BELWOOD – Born one day after the end of the Second World War, Bob Sargent grew up in the 1950s on a 100-acre farm one mile north of Belwood.
His memories and his recollections of the people and the places in Belwood are now part of a collection of stories he has self-published.
Belwood: The Village I Knew Looking Back to the 1950’s has been on Sargent’s mind for decades.
“My mom was always interested in history, and I guess she passed that on to me,” Sargent said.
A retired public school teacher, Sargent said his favourite subjects were history, geography, English and the arts.
All of those disciplines have gone into the making of his book.
Recollections of Belwood – The cover of Bob Sargent’s book, Belwood: The Village I Knew Looking Back to the 1950s.
“I’ve always been interested in local people and what they were doing, and why they were doing it,” said Sargent.
“One of my majors in university was sociology.”
He began his teaching career with a placement at John Black Public School in 1966, and then went on to teach with the Dufferin School Board.
Sargent said he never lost interest in the people of Belwood, despite being out of the area for a number of years.
Early years in Belwood
Sargent said he lived on Nelson Street in Belwood for the first three years of his life.
When his paternal grandfather died at 55, Sargent said his dad took over his grandfather’s farm and his grandmother moved into the home on Nelson Street.
“It was just an exchange. We would be down in Belwood visiting her, our grocery shopping was done at the local store …” he said.
“We went to church here. I knew all the people around. It was a small community and everybody knew everybody.”
Sargent said he used to ride his bike into town.
There is a reference in the book to competing in bicycle races down the St. Patrick Street hill with his cousin Terry “who always won.”
In his book, Sargent also recalls rowdy games of euchre in the corner of Albert’s Shop (a former blacksmith shop); the kindness of local grocers Lorne and Jean Bryan, who often quietly forgave overdue accounts; dances at the Belwood Hall; and lively church sermons that could rouse “any of the back row of choir men who might have dozed off.”
His memories are strong, he said, but not all are happy.
“I added a few that one might consider negative things,” Sargent explained.
“I didn’t start out to offend anyone, but I didn’t start out to smooth things over either. These are my memories, so these are the things you write down.”
Sargent had made two or three starts at writing the book. After he lost his first wife in 2016, and his second wife passed in 2022, writing the book became “a sort of catharsis.
“I sat down and said, ‘Okay, you’ve got to do this.’ You get to the point where those memories are going to disappear.”
Sargent said there are memories he wishes he had included in the book, including a cherished outing to Toronto.
His cousin Terry’s grandfather, Dan Sargent, “who had a beautiful tenor voice (and) was a wonderful baseball player in his day,” along with Clarence Gerrie, “who semi-adopted me as his grandchild,” treated both boys to a day out in Toronto to see the Toronto Maple Leafs, a triple-A international league baseball team.
In writing the book, Sargent said he hoped the people and stories that interested him would interest the people of Belwood too.
“My original idea was to use those characters as fictional characters, to weave them into a mystery story of some sort,” Sargent said.
That is something he may tackle in the future, but he said creating is harder for him than writing from memory. He added the book was a lot harder to write and put together than he anticipated.
It took about one year, and Sargent said without the computer skills, generosity and time of his step-daughter in-law Suzanne Sonoda, “there wouldn’t have been a book.”
Fiore Guido, co-owner of Magic Pebble Books in Elora said Sargent’s knowledge of Belwood is unrivaled.
“His book provides a vivid picture of what it was like growing up in the village post World War ll,” Guido said, “and is filled with humour and insight.”
Sargent hopes readers will find enjoyment in the stories, and hopefully conversations and memories may be sparked.
The book is dedicated to “the fine folks of Belwood who, decades ago, lived and loved and made this village a place of wonderful memories.”
The book is available at The Bookery in Fergus, Magic Pebble Books in Elora, and the Wellington County Museums and Archives.
