Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - Where We Gather - Fire at the Old Town Hall

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

“Everyone in town heard the lightning hit.”We’re talking about gathering places on this week’s episode; those vital places that serve our communities in so many ways. We start with a piece Stuart wrote about the Parliament buildings (a follow up to the Amazing Spaces episode from last season). Then a moving listener story about a town hall, and a story about the town hall in Dave’s hometown.Ad-free listening is here! Listen to the pod ad-free and early, PLUS a whole bunch of other goodies – like virtual parties, Q&As, listener shout-outs & more. Subscribe here: apostrophe.supercast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the apostrophe podcast network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton, and this is backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. We've got a couple of different things for you today on the pod. We'll have a story about Dave's childhood. That's in the second half of the show. But we're going to start with a bit of housekeeping. A few months ago, we had an episode called Amazing Spaces,

where we gathered scripts Stuart had written, showing his love of architecture and fascination with some of the incredible places we've visited while on tour with the Vinyl Cafe. I know you loved hearing those scripts again, or some of you for the first time, because you've written to tell me that you'd like to hear more. So I pulled all the old Vinyl Cafe hard drives out of a storage bin in my basement and spent a day digging around in the Vinyl Cafe vaults. One of the places that Stuart was talking about in that Amazing Spaces episode was the Library of Parliament in Ottawa. When we put that episode together,

I knew there was more to it, something more that we'd learned about one of the other rooms in the Parliament building and about the wood that lined that room. But I couldn't find it, and I couldn't exactly recall the details. It was driving me crazy. I wondered if it was maybe something

we ended up cutting from that original show, or maybe I'd just imagined it. after much digging around, I came across the bit I was thinking of. It was actually a letter that Stewart had received after the Library of Parliament script first aired on the radio. I want to start by playing that for you now. This is Stuart McLean, recorded in studio in 2011. This is a letter that came into the vinyl cafe inbox from Andrew Needs, the High Commissioner from New Zealand to Canada.

Dear Stuart, he writes, I was out in the garage a few weeks back, beginning the fall changeover, moving bikes, skateboards, and swimming gear into the basement while dusting off skis, skates, and sleds, all in anticipation of an Ottawa winter. It's a chore that I enjoy. It emphasizes the clarity of the seasons in Canada. As I often do when doing my chores, I was listening to CBC.

The Vinyl Cafe was just starting. It was the show you recorded while you were in Ottawa, the nation's capital. You talked about your tour of Parliament, including your experiences in the magnificent parliamentary library, and your visit to the members' dining room. As a special treat, you were allowed to view the New Zealand room, a small, private dining room. You relayed the story of this room being lined with native New Zealand cowry timber, timber that was gifted to Canada by New Zealand after the old parliament burnt down in 1916. I was moved enough by this story to read it at a dinner I attended recently.

It was a dinner to introduce a visiting New Zealand MP to a number of her Canadian parliamentary colleagues. That dinner, appropriately enough, was held in the New Zealand room. The assembled group was collectively moved by your reflections, They provided the catalyst for a wonderful discussion on both the closeness of New Zealand-Canada ties and on the state of our respective democracies. I'm writing today because I'd like to add to this evolving story. You may not be aware that in 1921, the Canadian Parliament gifted some bird's-eye maple and walnut timber to New Zealand to reciprocate the gift of the cowrie lumber.

The wood now lines the Speaker's Office in the Parliament buildings in Wellington, New Zealand. The room, I can report, glows with the warm colors of Canadian maple and walnut. The most recent addition to the story took place earlier last year, when New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, on an official visit to Canada, gifted Canada three contemporary prints by David Teyatta, a promising New Zealand artist. This new artwork was framed by David Monaghan, curator at the House of Commons. It now hangs in the New Zealand room. Kind regards, Andrew Needs, High Commissioner.

I love that letter, and I love this continuing story of the New Zealand dining room. It's just a tiny room, tucked away on the top floor of the Canadian Parliament building, hardly more than an alcove, with space for maybe 12 at the table, and paneled in the exceptionally strong cowery wood that's unique to New Zealand. It's a tiny story about a tiny room, but the story touches me. Because I would put forward, it touches the possibility of something rare, not the warm and enduring affection that we know is possible between individuals, but something more difficult and in less supply.

