“This place has so many memories,” she said while strolling along the cracked pavement on Saturday.
She wasn’t the only one getting a blast from the past last weekend, as dozens came out to Gander for a reunion of those in the 60-plus age range who would have attended either the Protestant or Roman Catholic schools in Gander between 1948 and 1967.
It’s startling to think a community once existed in an area now populated by dense shrubbery and enormous trees, making the remaining streets through the section just north of the airport quite shaded.
“This was a regular town. I was just mentioning a few moments ago how in such a short amount of time, 50 years, so much overgrowth is everywhere,” said Marcel Lemay, who came to the reunion from Ottawa, Ont.
Jim Butler, who travelled from Mississauga, Ont., to be at the reunion, said he thinks it is a shame people today cannot see what was once in existence on the old town site.
“There’s not many kids growing up who can come back and see nothing left of what they saw and grew up with it. Look at the size of the trees. The army side is even more grown over than this.”
Ms. Tulk, who now lives in Traytown, grew up near the railway in a small apartment above where her father, Albert Jenkins, worked as a druggist.
“The drugstore was the former fire hall, and when we moved there (in 1950), it had been changed into an apartment. That’s what we moved into. It was a different apartment. We only had one bedroom, and there were five of us – three children and mom and dad.”
Amongst the larger rooms in the apartment was the bathroom, which doubled as a storage room for her father. Pharmacy products could also be found on the steps leading up to the apartment.
“It brings back a lot of memories.” - – Jim Butler
“You could barely walk up the steps sideways – there were so many boxes lined up on both sides,” she said.
Mr. Butler moved to Gander with his army family in 1947, and left in 1961. He also spent most of his life there living on the army side of the old town site, and first went to school on that side of the town, before moving to another school on Foss Avenue.
“The schools were spread all over this part of Gander. The old fire hall had a school in it.”
Mr. Lemay came to Gander in 1958 at the old airport terminal, which was the centre of the town at that time.
“They were heavily involved in building the new town site. Shortly there after, they started to move people out there, but I managed to meet a girl and start to date her while she lived on Chestnut Street. We just walked in front of the place, but there’s no resemblance between now and then.”
He was on hand for the creation of what now exists as the centre of Gander, but coming back 50 years later, Mr. Lemay said he finds himself getting lost there.
“It’s not the same town, I can tell you that.”
When her family arrived to Gander, Ms. Tulk recalls eating her first meal at a business called The Greasy Spoon, which was across the street from her father’s drugstore. She can also remember her father being introduced early on to Bill Tapp from Goodyear’s Grocery Store, who became an extremely close friend of her father, teaching him how to drive amongst other things.
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