Paracutin

 

I must confess that I unashamedly am in love with Mexico with its warts and all! Ever since we spent a year as a family in Guadalajara, I have professed my love for "Mejico"! We made many Mexican friends and, as mentors in 2 Winnipeg high schools to International students, many of whom hailed from Mexico, we made even more friends. We have traveled to Mexico as often as we could and have been to almost all its major cities to visit friends and we have been to many of its beach areas. Puerto Vallarta and a Mexican hotel, El Piscador, just off the Malecon is a particular favorite.

But I shall never be able to visit Mexico again because of my fragile heart condition. So I visit it in my memory. One particular memory is of a volcano in the interior.

Paracutin

When I was about 10 years old, I was at our local movie theatre to take in an afternoon matinee. With the main feature there were also some additional reels of film shown. Along with the ever-present ongoing serial were also a couple of cartoon features and a Movietone news reel featuring the latest events from around the world. It was here that I saw an item that has stayed with me for almost 70 years.

It depicted the life cycle of a cinder volcano from its birth in 1943 to when it went dormant in 1952. It showed a farmer, Dionisio Pulido, standing in his corn field near a large crack in the ground from which rumbling noises were coming and clouds of steam and gases were swirling. From clips taken at different times it showed how the cinder cone grew until it reached its present day height of 424 metres.

During the 8 years of its growth, the lava it secreted covered an area of 26 sq. kms and the volcanic sand it spewed out covered 56 sq. kms. It also buried in lava completely the two towns of Paricutin, with a population of a little over 700, and San Juan Parangaricutiro, with a population just under 3000. In the latter town, the large church built of stone was the only object in both towns that remained sticking up partly above the lava bed. The top parts of the bell tower and another tower and the front apse where the altar was plus the top parts of the high walls were visible. As well, the large door leading into the cathedral was open. Some lava had seeped into the interior. All wooden parts which included the roof had been burned by the intense heat of the lava.

The volcano claimed over 4000 smaller farm animals and 500 horses which all perished because of the noxious fumes and gases from the volcano. No people perished as the lava moved slowly and the people quickly vacated their towns and set up in some uninhabited areas farther away from the reach of the lava.

When Patti and I and our two boys were in Guadalajara in 1989 -90 where she and I were teachers at the American school and our two boys were students in the Spanish/English bilingual program, we decided to visit this volcano I had such an interest in from age 10. One long weekend - and there are many in Mexico - on a Friday after school was out, we took a bus from Guadalajara to Uruapan, a 5-hour ride. The bus was a luxuriously outfitted highway cruiser. It put to shame all the Greyhound buses I had ridden in in Canada and the U.S.

When we arrived in Uruapan we checked into a hotel and then went on an exploratory trip through this city styled in colonial Spanish architecture. We enjoyed a great Mexican meal and then we retired early for our bus trip to the town of Angajuan which was the jumping off place if you wanted to see the volcano.

Saturday morning, we arrived at the bus depot, we bought our tickets which were quite cheap, and we boarded our bus. It was a very poor cousin to the one we had arrived in the day before. It was of the school bus variety with a side front entrance and further back a side exit door. The bus was red and white and obviously had about 500 000 kms on its odometer. There were all kinds of crates and boxes stacked on the roof. Inside as we found seating, we realized with no surprise that we were the only non-Mexicans on the bus. Paricutin was still not the tourist destination that it is today.

The passengers were obviously villagers and farmers going home from their market trip to Uruapan. They were all mestizos which is to say they were of Spanish and aboriginal descent. They were friendly and we got a lot of smiles. Our two sons, who are very fair complexioned, received a lot of stares. David in particular was almost white-blonde and he received the lion’s share of stares. Fortunately for him, no one tried to touch his fair hair for good luck as was wont to happen on the buses and combis in Guadalajara.

