One hundred years of memories

With his tall frame, lively gestures and strong life glowing in his eyes it is hard to imagine him a day over 80.

Webb begins his story telling with sharpness, searching memories over 90 years old.

“I spent all my young days in Port La Tour and in those days you knew everyone.”

He describes how there was not much money around and most people skipped getting an education because of the costs of books and supplies.

There was one outfit for church, hand-me-downs from generous neighbours and shoes to wear only in the winter months with summers spent barefooted.

“In those days the fishermen would row their boats out and haul all day only to come back with $3 worth of catch,” Webb reminisces.

Webb himself would work on the road pick shoveling for 25 cents an hour and recalls when he saved up his quarters to purchase his first bicycle for $28.

“I thought I had a Cadillac,” laughs Webb, “and so I got on my bike and went for half a day to a friend’s house in Birchtown and we rode together to Shelburne. It was like going to Chicago for us!”

In his days in Shelburne County there was no entertainment, and so, Webb explains the old men would come out of their homes and congregate together to tell ghost stories.

In 1927 Webb left Nova Scotia and traveled to Boston by boat.

“I had never seen so many people or cars in my life,” Webb remembers.

The only car in Port La Tour used to speed up and down the dirt roads making the neighbours upset, there was a petition to get him off the road.

“It didn’t go through but it slowed him down a bit,” said Webb.

His most memorable day in Boston was when Webb went to an Ebenezer Baptist church with his aunt.

“I walked into that church and had never seen so many coloured people in my life, the minister and choir was singing all lively and shouting amen. Everyone was jumping up and around and I was so excited and scared there weren’t that many coloured people in Port La Tour.”

He remembers the difficulties of being black in Boston and later when he joined the army in Georgia.

“There was a saying back then,” Webb says with a note of seriousness, “If you were black you knew your place.”

He remembers how bad segregation was with reserved signs placed on every table of restaurants, a method of allowing only white people in.

Webb received his education at Boston English High School after being turned away at one other school for not having his papers.

He worked on the railroad until 1972 and then returned home to Nova Scotia.

“I’m back home now,” Webb says happily, “back home with my small town people.”

Webb will be turning 100 years on May 6 but that has not stopped him from working every day in his tool shed or going out to the occasional dance.

“I even get up and do a couple of turns though I don’t go far from my chair.”

“I’m as sharp conversationally as I was 30 years ago and I’ll tell you something about being in the double oh’s,” says Webb then leans forward to whisper his secret.

“My secret is that lady over there,” he says pointing to his beautiful 70-year-old wife Helen Webb.

“I am living better today than I have my entire life thanks to Helen…she is my angel in heaven.”

Wallace Webb will be one of Shelburne’s residents honoured with a plaque at the town’s birthday party and organizer Doug Langley would like to know if there any other Town of Shelburne citizens who are reaching their 100th birthdays this year to contact Doug at 875-1258.