The following transcript of

Thomas “Spike” Hennessy’s interview

on

Memories and Music (broadcast November 15, 1981)

was created by the Sudbury Public Library as part of a

Summer Canada Project

in 1982.

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SUDBURY PUBLIC LIBRARY "MEMORIES & MUSIC" INCO LTD. CIGM

ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

INTERVIEWEE: Spike Henn~sY l rno",­

POSITION: Retired Engineer for the city of Sudbury

TAPE NO: 162 TRANS.: Raymonde Lafortune DATE OF TRANS.: May 1982 SUMMER CANADA PROJECT

DATE: November 15, 1981 INTERVIEWER: Gary Peck

THEME: Spike Henn sy, a third generation native of Sudbury recalls his duties and outlines the city of Sudbury in the early

'. de.ys.

G.P. Hello I'm Gary Peck your host on Memories & Music, presented Sunday at one p.m. QY Inco Metals Company. This week my guest will be Spike Henne~y and we'll be talking about early days in Sudbury. Spike Hennes has an interesting work history, in­cluding being city engineer for the city of Sudbury from 1953 to 1970, also currently the general manager of the S.R.D.C. Join Spike Hennedy and myself Sunday at one o'clock when Inco Metals presents Memories & Music on stereo ninety-two point seven, CIGM-FM.

(MUSIC)

G.P.

S.H.

Welcome to the interview pOE tion of Memories & Music. Our guest today is Spike Hennesy. Spike, welcome to the program. Spike, I understand that your family was in fact one of the pioneer families in the Sudbury area.

That's correct, if my memory serves me correctly in learning stories from my grandmother--my grandmother and gr andfather came to Sudbury in the fall of 1883--at which, time the/ as I remember the story, the railroad track to the C.P.R. was as far as Wahnapitae.

G.P. So it was being pushed westward. What was the name of your grandparents?

S.H. My grandfather's name was Thomas HenneJy and my grandmother's maiden was name Ann Curly.

G.P. Can you give us an idea as to the area from which they came?

S.H. My grandmother' s family, the Curly family, had lived in Egan­ville, Ontario; and my grandfather came out from Ireland as an orphan; and spent some time in Eganville, where he married

HENNESY 2 217

my grandmother; and shortly after they were married they moved to Sudbury.

G.P. What line of work was he in, Spike?

S.H. He was basically a plasterer, he had learned the trade in Ire­land, before he came to Canada as a young man; and that was his basic way of making a living. But he did carryon some small lumbering operations outside Sudbury.

G.P. I would think back in the 1880s it would be difficult to make a living ·as a, as a plasterer, you know there would be some difficulties associated with it. So you're saying that he had really a couple of avenues that he could pursue.

S.H. That's right. There wasn't enough building going on, of course, in those days, to keep a plasterer busy or employed full-time, so that he supplemented his income with these lumbering opera­tions. He had a few men in the bush and a few horses; and he cut lumber for some of the larger lumber companies in the area.

G.P. In terms of plastering, I would assume we would be talking about private residences as well as some public buildings?

S.H. Yes, he plastered many of the early residences in Sudbury; and one of the larger buildings that I recall, seeing that he plastered was the original King Edward Hotel.

G.P. Right when it was built at the time. Just shortly after the turn of the century.

S.H. When it was originally built, that's right.

G.P. Where did your grandparents live? Where was their original home?

S.H. My grandfather originally built a home on the corner of Lisgar and Larch Street, right across from, I guess, from St.-Andrew's Church, the original St.-Andrew's Church. And they lived there until the early 1920s, when he built a home on Elm Street, on the north side of Elm, just where the city Day-Care Centre is now, across from the Sudbury Y.M.C.A.

G.P. In the 1920s. The home on the corner of, I think you said, Lisgar and Larch • • •

S.H. Lisgar and Larch, yes.

G.P. What would be located there today?

S.H. The Air-Canada office is located on that corner now.

/

HENNESY

G.P. And did they puchase that property back in the 18oos?