With a loud roar and a belch of diesel exhaust we were off. One could not really converse over the noise of the bus engine without shouting. After about a 2 hour journey we arrived in the small town of Angajuan. As we were disembarking, one of the passengers, a clean-cut young man approached us with a piece of paper in his hand. He spoke to us in very good English. He told us he had written down the address of his parent’s home or casa. If we needed any help at all during our visit, he told us he was at our service.

We checked into a small inn and then after asking for directions with our recently acquired few Spanish phrases and receiving instructions from the innkeeper in his mixed Spanish and a few English words he knew, we set off to go on our expedition to the volcano. Arriving at a corral, we arranged for the hire of two horses and the necessary guide to get us to San Juan Parangaricutiro and our closeup of Paricutin volcano.

Nathan rode in front of me on my horse and David shared a saddle with Patti. Our guide led the way. After about a half hour ride down a twisting path through the lava field where some plant life and scrubby trees were making a comeback, we arrived at the remains of the church. Our guide tethered our horses while we all went exploring.

We made our way into the church. It was an awe-inspiring experience. The altar had some fresh flowers on it. It was apparent that many Mexicans also visited this church and many brought flowers. In the past, some lava had flowed into the church through the windows and the entrance doors. There were some large solid blobs of lava almost boulder-like that had been expelled from the mouth of the volcano as “firebombs" and had landed in the church and solidified. There were some plants making a valiant attempt to grow in the soil that had been blown unto the stone floor of the church.

We clambered all over and took many photos. For me this was a fulfilment of a wish I had had since I first saw the Movietone clip. Finally we were ready to go back. We mounted our horses and the guide let me lead, followed by Patti, and with him bringing up the rear. The horses knew their way back to their stable. We had them trot or canter or walk depending on the kind of terrain the path was on.

As we got back to the outskirts of the village, I could see that a wedding had just been performed in the small church and the people had been let out and were streaming toward the road we were on leading to the stable. Many of the men appeared inebriated and some were waving bottles of mescal, a cheap potent type of liquor. The bride looked extremely unhappy as did many of the women with her.

As the men headed toward the road, they saw us on horseback and started waving their bottles at me to offer me a drink. Now I knew if I stopped, I would not be able to get away until I had drunk with every man who offered me his bottle. I also knew that to refuse an offered drink from a Mexican was extremely insulting to the one offering the drink.

Thinking quickly, I took my foot out of the stirrup on the side of the horse that was away from the view of the men offering me mescal. I started kicking my horse on the side away from the view of the men offering me mescal. My horse reacted by started to shy and I made a great show of trying unsuccessfully to control him. The horse took off in a gallop and we were soon away from the small crowd of men who would have soon surrounded us.

Patti and the guide were not bothered and were soon reunited back at the stable. The guide pointed at me and made a sign with his forefinger and thumb that what I had done was very smart. He then held his forefinger to his temple and made a circular motion and pointed back at where we had just come from. “Es loco!” He meant the men we had left behind us were crazy.

We made our way back to the inn and that evening we stayed close to the inn not wanting to inadvertently run into any revelers from the wedding. The next day we bused back to Uruapan and then made a connection there for Guadalajara. It had certainly been a most interesting weekend.

The Meeting Place

 

The Meeting Place

When I first arrived in Winnipeg from Saskatchewan in 1960, I knew only my brother and my cousin who now both lived in Winnipeg. I first moved in with them. Then a few months later my parents decided there was no future for them on their small Saskatchewan farm and they, too, decided to move. They had a large sale to dispose of their accumulations from over 40 years of farming and moved to Winnipeg to join their two sons.

I moved in with my parents into a third-floor suite of a house on Maryland Street near the Misericordia Hospital. My dad with his grade 6 education got a minimum wage job. My job at the railyard paid well but I got very few shifts during the week because I was on the spare board. My mom worked part-time as a cook at a Ukrainian food restaurant on Selkirk Avenue which was owned by someone from the same village that she and the owner had both emigrated from. Together our pooled salaries helped us survive that first year.

