Love Story: Jack & Audrey Met On The Hunter Street Bridge In 1920s During A Rainstorm
/Sarah Ashley Edwards reached out to us to tell us this beautiful story of how her great grandparents Jack and Audrey Baker met on the Hunter Street Bridge. Below is her oral history based on conversations with her "Grandpaw Jack" before he passed away in 2005...
Audrey and Jack down at the Otonabee river near the Hunter St. Bridge on a date circa 1920s
My great grandparents Jack and Audrey Baker met on the Hunter Street Bridge sometime in the 1920s. Now that he's not here and he's been gone for a few years now, I can't ask the exact details again but I've heard this story from him hundreds of times.
He was driving across the Hunter St. bridge in a big rainstorm when he saw a tall slender woman standing by the sign on the bridge that said "Peterborough". He pulled to the side and asked her if she needed a ride, considering it was such heavy rain.
Audrey was so grateful and excited but being brought up to be cautious of strangers, she wasn't about to jump into the car with him—no matter how kind or good looking he was.
So she asked him to please call her father and explain the situation. If her father felt it was safe, he would give Jack the family password. So Jack drove across the Hunter Street Bridge to a drug store in East City and used their phone to call Audrey's father, Mr. Williamson.
Jack and his Scottish pride
Mr. Williamson's brother owned Peterborough Floral on the corner of Hunter and Water. Audrey was walking across the bridge from East City to the flower shop to help her uncle out that day when the rainstorm had hit.
When Jack got a hold of her father on the phone, Mr. Williamson asked that she be taken home instead of dropped off at the flower shop. When Jack went back on the bridge to meet up with Audrey again, she asked him for the password, he gave it to her and she jumped right in. He drove her home in such a terribly romantic rainstorm.
Every time they stopped in front of a store on the way home, owners would be looking out at the rain and they saw them side by side in his car. Jack said they both fell in love with each other on that drive starting on the Hunter St. bridge where they met.
Jack and Audrey became inseparable after that. They were married the following summer, and lived happily ever after.
-------------