And that is the possibility of good feelings between nations. Three small acts of, well, you can call them what you want, thoughtfulness, kindness, or even love, that were played out over the past hundred years. Small gestures, sure, but they add up to a not insignificant thing. I don't know what it is exactly, but it's something, and it's something worth knowing about. There is meaning in ritual and symbol, in reciprocation and remembrance.

The meaning I choose to take from these moments makes me feel good about the world and our place in it, and more importantly, perhaps, the possibilities of our world, and the way when we listen to our best selves that we can, even as nations talk to one another. So today on the show, I'd like to thank High Commissioner Needs for bringing the latest chapter of this story to our attention and also to tip our collective hat to whomever it was in New Zealand whose thoughtfulness got this going so many years ago

and to the people who've remembered that act and invoked it over the years. That was Stuart McLean, recorded. it in studio in 2011. I love how he takes the physical facts of the matter, the wood, the frame, and is able to pull his lens out to see why those things matter, to see the larger story, the poetry and sentiment behind those tangibles. If you want to go back and listen to Stewart's initial piece about the Library of Parliament, just scroll back in your podcast feed to October 2025 to an episode called Amazing Space.

You can hear it there. We've got another listener letter for you now, a story about a more humble but nonetheless important place. This is a story sent into the Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange by Rod Witherspoon of Lady Smith, British Columbia. This is Stuart McLean, reading Rod's story. Last Saturday, my wife and I made a trip up island to say goodbye to an old friend who finally lost her battle to cancer.

She had lived in Lady Smith for many years, but her family's roots were up in Union Bay. We chose to leave the parkway a few miles before town and finish the journey along the old island highway that hugs the water's edge. There were new homes here and there, but mostly we were driving by homes from another time. Yards cluttered with pickups or tarp-covered boats waiting for spring. the kind of places where clothes, lines, and wood stoves still earn their keep. The town hall was easy to find. The parking lot was jammed, and folks were standing around in clusters. Everybody dressed a little better than usual for a Saturday.

Inside, the warm, varnished walls were adorned with the records of local history, plaques, pictures, and other bits and pieces. The strains of Tell Me the old old story came from an upright piano in the corner of the room. The scent of fresh coffee hung in the air as several women set food on side tables. Egg salad, tuna and ham sandwiches, squares, cakes and cookies, coffee, tea, and juice for the children. And then it was time for the service to begin. A hush fell over the room. Straglers scurried for their seats,

and the minister settled into the story of my friend's life. An interesting biography to some, to others, memories both beautiful and painful. A trio of women stood and sang. None of them had what you'd call singing voices. There was no attempted harmony. They were just three cousins, who wanted to present a tribute from the heart to a beloved friend.

There was a rare honesty about that gathering. An old town hall provided an atmosphere that neither a church nor a funeral chapel could have offered. It sits there year after year, bearing silent witness to how people really live. It's seen a lifetime of town meetings, concerts, dances, wedding receptions, and yes, funeral services. We live in a world hypnotized with forward motion. That old town hall has chosen to let the world rush right on by. That was Stuart McLean, reading a story from Rod Witherspoon of Lady Smith, British Columbia. And that was from the Vinyl Cafe Story Exchange.

We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with a Dave and Morley story. So stick around. Welcome back. We've been talking about buildings that are built on connection today. And we have a Dave and Morley story that fits the bill. This is Stuart McLean with The Fire at the Old Town Hall. Everyone in town heard the lightning hit. It was well after midnight and most everyone was asleep, but they all heard it.

