Putting Kitchener’s best foot forward in 1941
“The Industrial City of Kitchener: Where Living Conditions are Wonderful!”
A 1941, eight-page Kitchener Board of Trade booklet by that name provides today’s equally-wonderful aerial view.
The Second World War is in high gear and under president A.J. Cundick, a retired banker, the Board of Trade is hoping to attract new businesses to the city. While looking due north from a plane soaring over Church Street near Eby, the photographer positions Kitchener’s new Ushaped post office and St. Peter’s Lutheran Church near the top. Just right of centre, at King and Frederick, are the city hall and market. Notice the roof of the Queen Street auditorium at extreme left edge with Walper Hotel above it. To the left of city hall appears the fire hall with its tower. From the bottom, the slightly-angled streets are Church, Alma (to become part of an extended Charles Street in 1962) and King East.
Some Board of Trade selling points boosting Kitchener make interesting reading 75 years later. Photos and descriptive paragraphs boast of the city hall; Rockway and Westmount Golf Clubs; Granite Club; Victoria Park; Rockway Gardens (“the most photographed spot”); the Municipal Swimming Pool (“one of the largest outdoor pools in the Dominion”); the city’s three recent Art Deco buildings — Public Utilities, Post Office and Registry; the YMCAs and YWCAs; and a long view of downtown King Street. Church of the Good Shepherd, erected in the mid-1930s, represents Kitchener’s religious buildings.
A stylized map in the centre of the booklet situates Kitchener amid Western Ontario. Highway 85 leads to Waterloo and Elmira; Number 7 & 8 heads to Stratford and London; Number 8 points to Hamilton and Toronto. Number 7 invites the motorist to visit Guelph, Callander and Ontario’s summer playgrounds. Callander?
Since 1934, Callander has been arguably the most-visited spot in the province. Located near North Bay, it was home to the Dionne Quintuplets whom the province had taken into provincial custody and put on public display. The Board of Trade wants part of that tourism action.
Kitchener boasts 35,000 people in 1941, 62 per cent of whom own their own home while 80 per cent live in detached dwellings.
Waterloo, with 8,700 residents, is “so close that a stranger cannot tell where one town stops and the other begins.” Several other facts jump out from 1941 Kitchener: 90 miles of streets; 65 miles of sewers; eight miles of street railway and 23 miles of bus routes (“high class street railway and bus service at a profit on a five-cent fare — the lowest on the continent”); 9,200 industrial employees; $47 million worth of industrial output and 16 schools of all levels. And, it is the highest city in the province: 1,050 feet above sea level.
The Board of Trade, under president E.J. Shoemaker, manager of McBrine Luggage, will become the Chamber of Commerce on March 13, 1945. Better times are not far off and the city’s business leaders are planning for the postwar boom decades during which Depression and war will recede into bad memories.
If you would like a copy of this booklet, I can send it to you in a PDF file. Sorry, no paper copies.
This Wednesday, March 7, I will be presenter at the post card club meeting at Victoria Park pavilion. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., program at 7:30; all welcome.
I’ll be using post cards to tell the story of the iconic five-and-dime stores, Woolworth’s and Kresge’s, locally and nationally.