Remembering the Bainton family - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston
Driving into town on the weekend I was shocked to see a pile of rubble where Bainton Limited had formerly stood. On thinking about it, I knew it was going to happen. Construction fences had earlier been installed around the empty building, but Bainton’s has been part of my life since Jill and I moved to Blyth in 1971.
I was editor of the Clinton News-Record when we bought The Blyth Standard. When we moved to Blyth our first home was in a house next to Bainton’s, which was also levelled earlier. We lived in the house and operated the newspaper there. I left Jill to run the day-to-day operations while I worked days at the News-Record. I ran The Standard nights and weekends for several months before I was confident enough we could make a living so that I could resign my position in Clinton.
That was also a fascinating time next door at Bainton’s. Years earlier, Frank Bainton had moved all industrial operations to a new tannery south of town. The building in town was mostly empty, but his only daughter, Glenyce, came up with an idea that it could be used as a retail outlet for wool and leather.
Her idea was a success and soon fall became a reason for people to drive to Blyth to shop for wool and leather products. The streets would be booming in those days before other stores started selling the same products.
That’s where the tale gets a little muddy. Glenyce apparently had a lease on the part of the building with the retail outlet. Somehow she and her parents, Frank and Cenetta, came into conflict. They set up their own retail outlet in what was to become our house.
By the time we came to Blyth, Glenyce and her husband Richard Snell had built The Old Mill south of town and moved there. Bainton Limited moved its retail outlet back into the former tannery. I remember one confrontation when I looked out the front window one day and saw Frank and Dick arguing over a sign Dick had put on the other side of the street that urged shoppers to go to the new Old Mill.
All that is long in the past, of course. That was a time when the Canadian Pacific Railway still came through Blyth with regular freight trains. I remember 50 years ago next year, when Blyth marked its centennial and Goderich marked 150 years, when an excursion steam train came through and stopped at the Blyth station to fill up on water from the water tower that still stood at the Blyth station.
Later, I remember when that station was loaded up on a truck and moved to The Old Mill south of town where it still sits today as a surplus outlet.
There were still sheds around the old station in those days. One was used to store hides that were shipped to Blyth by train, and later tanned at the Bainton tannery in the country.
We didn’t live in the Bainton house for long. An auctioneer came to the office to pay his bill and suggested we should look at the house kitty-corner on Hwy. 4 (now Wonky Frog pottery) because it would likely go cheap at the auction. We went, and he was right, and we bought the house and lived there until 1975 when we moved to the country to the house where we live now and where our kids (three, then, four later) had plenty of space to play and explore, far from the danger of the busy highway that ran right by the door in town.
My connection to the Bainton family continued in other ways. I came to know Cenetta and, in 1975, when I held my first meetings with James Roy about starting the Blyth Summer Festival, I suggested we should approach her about joining the Festival board of directors. We did the next day and she agreed.
It turned into one of the key decisions in the success of the Festival. When the Bank of Commerce decided it was going to build a new outlet in Blyth, Cenetta bought the old building and leased it to the Festival for its administrative office. Later, when the Festival decided to build an addition on the south side of Memorial Hall, Cenetta contributed the administrative office and the upstairs, which was renovated into a rehearsal hall. The Bainton name is still attached to what is now the home of the Blyth Festival Art Gallery beside the lower hall.
It’s hard to imagine the Bainton name not being integral to Blyth’s future. Years ago Franklin died suddenly after an attack while he was working at the tannery. Cenetta carried on until ill health limited her too. I remember her being pushed down the street in a wheelchair by a helper.
When Frank and Cenetta died, they left the tannery and the downtown retail outlet to their grandchildren. That generation kept
Bainton’s downtown store operating until recently.
Things change. Even giants like these age and die. Sooner or later nearly everything has served its time. Still, to see Bainton Limited reduced to a pile of rubble was sad.