Rhodus, Samuel (Samuel Roadhouse)

The original family name was Rhodus in England.

We were told that anyone with the name Roadhouse would not normally be found in England as it is a North American name. Also, he said that anyone with the Roadhouse name is related in some form or manner.

In 1953 my grandparents, Ersel and Matie Roadhouse with other members of the family, had a professional tracer document the tree. The tracer followed the tree back to England. He said the Rhodus name was of German origin and possibly went back as far as the vikings.

It has since been further documented by other members of the Roadhouse family to add new names etc.

This family is well documented offline thanks to the work of many family members.

Eileen Helen Hopper (Haddow)

 Eileen Helen (Hopper) Haddow and husband Joe were killed in fatal car accident.

Both Eileen and her husband Joe were killed in a head on collision along with two other relatives, Helen Lindsay Scott and daughter Elizabeth Merriweather (Reed) who were visiting from Scotland. This happened in1968. George Reed is a cousin in Scotland who my parents met when they visited there after retirement. I believe that George is son of Elizabeth Merriweather.

Helen Lindsay McKelvie Murray Arrival to Canada

Helen Lindsay McKelvie Murray, (my Granny Hopper) arrived in Canada in 1899.

Helen L.M. Murray told me (Judy-gr.dau.) 1st hand that she was 3 years old when they came overseas to Canada. I believe she said they sailed around the Cape and landed in Vancouver BC Canada. She talked about how she had to give up her cat before they left. At 80 + years of age, she was still upset about that.

Helen was about 3 years old when her family came to Canada from England.

About Roadhouse, Florence Adeline

 

Roadhouse, Florence Adeline

Adopted child of Joseph and Margaret Roadhouse. Sister to J. N. Roadhouse.

Source: O. B. Briggs, professional tracer (1953)

About William Roadhouse 1774

 WILLIAM ROADHOUSE OF CANADA

. William Roadhouse, b. Jan. 23, 1774, son of William Roadhouse and Sarah Sykes,sailed with his wife and eight children from Liverpool, England, May 26, 1819,in the ship Evergreen, Capt. Rathburn, for New York. They traveled to Albany, N.Y., and arrived at York, Upper Canada (now Toronto), August 12, 1819.

Apparently he lost no time in applying for a grant of land and he may have been in special consideration, for his “Ticket of Location” reads “Pursuant to an Especial Order In Council of the 25th August 1819” and he was assigned 200 acres, an unusual grant, in Albion Township, then in the “Home District” (now Peel County), Lot 23, Con. 9. The order was signed by the Lt. Governor Oct. 20,1819. But it was too late to establish his family there that year, partly because of difficulty in finding his grant before winter set in. So the family wintered at Aurora and went into their new log cabin in April 1820. On performance of settlement duties and payment of fees of 5 pounds, 5 shillings,5 pence, the final grant was made Jan. 17 1828. His son, William, acquired a grant of 100 acres on Lot 22, Con. 9.

William Roadhouse was 45 years old, in the prime of life, when he came to Canada, where he was to spend another 38 years as a pioneer in the new land. Although information about his is fragmentary, it reveals him as a man of strong character,firm and uncompromising in his convictions, but tolerant of human frailties. His family life was exemplary and his religious faith was deep. As a young man he had been converted to Methodism and he was a member of the Wesleyan Church for 62 years. He died Nov. 11, 1857, at the age of 83, at the home of his son,William.

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This information is from our original family tree which was completed in 1953 by O. B Briggs, a professional tracer.

About Roadhouses in Yorkshire

 THE ROADHOUSES IN YORKSHIRE.

The village of Monk Fryston in Yorkshire, is near and not far from the Humber River. It had a Manor House and it was the seat of St. Wilfreds, an ancient Church, the lower part of the tower of which is early Norman, about 1080. The Chancel was rebuilt about 1230. In the middle of the 15th Century the tower was raised and adorned with pinnacles and battlements.

The present Vicar at Monk Fryston says the Parish Registers are very old, the oldest in Yorkshire. Although it is a long arduous task to search those registers, this was done, for the Roadhouse family, by the vicar and his assistants in 1950-51.
It was found that William Roadhouse (original name “Rhodus”) moved to Monk Fryston after the birth of his daughter, Sarah, in 1768, and before the birth of his daughter, Mary, in 1771. The registers do not show where he came from.
This first William Roadhouse of record was a stone mason and stone engraver, by trade. Monk Fryston is said to have been famous for its stone at the time. So it can be assumed that he was a skilled artisan and it is known that some of his grandsons were apprentices in this trade in England and followed it in Canada.

Family records show that this William Roadhouse was born in 1740. His tombstone at Monk Fryston has the following inscription. “Here lieth William Roadhouse, a man of great moral worth, who departed this life April 3, 1831, aged 90 years,also Sarah, his wife, who dies December 17, 1778, and Rebecca his second wife”.His first wife was Sarah Sykes. There is no information about the second wife.

William Roadhouse and Sarah Sykes had seven children:
o  Elizabeth, b. Jan. 20, 1764
o  Joseph, b. Jan. 22, 1766; died young
o  Sarah, b. Nov. 30, 1768
o  Mary b. June 5, 1771
o  William, b. Jan. 23, 1774; came to Canada
o  Henry, b. Dec. 19, 1775; came to Canada
o  Ann, b. Sept. 7, 1777

William and Rebecca Roadhouse had one child, John, b. Sept. 20, 1783. He became a Wesleyan Minister and died at Leeds, Yorkshire, Dec. 17, 1872. His only known child was David Cooper Roadhouse, a surgeon, who died May 2, 1838.

