The Way It Was: Vignettes from My One-Room Schools (Legacies Shared)

Dobson The schoolyard was full of children. I looked at the bell on my desk and Van Kleek On the Monday morning that ...

Author: Edith Van Kleek

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Dobson

The schoolyard was full of children. I looked at the bell on my desk and

Van Kleek

On the Monday morning that the school opened, it was anything but lonely!

By Edith Van Kleek

Edited by Thelma Jo Dobson

thought “This bell is mine to ring! I am the teacher!” At nine o’clock I grasped the bell ﬁrmly by the handle, leaned out the door, and rang loud and clear. Twenty-seven children rushed in through the door…

Her personal recollections paint a vivid picture of the challenges she faced, from juggling students from grades one through nine in one small room, to extreme weather conditions and boarding with local families. But through it all, her determination, enthusiasm, and love for her students is unmistakable. Whether you remember one-room schools or just enjoy hearing about “the way it was,” this charming collection of stories is sure to delight. EDITH VAN KLEEK was born in 1902 in South Dakota. She attended and taught in one-room schools in rural Alberta from 1916 to 1961. THELMA JO DOBSON is Edith Van Kleek’s daughter. She painstakingly compiled and edited this volume from her mother’s notes and papers. She lives in Cold Lake, Alberta. www.uofcpress.com 978-1-55238-225-7

The Way it Was

So began the teaching career of Edith Smith Van Kleek. The Way It Was chronicles Van Kleek’s experiences as a student and teacher in oneroom schools in rural Alberta. From her ﬁrst year attending school in the High Prairie country in 1916, to the closure of her last rural schoolhouse in 1961, Edith Van Kleek recalls a bygone era in Canadian educational history.

The Way it Was: Vignettes from My One-Room Schools

The Way it Was

By Edith Van Kleek

Edited by Thelma Jo Dobson

The Way it Was: Vignettes from My One-Room Schools

© 2008 Thelma Jo Dobson University of Calgary Press 2500 University Drive NW Calgary, Alberta Canada T2N 1N4 www.uofcpress.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free 1-800-893-5777. LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION Van Kleek, Edith, 1902–1996 The way it was : vignettes from my one-room schools / by Edith Van Kleek ; edited by Thelma Jo Dobson. ISBN 978-1-55238-225-7 1. Van Kleek, Edith, 1902–1996. 2. Rural schools–Alberta–History–20th century. 3. Teachers–Alberta–Biography. I. Dobson, Thelma Jo, 1926– II. Title. LA2325.V36A3 2007

371.10092

C2007-906376-4

The University of Calgary Press acknowledges the support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts for our publications. We acknowledge the ﬁnancial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities. We acknowledge the ﬁnancial support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. This book has been published with the aid of a grant from the Alberta Lottery Fund — Community Initiatives Program.

Printed and bound in Canada by AGMV Marquis This book is printed on FSC Silva Enviro 60lb paper Cover design, page design and typesetting by Melina Cusano

Ta ble of Contents Preface

VII

Maps of School Locations

XIII

1: Prairie River School

1

2: Teaching on a Permit

15

3: Boarding Out

33

4: Sounding Creek

43

5: Normal School

53

6: High Point School

63

7: Bignell School

71

8: Wildrose School

83

9: Norway School

91

10: Hardindell School

109

11: Glacier School

121

12: Clearwater River School

133

13: Arbutus

145

14: Everdell School

159

15: Back to Glacier

171

16: Frisco School

187

Looking Back

197

Addendum

215

Appendix: Note on Names

221

Notes

223

V

Preface From time to time in most families some event precipitates an unearthing of almost-forgotten memorabilia. The spring of 2005 was one of those times in our family, and in one of the boxes that surfaced was my mother’s collection of stories of her early teaching career spent in one-room schools. I knew of their existence and her wish that they be compiled and published in some way, if not by her, then by a family member, and I decided to procrastinate no longer. My mother was Edith Van Kleek. She was born in March 1902 on a farm near Canton, South Dakota, U.S.A., the ﬁfteenth child for Herman and Sophie Smith. They named the tiny baby Edith Leona. She was so small and weak, tipping the scales at not quite four pounds, they doubted she would survive, but she fooled them all. In 1911 the Smith family moved to Canada and settled in Red Deer, Alberta. They were Sophie and Herman, a big brother Henry and the ﬁve youngest girls in the family, one being two years younger than mom. All the older children of the large family stayed in the United States. Herman was not well. It was thought that a more northern climate would help him, but also they carried with them their dream of ﬁling on a homestead in Alberta. Unfortunately Herman died within a year. VII

The family had acquired a huge old house in Red Deer, on Gaetz Avenue at the site where the Alpha Milk Plant stood for many later decades. To earn a living and take care of her ailing husband Sophie had turned the place into a boarding house. There were lots of jobs that could be done by little girls and the family survived well enough, but the old dream of homesteading would not die and they made the decision to follow that dream. Their destination of choice was the Peace River country, where there was said to be the best land in Alberta. Henry ﬁled on a homestead near Grouard. The move to Grouard is described in Mom’s book Our Trail North. Their homestead was remote and it became evident that the girls were just not going to be able to get to school. Mom longed to continue where she had left oﬀ in Red Deer because she wanted to become a teacher. At the age of fourteen she was ﬁnally able to continue her education and she was still determined to reach her goal, even though she had missed four years of school. In 1919 she left the homestead and went to live with her older sister Anna, who had not moved up north, but had married and settled in Coronation, Alberta. Anna was always in the background in Mom’s life, her rock and her mentor. Living there, Mom was able to attend high school, and subsequently normal school at Camrose, Alberta. Her teaching career actually began in 1921 when she was employed as a permit teacher at Sounding Creek School, southwest of Coronation. After Normal School, her career VIII

The Way it Was

began in earnest, in one-room Alberta schools. She taught at High Point, northwest of Veteran, and at Bignell School near Stettler. She was married in December 1925 to Carl Van Kleek and continued teaching with a break of one year during which I was born. She taught at Wildrose School north of Stettler and at Norway School near Alliance. Then for the second time in her life homesteading beckoned and the family moved to the Rocky Mountain House area, where they ﬁled on three quarter-sections of land twelve miles southwest of town. Two boys were born to complete the family. After a break of nine years, Mom was back teaching again in 1942. She attended summer school sessions at the University of Alberta in 1943 and again in 1951 to upgrade her certiﬁcate. In 1961 her last one-room school, Frisco, was closed. The children were bussed to the consolidated school in Rocky Mountain House, and she was assigned a grade ﬁve room there, where she continued teaching until June 1963, then substituted for four years before completely retiring. She and Dad moved to Stettler in 1968, and there they built their retirement home, a cedar log house. Every experience of Mom’s life she looked forward to with excitement, lived to the fullest, then wrote about afterwards to be re-lived over and over. After she retired she wrote and self-published Our Trail North. She continued writing, recounting her teaching experiences along with many other anecdotes, and these were accepted by the PR E FA C E

IX

Stettler Independent. She was published weekly for about three years. How often Mom mentions the big boys in her schools! They were respected senior members of all her classes. She counted on them often, and they always came through. All the ages seemed to work well together, the older ones taking responsibility for the small ones. Reading her stories makes me feel a bit nostalgic for those days when we were not as segregated as we are now. Mom enjoyed many years of active retirement. She was able to devote considerable time to her hobby of rock hunting. Studying geology in university had whetted her already keen interest in rocks, and she became a skilled “rockhound.” She and dad travelled all over Canada, the United States, and Mexico in their motor home on their never-ending search for ever more rare and beautiful stones. Sawing, polishing, and shaping for endless hours, they crafted countless items of jewellery set with semi-precious stones and many other objects made with beautiful pieces of cut rocks. In addition to their extensive travelling in North America, Mom and Dad went on excursions to Japan and the Orient, New Zealand, Australia, and Europe. Mom wrote accounts of all their experiences. In 1991 Dad died, and Mom lived alone for three years before moving into an extended care facility. To pass her time there, she wrote another book, this one a collection of anecdotes and family history for her descendants, much of X

The Way it Was

it in limerick form. She remained bright all her life, enjoying a good cribbage game right to her last days. In 1996, the ninety-ﬁfth year of her life, Edith Van Kleek died. With the help of what class records are available, I have assembled the school stories in chronological order. My thanks to Karen Mitra in the Provincial Archives, Anita Leung in the Alberta Education Transcript Department, and to Kelly Vickers, Sr., Records Oﬃcer, Alberta Education. Thanks also to those former students who shared memories of ﬁfty-odd years ago. Thanks to those who searched out pictures of moments long forgotten, and to Bill Baergan of Stettler, Alberta, for helping with locations of schools. Thanks to Garry Fix for getting pictures, and to Cold Lake teacher Debbie MacQuarrie for providing computer help. Finally, my thanks to Barbara Dobson for helping me work with the edited manuscript. Many thanks to the editorial board of Legacies Shared, for believing in this project and for providing a means by which this unique part of Alberta history can be remembered. My mother’s boundless energy and enthusiasm, and her indomitable spirit are very evident in these stories. She was always ready for a new experience. No obstacle was great enough to dissuade her from her goals. Always wanting to learn more about the world, she never stopped “looking it up”; to the end of her life she always had her precious World Book Encyclopedia handy. Her long life was full of many activities, but nothing was ever as important to her as all PR E FA C E

XI

her diﬀerent schools, the hundreds of children, and all that they did together. I hope you enjoy her memories. Thelma Jo

XII

The Way it Was

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1: Prairie River School My ﬁrst experience in a one-room school was as a grade V pupil in Prairie River School in the backwoods of the High Prairie country. It was during World War I. The year was 1916. Prairie River was one of the ﬁrst schools in that part of the country. It was built in 1908; Fort Vermilion and Grouard schools were built before it; however, they were not public schools but mission schools. There was no way we could get ten miles to school from where my family lived on the homestead. More than once Mama was visited by certain school authorities who wanted to know what plans there were for her four young daughters to attend school. When we had been on the homestead for four years a friend of our family, Mrs. Thompson, told Mama she would like to have one of us stay with her and go to school. Her husband was in the army, far away ﬁghting in the First World War. She was lonely, having only her small son and an aged brother-in-law with her and she wanted a companion. Mama said I could go as I was the one who was most keen to go to school. Mrs. Thompson had a saddle horse I could ride the three miles from her place to school, and to ride home any weekend I wished. This arrangement worked well; I helped Mrs. Thompson some around the house and sometimes milked cows, but most of the time 1

she would say they didn’t need any help, she just wanted me to ride to town for the mail, and go on other errands and I enjoyed that. I attended this school for two years, 1916–17 and 1917–18. My schooling had so far been brief to say the least, I had been to school in South Dakota before we moved to Canada, and while we lived in Red Deer I had been to school for about a year and a half before we left for the north, but in the fall of 1916 when I was 14, I had only grade IV. I wanted very much to go to school; I was more than happy when I started oﬀ for my ﬁrst day. There were thirty-two pupils, the children of the earliest homesteaders from all around the area, some coming many miles to attend Prairie River School. Many came on horseback. They were of all sizes, ages and abilities and of many nationalities as well as the local Metis. We sat in clumsy double desks screwed to the ﬂoor with little thought of whether the desk ﬁt the child who occupied it. Small feet sometimes dangled in mid-air, as often a grade I child sat with an older sister so the sister could look after the child and help with the lessons. Each pupil possessed a slate purchased from Eaton’s catalogue for twenty cents and a box of slate pencils which cost ten cents. Scribblers were not furnished with the Department of Education supplies. Chalk for the blackboard and the old brown Alexander readers and a broom about completed the supplies. The slates were very useful and economical. During the quiet of the school you could hear the scratching of the slate 2

The Way it Was

School slate and slate pencil, early twentieth century. During the second half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, pencils cut from solid pieces of softer grades of slate or soapstone were used by school children to write on tablets cut from harder grades of slate. Slate pencils were available with the slate core unwrapped, wrapped in coloured paper, or encased in wood like a lead pencil. Some even had a bit of ﬁbre attached at the end to erase with, but most students used a rag to erase. Collection of Glenbow Museum, C 10197, Calgary, Canada.

pencils on the slates as the pupils did arithmetic, wrote out spelling words to be learned, drew maps, and wrote letters and stories. The girls kept a neat little bottle of water and a small rag on their desks to clean their slates, but the boys just spit on theirs and rubbed it with their sleeves. PR A IR IE R I V ER SCHOOL

3

On reaching grade VII pupils were asked to buy a smooth ink scribbler, a bottle of ink, a pen holder, and pen nibs, if they could aﬀord it, and they were then expected to transfer their best written work into this scribbler to keep as proof of their ability in language. The teacher’s desk was in the middle of the front of the room, the back of it lined with books; the teacher’s copy of all books used to teach grades I to IX. Blackboards covered the reachable space on the wall behind the teacher’s desk, the ledge below holding chalk and brushes. In the corner next to the blackboard was a tall cupboard with doors that were always kept locked unless there was supervision. This was the “library.” High on the top shelf were Dickens’ and Scott’s novels, avidly read by the older pupils. The middle shelves held classics easier to read, Arabian Nights, Don Quixote, Little Men, Little Women, Around the World in Eighty Days, Gulliver’s Travels, Tom Sawyer, and similar stories. These middle shelves also held a set of six hard-covered British History Stories, to help us learn the history of our mother country, England. On the lower shelves were a great many thin paper-covered story books, falling to pieces from much use during the few years since the school was built. Conscientious older pupils were always trying to mend these, but they had nothing to mend with. On the very bottom shelf, never used, was a set of Everyman’s Encyclopedia, small dark books with print so ﬁne 4

The Way it Was

it was almost unreadable and no pictures, and there was a large dictionary, almost worn out with use. There were none of the easy-to-read bright-coloured books for small children that were on library shelves later. The closest thing to these was a set of Geography Readers with their fascinating black and white pictures of faraway places. This library might have been small, but it ﬁlled every need. It was the ambition of the older pupils to read every book the library contained, and they became good readers. Inside the door at the back of the schoolroom was a horizontal barrel stove that burned wood four feet long and six inches thick; it was called a “Waterbury.” This big stove kept the school not only warm, but hot, with air as dry as the Sahara Desert. A pan of water on this stove would have made the humidity ideal but there was no well at the school. In winter snow could have been brought in for the pan, but it would have been an endless job to keep enough snow melting to make any diﬀerence. It did help that moist air came in through the door when it was opened, many times each day. Willie Bell, fourteen, was the janitor. He walked two miles to school and never missed a day no matter what the weather and roads were like. He always had the room warm when the other children arrived, and the day’s supply of wood carried in. He swept the schoolroom every night after school, with the door open so that at least some of the dust could escape to the outside. Willie never dusted. Each child was supposed to look after that small chore, removing PR A IR IE R I V ER SCHOOL

5

the thick coating of dust from his desk and seat if he were fussy enough to want it done. The girls dusted their desks and seats with their slate-cleaning rags, the boys used their sleeves and the seat of their pants. For his duties as janitor Willie was paid $2.00 per month. He was the only one in school who had a job, and his own money. At the back of the schoolroom on each side of the door were spikes driven into the log wall to hold the coats and other wraps worn to school in weather as cold as ﬁfty below. There were never enough; outdoor clothing had to be piled in many layers on the spikes. Garments overlapped from one spike to the next and consequently head lice were easily spread. The treatment was coal oil. Beginning with whomever was singled out as the infected child, hair was parted in narrow strips and coal oil applied with a little piece of rag on the end of a twig. No doubt this stung considerably, but it was thought to be a necessary evil. This was done at home of course sometimes, but if not at home someone at school would take the responsibility. One side of the school had several single-layer glass windows, which were covered with thick frost in the wintertime. It formed itself into endless “frost pictures,” very beautiful to look at, but it was a diﬀerent story in summer when the windows were covered with big bull-ﬂies. There was no screen door. There was no entryway and an unbelievable amount of mud was brought into the room on boots in the warm weather. In winter snow was always swept oﬀ boots inside 6

The Way it Was

the school with the janitor’s broom. This was good because the melting snow around the stove improved the humidity in the room for a while. There was a barn to shelter several horses. Some pupils rode as much as eight miles to school, covering their legs with a blanket in winter by placing the blanket in front of the saddle and wrapping it back over the legs and thighs. This was very eﬀective. Heat from the horse helped keep legs and feet warm. In the schoolyard were two toilets, in which lots of ﬂies buzzed about in warm weather, and spiders established homes between the walls and roof. There was no toilet tissue. There was no hot lunch program, though many of the children came quite a distance and put in a very long day. Sandwiches of homemade bread with a slice of moose meat between suﬃced, or if there was no meat there was likely homemade jam. The thick, newspaper-wrapped sandwiches were eaten to the last bit. There was seldom any cake or cookies and fresh fruit was unobtainable. There was no water to drink. One girl brought her own bottle of water. The rest of us learned to do our drinking at home before and after school. There was no playground equipment. We just played running games and entered the school afterwards refreshed. This school was a community centre as well as an educational institution. Here in August, the agricultural PR A IR IE R I V ER SCHOOL

7

Horse and cutter. In winter, the wheeled “buggy” was exchanged for the cutter; its steel runners slid easily and quickly over the snow. Glenbow Archives, NA-2071-5.

society held the annual fair and picnic, which was attended by everyone in the community, and at Christmas-time there was a Christmas tree and a program and that helped draw the whole community together. Our teacher, Mr. Martin, was a homesteader who drove a horse and buggy, or in winter a cutter, three and a half miles to school, and never was known to miss a day. He was a veteran of the Boer War and was very strict, running the 8

The Way it Was

school with army discipline. None of us dared to misbehave. We respected and feared him. The school was lucky to have such a good teacher. He could really make a literature lesson come alive, or any lesson for that matter, and he did his best to instill high ideals of character in the boys and girls in his classroom. One day in arithmetic class I got in trouble. Willie Bell’s seat was in front of mine. I was looking over his shoulder, watching him draw animal faces on his slate. Suddenly Mr. Martin thundered my name! I stood up instantly as we were required to do. He thought I was copying from Willie. He didn’t even look at my slate or look at Willie’s slate to see what he was doing, or say anything to Willie about drawing instead of doing his arithmetic. Instead I was given a scathing lecture on the evils of cheating, and then everyone thought I had been cheating. Such a thing had never entered my head. When I caught on to what he thought I was doing, I was furious, and humiliated. When I could no longer stand his blistering, unjust accusations, I grabbed my Alexandra reader and aimed it at him hitting with surprising accuracy. Then I jumped up crying and ran from the room. I ran to the barn as fast as I could, grabbed my horse, leaped into the saddle, and tore out of the schoolyard for home. By that time Mr. Martin realized his mistake and came outside. He tried to catch my horse as I ﬂew past him at a gallop. The horse would have knocked him down if he hadn’t jumped back out of the way. PR A IR IE R I V ER SCHOOL

9

I refused to go back to school next day, but the day after I was persuaded to go back, which wasn’t too hard as I loved school. I had a note for the teacher from Mrs. Thompson, who told me she didn’t think I would be strapped for the way I had left school. So I went back. When I entered the school, nobody paid any attention to me. Not by word or look did anyone let on anything had happened. Mr. Martin didn’t raise his head when I put the note on his desk. I went trembling to my seat. Not one word was ever mentioned about the incident either by the pupils or Mr. Martin, even when I asked my girl friends in the privacy of the girl’s toilet they just let on they didn’t hear me. Mr. Martin had told them not to mention it and his word was law! He never admitted he had been wrong or unjust. Children were often dominated by grownups in 1916. It was soon forgotten, by all but me. At the end of two years I had taken grades V, VI, VII, and, VIII and wrote the grade VIII departmental examinations they had at that time. I still have my certiﬁcate for passing. There was one mystery about Mr. Martin that took a long time to clear up. Every day he walked down to Deep Creek at noon, never missing. One day two of the bravest of the big boys followed him at a discreet distance, out of sight. They found out Mr. Martin went there to smoke a pipe-full of tobacco. He didn’t want the children to see him smoking. 10

The Way it Was

The Railroad Hand Car. The section men, whose job it was to keep the railroad track in good repair, could propel themselves along the train track riding a hand car like this. There was no motor; they provided the power themselves as they pumped the handle bars up and down to turn the wheels below. Everyone stood up for the ride. If you were at a railroad crossing at just the right time, you could catch a ride with them to get yourself from point A to point B. Photo courtesy: The Canadian Northern Society.

PR A IR IE R I V ER SCHOOL

11

Life at Prairie River School remains forever sharp in my memory, perhaps because it marked a turning point, an end to just “marking time” at the homestead where I had been without school for four years. That fall there were many changes. People and businesses began moving from Grouard to High Prairie. A big frame two-storey building was moved (with many horses) from Grouard into High Prairie and made into a school big enough for about ﬁfty students. School buses (farm wagons or sleighs) were hired to bring children from the four directions. They were usually driven by the oldest child from the furthest away farm. So for a while I went to school in High Prairie on one of those buses. It was a very hard long day, and fortunately for me one day the hotel owner from High Prairie, Mr. Spaulding, came out to our farm on a railroad hand car looking for my sister Stella, who had worked at the hotel before he bought it. He wanted her to take her old job back. Mama said she could go if he took me too, so I could go to school. I could work for my board. “She will earn it,” Mama said. So oﬀ Stella and I went to live at Spauldings. We walked to school together, relieved not to have that long trip behind horses. We would go early and wait for our friends who would arrive on their “bus.” When winter came there was one ﬁfty-below day when we waited anxiously for our friend Lisa Babcock, the ﬁfteen-year-old driver from the furthest away family. Finally we saw her coming. We could hardly see her horses’ faces for frost, or her head 12

The Way it Was

either. Stella grabbed her coat and ran out to take care of the horses so Lisa could come right in to the school. We removed the wraps and scarves she was swathed in, and someone ran outside for a wash basin of snow. Her face was very white. We held snow to her face and hands. In a couple of hours she was ﬁne but she did have some frostbite that took a while to heal. The school term started out well. I helped the Spauldings extra on the weekends and got paid for that. I was able to buy myself a new riding skirt. We didn’t wear pants then. I started in grade IX, but disaster was ahead. In November the war ended, and in that winter of 1918–19 the ﬂu epidemic hit High Prairie the same as everywhere else. I was one of the ﬁrst to get the ﬂu, and months later I was not fully recovered. My sister Anna made the long train trip from Coronation to visit us. She saw my condition and told Mama she wanted to take me home with her. She thought I would get my appetite back and get stronger and, besides, I could go to high school in Coronation. Mama said I could go. So, arrangements were made for me to take the train back with my sister. It was the new railroad, the “Edmonton Dunvegan and BC Railway.” The track was laid along the south side of Lesser Slave Lake. The south shore did not provide a good roadbed for the train tracks; there was a lot of muskeg and much repair of the sinking roadbed was needed. The train was often as much as twelve hours late and it went so slow you could run and catch up to it. Along the lake where the track was very unstable over muskeg, Prairie River School

13

the passengers were asked to get out and walk. I wouldn’t. I was determined to enjoy every bit of my train ride. So I stayed on, head out the window watching the ends of the railroad ties slide another inch toward the lake as the train wheels went over. I thought about how ﬁve years before my sisters and I had walked all the way along the north shore of that same lake, following the wagon on our way to the homestead with Mama and our brother Henry. I had come full circle. I never went back to the north.

