Bravely Into High School - 1947 to 1951

Salisbury School

It is the summer of 1947, and I am wondering what school will be like this fall. I know I will be going to a different school building because the old brick Salisbury School where I survived my first eight grades burnt to the ground last winter. That dignified, somewhat imposing structure with which I had a love-hate relationship has been replaced by a drab frame stucco building where I expect to see four or five of us grade-niners in the same room as a couple of dozen other kids from six to sixteen. Next year, following this unexciting prospect, I would be required to enroll in East Edmonton School, a three-mile hike down the gravel highway halfway to Edmonton (no school buses). It is another uninspiring grey stucco three-room building that houses grades one to twelve. All the high school students are in one room with one teacher. Older kids who have been there tell me there are no optional courses and that most kids drop out before finishing grade twelve. Finishing school looks more like a jail sentence to be served than an opportunity. “Unenthusiastic” is how I feel about the coming school years. 

I am soon to learn that my parents feel the same as I do about the quality of our rural high school prospects. They are about to share a plan to do something about it. But first a bit of background: Twenty years earlier my two older half-brothers bypassed these rural schools to access a more comprehensive high school education at Strathcona High School in the City of Edmonton. They went on to collect five university degrees between them.  I guess my parents think that Dick and I should have the same advantages.  So, at breakfast one sunny July morning, Mom and Dad share a plan to provide us the same opportunity.

It begins with a comment from my mother: “We would like you to continue your education in the city”. “How?’, I wonder aloud. “Well,” she explains, “We will move there for most of the school year.” More questions tumble over each other in my mind: Where will we live? When would we move? What about the cows, sheep, horses, and chickens? I wait impatiently for the answers. Where? Mom reminds us that she and Aunt Eva jointly own a house on University Avenue that they bought for their parents in 1929. Aunt Eva lived with them there until they both passed on, after which she moved to Ontario to work in an armaments factory during WWII. In 1943 the house was rented to tenants who would live there until given notice. Aunt Eva wouldn’t be there because she is still working in Toronto. Mom says that moving to town would be less expensive than Dick and I boarding somewhere. Also, she and Dad wouldn't have to pay the non-resident school fee to the city. Living in Mom’s house eliminates these costs, with the added advantage that the family stays together.

When? Dad says we won’t move until mid-October when all the harvest and fall work is finished. “What are Dick and I going do about school until then”, I ask. Mom explains, “We have arranged for you to stay at Aunt Kate and Uncle Elmer’s place in Bonnie Doon during the week and ride your bikes to University School (now Corbett Hall). Dad will pick you up to come home to the farm on weekends.”

 “What about lunches?”, I ask. “My cousin Willes’s family lives four blocks from the school, and they have agreed to provide you lunch”, Mom assures us. I still feel a bit uneasy because of the challenge of a three-mile bike commute through city streets in increasingly chilly weather. Still, Dick and I agree that we can do it. 

What about the farm animals? Dad patiently explains, “I have arranged for “Curly” Page and his wife to do the milking, feeding, watering, barn cleaning, and whatever else needs looking after”.  Curly is a WW1 veteran, who subsists on an army pension and odd jobs and lives on a ten-acre parcel nearby. Dad says he has the skills, the time, and perhaps the need for extra cash.

I understand that Dad needs to be on the farm for the fall harvest, but what about the spring seeding? “Are we going to stay at Aunt Kate’s again while you return to the farm in May?”, I ask him. I am relieved to hear that the Pages will stay until we finish our school year and that Dad will commute to the farm to do the spring seeding while we all stay at The University Avenue house. 

During this discussion, I did not appreciate the magnitude of the sacrifice my parents are making for us. I just accept it as something they want to do so I simply go along with it. 

However, when the Labour Day Weekend arrives, I do feel a twinge of anxiety about embarking on this new adventure. It means leaving all our friends behind and not knowing how we will fit in with city kids. I steel myself as Dick and I set off on our bikes on the six-mile, mostly gravel road ride to Aunt Kate and Uncle Elmer’s tiny bungalow in the Bonnie Doon district. The house only has two small bedrooms, one for Kate and the other for brother Elmer so Dick and I are relegated to a fold-down couch in the closed-in front porch. I quite like my aging Great-aunt and uncle even though I have little in common with them. Aunt’s fare is more basic than Mom’s but that is of no concern to me and my teenage appetite. Each Friday after school when we roll up on our bikes, I welcome the sight of Dad’s 1937 maroon Chev parked in front of our temporary city residence. Arriving back home to the farm, even if only for the weekend, is a joyful experience. I’m back with family and in familiar surroundings that I love and have previously seldom left. Having to work on the farm while there is more of a happy privilege than a chore. Dad drives us back to the city on Sunday evening to ready us for the next week of biking to school.

University School (now Corbett Hall)

Fortunately, September is warm and dry so the twenty-five-minute ride to school is a pleasant way to start the day. We travel on tree-lined 83rd Avenue most of the way to avoid the busy traffic on Whyte Avenue. Mr. MacDonald, the principal, and our homeroom teacher, welcomes Dick and me to the class. I know it is a friendly gesture, but being very shy, I do not relish the attention. This is such a change. This room is full of strangers, and unlike the rural school, they are all my age. They have their social groups and are very much at ease with each other. I feel like a fish out of water, a country kid among university professor’s progeny, some of whom I am sure will become academics themselves.