S.H. My grandfather bought that property from the C.P.R. in 1889

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or 1890; and interestingly enough, the lots on Larch Street were being sold by the C.P.R. at that time for one hundred . dollars. The thinking being that Larch Street would be the main street in Sudbury, because the railway station was located at the end of Larch Street next to the railroad track; and strangely enough, lots on Elm Street were being sold at fifty dollars; and •••

G.P. Less then a hundred years ago • • •

S.H. I remember my grandmother often telling me that my grandfather figured that the corner of Larch and Lisgar would be the exact centre of the central business district as it's now established.

G.P. So he built a home there, on a hundred dollar lot. When you, when the house was moved across, or when your grandparents rather moved over to where the Day-Care Centre is, in the 1920s; there wouldn't have been that many residences along there I shouldn't think.

S.H. The house that was built on Elm Street across from the Y.M.C.A. was the first house built on that side of Junction Creek, of course you don't see much of Junction Creek anymore at that point it's all closed in. But that was the first house on that side of the creek, east of the creek.

G.P. The first one on that part i cular side . Spike, your grandmother I think you've mentioned it, had really lived into her nineties, I believe?

S.H. Yes. She lived until age ninety-seven.

G.P. She must have had a number of stories that she would share with her grandchildren.

S.H. Oh, it was an interesting thing because I lived in my grand~ mother's house with my family--our family lived with my grand­mother from 1831 until about 1954--and she had many, many visitors and of course they recounted a lot of the tales of the early days in Sudbury; and one of the interesting ones, when her children were very small--that is my father and my uncles-­in the spring, they used to have a problem with the men coming out of the lumber camps; and drinking and carousing at night; and on the occasion my grandfather was away in the bush and my grandmother had a young cousin of her's from Egonville visiting with her; and they had repeated visits and noise at the door from some of these fellows that were leaving the local bar and ended up t hat, my grandmother's young cousin ended up taking the shot-gun and taking a shot through the door to chas e away some of the strangers.

HENNESY

G.P. Looked after their own protection at that time.

S.H. Yes. There was no police force in those days.

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G.P. Or if there was, it would be very minimal and usually not available I suspected in those situations. Your grandparents really were in Sudbury then from the onset, so that they, they were there during that transition from log-buildings, frame­buildings, right on into brick-buildings, hay-streets and the dirt-streets. Did your grandmother ever talk about the conditions of the times?

S.H. Oh yes. The early days, of course, had a lot of hardship. There were problems of getting around. Everybody had to use a horse and wagon, of course, and sometimes, in the spring, the mud was so deep, that even the horse, one horse, couldn't pull a wagon; and they had to almost get them towed out with an other team.

G.P. Of course, people are great at exaggerating, and I'm sure, the pioneers were as good as any group. You hear stories about animals being actually lost in the, in the mud. And I suppose there might be some substance to that. Your father, what line of work was he in?

S.H. My father worked at the Sudbury Brewery, but he was a provincial government employee. He was a liquor inspector at the Sudbury Brewery from 1931 on for many years.

G.P. And his name?

S.H. His name was Spike, too. He was named, my grandfather's name was Thomas and my dad's name was Thomas Alban, and mine is Thomas Laurence. That might be news to some of your listeners.

G.P. I'm sure. And your dad was known as Spike as well?

S.H. Yes, that's kind of an interesting stor3. A lot of people ask, how did he get the name Spike?

G.P. Well I was about too.

S.H. My dad was quite an athlete and in both hockey and l acrosse; and when he was young lacrosse was a very big sport; and one of the big teams that played for the Man Cup, which was the Canadian Championship in lacrosse, was the Vancouver Team; and as you probably know, they still have great lacrosse teams in the west coast; and in those days the Vancouver Team had a, their star player was named Spike Hennesy. So, my dad as a young lad got the nickname Spike and I inherited it from him.

HENNESY 5 434

G.P. Well that's, that's quite a story. Alright, Spike, we're going to, we'll wrap up this portion of the programme and turn the programme over to Doug MacLaughlin. When we return, perhaps we can talk about what it was like to be city engineer in Sudbury. First we'll hear from Doug MacLaughlin.

