Saskatchewan needs child labour laws (and teachers need bells around their necks!)

Way back when we lived in that close-knit and self-contained community of CFS Alsask, my favourite place of all was the library. I had a library card almost from the minute the moving van pulled away and I devoured entire series of books; Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames were real people to me. Lorna Doone was one of the most tragic figures I'd ever "met".

The library was in the northwest leg of the H-hut that was John A Silver School (aka DND School Alsask). I visited at least once a week. By 1971, the library had outgrown the space; a portable was brought in and set up at the south end of the school to make room to expand. But how to get all those thousands of books from one end of the building to the other and into another building? Why not create our own version of a bucket brigade? Scathingly brilliant. The kids in Grades VII and VIII were enlisted to move the books. Who needs to have lessons and follow a curriculum when you can put all those kids to work? There were only about 16 of us, but that was enough. We passed piles of books down the hall into the waiting hands of the next kid all the way to the portable, where the librarian arranged them on the shelves.

That year we had two teachers: Mr George Proud, who was also the principal, and Mr Bill Winter who was in his first year of teaching and also taught part-time in the Grave V-VI class. Mr Winter was responsible for supervising much of the Great Library Relocation. One afternoon near the end of the project I was at the new end; we were moving the reference books... tons of encyclopediae... I can't remember whose idea it was, mine or Peggy Stewart's, but there we were, looking in the dictionary to see if they had an entry for the F-bomb. We were so intent on our quest that we didn't notice that Mr Winter had come up behind us and was looking over our shoulders. Thank heaven he didn't have the usual extension of his right arm (the yardstick) in hand or Peggy and I would both have been sporting some impressive welts! (Yes, corporal punishment was allowed in DND schools in 1971. I was intimately acquainted with Mr Winter's yardstick and so was Peggy.) We only realized he was there when he said, "Too bad you can't put that kind of enthusiasm into your English homework. Back to work!" Whew... we got off lucky that time.

I wonder where Peggy is now...

Today's a Two-fer: Family Vacations

When your family income is only just above the poverty line, family vacations aren't usually high on the priority list. However, when you have a Mom like mine, there will be memorable family vacations for which she scrimped and saved and did without to provide. One such was the summer I was 11.

My mom's maternal grandparents lived in Esquimalt, BC. They were getting on in years and none of us but Mom had ever met them. She really wanted to see them both again before age took its inevitable toll so she saved up all the tips she made while working in the restaurant of the Alsask Hotel to pay for a tent and gas. Then off we went to BC in our little red 1962 Comet. We found a campground about 17 miles from their home and staked out our vacation home then made our visit.

My great-grandmother Cubitt was a very strong-willed lady; Margaret Thatcher could have learned from her. Mabel Shaw was born in Nottingham, England and came to Canada with her father when she was 18. They sailed from Liverpool in the spring of 1911 then took the train to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan where they made their first stop. There she met and married my great-grandfather, WJ Cubitt. Their lives took them ever westward until they retired in Esquimalt. WJ was a slightly built man who was content to allow his Mamie to wear the pants, so to speak. He was born in the village of Dilham, Norfolk; he was the first of his family to emigrate across the pond, arriving in June, 1910. His brothers Jack and George followed in 1913, then his parents and two sisters in 1921. The three boys answered the call, enlisting in the Canadian Expeditionary Force and fighting the Hun in Europe during the Great War. All three returned in good health at the end of the war, picking up the threads of their lives again.

The Cubitts' house on Lampson Street was small and chock-full of treasures from "home". Great-grandma was a proper lady despite her working-class upbringing; she liked her china, crystal and silver flatware to be prominently displayed. My mother was very taken with the mother-of-pearl handled fruit knives and fish forks. (Who uses that?) Another thing Great-grandma liked displayed prominently were the results of her hobbies. She was a prolific needlepointer; there were pillows and tapestries everywhere, including a cushion that I can still see clearly if I close my eyes. The cover had a Union Jack in the background and a British bulldog in the foreground. It was incredibly detailed and flawlessly executed. Also quite conspicuous in their sitting room were the crocheted poodles! There were wine and liquor bottles disguised as crocheted poodles in every colour in every corner of the room. I went home with a white and pink one!