14

The Way it Was

2: Teaching on aPermit During my ﬁrst summer at Coronation I got healthy again. My old strength and energy came back, and I looked forward to getting back to school. I had no money and few clothes, but opportunity knocked! In the fall of 1919 farm help was very scarce. Because of the terrible ﬂu the “harvest special” trains hadn’t come from the east with their loads of harvesters. School opening was delayed so older children, both boys and girls, could help with the harvest. I got a job stooking at Farewells near where my sister Anna taught school. In the ﬁeld a binder would cut and tie the grain in sheaves. It swaths the grain and it falls evenly onto a canvas ramp, which moves it along, and when enough for a bundle is packed tight into the arm, it causes the knotter, which is threaded with binder twine, to wrap around the bundle, tie a knot and cut the twine. The bundle is pushed oﬀ onto a rack, and when about six bundles are tied they are pushed oﬀ the rack and they drop onto the ground. These round tightly packed and tied “bundles” (or sheaves) must be picked up two at a time and propped against each other (heads up so the grain can dry), then two more against them, one at each side, and then two more making little pyramids all over the ﬁeld. I stooked for half a day and played out. It had been a 15

Field of stooks. Collection of Glenbow Museum, NB 39-487, Calgary, Canada.

heavy crop year and those bundles were heavy with wheat! Being only ﬁve feet tall didn’t help. I quit. But Mr. Farewell was desperate for help, and he asked: “Can you drive a fourhorse team and run the binder so I can stook?” I said I could drive the four-horse team all right, if he would show me how to run the binder. He explained a few things about the binder and told me if the knotter came unthreaded to stop and raise my hand and he would come 16

The Way it Was

Riding the binder. A three-horse team pulls this one. Photo courtesy: Stettler Town and Country Museum.

over and thread it. Soon we were cutting and stooking at a great rate. He had to thread the knotter a few times but other than that the only problem I had was making the horses go far enough past the end to make sharp corners like Mr. Farewell did. They knew they were going to turn and were determined to turn sooner than later. I didn’t have the authority with them that Mr. Farewell had so my corners got more and more rounded. TE A C H I N G ON A P E R M I T

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I ran the binder for two weeks and felt that was about all I could stand. I had earned $30.00. But Mr. Farewell said: “Run the binder one more week and the wheat will be ﬁnished, and I’ll pay you $50.00 for the three weeks.” I couldn’t turn that down, tired as I was, so I climbed back on the binder and cut the rest of his wheat. Fifty dollars was the most money I’d ever had. It was the most money I’d ever seen all at once. With my fat bank account I was able to buy clothes for school and a warm winter coat. I lived with my sister and brother-in-law Anna and Hiram Doughty for two years and was able to attend Coronation High School, which was a big new school that had been built about ﬁve years before. In the fall of 1918 it had been used as a hospital, and/or morgue, during the terrible ﬂu epidemic. I had some catching up to do; in my last year at High Prairie I had started grade IX but had only attended classes for sixty-nine days when everything closed down due to the ﬂu, so of course I had not ﬁnished grade IX. Hiram said I was the worst grade IX graduate he had ever seen (academically), but I was allowed to start grade X anyway that fall. I worked hard, managing to ﬁnish grade X and XI by 1921. There was a scarcity of rural school teachers in Alberta at that time. The young graduate teachers who were available usually applied for jobs in the towns or villages. They didn’t want to go out to country schools where they would be 18

The Way it Was

The wonderful new school in Coronation where Edith enrolled in 1919 for Grades X and XI. Hiram Doughty was the principal. Photo by the Coronation Review, February 13, 1913.

more or less isolated. Lessons by correspondence hadn’t begun, so the Department of Education, in order to keep the country schools open, issued permits to teach school to selected high school students who had completed grade XI. I didn’t apply for my school. School inspectors visited the high schools looking for students who planned on becoming teachers. Mr. McLean, the school inspector for the Coronation inspectorate, was a friend of the Doughtys. Hiram Doughty was principal at Coronation High School and my sister Anna taught at Fleet School. When Mr. McLean came looking for someone to teach on a permit, the Doughtys told him I was available, so he assigned Sounding Creek School to me. TE A C H I N G ON A P E R M I T

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I had always wanted to become a teacher, so this was my golden opportunity to get started and it was soon all arranged. I was to board with a nearby family, the Glasiers. My only qualiﬁcation besides being a good student myself and willing to work was that I was used to school routine. Sounding Creek was out on the bald prairie south of Coronation. When the school district was formed, they built the school in the middle of the section, equally distant from all the expected pupils. There wasn’t a house in sight. It was a very lonely place, so lonely and isolated that when I went with a school board member to look at the school I found myself thinking “I could never stay here alone after school.” As it turned out I never did. The usual two acres was fenced with barbed wire. There was a barn, a well, and two toilets. The coal shed was attached to the back of the school with a door leading from the school to the coal shed, and there was a large woodpile at the back of the lot. On the Monday morning that the school opened, it was anything but lonely! The schoolyard was full of children. I looked at the bell on my desk and thought, “This bell is mine to ring! I am the teacher! ” At nine o’clock I grasped the bell ﬁrmly by the handle, leaned out the door, and rang loud and clear. Twenty-seven children rushed in through the door. They represented every grade from I to IX. There was full attendance that ﬁrst day as everyone wanted to have a look at the new teacher. The next day the big boys began staying home to help on the farm with the harvesting. I felt 20

The Way it Was

very uncomfortable with twenty-seven pairs of eyes staring at me. “Find yourselves a seat,” I said. “Sit wherever you sat last year.” They did so, depositing the armfuls of books they had brought. Adding to the school load were two little French children who couldn’t speak a word of English, and their ﬁfteen-year-old aunt, Yvonne Severonnet, who had attended school in France. She spoke a few words of English and came to continue to learn the language. The children, Camille and Marcel Nicoud, I led to the two smallest seats. There was a Welsh family in the district, and their little boy came, ready to start school. He had been supplied with a fat rough scribbler, a pencil, eraser, crayons, scissors, and an apple for the teacher; the little French children just brought themselves, their beautiful brown eyes wide and scared. Thank goodness the children were quiet after I rang the bell. They just continued to stare at me. Most schools at that time began in the morning with the pupils standing at their desks and with bowed heads reverently reciting the Lord’s prayer, which we did. A reading from the Bible followed. Someone volunteered to show me the list of Bible readings from the last year. Then I asked them if they liked to sing, and what songs they knew. The next twenty minutes were delightful as we sang together whatever songs we could think of. There was a new register on my desk, which I knew I must use, so I asked the children to write their names, grade, birthday, and anything else they wanted to tell me on TE A C H I N G ON A P E R M I T

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the sheets of paper I passed around. That put them to work. At least they quit staring at me and with heads bent they were busy. Yvonne neatly wrote the names and ages of the French grade ones, and I did so for the little Welsh boy and the other little ones. When the sheets were handed in and tucked in my register for me to look at later, I went to the box of supplies, which I had opened and looked at before school, and I passed around a rough scribbler to each child and instructed them to start their arithmetic. Grade III to VIII had arithmetic texts and grade IX had algebras to get acquainted with. School texts were for sale at the drug store in town and the druggist had the list for each grade. In my desk was a very thin pale green pamphlet entitled “Course of study” but I hadn’t had time to look at it. Thank goodness for the two years I had spent in the Prairie River rural school in the north country. That experience was my guide. I knew that if the children just studied their books and I helped them with whatever they didn’t understand, they would learn something, more than if they didn’t go to school at all. With everyone else busy I could turn my attention to grades I and II. I chatted with them to get acquainted, then grade II counted some objects I produced and grade I listened. Thank heaven for Eaton’s catalogue! Thankfully I had the foresight to bring one and what a great resource it was. It had many uses, for many grades, as I was to realize in the coming years. A catalogue project could occupy grades 22

The Way it Was

I and II for long periods, leaving the teacher free for other grades. One of the ﬁrst things I had grade I pupils do was cut something out of Eaton’s catalogue with the new little scissors that came with the supplies. I found that some had never used scissors and had to be shown how to hold them. The catalogue and scissors gave them something to handle and they found they really liked cutting. The pages of children their own age fascinated them and they liked to cut out the child each thought they looked most like. They would paste these in their scribbler, and a grade II child would print their name for them underneath, copying from the blackboard. Then they cut out their families, grade II putting the names under each family member. These they pasted in the scribbler, with paste very much too thick. Paste came with the supplies and needed only to be stirred up with water. This was so much fun they took turns doing it, an older pupil watching, and being judge of how much water to put in. In arithmetic they cut out groups of objects from the catalogue and pasted them in their scribblers, tracing the arithmetic ﬁgures I wrote very big for them with coloured crayons. The fronts of their bib overalls became sticky with paste but this work kept them quiet so I could look at what the middle grades were doing. The middle grades used Eaton’s catalogue as well, to make out imaginary orders for things they wanted, entering the dollars and cents in their proper columns, and adding TE A C H I N G ON A P E R M I T

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up. They also used the alphabetical index to ﬁnd the things they wanted. Readers needed were supplied by the Department of Education from a requisition form sent in by the former teacher who knew what would be needed. With the supplies also were scribblers, pencils, pens, ink tablets, drawing paper, newsprint and coloured paper, and paste for the little ones. There were small scissors for the tiny hands and a big fat pencil, supposed to be easier for small hands to hold. There was no lack of supplies to work with. I just carried on as I remembered I did in school. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were always the basics when I went to school. I knew we would also be working on geography, history, civics, grammar and composition, and drawing and nature study. There was even a text to teach drawing, with weekby-week lessons to be followed. There was a map case above the blackboard, which held maps of the continents, and there was the map of Alberta sent out to all schools when Alberta entered Confederation in 1905. There was a large map of the world donated to all schools by the Neilson Chocolate Company. The school board had bought a new globe the year before, one that hung from the ceiling and could be raised up and down on a pulley. The old globe had been taken oﬀ its stand and inevitably had got played with and thrown around until it was too damaged to be useful. The usual big school clock hung on the wall, wound once a week by one of the older pupils, and it ticked away the minutes and 24

The Way it Was

hours with exasperating slowness. A large ﬂag was tacked to the front wall of the school; it had the British ﬂag in the corner at the top and the Canadian Ensign depicting the then nine provinces on the red ﬁeld near the bottom of the other side. Last but not least on the wall was a large pair of pictures of King George and Queen Mary, our beloved sovereigns. There was an organ in the school. Most schools around the turn of the century boasted an organ, which could often be bought for a few dollars. Early schools were often used for church services, whenever an itinerant preacher came along, and also an organ was needed for that all-important Christmas program. These organs were “pump” organs, having two large footoperated paddles, which operated like bellows and when pumped furiously and continuously pushed enough air to the right place to activate whatever keys were pressed. There were two students in grade IX. I did pretty well with them, since it had only been a short time since I was in grade IX. They had text books and could study by themselves, but the little ones nearly drove me crazy! I couldn’t spend all my time with them and I couldn’t ﬁnd enough to keep them busy while I helped the older students. Although I went on the run all day I just couldn’t get around to all that needed to be done. I gave grade I their primers the ﬁrst day of school to give them something to handle. These primers were in script, the authorities not having changed to printing to be learned before writing. I told them the words on the TE A C H I N G ON A P E R M I T

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ﬁrst page often enough that they learned them before that page was black with dirt and completely worn out. Page one had a picture of a big red apple, with “apple” written under it. They tried to draw what they thought was an apple, with sharp corners around the edges, so out came Eaton’s catalogue again and we practised cutting circles. When they could do better circles, they could have pretty-coloured paper and make other things. A cat, rabbit, or mouse could be made with two circles, one for the body and one for the head and diﬀerent shaped ears, tail, and whiskers drawn on to show which animal was which. Then we changed to cutting squares, the basis for cutting out a “house” to paste in their scribblers; more paste mess! Then with newsprint they could make a whole farmyard with trees, cows, and horses. For the animals they used a rectangle for the body, a smaller one for the head, then they drew on the diﬀerent tails, ears, and legs to identify the animal. I enjoyed helping the little ones, but then – back to the middle grades! I had the middle grades all read aloud to me, and I gave them lots of spelling words to write out. I planned that ﬁrst day how I would mark everything they did, every day, but I soon found this was really an impossible task, even though I started marking right after school while the janitor swept, then lugged a huge bag of work a mile and a half home. I threw myself across my bed, near tears of frustration that ﬁrst day, wondering how on earth anyone could possibly do all the work there was to be done with nine grades. I felt like giving up, but I needed the thousand dollars I was 26

The Way it Was

to be paid for this job to attend normal school, and I had no other idea how to get that much money, so of course I persevered. I was terriﬁed the second week of school when Mr. McLean’s car pulled into the schoolyard, but I soon found out he had come to help me, not criticize. During an extended recess, he talked to me, giving advice. He wrote the alphabet along the top of the blackboard. He was pleased that I was marking attendance in the register. He said some of his permit teachers weren’t marking the register. He told me how to organize my nine grades into a workable learning situation for the whole school. He was a wonderful help. I worked harder than ever after Mr. McLean’s visit. I had a better idea of what I was doing. All year I carried books home to mark, mostly arithmetic and language, in a large haversack, which held a great deal and was carried over my shoulder. It had a strap long enough so you could put one arm and your head through, so it swung around to the back; it was like the backpacks that came out later. You could change it from side to side. There hadn’t been any cleaning done in the school before school started because there was no teacher available to open school. When Fred and Olive Glasier swept the ﬂoor after school the dust would be so thick you could hardly breathe. Mr. Glasier was chairman of the school board and I asked him to have the school ﬂoor oiled with linseed oil. At that time that was the thing to do to keep the dust down. TE A C H I N G ON A P E R M I T

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After a great deal of eﬀort on my part to get the board to supply four gallons of oil, it came in a big square can and was taken to school. The question of how it was going to be applied came up but no one wanted to do it. It was during the busy fall season and no one had any extra time. Finally I said if no one else would do it I would do it on a Saturday. The Glasiers hunted up an old worn-down brush used to put paste on wallpaper, pliers to open the can, and an old pail that the brush could be dipped into – and I took a lunch. The job would take all day. Although I was young and strong it was a terrible job. I had to move all the heavy desks, screwed to narrow boards in pairs, and my own heavy desk, and rub the whole ﬂoor with that paste brush. Was I tired! My back hurt so near the end I could hardly rise up after I bent over. The oil supply ran out just as I ﬁnished at the door. Then I had to walk the mile and a half home, but I didn’t have to carry anything. I threw myself across my bed to rest and later could barely make it out to the supper table. For this ﬂoor oiling job I was paid $5.00, but the comfort of being able to breathe in the room was worth much more. After I attended Normal I learned the easy way to oil a school ﬂoor, which usually ended up being the teacher’s job, with help of the children. The trick was to use an old mop with a rag on it. Some pupils moved desks and some vied with each other about who was going to push the oily mop. Like Tom Sawyer painting the fence they would all 28

The Way it Was

want to do it because it looked like so much fun. The ﬂoor would be oiled in a short time, and the teacher didn’t have to do anything but control the situation. Fred Glasier, fourteen, was the janitor, and when cool weather started he came to school early to build the ﬁre in the Waterbury furnace. Although he banked the ﬁre with a huge lump of coal after school, it was always burned out in the morning, and the temperature of the room would be at the freezing point. He would shake the grate to let in the air, put in an armful of small, split wood on the smoldering coals that remained, add small pieces of coal, and while the ﬁre started he carried out a couple of pails full of ashes. By the time the pupils arrived the schoolroom was like an oven. Everyone walked to school at Sounding Creek and arrived cold in the wintertime. The Glasier children and I walked together to school on a path across a quarter section of pasture. This walk was delightful that fall. We studied birds and plants on the way, but when snow came it was an ordeal. We took turns walking ahead as the path was blown full of snow every day. We all wore long winter underwear and high-topped overshoes, and I wore spats that came up to the knees. It wasn’t very long before I taught my ﬁrst health lesson. There was of course a water pail supplied, the janitor would pump it full every morning, and it sat on a bench with a dipper bobbing on top of the water. Everyone drank from the same dipper as they did at home, many leaving water TE A C H I N G ON A P E R M I T

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Women’s spats, ca. 1910–22; jersey with pile backing. Collection of the Glenbow Museum, PI 10458 A-B, Calgary, Canada.

in the dipper when they ﬁnished drinking and putting the dipper and water left in it back into the pail. I didn’t need any teacher’s training to teach them a lesson on germs and that germs are spread from a common drinking cup. I asked each family, including the Glasiers, to bring their own drinking cup and keep it in a sack in one of 30

The Way it Was

their desks. They were to ﬁll their cup from the dipper, and never pour any water back into the pail. Some of my students at Sounding Creek were Fred, Olive, Myrtle, Pearl, and Lyle Glasier; Howard and Allan Paugh; Lucy, Walter, Emma, and Emmet Fitzgerald; Yvonne, Camille, and Marcel Nicoud; Yvonne Severonnet; Nancy Evans; Trevor Jones; and Arthur Coﬃn. I learned myself as I taught each day the things I knew they needed to know and helped them with the text books they had. They accepted me as a teacher, even though at nineteen I wasn’t much older than the oldest of them. Their conﬁdence in me gave me more conﬁdence in myself.

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The big Glasier house, ca. 1930.

3: Boarding Out Thelma Higgins, one of my high school friends, lived south of Coronation, and it was she who advised me to board at Glasiers, if they would take me. It was a good boarding place, though a mile and a half from school. There was no place closer as the farms were large. Glasier’s house was large and I had a very nice bedroom on the ground ﬂoor. The bed was very good, with an eiderdown comforter, which was very warm. There was a dresser and a washstand with a pitcher and bowl on top and a chamber mug in the cabinet below. There was a large Persian rug on the ﬂoor in front of my bed and a large clothes closet. If I wanted hot water there was an enamel pitcher provided in which to get hot water from the kitchen reservoir.1 Everyone in the Glasier family of ten slept upstairs in this large house and they never locked the door at night. I felt nervous downstairs alone because I hadn’t been there long when I was told that a crazy man lived alone a mile away and made a practice of wandering around, especially at night, and going into people’s houses. This was another reason that I was afraid to stay after school alone. He hadn’t yet killed anyone, so the police didn’t consider he was dangerous enough to take to a mental institution, which was the solution at that time. Very likely he was not 33

Coal-burning kitchen stove, ca. 1922, with the reservoir on one end opposite the ﬁre box and the big oven in the middle. Collection of Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada.

dangerous at all; he just did things diﬀerently. Anyway at night I braced a tipped-over chair under the knob on my bedroom door, which I hoped would deter his entrance until I could scream for help. My lovely room had a large bay window I could raise to get fresh air, but it had no locks or screen. A man could raise this window from outside and crawl into the room as easily as crawling over a fence. I couldn’t nail the window down as I wanted the fresh air. I got an idea. I asked for a pitcher of water from the kitchen and a glass, presumably for drinking, but I wanted the glass to set on top of the open window sash. If anyone tried to get in by raising the window, the glass would crash down with enough noise to wake me up. I had to change my eating habits a little at Glasiers. Every morning when the eleven of us gathered around the big table for breakfast, there were huge quantities of fried potatoes and eggs on the table, good homemade bread and Coronation creamery butter, and a huge pot of excellent coﬀee. I was used to toast and marmalade, but they had no facilities to make toast for that many people. I got used to the change and have liked hash browns for breakfast ever since. There was always a good supper at the Glasiers. During the harvest season when the grain had to be cut with a binder and stooked, everyone was so busy we would not have supper until about eight o’clock, but it was always worth waiting for, a delicious roast of beef, potatoes, gravy, B O A R DI NG O U T

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and vegetables. We seldom had dessert, but who needs dessert after all that food! Then there were the big feeds of corn-on-the-cob that fall. The corn grew sweet and delicious under the hot prairie sun. Mrs. Glasier would cook a whole wash boiler full and family members would see who could clean oﬀ the most cobs. That’s all they wanted for supper. These big corn feeds took a great deal of butter, which was forty cents a pound at the time, but it was always plentiful. These corn feeds were a “highlight” meal. Sometimes we had a lunch after school if supper was going to be really late. Lunch was usually bread and honey. Glasiers know how to buy for a big family. They bought honey in ten-pound pails! Families in the area had formed a beef ring and the Glasiers belonged. The members of this beef ring took turns butchering an animal, which they divided among the group each time, everybody taking whatever they could keep cool and use up before the next animal was butchered, so we always had good fresh beef. On Sundays Mrs. Glasier often made a large white cake with sour cream icing. That icing was so good I never forgot it. The way that big cake would disappear from the table was fantastic! There were six lunches to pack for school every morning. Lunch consisted of bread and butter wrapped in newspaper and carried in three-pound lard pails. The bread was really good and fresh as Mrs. Glasier baked every day. During the season when fruit from our west coast province of British Columbia (B.C.) was on the market, we often each had a 36

The Way it Was

peach or a pear in our lunch bucket. For a drink with our lunch – just water, nice and cold, from the school well. The distance from school was no problem. I enjoyed the walk, but if a summer storm or a winter blizzard came, the oldest boy in the Glasier family, who had ﬁnished grade IX and had no way to go to grade X, took us all six to school around by the road in a wagon or sleigh. We all stood in the wagon box and the horses went quite fast. Occasionally he came to school to take us home if they got a message by phone that the weather was going to be bad. The way messages were sent all over the country was like this: The telephone operator was told the message and she would plug in all the phones and ring one very long ring.2 When people heard that very long ring they rushed to their phones and heard the message meant for all, like a blizzard coming or a very bad summer storm, or a death. Far out in the country they hadn’t set telephone poles yet. Most of the phone lines were just the barbed wire fences. They were called “barb’ wire telephones.” They worked ﬁne. Glasiers had a very big car, an Oldsmobile I think it was. This car had two collapsible seats in front of the back seat, and it would hold a lot of people. Every Sunday when the weather permitted we went to Argyle School for church service conducted by an itinerant student minister. The grandmother didn’t go and sometimes one or two of the others stayed home, but they always insisted I come with them and I was glad to. It was very dull sitting around the house all day Sunday. Church was the only social life of the B O A R DI NG O U T

37

Telephone, early twentieth century. Collection of Glenbow Museum, Pl 3696 AB, Calgary, Canada.

community except the Christmas concert and this outing gave me a chance to meet new people. Glasiers often went to Coronation in the car, if there was no snow or mud. Fred was twelve years old that fall 38

The Way it Was

of 1921 and he usually drove the car. He had no driver’s licence but his mother always went along, sitting beside him. Much of the time, though, in the winter the roads were blocked with snow, and then a cutter, pulled by two horses, was used for the town trip. The horses trotted most of the way and it took only about an hour and a half, one way. Olive, age ﬁfteen, and I usually went, as the boys had work to do. Someone had to get the mail and groceries. Olive would let me oﬀ at my sister’s place and go about the shopping, picking me up when she was ready to go home. Glasiers had two long sheepskin coats in the family, and when Olive and I were ready to go, we were helped into those fur coats over our winter coats. We took a foot warmer3 also. We had plenty of robes too so we were never cold on the way, except for our faces, as those Coronation winds did blow cold. The big woollen scarves wrapped around our heads would become coated with frost from our breath and would feel cold on our cheeks. I enjoyed those winter trips to town on Saturdays in weather as cold as 30 below. The air was so fresh and exhilarating. I looked forward to going to town on Saturdays after my hard week’s work. I didn’t miss a day of school all year, except the week everyone was sick with ﬂu and there was no school. I came down with the ﬂu Friday but was all right by Monday, when the whole Glasier family got it all at once. Ten of them were in bed all at the same time. Mrs. Glasier wasn’t very sick and was able to get up at times and attend to the others. They had a chemical toilet4 upstairs, which helped a lot. B O A R DI NG O U T

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There were several bedrooms upstairs and a coal heater in the hallway. I don’t remember who carried the coal upstairs for this heater. I had never been upstairs until they got the ﬂu; then I went upstairs to see Olive, my grade IX pupil, who was very sick. She lay in bed with a high fever for over a week. Mrs. Glasier and I rubbed her legs to improve circulation. As there was three feet of snow on the road they didn’t send for the doctor. I wondered later if that bout with the ﬂu might have left Olive with a weakness, as she died at the age of twenty-nine with tuberculosis. What a great deal of coal it took to keep that big house warm! Once a week the oldest boy would drive a team of horses twenty miles to the coal mine to get a load of coal. This coal didn’t cost much but it was a real chore to go after it. They kept the coal in a large shed built on the house outside the back door so it was handy to ﬁll the coal pails. Besides the kitchen range, there were three coal heaters to keep going, one in the front room, one in the dining room, and the one upstairs. What fun we had in the big front room on winter evenings! With the ﬁre crackling in the heater we would gather around and have music. Mrs. Glasier played the piano, the two older boys played the violin and guitar, and the rest of us sang. I even made some progress learning to play the guitar and violin myself. Boarding at Glasiers was a wonderful home away from home. I did have one scare in the middle of a winter night; in spite of the protective devices I had placed at the window 40

The Way it Was

Mr. and Mrs. Glasier. Bill, a busy farmer, took time out to chair the local school board. Annie provided for eleven hungry people at her table every day. On Saturday nights she played piano.

and at the door of my room, I was terriﬁed when I heard loud banging on the side door of the house. I didn’t scream as I knew everybody in the house would have heard that pounding, then the door burst open, and I heard quick heavy footsteps coming into the house, into the front room B O A R DI NG O U T

41

and to the front door where the telephone was! The next thing I heard was a man ringing for the operator and asking for the doctor. “Hurry doctor, she’s awful bad.” It was Mr. Nicoud, who did not have a telephone at home. He didn’t wait for any of the family to appear, he just rushed out again into the night and back to his wife. I remembered that a Nicoud baby was due, and obviously the labour was not going well. The next school day was Monday and when the Nicouds arrive they were beaming! “We have a new baby at our house!” Yvonne announced. So everything had turned out all right. In those days it was part of a doctor’s job to hurry out in the night, through mud or snowstorm, to attend the delivery of a baby being born at home.

42

The Way it Was

4: Sounding Creek One of the good things about Sounding Creek School was that the children all worked well and behaved themselves. There had been such a scare that the school was not going to open because they couldn’t get a teacher; the children felt privileged to be in school. The older grades pretty well taught themselves. They all had books on every subject and they studied them, asking my help only when they couldn’t understand something. The work for the older grades was mostly making up tests for all their subjects. One subject there was no test for was writing, but they were expected to work to improve their handwriting. Good writing was stressed at that time as typing had not been introduced into the schools. I set a good example as I was a beautiful writer at that time. Every pupil from grade IV on was supplied with a straight pen, pen nibs, and a smooth ink scribbler especially for writing lessons, and another smooth ink scribbler in which to copy their best compositions. Those two scribblers were works of art unless they had ink spilled on them, which frequently happened. Ink was made in the schoolroom with ink tablets that came with the supplies. To make ink you just put an ink 43

tablet into a quart bottle and ﬁlled it with water. The next day you had a quart of ink. Each child had an inkwell in the top right-hand corner of his desk, but these inkwells held only about a tablespoonful of ink and were often empty, or the children imagined that they were low on ink, necessitating one of the older pupils going around with this great bottle of ink to ﬁll them, usually running them over; this spilled ink running down on the books below. Some of the more particular pupils grew tired of this ink mess on their books and bought a bottle of ink in town; it cost only ﬁfteen cents. They loved to own a bottle of ink, but what sometimes happened, when cold weather approached, a fresh new bottle of ink would freeze and crack the bottle. Tucked away in the back of a desk nobody would notice the ink thaw and leak out the crack and all over their books until the damage was done. Many times there was a mess all over their books and the ﬂoor and they had to try to clean it up, but unfortunately ink stains cannot be removed. Grade IV pupils just learning to write with ink would invariably plunge the pen to the very bottom of the inkwell, getting ink all over the pen holder and their ﬁngers, which they then wiped on their clothes. The boy’s bib overalls absorbed the ink quite nicely but the girl’s dresses didn’t. “My mother said I’d get a licken’ if I got ink on my new dress,” one little girl sobbed. Arithmetic was the easiest subject to teach, as the children did most of the work. All I had to do was show 44

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them how to do anything they couldn’t understand from the directions in the book. That left me time to work with the little ones. I taught all the middle grades to add by endings. For example, if nine and eight are seventeen, then nineteen and eight are twenty-seven; twenty nine and eight are thirty seven, and so on. Six and seven are thirteen, so sixteen and seven are twenty-three; twenty-six and seven are thirty-three. You only have to remember single digit combinations. They had been counting on their ﬁngers, and when they actually caught on to adding by endings, they were proud of their new accomplishment. The grade ones loved to go to the blackboard and write on it with coloured chalk. I’d write large-sized numbers or letters on the board and they would trace them with every colour they had, making quite a rainbow. Finally they would write one like it for themselves. I’d write numbers along the bottom of the blackboard, at intervals, and the grade ones would put that many articles on the ledge beside my number. Anything to keep them busy. When I couldn’t think of anything for them to do, I’d send them outside to play to get rid of them. Lucy Fitzgerald, in Grade IX, loved history. She knew more about it than I did so I let her teach history to grade VIII. It was British history we were supposed to take, all about the kings and queens from William the Norman to Queen Victoria. Lucy could tell what each monarch did, good or bad, and talked about them in low tones in the corner where they gathered. They learned about the lives of S OU N DI N G C R E E K

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royalty but very little about the common person who didn’t seem to be of much importance. One thing stressed was that Canada was just a colony of Great Britain. I taught the middle grades Canadian history. I knew my explorers and I did pretty well with them, but the political history of Eastern Canada was boring to them because of my inability to make it interesting. I taught them the same as I had been taught, that Canada was a colony of Great Britain, that Western Canada was farming and ranching country and all the factories were down east. I taught them all the things my Boer War veteran teacher had taught me in those grades. Geography they learned themselves from their texts. I discovered that drawing maps was very time-consuming, so I had them draw lots of maps. The grade VIII pupils got so they could go to the blackboard and draw a map of Canada and mark in the provinces quite correctly. Composition I loved! I insisted they all write a page for me quite often. Even the little ones had to write their couple of sentences. “What shall we write about?” they would ask. I would say, “Anything you would like to tell me if you were standing by my desk.” I found out more about what went on at home than their parents would want me to know, mamma’s age for instance, and about family ﬁghts. I carefully looked over these messy eﬀorts, ﬁnding out what they needed to be taught. Grade VIII had grammar texts and we worked right through that. I’m quite sure I learned as much as they did. I never taught a spelling lesson. 46