(MUSIC)

G.P. Welcome back to the interview portion of Memories & Music. Our guest today is Spike Rennesy. Spike, shortly after the war, I think around 19-, was it 1946, when you started to work for the C.P.R.?

S.R. 1947.

G.P. '47, when you started to work for them, what was your line of work?

. I

S.H. I was an assistant engineer in the local office, and its proper title was Maintenance of Way Engineer; and we were responsible for railroads, well, all of the maintenance of the existing . track. But the big thing that occupied our time during those years was constructing new sitings for the paper and lumber industry, and the mines and the steel company, Algoma Steel, and so on, they were all expanding right after the war; and there was a lot of activity that required extra car storage space for railroad sitings. So that was a big part of our job was to layout and supervise the construction of the rail­road sitings.

G.P. Now you were also involved with leasing?

S.R. Yes. Part of my job was to administer all of the land leases of the C.P.R. In Sudbury, you might be familiar with the fact that all along Lorne Street, where Carrington Lumber and those other businesses are, that's all, or at least, all was C.P.R. land and on Elm Street from the President Hotel down to the _ track; and the same was true in places like North Bay and Sault-Sainte-Marie and the other places that were within our division.

G.P. So you would be involved with those transactions as well?

S.H. Yes. And they were mostly industrial leases, but a lot of commercial establishments, too. And they were all tenants of the railway. The railroad, had a policy of never selling land. So that we dealt with the clients, if they needed a, an extra piece of land to expand their business, we had to lay it out and negotiate the lease; and record it on the plans; and ••• Of course, maintaining a property record was a big thing; and all of the land sales or l and leases had to be entered on a large plan; t hey had a large plan called a Title Record Plan, for every community.

HENNESY

G.P. Now, how many years did you work for the C.P.R.?

S.H. Six years, from 1947 to 1953.

G.P. '53 . And then in '53 you became city engineer?

S.H. In June of '53 I became city engineer.

G.P. For the city of Sud"bury. What prompted you to go into that line of work?

S.H. Well. • •

G.P.' I don't mean in 1953, but originally.

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S.H. When I was about five years old in 1931, they built a new concrete bridge on Elm Street to replace an old wooden bridge, that had been there for many years; and I guess, like all small boys, they're kind of fascinated by a construction project, starting with the pile driving and then later the building the forms for the bridge; and pouring the concrete, and I guess, right then, in the back of my mind, I decided I'd like to be the City Engineer.

G.P. You had that curiosity at an early age. You were City Engineer from '53 to 1970?

S.H. That's correct.

G.P. That's a seventeen year period. Some of the major projects you were involved with i n during that time.

S.H. Well I guess the biggest one was urban renewal. It was called the Borgia Urban Renewal Project, but it really took in a big part of Elm Street, on the north side of Elm, from just below the Macky block, just east of the Macky block, down to Junction Creek, and back to St.-Anne's Lane; and what was formerly Borgia and Louis Streets, were included in that, of course; and that was, in those days, was about a twenty-million dollar project.

G.P. Can you give Us an idea of the time when this was being under­taken?

S.H. I'm not sure, it seems to me that was about, it finished about 1960, I believe. No, I'm sorry 19-, just before I left was it, be about '68 I ~ess or '69.

G.P. Right. Now, some of the specifics relating to that, what prompted the urban renewal in that area? Just a question of upgrading the street itself?

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S.H. Well, the, the area had generally fallen into a serious state of disrepair, and Sudbury was one of a number of cities, that had this blight in the downtown core; and an examination of the tax revenue, from that portion of downtown indicated that-­I forget the exact numb~, but for the sake of argui ng, we were getting something like a hundred thousand dollars a year or something, in taxes from that part of the city and we should have been getting a million, so that the idea was to, to acquire the property and tear down the buildings; and replace it with something that would generate a fair amount of taxes, because as you're probably aware, it isn't the residences in the comm­unity that carry the bulk of the tax load, the idea is to have a balance of taxes; and as much as you can from commercial and industrial, to lighten the load on the residential tax payer, so it's critical to the health of a community, to have a good commercial and industrial tax base • • •

G.P. And that being prime land.

