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Wellington Thru the Ages – Thanks for the Memories

Wellington’s weekend celebration of its 150th anniversary was highlighted by the musical gala ‘Wellington Thru the Ages’ Friday evening before a full house at Highline Hall in the community centre.
Song, dance and sketches were tied together with historical commentary by Roseanne Blower. Presented in 10 scenes, the program included music from the Golden Voices Choir, schoolchildren from CML Snider and featured tributes to settlers, Tara Hall, the telephone, the Cannery Years, flappers, the war years and the Dukes.
The  show finale had the audience joining in on the singing of Thanks for the Memories as the evening’s cast and crew met on stage.

Golden-Voices-ChoirWellington on the Lake’s Golden Voices, under the direction of Laura Demers, sang Amazing Grace and the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

The-SettlersThe Settlers, in costumes from The Regent Theatre and Mount Tabor Playhouse, told of clearing the land, building shanties, much working and little socializing – except at barn raisings and good, old-fashioned hoe downs.

CML-Snider-performersChildren from CML Snider School performed their “Sticks” song to music by Zeke Mazurek.
Narrator Roseanne Blower told of the one room school house located behind the town hall.
“The Teacher was John Stuart. Besides teaching, his job was to clean the school, baring in the wood and water, start the fire, clean the blackboards and fill the lamps and clean the chimney. His salary would have been $125 to $150 per year with his room and board, he could have one night per week off for courting. A female teacher’s salary was much less and the rules and regulations for her were much stricter. Attendance was sporadic as older children had to help out at home with chores and the harvest.”
CML Snider school was built in 1922 and was called Wellington Consolidated School. In 1976, the name changed to CML Snider in honour of its long-time principal.


Luke Beaubien delighted the audience with his jig. Upon finding out he was performing on his seventh birthday, the audience sang “Happy Birthday” to him.

Tea-at-Tara-HallThe Scene Tea at Tara Hall also featured costumes from The Regent Theatre.

Welly-telephoneElizabeth Boultbee and Judy Piene performed a humorous skit about getting the gossip using the telephone. If you were fortunate enough to acquire a telephone, Blower continued, your number might have been 32 and would be identified with a ring of one long and two short. If you wished to make a phone call, you rang the operator and told her the number you wanted – certainly not the 10 digits you must dial now. At first, there were only party lines available to residential customers so when your telephone rang, so did your neighbour’s and everyone on the party line could and did listen in!

canneriesCanneries played an important role in the village life. There were originally 75 canneries in the County and nine of those were in Wellington. The Canadian Canners Seed House was located in the building that is now Moongate Apartments. A great many of the village residents worked in the factories canning peas, corn, tomatoes, berries and pumpkin.

Doris Barnes, Dianne Baker, Yvonne Goostrey, Mary Latchford and Barb Richardson perform the Charlston in Flapper dresses. The Roaring 20s found fans four Rudy Vallee and Kate Smith. They danced the shimmy and the charlston in a time of prohibition and rum runners and for a while, before the great depression hit, life was good for a great many people.

 

war-yearsFollowing intermission, the Wellington Thru The Ages gala gave a tribute to the men and women of the Second World War.  Bag pipers and the Wellington Legion Colour Party joined singers Micheline Cox and Carlotta Rutledge on stage to sing war songs, accompanied by Mary Kay Morris, on piano.

The show also paid tribute to the movies with performances of Singing in the Rain and ‘One’ from the Chorus Line of Barb Richardson, Yvonne Goostrey, Mary Latchford, Dianne Baker, Barb Lyons, Doris Barnes and Karen Chapman.

Welly-ElvisDirect from Graceland was the music of none other than Elvis – with Tom Wall and fans.

Dukes-thru-yearsWellington shared its hockey town attitude with Norm Dodgson as Don Cherry and Bill Boultbee as Ron McLean welcoming and interviewing the Wellington Dukes through the ages – including Joe McKeown, Zack Blake, Cam Yuill, John Boultbee, Gary Parks, Dennis Dick, Roger Bryant and Roger Baitley.
Wellington’s first arena was built in 1930 of tin and was destroyed by fire in 1973 then  rebuilt with the help of a lot of volunteers, donations and grants and still sits on the original site on Niles Street. It became known as the DukeDome but now the Dukes play out of the modern and new Wellington Community Centre.

The final scenes of the evening were from ‘A new generation’ and featured CML student Summer playing piano and singing with teacher Mark Bass on guitar. A tribute to the wineries followed with the song ‘The Grapevines grow all around’, in an arrangement by Joan Turner, (who was co-ordinator of the event) performed by Fox and Rutledge.

Welly-memories-2The show ended with audience participating in the singing of ‘Thanks for the Memories’ during a cast finale walk to the stage.

 

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  1. Fran Renoy says:

    Great coverage from Sue and Amber as always. It was an amazing show. Definitely 4 stars.

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