Statistics

 Statistics from our old combined family tree. Total individuals statistic refers to total persons in both of our trees.

Description	Quantity
Total Individuals	2,941
Total Males	1,495 (50.83%)
Total Females	1,438 (48.89%)
Total Unknown Gender	8 (0.27%)
Total Living	505
Total Families	882
Total Unique Surnames	697
Total Photos	126
Total Documents	48
Total Headstones	14
Total Histories	7
Total Recordings	8
Total Videos	8
Total Sources	196
Average Lifespan1	61 years, 355 days
Earliest Birth (Renaud Meulan)	Abt 850

 

Longest Lived1	Age
George Frederick Harris	105 years 139 days
Jane Davis	104 years
Joan Marshall	102 years
Rachel Ostrander	101 years 113 days
Mabel Crittenden	101 years 78 days
Elizabeth Ritchie	100 years
James Stewart	99 years
Agnes Agae	98 years
Gavin Hunter	97 years
Margaret Blanche McLean	97 years

William Roadhouse 1740

 About William Roadhouse 1740

“It was found that William Roadhouse (original name “Rhodus”) moved to Monk Fryston after the birth of his daughter, Sarah, in 1768, and before the birth of his daughter, Mary, in 1771. The registers do not show where he came from.

This first William Roadhouse of record was a stone mason and stone engraver, by trade. Monk Fryston is said to have been famous for its stone at the time. So it can be assumed that he was a skilled artisan and it is known that some of his grandsons were apprentices in this trade in England and followed it in Canada.’

Source of quote – Professional tracer O. B. Briggs 1953

Ersel and Ross Roadhouse

 

Fraternal twins Ersel and Ross were born in Bolton Ontario at home on the family farm. The homestead still stands today and is still in the family. In 1972 when my grandparents came east to visit us, we took Grandpa Ersel to see the homestead. 

We found a relative on the Downey side and he showed us where the homestead was. Grandpa pointed to the windows on the right hand side, and mentioned that he thought that it was one of those bedrooms where he and Ross were born.

Great Aunt Anne Hopper (Thompkins)

 This is a little story about my great Aunt Anne Thompkins (nee Hopper) who lived out her final years in Victoria B.C.

I am not sure when exactly it was, but I was I think still a teenager when I got to go on my own to visit Anne. I had gone with my parents to visit Aunt Anne, but prior to that I hadn’t seen Anne since I was little when she lived with her husband Uncle “Tommy” in Bellville ON.

Aunt Anne was funny but with a straight face. It was kind of like dry English humour with a taste of sarcasm; Eg: We would invite her for Christmas and she would reply “I’ll be there… if I’m not dead” (lol) My dad always took it as her being a negative Nellie, but to me, she was hysterical!

This particular weekend my parents permitted me to travel alone on the ferry and buses to Victoria to visit Anne. I wanted to record some of her stories and thoughts on cassette, and get to know her again.

Anne and Tommy “Knight” Thompkins lived in Bellville ON in the 1960’s. When we first moved there in 1964 it was pretty tough for my parents, my dad starting Chiropractic college, my mom starting work as a waitress to provide for us while my dad was in school.

The first Christmas was genuinely going to be a Charlie Brown Christmas. We were as poor as poor could be. We had nothing for gifts, a tree or a turkey… or any kind of meat for that matter. I remember talk about having to have canned brown beans for our Christmas dinner. I don’t remember much as I was only 5 at the time, but I remember my brother Daryl going out and coming home with a spindly Charlie Brown tree that he got for 50 cents, which was the best he could find for the price.

The closer it got to Christmas, the more dire it got. I imagine my mom wondered how to explain to a 5 year old why Santa Claus was not going to come, even though I was sure I had been good all year.

I don’t recollect how close it was to Christmas it was exactly, but I remember my dad talking to Aunt Anne on the phone long distance, and then the next thing we knew we were going on a train ride from Toronto to Bellville to see Anne and Tommy.

Thinking back, I realize just how much she helped us out. She and Tommy welcomed us into their home, fed us a wonderful Christmas dinner, and she even made sure that the 5 year old me had a present from Santa. That present was a stuffed monkey and I still have him today.

The lean years in Toronto evenually got a little better. By the time the 1973 came, we were going back home to B.C. my dad graduated, my mom, no longer a waitress but a clerk typist for an insurance company. Daryl decided to stay and married in June just about a month after our dad’s graduation in May. In August mom, dad and I left for B.C.

Anne’s husband Tommy was a railroad conductor and because of his occupation, they had life time passes to ride the trains. So Anne after Tommy passed, would travel out to B.C. to visit the family. Later she finally decided to move out west to Victoria where her brother John and wife lived. She had a nice ground floor apartment in a nice neighbourhood.

When I visited Anne on my own that trip, I stayed in her spare room. During my visit she would tell me about the Hopper family and I recorded her telling the stories. Unfortunately, my tape machine failed to record anything. So the only recording I have of Anne now is from Christmas 1979 when she wasn’t “dead”, and came to have Christmas with us.