S.H. And it was t he prime land.

G.P. The prime land that was available. Some of the major problems that would be associated with acquiring the land. Were there difficulties along the way?

S.H. Well of course, there's a lot of emotion in expropriation, and that kind of a project involving two-hundred and fifty different properties, there really is no way you could ac quire the land and carry out the project with any schedule of time, unless

G.P.

you had control of it; and as a consequence, the city passed a by-law, one single by-law, as I recall it, and expropriated the whole two-hundred and fifty properties at once.

At once • • •

S.H. And registered the ownership--now you can't do that today, under the law, but you could in those days, fortunately for the city, or it never would have been completed--the properties were all registered in the name of the city at one fell swoop; and then, negotiations were carried out, in other words, pro­per ty negotiator on behalf of the city, sometimes it was me and sometimes the city solicitor and sometimes the city assessor --we didn't have any full-time staff, right at the beginning, but we eventually acquired a few people to do that--but each property owner would be approached and he would be told, how much the city had his property appraised for; and we had that done by independent professional real-estate or property ap­praisers; and the negotiation was carried on. Now many of those, I don't know, I would guess, probably two-hundred of the two­hundred and fifty were in fact acquired by straight negotiati on, where the owner agreed to sell at the price it was offered. Many of them had t o go t o court, I believe, the last one was just settled about six months or a year ago. So, it took twelve or fourteen years to, now that , the only thing that was being

HENNESY

disputed, of course, was price

G.P. Right.

• • •

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S.H. The project went ahead on schedule, even though the price had never been resolved on some of them • • •

G.P. Now, this was a project that was completed on schedule as well, was it not?

S.H. It's probably the only urban renewal project that ever was completed on schedule in Canada. There were a number of other major urban renewal projects, including the two that I'm fami­liar with: Hamilton and Halifax. Hamilton was seven years ahead of us in starting and had acquired all the land and clearel it to a large extent before we started; and they got into some difficulties with getting a proper development on the site; and they ended up with about a seven year stalemate, with nothing happening, in the meantime we'd completed our project.

G.P. That type of urban renewal programme, we're unlikely, it's we're going to see that.

S.R. I doubt if you'll ever see . . . G.P. Because of cost, because of the difficulties of acquiring the

land •••

S.R. The law doesn't permit expropriation in that fashion anymore . . . G.P. Blanket expropriation • • •

S.R. Well ••• not so much blanket, but the major differences that first of all, a municipality has to now prove need. So right off the bat you loose a lot of time having to go before a board, on tribunal to prove to them that you actually need the land, that you can't go someplace else. That's very time consuming; and the law has been changed to benefit the property owner, the individual to a much greater extent; and I think under the pre­sent law it would be physically impossible to acquire a large number of properties • • •

G.P. It would be more piece-meal •

S.R. According to any schedule • • •

G.P. Right. Spike you've made a comment earlier in terms of some of the firsts in the Sudbury area. Parking meters for example . . .

HENNESY 9 858

S.H. Yes there are a few of these things, that are, I guess, memo­rabilia. Sudbury was the first city i n Canada to have parking meters •

G.P. That was while you were city engineer?

S.R. No. Just prior to my • . . G.P. Just prior?

S.R. Yeah, a few years before I took over the first parking meters were installed • • •

G.P. Where were they installed? On Elm?

S.R. Of course, on Elm and on Durham Street the two, and •••

G.P. Was it, what was the reaction to them being installed?

S.R. Oh, it was horrendous!

G.P. I would think so.

S.R. People who owned stores, for example, many of them had for twenty-five years operated a store; and they drove to work every morning and parked right in front of their own store; then wondered why the shoppers couldn't get near them. Most of the parking spaces used to get taken in those days by the owners and the employees in the downtown stores. That was one of the reasons the parking meters were installed was to • • •

G.P. Get the traffic moving and make it available for people to •••

S.R. Well to provide short-term parking for the people who wanted to shop • • •

G.P. Sure.

