It's such a small world! MY particular world seems to be ever-shrinking - and especially since these nostalgic jottings have started being dished up regularly on the Internet.

As further proof of its globe-spanning influence, this old cobwebby column has newly reunited two long-lost St Helens chums now living in separate, widely-spaced parts of Canada! How it all came about makes fascinating reading.

Ivor Bowles from Ontario had received a letter from his sister-in-law, Jennnie Platt of Toll Bar, who enclosed a pictorial cutting from the Whalley's World page.

This featured the old Sefton Arms scene, in the heart of the St Helens shopping centre, during the late 1950s. And the accompanying text gave brief mention of a Wallace Orme who had written in on the subject from Quebec.

Something about that name rang a bell with Ivor. Could it, he wondered, have been the self-same Wally Orme who had been his classroom colleague at the old St Helens Higher Grade School during the war years. The pair hadn't clapped eyes on each other since leaving school during Christmas 1943.

Intrigued by that 55-year-old memory, Ivor decided to do a bit of detective work. He picked up the phone and contacted the trans-provincial telephone operator. She managed to dig out a number for a person named Orme, living in Pointe Claire, Quebec.

Ivor rang the number and a man's voice responded.

"I asked him if he was Wally Orme," writes Ivor from his home in Napanee, Ontario. "He confirmed that he was, and I sheepishly inquired how old he was and whether he had attended a Higher Grade School in St Helens."

Ivor had struck gold first time. "He remembered me and we are now in the process of exchanging family photographs and keeping well in touch.

"So bravo, Whalley's World, for bringing this about!"

Picking up on that flashback photo, featuring the Sefton Arms junction, Ivor explains that this particular location meant such a lot to him.

"The Gas Showrooms corner is where I used to meet my girlfriend, Jean - the one I married 46 years ago. She lived at Toll Bar and we travelled on a No.7 trolley bus, just like the one featured in the picture.

"Jean then worked at Sayers confectioners on Church Street, next to the old Reporter offices."

And Ivor has particularly fond memories of the Sefton Arms hotel. "It's Buckingham Palace, compared with our Wild West-style Canadian taverns."

And he signs off with a couple of memory-tweakers for the more mature brigade.

"Does anyone remember the Charlie Yates barber's shop, or the little jewellers' next to it, on the junction of Cotham Street with Baldwin Street?"

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.