I do remember one of the things she told me about her mother. Her mother had gone blind, and Anne only being about a year away from becoming a registered nurse, had to quit nursing school in order to look after her mother. She cared for her until she died.

When she wasn’t telling me stories, we’d visit Uncle John and Dorothy his wife. One day, she wanted to show me some of the areas around Victoria and how beautiful it was. The beach was not too far of a walk from her place and we walked down old growth tree lined streets to the beach and watch the handsome cabs (horse and buggys) go by with tourists.

On the way back, we were walking back to her apartment. We walked under several of those large old trees hovering over the sidewalk. The next thing I knew I heard a big “PLOP!!” and felt a warm running substance running all over the top of my head and all through my hair! Well, of course I thought Anne would crack up laughing at me. But, Anne being Anne, just simply said something like “Oh well, it happens”, and did her best to wipe the messy bird poo out of my hair with a tissue. I am sure she cracked a smile when I wasn’t looking though. Totally embarrassed, we may haste back to her apartment.

Anne must have surely felt my pain and embarrassment, she was kind, not making a big deal about it, and offered to help wash my hair in the sink. She would have made a great nurse! By the time I was cleaned up, I felt much better.

I would have to say that great Aunt Anne was probably my favorite aunt. The last time I saw Anne was when I went for another trip to see her in Victoria, and introduced my future husband Dan to her.

It took 4 heart attacks before she passed in the 80’s. She was tough as nails but very much a kind and loving lady. I loved her dearly and still miss her.

The Toronto to BC Misadventure – Judy McLean (Hopper)

 I don’t remember too much about our family move to Toronto back in August of 1964 but I have some memories of moving back home to BC in summer of 1973. I was 13 years old by then. I was 5 when we first went to Toronto.

A bit of back story…

I started school in Toronto at Kew Garden elementary school. I did not get to go to Ruskin School, which my boys Matt and Robert, brother Daryl, and my dad Murray attended. My boys were part of the last class before the school closed. I was proud that 3 generations had gotten to go there.

I was terrified to go as it was a huge school, bigger than anything I have ever seen. I, like my brother Daryl, did try to “go home” at recess time…. got caught of course and brought back. I did add one trick though, I pretended to get “lost” one time, but that move failed me too. It was one of my recess getaways, and I knowingly headed for the beach. (We lived about 2 city blocks from Lake Ontario). I was headed to the playground when 2 young men found me. Realizing now, that could have had a not so great turn out. But these two guys were on the up and up and really tried to help me. I don’t know how they got a hold of my dad, whether they called the school and the school called him or just what. Needless to say dad was not impressed with me. After that one I caved in and went to school. I just cried until recess instead of running away.

I remember not having much for furniture in our Toronto apartment when we first moved in. I remember the back seat of the car being our couch for a time. Being the apartment was only a 1 bedroom for 4 people, my dad converted the living room into a bedroom for Daryl and I. He later split it in 2 when we got older. We used the dining room as the living room for all those years.

My hatred of school did not cease. The only fun time was in grade 8 in a business or some sort of boring class, we had a nice “Newfie” girl in class. I thought she was ok, but she got teased more than I did unfortunately. I always thought it was neat how they said the letter “H” or “3” differently, and chimney was “chimeley”. Then there was the European friend I made in grade 7 or so who got bullied horribly for simply liking flowers. People are stupid! I wished I was not so ladylike back then… I would have straightened those bullies out right quick.

Dad, after repeating some college years and courses due to working too much and a late diagnosis of dyslexia, finally told us we were going home to BC in 1973. Daryl had married Barb at that point and chosen to stay behind.

I hadn’t seen my grandparents for 9 years, other than a train trip back to BC in summer of 1967 with Daryl and my mom, and visits from my grandparents a year apart in 1972 and 1973. Grandma and Grandpa Roadhouse flew down in 1972 for a long awaited visit. Grandpa would disappear on us for hours, and later would turn up just amazed at all the brick houses. Mom, Daryl, Grandma and Grandpa and I went on a trip to Bolton Ontario and after a little detective work we found a relation Mr. Downy, who showed us the Roadhouse farm house that Grandpa was born in. That was a really cool sight to see. That house I believe is now back in the Roadhouse family some how (I read online somewhere).

In May of 1973, my parents flew Granny Hopper (Helen L. M. “Nellie” Murray) to Toronto for my dad’s graduation from Chiropractic college.

On to the trip….

So then in late July of 1973 we cleaned out the little rental 1 bedroom apartment we had lived in and I had grown up in. I said goodbye to my best friend Janet who I had known since we first moved there when I was 5. We were in different school districts so we never went to the same school but it didn’t stop us from being besties.

The trip home did not go as well as the trip to Toronto did. Dad still had the old homemade travel trailer that he and Grandpa built. It had been parked at cousin Reid and Doreen’s farm in Lindsay Ontario. I’m pretty sure some kinds of critters lived it in while it sat there at the farm. I don’t remember much about dad getting it ready to go but they got it road worthy again and dad bought Reid’s old 1 ton truck to pull it. He had also purchased an X-ray machine that he figured he would need when he opened his office in BC. That thing is another story all on it’s own.

