Gary Pooler, April 13, 2023, VOL. 4 ISSUE 17

In the mid-to-late 1960s, I was a delivery boy for both the Welland Tribune and the

Buffalo Evening News. The Tribune route was year-round with all Canadian customers. The

Buffalo Evening News was only a summer route. This was due to the annual arrival of up to

twenty thousand American summer residents from Western New York who wanted their

American news.

Both routes meandered through the east end of Crystal Beach, then through Yacht Harbour and

out to Thunder Bay, delivering to roughly one hundred customers. Sometimes I would walk the

entire route. Other times I would ride a bike, if I could find one that worked. My big reward at

the end of the day was cutting through the Thunder Bay Golf Course and stopping at the club

house for an Orange Crush and Coffee Crisp. I inherited both routes from my older brother

Billy when he got sick of doing them. He told me I would make all kinds of money, so I was

sold.

At first, I felt like a real businessman. A brand-new canvas paper carrier bag (with orange

reflective tape), punch cards on a ring, and a paper punch were the tools of my trade.

I soon learned why Billy had passed the paper routes on to me. After my pop and chocolate bar,

and turning in my collection money each week, I ended up netting about five dollars, plus tips. I

recently measured my old paper route in my car and it came to 9 kilometres. This means I was

making roughly sixteen cents per kilometre, if my math is correct. Despite the long miles and

meager earnings, I felt quite important that all of these adults, Canadian and American, were

counting on me. Their papers seemed very important to them.

A curious boy, I always noticed the headline on the top copy of my paper bundle. It was the mid60s, and I gradually started reading what these headlines were all about, day after day, before

starting out on my rounds. The Welland Tribune was usually uneventful compared to the Buffalo

Evening News, which had articles about war and protests, and assassinations. At that age, I was

naturally drawn to the stories in the Buffalo News over the Welland Tribune.

Through those summers of youthful business enterprise, I learned about a place called Vietnam,

the Me Kong Delta, the Tet Offensive, Shang Kai Sek, the DMZ, and the massacre at My Lai. I

remember reading about mass killers Richard Speck and Charles Whitman. Another summer it

was Robert Kennedy’s assassination and the riots at the Democratic National Convention in

Chicago. It was like the Buffalo Evening News, an American publication, had become a portal

into my young brain for all the shocking front-page events going on around the world. At the age

of ten or eleven, I was dealing with almost a hundred different people, most of them from

another country. It was a great education.

Some of my customers intrigued me with their stories about their lives away from Crystal Beach,

and how they ended up here. Betty Hope was one of them. I believe she was a Tribune reader.

Betty Hope lived in a very tiny cottage at the corner of Inglewood and Fernwood in Crystal

Beach. She was a very large, friendly woman who claimed to be the aunt of legendary entertainer

Bob Hope. When she first told me this, I went home elated, telling everyone that I had met Bob

Hope’s aunt. My news was met with a mixture of skepticism and eye rolls. Betty was nice to me,

and was also a good tipper, so I wanted to believe her. Although it may seem odd, but at that age

I was also a huge fan of Bob Hope. I loved his Christmas television specials, the Road movies,

and his USO shows from Viet Nam.

Lots of people around the village have heard about Betty’s connection to Bob before, but many

thought that she was just an eccentric old lady and humoured her story. There was even a

newspaper article about Betty in the early 60s, but whenever the subject popped up during my

lifetime, it was usually thought of more as an “urban legend” than fact.

I, for one, never forgot the legend of Betty Hope. Every time I passed that little place over the

years, I would tell whoever was with me the story about Betty and her nephew Bob, whether I

believed it or not. I never knew the actual truth until recently when I was contacted by Rob

Therrien from Oshawa, whose family once lived in Crystal Beach back in the 1970s. He wanted

to purchase a copy of my book and he thought I might like to see some photos he had with a

Crystal Beach connection.

One of the photos was of a lady standing at the bathhouse beach entrance at Crystal Beach

Amusement Park in the early1960s. Rob initially thought that the lady in the photo was his

grandmother, Lucy Hope. I immediately recognized the lady in the photo as my one-time paper

customer, Betty Hope. I was positive it was her.

Betty Hope, Bob Hope’s aunt at Crystal Beach.

Through further research by Rob and his family, and some online digging, it turned out the lady

in the photo is indeed Elizabeth Hope, whom everyone called “Betty”. She is Rob Therrien’s

great-grandmother. The reason she rarely appears in any Hope family tree searches is that she

had become a Hope via marriage to Rob’s great-grandfather Walter Ernest Hope. Walter is the

brother of William Henry “Harry” Hope, Bob Hope’s father.

 Walter Henry Hope, Rob’s great-grandfather. William Henry “Harry” Hope, Bob Hope’s father.

Betty Hope was born in Welland around 1888 as Elizabeth Beech. Walter had immigrated to

Canada from England around 1910. He and Betty were married in Welland in 1910 and had a

daughter named Lucy Ellen Hope, who is Rob’s grandmother.

In the 1960s, many people in the village of Crystal Beach had heard about the lady in the small

cottage in Inglewood being Bob Hope’s aunt. There was even a newspaper article about her

“back in the day”, as they say. I have asked around and quite a few people today even remember her.

To some, it was simply accepted as fact. To others, Betty Hope was just another one of the many

colorful and eccentric people with interesting background stories who have made their way to the

village over the years. Both Betty and her daughter, Lucy Ellen Hope Quadrone, who also lived

in Inglewood in Crystal Beach, passed away in 1972.

In my own mind, a lifelong urban legend has been completely put to rest. Rob Therrien, the

gentleman who reached out to buy a book about Crystal Beach because of the fond memories

that he formed here, turns out to be the legendary Bob Hope’s 1st cousin, twice removed. And

Betty Hope, the large friendly lady in the tiny little cottage, was indeed the aunt of Leslie

Townes (Bob) Hope, the legendary Hollywood showman.

(All photos courtesy Rob Therrien and family)