The Life of Leslie George Wood
...as told to his son1 and some of his grandchildren2
and recorded3 on audio cassette on various occasions in 1996.
My dad, W.G4. Wood came to New York from England with his brother5.
When they landed in New York they seem to have parted ways and never got
in contact one with another. Dad went his way and went down one of the
streets of New York and he saw some delicious looking food on the street
and he thought he would buy one, and he bit into one of these beautiful red
pieces of fruit and he pretnear [sic] died, it was a tomato.
Dad went on to work for a company in the United States called
Ashdowns Hardware. He also seemed to change occupations. He went to a
firm of hardware merchants called Mark Slevette Dobe. Sometime during
this period he must have been keeping up correspondence with my mother,
Agnes Clare Ryder6 and he decided to go back to England to pick her up and
they were married, I guess over there, and came out to United States again
and finally settled in Manitoba, where he worked for the firm of Ashdowns
again and became a very well respected hardware merchant.
They moved to Leduc, Alberta, Oh I guess Dorothy was born7 in
Manitoba after that they moved to, yeah, Port Arthur, Manitoba, and after
1
Douglas Bryant Wood & Jolayne Marelyn Dawe Wood
2
Darren Andrew Wood Family (LeAnn Wells Wood, Jacob Andrew Wood, Logan Bryant Wood), Maria Elizabeth Wood,
Sarahlynn Margaret Wood, LaChelle Dwan Wood
3
Transcribed by LeAnn Wells Wood
4
William George Wood, born 2 October 1875
5
Brother’s Name — Some family debate exists...there is no evidence that it was his brother. Perhaps a friend
6
Agnes Clara Ryder, born 3 March 1875
7
DOB of Dorothy Clara
1
that they moved to Leduc. In 1917 I was born8, Leslie George Wood and I
resided in Leduc for twelve years. Dad was a hardware merchant once again
here. He had a big hardware store on Main Street and then moved to a
smaller store around the corner in later years. I think the hardware store in
Leduc was Beehive Hardware and also Leduc Hardware.
In Leduc, it was a nice little town, not much to do in winter time except
go skating on the lake or catching on the farmers bobsleds. It’s a little hard
to describe how we did this, but the farmers used to haul all their heavy
loads during the winter. A team of horses can pull about five times the
weight on the sleighs as they could on the wheels on the wagons so they left
all their transporting as much as they could to the winter. These sleighs
would come in loaded and the farmers would take their big black snakes and
try and fend us off from catching on the back of the wagons, but we got
pretty clever at it and able to do it. We could also hitch our own sleds
through the little rungs in the back and as soon as we put the ropes through
we’d fall back on our sleds and when we wanted to get off, we let go of the
rope and hopefully the rope didn’t catch on the sleigh and we would get off.
We used to go skating on the Leduc lake, which is really only a slue. It used
to get down around 40-50 below 0 in the Fahrenheit scale, which is pretty
cool, so we used to put a roasted potato in each shoe and then when we got
our skates on, why, we could eat the potatoes.
Just about the time I was leaving Leduc, in 1929, it used to be quite a
past time for kids with their new 1929 Model A’s, 1929 (McGloklin sp) Buicks
to take them down on the lake before the snow came and spin them around
down there. That was a great treat. Leduc Lake was a lake that would
freeze to a depth of any where from 24 to 30 inch thick ice and some of the
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3 March 1917, Leduc, Alberta
2
cold nights would be so cold that the ice would freeze and break, a huge
crack, 1 inch wide could open up across the whole lake probably two miles long.
We used to play hockey too on a rink that was outside, natural ice, but
fenced in, school had a team which I played for, and also we used to do a
little bit of sledding down the various canyons around the country. In the
summertime it got pretty hot there also, up to 90 odd degrees in the
summer. I used to pal around with a truck driver and go swamping on his
truck around Leduc and when he had loads for Wetaskiwin which is twenty
miles away or Calmar another 24 miles the other way, Camrose, 40-50 miles
SE of Leduc I used to travel around with him.
In 1929 Dad decided that he’d like to see what Vancouver looked like.
The depression was taking its toll on the farmers and the businessmen
around Leduc and he thought maybe he’d find greener pastures in Vancouver.
He went out ahead of mother and myself and looked around and bought a
grocery store on 4th avenue in Kitsilano in Vancouver.
