BANCROFT JACK HUTTON by Barney Moorhouse 2024-02-13
In 2017 I corresponded with Jack Hutton, formerly of Bancroft in the 1940s. While filtering through my own archives I came across the following information.
Jack attended North Hastings High School in 1946, the year it first opened. He reasoned that piece of information made him older than Dave Walker, former owner of The Bancroft Times, in fact the last independently family owned weekly newspaper in Bancroft, if not the province of Ontario, perhaps Canada?
“They were late finishing it (NHHS) so we were scattered around the town for the first few weeks.” Jack, christened John, was in Grade 10 and they met at the hotel. “Both John Murphy and John Pilgrim were in my Grade 13 class, along with Aileen Palmateer.”
The year after graduating grade 13 Jack became a substitute principal at the former Hermon Public School, presently the Hillview Christian School and home to the Hillview Conservative Mennonite Church. The principal had taken a leave of absence from January to June. “I had dizzying high academic qualifications in the middle of a teacher shortage. In hindsight, however, I think the real reason I was hired was that my father, I.W.C. (Bill) Hutton, was the principal at Bancroft Public School. He mentored everything I did at Hermon.”
Jack boarded with the Ramsbottom family while he was at Hermon. Their daughter Dorothy was either in grade 6 or 7. “They were a wonderful family. Another Ramsbottom, in his early 90s, was on the school board and was technically my boss. He also was very supportive.”
Jack found the real challenge was organizing it so one half of the room, whether 5-6 or 7-8 was occupied while he taught the other. “They alternated between the La Salle generation of explorers for one half and the voyages of Marco Polo and his generation for the other half, so a bright kid starting out in Grade 5 lived through the cycle twice in four years and knew it backwards and forwards.”
Jack recalls that the McArthur’s Mills school had an all-girls softball team that beat “the daylights out of our team in 1952. I took over as pitcher after the score became lopsided but they still demolished us. Very embarrassing.”
In 1993 or 1994 Jack and wife Linda took a detour to see the old Hermon school. They were on their way to perform at the Grand International Ragtime/Jasstime Festival at Alexandria Bay, N.Y. “We also drove down the old L’Amable road and saw the former schoolhouse where my family survived the first winter that my father was the Bancroft public school principal. When the wind blew from one direction it went right through the schoolhouse and out the opposite wall. It was so cold in the mornings that we put our shoes into the oven of the wood stove to thaw. One of my family jobs was drawing up ice-cold water from the well outside. I used to throw the occasional pail up into the air. There would be a loud SNAP and it landed frozen on the snow. A fireman was living in the L’Amable former schoolhouse when Linda and I went by in the 90’s and he was kind enough to give me a tour. He had done a great job of renovating the place inside, adding a new room. The schoolhouse later burned down. Paul Kavanagh (former schoolmate and friend) who has re-connected with me, says he drove up the road last summer (circa 2016) and there was not a trace left of the L’Amable schoolhouse. Paul became a department head at Ottawa Technical School.”
Bill had written an article in The Bancroft Times and was pleasantly surprised when a former Hermon student responded. Joyce Barker, grade 8, was the top student in the grade 5-8 class. Readers may recall her company Pilatzke Insurance located across from No Frills; last I recall a hair salon. I believe her husband Doug worked for the MNR.
Jack was 15 in Grade 11 when he told Stan Walker he would like to learn more about the newspaper world. So, after school, Jack learned how to set type by hand “in the old-fashioned ‘stick’”. He says that he sat on a stool next to Bert Ellerbeck’s wife (Stan’s sister).
“I never got very fast but I have not forgotten some of the things I learned that winter.” This was before Linotype so everything that went into the weekly paper had to be set by hand.
“I was allowed to write a couple of one paragraph social notices for each issue, which was my proud entry into the world of print.”
Following his stint at Hermon Jack entered the Journalism course at the then University of Western Ontario, now Western University, in 1952.
FAST FORWARD
Jack “Eyebrows” Hutton, a ragtime piano maestro and nonagenarian (90+) is still performing. Jack says apparently he is 10 days older than Willie Nelson. In 1983 Jack performed “Dreamy Limehouse”, a tune written by Fats Waller, and only discovered two years after his death in 1943. Waller’s son, Maurice, gave Jack the handwritten music to perform at the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival in Davenport, Iowa.
At age 90 Jack celebrated his birthday by performing at the Gravenhurst Opera House. “Jack Hutton and Friends” was billed as “One more time…” (If you run a search you can find some examples on the web.) This was a celebration of life with his Muskoka friends and family. “As always his Opera House show was sold-out.”
But, as reported, the concert almost didn’t come off. He had to undergo an emergency surgery on his right eye for glaucoma and Jack wasn’t sure that he would be able to read the music. However they put in a stent at Mt. Sinai and “we were able to go.”
“Hutton and Friends signed off with Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll Meet Again’.”
If you have ever taken a Muskoka tour on either The R.M.S. Segwun or Wenonah 11 from the Gravenhurst docks you may have been entertained by Jack during the cruise.
A SMALL WORLD
In 1990 Jack and Linda married and took their honeymoon at Prince Edward Island as Linda was fascinated with Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. While pursuing Linda’s quest Jack transitioned from indifference to interest.
Jack and Linda had purchased the former Tree Lawn Tourist Home in Bala, Ontario, which required extensive renovations and renamed it Roselawn. A letter from a University of Guelph English professor writing a biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery informed them that L.M.M. had vacationed with her husband and sons at Tree Lawn for two weeks one summer in 1922. Jack and Linda had no idea. Apparently this vacation inspired L.M.M.’s novel The Blue Castle, her only novel not set on P.E.I.
“You’d be interested to know,” Jack wrote, “that the hero was Barney.”
On July 14, 1922 L.M.M. wrote: “Muskoka was a ‘fairyland’ totally different from Leaskdale and P.E.I.”
This inspired the Hutton’s to create Bala’s Museum with Memories of Lucy Maud Montgomery which opened July 24, 1992.
L.M.M. and family lived in Leaskdale at the former St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church Manse from 1911-1926. Located on Durham Regional Road, the Town of Uxbridge purchased it in 1992 and in 1994 the Leaskdale Manse was designated a National Historic Site.
During his Journalistic career Jack was a reporter for the former Toronto Telegram and a one time Communications Director for the OSSTF (Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation). He has also penned books, created DVDs… as a quick search engine trip will reveal.
For 20 years Jack played the piano at the First Muskoka Congregational Church, north of Bala. During secular performances he plays a blend of ragtime, Broadway tunes, Gospel and Classics from the ‘20s and ‘30s. He also plays Stride piano which is a style of Jazz; the right hand plays melody while the left hand alternates between a single note and a chord played an octave or more higher. (Check out his Alexandria video.)
In 1997 Jack Hutton received the Pauline McGibbon Lifetime Achievement Award in the Arts. Long time residents may recall when Pauline McGibbon visited the new Eagle’s nest outlook platform site with the large cross in the background. McGibbon was Ontario’s 22nd Lieutenant (‘leff’tenant) Governor, also the first woman to hold that post and the first female vice-regal representative in Canada, from 1974-80.
Jack Hutton is another example of an ordinary citizen from Bancroft performing extraordinary achievements on the world’s stage.