A little sidenote about the truck… this GMC truck was bought new in 1964 by Reid who used it for a farm truck for many years. Daryl learned to drive on that truck and years later, once we were back in BC, Dad used it for the “stump farm” he called it, which was the property he had kept in Ruskin to come home to and build a home. The funny thing is that I also learned to drive on that very same truck! By the way, Mom and I named the truck “Old George”! They had several “George’s” as they got more successful later in life. Daryl inherited our old Buick as dad did not think it would make it back to BC, and he later parted with it. It ended up being in a showroom at a car dealership when he decided to part with it.

We saw Reid and family every summer throughout the years we lived in Toronto. I was between 2 of their daughters so there was always an exchange of hand me down clothing going on. We always seemed to go there at corn picking time too… funny how that worked out eh? I have to admit, I learned a lot about corn… and garter snakes… ewwww!

I was checking my mom’s diaries to see if she had our trip to BC was in her 1973 diary and it is! So I once I digitize it I will post a copy of it to show her version.

I don’t remember the exact dates that events happened but thanks to mom’s diaries she has that covered. So I’ll just touch on the events that happened as I remember them.

July 29th, we left Toronto to go to Reid and Doreen’s farm in order to prepare for the long trip home to BC. I am not sure how long we stayed but it was long enough to sort out Old George, and ready the trailer for travel. Loads got rearranged and goodbyes were said.

August 7th, 1973 we were underway at last. We got as far as Orillia Ontario when it was discovered that the tongue of the trailer had bowed badly. This was likely due to the trailer being overweight likely from the X-ray machine he’s bought. Dad got it welded and we found a camp to stay at for the night.

The next day, we got as far as Mactier in Muskoka area when the tongue broke again. This time it was right down to the ground just about. It was towed a tiny gas station in a place near Parry Sound Ontario. The guy told dad he would have to rebuild the tongue and so we had to order the steel for it from Parry Sound. We couldn’t stay in the trailer as it was now lopsided, so we got a motel for the night.

The next day, August 9th, the men had the work done on the tongue. Dad also got them to grease the wheels on the trailer.

We left Mactier late in the day, and got literally about 5 minutes away when it happened. We were going along, tongue working fine. We drove over a small hill, making note of the station wagon pulling a large travel trailer passing by us going in the opposite direction. I was sitting in the passenger window seat when we saw smoke coming from the trailer and it seemed to be listing to the left badly. That is when I saw in the side mirror the tire bouncing down the middle of the road….

We pulled over as quickly as we could safely. Dad and I ran back over the top of the hill to see what had happened because we had also seen a cloud of dust come up from the other side of the hill. It was the worse as suspected. The tire had come off of our trailer, bounced down the road and somehow hit the station wagon right smack in the radiator. This caused the woman driving to panic, jam on her brakes which of course flipped their trailer onto its side! Thankfully no one was hurt!

It turned out these poor people had suffered the worst vacation ever. It made our bad luck seem like a day at the park. The man was a minister with his wife and their family. They had 4 flat tires, their son nearly drown and when the husband tried to jump in and save the son, he nearly drown because he could not swim! The wife had to rescue both of them. So this accident just was the “the icing on the cake” for them! The police came, phone numbers and insurance exchanged, and at that point we were beaten. Dad was “done” with trailer and it’s problems, so after the mechanic put the tire back on we drove back to the gas station, off loaded what we could take onto Old George, and abandoned the rest for now. We then drove back to Reid’s to off load and leave stuff, regroup and start over again. I had to fight to keep the TV set! Dad hated TV for years.

We had to wait out a thunder storm before going as George had a tendency to leak. So we hid out parked under a bunch of trees. After the storm we finally got going. We stopped for gas somewhere and when I got out to go use the rest room, and bunch of bats came flying out from under our tarp swooping down at dad and I. I being a 13 year old girl, ducked and screamed of course! The guys at the gas station were excited about the bats though. The told us that their area was mosquito ridden and the bats would help to get rid of them. At least something good came out of it!

We arrived back and Reid and Doreen’s after midnight. They were completely shocked to see us again!

The next day, Doreen took us kids to Peterbough to sell corn door to door (oh joy!) while the grown ups dealt the truck load of stuff. Daryl and Barb came to help and we finally left Reid’s for the second time on August 11th. We got back to the trailer and loaded what we could onto George. We slept in the trailer that night for one last final time.

The next morning, we loaded the rest from the trailer, then finally got underway, arriving in Parry Sound by lunch time. Dad had left instructions for the gas station owner (I think) to sell the trailer and forward the money… of course, we never saw a penny of that.

We stayed in a place called Blind River that night and I believe that is where we saw the water was literally black from minerals I suppose. You could not see the bottom of the river water.

We were not able to get at our clothing as it was packed too tightly in the back of the truck, so we made do and shopped at Kmart for some things as needed. Other than that, things were fairly uneventful, thankfully. That is until we got to Medicine Hat Alberta.

We somehow had managed to drive completely across Saskatchewan in one day, almost 700 miles! We were completely beat by the time we crossed into Alberta. We stopped at a Kmart (I can’t remember where) to pick up a few things and I remember it being so hot that the pavement melted onto my flip flops! What a time getting that off.

