Penny Milne didn’t think it would be a big deal if she closed up shop so she and her co-workers could go join the crowd gathered outside to witness a little piece of Corner Brook history.
The decision he made 60 years ago this week would end up costing her and her fellow employees their jobs.
Milne, who would have been known as Mary Moss back in 1959, was working at The Knob. The popular takeout was owned by her brother, Clary Moss, who owned a number of concessions around Corner Brook at the time.
The momentous occasion was the royal visit by Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, who drove through the streets of Corner Brook on June 19, 1959.
Crowds of people lined the parade route the royal entourage took through the heart of Corner Brook that day. The procession was scheduled to drive through Broadway, where the popular take-out owned by Moss was situated.
Clary Moss, who is longer alive, was obviously hoping to cash in on the throng of royal watchers expected to be milling about outside The Knob that day.
Milne, who was 16 at the time, didn’t want to miss her chance to see the Queen and decided to shut down the deep fat fryers and close the takeout to go and have a look.
The takeout was only closed for about an hour and she didn’t think Clary would make a big deal of it. Her brother, though, was not at all happy when he found out and immediately fired the works of them, his sister included.
“We cost him so much money that day because we did that,” she said in an interview a week before the 60th anniversary of the visit. “He was so mad at me. I never worked at The Knob again.”
Milne, who is now a longtime resident of Ontario, said her brother eventually did forgive her and it eventually just became another memorable moment in their family’s history.
The worst thing about it all, she noted, was her effort to see the Queen hardly turned out to be the fantastic experience she thought it would be.
“There were so many people, it was hard to see anything through the crowd,” she said. “And they just drove past and it was all over so fast. It wasn’t worth closing The Knob down for after all.”
Somewhere in that crowd near The Knob, another young girl from Corner Brook was having a better experience. Verna Northcott was a member of the Curling Girl Guides movement and their leader asked them all to dress in their uniform and go watch the royal parade as a group.
After doing her Girl Guide duty and catching a glimpse of the queen and her husband on Broadway, 14-year-old Northcott wanted to see more of the special occasion. She ran all the way from Broadway over to the Margaret Bowater Park area and what was then called Ball Diversion to get an even better view of the visitors.
She clearly recalled the beautiful weather and the anxious anticipation of local residents that permeated the city that day.
“It was exciting just to see the queen and the car they were in itself,” she said. “A limousine wasn’t something you could see every day.”
While that was six decades ago, Northcott’s fascination with the Royal Family is still strong. She figures it stems from her mother’s high regard for the monarchy having made a strong impression on her.
She remembers her mother mourning the death of King George VI, Queen Elizabeth’s father, in 1952.
It’s a passion she still shares with her daughter, Jackie.
“When Meghan (Markle) and (Prince) Harry got married recently, I was in St. John’s visiting Jackie and we actually got up early and got all dressed up to watch the wedding,” she admitted with a laugh. “I even went out and bought new hats for us to wear.”