I eventually found a friend in this city, which at that time had a population of about 480, 000 people.  I had gone to boarding school with him for Grade 12. He introduced me into his group of friends. They were all from rural Manitoba from small towns or farms who had come to Winnipeg during the on-going recession to find work which was unavailable to them back at home. I was the lone Saskatchewanite but I had the same kind of “roots” as they did and, because I was also a good friend of Jack’s, they accepted me into their group.

It was a unique kind of group. We all had our grade 12 diplomas but no money to further our education. We all worked hard and were reliable employees. Most of us had low paying jobs except for Jack, who was in process of becoming a full-fledged x-ray technician at St. Boniface Hospital, and me with a good hourly wage but an unsure number of work hours each week. We numbered a dozen – 6 guys and 6 “girls”. Only one of us had a car. The rest of us walked or rode the buses or took a cab. We began to call ourselves the Dirty Dozen well before the movie of the same name came out in 1967.

As I mentioned earlier, we worked hard all week and we looked forward to getting together at a party on the weekend. We all usually met at Lorraine’s apartment. She and two other young women from our group shared a large apartment on the second floor of a fairly new apartment block, the Young Street Apartments. It was located on Young Street, a stone’s throw north of Broadway and 5 blocks east of Sherbrook Street.

She would put out the word and we would determine whether Friday or Saturday was most suitable for the “Dozen” to meet. We would make our way there for about 8 o’clock. Most of us lived within walking distance or were a short bus ride away. Attendance at this part was by invitation only. If you were not part of the Dirty Dozen and If you were not a “Dozen” member and you were not invited, you would not be welcome at the party. Occasionally in later years we extended our invitations to other people with similar roots. They were judged by their behaviors at the party as to whether they would be asked again.

Each of us brought our share of liquid refreshments. My bottle was quite popular because at that time of my life I had a taste for expensive Scotch. We each also had to bring a snack or a plate of food to share at the gathering. Most importantly, we had to bring our manners. Being loud or obnoxious was simply not tolerated. As well, alcohol was for slowly enjoying and not for getting drunk on. We monitored ourselves as we did not want to spoil our party spot. The apartment became known as “The Meeting Place”.

Lorraine also had an ace up her sleeve. She always invited the young care-taking couple of the block to our gatherings at the Meeting Place. It was good insurance in that we were then on our best or at least better behavior. And if there was the occasional complaint about the noise coming from the Meeting Place, the caretaker would say he was already on it. As a rule, we sat around visiting while some quiet music  played in the background. There was some dancing. There was a lot of enjoying each other’s company.

There were two exceptions to “membership” to our group. These two were always welcome at our gatherings. Both also had suites in the block. One was Boyd Kozak, who was a very popular DJ with CKRC radio. His real first name was Boris which is the name we used at our gatherings. Boris was, as he put it, “one of the favourite sons of Wadena, Saskatchewan.

He and I would speak to each other in Ukrainian. I could read, write, and speak fluently in Ukrainian. Others in our group had varied skills in the language which ranged from a little to just a smattering. Boris and I were both of the opinion that” if you did not use it, you would lose it!” Boris was well-liked and he was a great mixer and a wonderful addition to a party.

The other exception was Leo Lewis who was an all-star running back for our Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Leo was married with a wife and children back home in Missouri. He was only here from spring training time to the conclusion of the football season. He would have his one beer and quietly sit in an easy chair and watch us younger folk having a good time. I often sat with him and he was amused that I was a Roughrider fan amongst all these Blue Bomber fans. We also had some serious discussions about how people of color were treated or mistreated in both his country and our Canada. He opened my “white” eyes to many things of which I was blissfully or carelessly unaware. He occasionally brought Ernie Pitts with him. Ernie loved to dance and flirt with our young women. Leo would just watch and when he deemed that Ernie was getting too frisky, he would quietly go and take him by the arm and wish us all a good night and they would be off. We would bring our party to and end. We would say our good-byes and leave quietly. Those who lived further away would take pre-ordered cabs home while the rest of us would walk home as a group. We would make sure the young women were safely home first and then we would break off and make our own ways to where we were staying.

