Interview with Dianne Holley

TRANSCRIPT:

00:00:00 Dianne Meeting Her Husband Al Holley at Kodak

Well I can remember when I first started at Kodak, I was in the mail and file department. That's where mostly a lot of the people that were hired from school, the girls anyway went to. This one day, this fella came up to look for a file and he was having a heck of a time so I went over to see if I could help him. Oh he looked like he was about 13 years old, I couldn't believe he was working there. Anyway I guess that was it. Then it turned out that my girlfriend was working in his department and she pulled out a picture one day of her and I in our bathing suits and he goes, “Oh who's that?” She said, “Oh that's my friend Dianne.” Then she called me and she said, “Oh he seemed really interested, do you think?” You know, well of course, sure what the heck? He came out to the house oh three or four times. I kept thinking, is he ever gonna ask me out? Because he liked my mother's cooking. He used to come over and my mom would make cookies or cake or whatever. Anyway, from there, it went –yes I said to him are you ever gonna ask me out? Just keep coming to my house. So finally he did, and yeah that's when our relationship started and we've been married 52 years.

00:01:40 Working at Kodak 

When I first started as I said, I started in the mail and file department and they moved me to the camera repair department doing invoices and typing and that sort of thing. I learned a lot about the cameras and the projectors because all the gentlemen there, that's what they were working on. So I got to see a lot of different machines and things like that.

00:02:03 Employee Culture at Kodak

There was a lot of camaraderie, I mentioned that I met all my bridesmaids and maid of honour were in my wedding I made all those friends but mostly there were a lot of men in charge and the women did most of the clerical and stenography that sort of thing.

00:02:34 Lunch in Mount Dennis

At Kodak we had an hour for lunch and it was nice because you could walk up to the the main thoroughfare at Weston Road in Eglinton. There were all kinds of shops up there, you could pick up some groceries if you needed something at home. There was a wool shop we all used to go in and there was a bakery that was just fantastic. They had great– just terrific Empire cookies oh and there was a restaurant up there that we sometimes would go to, Stephie's. It was great, well in later years they decided to take the hour away and so we only had a half hour. Then that kind of curtailed a lot of the people going out at noon hour because you just couldn't get up there and back and do what you had to do you know in time. But there were a lot of nice people in those stores and I can remember walking, I think it was a Loblaws store it had all wooden floors. That's about all I know of Mount Dennis really, I mean I didn't live there so I couldn't really. Everybody would go to the bank on Thursday when we all got our cheques and go to the bank and cash it and everybody'd be all excited. They'd be bringing back goodies from the bake shop and handing them out to everybody that they worked with. It was some good times.