Mother and I went out to Vancouver in October 1929 after we had
settled up all the affairs in Leduc. We arrived at the CPR [Canadian Pacific
Railway] station, which is right behind the Spencer store. We went into the
Spencer store to look around or way out to Dad’s place and mother and I got
separated. For some reason I seemed to know where I was supposed to go
and the address of the store and I walked across the street and apparently
found out some way that the Number 4 streetcar went out to 4th Avenue
and would stop at U street where my Dad’s store was, at 4th and U. I got
there safely, I don’t remember how safely my mother got there, but I arrived
safely anyway.
Oh yes...my son9 would like to know about our train trip through the
Rockies. The route of the CPR from Leduc to Vancouver, you have to go
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Douglas Bryant Wood
3
south to Calgary and then across on the main line. At Calgary when we
changed on to the train heading towards Banff I had a, I guess I had a scout
pin on my jacket, and there was a gentlemen on the train, I think he had a
partial scout uniform on, but anyway it turned out to be Lord Baden-Powell10
who had just returned from a World Scout Jamboree somewhere and he gave
me, we had a little talk, and he gave me a scout knot which you fasten to
your shoulder on your scout uniform. It was quite an experience to meet this
wonderful gentleman.
The kids are wondering what we did in Vancouver, especially when I was
young, twelve years old. Well, we were able to go skating at the Vancouver
arena, which was on the corner of Denman and Georgia and we skated there
for about a year, or year and a half, until that burned down which that made
a very long trip all the way across town to the ice arena at the icing park
called The Forum. But we always seemed to have a dime for the streetcar
and able to get to our skating. We also liked to go skiing and to get to the
ski hill which was Hollyburn Mountain on the North Shore. We would have to
go down to Main Street and there we would catch the ferry over to West
Vancouver. I guess the streetcar trip to the ferry was about 20-25 minutes
long and the ferry trip another 40 minutes. Then from the ferry in West
Vancouver we’d have to hike up Hollyburn, this entailed walking all the way
through what is now the residential district of West Van and then up a trail
to the mountain. One of our friend’s brothers had a cabin up there and we’d
go up there. In the very early fall we could skate on the lake before the heavy
snows covered the ice. Then we could go skiing, but it was strictly a manual
thing, no ski lifts, no transportation up and down the mountain, no
transportation to the mountain closer than the ferry dock. So it was quite
an experience probably taking 3-4 hours to get there, 3-4 hours to get back.
10
Sir Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the World Scouting movement 1908 and British General
4
I attended the Kitsilano Junior High and the Kitsilano High School and
the Vancouver Technical School and also worked in my Dad’s grocery store at
4th Avenue and U Street in Vancouver. I also, due to circumstances, I quit
school and went to work. I had an opportunity of going to work for an
electrical contractor at $5.00 a week or going to work for Safeway store at
$19.00 a week. I chose the electrical and I worked there for about a week at
$5.00 and then given a raise to $7 and then given a raise to $19 all within a
period of about three or four weeks.
So, during this time I decided to get married to a beautiful little girl
called Alice Bryant11. We had a good time dating together. I met her through
a little Jewish boyfriend I had. Me, being the rich guy with the big job I owned
a Star car which I’d bought off my boss for a few payments supposed to
reach $25.00 for the full price of the car. So we’d take Alice and whoever
Joe Earl could scare up out for rides. I used to get frustrated with Joe, he’d
sit with his feet up on the dashboard, pretty hard to see around the corners
out of that old Star (Tori sp) so one day when he was sitting up there he
knocked off the ignition switch. The key on the dashboard didn’t work so I
had a little knife switch mounted on the right hand side of the car which you
had to reach over to put on. He knocked it off and killed the car at Broadway
and Granville, which was quite a busy intersection, even at that time. I said,
“Joe, I guess you’ll have to get out and bank it instead.” He didn’t notice he’d
knocked off the switch and I wasn’t telling him. He was kind of a shy boy so
he took his suit coat and tried to hold it up over his head while he cranked
the car with his other hand. I let him go through this exercise for a few
minutes before I decided to turn the switch on. Anyway we got going.
11
Alice Gertrude Bryant, born 27 December 1912
5
Another time, taking the Star touring around the University12, we were
going down the hill, it’s a long grade, not very steep, probably a one or two
percent grade for two miles or two and a half miles. We were coasting along
down there, and somebody said, “Oh there’s somebody’s wheel rolled past me
or going past us.” And I says, “Yeah, that’s ours.” Anyway we kept on going.
