In the wall at the far end of our Montreal kitchen, there was a small square door with a red handle. When the handle was pulled down, the door opened inward to reveal a metal lip hovering over a dark shaft. This shaft ran from the roof of the apartment building (one level up from us) to the basement, two levels below. It was a garbage chute. We shared it with six other families, and it was known as the incinerator. The concept was simple. You wrapped your food waste in newspaper, and it and other combustibles were thrown into the chute, falling into a firebox in the basement. The janitor burned the accumulated waste once a day and the smoke went up the chute and out the chimney. This was, of course, environmentally unfriendly, but it was 1950, common to all such small apartment blocks, and it was certainly convenient.
From a child’s point of view, it was the perfect place for getting rid of unwanted food such as bread crusts or bananas (favored by my mother but not by my sister or me). Should the telephone or doorbell ring during lunch, it was the moment for action. The undesirables could be quickly disposed of in the incinerator and our mother was never the wiser (or so we thought).
The incinerator also provided occasional excitement. Sometimes an upstairs neighbour would dispose of something large, and it would get stuck between the floors. When the janitor lit the fire, the dirty black smoke would rise to the blockage, and having nowhere else to go, would take the path of least resistance into our kitchen. Much panic and activity would ensue involving yelling, opening of windows and doors, banging on the ceiling, and rushing upstairs to ask the neighbours to throw something heavy down the chute. A large beer bottle was a common solution.
But despite its practicality and excitement, my favourite memory of the incinerator was its use as a conduit to Santa. Yes, if you wrote a letter to Santa and your father burned the letter in the lip of the incinerator, your wishes went straight up the chute to the North Pole. I know this is the case because my wishes so often came true.
Incinerators like this are now a thing of the past and there is no doubt they were not great ways to dispose of household waste. However, this one was such an integral part of family life at the time that I can’t help remembering it with a degree of nostalgia it perhaps does not deserve.