Living through the past 100 years of QW history – Belleville Intelligencer
When it comes to the history of Trenton, few can claim to have seen as much of it first-hand as Dominic Angelo.
Born in Sault Ste. Marie to Italian immigrants, Angelo first came to Trenton when he was only three years. His parents bought a small house on Water Street in 1916.
“We only lived there for a month-and-a-half or two and the damn thing caught fire,” said Angelo who celebrates his 105th birthday today.
Angelo and family lived with a neighbour until they rebuilt — a two-room shack on the original property. Eight years later that was replaced with a bungalow which stands there to this day.
Angelo lived in Trenton for most of his long life, moving to Belleville in the last year to stay with his son, Joe.
“When I first moved to Trenton there was just a little street where my dad’s house was,” recalled Angelo. “Now it’s two lanes, a main highway.”
Sitting in his son’s living room, Angelo was quick to laugh and even quicker to recount stories from his youth.
One of Angelo’s earliest members is the explosion of a munitions plant in 1918.
The British Chemical Company Plant was built in 1915 to manufacture artillery, rifle, and small-arms ammunition. Three weeks before the Armistice, an explosion levelled the plant which stood on the site of the old Gilmour Company saw mill.
Even at just five years old, Angelo said he remembers the explosion which rocked the small community nearly 100 years ago.
“We left town,” he recalled with a laugh. “Everybody left town.”
He was at the wake of a neighbour when the sound of the exploding plant ripped through the air.
“When that happened, everything was left, the body was left right there, we all took off.”
Angelo and family spent overnight at a flour mill on Wooler Road.
“We came back the next morning. Next morning there was another big explosion so my dad says ‘Let’s get out of here’ and we went to Belleville,” he said, adding they stayed in Belleville for two days before deciding it was safe to return.
Angelo was in his early teens when construction first started on CFB Trenton.
“It had just started, then the depression hit,” he recalled. “Everybody was out of work so what the government did was they started a program of rebuilding. Anybody that was out of work could come there and get jobs.
“They gave them their clothes, they gave them their shoes, they gave them their meals and they gave them a dollar a day.”
Angelo made his living as a machinist, making munitions and aircraft parts for Bata engineering where he worked — starting out in a temporary building in Frankford before moving into the newly-built main plant in the late 1930s — until he retired when he was in his 50s.
Angelo said he’s looking forward to spending his birthday surrounded by family — including his six children.
“They’ll all be here,” he said. “Some of them live out of town, but they’ll be here.”
tjmiller@postmeida.com
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