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They just wrote the words out umpteen times, which was delightfully time-consuming, giving me time to do something for the little ones. As Christmas time drew near I was informed there was to be a Christmas program. I had no experience getting up a program! I didn’t know how I was going to manage this but my sister Anna helped me. She gave me ideas, books, and music. We even used the little operetta she had because she had the costumes for it. This operetta was called Let’s Go Travelling. She even had a Dutch costume with real wooden shoes she had obtained in one of the schools where she had taught. There was a Welsh community in the district and some of those people oﬀered to contribute to the program. Welsh are famous for their wonderful singing! Their quartet sang in four parts, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. It was beautiful! The program turned out to be very entertaining, but the last week of school before Christmas the weather turned bitterly cold, 50 below zero for the whole week before Christmas, so the program was postponed until after Christmas. Three other of my high school classmates were out teaching on a permit and were getting more salary for fewer grades and pupils. I told Mr. Glasier who phoned the other two members of the school board and they decided to increase my salary to $1,100, but I knew of some that got $1,200. S OU N DI N G C R E E K

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After Christmas we had several bad blizzards. Parents always came for their children when they had warning there was a blizzard coming, but one day a terrible blizzard struck suddenly at noon. The Fitzgerald children lived close and always went home for lunch. What should I do about them? We could have each contributed some lunch for them, but their father was away working and mother was home with a new baby. I knew she would be frantic with worry. I decided to send them home via the barbed wire fence, which passed close to their house. In a blizzard the “white-outs” are not steadily blinding, there are always “lulls” in the wind when you can see a little bit through the snow. I took them out to the gate and told Lucy, ﬁfteen, to take the lead, and to keep touching the fence. The twins, Emmet and Emma, I instructed to hang onto Lucy’s coat tail and Walter, ten, to hang onto one of the twins, and not let go. When they thought they should be near I told them to go slow and watch in a lull for their house. I told them not to come back in the afternoon. Afterwards they said that the storm was so bad they couldn’t even hear what the others said on the way home. It was the kind of blizzard where a person can get disoriented and actually get lost and freeze to death on the way from the house to the barn. There was a great depth of snow that winter of 1921 and 1922, and when spring came and the snow melted there was a great deal of water. The big hollow on the school grounds became a lake. 48

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The big boys asked me if they could build a raft with the Christmas concert platform planks. I said “Yes,” anything to keep them happy. They secretly brought spikes and a hammer from home and built a good raft. What fun they had until Mr. Glasier found out about it. The school board was quite angry because the planks would warp, which would make them unsuitable for a platform next Christmas. They made the boys take the raft apart and put the planks back in the loft of the barn. The fact that I had let the boys have the planks didn’t raise their opinion of me. Soon drowning out gophers became the noon and recess occupation for the children. There were a great many gophers, and a great many gopher holes. The municipal oﬃce bought the tails for two cents each so the children were in business. I soon learned how the job of drowning out gophers was done. When a gopher was seen standing at a hole looking around, the children would spot it and run to the hole with a pail of water. The gopher would quickly duck down the hole, but water was poured down the hole until, to keep from drowning, the gopher came out. A child was there ready for him with a big stick and instantly whacked him dead. I didn’t know how they decided who got the tail each time for the two cents it was worth, but I do know all the boys carried their gopher tails in their pockets. The tails soon rotted and smelled but I couldn’t always tell whether it was rotten gopher tails that stunk or their feet. The boys all S OU N DI N G C R E E K

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wore rubber boots during the spring wet weather; barnyards where they did chores were so muddy. As they didn’t wash their feet or change their socks any oftener than they had to, the smell in the classroom was anything but pleasant. The girls complained of the smell but not the boys. I ﬁnally ﬁgured out how to solve the choking smell in the classroom. I asked them to clean the gopher tails out of their pockets at home each night. To stop the nauseating foot odour I suggested they go without socks during the lovely spring weather; instead of socks I asked them to cut insoles from the many cardboard boxes around and put clean ones in every day. They really fell for this idea! The boys could slip oﬀ their boots to go wading any time and their mothers didn’t have mud-soaked sweat saturated smelly socks to wash. Actually the cardboard idea was used often in winter just to keep feet warmer. With so much water in the sloughs the frogs began to croak. I wanted some frog eggs for nature study. As there was still ice in the bottom of the slough, I wouldn’t let the children wade in so I did it myself. I never waded in such cold water; I was walking on ice all over the bottom but I got the frog eggs. We found an old pan and plugged up the holes with bits of rag. We cut a piece of sod to put in the middle of the pan, installed the frog eggs in their new home and watched them grow. Spring came, and when the high ground warmed up the purple crocuses burst into bloom all over the prairie, millions and millions of them. It was spring at last and I 50

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began to look forward to the end of June when my job would be ﬁnished. I still wanted to become a teacher, more than ever. My hard year’s work hadn’t changed my mind. I looked forward to going to Camrose Normal School, where they taught people to become real teachers. I did one very reckless thing while at Glasiers. I broke three horses to ride. These horses had been broken to harness but had never had a rider on their backs. I volunteered to ride them one beautiful spring evening. I was a good rider, having had a great deal of experience in the north country. We always rode a lot, racing our horses on Saturday afternoons, just up and down the road since we didn’t have race tracks. Our horses were our “hot rods.” Someone bridled and saddled the horses, one at a time; all three ran away when I got on their backs. That’s what I wanted. I let them run until they were tired, and then they gradually slowed up and accepted the strange load on their backs. I didn’t think about the possibility I might have been thrown and hurt badly because I was used to riding and felt more at home on the back of a horse than I did trying to teach my nine grades. Luckily it all went well. I managed the June 30 school reports to be sent to the Department of Education better than I had the December forms. When the big envelope I put them in was ﬁnally sealed and ready for the mail, I felt a great load lift from my mind. At long last I was ﬁnished teaching on a permit, and I eagerly looked forward to teacher training. S OU N DI N G C R E E K

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5: Normal School Camrose Normal School opened its doors in 1912 with a four-month course for high school students aspiring to become teachers. Most of the students had only a grade XI education. Grade XII wasn’t considered necessary. My class, the 1922–23 class was taking an eight-month course, using a new course of study of two books, which replaced the thin, pale green pamphlet they had used before. It was a big class. There were 240 of us and we were divided into six classes. One class was all boys. One of the classes was distinguished as having taken grade XII. Members of that class were to become high school teachers with a ﬁrst-class certiﬁcate. The ones with only grade XI would get second-class certiﬁcates, which were considered good enough at the time. There had been such a shortage of teachers for years the authorities weren’t too particular. It wasn’t long though until the Department of Education demanded that all second-class teachers attend summer school until they got ﬁrst-class certiﬁcates. We had good teachers who really made us work. Heading the list was Mr. Stickle, the principal, who did his best to inspire high ideals during his remarks in morning assembly. Miss Lawson was his secretary. She used a great deal of make-up on her face, something we Normalites didn’t do at 53

that time. We tried to pin down one of our teachers one day as to what she thought of Miss Lawson. She hummed and hawed, and ﬁnally remarked, “She is … colourful.” Miss Currie was the librarian, always helpful when we went there for material. Miss Cole was from Red Deer. She was one of the Coles who were the original pioneers who came to Red Deer soon after 1900, according to Annie L. Gaetz in her book Red Deer Pioneers. Miss Cole taught us nature study and her specialty was birds. She really knew her birds. She encouraged us to bring bird’s nests to school. I think we brought her every bird nest within two miles of Camrose. Miss Johnston taught us primary work and music. In her class we all became little kids again, playing musical games and learning to read music. Miss Bowman taught us home economics. She spent three weeks teaching us how to make white sauce, which most of us knew how to make anyway. She spent the same length of time teaching the boys how to sew on a button. Miss Dyde, a very interesting person, taught us class management. She had travelled a great deal and used to thrill us with accounts of her trips. I think she inspired me to travel and write about my experiences. F. S. Morrison, an artist, taught us how to teach art to little kids and how to illustrate a story with swiftly drawn pictures. I often wondered how many budding cartoonists were in those classes. With heavy paper folded into sixteen 54

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squares he taught us how to make furniture for an apple box doll house. J. R. Tuck (Friar Tuck we called him behind his back) was a wonderful science teacher. His method was to question us to bring out our ignorance and then put us right. He was cynical and made fun of us at the least opportunity. One day he was questioning us on how thick we had seen hoar frost. Hoar frost got thicker and thicker until I volunteered to say I had seen hoar frost six inches thick. Then he proceeded to make me look silly. “Now, Miss Smith, what did you have to drink the morning you saw hoar frost six inches thick?” My face began to burn, but suddenly Hazel Ronning jumped up and said she too had seen hoar frost six inches thick in the Peace River country when it was 60 below. Bless her for coming to my rescue. I loved her for it. She was the well-known Chester Ronning’s sister. Mr. Tuck said that a good nature study teacher should be able to pick up a rock and teach a nature study lesson about it. I think I could do that now, since, perhaps inspired by him, I took a geology course in summer school. We learned so much from him. Mr. Scott was an obese man who was supposed to teach us history. He never looked very well. He had no energy at all. We dreaded his class, which usually went like this: “Class, we will have a study period today.” Then he would sit down to rest. We would sit there reading our texts, listening impatiently for the bell that would signal the end of our class. NOR M A L SCHOOL

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Sergeant McVay taught us a military type of physical training. The exercises he put us through were really strenuous and many of the girls began to just refuse his push-ups and just sit out, much to his distress. Miss McSkimming taught us literature and she was really good. We loved her class. These were our teachers. Being exposed to their elevating inﬂuence for eight months must have left its mark on us. We worked very hard as all the teachers gave us homework and it had to be done. Art was very timeconsuming for those of us who weren’t very gifted and one night in particular my roommate and I worked until 2 a.m. to get our books in order to hand in the next day. All week we studied every evening. When Friday night came we put our books aside and went to a show. Stan Bailey ran the theatre and knew what a crowd he would have on Friday night and always gave us a good show. I think it cost ﬁfteen cents. After the show, if we decided we could spend the money, we would stop at the restaurant for a cup of cocoa and a sandwich, costing twenty cents, before our four-block walk home. A highlight of our lives at Normal was receiving a parcel of food from home, usually cookies. Though our meals were good we were still always hungry. When one of us received a parcel we had a “feed,” held secretly behind locked doors, with just special friends participating. Once my sister sent me a roast chicken. My roommate and I invited two girls from another room and the four of us devoured that chicken 56

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down to the bare bones, which we then hid in a sack in the wastebasket. Then the same four bought a large wooden box of McIntosh apples for two dollars and hid them in our clothes closet, agreeing that every day we would each eat one until they were gone. On occasion, there were dances in the auditorium. The girls outnumbered the boys three to one but girls danced together and we always had a good time. There was a game room for those who didn’t dance. During the fall on Sundays we all went for a walk. We would walk miles into the country to bring back wild seeds, coloured leaves, and fall plants to study. The Camrose ski slide was a favourite haunt of all the Normalites, and many friendships were made there from other classes. Autograph books were all the rage then and we always had them handy. On one page in mine was: “With the trestle in the valley, with the ski slide on the hill, be sure you always think of – Bill!” I don’t know if even one student had a car. Wherever we went we walked. I thought I was smart to get a room in the big Turner house just down the hill from the Normal School, but after I got there I found out Mrs. Turner served only breakfast and we had to walk three blocks twice a day to Mrs. Cressman’s for dinner and supper. That was twelve blocks every day just for meals, regardless of the weather and some of those winter walks were bitterly cold. The Turner house was one of the big houses that were built in Camrose after 1912 to be used for boarding houses NOR M A L SCHOOL

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Chamber Pot, early twentieth century. Collection of Glenbow Museum, PT 8020/17, Calgary, Canada.

for the Normalites. Few of them had plumbing. As most of the students came from homes that did not have plumbing, they didn’t miss what they had never had. Turner’s house had nothing but hot and cold water taps in the bathroom. We all had washbasins in our rooms and we’d line up in the mornings to get a basin of hot water. Fourteen girls lived at Turners and sometimes there was quite a line-up to get hot water to take to our rooms. A bath was a washbasin sponge bath. Of course there was no toilet in the bathroom, or even a comfort mug5 in our rooms or the bathroom. We 58

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were expected to visit the outhouse at the back of the lot. We didn’t mind this in the fall, but when snow came it was an ordeal. Some of the parents complained about this and Mrs. Turner was forced to install a bathroom pail. We were the ﬁrst group she ever cooked breakfast for. She said too many girls would rather go without breakfast than walk out for it, and then she would have too many sick girls to look after. She gave us room and a good breakfast for ﬁfteen dollars a month and we paid Mrs. Cressman twenty dollars a month for dinner and supper, really good meals. There were two girls to each room. We looked after our own rooms all week but on Friday Mrs. Turner hired a woman to change the beds and sweep the bare ﬂoors. This same woman did our personal laundry in the basement for twenty-ﬁve cents each. Heat was a problem at Turners, or rather the lack of heat. The heating system was a coal furnace in the basement that piped heat up to the rooms. In winter when we were cold in the evenings while studying, which was almost every evening, someone would go to the stair banister and yell, “Mr. Turner, we’re freezing!” Soon we would hear him shake the furnace grates, and maybe some heat would come up, but never enough. Without storm windows on the house, there was always a draft. We learned that by taking the blankets oﬀ the bed, and wrapping ourselves in them to study, and by sitting as close to the register as two study tables could get, we could keep from shivering. I don’t know what we would NOR M A L SCHOOL

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have done without the long underwear we all wore at the time, and spats to the knees for outdoors. It was cold dressing in the mornings. We hurried down to breakfast. It was always warm in the dining room. Then we hurried up the hill two blocks to the Normal School, where it was always warm and there were ﬂush toilets. For dinner and supper we had to walk the three blocks to Mrs. Cressman’s, regardless of the weather. I often wished I had made other arrangements, but I didn’t know Mrs. Turner didn’t serve meals until I was established there. Near the end of the term there was a program. It was really good and the hall was packed with Camrose people who attended this function every year. The ﬁrst-class students got up the program the year I was there and surprised all of the second-class students, the numbers were so good. Then it was time for our last train ride home. During the whole eight months we had only been home for Christmas and Easter. It was a long trip. Early in the morning we would walk to the station carrying our suitcases and catch the train to Wetaskiwin. We waited in the Wetaskiwin station until the Edmonton-Calgary train came along, which we boarded to get to Lacombe. In Lacombe we would have dinner in a restaurant– a full meal with soup and pie for ﬁfty cents. At 2:30 in the afternoon, every day but Sunday, the train for the east began its laborious way, eventually arriving at Coronation, where some of us lived. That was the end of the line for that train. We didn’t mind this long train ride, 60

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it was thrilling to be sitting on the train instead of walking, and visiting with our friends instead of studying. There were two boys, John and Clarence Cross, whose home was on a ranch twenty miles beyond Consort. They had about another seventy miles east yet to go after Coronation. They would board a mixed train that would be waiting at the Coronation station. A “mixed” was a freight train with one passenger car on the end and it made slow progress because it stopped at every hamlet to load and unload freight, or passengers. The boys would be met at Consort late at night by a family member with a team and wagon to take them the last stretch to their ranch.

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6: H igh Point School When I graduated from Normal at the end of April 1923, I was oﬀered my ﬁrst job, High Point School, ﬁve miles west of Veteran. They had been without a teacher all year. I started right to work the ﬁrst week of May and taught for fourteen months straight, until the end of June 1924. My salary for this job was to be $1,000. Mama had sold her homestead up north and had been spending time with her daughters, Anna in Coronation and Stella, who had moved from High Prairie to Stettler. When I got the job I was given a little house ﬁve miles out of Veteran on a deserted road a mile and a half from school. Mama came to live with me there. Transportation to school was always the next thing to be settled and at High Point it worked this way: Six-yearold Mary Bottom, who was starting grade I, lived a quarter mile from us, and she needed help to get to school with the family’s gentle old horse, “Pet.” Mr. Bottom would hitch up Pet to the buggy, Mary would climb in and take the reins; dad would start Pet oﬀ and she would plod the quarter mile across a ﬁeld to a gate across from our house. I would be watching for her and open the gate. I would get into the buggy, taking the reins I would urge Pet to walk a little faster, and she would take us to school. We had the railroad 63

tracks to cross, and a stop a little farther on to pick up a covered pail of water left for us as the school had no well. Arriving at school I would unload the water, my books, and Mary at the school door, then unhitch Pet and put her into the barn for the day. I could have walked just as fast, but it was a treat not to have to carry my homework. Reversing the procedure at home time, I would open the gate and Pet would take Mary home. The older pupils had been attending school in Veteran so they didn’t come in the two summer months, but there were six grade ones eager to get started. I enjoyed those six little ones very much. It was exciting for me to watch how they progressed. As an extra activity I taught them a nature study lesson on the click beetle. That was a very dry year and, even more bad luck for farmers, there was an infestation of wire worms destroying the crops. Small children are often quite fascinated with bugs. I hunted up a click beetle, put him on his back and tickled him with a straw. With a click he jumped up about six inches and turned over, landing right side up. I told the children that the click beetles’ children are the thin yellow wire worms that eat the wheat roots and that makes the bare spots in the ﬁelds. We did have one problem. The prairie thunderstorms can be pretty violent and frequent on hot summer afternoons. About half of the children were ones who were used to screaming and being scared every time there was 64

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thunder, and they would succeed in scaring the rest, and it was a challenge to calm them down. There was really not much homework I could do for six grade ones; once the children left school in the afternoon there was really a lot of time to ﬁll in. I would put some work on the blackboard and then walk home to our very quiet house on the dead-end road. I began to think that maybe this was the time I could get a piano and start lessons. I managed to ﬁnd out about a piano that I could aﬀord, and I found that a Mr. Howard, who lived in Coronation, came to Veteran every week on the train to teach piano and he would make a spot for me. The Deacon farm was near us and Mr. Deacon oﬀered me a saddle horse to go to Veteran for my lessons, the only drawback being that the horse was very nervous and had to be blindfolded and tied up while you got on. He never bucked or shied; he just ran. Right after school on lesson day I would walk the half mile to Deacon’s. Mr. Deacon would hold the horse while I got mounted and reached down to pull the blindfold oﬀ. The second the horse was free he would run all the way to Veteran. Pulling his head to one side so he couldn’t see me, I would slip oﬀ and tie him to a telephone pole in front of Mr. Howard’s house. After my lesson I had to ask Mr. Howard, who was very fearful around horses, to help. I would get hold of the horse’s bridle and get the blindfold on; Mr. Howard would stand behind the pole and reach one arm around either side while I leaned down for the halter rope and the blindfold. You had to be H IG H PO I N T S C H O O L

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The Railroad Speeder. A step up from the hand car, this one had a motor – no pumping required. Riders sat down. Aboard this one is Charlie Fix. Photo courtesy: Stettler Town and Country Museum.

ready because the instant he was free the horse would run all the way home. After a while that horse got so he would run straight to that pole when we got to Veteran. That’s the way I got my piano lessons, and I made use of what I learned all through my teaching days. 66

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Mama and I sometimes went to Coronation by train to visit my sister Anna on a weekend. We waited at our crossing and when the engineer saw us he would stop the train and let us get on. Early Monday morning in Coronation we would catch the same train, going east. The conductor would tell the engineer when we got on and he would stop at our crossing at about 8 a.m. I had a mile to walk north to my school and Mama walked a half mile south to our house carrying groceries. Sometimes for these trips we would ride with the section boss on his speeder, and a couple of times we rode the hand car with the section men. The hand car was just a platform on four train wheels with a rod up the middle and handles attached to the top of the rod. The riders rode standing up, pumping the handles up and down to move the wheels connected below the platform. It could carry several people. The speeder was just a motorized hand car, no pumping required. The train on this line was the mixed; it took its time and stopped for almost anything. The section men were not all that busy; I think they liked a little company and a little diversion. We were sometimes invited out for Sunday dinner; someone from the family would come and get us with a wagon and farm horses. This was a nice break for us. After dinner we often played cribbage, which I loved. Mama was given a garden spot in a little corner of the ﬁeld next to the house and it produced wonderfully. She grew way more than we could ever eat, and as it was her way, H IG H PO I N T S C H O O L

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she preserved some for winter. By the school I planted sweet peas, the soil prepared with many pails of corral bottom from the school barn. The ﬂowers were huge and provided a bouquet for the school every day. The students picked wild baby’s breath to go with them. A well was dug that summer in the schoolyard, so no more picking up the pail of water for the school. We had a well at our house also, supplied with a rope and pulley to bring up a bucket of water. The well was about twelve feet deep, framed with lumber (cribbing) so it wouldn’t cave in. The cribbing reached to about two and one-half feet above ground and had a wooden cover over the top. It was wonderfully cool down close to the water. We put our milk, butter, and meat in a big kettle and hung it down the well to keep cool. We really appreciated having the well, although in winter it was a hard job bringing up the bucket; the water wouldn’t freeze at the bottom of the well but the bucket would become more and more heavily coated with ice and as the winter wore on it became very heavy. By spring it took the two of us to bring it up. Our fuel for the stove was sawed up old railroad ties, which we had to split up – not an easy job. On Saturdays that fall and the next spring in good weather, we borrowed faithful old Pet to take us the ﬁve miles into Veteran for groceries. She dragged her hind feet in the thick dust on the road sending clouds of dust over us, but she got us there and back. 68

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During those fourteen months I worked very hard, applying all my new-found expertise from Normal School. One of the things I couldn’t wait to try was the hectograph. This was one of the forerunners of the photocopier. It was a system whereby you could prepare only one copy of a work sheet, such as an arithmetic test, and then make as many copies as you wanted from your master sheet with the hectograph. I had the necessary supplies, a metal sheet like a cookie sheet with sides, the special gelatin substance to melt in this pan (when it cooled it would be somewhat like jello that got too thick), and a hectograph pencil. You then used the hectograph pencil to produce your test questions in a nice purple colour on an ordinary sheet of paper; you placed this upside down on the gelatin and gently smoothed it for a few minutes. When you decided enough purple had come oﬀ into the gelatin you carefully peeled oﬀ your master copy. You could then lay other sheets on the gelatin, each for a few seconds, and they would pick up a copy of your original. It sounded wonderful, and so eﬃcient. The demonstration at Normal School had seemed to work perfectly, but I found it frustrating. You couldn’t really make very many copies from each original; before long the gelatin absorbed too much purple and the copies were indistinct. The process then was to melt the gelatin in your oven, drain oﬀ what was clear, and start over. Another annoyance was that the pencils soon wore out and broke easily. H IG H PO I N T S C H O O L

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The real problem was that we often had small classes, maybe only two or three and if you copied work for one class you couldn’t copy a diﬀerent test for another class on the same day. You had to wait a day or so for the purple to sink down far enough in the gelatin so you could copy a diﬀerent test for another grade. For example, if you wanted to give all the middle grades their arithmetic test on the same day you were preparing for several days ahead. I think I was likely not the only one who gave up on this system, threw the whole thing out, and used carbon paper with results just about as fast. Once late fall came, everyone was back at school, including the big boys who had stayed home to harvest, and school was a busy place. I got my timetable all set up to my satisfaction and classes in all grades went to work, geography, history, arithmetic, grammar and composition, art, writing, civics, it actually could all be done! My students at High Point School were: Grace and Alice Stockwell; Mary Bottom; Aileen Hughes; George Schuninberger; Tommy and Frank Watson; Angus, Freddy, Eddy and Mabel Anderson, Thordis Walhood, and her brother Tom. After ten more months I was ready for a break.

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7: Bignell School

Miss Edith Smith, the new teacher at Bignell School, 1924.

