Written by:: Jim Beckman

Submitted by: Devonna Edwards

Hello Fairview Friends

My name is Jim Beckman, I was born in Halifax in 1938 and lived all my life in Fairview until 1957. But first, I want to thank Don and Devonna Edwards for all the research they have done in our little village. I did not known either of them, but in their research, they came across my name as an athlete from Fairview. From their research they recommended me for adoption into the Nova Scotia Sports Hall of Fame. As a result of their recommendation and follow up, I was elected to the Hall of Fame. It was my second induction to the Hall of Fame as I previously had been elected as a member of the Windsor Maple Leafs hockey team of 1964.

I originally lived at 10 Bedford Street, but later on the address changed to 20 Titus Street. This was due to renaming and rezoning. When I lived there, the only building on the right-hand side of Main Avenue was the old post office. The rest was a potato field. Then the first building on the right-hand side was built for the Deal family. I can’t remember the fathers name, but he was a Fuller Brush or Watkins salesman. He had a son David who was tall and I don’t exactly remember but I think they had another child as well. As a young lad I can remember putting rocks into the foundation of their house as the concrete was being poured. The rocks were put in to make the concrete stronger.

My schooling started in the basement of the United Church on Ashdale Avenue. After two years there, the new brick school on Main Avenue was completed and I spent grades three to nine in the new school. It was called Fairview Junior High School. From grades ten to twelve I had to go to the Armdale High School. It was a long walk. Usually in the morning one of our parents drove us. We had 1 1/2  hours for lunch to walk home and back. Kenny Burge’s father took us back most of the time. It is funny now, but they built a new high school (Halifax West High School) on the old Keeler Farm, a five minute walk from my home.

Facilities

When I grew up in Fairview, we had absolutely no sports facilities whatsoever. The gym in the new school was our first facility. We had no ball fields. At school we played on a rock field with the principal’s fence ten feet behind third base. Any batted ball landing in the principal’s yard was an out. But if a batted ball flew across his yard and across Main Avenue, then it was a home run. 

There was a big field in the woods above Frederick Avenue (today called the W.D. Piercey Sportsfield) where we played baseball. I think we spent more time in the woods looking for the ball and being stung by bees than we spent playing or it seemed like it anyway. Eventually the covers would come off our baseballs and we would cover them with black tape. New baseballs were hard to get and we cherished them when we got one. 

As for hockey, our main playing ice was on the 14th hole of the Ashburn Golf Club. We would take old car tires and light them on fire for heat to change our skates. It was large enough that we could have two games going on at the same time. 

However, there was a brook that ran into the pond and there was very little ice there. One day I was chasing the puck as it was heading towards open water. I lost the race and ended up in the water up to my waist. The heat from the burning tires was very welcomed that day!
We also had another place where we liked to play. It was a big pond in the woods behind MacDonald’s farm (corner of Main Avenue and Berts Drive. It had a big hollow log that was past way out into the water. It was called “The Hollow Log Pond”. We had a few other places also, but they happened when we had rain or snow melt in low lying places and a cold time of weather afterwards.

Airplane Crash

On a very windy day my brother Kenny and some of his friends saw a boat being smashed against the rocks in the Bedford Basin near the old Fairview Train Station. He got me and about six other friends, crossed the train tracks and pulled the boat out of the water. We carried it across the train tracks and pulled up the steep hill at the bottom of Evans Avenue.

About halfway up the hill we stopped for a rest as our arms needed a break. While we were resting, I was watching a Grumman Avenger plane coming from Bedford towards the north end of Halifax. At the same time, I saw a Sea Fury plane that had just taken off from the Shearwater Air Base. As the Sea Fury plane continued climbing, I said to my friends, “It looks like they are going to collide.” In about five seconds, they collided. The Avenger plane came down in the Bedford Basin. The Sea Fury plane crashed into the woods about a half mile from the Fairview Rock Quarry, starting a fire. The Fairview Fire Department was called to put out the fire. This happened in April 1953. However, in 1990 I was living in an apartment complex in Richmond, British Columbia and I was telling a guy in our lobby about seeing this crash. He told me he was the guy that strapped the Sea Fury pilot in his seat before he took off. Small world!!!