Great-grandpa Cubitt also had a collection of interesting memorabilia. We looked on in awe when he pulled out a cavalry sword he'd brought back from the war, then showed us the medals he'd been awarded for meritorious service. My favourite part though was when he reverently uncovered his mandolin, gently tuned it then treated us to a mini-concert of sentimental old melodies. His fingers were remarkably nimble for an 83 year old man. To this day my heart swells when I hear the sweet strains of the mandolin.

We were totally stunned when Great-grandma Cubitt died suddenly in October of that year. We had really thought she'd outlive Great-grandpa just out of sheer determination. He was bereft without her and followed her to the hereafter 10 months later. Somewhere I have a postcard he wrote to me the day before he passed that bears the postmark of the day following his death. And just last week my cousin offered me some pieces of Great-grandma's china. Are you KIDDING me? Bring it on!!


The following summer we took a family vacation that didn't include visiting relatives. My memories of that vacation are little vignettes, like a slide show or maybe a postcard collection. We left Alsask in the little red Comet, which really wasn't road-worthy but it was what we had, and headed southwest to the border crossing at Coutts, Alberta.

Our first stop was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a very accurately named town in my opinion. Our campsite was barely off the highway on an old riverbed. The soil was so silty it got into everything and I don't think that tent was ever the same again. We drove south through Yellowstone National Park where none of nature's wonders were in evidence that day. We wanted to detour to see Old Faithful, but Dad didn't want to take the time. (His philosophy is: decide where you're going and go there by the most direct route in the shortest possible time.)

The incongruity of the Great Salt Lake and the imposing grandeur of Bryce Canyon followed Yellowstone and then we were in the desert. We stopped for gas and a pit stop in Arizona then decided to get ice cream before continuing on. Mom discovered that she'd left her purse - with all our money - in the restroom at the service station. Just as she was about to lose her mind, a woman came up to her and asked her if she'd left her purse behind. Thank God for honest people! On we went to Las Vegas.

The time we spent there is a kaleidoscope of images: casinos, noise, heat, confusion. We stayed in a motel far off the Strip with a cracked and scummy pool; I scarcely remember anything more. Our travels took us to the southwest rim of the Grand Canyon. I was amazed to see people riding donkeys down a razor-thin trail clinging to the walls of rock, down into the base of the canyon. It was here that I first realized my fear of heights. Standing with my back to the railing of a lookout created such abject terror in me I could hardly breathe. Mom has pictures of us at that lookout, but I don't know that I could look at them. Then it was back to Vegas for another night before we hit the road again.

Our next stop was a campground in the Santa Ana mountains in California. It was very hot and dry; the fire risk was sky-high and there was an open-flame ban in the park. My only memory of that campground was of watching Mom shave her legs using a basin of water and Dad's old double-edged razor. The next day we drove into LA so that we could go to Disneyland. It was the summer that the Haunted Mansion opened and we took that ride twice, it was SO much fun. The parking lot held license plates from all over the world. I remember heat, sunshine and Tomorrowland. The following day we went to a beach so that we could swim in the ocean. Only problem with that was that it was a surfer's beach and the water was too rough to really swim in. Then it was time to go home.

The trip back was not memorable for anything except for the fact that the Comet was having problems fulfilling its role as family transportation. The starter went and the only way to get the engine started was to push the car until it reached a speed that it could be coerced into running. Mom, who didn't drive, push-started that car three mornings in a row; no one even thought to offer her a hand, except for a one-armed man who helped her push it up a little incline. Our last stop on the way home was in Great Falls, Montana. We visited with friends overnight and then were home the next night.

The Comet's days were numbered. There were just too many things that needed to be fixed. We really didn't need a car in Alsask because we could walk everywhere, so for months we didn't have a car. Not long before we prepared to move to New Brunswick, Dad brought home a Mercury Meteor. Finally there'd actually be room for three kids in the backseat! Hallelujah!! Our next road trip would be MUCH more comfortable...

