Remembering Charlie Hill

If memory serves, my folks bought that place next to the railway station in Elora in '59. Our neighbour a few doors south on the Elora Road was Charlie Hill.

The railway station is long gone, but our old house is still there, next to The Gorge Family Restaurant. At the time we moved in it came with four acres, a barn, and two chicken coops. There was no indoor plumbing. We got our water from a hand pump out front, and you did your business in an outhouse out back.

That was a bitch in the winter months!

Charlie Hill was a well-driller who ran a dance-hall on the side. From time to time drunken revellers from Charlie's dance-hall would turn up at our place. I recall one night when a carload of guys kept coming back looking for a gal who had escaped their clutches. They suspected we were hiding her somewhere.

I don't know much about Charlie's back story, but he was one of the key mentors who helped my father transition from penniless immigrant to solid dues-paying member of Canada's middle class.

I do know that Charlie had put in some time at the Beatty plant five miles down the road, in Fergus. That was the family business of Perrin Beatty, long time Conservative political operative. The Beatty operation wasn't held in particularly high regard among the working class at the time.

But Charlie's stint there gave rise to a bit of wisdom that I must have heard a thousand times from my father.

It's not how much money you make; it's what you do with it that counts.

This was based on Charlie's astute observation that he had prospered mightily on the road of life, while many of his cohorts at Beatty had floundered. That was because, as the story goes, those cohorts had repaired to the pub after a shift, while Charlie stayed back and worked a second shift.

I can see the logic at work here.

Makes perfect sense. Instead of squandering your pay at the beer hall, you had a second paycheque coming in. That, and the take from your dance hall, gave you the spare cash to do a little real estate speculation.

That's how every DP who ever washed up on these shores got out of the working class, and it was a strategy that even worked for guys who were born here, like Charlie.

Save your money and invest. It's a no-brainer.

At the same time, I think there was more to Charlie's success than that. Charlie's well-drilling concern put in the water-well when we got our indoor plumbing, and he did the water-wells at the next couple of places as we were moving up the socio-economic ladder.

Back then, drilling a water-well would take days and days. In hindsight, I think Charlie always kept the drill turning for as long as it took before he had a contract for his next well. He may have struck water on day one, but you'd pay for the next three or four days anyway.

Charlie was a good role model in many ways, and he was for sure a great guy for my father to know, but that came with a downside. Charlie had a grade four education, which led my dear father to conclude you only needed a grade four education to make it in this country.

Dad had that beat with his eight years of formal education, and he prospered mightily too, but I think that may have somewhat blinded him to the value of higher education at the time.

But that was then.


Charlie's former dance hall still stands in the middle of that little subdivision at the south end of Elora. I think it's an art studio now.

That subdivision is one of Charlie's legacies.

He had others.

He used to own the property where the Canadian Tire store now stands on Woodlawn Road in Guelph.

By that time, Dad had been in the real estate business for a few years, and Charlie was not only a mentor, but a client. That property was the subject of a hilarious three-way Mexican standoff between Charlie, my father, and Frank Silvestro, a guy who showed up in CBC documentaries about the "Mafia" years later.


But that's a story for another time...