In 1965, I was in northern Quebec as the playing coach of a baseball team in Jonquiere. After baseball season was over, I was asked to come to Sherbrooke to play hockey with the senior Beavers. I had played with seven of the Sherbrooke players the year before in Windsor, Nova Scotia. The year before, the Sherbrooke Beavers had won the Allen Cup so the next year they were Canada’s representative to go to Stockholm, Sweden in the Bunny Ahearne Tournament. We won the Bunny Ahearne Tournament and after, went to Czechoslovakia for seven days, in and out of East Germany for one game and on to Russia for seven days. Those seven players ended up indicted into the Nova Scotia Sports Hall of Fame.

While we were in Moscow, we were invited to the Canadian Embassy. At the Embassy I was talking to a lady, and she asked me where I was from. I told her I was from a small town in Nova Scotia, then she asked where and I said Hantsport. She said that her brother was the Personnel Manager at Canadian Keys Fiber which is in Hantsport. They make chinet paper plates and other paper products. I worked for Minas Basin Pulp and Paper Company for five years, just across the road from the Keys Fiber Company. They get their pulp to make their products from Minas Basin. They are both owned by the same man. I was across the world and yet close to home. Another small world moment.

Dry Summers

I can remember many hot dry summers as I was growing up in Fairview. In our part of Fairview, most people had wells, no city water. The wells of a lot of our friends and neighbours would dry up in the hot summer days, our well never went dry. My dad tried to pump it dry to clean the bottom once, he had to wear hip waders as he could never get the water lower than his knees. My sister Shirley was a laboratory technician and she tested our water, it was purer than the city water. 

We had many of our neighbours and friends come for buckets of water during that dry spell, nobody was ever turned away. Supervision was always necessary on our part as we didn’t want anyone falling into the well.

Moose

One day I looked up towards Bert MacDonald’s farm and I saw a moose walking out of the woods. It walked across the field, over the fence, and across Main Avenue. After that, I never saw it again. It was the only moose I ever saw in Fairview, I have seen deer in MacDonald’s field but only one Moose!

Snow Fun

My cousin Lloyd Beckman had a four-man bob sleigh, with a fixed rear sled and a front steering sled. We would take it up Main Avenue (Geizer’s Hill) as far as Bert MacDonald’s house. When we saw that there were no cars coming, we would get on the sled and the back person, usually me, would push the sled to get us going, then I would get on. Lloyd was a good driver and we never had any crashes. We also had toboggans to go down the hill and one-man sleighs. One time we had a snowfall followed by freezing rain, then a cold spell that made the small hill running down from beside the firehall a sheet of ice. I got my skates and put them on at the top of the hill. I skated down the hill, but it was very bumpy. I made it to the bottom without falling. I took one more run down the hill without falling. I considered myself lucky and called it quitting time!

Water Line

The powers to be, decided to put a water line from Halifax to Mount Saint Vincent in Rockingham, running through Titus Street in Fairview. To do this, they had to dynamite through a huge granite rock beside where the old post office was 
(corner of Titus Street and Main Avenue). There was also another large granite rock where Evans Avenue met Titus Street. Our street became jackhammer alley and explosion road, spring, summer, fall and part of winter. They had to go deep enough to keep below the frost line, which was seven feet. When they blasted, they came and notified us. They covered the blasting site with large rope coverings. We never had anything break inside our house. I see now that our house has been demolished.

Charlie

Charlie was a Native Indian who came every year and set up two teepees in the old rock quarry behind the White Rose gas station (on the Bedford Highway). Some of my childhood friends were afraid of him, but I went up to him one day and talked to him. He was a very pleasant man to talk to. He had some children, but I don’t know how many. If I remember correctly, he used to come sometimes around June or early July and then leave around the end of September or early October. One year he never came until sometime in August, but left at his usual time. I don’t know what happened to him, but just remember him as someone who is significant in my memories.

A.R.P. Dam

The brook that ran down from MacDonald’s farm, behind their property fence, ran behind Jackie Butler’s house and ended up in what was called the A.R.P. (Air Raid Patrol) Dam (located in the area where the Granbury Place apartments and the Centennial Arena are today on Vimy Avenue. We used to swim in the water there. There was a big flat rock out in the middle of the water and we would swim out to it and stand on it. I could not swim on top of the water at that time, but I could hold my breath and swim under water to get to the rock. The water from the dam was used by the Fairview Volunteer Fire Department to refill the fire truck after training sessions or after fires. Some of the wooden boards that held the water back were broken, so water was always flowing out of the dam, but only to a certain level.