It was night when we got to Medicine Hat. Dad found us a motel to stay at but it was full. They told him there was a convention in town and there wasn’t a room to be had anywhere. Dad got them to call and ask around at other motels as we were to exhausted to go any further. They did and told him that one place had one room left from a cancellation and we could have it if we got there quick enough. We hurried to the motel they sent us to, but the manager there told us there was some sort of miscommunication and there was no rooms available at all. We were done for!

We had no choice but to keep driving. We went a while until dad could not see straight anymore to drive. We pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned gas station and just sat there. We tried to sleep sitting up in the truck, dad at the wheel, mom in the middle, and me on the passenger side. That’s when mom “lost it” so to speak. The day had just gotten to her and she was beyond exhausted. She began laughing hysterically! Which of course started me laughing too. I had my head on her stomach for a pillow and every time she laughed my head would bounce. It got old pretty fast and finally after a while she settled down. I think we only slept 2 or 3 hours in total. By 4 or 5 am we were on the road again.

We arrived in Golden BC August 16th around 4 pm. Too tired to go a mile further we found a nice motel and took a long nap. We slept good that night.

We went through Rogers Pass, I took in the beauty moreso this trip as I was now older and could appreciate it.

Throughout our entire trip west, we occasionally would pass a “hippy” hitchhiker. We first saw him in western Ontario and of course we were so full up we could not have picked him up if we wanted to. We passed him over and over again, even in BC. The last time we saw him, he gestured that he would ride up top on the tarp… Oh my God! I think not!

Dad stopped at BC weigh scales because he thought he had to. That’s where he found out we had a 1 ton truck with nearly 4 ton on it! Nothing sketchy about that eh? He also neglected to tell us that every time we went down a big hill through the Okanagan and on highway 3, it was all he could do to brake. I remember him having the brake petal to the floor and him nearly pushing himself through the seat. He also didn’t tell us that the gas petal was nearly wore out too. We made it to Hope by the skin of our teeth! Mom and Dad were determined to get home to Mission today as they were just done with this trip from Hell.

We arrived in Mission about 11:30 pm and stopped by the hardware store which was across from the post office. Mom used a phone booth to call Grandma and Grandpa Roadhouse. We did not know where their address was as they had moved since the last time we were there. All I remember was overhearing a very loud scream of joy from that phone, mom holding the receiver away from her ear because Grandma was screaming so loudly from happiness and excitement. They kept telling us that they’d come get us and show us where they had move to. Dad thought he didn’t want to bother them and we’d find the place ourselves. Grandma insisted, and said they could just walk down to us. We were confused, but the next thing we knew there they were running toward us with open arms. Dad and Grandpa got George parked for the night, and we went upstairs to Grandma and Grandpa’s rental apartment on Welton Street. It turned out that it was less that a block away from where we were standing to call them!

It was long after midnight before we got settled in for the night. Grandma had mail for us, two of which were very important. One was the bill from the accident we had in Ontario. Those nice people only asked for $400 for the damages to their vehicles. Dad paid it out of pocket gladly. That could have been so much worst in so many ways. The second was the college documents that we did not stay around long enough to wait for. Dad had forwarded all mail to Grandma and Grandpa’s address before we left so his final college exam results were waiting there when we arrived. To everyone’s relief, Dad passed! He was now a licensed Chiropractor!

Their apartment was actually a small bachelor suite but Grandpa had partitioned it off for Grandma’s bed and he preferred a comfortable recliner to sleep in. I think we just crashed on the floor. All I remember is Grandpa’s snoring. He could move earth with that roar, but I remember how nice it was to just be there despite.

The next day Dad and Grandpa went to Maple Ridge and found us a house to rent. Within a week they had secured an office space to set up shop. I started grade 10 at Maple Ridge Senior Secondary that fall and we ended up moving again after only a month in the rental house. They were building a new mall (Maple Ridge Square) and the house was being sold to make way. The Realtor helped us out though, and set us up in Pitt Meadows in a duplicate rental. There we stayed until the house in Ruskin was built in 1975. Every weekend Dad would drive Old George out to the “stump farm” to clear the land. One Saturday not long after we got back, he had an accident. The brakes finally gave out on George and he crashed though a sign in a parking lot. Luckily, no one was hurt. So that’s when GMC George became Chevy George. George ended up with a Chevy hood, grill, fenders etc.

Funny fact: Both my brother Daryl and I learned to drive on Old George! Later our dad traded old George for my 1965 Chrysler Valiant.

The End

The History of the Hopper Family in Ruskin – Merle Hopper

 Written by Merle Hopper – transcribed by Judy McLean

Murray John Hopper was born in Wynyard, Sask. on January 30th 1924. Murray’s parents, Arthur and Helen (Nellie) Hopper, along with his brothers Arthur and Robert, came out to Vancouver BC in 1938 and lived there from September to January of 1939.

The Hoppers then moved to Ruskin and the three boys, Arthur (Art), Murray and Robert (Bo all attended Ruskin School. At that time the majority of students were Japanese.

Murray had a newspaper route and delivered the Harold and Sun papers up to the Ruskin Dam in 1939 and 1940.
Murray in his teens worked in Art and Carl Nelson’s shingle mill along with Walter Smith.
After leaving the Nelson mill, Murray at age 18, joined the Signal Corps in the Canadian Armed Forces. After training in Vancouver, and in several towns in Ontario he was sent overseas and spent three and a half years in total including Canada and overseas.