Long ago and far away

I'm almost running out of day to get this entry in under the wire. Here's a short snapper:

In those early days when Dad was a temporary civilian, we lived in the booming metropolis of Grimshaw, Alberta. I believe I was not yet five when we moved there, a long way from St-Sylvestre in Quebec's Eastern Townships. At first we lived in one of the four apartments found in the village. (The building was white with green trim. We lived in a basement suite; Auntie Carol, Uncle Clayton and Kellie lived on the main floor. This interlude was brief... some shaky investments and poor business decisions led Dad to return to Brockville and to the rest of us to sharing a tiny, two bedroom house with Nan. Her house was very crowded with all of us there; the three of us kids shared one bedroom, Nan had hers and Mom slept on the couch. The house had no indoor plumbing. Nan had a one-holer in her room; we kids made do with a chamber pot at night but during the day we made the trek to the end of the garden to the outhouse. Drinking water came from a basin in the kitchen where a tea towel kept it clean and a dipper kept it sanitary. Waste water and other unpleasant things went into a slop pail that was emptied into the outhouse once a day. We were bathed once a week in the big washtub in the kitchen. Bruce, then the smallest, went first and I went last. The water would be warmed up from the kettle, otherwise we'd have turned blue along with the goose pimples. Now it all seems so primitive, but back then that's just how it was.

Nan had a house full of treasures. She loved fine china and had a collection of cups and saucers as well as a variety of cut glass serving dishes. All of her upholstered furniture had hand-crocheted antimacassars on the backs and there were doilies on every flat surface. Nan decorated cakes as a bit of a hobby, and sold some for extra money. I couldn't wait for my turn to have a birthday angel food cake with a Barbie doll standing in the hole, her hand-made dress spread out over the top of the cake as the main feature.

There are many other things worth remembering about the time we lived with Nan, but I'll save those for another day.

History is wasted on the young...

On my 8th birthday my dad spent the day with a recruiter for the newly amalgamated Canadian Armed Forces. At the end of the day he had re-enlisted and a new chapter of our lives was about to begin.

Dad's first posting after re-enlisting was to the radar station at Mont Apica, Quebec. This little community was smack in the middle of Laurentides Provincial Park and was little more than a wide spot to the west of the highway. The townsite was small, as were most radar station townsites; a number of duplexes and 4 three-storey apartment blocks were arranged on the south side of the station with the school at the farthest north point and the church at the farthest south point of the housing area.

But before we experienced all of this, we had the privilege of spending a week in a hotel in Quebec City. Dad was already at work in Mont Apica so Mom and the three of us kids were checked into the Chateau Champlain (now called l'Hotel Manoir d'Auteuil) in Quebec's historic Lower Town. Quebec is one of the oldest communities in North America and the first settled by the French in the New World. There have been French-Canadians living there continuously since July 3, 1608. The old city is on the flats near the St Lawrence River and on the bluffs of Cap Diamant, or Upper Town. The city is filled with historic buildings and old battlefields, rich with the stories of Canada's beginnings and Mom was determined to expose her children to this abundance of culture. Too bad we were just kids.

Poor Mom, she really had her hands filled with us. I was 8, as I've already explained. Sharon was 6, to be 7 in November, and Bruce was 3, to be 4 also in November. And we were cooped up in a single hotel room in a very old, very well-preserved hotel. There was no TV or Internet for us to be amused by, there was just Mom. It was already mid-September and the weather was starting to cool off. After breakfast every morning mom would get us all dressed in warm clothes and we'd go sightseeing. We had very little money so most of our excursions were to places we could enter or view at no cost. I don't remember how many times we climbed l'Escalier Casse-Cou (Breakneck Stairs), which have been in that exact spot since the city was first established, but I remember thinking that I never wanted to see another step again! (There are actually 28 different staircases between Upper and Lower Town and the change in elevation is 350 feet. That's a LOT of stairs.) I wish I could remember some of the places we went and the things we saw on those walking tours, as it's likely the closest I will ever get to Europe. I do remember the very imposing Chateau Frontenac that towers from the highest point on Cap Diamant. It's a 618 room hotel and is thought to be the most photographed hotel in the world.