Road Hockey

We played road hockey at the bottom of Titus Street where it branched out in two directions. One coming up from where Keeler’s farm was (Halifax West High School replaced the farm and today The Boss Plaza Complex occupies the spot) and the other coming up from the Fairview Underpass (today called the Fairview Overpass). There was a large, paved section between the two roads as they parted from each other. This is where we played mostly. We used rocks for goal posts and had many arguments whether the shot was a goal or it went over the rock. We had to stop for cars to go by, then continue to play. We used a tennis ball as a puck. One day while chasing the ball, I ended up on the bonnet of a car. The car didn’t get hurt and neither did I!
There also was the basement of an old house on the same corner, sometimes we would play in there, but it was very small.

Stuart Beckman, my dad

My dad was one of the most honest mechanics you could ever want to work on your car. I say this not because he was my father, but I worked in the garage (located on Titus Street next to where the Kentucky Fried Chicken is today) with him for three summers between school time and saw how particular he was about his work. He would never let a car leave the garage unless he was satisfied with his work. He taught me a lot about cars and fixing problems, he also taught me how to do body work. The cars I worked on were from the 1930s, 40s and 50s. I did a lot of brake jobs in the garage, and if dad thought that you had another fifteen or twenty thousands miles left on your lining he would say, “Come back in two or three months and see me.” He was highly regarded by the big car dealers, who would send cars to him to fix that they could not find the problem with. 

My uncle Frank used to work as a mechanic in my father’s garage. He was a smoker and used to send me to McCarthy’s Corner Store (southwest corner of Titus Street and Main Avenue) to buy cigarettes. At that time, you could buy them individually as many as you wanted. It’s definitely not like this today. 
My dad was Assistant Fire Chief for our fire department for many years and became chief when Leo Nelson retired. In the summertime when I was working in the garage with dad and the fire alarm went off at the station, my dad and I went to answer the call. Sometimes it was only the two of us, but Pete Henderson was answering many times with us. Most of the time it was a grass fire, but one time it was a forest fire in Mount Uniacke and all the volunteers fire departments from Armdale, Fairview, Rockingham, Bedford, and Sackville answered the call. When we arrived at the fire, I remember putting a water tank on my back and putting out smoldering grass around houses. The trees around the houses where I was working all got burned, but the houses never caught fire. I can’t remember if we returned the next day or it the fire was put out that same day. 

Dad was active as manager of the Fairview hockey team that played in the Suburban Hockey League every Saturday night in the old Shirley Street Arena. He was also manager of the Fairview team that played in the Northwest Arm Hockey League. He took me to watch the Fairview softball team that played in the north end of Halifax. A good friend of my dads was Tony MacDonald, who was catcher on the team and a good hitter. He gave me my first ball glove which was not a catcher’s glove. At that time in softball, only the catcher and the first baseman wore gloves. The rest played with their bare hands.  

Fairview Flyers Juvenile Baseball Team  1957

In the spring of 1957, I returned home to Fairview from Toronto where I played junior hockey for the lakeshore Bruins of the Metropolitan Toronto Junior B team. I called some of my friends to see if they were interested in playing juvenile baseball in the Halifax Juvenile Baseball League. I got ten guys that wanted to play, that gave us eleven players including myself. I visited several stores and got enough sponsors to buy us uniforms, we only had tops and no regular bottoms. I entered the team into the Halifax Juvenile Baseball League. 

The following members of that team included: Normie Banfield, Billy Lapthorne, Ray MacDonald, Harry Campbell, Johnny Morgan, Dave Condy, Jimmie Sullivan, Billy Smith, Fred McInnis, Wayne Keddy and me. We didn’t look like much of a baseball team on the field, but we could play. We won the City Championship and had to play Liverpool in the first round of Provincial Playoffs. We beat them two games to one. Truro was next, they had Johnny Graham on their team, probably the best left-handed pitcher to come out of Nova Scotia. We were no match for him, they went on to win the Nova Scotia Championship. 

I was proud of our team as each one gave their best in every game we played. I later had Johnny Graham play with me with the 1961 Hantsport Shamrocks Maritime Senior Baseball Champions. Johnny was also a good hitter and a very fast runner. At the same time as I was playing with my Juvenile baseball team, I was playing senior’s softball with the Rumley and Johnson Team. They asked me to play for them, but I told them that if our teams had to play on the same day that I would be playing baseball and that was okay with them. We won the City Senior B Championship. We lost our first game in Liverpool and the next games were played at the Halifax Commons. My softball team was playing against Springhill on an adjacent field. We defeated Liverpool to force a third game. I relieved Ray MacDonald from pitching twice in the game and hit a home run. After our first game was finished, I walked over to the next diamond to see how my softball team was doing. Their game was tied in the bottom of the ninth, with a runner on first and two outs. They put me in as a pinch hitter and the outfielders moved in a little when they saw me come to bat. I hit a triple over their heads and we won the game. Now I came back to the baseball field and pitched the game and we won the series. I’m not certain, but I think I had a single and triple in that game. Ace Foley, the sportswriter for the Halifax newspaper had a big write up in the paper about my exploits that day.