Our group slowly begin to disintegrate in the late 1960’s. Some left for better jobs in other provinces. Some got married and had families. And we just got older and did not need the excitement and stimulus of a weekly part. Our Meeting Place came to an end when Lorraine was finally the only one left in her suite. It was too much rent for one person to pay. She then down-sized to a smaller apartment in a different block.

Alas, it was a good time while it lasted.

Reflections on 45 Years of Teaching

 

Reflections on 45 Years of Teaching

 

As I sit in my living room isolating because of my fragile health status, I am protected from the outside world and the Covid virus threat by my picture window and by my avoidance of public contact with people. Through the window I view the passing parade on my personal stage, Bonner Avenue. Often as I sit there waiting for the approach of spring and its promise of warmer temperatures, and watching for new participants in the parade, I reflect on the past.

 At 78 years of age, I have experienced a lot in my life. As I recall past events, I often stir up some recollections which have been safely stored in some “dim” recesses of my mind. Many are pleasant and happy reminders of my many experiences. Some are not so happy, and some are recollections that I have tried to forget because they are so sad or because they left me feeling frustrated because I could do little or nothing to alleviate some situation.

 In teaching as in any other professions or jobs or workplace experiences, there are all kinds of people you interact with. In my case it was mostly students and educators and support staff. I categorized them in my mind by referring to an old Clint Eastwood movie – “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly!”

 Good students could be said to be those who wanted to learn, who were willing to learn new concepts, and who helped their fellow students, and who as a rule, did not disrupt the classroom protocols. Good teachers would have the attributes of liking their students, would come up with suitable ways to help their students to achieve educational goals in the class, solve problems fairly and without rancor, and who were people who “liked” their “job, not for the money, but for the satisfaction of teaching others.

 Bad students? Other teachers might say they were those students who resisted efforts to teach them, not because of inability on their parts, but because they liked to be disruptive. I never considered any students to be bad even though these so-named students were a most often assigned to me because I “could handle them”! Principals most often did this because they knew that I did not send students to the office to be disciplined and thus these “bad students” would not be problems for administration to deal with. Bad teachers?  I considered them to be those who were in it mainly for the money. On their part there was little thought put into fresh or new lessons but more of a total reliance on past assignments from previous years, and no inclination to make their daily lessons interesting or exciting. “Very little bang for the buck!”

 Support staff? These were the custodial staff – the janitors, the cleaners, the techies, the cooks and the secretaries - I loved them all and really appreciated what they did for me. All you had to do was to treat them like equals, like real people who also had dreams and aspirations, and they would often work miracles for you.

 We come to the ugly. I truly only encountered only one of these students. He was totally amoral. He lied, he manipulated, he was very spiteful and hurtful and was a bully. Later I found out his father was both very physically and mentally abusive to the boy. This young man was cautioned not to talk to anyone about his treatment at home. I dealt with him fairly but there were times when I really wanted to get him out of my sight.

 In my “books”, ugly teachers were those who abused the fact that they were in charge and were mostly free to do as they wished in their classrooms. Some of them treated some of their students horribly. They heaped mental abuse on them with occasional physical abuse thrown in. These teachers should have been run out of the teaching profession. Most were not and many principals solved their problems with these teachers by having them transferred to other schools. Out of sight, out of mind.

 Often different memories come swirling out of the mists of the past. One was of a student whose sixth-grade class had been transferred to our school because their school was too small physically to accommodate the large number of students from the surrounding neighborhood. These students were distributed equally among our four sixth grade classes. One of these students very seemed shy. But she always seemed to have a pleasant smile on her face whenever we made eye contact. During one of our assignments, I discovered that she had a wonderful gift for drawing and a remarkable eye for colors. I made a fuss over her work and a few days later she brought in some other art pieces she had worked on at home. They were astounding. As we got to know more about each other through the course of the school year, she discovered that my tastes in music were rather mundane. One day she brought in a cassette for me to listen to. It was Bridge Over Troubled Waters by Simon and Garfunkel. Then and there I was hooked. They became and still are two of my favorite recording artists. I am happy to say that 50 some years later this student and I are still good friends.

