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Grandma Bee On-Line! My Story:

~ Sylvia Court ~

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    When my father finally joined us back in 1922 my family moved into Sylvia Court further along the street, closer to the park.  The only other building at that end of Beach Avenue was on the Beach side and called The Gifford.    We lived on the 4th floor with windows facing Denman Street.  Elevators in those days had to have operators.  My mother claimed it ‘bothered’ the operator if I rode up and down too often.  She’d be cross with me when I appeared for a bathroom visit and told me to go to the public washrooms.  Remember – I was barely four years old.  That was a long, long way to me!

    Instead, trying to keep from wetting while I walked that long way, I bawled – on an occasion I remember disturbing the tenant under whose window I stood.  I was rescued by a teacher out walking with a ‘crocodile’ of girls in green blazers.  That would be private school girls and ‘crocodiles’ is what I learned to call a two-by-two perambulating line of school children. This teacher called me across the street and formed a ‘privacy circle’ around me while I relieved myself on the grass of the boulevard.  Back in front of the Sylvia after the ‘crocodile’ ambled on the tenant called down to me crossly; “I saw that! I should tell your mother!” I, of course, was bewildered.  My mother didn’t want me upstairs – I’d never have made it to the public toilets.  What had I done wrong?

    I know I had toilet training problems or rather problems concerned with relieving myself – from snatches of memories from Morton Lodge and Sylvia Court but I can’t form them into one cohesive memory.  I just remember problems and struggles, and once I ran away across the empty lot with the shoes.  Punishment, my mother’s anger, discomfort – ah the woes of a tiny child unable to articulate her side of things!

    I have to think about it from my mother’s viewpoint.  What were her washing facilities?  No Laundromats existed.  I remember no wet clothes hanging about.  Four years later we used a Chinese laundry.  The laundry would be tied up in one of the sheets and left out on the porch where it was picked up by (and I wince) a “Chinaman” pulling a huge wagon.  Perhaps I was too young to be aware of my mother washing clothes in the bathtub or having laundry service at the time.  Could the Sylvia have had laundry tubs in the basement?  Were there some kind of machines?

    I became familiar with hand-powered machines on my in-laws unelectrifed farm in 1943 – big suction cups on a pole energetically plunged up and down by my father-in-law.  They boiled clothes in big rectangular washers, two, which doubled for boiling jars of fruit in canning season.  But no clouds of steam wafted about the Sylvia Court apartment.  I’m establishing here that my mother had reason to be exasperated by extra laundry demands.

    Alas, impatience and exasperation only transfers itself to a small child whose tension leads to more laundry.  Besides why didn’t she encourage me to appear promptly on the doorstep when I had a need?  Was the elevator operator really grumpy?  Were small children really not welcome at the Sylvia?  Morton Rooms was hoaching with children but I don’t remember any kids around the Sylvia’s hither-class hallways. There were neighbourhood children to play with though.  My very first ‘best friend’ lived in a little house next door and to the back of Sylvia Court.  Immediately next door was a little confectionery-come-grocery-store.  Dubsy was my playmate’s name.  She had an uncle who was a crab fisherman who moored his boat off the end of the pier across the street.

   Yes, a pier with a grandstand at the end where bands could entertain.  In 1922 there were also wooden seats tiered down the bank beside the pier and entertainers performed on the sand.  I can even remember talk of the Dumbbells staging a show there.  I believe they were a World War 1 entertainment group. Come to think of it there was a little stage out on the sand, too.

I’m interrupting my delving into my life at 4 years to record the fact that an earthquake shook Lions Manor as I wrote the above.  I got as far as the word ‘performed’ before the earth performed. It was one of the longest quakes I’ve ever experienced – and somewhat scary on the 6th floor of a building full of elderly and handicapped people with walkers and wheelchairs galore.

    I wondered if it would go on long enough to merit evacuation and thought about my warm jacket and oxygen as I gathered up the pages and thought “I’ll take this with me.”  Had even thought of stuffing it in a plastic bag.  My bags are in the closet near my jacket and hat.  It’s raining out there.  I didn’t give a thought to money (though that would have been a good idea!) but wanted to preserve these words.

    I walked to the door and looked out.  Nurses were conferring at the station and Harold across the hall was leaving his room, locking his door.  I said to him that it was one of the longest quakes I’d felt and he said, ‘pardon?’ so I added that "it was a long quake" and he said he hadn’t noticed it!

    An announcement came over the intercom which I did not hear because my radio was on and I listened to the news.  At first it was ‘experiencing difficulties’, then finally the news that Vancouver and Vancouver Island had been hit by an earthquake.  Before lunch Ian, our LPN came down the hall to say there’d been a small quake and was I alright.

    Now where was I on memory lane?  I had a playmate – Dubsy – How’s that – remembering the name of a four year old playmate?  About all I remember of other children was their teasing.  They’d get me to run up the street and then chase me.

The news has been on…7 on the Richter scale.  Seattle was hit harder and suffered more damage but nothing like a disaster requiring our rescue teams to offer aid.

    I can remember waking up to the realization it was Christmas morning thinking how clever I was to have figured it out from various clues about the room.  I could see a toy on a chair, and something that looked like a frock draped over a chair.  There must have been Christmas Eve chatter about how Santa Claus was coming when I was put to bed.

    We all slept in one room of the Sylvia at the time of this Christmas recall – my parents in a Murphy bed.  For the uninitiated that’s a bed that tips up into the wall.  I used to be afraid the wall would swallow them as it did the bed.  Not for the world would I have slept there!

    I close this chapter in the all absorbing saga of Betty Helen McLean nee Cooke’s life feeling humble after yesterday’s quake.  That has left me with a stronger drive than ever not to procrastinate with my writing.  The next episode will take me into the years from four to six or seven – briefly I hope since I’ve already written Lord Roberts School Days, so that I can then tackle Mount Pleasant School Days.

Rereading the insert about the earthquake interruption, I must add that Duncan, too, was in the act of writing when our world began to shake and his first impulse, too, was to save what he had written.

Betty McLean
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