S.R. Another first we had in this . . . G.P. Back to, just before we move from there, what would it be a

penny?

S.R. No. Five cents • • •

G.P. Five cents then • • •

S.R. For an hour • • •

G.P. For an hour of parking. I imagine there was quite a hue and cry, and a bo~cott of them initially and •••

HENNESY 10 887

S.H. Oh there were pay the fine. pay the fine; interesting •

a couple of court cases, where people refused to They wouldn't put the nickel and they wouldn't

and we threatened to put them in jail, it was . . G.P. I would think so. You were going to make another comment re­

garding a first.

S.H. Another first was the use of two-way radio for public works vehicles. A few years before, we got bold enough to recommend that to council, police departments in Canada had started to install two-way radio in their vehicles. It seemed logical to me that it was good for communicating between police vehicles and from the office to the cars, that we had substantially the same problem in communicating with our foreman and supervisors in the public works department; and when it was proposed that we spend five thousand dollars to buy some radio equipment it credted ~uite a hue and cry at council and the local media •••

G.P. They thought of you as being frivolous?

S.H. It was considered to be frivolous, very definitely. But hind­sight, I guess, established that it wasn't a bad idea.

G.P. But there was a fair amount of criticism of it at the time?

S.H. Oh, the media, the local media really took exception to it and considered it a waste of money.

G.P. Takes a while, doesn't it, for some of those, some of those proposals to get through. Spike, we're going to have to take a break right now, we'll turn the programme back to Doug MacLaughlin. When we come back we'll continue our conversation about what it was like to be city engineer in Sudbury. First we'll turn the programme over to Doug MacLaughlin.

(MUSIC)

G.P. Welcome back to the interview that we're having today, with Spike Hennesy. Spike was the city engineer for the city of Sudbury from 1953 to 1970. Spike, you've shared with us some of the projects that you recall, as you look back on the seven­teen years, the urban renewal programme, parking meters along Elm, to begin with, the two-way radios with public works I believe?

S.H. That's correct.

G.P. What were some of the other projects? When I think of public works, I think of asphalt for example, of sidewalks, etc.

HENNESY 11 096

S.H. Well, the, one of the big things that took up a lot of our time was developing a proper permanent road building programme, to what I would call more modern standards. Goi ng back to the Depression days, through 1928 almost through to about 1935 or '36, there was no, no work done, and it was only shortly after that, that the war started and again, there was no work done, because there was a shortage of materials; and it was only in 1946, that the city began any road construction that I would call a permanent road building programme.

G.P. This would be after the war, and there was really a gap you're saying • • •

S.H. Of nearly twenty years.

G.P. Associated with the Depression and the war and in fact that period right after that initial construction, say around 1920 or a little before.

S.H. That's right. The early road building was done in Sudbury in 1919, '20 and '21. In those years Elm, and Durham, and Cedar, and Larch, and Young, and Lisgar; those streets were paved with about eight inches of concrete with an asphalt top and lasted very well, they were really quite effective.

G.P. That was your standard technique for constructing a road at that time?

S.H. Yeah, concrete was the basic • . . G.P. Concrete base, with an asphalt cap.

S.H. Right. And concrete curbs, now those, those streets lasted very well. They were never, they never conceived, that they would be carrying fifty and seventy ton trucks, when they were built, so the base was in a lot of cases inadequate. But the actual road, the concrete and the asphalt, lasted extremely well. So, in '46 , after the war, they started a programme of building, first of all, streets that had never been permanently built. Some of them had three or four inches of gravel and a sprayed asphalt emulsion on top, and they broke up every year and had to be resurfaced. So that there were two kinds of, two parts to the programme. One was to build streets that had never been permanently constructed, Riverside Drive is an example, Elgin Street and a lot of those streets. But the other thing was that they also had to dig up and replace some of those that had been built back in 1918. So that was a major activity . There was effectively no sewer and water construction going on during that period because Sudbury was very completely built up, if you look back, you're looking at an old city of Sudbury, that had fixed boundaries; and they were two miles square, that was the size of t he community; and it was in the middle of McKim Township. But it was substantially all built up and completely serviced with sewer and water even in those days. We had the

HENNESY 12 152

odd sewer or water extension. But there were no major under­ground works. So, our, our big activity was road building, and that carried on for many years. Well, I guess, it never stops really.

