In the same decade the song All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth was released, residents in Bradford West Gwillimbury had a lot more than dental work to choose from for holiday gifts.
Cameras cost anywhere from $3.85, to $10.75 at Campbell’s Rexall Drug Store, according to a newspaper ad from the 1940s.
“Evening in Paris” toilet sets ranged from 65 cents, to $3.25.
Christmas cards in boxes started at just 25 cents.
And Neilson’s “Xmas-wrapped Candy” cost 50 cents, to $1.
Christmas gifts and generosity have abounded in BWG over the years — for local people and those around the world.
Random acts of kindness
In a letter from 1944, written by Herbert Taylor of the Royal Air Force who was based in Sri Lanka, he thanks his friends “and the people of Bradford for the parcel and cigarettes.”
“Someone must have given a great deal of thought to the making up of that Christmas parcel. It arrived in fine shape and in good condition,” he wrote in the letter that was published in the Bradford Witneass.
Taylor added he would love to exchange some of the 75 F (24 C) heat there for some cold.
Fast forward to 1976 and an Innisfil Scope article about a special gift for a 17-year-old Jerry Hiscock of Alcona.
“Legless almost since birth, (he) will be able to get around fairly well this Christmas,” the article read.
The Innisfil Lions Club donated a used three-wheel ATV, which was refurbished by Canadian Honda Motor Limited so Hiscock could use it.
“It cost the company more money to repair the bike than it would have to replace it, but it would have had to be a bigger model," Ron Rogers, Honda representative and Innisfil resident, said at the time.
As for Hiscock, he had his sights set on becoming an auto mechanic and, possibly, getting a motorcycle licence.
‘Railway Grim List’ and other unhappy news at Christmas
But the news in BWG at Christmastime has not always been happy.
An article in the Bradford Witness from Dec. 17, 1908, states how George Stoddart and Fred McKay were working at “the new school building at Middleton,” when the scaffold they were standing on gave way and they dropped eight metres to the ground.
McKay was unhurt, but Stoddart broke his leg at the ankle.
“The nature of the break is considered to be quite serious, and may mean amputation of the right foot,” the article read.
On the same day, the Bradford Witness also printed a “Railway Grim List,” which listed how many railway workers were killed on the job and how.
According to the paper, 242 railroad workers were killed in 1908, and 249 were injured in accidents.
The deadliest month was April 1908, with 32 deaths and 45 injured, and the most common cause was being run over by rail cars.
Christmas traditions honoured
However, right next to the grim list is information about sleighing being “very good” in the Lefroy area that year, and that local kids were organizing “Xmas Tree Entertainment” at a church.
In the BWG Public Library archives, there is plenty of evidence of Christmas traditions being honoured through the years.
A photo printed in the Bradford Witness of Grade 1 students dressed in crowns as wise men, and others in white cardboard angel wings with sparkly edges, for a nativity play at Bradford Public School in 1975.
Another photo shows three older women wearing wide-brimmed pink hats covered in decorations at a Bradford Women's Institute meeting.
“Christmas Meeting 1980 at Hazel Church's Home,” read the caption. “Theme: describe your hat.”
One photo from 1994 shows BWG’s town crier at the time, Arthur Meeke, dressed up as Santa Claus at the library’s kids Christmas party. A red sack of toys sitting on the floor next to him.
Who can forget the annual Santa Claus Parade?
The Bond Head Snowmobile Club features prominently in one photo from 1975, with an adult and some children on a float next to a large fake gingerbread house.
“MERRY XMAS,” a sign reads on the side of the float.
A lineup of other floats and kids wearing clownish polkadot outfits while carrying balloons fan out behind it.
“A good crowd turned out Saturday for the annual Bond Head Santa Claus Parade,” read the caption in the Dec. 10 Bradford Witness. “Here, the floats make their way up Highway 27. The Bond Head Snowmobile club is leading the way."
The BWG Public Library’s Summer Reading Club had fun with a Santa Claus Parade float in 1989.
The float featured “Bruno Bronty” the dinosaur, with luxuriously long eyelashes and a Santa hat, sitting at a chunky computer next to a sign reading, “Our dinosaur.”
‘Handsome’ new church
And, of course, there was church.
On Dec. 6, 1900, the Bradford Witness printed a large feature about a new Trinity Church, which it called a “handsome building” that is “an ornament to our village” and opened on a Sunday with “imposing ceremonies.”
The new church cost $4,500, according to the article.
As well, a new Anglican church also made big waves in the community at the time, with hundreds of people being turned away for a night service, “being unable to obtain even standing room,” read the article.
Four reverends were involved in that service, including Rev. A.C. Watt of Bond Head, the article read.
Prohibition, police, and other big events at Christmastime
Along with Christmas celebrations, local newspapers highlighted some big events in BWG’s history that happened around the holidays, including a visit from “Man in Motion” Rick Hansen in December 1986.
Bradford Weekly published photos of local kids from Bradford Public School and St. Marie of the Incarnation Catholic School holding signs of welcome, under the headline, “Hansen a hit in Bradford.”
Several hundred kids were given permission to leave school for the day and wait in St. Mary’s hall parking lot for Hansen’s arrival, read the article.
An article from Dec. 23, 1996 also explained the details about the then-newly created South Simcoe Police Service, which launched Jan. 1, 1997.
It was a new police service from the amalgamation of the BWG and Innisfil police services.
And back on Dec. 4, 1902, Bradford residents voted on the Ontario Liquor Act referendum about whether the government should start prohibition.
“Bradford, a town heavy with taverns and inns, had churches and the newspaper promoting the vote for prohibition,” according to the BWG Public Library archives.
“If there was the slightest redeeming feature about the beverage sale of intoxicating liquors, we might be more considerate of it, but it is utterly and absolutely bad,” read the Bradford Witness in an article on the day of the vote. “It produces depravity and crime of the most revolting character.”
The Witness printed the vote results on Dec. 11, 1902, with 98 local residents in favour of prohibition and and 34 against. Only 132 Bradford residents voted in the referendum.
The vote in favour of prohibition was the majority throughout the region, with 84 Bond Head residents voting for it (17 against), 72 Coulson’s residents in favour (10 against), and 58 Cookstown residents in favour (nine against).
“After the vote on Dec. 4, West Gwillimbury had a majority for prohibition, though the motion did not pass. There was a low voter turnout throughout the province, and despite the majority everywhere, it could not pass,” according to the library archives.
But while non-drinkers did not manage to get their way in 1902, one local family nearly 90 years later got perhaps the best gift of all just in time for Christmas — a new baby girl.
“Elinor and Steve Geniole (Schlarb) are tickled pink with the arrival of Alisha Bete, making her entrance on Dec. 20, 1990,” read an announcement in the Bradford Gazette. “(She’s) finally here!”