In the summer of 1924, I moved to the Stettler area, where my future husband lived. I got a job at Bignell School, ﬁve miles northeast of Stettler. School board members were Henry Bagshaw, Perry Brown, Tom Thompson, Frank Lee, and Mr. Bignell, whose large family gave the school its name. That summer the board had raised up the school and put a cement basement underneath. A new furnace fed a hot air duct to the school upstairs and they got rid of the Waterbury furnace. The Waterbury furnace was a ﬁxture in most schools at that time. It was a big long coal heater with a steel 71

jacket around it, and it was supposed to heat every corner of the school by convection currents, which it did when the ﬁre got going like mad. The jacket was about a foot out from the stove and extended from a foot above the ﬂoor to above the children’s heads. The jacket had a door in front of the stove door. The janitor (usually one of the big boys) would put a huge chunk of coal on the ﬁre at night, but there would be little left in the morning but a few red coals. He would shake the grates, take out some “clinkers” and a pail of ashes (if he did that at night the ﬁre would burn too fast and there would be no coals in the morning). Then he would add kindling to the coals, open the drafts, and the ﬁre would roar, but it would take some time and lots more stoking to get it hot enough for air to circulate. Sometimes the children were very cold when they arrived and they would try to get warm in front of the stove, with the jacket open, which delayed the air movement, or they would pull up desks to stand on and lean over the stove to try to get warm above the jacket. When the jacket door was closed, the convection currents would get moving and the heat would distribute, but until that, the air near the ceiling could be 100 degrees Fahrenheit (I tested with a thermometer), and the desks still too cold to sit on, and the snow on the ﬂoor in front of the stove not melted. When the room was ﬁnally warm the air was dry enough to make your throat burn. A pan was kept on top of the stove for water to evaporate, but someone would have to ﬁll it several times a day, or in 72

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winter you could use snow, but that required even more trips. Another problem with the Waterbury furnace was that it used to blow up when plugged with the clinkers left after the coal has burned. Gases built up and caused the explosions; the door of the stove would ﬂy open and red coals would spill out on the tin under the stove. The children loved this diversion but it worried me. In The Little White Schoolhouse, John Cheryk wrote a whole chapter on the evils of the Waterbury furnace. It was a big improvement at Bignell when they were able to carry out their plans to raise the school and put in a cement basement and a real furnace. There was another huge advantage; this change provided a teacherage in the basement. What a luxury that was! So far in my teaching years I had walked a mile and half each way to school, and although I thought nothing of that at the time, this was deﬁnitely going to be handy. During the digging for the basement, they happened to drill into an artesian well (a stream of water under pressure in the formation below ground). When the drilling released the pressure, the water would ﬂow up like a fountain. This was not uncommon in that part of the country. They put in a pipe to catch this water with a tap to shut it oﬀ, and we had water “on tap” between the second and third steps of the basement stairs. What a luxury! It was a tiny stream of water, but it was suﬃcient for the teacherage and the B IG N E L L S C H O O L

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school. If you set a pail on the step and turned the tap on you could get a pail of water in about ten minutes. The basement had a bin for coal, which could be ﬁlled from an outside chute, a room for wood, and a large room for the teacherage. It was heated by a pipe from the furnace. When furnished it made a comfortable home. They lined the walls with building paper and put linoleum on the ﬂoor. Mama (Sophie Smith) was still living with me. She set up her kitchen stove out near the furnace and put the stovepipe into the furnace pipe. We had a Coleman gas lamp and our “living room” furniture. Table and chairs were out in the hall, and also apple box cupboards she improvised. Mama kept her washtub and washboard in the wood room, and strung a clothesline from one end of the basement to the other. The new furnace the board had installed proved very satisfactory and it was always comfortable in the school and the teacherage. It was while I was at Bignell that the dreaded polio struck the district. Two of my students took polio, but they eventually made almost a full recovery. The school was closed for a week and fumigated. At Normal they had said to the graduating teachers, “We must do something about providing hot lunches at noon for the rural students.” When cold weather approached, I asked who could bring skimmed milk in the Roger’s syrup pails they all had. Everyone agreed to take their turn as they all milked cows, and not once did the milk not show up. The school board furnished sugar and cocoa. When the milk 74

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Bignell School – 1924 class. Back row (l to r): Vera Van Kleek, Mary Grabill, Lottie Lattery, Gertrude Lee, Cecil Grabill, Dale Lawrence, Chester Bignell, Elgin Bignell, Billy Bagshaw. Middle row: Essie Rosborough, Irene Fink, Gertie Lattery, Eva Grabill, Nola Lawrence, Floyd Lattery, Everett Rosborough, George Olson. Front: Gladys Lee, Grace Lattery, Roy Koehler, Benny Redfern, Vernon Bignell, Clayton Keith, Harry Koehler, Lloyd Lee.

arrived, Mama set the pail in a pan of water on her stove and at noon the milk was hot and she put in the cocoa and sugar. The big boys carried it upstairs and ﬁlled everyone’s cup. The Bignells grew a big garden and invited Mama and me to help harvest it, insisting we take home all we dug, thus giving us far more vegetables than we could possibly use. Mama got the idea that if the children could take turns B IG N E L L S C H O O L

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bringing a soup bone she would use up the surplus vegetables in soup. Everyone had lots of meat and extra soup bones, which they brought every Monday so she made vegetablebeef soup for Tuesday. Monday was cocoa day. Then she got the idea of making a full dishpan of scalloped potatoes for Wednesday as we couldn’t give away our surplus potatoes. By now the children were intrigued with the lunch idea and asked Mama if they took turns bringing an old hen if she would make noodle soup for Thursday. She was bored as she had so little to do, and she loved children so she agreed to furnish the eggs for the noodles and butter for the scalloped potatoes. We each had a helping before the kettle went upstairs. Then the children put their heads together and took up a collection to buy macaroni and tomatoes to make up for Friday. It all worked out very well. Mama didn’t have to cook noon lunch for us; we took out a helping from the school lunch as Mama did all the work and furnished all the extras. The children shared amiably; any left in the pot was scraped clean by the big boys before the pot went downstairs. We did this for two winters. It seemed almost like family. The children began to call Mama “Grandma Smith.” Mama gave little Gladys Lee a pretty red bead necklace for her birthday. Many, many years later, Gladys returned it to our family and it lives on, a keepsake for another little girl from her great-great-grandmother Sophie. Gertie Lattery, remembering her childhood, told how Grandma Smith made hot lunches for all the kids because 76

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there wasn’t much else for her to do. “And do you know what else she did,” Gertie said, “On Valentines Day, she had a big pan and she made date squares, one for everyone of us and each piece had a heart on top. She made them downstairs, a little red paper heart with your name on it. For some of us that was the ﬁrst date squares we ever had!” Gertie thought that was pretty special. Gertie was in grades VII and VIII those two years. Mama sometimes went for a week to visit her other daughters, and Gertie would come and stay with me in the teacherage. Someone asked her if she had to do homework on those nights. She said, “Not much, but Miss Smith made me read Ben-Hur.” We didn’t read Ben-Hur all the time; many winter nights we sat out on the school steps and watched the northern lights. On clear nights we sometimes sat out there and looked at the sky and tried to name stars and ﬁnd constellations. We would ﬁnd the North Star and the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, Orion, the Bear. The nights were black then, no lights in sight anywhere except a faint glimmer from one farmhouse across a ﬁeld and above this blackness the stars were dazzling. Sometimes we saw the full moon appear enormous on the horizon; soon it would rise higher and be its normal size. We noticed on calendars that show the phases of the moon that the quarter and halfmoons change sides in waning and waxing. We watched the changes, from full to new moon and saw that it was true, B IG N E L L S C H O O L

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the quarters and halves appear ﬁrst on one side, then the other side of the moon. Gertie very much wanted to be a nurse. You only had to go through grade IX at that time and then you could go to be a nurse. I told her I would lend her the money to go. She was thrilled and told her family, “Miss Smith said she would put me through school and I could pay her back.” It was not to be. Her mother had died when she was twelve; there were several younger siblings and many responsibilities in their farm home and in the ﬁelds so she stayed home. Life was hard then; that’s just the way it was. That was the only school where I ever had the facilities for such an elaborate lunch program, but I came up with another idea I used for years and years. A big dishpan of water was put on the stove and into this we put jars of food the children brought every day, whatever they had at home that day to bring, and there was always cocoa if nothing else was around. That was one handy thing about the Waterbury, the big ﬂat surface on the top. At Bignell I started spelling contests with the older grades. I would have them form lines and give the ones at the front a word; if they spelled it right they could go and sit down. If they didn’t, they went to the back of the line. If they were a poor enough speller, they could end up the only one standing. Then they knew they had better work on their spelling words. We of course put on a concert. The children all sang and had plays and “everything.” They had such an exciting 78

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time. The children’s excitement is very catching; I had a wonderful time myself. At all the country schools the spring sports day and picnic was a huge aﬀair. A highlight would be the making of ice cream. At Bignell there was always ice handy to make the ice cream. Tom Thompson had an artesian well on his land and he let the water run into a hollow to freeze. In the winter when it was the right depth they would cut blocks of ice with a saw, pack them into an ice house (a shed made for the purpose), and when covered well with straw the ice wouldn’t melt for a long time, they could provide ice for most of the summer. Farther west where there were lumber mills they packed ice in sawdust. Later Tom Thompson went on a trip to Europe and, sadly, was killed there in an accident. In the countryside around Bignell School at that time there was often an event somewhat similar to the English fox hunts, but the animal that was the object of the hunt was the coyote. Coyotes roamed in huge packs; there were way too many of them. They were a menace, killing chickens and turkeys and even small farm animals and children’s pets. Something had to be done, so the municipality established a bounty program. Five dollars could be collected for each coyote killed, and the hide was worth ﬁfteen dollars so hunting coyotes was fairly appealing. When the Lattery’s dad “Hank” and a couple of his three sons (there was Charley, Ed, and Leo) went after coyotes in B IG N E L L S C H O O L

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Bignell ladies and Louis Ball. Back row (l to r): Sophie Smith, Elsie Cunningham, Stella Moxham, Mrs. Ball holding Dorothy Moxham, Georgie Ball. Front row: Hazel Cunningham, Helen Cunningham, Louis and Eva Ball, and Dorothy Ball. 1924.

the winter, it was exciting to watch. If you heard the dogs (they were coyote hounds) and looked out at the right time, you would see a sleigh tearing right across country, horses at a full gallop after the dogs, a dangerous but exciting activity over rough ground. When they came to a barbed wire fence, the two boys would jump out, pull the staples out of two posts, lower the wire and stand on it so the team and sleigh could get over it between them, and in seconds they would be away again at breakneck speed. Before long they would return at a more relaxed pace, a dead coyote in the sleigh. They always stopped to replace the staples in the fence. 80

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I taught for two years at Bignell. In December of 1925 I married Carl Van Kleek. No more “Miss Smith.” After that it was “Mrs. Van Kleek.” Mama bought a small house in Stettler for herself. My sister Stella had left the north a few years before; she married Frank Moxham and they farmed in the area. In June 1926 I resigned, intending to take a break from teaching for a while.

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8: Wildrose School In the fall of 1927 I was not intending to teach; I had a year-old baby and I planned to stay home. Wildrose School was nearby, only about a mile from our farm as the crow ﬂies. Their school board members, Clarence McCarty, Marion McCarty, Sr., and Walter McCarty, had hired a young man but he stayed only one day and then accepted a position in town, leaving Wildrose without a teacher. The board thought of me as a replacement, and I decided to take the job. Getting to school wouldn’t be a problem as we had a saddle horse, but getting a babysitter was another matter. Several people helped out temporarily, including my sister-in-law Vera Van Kleek, but we just about gave up ﬁnding someone who could commit to staying the year. Then, two months into the term, Georgie Ball agreed to take the job. What a relief. She was only sixteen but she was perfect. We couldn’t have asked for a better and more capable person, she took good care of the baby and the house and meals. The horseback trip to the school wasn’t that simple after all. Roads then just followed the contours of the land and in the spring and fall two large sloughs formed across the road so to avoid going through all that I went across country instead of around by the road. This meant going through 83

Wildrose School.

John Kerr’s place and there were a total of ten barbed wire gates each round trip to open and close! Actually I didn’t mind; it was good practice for horse and rider to manage gates without the rider having to dismount. The horse could be guided to come up sideways to the gate post so the rider could then lift the loop oﬀ, carry the post in one hand, guide the horse though, turn keeping the same side toward 84

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the gate, and back up a couple of steps to place the rider alongside the post again to put the loop back over. The ﬁrst morning I went early to get settled and wait expectantly to meet my Wildrose pupils. The Canning boys came; they lived on a farm near Leahearst siding, Mr. Canning bought grain at the Leahearst elevator. Thomas was in grade IX and Roger in grade V. Thomas was the most studious boy I ever taught; all he wanted to do was study. He wanted to be a doctor, and he did accomplish that. He became a kidney specialist. Roger was full of fun and would get the giggles, which would annoy Thomas, who would get up from his seat, walk over to his brother, and whisper something in his ear. Roger would settle down to work, until the next amusing thing came along, but Thomas kept his eye on him and tried to keep him appropriately subdued. The Canning family had suﬀered a terrible tragedy. There was another boy, Walter, who at age two drowned in the water tank. Dorothy Ball, Hazel Cunningham, and Beth Morgensen were all in grade III, Helen Cunningham was in grade VI, Eva Zipse in grade V. Eva’s sister Bessie brought her to school in their car. There were two families of McCartys attending Wildrose. Melvin and Doris came from Marion McCarty’s. Charley McCarty, grade VIII, was Clarence McCarty’s son. He was the janitor, and a good one. He took on an extra chore. Every morning when Helen and Hazel Cunningham came to school with their horse and buggy, Charley met them at the school and unhitched their horse, took it to WI L DR O S E S C H O O L

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the barn and fed it the hay the girls’ father had put in the back of their rig. After school, before Charley started the sweeping, he hitched up Helen’s horse and brought the rig around to the school door. That seemed to him the right thing to do for the young ladies. Margaret Adair and Jack Lyster came to school on skis that Mary Kerr had made for them. Their house was in the middle of the quarter-section, and coming across the ﬁeld was a short-cut. John and Mary Kerr were brother and sister who made a home together. In the past they had raised two sisters, Edith and Vada, and Margaret and Jack were two of these sisters’ children. When little Margaret was ready for school she was living with her parents at Hughenden, where there was no school close enough for her to get to so Mary took her to live with them and go to Wildrose. Then she got Jack Lyster, Margaret’s cousin and the same age, to live with them also. She did love children and she loved to make a home for these two. Vernon and Ethel Richardson came on horseback, riding double two miles to school. Ethel was barely six and Vernon was nearly eight. Vernon had never been to school, but he progressed so quickly I pushed him on and he took grade I and grade II that year. There was a native boy, Arthur Hupie, in grade III and his two little cousins in grade I. When I taught Arthur to write letters, his father was so pleased he bought him a box of fancy stationery and said “Now Arthur is going to write to our relatives at Hobbema.” 86

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Hot lunches worked at Wildrose, but we didn’t make the full meal community one like we did at Bignell as there were diﬀerent diet preferences at Wildrose. Each family just brought whatever leftovers they had at home, placed their jar in the pan of hot water I kept on the stove, and at noon they would have a hot lunch. We did this all winter. I used to encourage the children to bring nature study material to school. One day I was shocked at ﬁrst when I looked up and saw they had a huge dead owl. I think it was a Great Horned Owl. What caused the owl’s demise I never knew, but we examined it every way we could think of. We measured its wingspan, ﬁve feet! We weighed it with scales I borrowed. Everyone stood around close and felt the claws and found out how adaptable they were for catching and holding prey. They felt the owl’s big hooked bill and

Vernon and Ethel Richardson, ages eight and six.

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saw how it could easily tear a rabbit to pieces. We checked the feathers, especially the strong wing feathers and bones that helped the bird ﬂy. We talked about the owl’s good eyesight and how it could turn its neck to look behind itself. When we had ﬁnished our examination I dissected the owl and showed the children the organs inside, heart, lungs, the crop, gizzard, and intestines. When the owl was ready to be disposed of, Arthur came up to me and whispered in my ear that his grandma wanted the owl when we were ﬁnished with it. Maybe it was for the feathers; it was good they got used. It was at Wildrose that I developed a method of teaching about ﬁsh. A child could read in the encyclopedia the description of a ﬁsh, and its dimensions, but it was hard to get a real picture from numbers in a book. We always studied the resources of Canada, and I wanted to make learning about the wonderful harvests from the oceans more interesting. So, I had a child go to the blackboard with a yardstick and draw a salmon, life-size. Others drew, life-size, herring, smelt, cod, halibut (the ﬂat one, hard to draw), lobster, shrimp, every kind of ﬁsh or shellﬁsh until the blackboard was full of them, some overlapping. Then one little boy asked, “How are we going to draw a whale?” “Easy,” I said, “We’ll just push the desks aside and draw a whale, life-size, on the ﬂoor.” Eager hands pushed the desks ﬁrst to one side, then the other. We found there were several sizes of whale, the biggest one being the blue whale, which would reach from corner to corner of the schoolroom, and 88

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Wildrose girls. (l to r): Helen Cunningham, Doris Morgensen, Eva Zipse, Doris McCarty, Margaret Adair, Hazel Cunningham, Beth Morgensen, and Dorothy Ball. New Grade I girls for orientation: Jean McCarty, Ethel Richardson, Dorothy Moxham, Lenna McCarty. June 1929.

its tail would reach up the wall! So the children drew that one, but I explained that most of us in this part of Canada don’t eat whale. That whale and the tuna beside it were on the ﬂoor until the chalk got scraped oﬀ. They studied the diﬀerent shapes, drawing what features they could. They even worked on their ﬁsh at recess and noon, drawing from pictures the WI L DR O S E S C H O O L

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eyes, ﬁns, gills, and the whale’s blowhole. They learned how the gills get oxygen out of the water, but that for the whale, the blowhole is its nose and it has to have air. Every grade learned something about ﬁsh, whether it was for their grade or not. Even grade I learned there were big ﬁsh and little ﬁsh. It is a well-accepted fact that in the one-room schools with nine grades the children learned from each other. Wildrose was the only rural school I ever taught that had a telephone. The parents soon found out I wouldn’t answer it during school hours, but at recesses and noon hour it was ringing all the time. The children would answer it, and although a few calls were necessary, most weren’t. The year after I left they had the phone taken out to save money. I thought that was a good idea, if anything serious happened there was a telephone just across the road. It was a happy year at Wildrose, but at the end of the term I resigned; I wanted to be home with my child. The next teacher who came to Wildrose was only eighteen and in her ﬁrst school. She stayed at our place. When Christmas-time approached, she was overwhelmed by the prospect of having to produce a concert. I was able to help her; I had material and costumes, poems, and songs, and her concert went well.

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9: Norway School During the summer of 1929, I was once more preparing to go to school. I had accepted a position at Norway School, ten miles east of Alliance. At this school there was a nice teacherage. The last week in August we loaded up enough necessities from our farm near Red Willow for me to get set up at Norway. I had with me my daughter Thelma Jo, who would turn three in November. My husband, Carl, was farming and not able to spend much time there in the fall and spring, but he spent most of the winters there for the next three years. The trip from Red Willow to Norway took about an hour and a half on a good day. In winter, there were some trying times, the Model T Ford we owned not having a heater. Lots of blankets and a foot warmer were needed for the winter trips. Fortunately, our one ﬂat tire occurred in the warm fall weather. Rolling along over the trail (it was really just a trail with grass growing between the tracks), a loud bang announced a hole in an inner tube and we well knew we would be spending the next half-hour or so on the side of the road. Out came the tire mending kit that was always with us. It contained patches, cement, and tools. The procedure was to take the wheel oﬀ, pry oﬀ the tire, pull the collapsed inner tube out of the tire, and ﬁnd the hole in the 91

inner tube. There was a tool with a scratchy surface to use to roughen up the rubber around the hole, and the evilsmelling cement to stick on the patch. Then the inner tube had to be poked back into the tire, pumped up with the tire pump and then, as soon as we got the tire back on the wheel and the wheel back on the car, we were oﬀ again. The ﬁrst year at Norway there were seventeen pupils, including three grade nines. I was anxious to get to work, and glad I had extra time for preparation. The teacherage was quite nice, with a main room and two bedrooms. I had no trouble getting someone to stay with my daughter during the day; Myrtle Wold came to help us. She looked after Thelma Jo and had our lunch ready at noon. We really liked her and kept in touch for years after. I was at Norway for three years, and the fall Thelma Jo turned ﬁve she just came to school and played quietly or coloured. Later, since she had learned to read, I found out from the inspector that I had to put her on the register, so she would be counted and the grant adjusted. Years after that the same thing happened with a young son, Don, I took to school with me, and many years after that a granddaughter staying with me in the teacherage learned to read and so had to be counted. Although they were never formally in a class at age four or ﬁve, they learned to read sort of by osmosis it seemed, and having learned to read was what made one a registered student. A freak blizzard happened on the sixth of October that ﬁrst year. My sister-in-law Vera was with me for the 92

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weekend. We were totally unprepared for winter, or snow, and we woke up to ﬁnd a huge dump of snow and deep drifts between us and the wood, the well, and of course the outhouse, which was clear across the yard next to the back fence. We had no overshoes, or the ski pants we would bring later; we had just our dresses and light coats and summer shoes. We could have just waded in snow in our stockings and shoes, but we got another idea. We took our big bath towels, wrapped them around our legs tight and fastened with safety pins. It may not have been fashionable, but it helped a lot, at least for our legs. We took turns going out for the necessities and then shook the snow out of the towels and they dried quickly, ready for the next trip. The second day of the storm we looked out the window and saw Elmer MacDonald coming, ploughing through the snow on a big farm horse. He was carrying a quart of milk for us. We had been taking turns bringing in armfuls of wood and Elmer carried in a lot more for us before he left. Later that same day a school board member came with his team and sleigh with a load of wood for us. He wanted to make sure we didn’t run out. The strange thing was that when that snow melted in a few more days, there was almost no snow at all for the whole winter that followed. There was often some bitter weather to contend with at Norway when winter came; the land was more open and winds could be freezing. Children did not have the insulated clothing and warm boots that came on the market later. There were times when I really worried for the children if N O R WA Y S C H O O L

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storms came up during the day. I always had a big supply of newspapers; there was the Winnipeg Free Press, which everybody got free, and local papers. Many times I stuﬀed the fronts and backs of the boys bib overalls and the girls coats with layers of newspaper before I saw them oﬀ. Then for myself, I felt very lucky; all I had to do was walk a few yards to the warm teacherage. In the Norway school district many people were Norwegian and that’s where we were introduced to skiing. There was lots of winter fun there. The bare prairie hills provided lots of “runs.” Of course one had to get up there, and those with a Norwegian background were much better at the cross-country aspect of this than we were and had no problem. We had plenty of excitement as we improved on our new skill. There were places right near the school where we could ski. On winter weekends when we weren’t skiing we enjoyed meeting all the neighbours on our excursions around the community. Of course the winter highlight was the Christmas concert. That ﬁrst one we had in the afternoon – an idea I had because the weather was so cold. It could be quite a few degrees warmer in the daytime and everyone was free to come from their farms in the afternoon. It worked ﬁne. Santa still made his appearance. Everyone got along quite well in their studies, my three grade nines passed. By the end of the school year I had made plans to stay on at Norway. 94

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Norway School Transportation. Posed beside the teacherage. On the ﬁrst horse (front to back): Thelma Jo, Mary Mundle, Gwen Rear, Bob Gaﬀney holding reins. Blaze horse: Wayne Gaﬀney, Nora Berg, Mary Johnson holding reins. Right side: Norman Berg, Sheila Holt, Hazel Berg, Walter Berg holding reins.

When I came back in September 1930, I found the enrollment down somewhat. Several of the older students had moved on, or stayed home to work. Two of my three grade nines were gone from the community. The closest neighbours were the Holts and Mrs. MacDonald; they were the nearest neighbours I had had at any school so far, Mrs. MacDonald in sight right across a ﬁeld. It was Mrs. MacDonald who provided care and stability one fall day when my unconscious daughter was carried in to me by Mary Johnson, one of the big girls, at noon hour. N O R WA Y S C H O O L

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Mary Johnson on Howard Johnson’s Hackney saddle horse.

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She had been riding with Mary and fell oﬀ, hitting her head on a big rock. It was no one’s fault; the horse had stepped in a hole and stumbled. Mrs. MacDonald sat with her all afternoon and calmly assured me “the child will be all right.” We had to get a message to my husband, in the harvest ﬁeld at Red Willow, and fortunately Mrs. MacDonald had a phone. It took the whole afternoon for him to get there. Then as soon as school was over we took Thelma Jo to the hospital in Galahad. She was released that evening, and pronounced none the worse. Ragnar Brynlund was a fourteen-year-old boy who lived with his aunt and uncle. He did not do well in school. He had never learned to read. During my ﬁrst year at Norway, he and I struggled with his reading but he made little progress. At that time we tested the children’s

eyes at school ourselves (there were no health nurses then), and I discovered Ragnar was almost blind. I went and talked the matter over with aunt and uncle; they were convinced and said they would get glasses for the boy as soon as they could scrape up the money. Ten dollars would be the cost. The day came when Ragnar came to school wearing his new glasses. He was thrilled with the way he could see and was always telling me of something he saw for the ﬁrst time. By the end of that term he was much improved in reading and was doing really well in school. He was so proud of his glasses and happy that he could see. When school started in September Ragnar had a story to tell me about his glasses. One Saturday uncle had sent him out to plough with a sulky plough. The sulky plough was a one-furrow plough pulled by two horses and with a seat so the driver could ride. The day was hot and ploughing was a boring job. There was little to do. The horses could do the job without a driver, except for turning at the end of the ﬁeld. The monotony caused Ragnar to fall asleep. When the horses stopped at the end of the ﬁeld, Ragnar woke up to ﬁnd that his precious glasses were gone, fallen oﬀ while he peacefully slept, slumped over in the big plough seat, and they were ploughed under. Although they turned back furrows for half a mile, they didn’t ﬁnd the lost glasses. All the rest of that summer Ragnar had gone without glasses, but before school started in the fall aunt and uncle had saved ten dollars again out of the meagre cream cheques to N O R WA Y S C H O O L

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The Sulky Plough. This was a step up from the walking plough, where the operator had to walk behind, pushing down on handles that kept the blade in the soil. On the Sulky, there was a comfortable seat, high above the ploughshare that turned the soil. Photo courtesy: The Reynolds-Alberta Museum, Wetaskiwin, Alberta.

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buy him another pair. You may be sure Ragnar took very good care of his second pair of glasses. I was feeling fairly experienced by that time, classes were going well, and I had developed some special methods of my own. I enjoyed teaching, especially history and geography of Canada. Composition was a favourite also; I encouraged the children to write stories, about anything, as long as they were writing. With every grade from I to X, except IV and VII, the days were full, and the evenings quite full also, with marking. Handwriting was in the curriculum. Before each writing lesson someone went around with the great quart bottle of ink, which had been made with the ink tablets provided by the Department of Education. They ﬁlled the empty ink wells, whether they were needing it or not. When all was ready the writing lesson began. Grade IV was the grade the course of study said to start children using pen and ink. Grade IV and on up took their writing lesson together. To practice they were provided with writing books. The lined pages were marked with a light horizontal line across the space between every two main lines to indicate where the top of letters like “a” should go, and that letters like “h” should reach above this line, and that letters like “p” should ﬁll only the lower space with the main stroke hanging down below the line. First came instructions on how to develop “free arm movement.” The student was to grasp the pen holder “gently,” and place his arm on the desk in such a way that N O R WA Y S C H O O L

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he could make a rolling motion resting the fat of his arm on the desk. Most of their arms were skinny; they had no fat to roll on so this was usually lost eﬀort. Then they had to make free arm circles two lines high, then one line high, and ﬁnally running circles all across the page. After this exercise they were to make even connected slightly slanted strokes across the line, ﬁrst one line high, then two lines high. Finally, they made rows of what looked like an endless “n” across the lower half of the line. Carefully dipping just the tip of the pen nib into the ink was too hard for small children, they invariably plunged their pens deep into the inkwell, getting ink on the cork end of the pen holder, and on their ﬁngers. Smooth paper scribblers to use with pen and ink were supplied for copying their best work. This was a timeconsuming and messy exercise, eventually discontinued, but I have often wondered if this practice was responsible for the beautiful script we see in museum records transcribed in early times, before the typewriter. A wonderful sense of fun was often evident in the community at Norway. Folks enjoyed themselves in those days, pulling elaborate pranks on each other for Hallowe’en or April Fool’s Day. With enormous energy more than once a wagon had been disassembled, parts hauled up to a rooftop, reassembled and tied down. What a sight for the owner to behold the next morning! Then of course there was always the “get even” prank. Norman Holt was a mink rancher. He had the misfortune 100

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to have two mink get out of the pen. He searched diligently for the valuable animals. Then he got an excited call from a neighbour: “Your mink are here! They were in the milk shed and we got them cornered and caught them. We’ve got them under a barrel!” So eager to catch the mink Norman never thought about the date, April 1. He rushed to the neighbour with his mink box and some netting, which he carefully placed over and all around the barrel they had placed upside-down on the grass. He was very excited and pleased. The neighbours formed a circle around to watch. When he was ready, he put on his mink-proof leather gloves and gently started to lift the edge of the barrel, slowly. Farther and farther he tipped the barrel; ﬁnally he was down on his knees looking up inside the barrel to see if the mink were stuck up there. Of course there were no mink, it was a “get even” prank. “April Fool!” By that time I had realized how many problems might turn up at school and it’s the teacher’s job to ﬁgure out what to do. A child could have a nosebleed, a crying spell, throw up, faint, break a bone. One day just when I thought there could be no more surprises, I was confronted by a little girl with face awash in tears, “My mitt fell down the toilet,” she wailed. “It’s the mitts Grandma made me!” More tears. Mitts were important. The school toilets were always “two-holers.” Obviously she had laid her mitt down on the seat and it got brushed aside, too far. N O R WA Y S C H O O L

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At ﬁrst I thought, well, that’s that. But then I looked at her teary face and I heard myself saying, “Don’t cry, we’ll think of something.” And we did. Out in the woodshed I found a splinter of board, it was long – kindling for the Waterbury! It even had a nail in one end. While its owner watched through the other hole with bated breath, I was able to reach down with the splinter and snag the mitt, and that’s one time I was thankful for 30 below weather. Everything down there was frozen hard as a rock. The grateful look on that little face made me glad I had made the eﬀort. Those were three memorable years at Norway and lasting friendships were formed, but change was in the air. In the spring of 1933 we moved from the farm at Red Willow to take up a homestead near Rocky Mountain House. Once again, I resigned.

