Grandma Bee On-Line!
My Story of:
| ~ HENRY HUDSON SCHOOL DAYS ~ |
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I suppose I must have been a little over ten when we moved to Kitsilano because I was ten and a bit when Joan was born. The floor varnish hadn’t dried when we moved in. We all slept in the basement. Mom and Dad went to a party that night, although perhaps we slept in the basement more than one night.
What I remember clearly was being woken by their return. They had brought some party trinkets for us. Donnie didn’t seem to mind being woken but cheerfully enjoyed the trinkets but I wanted only to sleep and was cross and uncooperative. The baby, of course, was used to being awake in the night. Not me! All these many years later I remember how cross I felt!
The main fun of living in Kitsilano, of course, was the beach and the swimming. This was before the pool was built there. It was a lively, clean, sandy beach with a wooden bathhouse. I’m trying to recall if there was a concession selling fish and chips, or any kind of concession – for candy and pop etc., but if there was I have forgotten. The smell of fish and chips was such an integral part of beach days at English Bay. Mind you we crossed Beach Avenue to the Fish and Chips stores.
I remember that there was some objection to people, even children, being on the street scantily clad in bathing suits which were rather heavy woolen things with a skirt. Not even men or boys could have their chests uncovered and tight fitting shorts would have been much too immodest and suggestive. Two piece bathing suits, and bikinis were something the bathing folk of that era couldn’t have dared imagine. I suppose even those skirted bathing costumes were daring to my father’s generation. I can recall him remarking once that all this exposure of flesh couldn’t have given the thrill that men used to get from just glimpsing a demure ankle!
My mother as a young woman bathed in a long skirted costume with sleeves. These must have been very hampering to a swimmer but I can see my father’s point. The more flesh one exposes the more ho hum it all gets. Nowadays no one bats and eye when semi-nude people parade the beaches, and it’s nothing to see bare midriffs off the beach complete with bejeweled belly buttons.
I think we were right to move away from the prudery of those early days but my Dad had a point. We go too far and either make it all ho hum or perhaps it is not as ho hum as all that. Perhaps the flesh display invites trouble in certain quarters. However, that's the beginning of a debate and I'm supposed to be wandering down memory lane. Kitsilano also had a fenced playground where we spent many happy hours. The fence – a high link fence – is a memory that has me a bit puzzled. It was locked on Sundays. We kids always managed to get in anyway, but was this an enforced observance of the Sabbath or what?
At English Bay we had Ceperly Playground at Second Beach. I cannot picture it fenced, though it might have been. Perhaps enforced Sabbath observance was already being overcome. After all we had Sunday symphony in Stanley Park. I dare say I was simply not aware of the Sunday restrictions. You couldn’t go to a movie on Sunday and only convenience stores were open.
While I am certainly not for enforcing Sabbath observance on everyone, it was rather welcome to have a quiet day. The fewer commercial establishments were open, the less traffic there was. The air was cleaner. Now that we have the convenience of shopping until ten or even ‘til midnight or all night, it means huge trucks are out there as well, keeping the stores stocked. Air pollution and noise pollution therefore increases. If it takes Sabbath observance to give us one day a week with less noise or air-pollution I’d vote for it. I didn’t vote yes to the by-law that allowed Sunday shopping.
Yes yes, that’s not a childhood memory but it tells you a bit about me. It is a memory in a way because in my childhood stores and theatres and dance halls were closed on Sundays. Indeed for most of my life Sunday really was a day of rest. Another aspect of wide-open Sundays is that more employees work on Sunday. That’s good you say? But is it? Wasn’t it nicer when breadwinners got to stay home with their families? They could picnic, or go to the park or the beach, do some gardening, or go to church. Whatever!
There was a time when anything except church observance was frowned upon but during my childhood, if neighbours were critical seeing Dad load up the car to head for White Rock, they didn’t say so to our faces and as a child I was blissfully unaware that we were doing anything wrong when we went off to some distant outside activity. Sunday was a fun day. Dad was home. We had a break. I’m not arguing the point. I’m simply saying how Sundays were for me way back when. It was irksome to have the playground fence locked on a Sunday. I was more annoyed by the churchgoers than inclined to go to church. To go to church is a privilege.
The playground at Ceperly Park and Kitsilano had the usual – swings and teeter-totters and wading pools for tots. They had marvelous slides. One at Ceperly had humps in it. How can I describe that? I don’t remember when they banned them but they eventually did. The story was that some kid went down on her tummy and got a very nasty splinter. During the week when playground attendants were around we could borrow balls of all sizes and the young attendants would organize games. It was in the parks that there were band concerts in the evenings and singsongs. For the singsongs there would be a screen showing a little ball bouncing from word to word of the song we were singing. We had song sheets as well. I loved them both, the singsongs and the band concerts.
I remember with nostalgic pleasure those wonderful summer evenings, I wonder if the children aren’t robbed of that kind of innocent fun. Travelling on B.C. Ferries I shake my head, seeing children standing before what to me are idiot computer games, their eyes glued to the senseless antics of little figures battering at each other. Biff, bam, boom, zap – they are totally immersed in the violence on the screens and keep their backs to the beautiful scenery through which the ferries glide.
Ferry rides were rare pleasures in my childhood – a childhood deprived of TV and TV commercials. TV antennae began to appear on every 4th hour or so in 1951 when we were preparing to move to New Denver in the Kootanies. We didn’t have it available there and somehow we escaped owning a TV until Duncan was about 10 years old. Radio, too, was an invention new in my childhood. My family had a little radio on Short Street in Kitsilano for which one had to have earphones. That meant only one person could listen at a time – very frustrating for stories or comedies. You’d just get to the punch line when someone else demanded the earphones. I remember my mother having me – 11 years old, sitting with the earphones with instructions to call her when certain songs were played.