G.P. No, it seems that way. Talking about the durability of some of these projects. If I recall, there are sidewalks in the Durham Street area etc., where the date is on them. Warren, for example, constructed some of those a long time ago.

S.H. That's right. Many of those early sidewalks, that were built by Warren are still in existence.

G.P. They're going to be around for quite a while, those are land­marks in a way. Rock tunnel, I think, was it commenced while you were engineer?

S.H. Yes. That was started, as I recall it just, we had an amalga­mation of the city of Sudbury with McKim Township and part of Neelon Township, the west half of Neelon Township, on January 1, 1960; and my recollection is that we, we started the, cer­tainly, we designed the tunnel and got the idea accepted by council, prior to amalgamation in 1960. I can't remember exactly when it was built, but it was around 1960, when the Rock tunnel was built. Of course, that was another major project and one that deviated from the normal way of handling the sewer problems, and I think the debate on that lasted at least a year.

G.P. Gave quite a few people a fair amount to talk about. What were the dimensions of that, Spike, in terms of length, actual size.

S.H. The tunnel is roughly. five feet, or sixty inches in diameterr That's the minimum dimension that's bigger than that in some places--and it's approximately five miles long. It runs from that big rock out-cropping just behind Pioneer Manor down to Kelley Lake, where the Sewage lift station was built. There was no treatment plant at the time. That was another war we had with the body that was in charge of those a.cti vi ties, in the day it was called the Ontario Water Resources Commision. They were objecting to us continuing to dump the sewage un­treated in the Kelley Lake, however, they finally approved it. There is now of course, a sewage treatment plant there.

G.P. Right.

S.H. But at the time all that was built was a tunnel and a pumping station.

G.P. Now that tunnel, why would there be opposition to it? Was it because they felt that it was novel, or impossible or a com­bination? Expense? What were the factors?

)

HENNESY 13 205

S.R. Oh well, there wasn't any argument about expense. We had no alternative, some major facility had to be built because all of the existing facilities were being pushed beyond their limit, and something had to be done. It either had to be a conventional sewer, you know, say six or eight feet below the ground, or the tunnel; and our position on that· was that the tunnel could be driven underground without disturbing anyone, or any traffic; and it could be done cheaply; and it would be forever. Some people who don't or didn't know anything about geology or mining, had visions of the thing collapsing and being an unstable rock and thinking of the catastrophe that would happen • • •

G.P. Sure.

S.R. If all the sewage in the city i s going through a tunnel and that collapses, so. That was the fear a lot of people had was that it would collapse or something. I think others were just fighting by the magnitude of the job, they weren't believers that a five mile tunnel could be built. Really,

G.P.

it wasn't any spectacular project, people in the mining, tun­neling business • • •

They would relate to it immediately • • •

S.R. Yeah, no problem at all.

G.P. Maybe that's why we were very fortunate that it occured here because it would be many, of course, who'd . have that background . . .

S.R. That's right. The fellow who really deserves most of the credit, and came up with the original idea for it, was an alderman by the name of Duke Gerit, who was a mining engineer, worked at Frood Mine as in the mine engineering department; and he con­vinced me that it was a good idea; and once I was convinced and the two of us took on the world almost • • •

G.P. What happened at council when it came before, was it accepted initially or immediately, or a fair amount of discussion?