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Site of Norway School in 1994. No childrens’ voices now, only the prairie wind. Norman Holt at the school gate.

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Students at Norway School DECEMBER 31, 1930

JUNE 30, 1930 Wayne Gaﬀney Walter Berg Nora Berg Sheila Holt Hazel Berg Ragnar Brynlund Jack McKay Norman Berg Irwin Berg Mary Johnson Isabel Archibald Helen Archibald Arthur Wold Ronald Teague Patrick Holt Norman Wold Ted Archibald

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I I II IV IV IV V V V VI VIII VIII VIII VIII IX IX IX

Bob Gaﬀney Wayne Gaﬀney Walter Berg Nora Berg Sheila Holt Ragnar Brynlund Hazel Berg Jack McKay Mary Johnson Norman Berg Arthur Wold Ronald Teague Norman Wold

I II II III V V V VI VI VI VIII IX X

DECEMBER 31, 1931

JUNE 30, 1931 Bob Gaﬀney Tommy Mundle Mary Mundle Wayne Gaﬀney Walter Berg Nora Berg Sheila Holt Ragnar Brynlund Hazel Berg Jack McKay Mary Johnson Norman Berg Arthur Wold Ronald Teague Norman Wold

I I I II II III V V V VI VI VI VIII IX X

Tommy Mundle Mary Mundle Bob Gaﬀney Wayne Gaﬀney Walter Berg Nora Berg Sheila Holt Ragnar Brynlund Hazel Berg Jack McKay Mary Johnson Norman Berg Arthur Wold

I I II IV IV IV VI VI VI VII VII VII IX

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Students at Norway School (con’t) JUNE 30, 1932 Mary Mundle Tommy Mundle Bob Gaﬀney Wayne Gaﬀney Walter Berg Nora Berg Ragnar Brynlund Sheila Holt Hazel Berg Mary Johnson Jack McKay Norman Berg Arthur Wold

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DECEMBER 31, 1932 I I II IV IV IV VI VI VI VII VII VII IX

Mary Mundle Tommy Mundle Thelma Jo Van Kleek Bob Gaﬀney Walter Berg Wayne Gaﬀney Nora Berg Sheila Holt Hazel Berg Mary Johnson Jack McKay Norman Berg

II II II III IV V V VII VII VIII VIII VIII

JUNE 30, 1933 Mary Mundle Tommy Mundle Thelma Jo Van Kleek Bob Gaﬀney Walter Berg Wayne Gaﬀney Nora Berg Sheila Holt Hazel Berg Mary Johnson Jack McKay Norman Berg

II II II IV IV V V VII VII VIII VIII VIII

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10: H ardindell School In the late summer of 1942, I went to the school oﬃce in Rocky Mountain House to see when our school, Hardindell, would start. I had a son who was ready for grade I. “It isn’t starting,” they said. “We have no teacher.” “Well then,” I said, “I will teach my son myself. I’m a teacher.” Right away they asked me to take the school. “I can’t,” I said. “My certiﬁcate has been cancelled, and besides, I have a three-year-old boy as well as the six-year-old.” Married women’s certiﬁcates had been cancelled at some time in the depression years of the thirties in order to give new young teachers a better chance at getting a job. The married women, older and more experienced, were getting hired before the younger ones. “The Alberta Government has reinstated all those cancelled certiﬁcates,” the superintendent told me, “and you can take your little boy with you to school.” Having had some early-life health problems, my little son still was not strong enough to be taken out to school every day, so I refused the oﬀer and went home. For two days I thought about this school needing a teacher, and I also thought about what the extra money could do for us. During those two days it poured rain and 109

the road to town was in deep mud. On the third day I had made up my mind I would take the school after all, so I went to town horseback through the twelve miles of mud and told them I would take the school if I was still needed. They said they hadn’t intended to take “No” for an answer. They said that if the roads had not been impassable the superintendent would have been out to our place with the contract. When I left town that day I had a job. That was the beginning of twenty-one consecutive years of teaching in diﬀerent schools all over the Rocky Mountain school division. My ﬁrst cheque was for $62.00! That was a lot of money. I didn’t take my son to school with me; a young girl in the neighbourhood, Lois King, had ﬁnished school and was available to stay with him. She received thirty-ﬁve cents a day, and her dinner, which was what she asked for. Later I raised it to ﬁfty cents a day. When spring came my husband decided that for the rest of that year he would take our son with him to his job at a nearby sawmill. His boss had agreed to this; it was a family operation and another child ﬁtted in ﬁne. I found it wasn’t that hard getting “back into harness.” In fact it was quite exciting to make the ﬁnal arrangements and resume my career. The school division secretary was Jack Stronach, and he was always helpful and in good humour.<EVK-14> The supplies were sent out and I went to unpack and arrange the schoolroom. Supplies were never a problem. Everything needed would be there, the teacher who was 110

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Hardindell School Class of 1943. Outside for calisthenics.

there the last year having turned in a list of prospective students and their grades, also a notation of anything else needed, such as a new baseball and bat, perhaps a skipping rope, or new broom, water pail, or wash basin. A ﬁxture on the teacher’s desk, not often having to be replaced, was the school bell, which of course lasted forever. It would be a good-sized brass handbell that could produce a loud sound. At the beginning of school and whenever students needed to be brought in from playing outside, the teacher would lean out the door, bell in hand, and ring a few times. That would bring the students on the run. One other item supplied but not often having to be replaced was the “strap.” This was standard. It was kept in one of the teacher’s drawers, the “strap drawer,” and it H A R DI N D E L S C H O O L

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was expected it would be used. The strap was just cut from a piece of machine belting, about three inches wide and fourteen inches long. The belting was extremely ﬁrm, and not smooth, having a bit of a grain or weave on one side – the business side. Most of the time it wasn’t used that often but would be brought out for punishment of certain fairly serious oﬀences, such as major disturbance in the classroom, pranks that caused more serious destruction than could be tolerated, or “sassing” the teacher. In the worst cases, such as damaging property, when no one would confess and no one would tell, there could be a group strapping to put an end to the whole thing. The strap was usually administered after dismissal of the rest of the class. The culprit was required to stand in front of the teacher, holding out both hands, palm up. The number of strokes to each hand would have been decided upon and made known to the student, and when all was ready the teacher, grasping the strap at one end, would raise it high and bring it down “crack!” on an extended palm. The force applied was related to the frustration caused by the whole disturbance. If the student tried to spoil the aim by pulling back, most teachers would promptly add to the planned number of strokes to each hand. Strapping completed, the student, dismissed, might ﬁnd a few anxious friends loitering in the schoolyard and, having a certain status now, the strapped one could swagger forth with quite a bit of bravado. “Did it hurt?” “Naw. Hardly felt it.” 112

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There was the odd family where nothing would be said at home about the strapping because if it was mentioned there would be more punishment at home. I actually did use the strap once. An older boy from the district had been spending time in what would later be called a remand centre. It was a mistake to send him home with the expectation that he would now go to school peaceably. The ﬁrst day he came (and I had not been pre-warned), he caused a great deal of trouble, completely refusing to sit down, or take part in anything; he just walked back and forth disturbing everybody, swearing, threatening, throwing all the coats onto the ﬂoor. The children just sat staring; no one knew what to do. He deﬁed me; I said if you don’t behave I’ll call the police! (I had no phone.) He was way bigger than any of us. Finally when he came belligerently up to the desk, I said to him, “You’re getting the strap. Hold out your hand.” He did. I think, maybe, considering my size, he didn’t think this was a very serious threat, but I gave him what I thought he needed, and he left. I was shaking for a long time after. I had been secretly praying that if things got very much worse the big boys in class would come to my rescue, but thankfully the situation ended abruptly. He did get taken back to the institution. I never knew if they were ever able to help him. The above incident did not take place that soon after my return to work in 1942, but after I had quite a few more years under my belt. H A R DI N D E L S C H O O L

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At that time, the idea of having transportation for school children was beginning to take shape. There were already some “consolidated” schools that had developed a bus system, but money was a big problem. At Hardindell there were children who had several miles to go. The family furthest away was the King family, ﬁve miles from school. The school board asked Mr. King if he would drive a school bus, provided he could ﬁnd some vehicle he could aﬀord. He purchased an old Model T Ford for $65.00 and the school board agreed to pay him $2.00 per day. He had to pay for his own gas and repairs, but of course he was allowed extra gas coupons; this was still in the war years and gas was rationed. He said that at least he got his children to school (and incidentally me and my grade I son). When I agreed to teach Hardindell, of course I realized I would have to ride this “bus.” The roads were muddy in the fall and when we got stuck, which happened often, everybody got out, including me, and pushed. The Model T was easy to push, we could just about carry it. What a challenge the roads were in those days! Rain fell plentifully and often; getting anywhere could be diﬃcult; getting home again worse as the day’s traﬃc deepened the mudholes. On approaching a bad mudhole, the driver would stop, get out and try to assess the depth of the mud, and which would be the best way through. Sometimes the only way to proceed was to cut down trees and lay them close together across the mudhole. We called it “corduroying.” Sometimes there were piles of slabs (bark-covered ﬁrst cuts 114

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from logs) left at the edge of the road for corduroying at the worst spots. Winter came and with it lots of snow, and rather than struggle any longer with the car, Mr. King decided to hitch up two old horses, “Tom,” and “Tony,” who were each pushing thirty years of age, to a contraption something like a small boxcar with a canvas covered roof and benches along the sides. It rode on either runners or wheels, so it was “all season.” It was slow going for the old horses, we had to be ready at our gate at 7:30 a.m. By that time Tom and Tony had paced oﬀ a mile and for the remaining four miles, the pace became slower and slower. When the school day ended we left immediately; there was never any time to work in the school. We wouldn’t get home until ﬁve o’clock. When the days were long at least I could do marking on the way home, but in December and January of that year I left for school in the dark and came home in the dark. There were students who came from the lower Cow Creek area straight west of Hardindell, and for them there was another bus driven by Don Sinclair. He had an old sedan. The two bus drivers stayed all day; when travel is that much of an eﬀort, you don’t go home and come back at the end of the school day. They adapted a small shelter that was a little way down the road and put a heater in it. They had their lunches with them and spent most of the days there, playing cards and telling stories. H A R DI N D E L S C H O O L

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We still had our skis, which we had gotten used to during our life at Norway School. I decided to add skiing to the curriculum. On a perfect fresh “powder” day I brought my skis and we all went to the Engens’ ﬁeld behind the school. There was a gently sloping gully, smooth and clear. One at a time, every child tried the skis. They patiently waited their turn until everyone had a taste of skiing. After skiing, there was cocoa. There was always cocoa, in every rural school district there were lots of cows milked, and parents took turns sending milk, which would be heated on the school stove by setting the container in a pan of water. The school board supplied cocoa and sugar coupons during wartime rationing. The Christmas concert was a fun time. I was excited to get out all my resources and start the practices. One day I had the students lined up in a circle around the room, between the rows of desks, endeavouring to get them to march like wooden soldiers to go with the music to March of the Wooden Soldiers. I was in the lead, demonstrating the stiﬀ arms and legs they should display as I led them around the room, exaggerating the stiﬀ part. We didn’t even notice the door had opened at ﬁrst, then we realized the superintendent was standing there watching. I just said, “Take your seats. We’ll practice another time.” The year at Hardindell passed all too quickly. I still liked teaching. I found there had not been that much curriculum change and I got along ﬁne with the full grade load. 116

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The winter highlight was of course the Christmas concert. On concert night the whole community was there. Santa Claus did not disappoint, every child went home with a gift and a candy bag. Soon it was spring and the ball games started, ending with the big picnic and sports day. Children vied for prizes in high jump, long jump, triple jump, and in all kinds of races, ﬁfty-yard dash, one-hundred-yard dash, wheelbarrow race, sack race, three-legged race. There would be a ball game to end the afternoon, and of course there would be lots of food, and if we were lucky, ice cream. Like the concert, the spring picnic was a whole community event. By the time the summer holidays began, I had made plans not to continue at Hardindell; the transportation was just too hard. I resolved to look for another school. I had made other plans too; that summer of 1943 I attended summer school sessions to upgrade my certiﬁcate.

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Hardindell students, 1942: Gladys Holgerson, Ina Sinclair, Ellen Sinclair, Violet Engen, Beth Sinclair, Gladys Engen, Dina McDonald, Lawrence Stewart, Russel Anderson, Audrey Girard, Lloyd King, Bobby Van Kleek, Charlie Glasier, Johnny Creighton, Kenny Glasier, Arnold Rodtka, George Creighton, John Sinclair. Missing: Joe Crutchﬁeld, Donald McKee.

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Students at H ardindell School JUNE 30, 1943 John Sinclair Audrey Girard Dina McDonald Russel Anderson Bobby Van Kleek Johnny Creighton Beth Sinclair Ellen Sinclair Arnold Rodtka George Creighton Kenneth Glasier Lloyd King Lawrence Stewart Ina Sinclair Joe Crutchﬁeld Gladys Holgerson Violet Engen Charles Glasier Donald McKee Gladys Engen

I I II II II II III III III III III IV IV IV V VI VI VII VIII IX

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11: Glacier School Glacier School had been closed during the early years of World War II, as there was no teacher available. They had been getting along with correspondence lessons. I felt that was the place for me and my application was accepted. Someone in the early days had thought that the huge build-up of ice on Prairie Creek where it ran near the school was like a glacier, and that’s what they named the school. Glacier was the most hard-to-get-to school I ever taught. There was isolation pay for this job, a bonus of $150.00 a year added to my salary of $1,000. The ﬁrst time we went out to look at the place we found a huge wasp’s nest built right over the school doorknob, and inside the school lots of bats. The wasps we removed, but they were back the next week with their building done again, so they had to be disposed of. The bats were not so easy; they ﬁnally did relegate themselves to the bush at the back and didn’t bother us too much; anyway, we were comforted by knowing that they were eating lots of mosquitos. There was a teacherage, it had been built by and was still owned by the former teacher; she and her husband ran a small sawmill. With permission from the school board they had built the small teacherage with their own lumber. It was warm, insulated with shavings from the planing mill 121

in town, which were free. The outside was covered with tar paper, the inside papered with building paper, and on the roof was heavy rooﬁng tar paper. The ﬂoor was the only planed lumber in the building; all the rest was rough lumber. There was a kitchen stove, a bed, and a nice rocker, padded and comfortable. There was a heater made from a ﬁfteengallon oil drum, home-made table, and benches. I was able to buy all this for $100. We added a couch, radio, gas lamp, and a paige wire6 cover over the large low bedroom window for protection from animals. It was quite a satisfactory home during the week for me and my two sons. There was plenty of ﬁrewood supplied, and split, for the three stoves. In the school the stove was an upright barrel stove, not the usual Waterbury furnace. It was in the middle of the room, I guess it was supposed to make the heat circulate more evenly throughout the room. A very long string of pipes lead to the chimney. We had decided that both boys would come to school with me, Bob now in grade II and Don, four years old. We got settled in the teacherage and organized to spend the year. We had everything we needed, even fresh milk, which was available from a neighbour a short distance north. It would be a job for my eight-year-old to go for the milk each day. It was ten cents for a ﬁve-pound lard pail full. We were told to always listen before he left to see if we could hear the cow bells; if they sounded close he should wait as there was a bull with the cows and he could be dangerous. 122

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Instead of the usual Waterbury furnace, Glacier School was provided with a “barrel heater” in the centre of the room, ﬁtted with a very long string of pipes to reach the chimney.

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The reason for the bonus for this job was that the road in to the school oﬀ the main road was impassable for much of the spring and fall. Two big sloughs would form across the road allowance during spring run-oﬀ and the seemingly ever-lasting fall rains, and it would become necessary to leave one’s vehicle and walk around these sloughs, negotiating two barbed wire fences. It meant crawling through a fence four times on a trip in and out. Everything had to be carried the last half-mile to the school and back out again. That’s the way that at least one spring the superintendent made his visit to the school, walking that last half-mile and crawling through the fences, carrying his briefcase. Knowing what was ahead, and while it was dry in late August, we brought in a good supply of canned goods and, in covered tins or jars, dry staples so we would only have to bring fresh food each week. All too soon the road in became ﬂooded, as promised! We managed on Sunday afternoons to get ourselves to school, with my husband’s help of course. We took a child’s sled loaded with an apple box of supplies to drag along when we came to the detours. Everybody had to carry something, or pull the sled and carry something. Sometimes my youngest boy, Don, had to get carried himself, on my husband’s shoulders. I had my same old haversack, bursting at the seams, over my shoulder. In a few weeks the rain stopped; the sloughs drained enough, or froze enough, to drive over for the rest of the winter. 124

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I had left Hardindell because of the lengthy travel time to and from school; one might think that at least it would be better than climbing through fences and walking the last part of the way, but the fact was that I liked teacherage life. I could get settled for a whole week and concentrate on the lessons and marking in a way that would not be possible if I went home every night. The weekends at home were free for other activities; I never had to take school work home. The road southwest of Rocky made a big loop through the districts. After crossing the Clearwater River four miles south of Rocky there was a junction. Staying on the east side, the road continued about another six miles south past Everdell School. Then it turned west and a few miles on was the turn-oﬀ from the main road to go a mile further south to isolated Glacier School, in a clearing on the edge of a heavily forested area. The main road continued west through the Prairie Creek district, past Strachan, eventually turning northeast on the way back to Rocky, passing Hardindell on the way and rejoining the south-bound road at the junction. In the fall and spring, to save time and many miles, we walked from the school at 3:30 on Friday afternoons, out to the road, then followed the “Lisch Trail” across a vacant quarter section, and part of the next section which bordered our farm in the Hardindell district, thereby cutting almost across the loop. Meanwhile my husband would drive from the mill where he worked and meet us at our farm fence at our agreed-upon time. GL ACIER SCHOOL

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The horse trail that we followed across the quartersection had deteriorated into just a path, but it was still called the “Lisch Trail.” Long before, Mr. Lisch had ﬁled on a homestead and built a cabin, but alas before the realization of very much of his dream he died, and no one had ever taken over. Those were real nature walks across the Lisch Trail in the spring and fall of that year. There were so many birds, and we saw deer all the time, and often a moose, lumbering along. Once we heard the cry of a lynx, which I knew from my time up north. Fortunately we never saw a bear, but I thought I detected bear smell more than once, a skill acquired, again, up north. That was a great year at Glacier. Life was a little harder there, but there were so many helping hands. Young mothers, capable and strong, would always come to help if we had a special event. That Christmas I asked the children what they would think about having a big Christmas dinner for everyone instead of the program. They all went for the idea and almost before I knew it there were roasted and stuﬀed chickens promised, sometimes two from a big family, gravy, mashed potatoes, and all kinds of other vegetables, and wild blueberry pies with whipped cream. Some mothers would bring home-made buns and butter. I said I would provide coﬀee and an enamelled dishpan full of Jell-o with fruit, which my family would bring from town. 126

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At noon on the big day the children went home to get ready for dinner. Later, pots of vegetables started appearing from every direction and were soon cooking on the teacherage stove, or kept warm in the oven or on top of the school stove, all looked after by the moms. Everything was going wonderfully well when suddenly there was a little unplanned excitement! In the stove in the teacherage a roaring ﬁre had been kept going to get all those pots of food cooking. Suddenly I realized I was hearing a roar in the stove pipe, I knew that sound – chimney ﬁre! I went outside and looked; sure enough ﬂames were shooting out of the stove pipe. A chimney ﬁre would start when enough soot collected in the pipe and got over-heated from hot ﬁre below. We called it a chimney ﬁre but we had only stove pipes. The pipe was soon red. I grabbed the salt and threw a handful into the ﬁre box, no result – that was the wrong thing! Water would put out the ﬁre. Cup-fulls of water thrown into the ﬁre box would cause steam to rise in the pipe, which would put out the ﬁre. We carefully threw in just the right amount of water, the challenge was to put just enough water on the ﬁre to cause steam, but not to slow the ﬁre too much. It worked! The ﬁre in the pipe went out, the pipe cooled, the moms built up the cook stove ﬁre again and kept cooking. More people came, bringing their pies, cream, cranberries, and pickles. At four another crew brought the roasters of chicken, dressing, and jam pails of gravy, milk, GL ACIER SCHOOL

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and card tables. How they arranged all this coming and going I never knew; they had no phones and no one had more than one vehicle. The men came and with marvellous ease found heavy planks and placed them from desk to desk for more seating, and they ﬁxed someplace to set out the food. Others helped mash potatoes and kept the Dover beaters7 going steady in the teacherage to get all the cream whipped, which was then set out in the snow and covered with tubs or pails. “Many hands make light work,” I always said. Everyone had brought their own plates, cutlery, and cups. When all was ready, the entire community loaded their plates, buﬀet style, and sat down to eat. Every last person had come. The food was delicious and plentiful; lots of trips were made back to the pots for seconds. Just as everyone was ﬁnished eating who should appear but Santa! The Christmas tree was unloaded and every child received a gift and a candy bag. What a success! Then it was over, and everything and everyone disappeared back into the winter evening. They had to get home to milk. When there was a program at 7 p.m. they had to milk ﬁrst and then come and spend the evening. The cows always needed to be milked at the same time, or close as possible, every morning and night. All my life I have been a bird watcher. I have found that most children, even if they have not given birds too much thought before, become avid bird watchers after a little encouragement. Children in the country who walked or rode 128

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to school horseback had a special opportunity to observe birds and the Glacier children were exceptionally good at that. With their sharp eyes they spotted everything. I kept the bird book handy and a space saved on the blackboard for children to record what they had seen on their way to school. They would rush in grab my Birds of Alberta by Salt and Wilk, and page through until they found their bird to record. In the fall they saw the regulars, migrating grosbeaks with their brilliant reds and yellows, cedar waxwings, gray juncos, and all winter the hairy and downy woodpeckers, the cheerful chickadees, and sparrows. Cyril and Ronald walked three miles through heavy bush; they saw piliated woodpeckers with their big red topknots, and a couple of times an eagle sitting on the very top of a tall tree. When spring came the bush was alive with birds; they ﬂuttered in the trees like leaves and ﬁlled the air with birdsong. The students learned the markings of the many diﬀerent yellow warblers and ﬁnches, and they learned how important these insect-eating birds are. The most energetic singer is the mother wren; she never stops singing for a moment – until her eggs hatch. Then you never hear another peep out of her because it’s feeding time, non-stop, and she can’t sing with her mouth full of food for her chicks! The children identiﬁed over thirty birds, including many little grey birds. One by one they all got separated and named. All schools belonged at that time to the Audubon Club, and we wrote them a letter suggesting that a campaign should GL ACIER SCHOOL

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begin against the English sparrows, as they were increasing all the time in more populated areas, at the expense of other birds. The reply we got was: “City children would never see a bird if English sparrows weren’t around!” A little chipping sparrow built a nest in a bush outside the window of the teacherage and used to sit on a twig close to the glass and sing. One day as I stood by the window I spotted the rare purple ﬁnch, the only one I ever saw. The day we saw a yellow-headed blackbird was a memorable one, as they are not native to the bush country. Neither is the meadowlark, with its soul-lifting morning song. I had to just tell the children about that one and show the picture. Sally came past sloughs and stopped to look at the swimmers and waders; with her sharp eyes she identiﬁed many to add to our list. She even saw the rare harlequin duck. One day Lorne came to school carrying a beautiful Mallard duck with an injured wing. We found a piece of chicken wire (woven wire with openings too small for a chicken to escape through) on the trash pile and made a pen for him. It was Tuesday and we kept him until Friday afternoon. Lorne brought him a pan of bugs and grass in slough water next day but we didn’t see him eat, but we thought he drank at least. His wing wasn’t really broken and it healed some during his stay with us. On Friday afternoon with all of us along, Lorne carried him down to Prairie Creek and put him gently into the water. Everyone was happy to see him swim across the creek and settle in 130

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some bushes. As it was spring he had all summer to heal and would be able to ﬂy by fall. I had signed a contract for only one year at Glacier, so at the end of June it was time to move again. There were two moves actually, in that summer of 1944 we moved into Rocky Mountain House and rented the farm.

