YEAR IN REVIEW: This article was originally published on June 5.
97-year-old Helen Pullen has lived on the same block in Thorold almost all her life. But now she has decided to sell her house and move on.
“Things happened to me here,” Helen tells ThoroldToday. “I got married here and I lived here. [Thorold] has changed a lot.”
Last Thursday, Helen and her daughters Judy Sutton and Susan Zill, along with cousin Christine Cook, gathered at the house at 35 Pine Street South to reminisce and say goodbye to an era.
Helen was born in 1927 and grew up at 22 Pine Street South and at 64 Pine Street South.
Her mother and father came to Thorold from Aprigliano, Italy.
“I think a lot of Italians lived over here,” Helen says. “I think they came and worked on the canal.”
“Half the people in Thorold we are related to because they all came from Italy,” adds Christine. “Everybody was our aunt and uncle, it didn’t matter who they were.”
Thorold looked much different back then. The Welland Canal ran through the downtown, along Towpath Street, and there was a streetcar.
“The train tracks ran between the two paper mills and then there used to be a boulevard,” Susan tells ThoroldToday. “It was all tree-lined because you can see now there’s really no trees.”
“There was a big stinky canal that ran right through,” adds Christine. “I’m surprised any of us lived this long. Remember the stink of it? Oh geez.”
Helen went to school at Holy Rosary Elementary and Thorold High. When she came of age, she got a job in St. Catharines.
“When she was single out of high school she went and worked in St. Catharines at the telegraph office,” Susan says. “That’s where she met my dad. He was the messenger boy.”
Helen married Ted in 1953, which is when the young couple moved just around the corner, into 15 Sullivan Avenue.
At that time, the house at 35 Pine Street South belonged to Margaret McManamy, who gave piano lessons to the kids in the neighbourhood.
“McManamy is the one who had the house built,” Judy tells ThoroldToday. “When she died is when my parents bought the house.”
In 1962, Helen and Ted bought the house for $9,500. Because they were just moving around the corner, the family did it all by themselves.
“We just pushed everything down,” Susan says. “There was no big moving truck. Everything just got carried from one house down to the next.”
Susan and Judy, and their brother, spent most of their childhood at 35 Pine Street South.
“We grew up here and we had a lovely childhood,” says Judy. “Our family all lived here and you had your friends. The town is nice. Now I live in Toronto and you don’t have that. You just don’t have that nice little feeling.”
Thorold was alive and exciting at the time.
“It was more established,” Judy says. “You had clothing stores, shoe stores, grocery stores. There used to be a fish market. When we were kids there used to be a movie theatre: the Tivoli. It was 25 cents.”
“This used to be the busiest corner in Thorold at one time,” adds Susan. “It had the stoplights and a grocery shop across the street. There wasn’t really much you needed.”
In the winter, Ted used to build an ice skating rink in the backyard for his children, and in the summer he would tend to his vegetable garden.
The house also had a fruit cellar, where Ted made wine, and where Helen canned fruit and vegetables.
On Sundays, the family would attend mass at Holy Rosary Church, just around the corner, where the service would be held in English and Latin.
“It was a good way to learn Latin,” Helen laughs.
Helen never really thought about leaving Thorold.
“It just happened,” she says. “I just grew up here. You were married and you stayed here.”
In 2015, Ted passed away and Helen had a stroke, so she was forced to move out of her house.
“I was in the hospital and I never really thought too much about it,” Helen says. “They wouldn’t let me go home so I moved into a home.”
“She is the youngest so everyone was older than her,” adds Judy. “Everybody’s lives had already changed. No longer did you pop down for tea because everyone was living at a senior’s facility or is deceased. The life that you had, it had changed.”
Helen now lives in an assisted living facility in Stoney Creek, and her daughters have both moved elsewhere. Only cousin Christine has stayed in Thorold.
Throughout the last decade Helen has often been back to the house on Pine Street South, and her children have used the house whenever they visit family and friends.
“We came every year for the Santa Claus parade,” says Susan.
“I think in the 30 odd years we’ve missed maybe only five,” adds Judy.
It’s definitely a bittersweet moment for the family, having to say goodbye to the house. Even though Thorold as they knew it has completely changed.
So how does Helen feel about the McDonald’s going up across the street?
“It all depends if it affects the sale of the house,” she laughs.
