JOHN CONLEY
From the Renfrew Mercury
08 May 1925
Now cometh the baseball season and a citizen of Renfrew who will have more or less to do with the game in this town from the month of June until the end of September, will be Mr. John Conley, who for over a score of years has filled a like role here. Baseball is with him a vocation; his vocation is plumbing.
He learned the plumbing business in Kingston, his native town, long prominent as a baseball burgh, and his first visit to Renfrew was in the winter of 1888, when in the home of Mr. Allen Francis, now the residence of Mr. F.D. Vickers, he did some work for the late James Ward. Mr. Conley came to Renfrew as a representative of the Kingston plumbing firm of McKelvey & Birch. For the same firm he was here to install a hot-water heating system in the home of the late Noble Dean, and all the while as the work progressed Mr. Dean had his doubts about it, being unable to see how hot water in radiators was going to give sufficient heat to make a house comfortable in below zero atmosphere. The same Kingston firm with Mr. Conley in service, also installed heating system in the Cameron block, Pedlow store, McAndrew block, Mackay block and other buildings.
Forming a good impression of Renfrew while in the town temporarily, Mr. Conley resolved to locate here, and in 1902 he opened business with Mr. Allan Derry, also of Kingston as his partner. The partnership continued for five years. Mr. Conley has been at work ever since, and about a year ago took into partnership Mr. Thos. Williams, when the firm name of Conley & Co. was adopted. Owing to the location of the shop, the wags speak of Mr. Conley as “the man behind the Bank of Montreal.”
He has had no aspirations for public service, convinced that there can always be found plenty of men with a fondness for work in the Town council and as school trustees, and that neither the town nor the schools suffer from his lack of liking for that service. He has given help to organizations notably the Masons and the Oddfellows, having been particularly solicitous in the
weal of the former body.
As for Renfrew, he regards it as the best town in the Ottawa Valley. He says it is practically the only one that was alive during the past winter. His firm found it necessary to lay off no help. Times, says Mr. Conley, are no harder than people think they are. In the matter of shopping he opines that people should spend their money where they get the biggest value for it. With the stores of Renfrew he feels that the time for doing business is too short; there is too much closing. Fathers of the present storekeepers did not make their money in that way, observes Mr. Conley, who also comments upon the lack of socialability once so much in evidence in business. Taxes are high, but what, he asks, is not materially higher than it used to be? For high rates today he is inclined to blame in part to former councils that failed to raise enough money to pay their way.