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12: Clearwater River School My new school was twelve miles south and a little east of Rocky Mountain House. The Clearwater area had been settled for quite a long time so everyone was quite wellestablished. It was an easy school, only thirteen students counting my own two boys, and no grade IX until the next year. There wasn’t a teacherage; former teachers had boarded with a family nearby, but that was no longer available, and wouldn’t have been suitable anyway, as there were three of us. To solve the problem, we bought a “tar paper shack” from a bush camp. Although not beautiful on the outside, this made a very satisfactory home away from home for us. We lined the inside with building paper and leftover wallpaper. A heater and cook stove, table, chairs, a bed, and a pull-out couch completed the furnishing. There was outdoor plumbing, of course, which we were used to. We always did like the camping atmosphere. My oldest boy came with me for one more year, the youngest for two more years. We moved out to the school every Sunday evening in our old Buick, my husband, Carl, would go back into town to his job and come back for us Friday after six. I was surprised to ﬁnd that there was no playground equipment except a high swing frame with no rope. Their 133

equipment had worn out during the thirties and there had never been enough money to get replacements. In 1945 money was no longer such a problem. I thought this should be a priority and the school board was most cooperative. We soon got the necessary rope, and see-saw planks, and the big boys installed them. One of the fathers, who had taken a physical training course in Germany, oﬀered to install two horizontal bars, one for the boys and one for the girls, and also oﬀered to demonstrate their use. Even the smallest girls learned to chin themselves and skin the cat. Everyone spent recesses and noon out of doors in the fresh air, now that they had something to play with. We also got a merry-go-round. This was all ﬁne in warm weather, but when cold weather came the big boys got an idea. They wanted to make a slide using green trees for posts and sides, and material from an old collapsed building in the bush behind the school for the rest. How they worked! With someone’s post auger from home they dug holes and set in four tall green trees for the frame and shorter trees down both sides of the slide, connecting them with strong green poles, using hammer and spikes from home. A bucket or two of water down each hole soon meant the tree poles were ﬁrmly frozen in. Scrap two-by-fours made a good ladder up the back, and they ﬂoored the landing and the slide with strong green poles over which they put a smooth ﬂoor of boards from the old shack. There was a big snowstorm just as they ﬁnished. 134

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There always was lots of snow! The children had all brought collapsed cardboard boxes to use for sleds, taking them into the school to dry oﬀ after use. Their slide was really a success, strong, safe, and fun! They kept pouring a little water down from the top every day at last recess, so it would freeze, and eventually they built up a layer of ice. They played on the slide all winter, every recess and noon, no matter what the weather, and came into the school with cheeks red and eyes shining, ready to settle down to study. They even persuaded me to have a ride down their slide, but I didn’t go a second time; it was too fast for me! One thing about moving to a diﬀerent school that was a plus, all the Christmas concert material that I had was new again! Out came my plays, drills, and poems and we had good programs. I had one drill I called “The Star Drill.” A pole supported by a stand had diﬀerent colours of crepe-paper streamers attached and a star at the top. Eight children would each take a streamer, and while I played the march that went along with it on the organ, the children circled the pole in a certain pattern, weaving the streamers together into a design ﬁrst, then reversing so the streamers were all separate again at the end. It was quite impressive! I always liked to think of something diﬀerent for a social activity and some fun at school, on special occasions. Teachers are expected to organize a couple of parties each year. It’s important for the children to have fun together. At Easter time, 1945, I said, “Let’s have a cake party on the C L E A R WA T E R R I V E R S C H O O L

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last day before the Easter holiday. We’ll have a big cake with lots of icing.” It was wartime, and rationing of many staples, including sugar, had been in force for years, so people made do with much less. We made “Canada war cake,” economy cake, sugarless prune cake, and baking sweetened with honey. We were used to it but often thought about the pre-war days when we didn’t have to scrimp. The school board at the time provided sugar coupons for the schools so they could still have their cocoa. As Easter drew near I made sure I had a cupful of sugar left in the school sugar bag. Others contributed. If the adults did not take sugar in coﬀee, or if the spirit moved them to quit taking sugar, it was possible to save quite a bit. Word got around the community about the cake party. It was agreed that the acknowledged best baker in the community would bake the cake. She said she would, and she would make a double size. With the extra sugar collected she would make boiled icing, she said. Party day arrived. The cake, which was a wonder to behold, was displayed on my desk. There were only thirteen pupils, but on special party days the children were allowed to bring their small brothers and sisters. Moms and the little ones and of course the lady who made the cake were all there. Lots of people made it a real party atmosphere. The moms helped with games and there was lots of laughing and running and noise. Then everybody settled down; it was time for the cake. 136

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With hands washed clean the children gathered around to watch the cutting. The extra children were counted and a wedge cut for everybody. It was a layer cake, with three layers and icing in between and on top. The wedges of cake were laid on pieces of newsprint on the desks; there was hot cocoa ready, and everybody enjoyed the treat! There were times during the war that candy and treats were hard to ﬁnd; I bought my boys Smith Brothers cough drops one time and they thought that was candy. As it turned out, the very next month the war was over; no more rationing. We had all the usual parties in my schools, but sometimes a bit extra as I would think of something I wanted the children to experience. Some things worked out better than others. A couple of times in later years I decided I wanted the children to have a taﬀy pull. In small schools it’s manageable. Each child gets some taﬀy in a dish; sometimes they start too soon, getting a bit burned in the process. Sometimes they get their taﬀy stuck to other things, or dropped on the ﬂoor. But sometimes they pull long enough to produce smooth braids of delicious taﬀy. Another time I wanted the children to have a nice punch at their party, properly made, in a dispenser. These were children who didn’t get too many treats, and most likely never pop then like they had later. My punch was a great success; they could barely control themselves, bumping each other and crowding and spilling as they pressed the button C L E A R WA T E R R I V E R S C H O O L

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to ﬁll their glasses. So much got spilled – but there was lots and they learned that, if we cooperate, there is enough for everybody. That spring a new superintendent came to visit Clearwater. He demanded to know what that ugly contraption in the schoolyard was and said that it was an eyesore to the passing public and must be torn down at once and the material taken away. It was spring anyway so the boys willingly tore their slide apart and took all the boards and poles back to the bush, leaving the schoolyard tidy. The spring of 1945 had been a terrible year for mosquitos. We had to have the door open in the warm spring weather and sometimes the mosquitos swarmed in through the door in such droves we had to start a smudge in the stove and put up with some smoke rather than the clouds of mosquitos. The girls wrapped their legs in newspapers inside their stockings sometimes; no pants were worn then. The school board provided a little hand pump and some “Flytox,” which was used at that time, but it was ineﬀective. I had read that a coating of oil on the water where mosquitos were breeding would drown mosquitos at the pupa stage so that next spring I decided to try it. There was just one slough behind the school. I brought a gallon of used car oil from home and the boys dumped it in several places around the slough. The breeze spread it all over. It worked! There were almost no mosquitos the second year, but better still it was a good science experiment. The 138

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children really enjoyed learning the metamorphosis of the mosquito, looking up and drawing enlarged pictures of the mosquito in the diﬀerent stages of development, egg, larvae, (wiggler) pupa, and adult, and how the pupa hooked itself to the surface of the water to breath and how the oil interfered and killed them. Of course the ideal conditions there were responsible for our success as there was only the one slough. I’ve also heard that wind ruﬄing the surface of the water will dislodge the pupa from its hold at the surface and drown them, but nature doesn’t always cooperate. I always had the children “look it up.” There were good atlases and my World Book Encyclopedia in the classroom, and when they asked me a question about anything, really they knew before they asked that I was going to say, “look it up,” and they would sigh and go for the books. There were good history books in the school, and of course a wellworn dictionary. Whenever anyone brought a question to school, about something they had heard elsewhere, I would say, “Let’s see what we can ﬁnd out about that.” I tried to turn out students who had a lot of general knowledge and knew how to research and think on their own. I always had a consuming desire myself to ﬁnd out about things, and I tried to instill that in the children, hoping they would get to love learning, about anything, as much as I did. The children lamented the loss of the wonderful slide when winter came. I suggested a skating rink as there was C L E A R WA T E R R I V E R S C H O O L

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a good well. I got the road scraper to prepare a ﬂat place just downhill from the well and pack the edges with snow. Everyone helped pump water to ﬂood it whenever needed. Taking turns keeping the pump going and with a bucket brigade, it was surprising what the children could do. They even built a contraption to clean the snow oﬀ the ice. They all had skates, or bought skates, and the other two years I was there they had as much fun with their rink as they did with their slide. On the last day of June of my third year at Clearwater, we had an ice cream party. It was the mothers’ idea. They brought two big ice cream freezers, thick country cream, and all the ingredients including ice. They made all the ice cream the kids could eat. There was cake to go with it and nobody got sick from eating too much. I was stunned to see the quantity those big boys could pack away, but – their mothers gave it to them! It happened to be a very hot day, we had the party in the shade of the big trees behind the school. The kids said it was the best party we ever had. I would have stayed at Clearwater as long as the opportunity was there, but plans to consolidate were underway, and Clearwater was a small school. As it turned out though, it did not close for a few more years. When it did, the school was taken over by the community group to use as a centre for social activities and meetings. They also took over the skating rink the children had made. 140

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They enlarged it, ﬂooded it with a pump truck, and the whole community skated there. They built a shelter with a stove in it so they could make coﬀee and hot chocolate, and warm up. They even put on an ice carnival, complete with queen and attendants. So the children left their legacy!

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Students at Clearwater River School FEBRUARY 28, 1945 Emily Periche Mary Schafer John Rauch Harold Sawyer Helen Edmonds Warner Rauch Elsie Buck Joan Periche Bobby Van Kleek Stuart Scott Evelyn Rauch Donald Buck Donald Bert

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DECEMBER 31, 1945 II II II II III III III III III VI VII VII VIII

Edith Buck Otto Rauch Donnie Van Kleek Emily Periche John Rauch Helen Edmonds Elsie Buck Warner Rauch Joan Periche Mary Schafer Boyd Elliott Stuart Scott Evelyn Rauch Donald Buck Cyril Lund Donald Bert

I I I III III IV IV IV IV IV IV VII VIII VIII VIII IX

JULY 6, 1946 Edith Buck Otto Rauch Donnie Van Kleek James Watkins John Rauch Ellen Watkins Emily Periche Helen Edmonds Elsie Buck Warner Rauch Joan Periche Mary Schafer Gwen Watkins Myrtle Watkins Stuart Scott Evelyn Rauch Donald Buck Cyril Lund Nona Knorr Donald Bert

I I I II III III III IV IV IV IV IV VI VI VII VIII VIII VIII VIII IX

DECEMBER 31, 1946 & JUNE 1947 Ronald Lund Audrey Nichol Edith Buck Otto Rauch Donnie Van Kleek Harold Sawyer* Emily Periche John Rauch Helen Edmonds Elsie Buck Warner Rauch Joan Periche Mary Schafer Morris Schmelzer Stuart Scott Nona Knorr Evelyn Rauch Cyril Lund Donald Buck

I II II II II IV IV IV V V V V V VI VIII IX IX IX IX

* By June 1947 Harold Sawyer had moved away. C L E A R WA T E R R I V E R S C H O O L

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13: Arbutus School In the fall of 1947 I started teaching at Arbutus. I wondered where the name for this school came from and I found it was suggested by Mr. Conley, an early pioneer whose home province was New Brunswick. The beautiful ﬂowering vine “trailing arbutus” grows there. Arbutus teachers before me had taken the Red Deer bus out of Rocky in the mornings, getting oﬀ at the Arbutus corner and walking a mile to school, then catching the same bus after school for the ride back. They had to leave very early in the morning and in the darkest months it was necessary to carry a lantern for the walk, and also to see to light the ﬁre in the dark school. I didn’t have to take the big bus. The year I started at Arbutus a school bus began to make a trip to Alhambra to pick up students for high school. I rode with Bernice von Hollen who drove one of these buses and she left later so I never had to take a lantern. Bernice picked me up at my house in town. Her bus was a half-ton truck, with the back roofed over and benches down each side for students’ seating. I sat in the front with Bernice. Vehicles like this were common forerunners of the big yellow school buses to come later. I got oﬀ at the Arbutus corner and walked a mile south to the school. 145

I went to school this way for two years. I didn’t mind the walk in, except when the road would get so muddy I had to wear high rubber boots. In the winter there were sometimes deep drifts. When I anticipated a drifted-in road, which happened several times, I took my skis and poles, tucked in the back under the seats. With Arbutus School, class of 1949. my haversack on my back I could ski over the snow for the mile in to the school and it was actually enjoyable. The third year I was at that school the bus route changed in order to pick up Arbutus high school students so I got a ride right to the school. In good weather I occasionally skipped the bus and took the old Buick we had to school so I could do some special work in the classroom after 3:30. How fortunate that was one day when there was a playground accident! 146

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Arbutus School and the “Side Swing.”

Many schools at that time did not have very much for playground equipment because all through the war years there had been no money or time to keep equipment up to date. At Arbutus there was only a “side swing,” which consisted of a long heavy plank suspended in a frame that allowed it to swing back and forth. They were popular because so many children could get on at once. The object was to see how high you could get with a big load. It was A R BU T U S S C H O O L

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lots of fun, but I was worried about someone on the ground getting too close to the end of the plank as it swung out. It happened just as I feared the third year I was there; little Bertha Larson, six years old, got the end of the plank right in the mouth, knocking out several teeth and bruising her mouth terribly. What a lot of blood! Fortunately I could drive her home. It was last recess, I dismissed all the others and with the help of a grade VI girl who held a roll of toilet paper to Bertha’s mouth we got her home. Her family took her to the doctor at once. As it was her baby teeth that were knocked out, in a few months she was back to normal with a ﬁne set of new teeth. Arbour Day came at Arbutus School and, like all schools, we were expected to do something to improve the schoolyard. As there were no trees in the yard, we decided to plant some. We chose the number three while joking about the little song, The Three Trees. The big boys again did most of the work. First they dug three holes, each the size of a small washtub in a carefully selected spot. Then oﬀ to the bush on the adjoining farm we all went where everyone helped select the three trees. We had been given permission to take whatever we wanted. The children chose a spruce, a poplar, and a balm of Gilead, each about eight feet high. The boys worked very hard digging around and under them. There was a good clay content in the soil, and plenty of moisture so lots of soil stayed on the roots. It was a heavy job carrying the trees to the school, with all the dirt on the roots. The boys carried the butt end; 148

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then eager children, as many as could get a hand hold, took turns and tried to hold up the rest of the tree. The boys had to make three trips; the younger children couldn’t carry the heavy ends. Eventually we had all the trees in place ready to plant. Excitement built as they were set in the ground, the boys shovelling in and packing soil, and everyone else saying when the tree was straight. There was a good well and lots of water, and the children set up a bucket brigade to make sure the trees were well watered in. Of all the school wells that I knew of, this one was the hardest to pump. You had to be able to reach high up to grip the handle, and it required many “dry” strokes ﬁrst before any water came up. Hard work, but the older children managed the pump, and the younger ones, two to a bucket, carried water to the trees. Trees were never more carefully looked after than those, and did they grow, year after year! I saw them many years later, long after the students were bussed to town. They were tall and beautiful. Since a skating rink had proved so successful at my last school, we did the same thing here, but it was a little smaller. Nevertheless, it was the source of much enjoyment. I always brought music into the activities as much as I could. The country students couldn’t be involved in the various organizations of their peers in town because of transportation diﬃculties, but I felt I could give them some advantages. I never wanted to miss an opportunity to help any child develop musical talent; my own oldest son became A R BU T U S S C H O O L

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a musician because we made an eﬀort to take advantage of whatever opportunity presented. Children love to sing and in all my schools music was taught the required number of minutes each week, in two classes, junior and senior. They learned the names of the notes, how to count time, and what all the diﬀerent notations on a sheet of music mean. I took my guitar to school and showed the children the simple method of chording to their singing using the Hawaiian style with the steel bar. They really fell for it! In a short time noon hours and recesses rang with the sound of music, Red River Valley, On Top of Old Smokey, Springtime in the Rockies, You Are My Sunshine, and many others. I was so pleased they learned so quickly I left the guitar available on top of an unused desk and they made good use of it. It got so it went out of tune quickly but that was all right; they learned to tune. We had wonderful Friday sing-songs. Two gifted sisters sang so nicely in harmony that I took them to the festival in town. At another school two boys learned to play their own guitars. They brought them to school and learned to play Hawaiian, and then they accompanied the singing. I never wanted to miss even the slightest opportunity to encourage children in music. You never know what talent is there, and it can so easily be overlooked or crowded out by other things. If someone says “I can’t sing,” or “I can’t play any instrument,” I never wanted to just let it drop, I would say, “you mean you haven’t sung yet.” 150

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It had become my custom to involve the whole school in a nature walk, at least once in spring and once in fall. One spring at Arbutus two brothers, Dale and Alvin, were our leaders on our walk. They knew where there was a patch of lady’s slippers, even then they were so rare. Most of the children had never seen a lady’s slipper and it was possible they never would unless they saw these. When a hike was being discussed Dale said he knew where there was a squirrel nest with young in it, and near this squirrel home was a chickadee’s tiny nest in a hole in an old stump. So away we all went a half-mile away to a wild section of uncultivated land near the river. Alvin took us straight to the patch of lady’s slippers. It was about three feet across and had dozens of beautiful blooms. We all sat down on the ground in a circle around the precious plants and looked at them and talked about them being the beautiful wild orchids of the temperate zone, with their pouch-shaped lip that looks something like a moccasin. Moccasin ﬂower is another name for them. These queerly shaped ﬂowers are formed of three petal-like sepals and three petals. By looking at other wild ﬂowers around, the children were proud to ﬁnd other examples and use their two new words, “petals” and “sepals,” as well as the word “botany.” When everyone had had a good look, we left the patch of lady’s slippers to themselves. No one even thought of picking one of the beautiful blooms, which are so rare they are on the endangered list of wild ﬂowers. A R BU T U S S C H O O L

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Arbutus students, 1951. Back (l to r): John Vavrek, Aldrech Larson, Susan Emery, Sharon Antrim. Next row: Darlene Emery, Henry Fredine, Jenny Pool. Next row: Joyce Paulson, Faye Antrim, Janet McLeod, Raymond Ahlstrom, Allan McLeod, Harry Van der Veen. Front: Garth Ahlstrom, Ruth McLeod, Denise Randall, Donna Fredine.

Then we went to the trees behind Dale’s family barnyard where he pointed to the hole that was the entrance to the squirrel home. No one was tall enough to see into it but they stood on each other’s backs and got a look. The big boys proudly held the little ones up on their shoulders so 152

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everyone got a look at the squirming mass of baby squirrels. Alvin asked me if he could pick one up out of the nest to show everyone what a single tiny baby squirrel looked like. He did so, very carefully. Respect for the tiny lives was quite evident among the children. I always noticed that rural children were quite wise in the ways of nature. The stump with the chickadee’s nest was close to the squirrel nest so we looked at that. The nest was about two feet from the ground so everyone looked into it and saw that the eggs were about the size of peas. We saw several robins’ nests but they were high up and all the children had looked into robins’ nests before and admired their beautiful blue eggs. As robins feed on worms (albeit some good and some bad worms), we talked about how unfortunate it is that cats catch so many robins. One more thing we looked at was the new leaves on a patch of aspen trees (often just called poplar). We saw that the thin leaf stems are attached vertically to the leaf, so they shake much more in a breeze than leaves attached with a ﬂat leaf stem, hence their name, “trembling aspen.” We returned from the hike feeling great. These children knew a lot about birds, and I hoped their interest would continue throughout life. I asked them to name for me a bird they saw on the way to school in the morning, the same as I did at Glacier, where there were so many birds. In the spring when the songbirds came back they saw mountain bluebirds, blackbirds, orioles, ﬁnches, and warblers with their gorgeous colours. A R BU T U S S C H O O L

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I was three years at Arbutus. In June 1951, there were thirty-two on the register, also there were eight new grade ones there to get acquainted as they would be enrolled in the fall. All wonderful children and no problems, but I had applied for a lighter school. When Arbutus closed later, as all oneroom schools were, it Gretta (left) and Anna Van der Veen’s family were among the ﬁrst Dutch immigrants to was taken over by the settle in the Arbutus district, 1949. Ladies Club, and they used the skating rink the children made (enlarged), and the three trees to shelter their summer picnic booth where people gathered around on their lawn chairs in the shade. The children who planted them are grown up, but they can still look proudly at those wonderful trees.

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Students at Arbutus School JUNE 30, 1948 Janet McLeod John Patton Aldrich Larson George Ironside Lorne Larson Mickey Ferguson Tommy Ironside Lee Ferguson Luella Ahlstrom Oren Hutton David Hutton Frances Patton Dale Antrim

I I I I I II II II III III III III III

Cecilia Patton Dorothy Calkins Bernice Fredine Marie Ferguson Ernest Fredine Alvin Antrim David Sparrow Jim Sparrow Laverne Ahlstrom Dale Triebwasser Shirley Antrim Sally Sparrow Wayne Ahlstrom Mike Korpan

III V V V V V V VI VI VI VII VIII VIII VIII

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Students at Arbutus School (con’t) DECEMBER 31, 1948 Gloria Antrim Yvonne Patton Allen McLeod Henry Fredine Jimmy Calkins George Lloyd Janet McLeod John Patton Aldrich Larson George Ironside Lorne Larson Tommy Ironside Lee Ferguson Mickey Ferguson Luella Ahlstrom Oren Hutton David Hutton Frances Patton Dale Antrim

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I I I I I I II II II II I III III III IV IV IV IV IV

Cecilia Patton Nancy Morgan Judy Forsyth Dorothy Calkins Bernice Fredine Marie Ferguson Ernest Fredine Alvin Antrim Dale Triebwasser Niels Bonde Laverne Ahlstrom Ebbe Mortensen Ruth Bonde Edna Thompson Jean Vavrek Dennis Galisky Barry Galisky Sharon Antrim

IV I I VI VI VI VI VI VI III VII III V V I VI IV II

JUNE 30, 1949 Gloria Antrim Yvonne Patton Henry Fredine Jimmy Calkins George Lloyd Nancy Morgan Judy Forsyth Lorne Larson Allen McLeod Jenny Pool Jean Vavrek John Patton Aldrich Larson Sharon Antrim Janet McLeod Anna Van der Veen Niels Bonde Ebbe Mortensen

I I I I I I I I I I I II II II II II III III

Rhona Fredine Luella Ahlstrom Oren Hutton Cecilia Patton Frances Patton Dale Antrim Barry Galisky Dale Fredine John Pool Edna Thompson Ruth Bonde Dorothy Calkins Bernice Fredine Ernest Fredine Alvin Antrim Dennis Galisky Dale Triebwasser Gretta Van der Veen

III IV IV IV IV IV IV IV IV V V VI VI VI VI VI VI VI

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Students at Arbutus School (con’t) JUNE 30, 1950 Ruth McLeod Dorothy Patton Dick Ferguson Faye Antrim Yvonne Patton Raymond Ahlstrom Joyce Paulson Harry Van der Veen Bruce Lloyd Jenny Pool Allen McLeod George Lloyd Jimmy Calkins Henry Fredine Aldrich Larson John Patton

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I I I I I I I I I II II II II III III III

Anna Van der Veen Janet McLeod Sharon Antrim Lee Ferguson Barry Galisky Cecilia Patton Frances Patton Rhona Fredine Mickey Ferguson Dale Fredine Oren Hutton John Pool David Hutton Luella Ahlstrom Gretta Van der Veen Suzy Kooistra Tim Kooistra

III III III III IV IV IV IV V V V V V V VI VI VI

14: Buster Creek and Everdell When I left Arbutus my next placement was Buster Creek School, which was twenty miles out of Rocky, across the Saskatchewan River, north of Crimson Lake. The distance and the thought of winter roads was a bit daunting, but I agreed to go. In the fall it was actually a beautiful drive to Buster Creek. After crossing the Saskatchewan River west of town I took the dirt road which wound north through bush resplendent with fall colours, highlighted by the bright yellow tamarack trees. It was a light school, and soon everything was going ﬁne. One of the things we did was something I had planned on before but never got around to: we built bird houses. The song birds were gone of course, but we wanted to be ready for the next spring, so we started right away in the fall. That was our ﬁrst project. The houses would have all winter to age and get rid of smells. Birds like old places for nesting. There was no shortage of scraps brought from home, the boys brought a couple of saws, hammer and shingle nails. They worked on Friday afternoons, pieces were cut from patterns and even the smallest children with help could sort out the pieces for each house and drive a nail or two, albeit with a couple of slightly banged ﬁngers. A couple of the 159

boys took all the front sections home to get help to drill the door holes. They made several, some were taken home and a couple installed in the schoolyard. One thing we hoped for was to attract the beautiful mountain bluebirds. That was the ﬁrst few months, but then when winter set in it was a diﬀerent story. In the days before school buses the roads were not ploughed like they were later when they had to be sure the school buses could get through without trouble. Snow began to pile up and I found myself on a road that was mostly one lane, and to make matters worse it was used by heavily loaded lumber trucks. I told the superintendent that I wasn’t sure I would always be able to get to school when there was heavy snow. “No problem,” he assured me. “When you meet a lumber truck just give him the road. When the truck has passed you the driver will watch to see of you are in trouble, if he sees you are stuck he will stop, back up and fasten a chain onto the back of your truck and pull you back into the track again.” By that time we had a half-ton Fargo truck and I drove that to school. I found that it was true; there was that kind of cooperation on the road. One of us had to get out of the way. If the truck got stuck, it would be much harder to get out, and I couldn’t help. Much better that I get stuck and be pulled out quite easily. After this had happened quite a few times it became routine. Never did a truck driver fail to stop and pull me back into the tracks. 160

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That’s the way it went until one morning in January when the temperature dropped to 40 below. I was easily convinced I shouldn’t go out alone; my son Bob was sixteen then, and he came along. There had been a fresh snowfall the day before and we found the road very heavy going. We got stuck turning a corner, I guess going a little too fast for conditions. Bob shovelled until he was exhausted but no way could we get out of the snow, and wouldn’t you know, that morning there were no trucks. We ﬁnally had to walk nearly a mile. I was very well dressed and was okay, but my son nearly froze his feet before we reached the Surdy place. Thankfully they were home. I have to say that, with the road and weather like it was on that day, it was the sensible place to be. We stayed there and Mrs. Surdy took care of my son’s feet and gave us dinner. Her husband went then and got our truck out, and we just went home. We didn’t get to school that day. It was always necessary to show up at school; not to be there was unthinkable because, no matter what the weather, surely some child would come. However I found out later that no one came to the school that day. That trip was just too much. When I got home I phoned the superintendent, told him what had happened, and that I would never go back there again. He said soothingly, “There’s to be a chinook tomorrow. You go until Friday and then I’ll exchange you with a young man who is at Everdell. He isn’t too happy there in his ﬁrst year with twenty-four students and seven grades, and he will handle that road better B U S T E R C R E E K A N D EV E R DE L L

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than you.” I was happy with that. We made the switch; on Monday morning I was at Everdell School and I was there for the remainder of that year and for the next two. Everdell was about ten miles straight south of town, on a good road and I went out every day in the half-ton. I found it was easy to settle in. I already knew a lot of the people in that community and that’s always a head start. I established my timetable, which was not that much diﬀerent actually. The young man I replaced had been doing a good job. I always started oﬀ with a very brief “news” break right after the ritual morning prayer on Mondays. I would ask some of them what they did on the weekend. Maybe Grandma and Grandpa came, or they planted potatoes, or more calves were born. That way our relationship extended beyond just school. I would tell something of what I did. For the older grades this was current events time, and the younger ones listened. Then it was time to get to work. Arithmetic ﬁrst, then study period, oral presentations, spelling exercises, and science. After noon break we would have a chapter of our current story, then blackboard language exercises to do. There was geography or history time each afternoon, and music and art alternated. Writing practice took place every day for a few minutes for grades IV and up. Combining classes and working together, teachers were able to cover the work of nine grades in one room. Even when younger classes were doing something else, they heard a lot of what was going on, and I found there was always an older student 162

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whose work was done and who delighted in coaching the little ones. Something I insisted on in every school was that the children study the times tables and practice until they were comfortable with any combination. I never allowed children to be slow with their times tables. It was all printed on the backs of their scribblers, handy to study. Also I used “Flash Cards,” small cards to hold up, showing a combination on the front, and the answer on the back. The children used them themselves, an older child in spare time testing two younger ones to see who could answer ﬁrst. A little reward could be extra free time. Besides the times tables there was other useful information on the back of their scribblers, twelve inches one foot, three feet one yard, ﬁve and onehalf yards equals one rod, and feet in a mile (5,280), or 1,760 yards. For liquid measure: two cups one pint, two pints one quart, four quarts one gallon. Some scribblers even had the kings and queens of England listed and the provinces of Canada. If they were slow in their arithmetic or in learning their combinations, I taught them to play cribbage (making sure ﬁrst that the parents had no objections to cards). There’s nothing like crib, I always thought, to sharpen up their adding skills. Sometimes when there were a few moments of spare time toward the end of the day, they could challenge each other to a short crib game, usually just to ﬁfty, or one hundred. B U S T E R C R E E K A N D EV E R DE L L

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Science was always one of my favourite subjects to teach and there are so many experiments that never fail to fascinate the students. The best hands-on experiment I ever had happened at Everdell. A couple of school board people stopped by the school one day, the third year I was there, with some poles and a thick block cut from a tree trunk. They came to the door to tell me they were going to move the barn later, and maybe I would want to instruct the children to stay away from those poles – they might get hurt if they started climbing around there. But I thought – “No. I see a lesson here.” We just happened to be studying levers! The men had brought several long green poles for levers and the block obviously was for a fulcrum. The barn (actually it was only a shed) had been brought there and just set down crooked and in the wrong place so they wanted it moved back to the fence and set straight. It was just shiplap walls anchored to 4x4 beams; a pole could easily be pushed under the edge of a wall. We all went out to the barn. First the grade IX boys moved the barn sideways by prying with poles (ﬁrst-class lever; an example is the crowbar). Then they adjusted it just where they wanted it by second-class lever, with a pole over the block (fulcrum) in the middle, the barn (load) at one end and eﬀort (their muscles) at the other. Using a yardstick to measure the distance between the fulcrum and the load, and the fulcrum and the eﬀort, they ﬁgured out 164

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the mechanical advantage and how it changed in relation to the position of the fulcrum, whether nearer the eﬀort or the load. Then grade VII and VIII had a go at it, instructed by grade IX. Even the smaller children found they could lift the barn but it took more of them. They all had a great time, they would have moved the barn right oﬀ the property if I hadn’t stopped them. At the end of the session they learned how a human arm is a third-class lever, fulcrum at the shoulder, eﬀort in the middle, load at the end. Even the youngest ones who wouldn’t be studying levers for some time at least knew what was ahead. There were always beneﬁts from all grades doing things together, even if it was only social. One fall day, practically on the spur of the moment, we went for a hike. The leaves on the poplars, which stood in thick stands, were hanging still and bright yellow when suddenly a strong wind blew them all oﬀ at once in one day. There were piles of leaves in drifts more than knee deep. I thought “Its time for a fall hike.” We would have to go that day before the leaves settled, so when I called them in after the noon break I asked them how they would like to go for a walk in the leaves. They were delighted so away we went towards the heaviest stands of poplar. It turned out to be an outstanding afternoon. Walking through the deep drifts of leaves made a rustling sound that was like music. The children threw themselves into piles of leaves and rolled in them, shrieking with laughter. B U S T E R C R E E K A N D EV E R DE L L

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To make a science lesson out of it, I drew their attention to the new leaf buds on the trees that had taken the moisture and that made the old leaves dry up. The tree didn’t need them any more.