Entertainment

We had two places (stone walls) where we did a lot of thinking about topics of the day. One was the stone wall coming from B.D. Stevens house (Main Avenue) to the corner of Titus Street. This one was not quite as popular as the one in front of St. Lawrence Church (St. Lawrence Place stands there today) on Dutch Village Road. After we had spent all our nickels at Doran’s slot machines (today Super Mike’s on Central Avenue), we would cross the street and sit on the stone wall there, musing about any topic that came up: baseball, hockey, the heavenly bodies that would pass by, the school teachers we liked and disliked, how we would like to have a ball field to play on and any other thing that came to mind.

Minor Hockey

In my first year of playing minor hockey, I played Bantam Hockey for the Halifax Monarchs organization run by Sid Vaughn, Ron McLean and Bunney Foley. I had played minor baseball in the summer for the same organization. I loved baseball but having no team or field to play on in Fairview, I got on my bicycle with my glove on the handlebars and rode to the Halifax Commons. There I saw a team practicing and I asked if I could try out. They let me and started hitting some ground balls to me to throw to first base. I impressed them with my fielding and strong arm and this started my baseball career.
Back to hockey, my first year in Midget I started with the Monarchs again. That year Fairview put a team in the Midget League and tried to get my release so I could play for them. About halfway through the season the Monarchs gave me my release and I joined the Fairview team. We didn’t make the playoffs, but we ended up strong after a slow start. 

In our second season we won the City Championship. We defeated the Monarchs two games to one and the Toppers two games to one. In the provincial playoffs, all series were a two game total goals series. We defeated Dartmouth Webby’s 11-1 and 3-1 to win the District Championship. Next, we played Windsor and won the first game in Halifax 5-4. Then we played in Windsor and were behind 3-2 with about a minute to go. I picked up the puck behind our net and went through the whole Windsor team and put a deke on the Windsor goalie that left the whole net open. There were 21 seconds left in the game. Ray MacDonald won the faceoff to me and I passed it to Wayne Keddy who skated around the neutral zone and ran the rest of the time off the clock. The Windsor players couldn’t catch Wayne and we won 8-7. Next was Antigonish and we had to play in their rink first. We won 13-1 and their was no second game as thy gave us the series. I had 10 goals and 2 assists. Next we played Glace Bay St. Annes and both of these games were played in the Shirley Street Arena in Halifax. Glace Bay won the first game 9-7 and in the second game, we were behind 4-1 after the first period. Now we were behind 5 goals in total. In the second period we tied it at 4-4. In the third period we went ahead 9-5 with less than a minute to go. They scored a goal with less than 10 seconds on the clock to make the final score 9-6. We won 16-15. Buddy St. Clair had the game of his life scoring 5 goals, 4 of them in the third period. We were now Provincial Champs. Fred Turpin was our coach.

The next year some of our midget team had to move up to juvenile hockey. Wayne Keddy, Murray Hartley, Normie Banfield, Gerry Wile, Billy Mitchell, Buddy St. Clair and I moved up from our Midget Championship Team. We joined Robert Ingraham, Bob Timothy, Mike Purcell, Ron Hartlen and Eddie Waugh, plus Carl Purcell and Jimmy Sullivan from the previous year juvenile team. Jackie Edwards was our coach. 

We won the City Juvenile Championship 1955-56. In Provincial Playoffs we played Truro first. Again, all series were two game total goal series. We played Truro at the Shirley Street Arena first. We won 6-2. In Truro we lost 6-5, but won the series 11-8. We then played Windsor. The first game was in Halifax and we won 14-5. In Windsor we won 4-3, winning the series 18-8. Next up, we played Glace Bay St. Annes for the Nova Scotia Championship. All games were played in Halifax. We won the first game 8-6 and the second game 6-5, winning the series 14-11 and clinching the Nova Scotia Juvenile Championship. We went on to play Moncton in Halifax for the Maritime Championship. We won the first game 10-7 and the second game 9-3. Another Maritime Championship 19-10. The little village of Fairview had a Nova Scotia Midget Championship and a Maritime Juvenile Championship in back-to-back years. In those two championships, I scored over 140 goals. But Billy Mitchell was a big part of our success.