Next morning at the Maple Leaf Cafe, the regulars who sit at the back table were playing the moment and Smith Gardner said, I heard it even woke Bob Wilson. Smith got a good laugh for that one. They buried Bob Wilson last summer. But it was loud enough to wake the dead, I mean. The lightning hit town like a cracking big whip. If anyone did manage to say, sleep through it, the thunder got them. Like the end of the world, said Alf McDonald. Like the old days, said George McDonnell, meaning the days when things used to happen at the mine, though those were more bumps than bangs, more muffled. And those days are long gone. Last shaft closed 50 years ago. Dave's cousin Brenda was the first in town to know what got hit. Brenda was sitting in her taxi right under the portico,

her engine running, the Halifax radio playing along to the slap of her windshield wipers. Brenda was thinking she might as well pack it in, go home and play some online bridge. Who's going to call a taxi in the middle of this wet night? When bam! So close to Brenda. ducked and smacked her head on the steering wheel. It was pure reflex. Next thing she did was reach for her radio.

That was reflex too. Brenda called it in before she even saw the flames. She knew right away it had hit the bell, which is ironic. When you consider all the work that went into saving that bell and getting it up there. The fire department couldn't have got there any fashion. faster, 10 minutes at the most, though it seemed way longer to Brenda. It occurred to her that she should go in and save something. She had a key. Half the people in town had a key. But what was she going to save? The coffee machine? And then Sparks started landing on the hood of her cab, and that

settled that. Brenda backed across the street and started calling people instead. Dave was her third to call. The fireman didn't even have the hoses out when the phone on his bedside table rang. And some 2,000 kilometers away, Dave lurched up with a gasp. He did that thing we all do when the phone wakes us in the middle of the night. He pretended it didn't. Hi, he chirped, as if he had been sitting around expecting the call. Brenda, who wasn't fooled and didn't care, just said, the hall's on fire. The big Narrows Community Hall.

Dave made some indistinguishable worrying sound, and Morley, who had been woken by the ring, sat up abruptly. Her mother is old. Their daughter has moved out. What? She said. So it was relief for Morley, anyway. When Dave covered the mouthpiece and told her what was going on, the halls on fire. Brenda said, I posted a picture. I'll put up a video. It's not over. But almost the moment she said that, the flames burst through the roof and started crawling down the walls. Brenda said, I've got to go. Next thing you knew, Dave's cell phone was beeping. It was a text message from his boyhood pal, Billy Mitchell.

you awake? The hall's on fire. Now that would have been the thing to get two calls in the middle of the night about a fire in your hometown. That would have been a thing. Even if Billy still lived in the narrows. But Billy is in Afghanistan.

What kind of crazy world is this? said Dave. Morley and Dave were wide awake now. Morley had fetched her laptop and had it perched on a pile of pillows between them. They were staring at the videos that Brenda was posting, at the people in the crowd as much as the fire. There's my mother, said Dave. Is she in her nightgown? And then Morley said, okay, if we're staying up, I'm making tea.

Well, she was doing that. The phone rang again. It was either the kettle or the phone that woke Sam. Is something wrong, he said? Did someone die? Sort of, said Dave. And so the three of them sat on the bed, staring at the computer, and Dave told them the story of the hall that was burning right in front of their eyes. It was the summer that he was 12.

Someone had the idea they'd tear down the old schoolhouse and build a community hall in its place. In those days, if you had an idea like that, you could just go ahead and do it. I think they got a little money from the town, said Dave. They used it to hire an architect from Glace Bay, but I don't think they followed his plans. Mostly they just did it themselves. They were miners and fishermen and farmers, and they knew how to do things with their hands. There was no question of fixing it. up the old schoolhouse. The schoolhouse was done in. First thing they had to do was demolish the school.

The whole town gathered to watch that. They had four tractors with chains attached to each of the four walls. The moment they started pulling, the roof smacked down. Big cloud of dust and suddenly there was an empty lot where the school had been. It was every school kid. It was every school kid. dream. All the kids thought it was fantastic. Everyone who had gone to school watched with tears in their eyes. The kids cheering and the old folks crying, isn't that the way of the world? Then they set to building the new hall. Sam said, did you help? Of course, said Dave. Everyone pitched in. The kids had come home from school and the parents had come home from work and they'd gather at the hall, start in the late afternoon and work until 10 at night, five nights a week, then all day Saturday.

