“I can mind the time…” with Tom and William Coady (Blacksmiths) Produced by the Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1985
At a time when a glass of rum cost $0.05 and apprentices were bound to their trade for four years at $1.50 per 60 hour work week and a 9PM curfew, Tom Coady went to work for his father, a blacksmith in St. John’s, Newfoundland. In 1920 Tom’s 13 year old son William joinedthe family business and for the next 50 years the two of them worked side by side, day after day, in the dark and sooty recesses of Coady’s Forge, a 25’ X 25’ leaning shack which was torn down in the late 1960’s to make way for the new St. John’s City Hall.
This film traces 100 years of Newfoundland history. From the time when sail powered schooners filled the finger piers along the waterfront, the devastating fire in 1892 that leveled the City, through WW1, the great depression, WW2, the end of British Colonial rule and the start of Confederation, and the growing popularity of the automobile which devastated the blacksmith industry, the film explores life in St. John’s in the context of the role of the blacksmith in society.
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