Billy Mitchell

Goaltending is always the backbone of any hockey team. A lot of people never gave Billy Mitchell the credit he deserved for his goaltending for us. We were a terrible defensive team. We had a lot of goals scored against us in some games, and it sounds as if our goaltending was weak. But that is not true. We were not a very good backchecking team by our forwards, me included. We did not give our defence or goaltender much help. I can remember in our series against Truro in the juvenile playoffs where Truro had three against no defenders from the blueline to the goal and Billy stopped them. Later in the game they had a two against no defenders and Billy stopped them. We won the game 6-2 and those two stops were huge as we lost 6-5 in Truro in the second game. We also were guilty giving many three against one defender and Billy would come up big for us. I can’t remember Billy ever giving up bad goals. When I went away to Toronto to play junior hockey in the Boston Bruins organization, I played against Dennis De Jordy and Gerry Cheevers who both went on to play in the NHL when there were only six teams then. Billy’s skills were as good as theirs. He was especially good in close. I hold Billy in high regard for backstopping us to the Nova Scotia Midget Championship and the Maritime Juvenile Championship for the next year. Hats off to you Billy…..Thank You!

We were going to Armdale High School together, we formed a four-man softball team consisting of Marvin Banfield (catcher), Billy Mitchell (pitcher), David Johnson (first base) and myself (roving fielder). We challenged the rest of the school to form a nine-man team to play us. We had one challenge: They battled first and scored 7 runs, laughing at us. In our bat, we scored 11 runs and their complexions changed. They scored 4 in their second at bat and we scored 12. In their third at bat, Billy struck out two batters, allowing only 3 runs. They conceded 23-14.  

In my juvenile year, I had the opportunity to play for the Boston Bruins in an exhibition game against the St. John Beavers at the Halifax Forum. St. John were waiting for their opponent in the Allen Cup Playoffs and the Bruins were on an exhibition tour after missing the Stanly Cup Playoffs. Gerald Regan, yes…the Premier of Nova Scotia, was a scout for the Boston Bruins. One of the Bruin forwards had been injured on the tour and I was asked to play in his place. I was excited for the opportunity. I think that half of Fairview was at the game as the rink was full. I didn’t have any good chances to score in the first two periods. In the third period I was put on a line with Cal Gardner and Real Chevrefils. We had a faceoff in the St. John end. At the puck drop Gardner got a bit of it and it ended up in the face off circle. I beat my check to it and put a backhand shot up to the inside post for a goal. The rink became very loud. We won the game 7-4. It was a big thrill for me at seventeen years old! Another funny thing about rinks. All the years going to the Halifax Forum and Shirley Street Arena to play minor hockey and they end up building an arena (Centennial Arena) close to my street where I could have seen the roof of it from my bedroom window. A little too late!

My Travels

From Fairview I moved to Hantsport to be Playing Coach of the baseball team. While there I saw a girl at a dance hall and said to Harold Murray that I was going to have a date with her before I left Hantsport. That date lasted over sixty-two and a half years! Her name was Donna Guptell and we had two children (Todd and Daina) while living in Hantsport.

From Hantsport we moved to Quebec. I was Playing Coach of a baseball team in Jonquiere in the Lac St. Jean area in northern part of Quebec. From there we moved to Sherbrooke where I worked as a steel fabricator and welder and also playing pro baseball for two years. I also played hockey there for four years. In Sherbrooke we added another little girl (Tina) to our family. From Sherbrooke we moved to Grand Falls Newfoundland where for the next four years I was Playing Coach of the hockey team as well as working as the Recreation Director. We moved to Windsor, Nova Scotia where I worked at the Halifax Shipyards for over three years as a welder. The Shipyards shut down due to no more contracts for oil drilling rigs so we moved to the bustling city of Calgary, AB. There I worked as a steel fabricator, welder and erector. I developed asthma after twelve years in that environment and headed to Richmond, BC which is just outside Vancouver. We moved a few times around the lower mainland including Ladner, Langley then back to Ladner where I currently reside. 

My wife Donna passed away June 10, 2023 after a few years battling ALS. This left a big void in my life but thankful to have had the wonderful support of my family and friends. I am healthy, no longer have asthma, stay active playing golf and taking long walks, volunteer at a Mission Thrift Store, spent time with my church friends at our regular coffee time and spend time with my family. I thank God for the many talents He gave me and the wonderful wife and family I have been blessed