People would bring supper and they'd sit around the picnic table out back and eat together. Mostly, the kids did things like cleanup, sweeping nails and dead bits of wood and burning them out back. I hammered in the sub floor, said Dave. His little sister Annie hammered in the window frame at the back of the kitchen, the one to the right of the sink. If you examined it, you could see the dents around each nail. Like they had blindfolded her before they gave her the hammer. How old was she, said Sam?

Probably three, said Dave. She was seven. Dave reached for the phone. We should call her, he said. It was Annie who reminded him about the basement. Your grandfather had a thing about concrete, said Dave. Every time he poured concrete, Charlie got Dave and Annie to put their prints in it. So the night they poured the slab for the community hall, Charlie waited until everyone had left, and then he snucked them back. I'll never forget it, said Dave. They had to use flashlights. They crawled along a plank so they were out in the middle.

There's a picture somewhere, two sets of little hands and feet in the concrete floor of the Big Narrows Community Hall. I just can't believe it's burning, said Dave. It's not often you get to hear your parents talking like this. And certainly not in the quiet, dark, confessional middle of the night. Sam was lying at the foot of their bed, praying they wouldn't send him back to his. He was sleepy enough to go, but he didn't want the moment to end. He needn't have worried. His father was staring at the computer at the images of the burning hall

and reeling off one story after another. Sometime early that summer, they had arranged to have a skid of lumber delivered. That evening, when they were, they got to the site, the lumber, which they knew it arrived in the morning, was nowhere to be seen. Whoever took it, and they had a pretty good idea who that was, had dragged the skid away, so it was easy enough to follow the trail down the dirt concessions. Charlie and Fred were deputized to go after it. I went with them, said Dave, just like they experienced.

the skid marks led from the half-built hall directly to Digger Flowers' farm. Now, the Flowers family had always been different. You hardly ever saw them in town, or even when you drove by their place, maybe a shadowy figure going from the house to the barn, but no more than that. They'd been like that for generations. The grandfather, long dead, used to steal chickens, and then try and, and sell them back to the farm where he'd stole them. So Charlie and Fred and Dave were standing by the road staring at the tracks that clearly turned down the Flowers driveway. What did you do? said Sam.

Did you call the police? Nope, said Dave. We drove in. They found the skid just as they expected hidden behind the barn and not a flower's insight. Dave said they were there. You could feel them. But we pretended no one was home. And they accommodated that. What happened, said Sam? We hooked up the skiddle lumber to Fred's truck and we de-stole it, said Dave. Morley said, didn't they steal an outhouse or something? Dave glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was three in the morning. Sam, caught that glance and said, tell about the outhouse. The outhouse, said Dave, immediately forgetting the time, that wasn't Digger Flowers.

That was a fellow from the city. When he said the city, he meant Sydney or maybe Glace Bay. What happened was someone had donated an old outhouse and they had set it up at the back of the hall to use while they worked. and then one day, just like the skid, a new lumber, the outhouse had disappeared. They didn't find it for months, but they knew they would eventually. And when they did, it was this city fella who had a camp along the creek at the base of McColley's Mountain. He was a hunter, said Dave. He'd drive up on Friday nights and sleep in a trailer.

Now, by then they had a new house. outhouse, and they didn't need the old one back. And everyone figured if this guy needed an outhouse so badly he was prepared to steal one, they'd let him keep it. Of course, a group of them did go out and serve the guy a dose of small town justice. What did they do? said Sam. Well, said Dave, they picked that outhouse up and they moved it three feet back from where the guy had it placed. I don't get it, said Sam. They finished the town hall in the early fall, though it's hard to pinpoint when exactly. It had been the social center of town all summer long. Ever since that morning in April when everyone had gathered to watch the old schoolhouse come down and through the afternoon

in June they found the skid of wood hidden behind Digger Flowers' farm. And the night in July when they held the moonlight ball and danced under the stars on the sub floor before the roof was on. Through all that and everything else, and it just sort of continued. They had an opening ceremony, of course, but it was just a formality. Moose McIsaac was the mayor at the time. Instead of cutting a ribbon, someone suggested that Moose marked the moment by sliding down the spiral slide that was still in the yard from when the hall was a school. Moose, who was a robust man,

and always happy to oblige a constituents' request, struggled up the ladder, but got wedged halfway down the slide. It took all the men in town a good hour and a half to pull him out. When Moose passed, they held his wake at the hall. Everyone had their wake there, and there was a lot of talk against. getting him out of the casket and running him down the slide one last time.

