About Me

My full name is George Slade Rout and I was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Sept. 23, 1937.  For details on Mom, Dad, brother and sister, family, etc. see the Rout Family page.  Like my older late brother and my uncles, I was born with poor vision due to myopia, astigmatism, and nystagmus, it being genetic and carried by the women on my mother’s side but showing up only in the males.  When I was born, my mother was 39, my older late brother Jack was 9 and my sister Betty was 13!

When I was born, my parents were renting the lower flat at 741/2 Lawrence St., but moved 3 months after I was born to 313 South St. (north side),  right at the top of Carterat St. diagonally across from my mother’s parents (Richard J. and Mary Jane Anderson), who lived at 322 South.  It was sort of a status symbol to live in the ‘southend’ of Halifax. (House numbers were renumbered in Halifax in the 1960s to a grid system). 313 South St. was an 8-room house rented from George Getley and had two homes behind it on the same property.  Directly behind us lived Flossie and Hilton Powell and their daughter Marie.  Behind them lived “the Sutherlands”. 

As did my brother & sister, I attended St. Thomas Aquinas (STA) Catholic school on Watt St. (now LeMarchant-St. Thomas) from Grades 1 to 6. My teachers were Sister Marion Gertrude for Grade 1, Miss Flemming for Grade 2, Miss MacDonald for Grade 3, Miss Inglis for Grade 4, Miss Simms for Grade 5 and Sister Martina Marie for Grade 6.    My poor eyesight necessitated that I wear “coke bottle” glasses which attracted comments from other kids and led to bullying (yes, back then).  My parents had little money and couldn’t afford to have my glasses broken several times.  When approached, the principal, Sister Ann Catherine, stated I was causing the problem.  My father and mother monitored me in the schoolyard and found I was simply being bullied.  With the thought (in those days) of risking being excommunicated by the Pope, my parents did something unheard of, they took me out of the Catholic St. Thomas Aquinas in Grade 6 and put me in the Protestant LeMarchant Street School right across the street. The bullying stopped.  The new Gorsebrook Junior High School on South St. opened in a year or so, and I went there and then on to Queen Elizabeth High School for Grades 10 & 11. 

 

I attended the QEH “Last Chance Reunion” in 2007 and enjoyed meeting a lot of folks I hadn’t seen since 1954. 

 

After QEH, I went to the Halifax County Vocational High School to take Office-Typing-Bookkeeping-Accounting-Business-Math and Commercial Law.  It was a one-year course which I completed in the spring of 1955. 

 

You can’t believe everything you read!!!!   My Halifax County Vocational High picture above states that I was interested in model planes.  Not quite, I had model trains!!!!  It also says I was into sports of all kinds.  Well, I played table tennis!!!!

My father was in the army during WWII.  While he wasn’t overseas, he was away from home much of the time as the Battery Sergeant Major (BSM) at the A-23 Searchlight Battery at Eastern Passage across Halifax Harbour.  I never remember my father doing anything with me except making a model boat  when I was very young.  He came home on some weekends bringing chocolate bars to me.  In 1945, he was medically discharged with a stroke, the first of 9 before he died in 1953 at the age of 57.  He was never a well man during this period, and couldn’t work.  Therefore, not much money was coming in. 

Grandma Anderson developed Alzheimer’s and came to live with us around 1950 just before we moved from 313 South St. to 90 LeMarchant St. (two houses north of Coburg Rd. on the west side) formerly owned by L. Avard Forsythe.  313 South was being sold and, for some reason, we had to move.  90 LeMarchant St. was a big two-storey home with 12 foot ceilings, and a fireplace in major rooms.  The cellar was rock, and somebody had dug out the rock to install an oil furnace and it had forced hot air to a few parts of the house, but it was totally inefficient.  A regular desk fan was installed in a duct on its side to help with air flow. 

My father and grandmother Anderson both died in 1953, and my mother wanted to get out of that old big cold house, and bought 27 (later 1253) LeMarchant back in the same block as 313 South St.  27 was owned by Mr. Arthur Cooke.  It was a small tidy home with a nice yard.  Mom lived there until about 1961, when I was living in Montreal and she lived in several apartment buildings over the years all in that south end neighbourhood.

For more information on these houses just hover over them for a little additional knowledge.

The family belonged to the North West Arm Rowing Club (NWARC) at the foot of South St. (we couldn’t afford to join the classy Waegwaltic!!!!).  My late brother Jack and his buddy the late Paul Bernard (from Waterloo St.) used to canoe quite a bit (probably chasing girls).  They also did a bit of sailing. I remember my brother’s snipe class sailboat, JETSAM.  It ended up with me, but I think it was in poor shape.  I was keen on canoe sailing following my uncle Clarence’s sport.  He gave the sail, mast, gaff, boom and leaboards to me, the best thing he could have ever done.  For years I loved to sail the 14 and later 16 foot Chestnut canoe (painted black) many times a week.  Depending upon the wind and weather, I would sail up around Armdale, or right out into Halifax Harbour and into Bedford Basin, or around Lawlor and McNab’s islands.  I remember the first time I saw the anti-submarine chains hanging down under the water between the islands and the mainland of Eastern Passage. When US warships came to visit, I would sail up to the Dockyard to see them.  Dave Pace, who lived on the Thornvale property next to the NWARC, would accompany me quite often. 

In my late teens, Bob Zinck and I became friends when he joined the boat club.  Bob bought first a smaller boat, and shortly after a 41 foot Cape Island style cabin cruiser for $300 (yes, back then) from Atlantic Marine.  It was originally a tow boat, had two props, powered by a 35 Ford V8 and a 37 Pontiac straight 8 car engines.  I really enjoyed working with Bob on the boat.  We removed the two engines (which were using No. 50 oil) and back then you could buy a Plymouth rebuilt engine from Simpsons’.  Motor mounts for that were purchased from Bar Marine in Bar Harbour Maine.  Reverse gear on an automobile transmission is very low, and had no effect in the water, so we replaced it with the 2nd gear which we niftily called our “high speed reverse”.  The boat was named “Seigro” which may be obvious to some and not to others.  Many good times were had on board the Seigro. I left those good times in 1960 to work for Marconi Television in Montreal.  Please see the CANOEING AND BOATING pictures.