Reg Quick

Corner of Colborne Street and Hill Street

Reg Quick’s story comes from the London Public Library’s Oral History Heritage project.

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I remember, for instance, the storm sewer that was built on Colborne Street. It was a new sewer built at the time, and us kids used to get in the entrance where it came into the river down there. And we’d walk up two or three blocks, y’know? It was nice and clean, y’know, and we were small. But it would be pitch dark, you’d take a lantern of some sort. I don’t think we had flashlights then, I don’t remember them. We used to have some of these lamps, lanterns that almost looked like the railroad man had or something. We’d go up there and I remember one time we got up there, must have been up three or four blocks up the street. We heard this kind of a roaring noise and we thought the river, the water was going to come to us. Instead of that, it was somebody opening up one of the manhole covers. Of course, we dodged back to it. One fella swiped some pigeons one time and he kept them down there. Then of course, it got to be used so we never saw them.