 Another memory was from a time I was teaching English in a Mexican school in Guadalajara. It was an American school, the American School Foundation of Guadalajara. It had 1300 students and a staff of roughly 50% Spanish speaking Mexican teachers, many of whom were bilingual, and 50% imported teachers from countries where English was the main language. In this latter group were two actual teachers who had trained to be teachers. They vast majority of this group had no teaching expertise but could speak English and were willing to teach the mostly Mexican kids despite the very low salaries.

 On opening day, the new students to the school were assembled in the auditorium to be assigned to their new classes. Most were American and Canadian and Japanese whose parents had been deployed to work in the Mexican subsidiaries of businesses and diplomatic corps of their respective countries.

 I noticed one student who stood out from the group. Her jeans were torn, her makeup was “interesting”, and she had a sullen look on her face which to me cried out, “I don’t want to be here!” I made a silent wager with myself that she would be assigned to one of my classes.

 Sure enough next day, there she was in my class, which had a mixed array of Mexican and “foreign” students. I soon found out again that I should not judge a person by his or her appearance. I found her to be an avid reader and a writer and she became one of my best students. We shared ideas for books and for writing and we developed a friendship which has lasted to this day.

 Then there was Miguel at the same school but in a different class. He was part of a group of Mexican students who were not as proficient in English as they should have been after being in the bilingual stream for so many years in the school. This class was the most difficult to handle at this school. Yet when I compared them to some of the classes I had “worked’ with at home in Canada, they were pussycats. They tested me to see what they could get away with. I kept my cool with them and then I started to praise Miguel for his apparent ability in English. He admitted to me that he had lived in Chicago for much of his life and had only returned to Mexico when his mom remarried.

 Now Miguel and I had a common bond as I had spent much time getting to know Chicago when my brother-in-law lived there. Soon we were discussing ball teams, restaurants, tourist spots, the El, and a lot of things he and were aware of. I also noticed after about a week that the class’s behavior now made them one of my easiest classes to teach. One of the girls came up to me in the cafeteria after I had praised the class on their self-discipline and how well they were doing. She said it was because Miguel, a pretty tough character, had put the word out that anybody who messed with “Meester Breeski” was going to have to deal with him after school was dismissed for the day! I later learned Miguel lived in a shed apart from the house because his stepdad would not tolerate his presence in the house. He was subjected to verbal abuse from the stepdad. In me he found an accepting male figure and he responded to my “kind” treatment of him.

 These are the kinds of memories that come back to me and make me realize how rich my working life had been and how much I had enjoyed my 45 year journey in education. Each day new memories crop up. The thousands of students I worked with have become somewhat dim in my memory. Some of their names are lost to me. Some of the first students I first taught are now grandparents.  A few are great-grandparents. But they were all precious to me and occasionally some of them “visit” me as I reminisce.

 

 

Tommy Douglas

 

Tommy Douglas

Tommy Douglas was a Scottish Canadian politician who had been a Baptist minister. He served as Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961. He became leader of the New Democratic Party from 1961 to 1971. While he was premier of Saskatchewan, his cabinet under the party banner of Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, or CCF, was the first democratic socialistic government in North America. It introduced the continent’s first single-payer, universal health care program and was the fore-runner of our universal health care system in place across all of Canada today. In 2004, a CBC television program named Tommy Douglas “The Greatest Canadian” based on a Canada wide, viewer supported survey.

