PARTNERS FOR LIFE

Wedding anniversaries are wonderful milestones, but few are as grand as spending 70 years together. Such is the case for Vera and Vernon Asselstine as they approach 70 years of happiness with each other.

VERNON AND VERA ASSELSTINE

It all started back in 1917 in Moscow, Ontario, a small farming community, when Vernon Asselstine was born. A few years later Vernon’s father moved the family to Alberta and the promised richness of homesteading.

Three years after Vernon was born, a career soldier and his wife in Quebec City, had a baby girl, Vera Chaplin. While Vernon’s family was farming out west, Vera’s clan had just returned from England, where her father served in the Canadian Army during the Great War.

Vernon worked hard on the farm and Vera studied accounting. The Chaplins returned to Kingston after the war and the Asselstines moved back to Napanee.

“My father planted crops for three consecutive years without so much as one seed to show for it,” Vernon said, as he reminisced about the early days. “People now a day have no idea what poverty was all about.” Vernon picked strawberries
and worked on a farm, at a salary of $5 a month. He was shocked when he was offered a job as a farmhand for $13 a month in Kingston.

By this time, Vera’s family had also migrated into the farming industry near Kingston and while at school in Odessa, she became friends with Vernon’s sister. It was through that relationship Vera and Vernon met.

“Getting to school was difficult,” Vera recalls. “My teacher lived further than I did and her father would drive her to my house in his car. There we hopped into our cutter and my father would drive us the rest of the way.”

It was not long after Vera and Vernon’s meeting that the romance blossomed and in 1939 wedding bells tolled for the
happy couple.

The Asselstines did not wait long to start a family and their oldest boy, Gerald, was born in Kingston. Vernon had taken over Vera’s family farm and expanded, but times were tough and they sold the farm when Vernon was offered a position with Bata shoes in Batawa.

When the government began offering war emergency classes, Vernon enrolled and learned the arts of blue print reading and welding. The course was 90 days and Vernon worked as a waiter in the local Trenton hotel to pay the bills. Vera was with child and when an opening in General Motors arose Vernon jumped at the chance. He arrived at 3 in the morning for an 8 a.m. interview and was at the start of a line that wove all the way around the plant.

He was told they needed two welders and was so excited when he was hired that he ran out, never hearing who received the second posting. In 1941, the family moved to Oshawa where their second son, Alan was born.

Vernon worked at GM for 33 years with a leave of absence to serve in World War II. His participation in ‘D’ Day was memorable, but a subject best left for another day. In 1952 the Asselstines moved to Blackstock where Vera and Vernon bought a 97 acre farm.

Vera was busy at home with their seven children and Vernon became interested in local politics. He was elected councillor for Cartwright, a post he won several times when the Region of Durham was formed in the seventies. Vernon headed up the Port Perry Hospital Board as well as the Children’s Aid Society for many years.

The Asselstine’s sons had a keen curiosity in snowmobiles and Vera and Vernon bought two Yamahas. Vernon decided to pursue the interest by starting a small snowmobile shop on the farm in Blackstock. It was not long after they were awarded the Yamaha dealership for the area and are still one of the largest dealers today.

“Vera did the bookkeeping and accounting while I worked in the shop along with my boys,” Vernon said. He maintained his full time position at General Motors while building the family business.

When Vernon retired from GM in 1986, they sold the farm except for ten acres where the store was located. Another acre was reserved for the family home. Two of their sons Floyd and Gerald ran the business and Vera and Vernon decided to take up travelling and a well-deserved life of leisure. They spent winters in Florida, and travelled to Europe numerous times.

Three years ago, Vera and Vernon moved into Port Perry and now enjoy such activities as shuffleboard, bridge and euchre. The family business in Blackstock is thriving and they have branched into ATV’s, motorcycles and repairs.

“We want all our friends to drop by the Legion in Port Perry on April 26th between 1 and 3,” Vernon and Vera said sincerely. “It is not often two people can be this happy for this long a time.”

Jonathan van Bilsen
Focus on Scugog