Earlier, on Denman Street, we had a Victrola which was a record player one had to wind up. If one let it run down the music got slow and lugubrious! The radios eventually came in rather handsome pieces of furniture. I remember that we’d gather in the living room to listen to Jack Benny. We couldn’t wander in and out but had to sit down en famille to listen. In your grandfather’s family there was always a piano and someone to play it. Singing together around a piano was a popular activity. Other musical instruments would be used for self-entertainment. Musical folk made their own music. The McLeans kept the Sabbath!
Alas, my own family wasn’t very musical. I wanted piano lessons but we had no piano until I was in my teens and by then it was sister Joan who had the lessons. The idea was for her to learn to accompany brother Alan who sang on the stage. He grew up before she gained enough skill to do that.
My cousin Eddy – son of Dad’s brother Duncan – my Uncle Duncan – became a part of our summer, visiting his mother, my Aunt Hilda. He came between Donald and I in age. Eddy preferred English Bay to Kitsilano and he and Don went over there on their own. I had to spend a few hours listening to my parents and Aunt worrying about where they were and for quite awhile I claimed I didn’t know where they’d gone but when they started talking about calling the police I gave in and ‘ratted’ on them. The boys made it home shortly after and were soundly spanked.
We were living at Kits when going to the Exhibition became important. We were issued tickets for five free rides at school for a certain day – Children’s Day. I remember one occasion when Eddy and Don and I went by ourselves. All went well for awhile. There was quite a mob of us waiting at the gate. We were given a bag of goodies as we filed in. Following my Mom’s directions we chose the merry-go-round as our meeting place if we got separated and we were – at least twice. Late in the afternoon I went on a ride –Chute the Chute, which didn’t appeal to they boys.
“Stay right here,” I told them but when I got off they were no were to be found. Off to the merry-go-round I went. I’d be 10 years old, Eddy 9, and Donald 8. By this time I had a very sore foot. I’d been playing at one of the homes Dad’s Real Estate was building. When I jumped down onto a sandpile I landed on a nail, point up. I was glad to sit and wait for the boys but after half an hour I got worried and began to tramp around looking for them, my punctured foot ‘drawing’ in pain every time I lifted it. I must have hunted for an hour. What the little guys had done was go to the gate, both bawling, and a man had driven them home. What this Good Samaritan thought I’d do I’ve no idea. I don’t remember whether the little boys even mentioned me but they must have. All the time I trampled around they were safe at home. I, of course, was worried sick about them when finally I started home without them.
It never occurred to me to go to the police or Lost and Found or to phone home. Going to the fair grounds we’d transferred from Kitsilano #12 to a special Exhibition streetcar. Going home, I got off at Hastings and Main and didn’t know what to do because the #12 didn’t pass that corner. My tear-stained face attracted the attention of a lady who explained that I’d show my transfer on the next # so and so streetcar which would connect with a number 12. By now my foot was killing me. I was going to get home without my cousin and brother, smaller and younger than I on top of genuine worry about the little boys and my foot, I dreaded the spanking I’d probably get for losing them. Such is the world of a child!
That didn’t happen. My foot didn’t get badly infected. I was older next year and so were the boys. Going to the exhibition continued to be one of the summer highlights.
What a less dangerous world we lived in. The man who took my brother and cousin home was simply a kind man not a pederast or a kidnapper!
We lived near a tram barn where streetcars were serviced. It was open. We’d go in to collect tiny ball bearings which we called steelies and used for marbles. The boys played a game with cardboard milk caps and hardened and polished chestnuts to string for yet another game. We fished for ‘shiners’ down by the streetcar trestle, and went to Saturday matinees at the movies for 10 cents.
Ah – now there’s a topic! - one I'll save. Libraries too. It was about 10 blocks to Kitsilano Public Library. Libraries figured prominently in my childhood. Mother started sending me to the only other library – the main one at Hastings and Main – Carnegie Library – when I was about eight years old.
Let us save those memories until another chapter shall we?
Both Lord Roberts and Henry Hudson still exist as schools. Henry Hudson is on Cornwall Street and Cypress and our home was on Short Street near the corner of Cypress. Alas it has been torn down to make way for a three-story apartment building.
My parents were so proud of that home. It had hardwood floors in the dining room living room area, one bedroom downstairs and two up, ensuite plumbing wasn’t in style and there was no bathroom upstairs. You went up a staircase off the kitchen an innovative idea Dad used in several houses his Real Estate built. There was a breakfast nook off the kitchen where we ate our meals. I can’t remember us having dining room furniture. Having had the experience of furnishing a new home I can understand why.
When we lived at 1860 Short Street the hard times of the Great Depression were already creeping upon us. I think the stockmarket fell about 1928. I was eleven years old and naturally didn’t feel the full brunt of the event then. It must have been calamitous to my parents. Real estate felt the effects immediately and my father was forced into bankruptcy. Although, he no longer required to do so he insisted on repaying his debtors in the ensuing years. I have mixed feelings about that.
It was his family that did without but his sense of honour was such that he had to do it. He established an enviable credit rating. As for our doing without, let’s just say we paid a price. Back when I was only eleven I noticed that money was tight and when we moved from that lovely home in Kitsilano to a five room upstairs ‘flat’ on east 5th Ave. in Mount Pleasant, I noticed the tension in my parents.
Mount Pleasant School, one of the oldest in Vancouver was like a fortress. Its wooden floors reeked of oil. That, too, can wait until Mount Pleasant School Days.
Betty McLean
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