I first saw Mr. Douglas at a speech he gave at Madge Lake in Duck Mountain provincial Park in the 1940’s. He was standing on the back of a three-ton farm truck, speaking to several hundred people who were gathered to hear him. Most of the group were farmers, including my dad. My dad hoisted me onto his shoulders so I could see better and so that I wasn’t inadvertently trampled in the crush of the crowd. As Tommy was up there “orating” from his “pulpit” on the back of the truck – he was a tremendous public speaker – I began to slowly wave my hand at him. I kept this up for several moments. At one point in his speech, he stopped and smiled and then he waved back at me and continued with his speech. I was so pleased with myself. It isn’t often that a three-year old gets recognized by an important adult in a big crowd.

The Colonel and I

 

The Colonel and I

In 1958 Oscar Gruber, son of Polish immigrants, brought the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise to Winnipeg. It became part his Champs Drive-In located at Sherbrook and Notre Dame and would be the start of a chain that would benefit both him and Colonel Harland Sanders in its operations in Canada.

Colonel Sanders did a lot to promote his franchises here and in the United States and abroad. He traveled to various cities promoting the excellence of KFC chicken which was flavored with his, oh, so tasty secret recipe. One memorable night in the summer of 1973, he arrived at Charlie Krupp Fastball Park with Oscar Grubert in a white limousine to take in a double header game between his namesake Colonels, who were sponsored by Mr. Grubert, and an opposing team from the newly formed Western Major Fastball League.

They exited the limo and made their way to the press box, where as manager of the ball park, I became their unofficial tour leader. Bob York was the official scorekeeper and the public address system announcer. Between our explanations and Bob’s announcements, we managed to bring both Oscar and the Colonel up to speed on the differences between baseball and this “fastball” game. The Colonel was a quick learner.

Between games, Sanders was brought to home plate where Bueckert, the Colonel’s manager, welcomed him, and showed him a team warm-up jacket with the iconic photo of the Colonel that you see on every KFC store on its back. Grubert and Bueckert helped the Colonel remove his white suit jacket and replaced it with the black Colonels one. Before the PA system could be switched back to the press box, Sanders turned to Grubert and said, much to the delight of the large crowd, "You got something to do with these boys, Oscar?"  

They didn’t stay for the second game because there were other stops on his whirlwind tour. Before they left, they both thanked Bob and me for being such good hosts. Oscar than gifted me with a fistful of free dinner coupons which I was to share with all “my” employees at the park. A nice gesture on his part.

And so with one last wave of the Colonel’s Stetson, they entered the limo and were off to their next stop on the city tour.

 

 

Then and Now

 

Then and Now

As I look at my two sons’ families, I smile because they have each gifted me with 3 delightful grand daughters. One family has the girls’ ages at 15, 12, and 11. The other family has girls who are 9, 7, and 4. Of course they are as smart as whips and intellectually and physically (athletics, sports, and dance) gifted. I know, I know. But grandparents are permitted/allowed to brag and perhaps exaggerate a little bit.

I look at what they are allowed or asked to do as they fill a role in their families. There is

some “helicoptering”. There is a lot of community pressure in the form of political

correctness. It is a different “time’ from my childhood days of the 1940’s and the 1950’s.

Those of you young enough who have children of these ages or if you are a grandparent

of children of these ages, you will know today’s norms.

 

We moved back to the farm from our neighboring village of Wroxton when I was 7 years old. This opened up a whole new world of activities and demands on our family. My dad was now farming again and my mom was in seventh heaven because she now had all the garden space she wanted or needed.

We had two fields of summer fallow near our yard. They were each about 30 acres in size. The rest of the farm stretched out to include an extra 180 acres. Most of it was arable with some hay meadows, a pasture, and some treed acres from which we derived our firewood for the year.

We had two tractors, a Small John Deere and a much larger Allis Chalmers with all the bells and whistles. My dad would let me sit on his lap as he worked the smaller plots with the john Deere. Usually he would disk the soil and then harrow it to keep free of weeds. Soon he let me steer the tractor only taking over at the turning at the end of the field. Eventually I got to do that. As I showed that I could handle the job, he sat on the fender while I had the whole seat and complete charge of the steering wheel. Eventually he would sit in some shade at the end of the field while I handled the tractor by myself. When he saw that I was to be trusted and that I was capable, he simply went back to do some other required work in the yard.