I have been married for more than 30 years to a man whose ancestors were among the founding familes of the city of Quebec. Our children are the 12th generation of their father's family to live in Canada; the Fortiers arrived in Quebec in 1664 to settle first at Beauport, then on l'Ile d'Orleans in the St Lawrence River across from the settlement at Quebec. Antoine Fortier developed the first commercial fishery in New France and was very successful. Through marriage they're related to Louis Hebert, the first farmer in New France (arrived 1616) and to Abraham Martin (arrived 1619), thought to be the original owner of les Plaines d'Abraham, site of the defining battle in the war for control of Canada. Abraham Martin was my children's 11th great-grandfather and Louis Hebert their 10th great-grandfather.

The time I spent sightseeing as an 8 year old would mean so much more to me now as a 51 year old amateur genealogist!

Learning to Ski in Saskatchewan

Imagine living in a small town on the prairie where on a clear day you could see the grain elevators in the closest town 12 miles away. Alsask, a tiny little stop on the railway grain route to the ports of Thunder Bay and Vancouver, is one such little town. It sits barely a mile from the border between Saskatchewan and Alberta and there isn't really much left there any more since the dismantlement of the Pinetree Line of radar sites.

The radar station at Canadian Forces Station Alsask had 124 houses, all steel-locks (a euphemism for bargain-basement double-wide trailers), and a 15 pad trailer park. These steel-locks were all one of two designs, with aluminum siding and carports attached to the front or the side, depending on which model you had. They all were 3 bedroom, 1 bath slab-set homes and some families living in them had more children than there were rooms altogether. None of the yards were fenced except for the C.O.'s house. The school, K-8 in an H-hut, stood in the very middle of the townsite. The chapels were across the road from the school, Catholic on the west side and Protestant on the east. The swimming pool was in a building of its own, separate from the rec centre and the pool just fit in the space. Locally it was known as the Gopher Dip. The people who lived here were the men and women of the Cold War and their families. About one third of the population turned over each year during the Annual Posting Season and that's how we came to be there from August 1968 to July 1971.

Speaking of gophers, there were millions of them everywhere! And where there are gophers, there are gopher holes. More golf balls were lost in them than anyone would believe.

There were two trees, bristlecone pines that stood next to the guard house at the main entrance to the station. When we moved there in early August 1968, those trees were only as tall as I, a 10 year old girl. The main road, a big loop through the housing site, was paved but the little cul-de-sacs that sprouted off it weren't until that fall of '68. There were 6 houses on each of the cul-de-sacs; we lived in house # 122, on the very last cul-de-sac, between the Nowans and the Savages and across the road from the Pinders. Shopping was very limited; there was a tiny drug store and a small IGA in the village and an even smaller canteen on the station. If you couldn't get it there, you'd have to go to Kindersley, 40 miles to the east, or to Oyen, 25 miles to the west but much smaller.

Now I can hear you thinking, what ever does this have with learning to ski? Well, actually it has a lot to do with it. The people who were transferred to Alsask came from all over Canada. We moved there from Quebec and when we left, it was for New Brunswick. The same summer we moved to Alsask, another family moved there from the Ottawa area where the skiing was quite good. Sgt Dave McKinnell was a ski instructor and ski patroler in Ontario when he wasn't defending our country from the Russians and he had a real problem with the notion of living on a treeless, flat prairie for 3 years.

Dave spent the late summer driving up and down the rural roads of southwestern Saskatchewan looking for a hill. Or even anything that looked like a hill. One day he found one. It was not a huge hill, more like a dune, but it offered enough of an incline to at least provide a little momentum. It wasn't far from the station, about 10 miles to the southeast and the road was reasonably well-maintained. There was a spring on the property and a few spindly trees; close to the road was an old derelict house that had been the original homestead. The best part was that it wasn't cultivated, as was most of the land around it, and the owner was willing to lease the area for a nominal fee. The station commander agreed to support the development of a ski area at the Springs and so it began.

A shed located a short distance from the derelict house housed the old car that would become the motor for the rope tow needed to propel the skiers to the top of the hill. A half dozen or so power poles were erected along the path the tow was to take and the trails were groomed to remove rocks, fill holes and create a safer surface for the throngs of people Dave hoped would find their way to his little resort. The derelict house was cleaned up enough to provide a place to get out of the wind (which is relentless in Saskatchewan year 'round) and a propane camp stove brought out to heat water for instant hot chocolate. The station motor pool was tapped to provide a bus out to the Springs and back every Saturday and Sunday as long as there was snow on the ground, no matter the weather. The Alsask Ski Hill opened in early November 1968 and I was an inaugural member.

