02/03/2016
Found a transcript from some old interviews including one from a former tenant of 11 Fleming Place! Info here: http://www.trentu.ca/library/archives/96-008.htm
Not much is said about Fleming Place, but it is nice to know that artists occupied this space even further back in the day:
Mrs. Grace Reinhardt [11 Fleming Place [Born 1888, in Montreal]
After my father died my mother married an old friend who lived in Peterborough, Mr. Hall, E.H.D. Hall.
So instead of going back to Montreal, my own home there at least where I was born, I just stayed in Peterborough. My furniture was here, I had bought the furniture and I just though well I will stay here and live quietly in an apartment and that is what I have done since he died. I spent a good many years after my mother died just looking after him you know, keeping house. We had a house, rented house on Fleming Place. That is where we were until I got my own place and after he died I took an apartment and I have just been living alone. That is what happened to me.
I came to Peterborough in 1909. My mother was alive then, it was her second marriage. My father being dead and she died a year afterwards. I had a choice of going back to Montreal or staying here, but all my furniture was here and I had made some friends and my step father was very kind so I stayed on. I have managed the best way I could since he died.
[did you work?]
I looked after my step father. He was quite an elderly man and we had a house. So I just had to keep house. He continued until he was in his eighties to go to the office. He was a prominent Lawyer you see. I used to walk down with him and go pick him up either driving or walking and that took quite a while, so now I did not. Though I had graduated and got my certificate as a librarian and I was in the Peterborough library for a little while, for part of a year, but summer came and we had an island at Stoney Lake. I had to take Mr. Hall up to the island and you know open the cottage. So I had to leave. It was too bad, I would have liked to have stayed on as a Librarian but I felt the family came first. I gave that up and took charge again.
I was still doing water colours when I was living on Brock St. I was still working with some of the other girls. There were a number of us. We called ourselves the Brush and Palette Club. We used to go out, some of us had cars we used to collect maybe 8 or 10 and go out to the country and settle down and paint for a couple of hours and it was really lovely. I did not do any oils.
[What were your favourite painting spots?]
I liked to got o the country when we had time and Jackson Park was lovely. We felt safer being near the city. In a group we just went a few times with a teacher because the weather meant too much. You had to have a fine day you know. The artist that we work with did not live in Peterborough. He was from Cobourg and so he used to come up once a week on a certain day and it had to be fine enough and we usually stayed inside but occasionally we did go. We had cars and we would double up and drive someplace. Lovely outing. I liked it. I loved painting so it was a nice thing to do.
We did have exhibitions together. We would all show something, we would never show more than four usually just two pictures each. Now Gladys Elliott was in that group and May Nadiel. The name of the teacher was Pavol Punola. He was a Cobourg man, the Exhibits were in the Peterborough Public Library, upstairs.
[What kinds of paints?]
Tubes, I liked those the best because you can get them in pans too. Well I always tried to get the best paints. I think I got them Eaton's mostly in Toronto. I could look around and get what I wanted. I loved water colors. It is a nice thing to do with a group of people. Any chance I got, if I ever went to Toronto, the first place I would go would be the art gallery. The Eaton's art gallery or down town.
[WW1?]
I hated to pick up the paper and read about the fighting. You knew so many who had gone. It seemed like such a little thing at the time. They seemed ready to fight for any little reason, especially the Germans.
This fonds consists of transcripts of interviews with Peterborough and area citizens concerning their perceptions of the social, cultural, and political aspects of life in Peterborough from the early 1900s to 1974. There are also three cassette tapes forming one interview with Lorna Cotton-Thomas.