It was like this with both of my parents. As I grew older more chores and jobs were assigned to me after I had received instruction and hands-on training. By time I was 10, I had graduated to the “big” tractor and I was taking my turns at working all the fields. At this age my dad taught me to drive our half-ton truck because I could now reach the clutch and shift gears properly. This came in handy when I was twelve and he bought a combine and a grain auger. I could now take the grain from the combine while he was driving it and take it back to the farmyard where we had our granaries and I would manually off-load it into the auger’s hopper where it would be augured into the granary.

When I was nine my mom started teaching me how to milk a cow. By lots of practice and with a very patient cow, I soon mastered the fine art of pulling the teats properly. I could never approach my mom’s level of dexterity. She milked her four cows in the time it took me to milk my one patient cow.

My mom and dad relied on my help. I felt like I was a good contributor. Chores I was responsible for:

·         separating the milk and storing the cream in a special container that hung by a rope into the cool depths of our well;

·         feeding the pigs their mixture of chopped grain and skimmed mild from the separator;

·         feeding the chickens, geese, and turkeys with their mixtures of grains;

·         feeding the dogs their chopped grain and skimmed milk;

·         feeding the cats bread soaked in skimmed milk – they had to catch mice for protein;

·         feeding the cows their hay forked down from the loft;

·         turning the cows out to the corral and feeding them hay;

·         in the warmer months after milking, chasing the cows to the pasture and retrieving them in the evening for milking;

·         cleaning up the manure from the cattle and fowl and spreading out fresh clean straw;

·         helping my mom plant and weed and water her huge garden;

·         in fall helping her harvest the “fruits of our labor” and helping her prepare the “fruits” to be canned;

·         mowing our large lawns;

·         keeping the wood box filled

·         keeping the water pail in the kitchen filled for consumption in cooking and drinking

·         cleaning snow off the paths

·         washing the truck

·         helping my dad cut down our wood supply for next year

·         chopping wood

·         helping my mom with washing dishes

I am sure there were many other jobs and chores. Many of them my grandchildren would love to attempt and many they can do now. But many are not options available in an urban setting. Some I was allowed to do so early because three people eased the load of work on two people. When I had proven my competency and did my work capably and safely, I was glad to do them to help my family. Many of these chores and jobs had to be done before or after school. When the summer holidays came, I worked harder but I enjoyed being out of doors and working with animals and generally contributing. I am glad I had these experiences growing up. Do I wish this type of life for my granddaughters? I can't honestly answer that.

The Slingshot

 When we moved to Vryenhoek Crescent in 1973, we were close to Mother Nature. You would have to walk a long block to Raleigh Avenue and then cross it and the railroad tracks, cross Gateway Avenue and then you were in a “forest”. The forest was located south of Springfield Road, an area now encroached by civilization and most of the forest obliterated. It stretched all the way to Highway 59, later Lagimodiere Boulevard. It wasn’t a forest in the true sense. But there were many trees and small ponds surrounded by willows.

On weekends my two sons, aged about 5 and 3 at that time, and I often went exploring in these woods. They loved it and it gave their mom some uninterrupted “me-time”. In the “forest” there were black and white poplars of varying sizes. There were saskatoon and chokecherry and pin cherry bushes which you had to know where to look to find them. There were willows, both diamond and other varieties – pussy willow, goat willow, and the white willow. There were many birds flitting about and the occasional nesting pair of ducks. We saw small animals such as rabbits, hares, squirrels, chipmunks, and the odd fox. Occasionally we would startle a deer out of hiding. It was a wonderful place to explore.

We would build small forts from fallen trees and branches. From this home base we would go looking for imaginary foes. To fight our foes we made some very rudimentary slingshots using diamond willows for the wood base. We could not shoot our small pebbles at living creatures but only at our imaginary foes. When we were constructing these “weapons” my memory hearkened back to a n earlier time when I was just a young boy.

