Then I got promoted to be a steward, in charge of the dining car, looking after the meals, the revenue and everything. And then in 1950 I was promoted to be a sleeping car conductor. I used to work as a platform inspector too, in the summer time, in Central Station. I used to meet the crews coming in from different trains, sign their time slips, pick up the keys, and so forth. I also used to see them when they were going out, and if anybody was missing I'd call up a list of people. You would have to try to get them to come to make the train before it pulled out. You'd only have about an hour and a half at the most to do this.

I had a problem, when I was working with the railway. I had a lot of time on my hands, and I got mixed up with gambling, playing barbotte. That darn gambling in Montreal! In those days there was a gambling place on nearly every corner downtown. I got myself in such a financial position that I could no longer be bonded to carry on with my work as a conductor, and so I got laid off. That was something I always regretted, but I worked almost 20 years for the railroad.


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