But out of respect for the widow, McIsaac, they didn't do that. Although there are folks who will tell you they were there or knew someone who was there late that night and that Moose did have a final moment of glory. Is that true? said Sam. I don't know, said Dave. I was too young for that sort of stuff.

I've heard people swear it's true. but I'd never heard anyone who will swear to have been there when it happened. Phone had rung for an hour. They had shut the computer and Morley was drifting in and out of sleep, and there was more and more silence between Dave's stories. Not long after that, Sam got up and went back to his bed. Good night, he said. And Dave was left there lying on his back with his hands behind his head,

staring up at the ceiling. A few minutes after Sam left, he said, it makes me sad that he hasn't had a time like that. He thought he was alone. He thought Morley was already asleep and was surprised when she answered. Morley said, he has his own times. And Dave said, yep, you're right.

And then he said, maybe what I was trying to say is those were my times, and I'm thankful for them. We all have our own times. In Dave's time, monumental things have happened. We have flown to the moon and back, and by moonlight we have seen the downtrodden both rise up and bow down. But the times are always monumental. And the things we remember are never the monumental things. When the phone rings in the middle of the night, it's always about small things we hold in the small of our hearts. They will rebuild the hall in Big Narrows this summer.

And day it'll go down for the ceremony, the weekend it opens. It'll look pretty much the same. same, for they'll do their best to recreate it. But he will no longer know the secret place where the floorboards creak or the spot where you shouldn't dance if you don't want to get the DJ's record skipping. Before that opening night's over, Dave will go outside and get down on his knees by the front door, and because he knows exactly where to look, he'll find a few small letters carved into the side of the old concrete steps that are all that will be left of his hall.

S.K. Heart. M.L. Forever. It'll make him happy to see them. Stephen and Megan still sitting in a tree. Maybe not forever, he'll think, as he stands up and brushes the dirt off his knees, but maybe long enough. He'll do one last thing before he leaves. He'll stand on the top of those stairs by the door for a brief moment,

and he will slip his keys out of his pocket and try his key to the old hall in the lock of the new door. It won't fit, and that will make him strangely happy. He had his times, but life moves on. He'll leave the key on his ring, however, and every now and then when he notices it, it will unlock these memories, the ones I have told you. For it's no longer a key to a hall he seldom visits.

Forged by fire, it has become a key to a small, corner of his heart. Thank you, everybody. That was the story we call fire at the Old Town Hall. We recorded that story at the community theater center in Sioux-Marie back in 2014. All right, that's it for today. But we'll be back here next week with another Dave and Morley story. He was waiting over to where that fish had jumped, trying not to splash, trying to glide.

When he got to what he figured was 20 yards away, Carl lifted his rod, drew it back over his right shoulder, and cast out the line. The lure hit the water. He let the lure saddle, and he began to reel it in. Later, he would swear he could feel the bass breathing on his line. But it didn't bite. Didn't do anything. A second to cast. And then a third.

On the fourth, he felt it again. But this time there was more than just breath. This time there was something. Carl stopped breathing. This was it.

This was his moment. Okay, Norm Harrison, said Carl under his breath. And he broke his wrists and he jerked his arms back to set the hook and his rod shook. And there was a flash of silver three feet above the water, the fish twisting against the sky like an acrobat. He felt the weight right away. It was almost as big as Kenny's. It was four pounds if it was two. And that is when Carl saw the bear. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the

Apostrophy Podcast Network. The recording engineer is no stranger to move in the outhouse, Greg DeCleut. Theme music is by Danny Michelle, and the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeClute. And me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.