The Slingshot

Growing up on a farm on Saskatchewan in the the 1940's and 1950's gave me many opportunities that are unavailable to most urban children of today.  One of them was that I was taught how to use a Cooey .22 calibre single shot rifle.  I was taught the rudiments of shooting and using the rifle safely was drilled into me.
It was also a fact that you would never shoot the rifle unless it was for a good reason - shooting an animal or a bird for the table, ridding the farm of a rodent or carnivore which came hunting our chickens, ducks, or geese.  My father did not condone the shooting of something just for the sport of it.  As well, if you fired the weapon you were responsible for replacing the bullet if you missed at what you were shooting.

I early on decided I did not like killing animals or birds and since I would have to pay for any bullets I used in plain target shooting - plinking cans or shooting at insulators on telephone and hydro poles. The latter I did once and I received one of my dad's lectures. He never raised his hand or his voice to us but when he was finished with one of his lectures, we felt about an inch high and very ashamed of the dastardly deed we had been remonstrated for. I was careful in selecting my targets after that.

Because of this cost for ammunition, I adopted another type of "weapon", the slingshot.  A well - constructed slingshot was a thing of beauty.  It felt good in your hand, and if made well, it was a formidable weapon. It fit into the back pocket of your jeans and no self-respecting prairie farm boy would be without one during the months when there was no snow on the ground.

Making the slingshot was an art in itself. First you had to find a sturdy, y-shaped piece of wood. By piece of wood, I mean the forked branch of a sturdy diamond willow. The piece of willow had to be about 6-9 inches long, depending on your hand size and your arm strength. I tried to find a piece with as few imperfections as possible because even moderate flaws such as a crack can render your slingshot dangerous or unusable.  If there were knots or bumps on the y-shaped branch, I cut or sanded them off.

Then I would peel off the bark. With the bark gone, the slingshot was more comfortable to hold. I would let the wood dry for a few days.  This drying ensured more stability and strength. To form the firing mechanism, you needed some strong rubber.  As surgical tubing was non-existent on the farm and strong elastic bands difficult to obtain, I used the next best thing - the rubber from a discarded inner tube.  With sharp scissors, I would cut 2 strips of inner tube, each about a half - inch wide.  I would experiment with the length to find out what worked best, but the important part was that the tubing had to be strong and thick.  A newly discarded tube worked best as one that had weathered for awhile tended to become brittle and the rubber bands could break at a most inopportune time.

Then I would find an old shoe and cut off the tongue.  Out of this I would cut a rectangular piece of leather between 2-4 inches in length and width.  This would become my holder or "pocket" for the ammunition. Then with a pocketknife, I would cut two slits into the pocket.  I made the slits just large enough for the rubber band to fit through without being wrinkled. Then I would slip one end of one of the rubber bands through the slit and fold it back over itself so that it made a little loop around the edge of the pocket.  I would then secure the loop by tying a small length of leather shoe lace doubled or tripled around itself to make it tight enough. I would do this with both strips of rubber.

The next step was to lash the rubber bands to the slingshot body.  I would secure with the strip of leather shoe lace, one of the long rubber bands to the back of one branch of the "Y", and then secure the other long rubber band to the back of the other branch of the "Y", both near the tips of the branches. I would make sure the bands were of equal length.

As ammunition, I would use small rounded stones that I collected from the highway running past our farm.  And for targets...tin cans placed a top of fence posts.  But my favorite target would be a small rectangular piece of board fashioned roughly into looking like a small ship.  Usually I would mount 2 or 3 upright pieces of dowelling on this board to which I glued paper "sails".  The boat or boats (I often made a small fleet) would be launched onto our slough.  Then from the banks I would attempt to destroy this armada with my trusty slingshot. I spent many an enjoyable hour honing my shooting skills on these cans and boats and the wild life in insulators were free from any predatory attacks on my part.