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Students at Everdell School JUNE 30, 1951 Mary Dille I Charlotte Ironside Bryan McKenzie Bertha Larson Arthur Brown Paul Eror Dwight McNutt Billy Garland Bruce McKenzie Fay Cooper Steven Eror George Ironside

I I I I II II III III III III IV

Tommy Ironside IV Clarence McNutt IV Elmer Cooper IV John Hutchinson V Alice McNutt V Gordon Adrian V Garth Bigelow V Ellen Jukich VII Loretta McNutt VI Marjory McKenzie VI Lloyd Dille VI Joe Eror VII

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Students at Everdell School (con’t) 1952 Dennis Milligan Carl Cooper Paul Eror Dwight McNutt Arthur Brown Charlotte Ironside Mary Dille Bryan McKenzie Bertha Larson Beverly Grams Bruce McKenzie Billy Garland Steven Eror

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I I II II II II II II II IV IV IV IV

Clarence McNutt V George Ironside V Tom Ironside V Gordon Adrian VI Alice McNutt VI Garth Bigelow VI Loretta McNutt VII Marjory McKenzie VII Joe Eror VIII Ralph Rosdal VIII Lloyd Dille VIII Ellen Jukich VIII

1953 Geraldine Garland Barry McKenzie Dennis Milligan Sharon Schule Charlotte Ironside Paul Eror Dwight McNutt Bryan McKenzie Bertha Larson Arthur Brown Beverly Grams Steven Eror Billy Garland

I I II II III III III III III III V V V

Bruce McKenzie V Thomas Ironside VI Clarence McNutt VI George Ironside VI Alice McNutt VII Gordon Adrian VII Garth Bigelow VII Morley Humphry VII Marjory McKenzie VIII Ellen Jukich IX Ralph Rosdal IX Lloyd Dille IX Joe Eror IX Edna Larson IX

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15: Back to Glacier In the fall of 1953 I accepted a position at Glacier School, where I had taught for one year ten years before. That meant going back to teacherage life again. There were a few changes, of course; most important was that the road was ﬁlled and graded and was passable, maybe with diﬃculty, most of the time. It did get ﬂooded sometimes, but with my youngest son’s mighty Model A Ford, we always got through. No more fence crawling and detours! No more bonus! The teacherage had been purchased by the school board. The bare plank ﬂoor had been covered and linoleum laid; otherwise things were about the same. I got settled in and spent the next two years there. Many of the students were the young brothers and sisters of the students I had there my ﬁrst time. Little ones who had come with their mothers to our parties were now in the middle grades. My own two boys who had been with me there were then in grades VIII and XII in town. My son Bob by that time was part of a high school band and one week I borrowed a drum from him and took it out to school. What child doesn’t like to beat on a drum! With the organ, bells and a triangle we had a good rhythm band. 171

We could have been heard for quite a distance, if there was anyone to listen! The ﬁrst year back was the ﬁrst Christmas program I had at Glacier. When I was there before, we had skipped the program and had a big community dinner instead. So we outdid ourselves. My material was all new to them and they really got into the spirit and learned their parts. The dads produced a tree and put it up, and the children got out the decorations, the tall boys doing the hard stuﬀ of course. When the night came we were ready. Nothing can compare with the breathless excitement of the Christmas program in a country school. These children worked hard, and life was not that easy for anybody. They deserved to have a good time. That January was cold. I worried about the children on their long walks. Some of them had no mitts! They stuﬀed their hands up into their sleeves, or into their pockets. I decided we would make mitts. Necessity is the mother of invention, someone has said. I had made lots of mitts out of old socks. The children helped. I got them to bring old socks and I brought scissors. I showed them how to cut oﬀ the sock just above the worn-out heel, or shorter for the little ones and sew up that open end, pulling it together a little bit. The sock cuﬀ makes a nice wrist cuﬀ. For very small children the sock has to be taken in a bit. Thumbs can be made and sewn into a slit, or they can go thumbless. They can make them double, if they come up with enough old socks. Socks were wool at that time and they were warm. 172

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In all my schools we read a lot. We always had a book on the go; I would read for twenty minutes, usually right after noon break. Sometimes one of the older students who had got quite ﬂuent in reading would take a turn. When some didn’t want to at ﬁrst, I started out by asking them just to read the title, then a little more, and they soon became comfortable with reading in front of a group. I knew many of them would be community leaders and I wanted to instill self-conﬁdence in them. Sometimes a child, stomach full from lunch and tired from games outside, would doze oﬀ. That was all right, but it’s hard to get back to work once you have relaxed that much, so sometimes I tried setting the story time for twenty minutes before home time, if their work was done. It worked quite well; they would urge each other to get ﬁnished for story time. At that time you could get books from the extension library at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. It was a wonderful service. People in the most remote areas had access to the biggest library in the province, free. You could write and ask for a certain book, or you could specify a subject, or tell them something about a book you had heard of, and presto (as quick as the mail was, that is), there was your book order, probably with extras. The books came postage paid, and you just took the books back to the post oﬃce in the same packaging and they went back postage prepaid. There could be no measurement of how much enrichment of young minds was due to the extension library. BACK TO GL ACIER

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It was about then that I was given a whole box of carbon paper, from someone in town who didn’t need it any more because they had a new way of copying. We used lots of carbon paper. I taught the children to use carbon paper for all the pictures they wanted to copy, from magazines, or the encyclopedia, or map books. With a carbon sheet over plain paper, their picture on top and tissue over that so they didn’t damage the picture with pencil marks, they made good copies. The little ones used this method to draw good pictures out of a book or Eaton’s catalogue. These pictures they coloured or cut out, or both. The middle grades used it to illustrate their enterprise work,8 and the older ones found many uses for it, to decorate their scribblers and for map-making. Grade VIII, for example, when they were studying Europe, ﬁrst made a carbon copy of that complicated continent, then coloured the various countries diﬀerent colours and put the names on. They would cut out the countries and then put it all back together. Sometimes they would trace just the outline of a country, then draw in rivers, cities, and mountains. They developed ingenuity in putting things on these maps, like gluing on actual wheat, fruit, rice, or small pictures of factories and animals. With no reproducer to hand them ready-made copies, they made their own. They even made continents and oceans and put all together on the wall. One year the mothers gathered at the teacherage a few days before Christmas with their idea of making popcorn balls to pass around along with the candy bags the children 174

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would get. Five mothers came bringing the ingredients and a wire basket corn popper. These poppers came from Eaton’s and were specially adapted to use with a wood cook stove. Their method was to get a good ﬁre burned down to lots of red hot coals ﬁrst. The wire poppers were rectangular and about eight inches deep, with a long handle attached to a lid that you could slide open or shut. The two front lids and the frame they sit on are taken oﬀ the stove, then the popper can be shaken right over the red hot coals in the ﬁre box. Batch after batch popped ﬂuﬀy and white. Into a dishpan it went, and then in the oven to keep warm while they made their syrup, which was basically corn syrup, sugar, and water boiled until a drop in cold water formed a hard ball. They poured the syrup over the popcorn, lifting and stirring with their hands (cooling hands frequently in cold water), quickly forming big white balls. They popped more corn and boiled more syrup, until they had used up all the corn syrup they brought. Then they went home, but they left a big box of beautiful sweet white popcorn balls. In January we come back to school for what I always call the “long haul” until Easter break. That year for a diversion I planned a valentine party outdoors. We went out on the road near the school, where there was a good hill. The children brought cardboard boxes and had a great sliding party. You can slide like greased lightning on cardboard, and there were lots of boxes because, when families went to town for supplies, their orders were always loaded up in cardboard boxes. BACK TO GL ACIER

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There was seldom any traﬃc on our quiet road, but we kept one child at a time on the lookout just the same. No one came by. We built a big bonﬁre, roasted wieners and marshmallows, and we all had a wonderful time. They were reluctant to leave at home time. That winter we were learning about the sugar maples in Eastern Canada and how they had such good times making taﬀy from the maple syrup, laying it in the snow until it got cool enough, then pulling it with their hands, pulling out long strands, folding and pulling until they had smooth ﬁrm strands and twists. I had made taﬀy with the students in another school, but not in the winter. I made sure I had the ingredients on hand and one day when there was deep, clean, fresh snow we went out and pulled taﬀy. Just like they do in Ontario. The children had a hilarious time. There are often chinooks in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and in the spring when a warm chinook wind is blowing sometimes it’s hard to stay inside and work at arithmetic, geography, spelling, composition, art, or literature, but work we must. There were a few things though that could be done outside. We one-room teachers were responsible for everything, even physical education, whether we wanted it or not. I used to take the children out for “calisthenics.” The leader didn’t always have to be me; there would be an older child skilled and strong who would like to lead in the exercises. Another thing that I did outside with the lower grades was ﬂoat walnut shell boats. Ask any young child, “What 176

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makes water ﬂow?” and they have no idea. Maybe it’s the wind. The basic truth that water ﬂows downhill is not always known by a young child. In the spring when there are rivulets of run-oﬀ water, we would make walnut shell boats (a toothpick with a paper sail waxed into a half-walnut shell), and they would ﬂoat down the stream just like the sleekest canoe. Later they studied the glaciers that feed the rivers that ﬂow down and feed the prairies. One late spring evening of my last year at Glacier, I had a memorable visitor. I was in the teacherage ﬁnishing term returns when there was a knock on my door. “Come in,” I called, thinking it was Mrs. Matchett, my only neighbour, whom I was expecting. Very slowly the door began to open. Someone with slow heavy steps was coming in. Startled, I waited for a look. When the door opened wide enough, in walked a man I had never seen before. Although it was a hot day he was wearing heavy clothing from head to foot, and a close-ﬁtting skull cap covering his forehead and ears to low on his neck. A huge grey beard a foot long hung from his chin. Pale blue eyes looked out of a leathery brown face. One shaking hand held a home-made cane. In the other he held a handful of alder brush to wave at mosquitos. I knew who it must be. I had been told about a man in the district who chose to live alone. Not unheard of to live alone, but – he lived in a tree! From time to time there had been speculation about him, usually ending with the assumption that he BACK TO GL ACIER

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must certainly be “crazy,” but harmless. Very ﬁttingly, his name was John Eagle. I was afraid, but soon he spoke. “I’m very thirsty. Could I have a cup to get a drink from the well?” I gave him a cup and invited him to help himself from the pail of water I had just brought from the well. He drank several cups full. He looked very tired, I placed a chair in the doorway, and he sat down heavily. What followed was one of the strangest conversations I ever had. “You’re Mr. Eagle, aren’t you?” I ventured. “Yes,” he answered, “I came to see if there was going to be a picnic.” I’d heard that once years ago Mr. Eagle had attended the Glacier school picnic. I explained that the picnic had been cancelled; the roads were so bad right then. Then I ventured further, “You’ve lived here a long time.” “Forty years,” he answered absently. “You must have had some very interesting experiences in all that time.” “People used to think I was crazy and stayed away from me. Just because a man does something that isn’t quite like what other people do,” he mused. “I know what you did that was diﬀerent,” I said, “You built your house up in the trees.” He became alert and seemed eager to defend himself. “It happened like this,” he said, and with occasional prompting and silent pauses he told his story: 178

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“When I moved out here forty years ago I tried to build a house but it was slow work for a man alone. I had no horses myself, so I had to hire a man to haul my supplies, ﬁve dollars each way, ten dollars a trip. To save money I bought a big supply. Soon mice troubled me. They chewed through my wooden boxes and scattered my ﬂour. I began to try to think of some way to stop the mice from getting into my groceries and I decided to put them up in the trees. Where the trees were thick I sawed oﬀ several and built a platform and put my supplies on there and covered them with a canvas I had. But without the canvas I got wet so I went up into the trees to sleep on the platform beside my groceries. I fastened my hammock between two trees and stretched the canvas over it. When the wind blew and the rain came in the side I made a way to shelter myself. I made a frame around my platform with poles nailed up and down. I had shelter from the wind and the rain, and the mice didn’t bother.” I told him that was a good idea. “How long did you live in your tree house?” He smiled as he remembered. “A long time. From my tree house I saw every kind of animal in this country. They were not afraid of me nor I of them. Maybe they thought I was one of them. Some of the bears tried to climb up and get in, but when they saw me they would go away. Moose and deer used to rub against the trees of my house and it shook. So many animals came around. Maybe they liked the smell of my food. Maybe they liked the shelter under my house.” BACK TO GL ACIER

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“What did you have in your house?” “Just things I made myself. I got handy with a needle when I was in the merchant navy. I made my hammock myself. I made a table and stool for myself. In all the forty years I lived there, I never had any company. People were afraid of me.” “How did you ﬁll your time?” “I walked in the bush a lot. I talked to the animals. They were not afraid of me as I never harmed them.” “I’ll make you a lunch,” I said. He looked really oﬀended. “Oh no, no, no. I’m not the kind of bachelor who wants something to eat when at someone’s house.” “Have this piece of cake anyway,” I said, handing him a generous slice. “I just made it and it’s very good.” He took the cake from my hand and looked at it closely. He examined the top and all four sides. Then he held it up high and examined the bottom. He acted like he’d never seen a piece of cake before. When his examination was complete, he slowly took a bite, his beard making it diﬃcult to get anything into his mouth. Slowly he ate the whole piece. “What did you do all alone in your house?” I asked. “I kept improving it. I made a box for a bed and ﬁlled it with hay. I made lots of things.” He paused to think, then continued, “I made a hat for myself to keep the mosquitoes oﬀ.” 180

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“Why did you ﬁnally build a cabin?” I knew he had a cabin. “I lived in my tree house until the country was settled up. Never had a lock on my door until there were people in the valley. With settlement came horses. They used to get under my house to get out of the ﬂies in summer and storms in winter. The horses rubbed against the trees loosening the nails. Some of the trees got old and died. Finally my house got so loose it wasn’t safe any more if a storm came. I knocked it down after I built my cabin.” He got up to leave. He politely thanked me for the water and the cake and for letting him rest in my house. Firmly grasping his cane, he turned and went out the door, his cane thumping on the ﬂoor. Straight out and down the road toward his home three miles away he slowly walked, never once looking back. I stood in the door and watched him until he was out of sight. I had met and entertained in my house the man who lived in a tree, not a crazy man either, just an eccentric gentleman. After living alone in the woods for nearly half a century, Mr. Eagle ventured into the community and was killed when a tractor he was learning to drive got out of control on a hill and overturned, pinning him beneath. During my last year at Glacier, we had a nature study class that was totally unplanned and most disturbing. On a warm June morning just before nine o’clock, two girls ran screaming into the schoolyard. BACK TO GL ACIER

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“We met a bear! A great big bear! She’s in those trees beside the road over there! We were right beside her before we saw her. She was looking at us. And she has her babies!” “Get Red Matchett,” I cried out, at the same time thankfully comprehending what had obviously just happened. These little girls had surprised a mother bear with her cubs and passed by unharmed! Two big boys ﬂew out the door. I knew where they were going. They would take another trail, nearly a mile, to where “Red” Matchett would be operating his small saw mill, and he would have his riﬂe at hand. I thought about how the girls had passed by unharmed, maybe because they were small? We waited, no one could get to work. In about a half an hour the boys came back. “Yes,” they had found Mr. Matchett. A few minutes later, through the open windows we heard the crack of a riﬂe, and then two more! The children had no interest in classes. To tell the truth, I didn’t either. So I said, “We’ll go and see the bears. It’s nature study time.” So the whole school traipsed across the clearing and into the bush to where the children said they had seen the bears. It didn’t take long to ﬁnd them, all three lying dead. I knew it was against the law to kill them, but the baby bears were too young to live without their mother. What do you do? People have to live where they live and earn their living, and no one would risk the children’s lives. Although there had been no reports of a “rogue” bear in the area, who would take the chance? 182

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There they all were, all three lying dead. The huge sow bear was sprawled in her blood, her mouth hanging open showing a ﬁne set of white teeth. She smelled like a pig. The poor little bears were lying at the foot of the tree where they had landed when shot down. They looked so cute! “What a waste of life,” I thought, “these little bears hadn’t done anything wrong. They should have been moved somewhere.” I don’t know if the wildlife oﬃcers at that time had the facilities to move the bear family away to another area. We began our examination. The mother bear had been eating bear berries; some were in her mouth. Several of the children tried to roll the mother over by grabbing her legs and pulling together, but they couldn’t budge her no matter how hard they jerked on her back legs. Some of the children lifted the little bears. I had taken a piece of tissue along so I could trace the footprint of a baby bear to show the children how like a human footprint a bear track is. I wished I had a piece of paper big enough to trace the mother’s foot, but it would have had to be eighteen inches long! Even though she was just an ordinary brown bear, she sure was big. We examined every part of the bears, including the mother’s teeth, and we measured her curved, wickedlooking claws. They were three inches long. Next morning the children walking that road reported the dead bears were gone, likely skidded out with a team of horses. The little bears would make steaks, likely shared around the neighbourhood, and the lard would be rendered BACK TO GL ACIER

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Glacier School alone with its memories in its remote bush location, remaining untouched for forty-four years after closing.

from the old bear and kept in a cellar. The hides, fur side in, would be nailed to the back wall of a building somewhere to dry. Life is not fair for bears.

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Glacier School Students In the 1940s it would have been easy for a stranger to assume, coming across Glacier School so out of the way in the bush, that there would not be very many people around, but that was far from the truth. In 1943/44, and for the two years 1953 to 1955, there were many wonderful children for me to teach. My own son Bobby was there with me for grade II. Those who came to Glacier School during my years there, or the intervening years were: Ethel and John Matchett; Beth Woodward; Cyril and Ronald Lund; Ethel, Ronald, and Robert Smith; Larry, Danny, Lillian, Lorne, Lorraine, Lucille, and Lois Rankin; Glen, Franklin, Gloria, Claude, Jean, Joyce, Ruth, Doris, Grace, and Gail Gray; Agnes Carpenter; Tilly Jensen; Cliﬀord Evans; Madlean and Jimmy Garland; Wayne and Terry Osborne; and John and Iva Hazen. Glacier School closed in 1959.

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16: Frisco School After two years at Glacier, I moved again. This time my school was Frisco, ﬁve miles north of Rocky Mountain House on a good road. When it was built it was named by a family from San Francisco who were among the ﬁrst settlers. There was a teacherage, surprising that close to town but in earlier days ﬁve miles was more of a challenge. I had a choice, to stay in the teacherage during the week or to drive in every day from home. I chose the teacherage. The day before school was to start, my husband and I went to check out the teacherage and clean the school. There was a new twist to this job, I would act as janitor in lieu of paying rent for the teacherage. The ﬁrst thing I noticed about Frisco was the beautiful yard. It sloped very gently up to the school from the road. It was green with natural grass, not a tree in sight. Nothing in the way of a ball diamond, I thought. The trees were all at the back. I made a mental note to encourage the children to notice the clean green yard, and to take pride in keeping it that way. I think they were proud one day later on when a school nurse who came complimented them on the tidy schoolyard. On the ﬁrst day they came from all directions. From the north came the Hall boys on horseback, riding double with 187

two horses. They were the only ones who had horses. Edna Sorensen and Patsy Kerik walked from the north, but Patsy only a quarter of a mile. She was the only one who could go home for lunch. The Schenk children walked two miles from the southwest, a mile west of the highway to Rocky Mountain House. The Bidingers and Werners walked a mile up the road from the south. The Sims children and McColmans and O’Connors came over a mile from the east. The Cardinals walked across a ﬁeld, winter and summer, from where they lived south of the school. The Wildeboers, Archie Cook, and Larry Martins came from a mile or mile and a half from the northeast. It was to be a heavy school, with twenty-nine students, but no grade IX. My ﬁrst priority was to get all these children working in the grade where they belonged, but they were very cooperative and soon were studying at the right level. Most of these children walked quite a long way but very few of them ever missed a day. They would arrive in the winter very cold, unless there happened to be a chinook blowing, and I would have a warm ﬁre going for them. That was my ﬁrst job in the mornings in cold weather. When we came out on Sunday afternoons with my week’s supplies, my husband always made sure there was lots of kindling split, and the school board saw to it there was plenty of wood and coal. It didn’t take long to get a hot ﬁre going. In the teacherage, though, a hot ﬁre wasn’t the answer. The Frisco teacherage was in the northeast corner of the school grounds, out of the way. It had only one room. I 188

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found it to be unbearably cold once winter came. There was a heater of course, but as soon as the ﬁre died down the chill was just like outdoors. I complained to the school board and that very weekend they sent a man out with a load of insulation, which he blew into the walls and over the ceiling. What a diﬀerence that made. It was always warm in the teacherage after that. In October that year, it was decided that my little granddaughter Diane, aged ﬁve, would come to school with me. That put an end to babysitting problems, and I enjoyed the company. Years later when Diane was asked what it was like to have to stay in the teacherage, she had pleasant memories. She liked it there, with lots of kids to play with, lots of time outdoors, and she said, “After supper I would be in my bed in the corner, listening to the ‘swish’ of papers as Grandma sat at the table in the lamplight marking. I felt safe and warm.” She stayed with me that year and the next came to school with me on the bus and started grade I. That year Dilda Fleury started grade I and she and Diane were instant playmates. They were seldom apart all day, they played together, worked together, sat together, straight shiny black hair almost touching golden curls. It was good for Dilda’s English to talk to Diane all the time. They spoke Cree at home, which was important, but she really needed to work on her English. The following year Diane moved away with her mother. I liked to do some science experiments early in the term, they were fun, middle grades could work together, and often FR I S C O S C H O O L

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later on older students would help the younger ones to set up their experiments. I had quite a repertoire by that time. It usually fascinates children to observe the simple truths about air and water pressure. A favourite to show how hot air expands is the egg in the milk bottle demonstration. A hard-boiled egg (peeled) and a milk bottle, a match, and a scrap of paper are the essentials. The bit of paper is lit on ﬁre and dropped into the milk bottle; immediately the egg is placed in the neck of the bottle. The air in the bottle gets hot and expands; you can hear it forcing its way out of the bottle around the egg. The ﬁre goes out and when it all cools oﬀ a vacuum is created in the bottle, and pop! the egg is sucked into the bottle to ﬁll the space. Perhaps the best part is what you do next. Someone blows into the bottle as hard and long as they can, covering the bottle with their hands and blowing hard into a small opening. When you have blown enough air into the bottle, air pressure forces the egg to pop out, maybe exploding on someone – all the more fun. Not as much fun but just as interesting, we could make a thermometer. Usually lacking a ﬂask and tubing, we could just use a bottle and a straw. We put just a tiny bit of water in the bottom of the bottle, put in the straw, and close over the top around the straw with plasticine. The water should be coloured so you will be able to see it in the straw. Then with warm hands grasp the bottle and hold it for a couple of minutes. The air in the bottle warms, expands, pushes on the water and it has to go somewhere, so it comes up the 190

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straw. In the winter when we had hot water on the stove, we could wet a cloth in the hot water, wrap it around the bottle, and the water would go higher in the straw. There were no real learning problems among the children, although one little boy, Tommy, who was in grade II the year before when I started at Frisco, was not learning to read. I had not held him back because of the reading and so the second year I was there he was in grade III. I had a chance then to help him catch up. The school board had decided that year to run a bus for Frisco school. After two years in the teacherage, I decided maybe I should try the bus. Diane and I were picked up at home in town. The bus had to make a loop to the north after passing Frisco. The students were expected to stay on as school was not open for another half hour, but I got oﬀ on the ﬁrst pass. I made arrangements for the Werners to get oﬀ with Diane and me at the school gate. There was Tommy’s sister Madeleine as well. I had to get the ﬁre going; even though I no longer used the teacherage, I was still janitor. The four of us made our way to the school, often through deep snow, and I would get the ﬁre burning. It would soon be roaring and we would stand close to the stove until the bus got back from the north and the school day would begin. That was when I gave Tommy his reading lesson. I started him right back at the beginning of basic phonics in grade I because he had everything hopelessly mixed up. I started with the letter S, on the stop sign, which Tommy saw every day on the road. When the four letters in FR I S C O S C H O O L

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STOP were mastered, we went on, very slowly, one letter at a time until he had enough letters so he could start to blend them into short words. I knew what I was doing because this had worked on a twelve-year-old boy in another school who was about to go through life illiterate. For two years, Tommy had his reading lessons with just us there. Finally he could read his primer and by grade IV he was able to join his regular reading class. He used to take books home and read to Madeleine, who had watched him learn from me for two years and understood what it meant for Tommy not to have to go through life not able to read. I never asked him to read in class. I just said, “Tommy had his reading lesson this morning.” When they built the school they put the windows on the west side, and by the time I was there the trees that were small when they built were quite big and shaded the windows, making the school dark. We found that in winter when it was snowing it would be so dark it was almost impossible to work. There was a power line past the school by that time, but the school board was unwilling to run power into the school because they planned to bus all the country children to town as soon as possible. On the short winter days, the classroom could be a very dim place, but on the ﬂip side, the frost pictures on the single-glazed windows were amazing, and while the snow blew outside, the room was cozy with the warmth from the heater. 192

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The best place for windows when they built schools like these was the east or south side of the building. Seated facing south or west the children were not working in shadows from the right. Some rural schools got built without the builders thinking of that; in fact, in one school they changed the windows later to the other side. There were no lamps, when there was an evening function, someone brought a gas lamp from home. After all, school was a daytime-only activity. In the fall the children played on the “ropes.” This had been a swing, all gone now but four dangling ropes. The children would grab these ropes and run around to get momentum and then whirl through the air as long as their momentum lasted, or until their arms got tired, then someone else got that rope. There was also, as at most schools, a seesaw. One day Sherry Sims, age six, fell oﬀ. She didn’t even cry but just acted dazed. I had her sitting in the shade while I ﬁgured out what to do, when who should come driving by but Dr. Greenaway. He stopped in to visit with the children. Likely he had brought most of them into the world. I took Sherry to him and asked if he thought she was hurt. “Of course she’s hurt. She has a broken collar bone.” He took her in his car, went to her home, and picked up her mother and took them to the hospital. Soon Sherry was back at school all bandaged up. I found always that the students were fascinated with how the pioneers lived. We studied the pioneers of Alberta, FR I S C O S C H O O L

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how they lived and worked, and how their grandparents and great-grandparents managed to make some kind of shelter, sometimes only a “soddie.” One hot spring day I said to the children, “Lets go out under the trees and build the kinds of houses the pioneers used to live in.” I had some tools to strip up some sod, which the children cut into strips and then into domino-sized “sods.” The girls built a sod house about six by four inches, with small branches laid across to support the roof. I told them the sod roof leaked badly after a rain so pioneers tried to get some tar paper to put between the layers of sods. We left holes for a door and a window. The window would have parchment from a dried moose’s stomach for glass, or a piece of ﬂour sack. The door would be made of poles nailed on a frame. The sod house was really cute! The boys built a log house. They had the school axe and their jackknives, and they cut branches to make the “logs.” I showed them how to notch the corners so the logs ﬁt together. I remembered that from when we built our log cabin on the homestead at Grouard. When I told them that this used to be done on big logs by hand by men who notched the corners with big heavy axes they were in disbelief. They were even more incredulous when I told them that twenty years before, for my family’s log house on our homestead southwest of Rocky Mountain House, a skilled workman, Chris Rodtka, with a “broad axe” (a big double-bladed axe), hewed the logs smooth for what would be the inside walls as they were placed, round on round. He 194

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walked on the top round of logs, hewing the full length of the side of the log under his feet as he walked on top if it, making it ﬂat and even with the one below.