Murray’s family lived in the house next to the hall, where the Shield’s family now reside. Murray and his brother Bob dug the well for that home by hand.

Murray and Merle began courting on New Year’s Eve 1946, were engaged on January 4th 1947, and were married on February 18th 1947.
Our son Daryl John was a student at Ruskin School in the 1950’s.

Murray and family moved to Toronto so Murray could attend Chiropractic college. Our daughter Judy began her schooling in Toronto Ontario. Daryl complete his schooling in Toronto while Judy completed her schooling in Maple Ridge.

Judy married Dan McLean and have two sons Matthew and Robert who attended Ruskin School in the school’s final years.
Art Hopper’s wife Pearl and Murray Hopper’s wife Merle were Ruskin Brownie pack leaders in the 1950’s. We held our meetings in the basement of Ruskin School.

Many concerts and stage shows were put on in the Ruskin Hall. One show in particular was the Miss Ruskin pageant. The winner of the pageant turned out to be a real horse. Back then we took turns shoveling coal into the furnace.
It has been a pleasure to witness the changes to Ruskin Hall over the years. It holds a lot of good memories for us.

The Big Move – Daryl Hopper

 The year was 1964, my dad was sitting in his basement study area trying to make a major decision, namely to uproot the family and move to Toronto to go to the Chiropractic College or to stay in Summerland BC and continue with a job that he hated. For the past twenty years he was the manager of the five and dime department store in Mission BC. In 1962 the store was bought out by Stedman’s, a department store chain that did not treat their managers very well, so he quit and took a job as assistant manager in the five and dime store in Summerland BC.

Dad wanted to be a chiropractor ever since my mother got very sick in the 1950’s.  As a last resort he took her to a chiropractor in Vancouver who helped her so much and impressed my dad so much that he decided to become a chiropractor so he could help people too.

He realized that this would be a huge gamble, but thought it would be worth it. So he decided to do it. He talked it over with my mother, who agreed with him mostly because she did not want to disappoint him. She had one condition, which was to try it for one year, if he failed then we would come back, to which dad agreed. They kept it a secret from me until the end of the school year, as they did not want to freak me out. When they did tell me, guess what, I freaked out.

The move to Summerland was traumatic enough, coming from a house in the bush to a small town with people and paved roads. Toronto was too intimidating for me. I hated the very thought of it.  Apparently, my opinion did not matter, because we packed up the house with everything that we thought we would need in Toronto. Dad built a huge roof rack for our 1955 Buick; then we stuffed it full of our belongings, including our washing machine. We were going to drive across Canada living in our camping trailer that dad and grandpa had built a few years ago.

Dad always wanted to ‘beat the traffic’, so he made us get up at 3 AM. This was 1964, there was no traffic! My sister and I were both prone to car sickness, made worse by our mother’s smoking. Dad had quit smoking cold turkey just before we left. They had an empty tobacco can for us to throw up in, and we made good use of it.

I do not remember a lot of the details of the trip, because it happened in 1964, and I am now seventy-two and have a hard time remembering my name. I do remember driving across the mountains on highway one, a windy and very treacherous road. The Coquihalla highway, a safer, not so windy highway, was not built yet. I remembered as a young kid going on holidays in the Okanagan, before my sister was born, we would take the same road. I was so scared going across those old wooden bridges between mountains that I would lay on the floor of the car and shut my eyes. Going across them again brought back those same memories, this time being older; I was able to hide my fear. My sister was only five; luckily we were able to entertain her so she would not look outside.

The scenery, however, was breath taking. At night we would stop at a camp site carved out of the forest with the Rockies as a backdrop, it was amazing. Once, dad let me drive the Buick. I was to just back it up so we could hook up the trailer. I wanted to show him how good a driver I was, so I took off and drove all away around the camp site then backed into the spot to hook up. He did not know that mom had let me drive the Buick, with her in it, since I was twelve. I got out expecting ‘the lecture’, as he thought all teenagers were reckless drivers. All he said was, “Ok, let’s get hooked up.” That was a resounding compliment coming from him. When we finally cleared the mountains, I was sad to see the last of them.

I had not seen flat prairies like the ones in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba since our trip into the Peace River area to visit relatives a few years previously. The old joke about watching your dog run away for three days was true. The trip was uneventful as I recall, except that it was the only time dad let my mother drive the car. It was so flat that he thought that she could not get into too much trouble. It took us about three days to get across the prairies. We had a flat tire, luckily dad had a spare and we were on our way in no time. Gas stations were few and far between, so dad had to watch the gas gauge very closely.

Ontario was quite picturesque in its own way. There were forests, and little lakes around every turn. It was mountainous, not like BC but enough to give our fully loaded Buick a good workout. When we looked down the mountains we saw Lake Superior which was very scenic with many small islands in it. It took two days to get through Ontario. It was nice to see civilization again after the desolation of the prairies, although, with civilization came traffic. It was hard to navigate as we were not used to the roads or the chaos.

Finally, we pulled into mother’s cousin Reid Roadhouse and his family’s farm near Lindsey. They had invited us to stay with them for a few days to rest up before going into Toronto. Doreen, Reid’s wife, was in the hospital having a baby, their only son Roger. Mom jumped in and helped with meals and whatever she could do until Doreen came home.