These Star cars were noted for their balance. They could go quite a ways on
three wheels. It was a back wheel, and of course, you only had brakes on the
back two wheels, so when one brake lining was able to collapse completely,
why, you had no brakes on the other side, you just kept on going. Anyway we
came to a parking place called Simon Fraser Monument, marking one of the
spots, I guess, that Simon Fraser had landed on the Fraser River. Anyway,
we slid into there and ground to a halt and went down the road and picked up
a few of the pieces that we thought we might need, got the wheel back on and
continued our journey. It was lots of fun.
Alice and I finally got married on May the 14th, 1938 and we celebrated
our honeymoon by driving our (Marquette) all the way down to Olympia,
Washington. The only great event that we had, there was one flat tire and
the manual gas pump on the dashboard every once in a while would decide to
squirt gas all over the passenger.
After we were married we lived a few months with my mother and dad
on 13th Avenue just off (Crutch) street in Vancouver. Then we moved to an
apartment on (Pine) street just off 4th Avenue. At this time I was working
for Banks electric and he had a suite in the back of his house, where he had
originally had an electrical shop and a lighting fixture display room. This had
been converted into a suite, so we moved over there. At this time Alice and I
could always go out and fill the back seat of the car with groceries and meat
enough to feed us for a week or so for a little less than $5.00. Gas was 25
12
University of British Columbia in Vancouver
6
cents a gallon, and a big milkshake, which would be about a quart in size was
anywhere from 5 to 10 cents and as thick as cement.
I worked on many different kinds of jobs for Banks Electric, but usually
on conduit jobs. I got quite fast and accurate at mending pipe and some way
Lucas Electric found out about it and they wanted me to go with them. And
of course offered quite a double or triple rate of pay that Banks did. And
although I didn’t get much commercial work I was able to go out to the
University and watch Frank Holden wire some extra fancy homes that were
constructed all the outer walls are two by six laminated double put in
vertically and spiked together on all the outside walls. It was a real picnic
trying to wire these places and I just loved to watch Frank work at that
because they’d send me out once in a while out there to watch him work.
Frank Holden became electrical inspector for the district of West Van in later
years.
One day I was working down on Pender street at the corner of Hamilton
in one of the Government buildings, I think it was going to be set up as a
recruiting office for the Army or Navy. This was just at the start of the
war13. I was up on the ladder doing something. Some guy come and tugged
at my pant leg and said, “Come on down, they want to talk,” to me.
Apparently it was something to do with the Army, or the Navy, or the Air
Force. They told me that Lucas Electric would no longer need me and that I
would go to work for the shipyard. So, that’s fine.
We lived, we had moved from Bank’s place and into a little house on
Walnut Street and this is where we lived at this time. I guess there is one
little item I forgot. Douglas probably was born. That was before we moved to
Walnut Street. He was born when we lived on (Fraser) Street. Left out one
place. We moved from Vine Street to Fraser street and then to Banks and
13
WWII
7
then to the Walnut Street. It was during the time, I believe, that we lived on
Fraser Street that Doug was born14. He was born in the Vancouver General
Hospital and that wasn’t too far from where we lived.
One Christmas we had an exciting time with him. We had him roped
into a small rocking chair and he was watching me do some work on some
Christmas presents. And I was cutting a piece of glass about three or four
feet from him on the floor. A knock came to the door and I got up and went
to answer it and from where Doug was just around the corner from the door
and he couldn’t quite see it, so I guess he leaned forward as far as he could
in the rocking chair and being tied into the rocking chair pulled the whole
thing over and he landed face foremost in the pane of glass, one chip landed
between his eyes and was really creating a gush of blood so between the
blood and the glass being on his face we weren’t going to take any chances
so I rushed him off to the hospital. It turned out not bad, there’s a little
scar there where the glass got him, but everything turned out all right. We
had a good Christmas.
Hi-lee15 would like me to tell about how I got started in the electrical
business. Well, with Banks electric he made me wired houses, but we also did
other types of commercial work like restaurants and that which were the
main thing at that time going on, but there was a housing boom, many
houses being built. We had one great big one to do on the British Properties.
