A Treasure Trove in Ocean Falls

February 26th (Wednesday)

Around noon we headed over to meet up with Blair, Norm, and John. They had invited us to their Wednesday-lunch gathering at the Marine Ways. The Marine Ways is an old building that was built in 1927, and it is still being maintained and used for boat storage, and many other things.  

After lunch we spent a while with Norm looking around his Treasure Trove.  

Since he first arrived in Ocean Falls, over thirty years ago, he has been collecting unique items, some quite old and others newer, and he has accumulated quite the collection.   

Some of our favourites were a set of glass bottles, each a different colour, that were shaped in a wavy form and fit together perfectly like puzzle pieces. 

He had an automatic egg boiler that was from the 1930s. It was an electric unit that was made of stainless steel, and was to be filled with water. The water would then be heated, and there were baskets for putting the eggs into for being hard-boiled. The eggs that were to be soft-boiled went into a separate basket that could run up and down on a central post. A timer controlled this post, and so the timing of the perfect egg could be precisely set. Once the timer was set, and the basket pulled down into the hot water, the chef could simply walk away, and in the set amount of time the basket would rise up out of the water with a ding!  

Norm also had yearly, record books from the hotel. We looked at the one from 1965, wherein each day the desk clerk on duty had recorded any incidents of note at the time. There was the odd day which simply stated that it had been quiet, but most entries gave us the impression that the hotel in Ocean Falls had once been a very eventful and often noisy place.  

It was very neat to see everything that Norm had collected, and we were happy that we had had the chance to visit his place.  

In the afternoon we headed over to the municipal building to meet with Gladys. We had heard through Dorothy that they had been looking for someone to do some work on the building, and we had expressed that we might be interested. Gladys showed us that there were several suites upstairs in the building, two of which were in need of renovation. Once these suites were renovated, they would be able to rent them out and make some money for the town. Although they had had someone who was working on them in the past, he had had a stroke, and they had been unable to find anyone to continue the work. Gladys’ priority was one suite in particular, and we said that we would work at getting it repainted.  

Whoever had painted the entrance and hallway areas, as well as the bathroom of the place, last, must have done no prep work, or else had used incompatible paints. The paint was flaking so badly that it made the place look terrible. There were also a lot of cracks in the walls and ceilings. We looked over the supplies that they had, discussed ones that we might need, and made arrangements to start work the next day.