S.R. Oh no. They, well, first of all they were, council were frigh­tened off primarily by the Water Resources Commission who were at that time they were like the Ministry of the Environment now they were suppose to be the water and sewer experts for Ontario and they said it wouldn't work; and it ended up with this city council hiring consulting engineers and we in fact had two separate consulting engineering firms, you know, oppo­sing one another almost, one recommending the rock tunnel and one of them recommending a, what I would call, a surface sewer that, where we would have had to expropriat e hundreds of pro­perties and tear up streets • • •

HENNESY

G.P. That would have been a mammoth task. Do you recall who the mayor was at that time? That wouldn't have been •••

S.R. I think, Joe Fabro •••

G.P. Was involved somewhere along the line. Associated with it • • •

S.H. Yeah.

G.P. Brady Street underpass?

S.R. The Brady Street underpass was another major project. That

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was one of the first modern big projects, I guess, by today's standards, it's not really big. It was only two million dollars. But I think, it was the first multi-million dollar project, single construction project undertaken.

G.P. Would be joint funding on that? Was there financial as sistance?

S.R. Oh yeah, there was a major contribution from, from the ministry of, what used to be the Ministry of Highways in those days; and we got a seventy-five percent grant on it, as a matter of fact, because it was supposed to be called a "Through Way With Controlled Access," hasn't worked out that way but •••

G.P. Not exactly • • •

S.H. The master plan for Sudbury in those days was not to include a by-pass, not a highway by-pass, that the city was given an option, they could have a by-pass or they could have a through­way through the middle of the city, much like Ottawa has. Ottawa had started the Ottawa through-way at the time, the Queen's Way or whatever they call it.

G.P. Yes.

S.H. And the government raised the subsidy from thirty-three percent to seventy-five percent if you built a through-way. But one of the conditions was that there were to be no great entrances; and that was the way Brady Street was to be, the first leg of a through-way that would extend from the City limits on the west, near Copper-Cliff, throu~h to the east City limits. To Highway seventeen east (17E).

G.P. So Brady street was not going to be the beginning of it, but it was going to be part of it.

S.H. Yeah, the middle segment really.

G.P. Right. Why, why the change over the years? Different emphasis in terms of people at t he city level? You know, in terms of priorities, availability of funding?

HENNESY

S.H. Well, there never was, I mean, I don't think there ever was complete agreement by council, that they would go for •••

G.P. I mean, the master plan •••

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S.H. The master plan. The master plan included the Brady Street being extended past the, the Civic Centre; and where it crossed Drinkwater Street, it then would start up over the rock where that Senior Citizens or there that apartment building is up there now.

G.P. Yes.

S.H. In the way of getti ng a controlled access road, primarily would be all through that still undevelopped area up on top of that rock, from there right out to Kingsway, there's still nothing up there, of course, but it was gonna to be a major project • • •

G.P. It seems like any projects today are major, aren't they?

S.H. I think so.

G.P. There's, there's no easy way around them. Spike, we're going to have to take a break now and in a few minutes we'll return and wrap up the program, first we'll turn it over to Doug MacLaughlin.

(MUSIC)

G.P. Alright. We're back with our interview with Spike Hennesy, and we're really running out of time, it seems. Spike, when you look back on the seventeen years that you were city engineer, what thoughts go through your mind?

S.H. Well they were very hectic, but very enjoyable and extremely interesting and, the fact that I'm a native of Sudbury, I think, helped me to enjoy that work more so, than if I'd come here, to just take a job in a strange community.

G. P. There was that pride associated with really being third gene­ration in the community.

S.H. I think that had a lot to do with it.

G.P. I sense the job was quite challenging as well. Considering the number of projects that you seem to have become embroiled in.

S.H. Well, everyday was a challenge in that position, and it's much the same today. I think, to some extent you make the job, but there are lots of challenges. But very interesting, and you meet a lot of wonderful people.

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G.P. So you look upon that period of time as a, in a very positive way.

S.H. Oh very definitely.

G.P. Spike, on behalf of our listening audience, thank-you, for helping to, in a sense, open the door at City-Hall. I think, today our audience has really gained a better understanding of what it was, what it is like, the work involved at City-Hall, and I think for that reason we're indebted. Thank-you.

S.H. You're welcome Gary.

(END OF TAPE)