My wife and I were downtown a few weeks ago to the Convention Centre on New Gower Street. The occasion was the Beyond Van Gogh exhibition. That is a new multi-media celebration of the works of Vincent Van Gogh. It was all so quiet, peaceful, and civilized. My wife Judy is an amateur artist, but I am not. We do share a like for “the impressionists” in the world of painting.  

      The Van Gogh Immersive Experience, as they called it, was great. It was all subdued and gentle. It was a quiet exhibition. There were no raised voices at the exhibit and no loud noises. Even the children, and there were lots of them, seemed well behaved. There were tons of old couples which pleased me. Grandparents with grandkids all over the place. I like that because I am  tired of always being the oldest person in the room.

      While I am new to the Convention Centre, I am no stranger to that New Gower Street neighbourhood. It used to be my part of town. I was born and raised around the corner, on Pleasant Street, which ran down across Casey Street and down to New Gower at one time. It is a great understatement to say it was a different time. New Gower Street was once a pretty rough and tumble place. No tennis clubs and rinks. There were legitimate businesses down there but also a plethora of dodgy things going on. There were, for instance, besides taverns, lots of bootleggers and brothels.

      I should tell you that when I was growing up the sale of booze was limited. You could only buy so much liquor per month and sales were registered in a liquor book that people carried. I remember dad getting one of uncles to put a “40 ouncer” on their liquor book for him. That is why I have an understanding and a certain appreciation of bootleggers. They were there to meet the demand of a population that government thought couldn’t control itself.  It is simple supply and demand. I get that and there is a sense in which an under-the-table bottle is in a way sticking it to the government.

      On the matter of prostitution there is a similar appreciation or at least an understanding. Mom used to call them “the ladies of the evening.” I do understand the argument against the trade and I’d be absolutely enraged and dead against them if they were grabbing clients off the street and forcing them to buy their services. That, however, is not the way that business works. There is a buyer and a seller. There are certainly lots of problems associated with the business but in the end, it is just that, a business, and it is sometimes called the oldest profession in the world.

      This was all part of the New Gower Street I knew. There was also a roaring trade in stolen goods. You could get anything on New Gower. A railway and a harbor full of vessels led to healthy trade in “budget” items. It was just part of life. I bought a new pair of sneakers  once for a dollar on New Gower.  Woolworths could never top that.  

      I also knew the taverns. The Ritz and the Belmont is where my dad drank but I was too young for that I just knew it because of talk around out house. Before it closed I did have a drink in later years at the famed Gosse’s Tavern. It was also known as Mammy Gosse’s. That was a renowned place that once had a back room with a tablecloth that was frequented by members of the press. Members of the press were always booze hounds.  

      “Casey the butcher” was on New Gower as well. There was a sawdust on the floor of the shop. When Casey died his recipe for sausages went to his long-time employee, Tom, who had taken over the business. When Tom died the sausage formula was lost to the ages.  There are no more Casey’s sausages.

      My Uncle Charlie had Bowman’s grocery almost next to Mammy Gosse’s on New Gower. Uncle Charlie inherited the store from his father. It has a salt beef barrel with big junks of salt meat that were hauled out with a short-handled hook. It was a legit business like the yellow out of town bus terminal at the bottom of Lime Street. I used to get the bus to Witless Bay from there. There were groceries and pharmacies and even a couple of Chinese restaurants down in that neighborhood. I went to one where the proprietor was a Mr. Wi. We just knew him as Wi. His place had a great heavy Gottlieb pinball machine named Fair Lady. Beautiful lights and not so easy to tilt. I put a lot of dimes in that.

      That is few of the bits and pieces that popped into my mind while I quietly took in the Beyond VanGogh exhibit. It is the way things are today on New Gower juxtaposed with the way things were. I present it all to you without judgement as part of a mostly fond memory.               

You can contact Jim Furlong at [email protected]