My parents were not well-off but they scraped up enough cash to buy skis, memberships and lessons for my sister and me. I was a real diehard and was there every single weekend; I loved it. My pants would be frozen to my legs, my hair matted to my head, my cheeks windburnt and frostbitten, my lips chapped and the tip of my nose totally numb, but nothing brought me down off the hill but the headlights of the 15 passenger bus coming down the road. I wiped out in spectacular fashion, came to sudden stops at the bottom of the hill where the hay from the bales keeping the snow on the hill sometimes blew, jumped and teetered on one ski but I never had so much fun in my life.

In 1970 the owner of the land agreed that the "warming hut" could be demolished and an A-frame "chalet" be constructed as long as it didn't cost him anything. Somehow Dave gathered the necessary funds to build it; it wasn't fancy, built as it was out of 2x4s and particle board, but it had a soaring wall of windows looking over the hill and electricity. By this time there was a small canteen there that sold coffee, hot chocolate, potato chips, chocolate bars and Hot Rods. When the power was turned on, we could have some space heaters and a place to actually get warm. But still, there was no phone. We were really cut off out there.

That same winter, Peter Berthiaume was the first real casualty of our little club. He had taken the gentle slope on the west side of the tow down to the springs and the little stand of trees. I saw him fall but didn't think too much of it. I was right behind him on the same run; as I approached him from behind him I noticed he wasn't trying to get up. When I called his name he didn't even look up. He was very pale and had a dazed look in his eyes. One foot was twisted at an unnatural angle. I skied past him, shucked my skis outside the chalet and started yelling for Dave. I grabbed the toboggan leaning against the chalet as I yelled, then turned and ran back to Peter, who still hadn't moved. I carefully took the ski off the foot that wasn't hurt, undid the runaway cable from the other one and reassured him that help was coming. As I tried to help him onto the toboggan several adults arrived on the scene and Peter was loaded up, hauled to Dave's car and taken off to Kindersley for treatment. I was 12 and had just handled my first emergency without falling apart.

The summer came and with it a move to New Brunswick. The McKinnells also moved that year and I have no idea what happened to the Alsask Ski Hill. I didn't ski again for 6 years but I've never fogotten learning to ski in Saskatchewan. Thank you Dave McKinnell, wherever you are.

Muddled Musing

I'm on an alliteration kick today it seems. ..

I received some unexpected feedback today regarding a little anecdote I related on another website, a simple reminiscence of a childhood pastime. Readers of my insignificant little story liked it enough to ask for more tales of my childhood memories. The result of that feedback is the decision to create this blog. If no one but me ever reads it, that's okay.

My earliest memory that is truly a memory is of winter night in Gander, Newfoundland. I couldn't have been much older than two. My dad was standing at the set tub in our basement at 116 Sullivan Dr, cleaning fish. I had an earache and my daddy was always able to make them go away. He hoisted me up to sit on the hot water tank so I could see what he was doing with those fish of his. I can see my pyjama-clad toddler self, sitting way up high with my ankles crossed and feet dangling, patiently waiting for all those fish to lose their innards. After he was done and had cleaned up all the guts, he took me upstairs to "treat" my earache. Sometimes he used warmed camphorated oil and a cotton ball to ease the pain. When we didn't have any camphorated oil (the odor of which I can feel in my nose as I write this) he would use a lit cigarette. [Stop shuddering, I still have both my ears. BUT!! Don't try this at home!!] The filter end went against the ear canal and the lit end went in Dad's mouth. He'd then gently blow warm smoke into my ear and like magic the pain would ease.

When it was my own turn to soothe small children with earaches, my choice of adjunct never included a lit cigarette. It leaned toward the more plebeian... Children's Tylenol and amoxicillin (or cefaclor for Adam and his resistant bugs!). Not nearly as memorable, but infinitely safer.