Robert Love came to Melita around 1900 and established
himself as a
leather worker making and repairing harnesses and shoes. These
were vital services in a pioneer farming community. By 1910 he was
operating “The Melita Shoe Hospital” in a building which later housed
“Lefty’s Grill” and is still standing on Melita’s Main Street. Before
that he had operated in out of the back of the Blackwell Block, one of
the original Manchester buildings that were moved to the new town.
Some time in the 1920’s Mr. Love, perhaps seeing the inevitable decline
in harness making and shoe repair, became an agent for Wawanesa
Insurance, taking over from another Melita business pioneer, A.B.
Estlin. He continued in the insurance business until 1951 when he was
bought out by Murray Cameron and the business became C. & C.
Agencies.
His long service to the community in a commercial capacity was
important, but it was his service in various community endeavours that
perhaps was more influential.
On September 13, 1913 he purchased property for erection of a building
to house moving pictures and other forms of entertainment. It was 30
feet by 90 with a 20 foot stage and a floor on a slope. Seating
capacity was 400. The first moving picture was shown in December of
1913. Excerpts from the Melita Enterprise during the ensuing years are
filled with ads reflecting the great variety of entertainment provided
in this venue. The Opera House was destroyed by fire in 1917.
On a recreational and cultural level we see that he was a founding
member of the Lawn Tennis Club as Secretary-Treasurer, as well as a
founding member of the Glee Club in that same year. He was Grand Master
of the I.O.O.F. in 1915. He served the Victoria United Church as Clerk
of Session and Superintendent of the Sunday School for 12 years,
resigning in 1946. He was Secretary-Treasurer of the Manitoba School
Trustee’s Association in 1928 and also served on the Melita town
council.
Adapted from Our First Century, page 301, 373, 553
The Old Harness Shop
Today, any sizable town needs at least one service station to keep the
wheels of transportation turning. Not so long ago, any village worthy
of a place name could boast at least two skilled trademen who kept
horses and their equipment fit for service -- a blacksmith and a
harness maker.
In days gone by, the harness maker was an important member of the
community. Whenever someone rode a horse, drove a buggy or hitched up a
team to plow a field, it was leather straps that quite literally
"harnessed" the muscle power of the animals so that humans could
control it and use it for productive work. Just as skilled mechanics
are essential in the modern world, in the age of horse power the
survival of the community depended to a large extent on the skill of
people who knew how to work with leather. Using simple but specialized
tools, the harness maker could repair broken harness (or "tack") and
manufacture new equipment when required. If he were especially gifted,
he might have been called upon to make buggy whips or riding crops. The
epitome of the harness maker's art was saddlery -- a skill unto itself.
It required an experienced artisan to repair a broken saddle, and a
trained craftsman to fashion a new one.
The vocation that may be less in demand than it was a hundred years
ago, but which remains critically important to anyone who works with
horses, even today.
In rural Canada, the harness maker's shop sometimes did double duty as
the temporary workshop of an itinerant cobbler. The business
relationship between the harness maker and the shoe maker was a natural
association, because both craftsmen worked with leather. A hundred
years ago, most boots and shoes were custom made. In villages too small
to support a full-time cobbler, folks from the neighboring farms would
visit the harness shop when they came to town, choose a shoe style from
drawings or from a few samples, and leave a pencil tracing of the
outline of their feet. When the shoe maker made his rounds every few
months, he would set to work filling the accumulated orders, often
relying on nothing more than these tracings to judge the sizes!
http://www.durham.net/~neilmac/harness.htm
|