When it was time to go to Toronto dad decided to lighten the load and leave me with Reid and Doreen. Dad, mom and Judy went ahead to Toronto to find an apartment, and enroll me in school. Meanwhile, I learned how hard farm work was. There were about twenty cows to milk, hay to cut and rake with tractors and wheat to harvest using a combine and dump trucks which I learned how to drive. He bought a brand new dump truck which I was one of the first to drive. Years later, dad bought it to get him, mom and Judy back to BC. Judy and mom named it ‘George’.

Finally, they came back to get me and leave the trailer in the field until it was time to go back to BC. When I first saw Toronto I could not get over how big it was with the high rises and all the cement sidewalks. Our apartment was a small one bedroom. Mom and dad took the bedroom, then dad split the living room into two sections – a bedroom for Judy and me and a living room section. Our first sofa was actually the back seat of our Buick.

I had to walk about three miles to Monarch Park Secondary School to start grade eleven. He had put me in the five year arts and sciences programs which did not interest me in the least. I wanted to go to trade school to learn something useful.

That one year trial that mom agreed to turned into nine years because dad failed every year of a four year course at least once. They finally made it back to BC to start his practise. I was not with them because I was married with a good job my then.

That was our big move that changed all our lives. Years later, after he had retired, I asked him would he do it all over again. With no hesitation, he said, “NO!” My jaw dropped to the floor.

The beginning of computers - Daryl Hopper

 I wrote the following story about twenty years ago when I was a computer operator. It starts in 1968 when I began in the computer world, such as it was back then. The story goes up to the early 1990’s when I quit. I will continue from there and try to bring it up to date. I hope you will enjoy it.

In the Beginning

The first computer was invented in 1822, but I started a little later. Actually, computers have been progressing faster and faster since then. The first generation (circa 1940’s and 50’s) were the tube and wire type, they had 18,000 tubes, 500 miles of wire and took up a half of a football field. They could do one transaction every three seconds, and you thought your computer was slow! You could not program them and they only had one kilobyte that is one thousand characters of storage. During the 1950’s and 60’s there was one person that was instrumental in bringing the computer into the next several generations. Her name was Grace Murray Hopper (1906-1992), I don’t know if she was a relative or not, probably not. She was in the United States Navy and retired as the first woman Rear Admiral. She invented the compiler, which translates basic English into machine language or the binary system. Now computers could be programmed for several different things from decoding messages to commercial business transactions. She was a fascinating person, if you want to find out more about her just search for ‘Grace Murray Hopper’ and you will find many sites with her biography etc.

The IBM 360 Years

That is enough history, let’s talk about me. Lol. When I started Computer College in 1968 we learned about the punch card and how to program the unit record machines by wiring the control panels. Unit record machines were machines that sorted, collated and gang punched the computer cards preparing them for input to the main computer or mainframe. When I graduated my first job was running some of these unit record machines. After a few boring weeks I was promoted to computer operator, wow, NASA here I come! Well, not really. The first computer I worked with was the IBM-30. The CPU was the size of a one-ton van. It had lots of lights and buttons. When it wanted attention, say when a job would pause until we mounted a tape, it would ring its fire bell. Needless to say we had to bring several pairs of shorts to work. Lol. We communicated with it via a ball typewriter. The commands were simple, eg. To start a ‘job’ we would say ‘START’, not exactly rocket science. We took the thousands of punch cards from those poor guys in unit record and fed them, hand full by hand full, into the card reader. The computer would then, if everything went well, start processing the ‘job’. DOS was a new thing, nothing like the DOS of later P.C.s. Before DOS we had TOS… Tape Operating System. We had to put the ‘supervisor tape’ on the tape drive, dial in the address of the tape drive on the CPU and hit ‘load’ on the console to start the job running. Very seldom a job would run from beginning to end without a problem. We would have to fix a card jam or the JCL (job control language) or get a programmer to fix the program usually at 4 am. I later was promoted to programmer at a different company. This meant I got most of the problems to fix at 4 am… not fun. Programming the mainframes of the day took a lot of patience and time. They only had 64k. Megabytes were unheard of yet. We wrote a program, usually in COBOL, on coded sheets of paper, several pages long. Then we submitted it to the keypunch department. They would keypunch the written instructions onto punch cards. We would write the Job Control that told the computer what to do with the compiled program. All this would take a day. Then we would submit the compile to the computer to run, usually overnight. The next day we would get our compile and the printout to debug. This would go on until the compiled program was perfect. Then we would finally catalog it, which meant load it into storage. We had to know how to read core dumps in order to find room for the programs and fix any problems in the programs. A core dump was the actual data and program instructions in binary form or machine language. We would add and subtract in hexadecimal, a number system based on 16 not 10 eg. 0123456789ABCDEF. So 5+C=11, not eleven but one one or 0011 in binary machine language. The fun part, when I was an operator, was that the machines were so slow that we had lots of time on our hands and we were young. The machines ran 24/7 and so did we. So, we would run a long job that would take at least three hours on the night shift, then go out and party. We took turns running back to change a tape or whatever needed to be done. By morning the jobs would be finished, the reports printed and distributed, and the boss would think we worked hard all night because we looked so tired.