And it was about a half a day trip to get over there from where we lived in
18th Avenue just off Oak Street, had to travel down to the old second house
bridge, wait your turn to cross the railroad bridge, then drive all the way
through North Vancouver and up into British Properties and that’s just over
old trails, not really any roads. There was no such a thing as a Lion’s Gate
14
Douglas Bryant Wood, born 14 April 1939
15
Nickname for his Granddaughter Sarahlynn Margaret Wood
8
Bridge or anything like that, not even a second house bridge, all you had was
a one way road across the railway bridge for cars. So we finally get up to the
top of the British Properties and wire this house for one of the Guinness
people who were the owners and originators of that high priced spectacular
housing development. The houses were wired at that time with what we call
knob and tube wiring. This consisted of boring a hole for the neutral where
ever it went and also boring a hole and pulling a wire through for your hot wire
and boring a hole for your switch length so by the time you got finished with
some of these fancy homes with their three-way and four-way switches which
required three and four wires to each device a joist began to look like the
inside of a grand piano and it was quite a job to get figured out how to have
enough space, you could find enough space to take all these wires without
completely destroying the joist. It kept the building inspectors scratching
their heads sometimes, but anyway, we managed.
I had mentioned that I had been called to serve in the shipyards, so I’ll
tell you just a tiny bit about that. My first assignment was over in North
Shore in the dry docks there and they were degaussing16 the freighters. This
degaussing was a method of making the steel ships nonmagnetic. This was
done by placing hundreds of turns of wire all the way around the boat and
these consisted of various sizes of wires and they would run certain voltages
and certain amperages through each set of wires to compensate for the
magnetic field. The closer you got to the North Pole the higher the magnetic
strength of the boat was and therefore you’d have to increase the current
flowing in the wires around the boat to make it act like a block of wood. As
you approach the equator these boats began to lose their magnetic field so
you’d have to decrease your electrical field or else you’d be causing a magnet,
then when you’d cross the equator and went to the other, approaching the
16
To make non-magnetic
9
South Pole, the magnetic field on the boat changed too so you would have to
reverse the polarity on your ear wire. It was quite fun All I had to do was
run a pair of wires from the wheel house down the bridge of the boat down to
the control panel on one of the decks, probably the second or third below the
main deck. And all I had to do was run this half inch conduit down and pull a
couple wires in it. I found out later it was a job that usually took two or
three weeks to do, I guess, and I was doing it less than a day so I had quite
a bit of spare time.
After a few months of that traveling to the North Shore, Burrard
opened a new shipyard over in Vancouver, at the foot of McClain Drive to build
the Liberty boats. They were ten thousand ton freighters and everybody
hoped that they’d make at least one trip with goods for Europe or some part
of the world where the allied forces were. This I know was occurring. Anyway
they were going to build this shipyard on the Vancouver side so I was asked
to go over and start wiring the shops over there, the plate shops, the welding
shops and what not, huge buildings and it was quite an experience wiring
these places. It was just another case of running a bunch of conduit around.
After they had the buildings running, why, I was made assistant foreman of
one of the shifts in charge of maintenance for the yards. They did not do any
of the wiring on the boats themselves at that yard, all they did was turn out
a hollow weak of the four building ways every, there’s four ways, four boats
being build at the same time, and every seven days off those four ways a
boat slipped down into the water and then they were taken away to another
yard for fitting. Practically all it was a hull with the cabins and the deck and
one of the super structures of some kind on it, but no machinery or anything
fitted in them, so we were strictly a building yard and all my was to keep the
machines running, the welders going and the lights on. That was all I had to
do there.
10
During the time at the shipyard, I was on swing ship, but a fellow by
the name of McDougal wanted the afternoon shift all the time, so the other
Assistant Foreman in charge of maintenance swung with me between the day
shift and the grave yard shifts. And this fellow by the name of McDougal
towards the end of the war was starting a company. And they were
operating out of North Vancouver and they built up a little bit of a reputation
and got a little business going wiring houses and various buildings in North
Shore and had a store on Lonsdale where they sold lighting fixtures. They
said as soon as we were finished up at the shipyard they wanted me to go
over and go into business with them and go into the electrical contracting
business. So, we gradually worked into that and we were taking contracts all
over British Columbia for schools and public buildings of various kinds. Knoll
Electric, which it was called, went across the street and opened a big store
and sold records and appliances and that. This kind of sapped the money
from the contracting end of the business and kind of folded up peacefully.
Three of us fellows, Charlie Jones, Ray Albertson and myself, formed a
company called Triangle Electric17, and we mainly did houses and a few stores
and what not. And in 1955 we were incorporated and gradually got into
larger work wiring, we became kind of closely associated with (Golby) Cranes.