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Looking Back In the early years before consolidation, there were no school nurses and some of the children suﬀered as a consequence. I remember one girl who suﬀered so much with toothache, but nothing was done. I think a school nurse would have been able to instigate something. Another time I had a family who refused the inoculations. I knew there was not a religious reason for it, just some sort of independence. One day, when we knew the nurse was coming, a child from that family stayed home and I was sure it was to avoid the inoculations. That family underestimated the determination of the nurse. She left her car in the schoolyard, climbed through the fence, walked across a ﬁeld carrying her medical bag, and inoculated the whole family. Once the children got used to the nurse and the muchfeared needle, it turned into a special day for most of them, a day when they got special attention. There was one little boy, though, who, in spite of all our eﬀorts to calm him, and in spite of me myself receiving a demonstration “shot” to show that I survived, would invariably turn white and faint. The nurse would wait until he came around and eventually get the job done. That boy struggled with that as long as I was at that school. 197

It was such a relief when the nurses started coming. At one school right after the war, there was a family where I knew there was a boy with a broken arm. At least I thought it must be broken when I was told about the accident. A horse had stepped on his elbow. The family just kept him at home. I guess they thought his arm would just get better on its own. They were a Dutch family newly in Canada, and after what they had been through in the war, they were fearful of losing family members to strangers. They didn’t yet totally understand that they were safe in Canada. When the nurse came and I told her about the boy, she went right to the house and, in spite of the mother’s protests, “Don’t take my boy,” she carried the boy out and took him to the hospital. I went to the hospital right after school to stay with him; he was of course terriﬁed, but soon neighbours took over and helped the family. Unfortunately that arm never did heal properly. Usually we rural teachers were on our own to solve our problems. In one school where I went to teach, I found many of the children had impetigo. No doctor or health nurse was available. The three-man school board that ran the school was no help. Eaton’s catalogue to the rescue! Searching the index I found an item, “Itch ointment for impetigo.” I sent for their biggest jar, which cost one dollar, postage paid. We used it according to directions on the jar. By the time the big jar was empty, all the impetigo in the school was cleared up. Score another one for Eaton’s! 198

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Later on there were regular “lice checks” in schools, and some commercial product was made available, but at that time we were on our own to take care of that problem. Dividing the hair in ﬁne parts, coal oil was applied with a cotton swab to the scalp. It took care of lice and nits both. One child who submitted to this cure went home and passed on the treatment information. She came back next day looking very happy and told us her mother was delighted to ﬁnd that solution because “she had many.” There were times when I wished I could have done better. One boy I could not teach to read. I tried everything I knew. He had been to school for four years, two of them with me, and he could only read three or four words. He was a pleasant enough little boy. He spent his time just watching and listening, or aimlessly colouring and playing with plasticine. I went to the superintendent ﬁnally to see if I could get some direction. He listened to what I had to say, then gave me this advice: “Take him to his mother. Just take him to his mother and explain to her that it seems clear he is never going to advance; she might just as well keep him at home.” I did as he advised, and I remembered for a very long time the look on the mother’s face as I told her what the superintendent had said. I didn’t know what more to say. She shed a few tears but then said she guessed she knew. All the early teachers likely have stories of school “inspectors.” They instilled fear in my heart; I’m not sure why. They were always men and were very authoritative, L O O K I NG B A C K

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but they were there to help. It would have been perfect to always be prepared for the superintendent’s visit, but since they were unannounced, there were bound to be times when things might not have been as we would have liked. On one of the last times I was visited, I was not even in the school! It was at Frisco. When the superintendent arrived he found a strange young man in charge. It was my son Don, who had struggled through the bush with me to Glacier School many years before, when he was only four years old. He had ﬁnished his ﬁrst year at university and was at home in May when I very suddenly became ill, and I just sent him to ﬁll in for me. Who would have thought, that was the very day the superintendent’s visit was planned! Sending Don there wasn’t legal, of course, but it worked ﬁne, he did a good job. As it turned out, his own teaching career spanned more than forty years. In cold weather we always had to be on the lookout for chimney ﬁres. The kind of poplar wood delivered to the school made lots of soot in the pipes. The best scenario was when the ﬁre burned the pipes clean and went out, but many times it didn’t work out that way. One day at Frisco the soot in the chimney (we had a real brick chimney there) dropped down and plugged oﬀ the spot where the stove pipe entered the chimney and the ﬁre smoked and smoked and would not burn. Soot backed up and plugged the pipes. Everyone was cold, still wearing their outdoor coats at noon. 200

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The only thing to do to get the ﬁre going was to take down the pipes, clean them, and clean out the entrance to the chimney. We took the pipes down three lengths at a time and the big boys took them outside to the ash pile and pounded them with sticks to knock the soot out. You must not hit them with anything too hard; you could dint them and make them harder to ﬁt together again. Other students inside the school cleaned up the mess made when the pipes were taken down, and was there a mess! When the ﬂoor was cleaned up, the boys brought the pipes back in and put them back up. It’s quite a job as the end of each pipe has to be ﬁtted over the crimped end of the last section, and the whole length of pipe ﬁtted into the space between the stove and the chimney. When the pipes were secure, the ﬁre was started and the roar of it burning unobstructed was like music to our ears and the heat soon radiated through the cold room. We had to clean the pipes, freeze, or go home. There were no telephones to call for help so we had to do things for ourselves. One spring morning I won’t forget. I started a ﬁre to take the chill oﬀ the room, the soot in the stovepipes got on ﬁre, and the ﬁre burned up to the chimney and it got on ﬁre. Running outside and looking up at the chimney, I saw there were ﬂames several feet high emerging from the top of the chimney. I had encountered that before; here was one more emergency. Soon the roof would get hot and start to burn so we had to act fast. L O O K I NG B A C K

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Some of the children pumped like mad ﬁlling the school water pail and the teacherage pail. I fed the water by cupfuls slowly to the burning mass in the bottom of the chimney through the cleanout hole. That caused steam and the steam eventually put the ﬁre out. Proud of having saved the school, I reported our eﬀorts to the school oﬃce, expecting a little praise. The secretary said, “Why didn’t you just let it burn down? We would have collected the insurance and bussed the kids to town, which we are planning to do anyway in the future.” So much for our precious school! In spite of the criticism I got from the superintendent at Clearwater School, where we had to tear down our slide because it was an “eyesore,” we built another slide at Frisco. We built it in the trees west of the school the second year I was there and the superintendent never saw it. There were so many big boys I knew they could do it, so I told them about our slide at Clearwater. They made theirs in an easier way, though; they hunted up a place in the trees where they could use trees for posts instead of digging holes and setting in posts. Four trees became posts for the platform. Bringing spikes and hammers from home, they built a ladder up the back so they could ﬂoor the top with poles. Then they cut two long strong trees and leaned them from the top to the ground, ﬂoored that, and built sides on it, and there was their slide! They had to clear a little land at the bottom, but I said there were too many trees anyway. 202

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It started to snow just when they ﬁnished. I had supervised all the construction to make sure it was strong and safe. The children had collapsed cardboard boxes ready and did they have fun! They played on that slide for four winters. I never had a ride down that one. I had one ride down the Clearwater slide but none on this one. It was higher and faster. Even when it was 40 below, some of the bigger ones would venture out for a couple of rides and come in with cheeks red and eyes shining. The cardboard box sleds were easy and light to carry up the

Fun at Frisco! A slide-load of kids. This slide was built with trees for support. They slid down on cardboard boxes.

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back ladder for the next ride. The slide faced north and was in the trees so it lasted longer in the spring weather. Children have to have something to play with; they get tired of playing “fox and goose” and having snowball ﬁghts. I remember so many bright and talented children. We had some good music at Frisco, and some children displayed a special gift for art. One valentine a little girl made for me I still have. She drew and coloured perfectly a big owl, and she wrote, “Do you give a HOOT for me?” All the years at Frisco seemed to blend one into another. Older children moved on and went to high school in town and their little sisters and brothers came to school. Five years is a long time in the life of a young family. I was grade I teacher for some who were babies when I ﬁrst went there. After classes, one Friday afternoon in late September of 1961, I was alone at the school as usual waiting for the bus to come back from the north loop. I had gathered up my homework and I was waiting on the school steps, enjoying the fall scenery. It was completely silent; the song birds had all been gone for several weeks. The yellow leaves hung motionless in the sun, and long threads of spider silk, harbingers of Indian summer, drifted in the still air. I heard a car coming and watched as it turned into the schoolyard. The superintendent and a school board member got out and came up to the school door. They were looking quite pleased with themselves, talking and laughing. 204

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Frisco School 1957. A winter marshmallow roast. (L to r): Phyllis O’Connor, Islay Schenk, Sherry Sims, Diane Robinson, Alex DeBoer behind, Barry McColeman next. Dilda Fleury in front, Mavis Worsley, Irene Schenk, Clement Hall, Stewart Hall, Edna Sorensen in front, Jim Schenk, Brian O’Connor, Dwayne Sims with box, Sharon Sims behind, Madeleine Werner, Martha Fleury.

“Well, Mrs. Van Kleek, you can pack up. We’re bussing the kids into town; this school is closed, eﬀective Monday. You’ll have the weekend to get all your things out.” I said, “Oh?” They continued, “You can teach grade V in town, starting Monday.” They talked about what a huge organizing job it had been to “consolidate,” and how thankful they were to be so near the end. After a few more moments they got in their car and left. L O O K I NG B A C K

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The Frisco slide was high and fast!

I stood still until the sound of the car died out in the distance and the silence returned. My one-room school days were over. I turned, locked the door, and picked up my haversack. I could hear the bus coming from the north loop.

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Students at Frisco School JUNE 29, 1956 Dawn Sims Billy Cardinal Edna Cardinal Dwayne Sims Tommy Werner Albert Cardinal Louis Cardinal Cecil Hall Brian O’Connor Barry McColman Harry Wildeboer John Wildeboer Clement Hall Edna Sorensen

I I I II II II II III III III III III V V

Madeleine Werner Irene Schenk Alex Wildeboer Phyllis O’Connor Sharon Sims Islay Schenk Cliﬀord Hall Leslie Bidinger Stewart Hall Archie Cook Jim Schenk Larry Martins Marvin Bidinger Iris Schenk Patricia Kerik

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V V V VI VI VI VI VI VII VII VII VII VIII VIII VIII

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Students at Frisco School (con’t) JUNE 30, 1957 Carol McColman Mavis Worsley Diane Robinson Dilda Fleury Dawn Sims Norine Fleury Dwayne Sims Corrine Laboucane Tommy Werner Alvina Fleury Helen Fleury Martha Fleury John Wildeboer Harry Wildeboer

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I I I I II II III III III III III III IV IV

Cecil Hall Brian O’Connor Barry McColman Madeleine Werner Clement Hall Irene Schenk Edna Sorensen Cliﬀord Hall Alex Wildeboer Leslie Bidinger James Schenk Sharon Sims Phyllis O’Connor Islay Schenk Stewart Hall

IV IV IV VI VI VI VI VI VI VII VII VII VII VII VIII

JUNE 30, 1959

JUNE 30, 1958 Philip Cole Sherry Sims Sally Werner Shirley Martins Doreen Martins Wilma Van der Leek Mavis Worsley Carol McColman Dawn Sims Dwayne Sims Tommy Werner Cecil Hall Brian O’Connor Barry McColman

I I I I I I II II III IV IV V V V

Rita Cole I Michael Watrin I Patricia Levinsky I Louis Harris I Sally Werner I Linda Levinsky II Sherry Sims II Doreen Martins II Shirley Martins II Wilma Van der Leek II Philip Cole II Mavis Worsley III Carol McColman III Allan Lindsay III Pauline Levinsky IV Michael Levinsky IV Dawn Sims IV George Levinsky IV Dwayne Sims V Judy Levinsky V Tommy Werner V Barry McColman VI Billie Lindsay VI L O O K I NG B A C K

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Students at Frisco School (con’t) JUNE 30, 1960 Kenneth Levinsky Marilyn Van der Leek Louie Harris Rita Cole Patty Levinsky Michael Watrin Sherry Sims Philip Cole Doreen Martins Wilma Van der Leek Linda Levinsky

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I I II II II II III III III III III

Shirley Martins Mavis Worsley Michael Levinsky George Levinsky Dawn Sims Pauline Levinsky Judy Levinsky Dwayne Sims Iris Sayers Inez Sayers Norman Shearer Chester Shearer Sheila Shearer

III IV IV V V V VI VI III I V V III

JUNE 30, 1961 Stanley Harris Clara Levinsky Laura Polson Marilyn Van der Leek Louis Harris Kenneth Levinsky Michael Watrin Patricia Levinsky Cheryl Sims Philip Cole

I I I II III II III III IV IV

Doreen Martins Shirley Martins Wilma Van der Leek Linda Levinsky Michael Levinsky Ralph Hamilton Dawn Sims Pauline Levinsky George Levinsky

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Edith is third from right, bottom row in this, her ﬁrst school picture. Platte, South Dakota, 1909. The inscription: “To Edith, my little busy bee. With love from Miss Nokes.”

Edith, a Red Deer school girl, 1911. Hairdo by sister Anna.

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This picture titled “An Apple for the Teacher” appeared in a 1993, issue of The Stettler Independent with the following caption: “It’s been a while since Jack Lyster, 78, was in school. Still he brings an apple to his former teacher, Edith Van Kleek, 93. She taught him in Grade 3. Lyster credits her with saving his eyesight. ‘She said I needed glasses.’ It turned out Lyster had only 10 percent eyesight in one eye and his eyesight would have deteriorated without the glasses.” On the wall in this photo can be seen the graduation photo of one of three granddaughters of Edith’s who each attained education degrees. Photo courtesy: The Stettler Independent.

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Coronation School turned into hospital/morgue, December 1918. Back (l to r): John Master, Alice Kahl, Laura Bryenton Clark, Miss Wilson, Anna Doughty (holding puppy), Miss Bowden, Jay?, Millie Mayhew, John ?, Dr. Brookman, Unknown, Mr. Towns, Lucille Mayhew. Front: Mrs. George, Vera Green, two teachers Unknown, Mrs. Wilson, Unknown.

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Addendum

Grade V Students at Rocky Mountain H ouse Elementary/Senior School 1961 Annechien Askes John Bednarz Richard Belton Leslie Brockman Dianne Broughton Lyle Beck Sherry Chatwood Patricia Clouston Allan Cook James Cunningham Tammy Davies Murray Diggins Jerry Feddes Gary Fredine David Hansen

Beverley Howard Corrine Laboucane Barry MacKenzie Linda Murray Clarence Nelson Dennis Ross Linda Shulty Roy Slaymaker Gregory Riggins Richard Wilson Cynthia Winchester Murray Williams Linda Parodis Judy Handford Betty Kreutzer

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Grade V Students at Rocky Mountain H ouse Elementary/Senior School (con’t) JUNE 30, 1962 Carol Bednarz Dennis Bidinger John Broughton Larry Butterwick Crystal Challand Larry Chevallier Philip Cole Roy Diggins Gregory Edwards Janie Helmer Gail Henderson Dennis Holman Brenda Kirstein Mary Lea Kenneth Leavitt Maureen Longworth Jennie Mah Jim Mah

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Darlene McGrath Sheila McFadden Susan Mellor Michael Moﬀord Patricia Moﬀord Jean Morley Margaret Nist Karen Pullan Albert Schroeder Teresa Schroderus Terry Schroderus Robert Spoor Tommy Teskey Delores Tremblay Marsha von Hollen Berry Lee Erma Pendergast Rene Garton

JUNE 30, 1963 Linda Brookes George Brown Patricia Christianson Allan Cunningham Deborah De Sutter David Falk Peter Gladue Irene Howes Terry Halina Kent Hein Betty Jones Ernest Justenin Donna King Faye Kwon Linda Lang Thelma Laut Loyal Leong Patricia MacDonald

Margaret Mason Judy Millis Bill Morley Bonnie McLochlin Terry Nile Alice Oestrich Terry Peacock Kenneth Pullan Beth Robson Bertha Schultz Joan Spoor Lynda Strain Gregory Switzer Patsy Teskey Kenneth Thurston Beverley von Hollen Marlene von Hollen Marlene Huhn

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Appendix: Note on Names With a few exceptions, adults herein are mentioned without personal names. In earlier years it was not considered proper or appropriate, especially for young people, to address adults by their ﬁrst names. Some ﬁrst names are available: The Boer War veteran teacher in chapter one was George Martin. He and his brother Billie both fought in the Boer War; Billie did not come back. Charlie Spaulding owned the Spaulding Hotel. He was long remembered for his volunteer work during the 1918 ﬂu. In Chapter 2, Austen Nicoud called the doctor in the night for his wife Louise. At Camrose Normal School in the early 1920s, the yearbooks were compiled by the students, who rarely ever knew the teachers’ ﬁrst names. In the 1923 Normal School yearbook staﬀ photo at the Camrose and District Centennial Museum, the teachers’ names are shown as: Mr. W.A. Stickle; Miss M.E. Lawson; Miss Currie; Miss M.P. Cole; Miss E. Johnson; F.S. Morrison; John R. Tuck; Walter Scott; Sergeant McVay; Miss M.W. McSkimming. No more ﬁrst names are available. Thanks to the museum staﬀ for this information. Missing from the photo (my assumption): Miss Bowman and Miss Dyde. 221

Chapter 6, High Point. Mary’s dad was Arthur Bottom. He was a sailor and had been all over the world, before settling near High Point school. John Howard was the piano teacher who came on the train from Coronation to teach one day a week in Veteran. Chapter 7 tells about Bignell School. John Bignell was on the school board. In Chapter 8, Harry Canning bought grain at Leahurst. In Chapter 9, close neighbours at Norway school were the Holts, Alfred and Nellie. They came from England to settle there. The other close neighbour was Bessie MacDonald (nee Strom). Ragnar Brynlund’s aunt and uncle were Jack and Mary Bolton; they brought Ragnar with them from Norway to settle in the Norway School district in Central Alberta. In Chapter 10 (Hardindell), Austen King was the bus driver. Early bus drivers had to be creative about vehicles. The Matchett neighbours in Chapter 11 were George (Red), and Dorothy. In Chapter 13, Chet Conway came from New Brunswick, where the trailing arbutus grows; he was on the ﬁrst Arbutus school board. In Chapter 16, Dr. Alfred Clayton Greenaway came to practice at Rocky Mountain House in 1931; he was there for twenty-one years.

222

The Way it Was

Thelma Jo Dobson

Notes 1

2

3

4

5

6

A small water tank at the end of the stove opposite the ﬁre box. It would be somebody’s job to keep it ﬁlled with water from the well outside. With cooking ﬁres in the stove much of the time the water in the tank would get warm. A “ring” was produced by the caller turning the crank on the side of the telephone to cause either short rings or long rings. Each subscriber had their own pattern of rings, perhaps two shorts, or a long and a short and a long, or two longs, and so on. Everyone on the line heard all the rings, but when subscribers heard their own ring they would take down the receiver and answer. The operator at “central” could alert everybody by turning the crank several times, thereby making “one long ring,” which was assigned to nobody, but alerted everybody. Foot-warmers were a little longer and ﬂatter than a lunch box. They were made of some heavy metal with a good hinged lid and covered with heavy carpeting. Inside you could put burning carbon bricks, or a lump of red hot coal and it made a nice warm foot rest. Chemical toilets were a convenience used indoors. A bench ﬁtted with a toilet seat enclosed a container for waste. They were placed against an outside wall and vented. A chemical, usually creolyn, was added to the container to control odour. Before indoor plumbing was common there was always a toilet, or “outhouse” at the back of the property. If need arose in the night, it required a great deal of courage to get up from a warm bed and go out into the Canadian winter to the outhouse. A chamber pot (or “comfort mug” or “bathroom pail”) usually kept under the bed allowed folks to delay the trip outside until morning. Smooth wire, less damaging to animals than barbed wire, woven in an open pattern and used for livestock fences.

223

7

8

224

The Dover beater, which was a rotary hand eggbeater, was “generally regarded as the best in the market” and the name became, for a long time, “a generic term for eggbeater.” The “real” Dover eggbeater was manufactured by the Dover Company of Boston (Glenbow Museum). A teaching system that was developed to attempt to combine social studies, mathematics, and science by beginning with a study of a speciﬁc area, for example farming, and noting how these three subjects are relevant in aspects of everyday life in that area.

The Way it Was

LEGACIES SHARED SERIES Janice Dickin, series editor ISSN 1498-2358 The Legacies Shared series preserves the many personal histories and experiences of pioneer and immigrant life that may have disappeared or have been overlooked. The purpose of this series is to create, save, and publish voices from the heartland of the continent that might otherwise be lost to the public discourse. The manuscripts may take the form of memoirs, letters, photographs, art work, recipes or maps, works of ﬁction or poetry, archival documents, even oral history. A complete listing of titles in this series may be found at www.uofcpress.com. Memories, Dreams, Nightmares: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor Jack Weiss · No. 13 The Honourable Member for Vegreville: The Memoirs and Diary of Anthony Hlynka, MP Anthony Hlynka, translated by Oleh Gerus · No. 14 The Letters of Margaret Butcher: Missionary-Imperialism on the North Paciﬁc Coast Margaret Butcher, edited by Mary-Ellen Kelm · No. 15 The First Dutch Settlement in Alberta: Letters from the Pioneer Years, 1903-14 edited by Donald Sinnema · No. 16 Suitable for the Wilds: Letters from Northern Alberta, 1929-31 Mary Percy Jackson edited by Janice Dickin · No. 17 A Voice of Her Own edited by Thelma Poirier, Doris Bircham, JoAnn Jones-Hole, Patricia Slade and Susan Vogelaar · No. 18 What’s All This Got to Do with the Price of 2 x 4’s? Michael Apsey · No. 19 Zhorna: Material Culture of the Ukrainian Pioneers Roman Fodchuk · No. 20 Behind the Man: John Laurie, Ruth Gorman, and the Indian Vote in Canada Ruth Gorman, edited by Frits Pannekoek · No. 21 Missing Pieces: My Life as a Child Survivor of the Holocaust Olga Verrall · No. 22 Medicine and Duty: The World War I Memoir of Captain Harold W. McGill, Medical Oﬃcer 31st Battalion C.E.F. Edited by Marjorie Barron Norris · No. 23

225

Missionaries Among Miners, Migrants, and Blackfoot: The Van Tighem Brothers’ Diaries, Alberta 1875–1917 Edited by Mary Eggermont-Molenaar and Paul Callens · No. 24 Bronze Inside and Out: A Biographical Memoir of Bob Scriver Mary Scriver · No. 25 Give Your Other Vote to the Sister: A Woman’s Journey into the Great War Debbie Marshall · No. 26 The Way It Was: Vignettes from My One-Room Schools Edith Van Kleek, edited by Thelma Jo Dobson · No. 27

226

The Way it Was

Dobson

The schoolyard was full of children. I looked at the bell on my desk and

Van Kleek

On the Monday morning that the school opened, it was anything but lonely!

By Edith Van Kleek

Edited by Thelma Jo Dobson

thought “This bell is mine to ring! I am the teacher!” At nine o’clock I grasped the bell ﬁrmly by the handle, leaned out the door, and rang loud and clear. Twenty-seven children rushed in through the door…

Her personal recollections paint a vivid picture of the challenges she faced, from juggling students from grades one through nine in one small room, to extreme weather conditions and boarding with local families. But through it all, her determination, enthusiasm, and love for her students is unmistakable. Whether you remember one-room schools or just enjoy hearing about “the way it was,” this charming collection of stories is sure to delight. EDITH VAN KLEEK was born in 1902 in South Dakota. She attended and taught in one-room schools in rural Alberta from 1916 to 1961. THELMA JO DOBSON is Edith Van Kleek’s daughter. She painstakingly compiled and edited this volume from her mother’s notes and papers. She lives in Cold Lake, Alberta. www.uofcpress.com 978-1-55238-225-7

The Way it Was

So began the teaching career of Edith Smith Van Kleek. The Way It Was chronicles Van Kleek’s experiences as a student and teacher in oneroom schools in rural Alberta. From her ﬁrst year attending school in the High Prairie country in 1916, to the closure of her last rural schoolhouse in 1961, Edith Van Kleek recalls a bygone era in Canadian educational history.

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