The IBM 370 Years

In the mid 1970’s computers started advancing faster and faster. I worked on the IBM 370 series. The main languages were the same as the 360’s but the hardware got faster. No longer did we have the old typewriters to communicate but new screens and keyboards. Also gone were the lights and bells, how boring. Storage was bigger too, a whopping 128K. The data was stored on removable storage units called DASD, (Direct Access Storage Device). They looked like huge records about eighteen inches across and six or eight ‘records’ deep, and weighed about ten pounds each. We became very muscular. Most of the data was kept on magnetic tape.  We had tape vaults with hundreds of tapes in it. If you have ever seen old movies with banks of old six foot reel to reel tape drives, that is what we used.

The Final Years

The final years for me were the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. I was in my forties, the oldest person in my department, and very burned out. By now Bill Gates was going strong. Personal Computers were getting more and more popular in the business world. It still took someone to program them because the users were not interested in computers just the reports that they could produce. Besides, operating the mainframe, I also had to operate and program, to a certain extent, the P.C.s that were still kept in the computer room. They used DOS, not the same as the old DOS, and BASIC for the programming language. The mainframe we had at the time was state of the art. It was the AS400, it was about the size of a refrigerator. It had something that we only had heard about that was the GIGABYTE. Just imagine, 1000 MEG. In fact, our company was the first in Canada to have Gigabytes in a commercial environment. We were the first to have ‘mirroring’ which was the ability to have an exact duplicate of the storage in the CPU. Every transaction was duplicated in the mirroring storage. This was in case of a head crash, which was considered a disaster in the computer world. If a head crash occurred in mirrored storage the machine would simply go to the backup or mirrored data. The user would not be inconvenienced, and we could call for service, and replace the damaged disk drive. You guessed it; we were the first in Canada to have a head crash using mirroring. It saved our butts. In 1992 I had had enough, we moved across Canada. I got into the security business and never missed computers a bit. Now computers with windows and the Internet are so user friendly that anyone off the street can use them with no trouble. I think I got out in time, as my job no longer exists.

The Future

I have seen computers come out of the Stone Age and into the space age. I was a jack-of-all-trades in the old days, now there are specialists for every part of the computer. There are software people, hardware people, network people, web design people and coffee people that keep the rest awake all night when there is a problem. What does the future hold, who knows? I read that the scientists are working on an implant in the head. They already make a blind man see with a visor implanted directly into the brain. I hope these guys are on our side.

Back to the Future

The above was my story of the old days in computers. I was a senior computer operator, scheduler, programmer and production support in a lot of different companies for over 25 years. The technology went ahead so fast over the years that eventually it left us operators and programmers behind. The office workers, called ‘users’, all had P.C.s on their desks and could process their own input data. The old users that used to input their data to our data entry department for processing, and could not learn computers, were all phased out. I feel that I should explain some of the terminology of the day. For example, a ‘Head Crash’ is not a stroke. It is when the head sensor of the disk drive, which floats about a millimeter above the disk that is spinning around sensing the data, touches, or crashes, on the surface of the disk. The disk must be replaced and all the data on it must be restored to the point of the head crash on a replacement disk. Without ‘mirroring’, like the cloud of today, we would have to take all our disks and tapes to a computer room offsite and rebuild the system. Then we would start processing from there until our system was repaired. All this would take days. The company would lose millions of dollars and maybe even shut down. We had an offsite computer room on standby at all times. We would even go there and practice the recovery procedures once a month. Thankfully, when we did have a head crash happened we had mirroring. Actually, it happened to me. I was the only one that noticed it. A message flashed up on the screen like ‘mirroring is activated’. I called my boss, he called the engineers to come in and replace the damaged drive. They did. Then we simply switched the mirroring off and continued with the processing. No one except us in operations knew that we saved the company. We ran ‘JOB’s, which was the combination of the data to be processed, the object program that the programmer created and the JCL (Job Control Language) that we created to tell the program which devices to use and where to put the data on the disks. When I wrote about ‘debuging’ a program, this started with a real bug getting into one of the older computer and causing problems when it ate some of the wiring. When I wrote ‘we would say START’ did not mean that we actually talked to the computer, except to swear at it. We would simply type it into the typewriter to tell the computer to start a ‘JOB’. We would communicate with the computer via the ball typewriter on the first computer that I operated in the early 70’s. I wrote about Grace Hopper. Turns out she was not a relative, too bad; I could have used her brains. She was the first female Rear Admiral in the US Navy. She never went to sea. She worked in the offices developing her computer languages. She invented ASSEMBLER, COBOL, and probably RPG. These were old computer languages that brought computers from wiring panels to writing code so that they could use computers in the business world. This was revolutionary. Now they could code programmes to do transactions 1000 times faster than they could do just filling in paper work. She was the mother of the modern computer. I wrote about ‘GANG PUCHING’. This does not mean a riot. It just means that we would wire a panel to move one field of data from one area on the punch card to another area. I wrote about what I thought the future would hold. Scientists have made huge progress in the medical world with robots doing operations remotely. Computers fly airplanes. The pilots are now computer operators. The smart phones have so much storage that I cannot fathom it, knowing what one byte looks like. I cannot imagine what the next 20 years will bring in computers. I am sure there will be implants in our brains, or elsewhere. If the human race is still around!