And we were wiring cranes of various sizes just like donuts, they were turning
them out dozens at a time, kept us going seven days a week almost 24 hours
a day. And we also had other projects like the container cranes on the
Vancouver docks and places like the bay shore had one thing or another to
look after and alterations and renovations. It was a good time. Doug worked
into the company then. Ray left it, Charlie left it, and so eventually it
practically boiled down to Douglas and myself as Triangle Electric Limited.
17
Triangle Electric Limited - North Vancouver, BC
11
12
Leslie George WOOD
Born:
1 Mar 1917
Married:
14 May 1938
1st
2nd
Leduc, Alberta, Canada
Vancouver, Westminster, BC, Canada
3rd
4th
5th
_________________
+William WOOD----|_________________
+Thomas WOOD-----|
_________________
|
+Francis---------|_________________
+William G WOOD--|
_Daniel WELCH____
|
|
+Michael WELCH---|_Martha__________
|
+Anne WELCH------|
_Benjamin HILL___
|
+Hannah HILL-----|_Mary____________
Leslie G WOOD
_________________
Alice G BRYANT
+----------------|_________________
|
+John T RYDER----|
_________________
|
|
+----------------|_________________
+Agnes C RYDER---|
_________________
|
+----------------|_________________
+Alice M HUGHES--|
_________________
+----------------|_________________
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Lesley George Wood Burn Accident
As told to grandson David Nephi Wood on October, 29, 1999
Grandpa was unsure of the date and as I was not writing or recording as he told me the
story, I am going by memory. I hope the location I give is accurate.
During construction of a hydro electric dam in Castlegar British Columbia,
Canada, there were temporary bridge cranes (bridge cranes are unit that straddle the
load. They have two legs with a bridge between. Grandpa said the legs were
approximately 90 ft. apart and they ran on tracks) set up to move logs from the river
above the dam site to the river below the dam site. Grandpa was working on one of these
high speed cranes when the accident occurred. Due to a holiday the two men working
with Grandpa had left early so as to take advantage of a longer holiday break. Working
alone, Les went to complete a job in a panel or electrical inclosure of some sort….he
couldn’t remember exactly what it was that he was doing..he seemed to recall that he
was drilling and bolting a buss bar in place (a buss bar is a flat bar of metal used to
carry an electrical current and found within an electrical inclosure…size of bar is
determined by amount of electrical current being carried). He remembers that the
enclosure was for 600 amps at 480 volts. Entering this enclosure was a cable carrying
480 volts. When this cable was installed it was probably damaged; cut or nicked in some
way. Les said that when he started to drill the bit caught the insulation on this cable
and peeled it off exposing the bare cable. The drill made contact with the bare cable
creating a direct short circuit to ground ( a short circuit can carry thousands of amps
to ground in a fraction of a second). A flash was created when the short circuit was
made. This flash is was burnt Les. He was not electrocuted. The flash burned his hands,
his face, his neck down to the circular collar of his sweater. To this day one can see the
lines from his gloves around his wrists and the circle from the collar of his sweater. His
glasses, during the flash, were blackened completely….they saved his eyes.
Les was taken to the hospital where he was treated for his burns. There was no
room for him, as the burn unit was being occupied by another patient. They put him out
in the corridor. He did not want to stay, and I would imagine they gave him the option to
leave, because he did. One of the engineers on the site offered to drive him home (back to
14
Vancouver). He had bandages on his hands, that from my understanding of his
description, were puffy and would have appeared like boxing gloves. He took the ride and
about half way home, the engineer got tired and pulled over. Grandpa, wanting to go
home, took over driving, puffy hands and all, unable to wrap fingers around steering wheel
and drove home to Vancouver.
15
Lesley George Wood Addendum
As told to grandson Darren Andrew Wood on September, 29, 2002
I spent another afternoon with Grandpa today. He said that his father (WG) came to
New York where he and his brother apparently shook hands and went their separate
ways; never to see each other again (and Grandpa doesn't know his uncle's name). WG
came to work for a hardware company in the US and then went to Port Arthur with the
same company.
Apparently WG's father Thomas was a ship chandler and well to-do in Birmingham.
Grandpa said the name of the Hardware company his father had in Leduc Alberta was
Beehive Hardware. Grandpa has 3 nieces in northern Alberta. One of their husbands
was the mayor of Athabasca for several years.
16