One Friday afternoon in mid-October Mr. MacDonald announces that it’s time for impromptu speaking. I’m sure he won’t call on me because I am so new to the class. But I think I know why he does. Last week I was at the Fall Livestock Show and Sale at the Edmonton Exhibition Grounds where Dad entered several black-faced Hampshire sheep. The show had a Junior Sheep Judging competition that I entered and won second prize. I was proud that The Edmonton Journal published the results – I had my name in the paper. This was great, but I’m about to learn that public recognition can be double-edged. Mr. MacDonald had seen the newspaper item.

“Don, would you come up; your topic is Judging Livestock”. Stunned, I drag myself slowly to the front in a daze. I begin, “First you have to consider the age of the animal”. Realizing that was hardly relevant, I stopped, panicking about what to say next. With twenty-five alien faces staring at me I lack the presence of mind to recover. I stand there, mute for an agonizing minute or more. Mr. MacDonald finally comes to the rescue, “Well I guess that’s all he has to say.”  I return to my seat studying the floor, and slouch, defeated, into my desk.

This episode is reflected in the lines written below my picture in the Grade Nine yearbook: “Don, he is a handsome boy; yet very shy and also coy. Someday a pretty girl will appear and sweep him off his feet I fear.”  These lines do not at all represent my self-image. Sure, I’m shy but certainly not coy, as I’m not pretending to be anything I’m not. And I don’t believe I’m handsome. How could I be? – I am merely me. So, I certainly don’t see any girl being attracted to me. I do like Valerie, Daphne, and especially Ann, but never dare to give them any indication.

After Mom, Dad, and young brother Owen moved into the house on University Avenue later in the fall, Dick and I can now meet our classmates outside of school time. We soon become friends with Jack Fraser whose parents are well known to our family. Jack is an outdoor enthusiast and not part of the teenage scene. We join him in the social safety of the natural world. Our activities now include hunting snowshoe hares with slingshots to use as bait for weasels on Jack’s trapline. That two-mile line begins west of the U of A campus (in what is now Windsor Park), down to the Mayfair Golf Course, and then south along the river valley to Whitemud Creek. We wait until the weasels turn white in late November and then set the box or post traps, patrolling the line once or twice a week until the snow gets too deep in January. This yields five or six ermines. Jack carefully skins them, slides them onto an eighteen-inch bullet-shaped stretching board to dry, and delivers the dry skins to the Hudson’s Bay raw fur buying depot. Each hide brings between three and five dollars depending on the size and quality. Jack shares a few dollars with Dick and me for helping on the trapline.

Another of Jack’s interests is birds of prey. He tells us of the tame Sparrowhawk and Great Horned Owl he took from nests last spring when they were chicks and raised in his backyard. “The owl was harassed by robins, blackbirds, and other birds including the Sparrowhawk”, he relates. His story ends with a surprising twist: “One morning in August the Sparrowhawk is missing and I can’t think why until I spot tailfeathers still protruding from the owl’s beak.” The owl’s revenge!

Dick and I are inspired by Jack’s example, so the next year we take an owlet from a nest near the farm and start to raise it in the city, feeding it meat scraps from the butcher shop at the end of our street. At the end of June, it moves with us back to the farm, much closer to its natural habitat. We feed it trapped gophers and mice until fall when it is hunting by itself. In early October it disappears, presumably back to the forest where it was hatched.

Jack’s adventurousness shows up in other ways. University Elementary School has two entrances, one for the girls and the other for the boys. The girls’ entrance is right next to our classroom while the boys’ is a two-minute walk around to the back of the building. One winter morning the north wind is freezing our faces as we are about to pass the girls’ entrance.  Jack says, Let’s take a shortcut through here.” I protest, “What if we get caught?” “We won’t”, Jack replies. But as we go through the girls’ door the glowering image of Mr. MacDonald looms at the top of the stairs. Jack receives a stern rebuke, but Dick and I get none, probably because we are new to the school and just followed Jack. “Why does there have to be separate entrances anyway?”, I wonder. 

Another Jack-led caper is more daring. He has discovered a crawl-through entrance to the ventilation and utility corridors that run between the school classrooms. It is in a small study room that is often vacant and accessible with little risk. One day when the room was free, Jack coaxed me to join him in exploring these tunnels and shafts. “What if we get caught?”, I protest. “Don’t worry, this room is vacant until next period”, Jack assures me. We clamber through the opening, closing the unlockable door behind us. As we crawl on our hands and knees through the narrow tunnel our only dim light is from the ventilation shafts in the classrooms above. This is exciting! We can stand up in the ventilation shafts and see and hear the kids in classrooms through the wall grid! One such visit is enough for me as I don’t share Jack’s sense of adventure.

By spring I feel integrated into the urban school community, aided I believe, by being good at baseball and doing well in school. Grade Nine is a breeze. I passed the departmental exams with honours in all subjects and it’s back to the farm for the summer with little thought of high school in September.

In the fall of 1948, I am no longer the stranger from the farm I was last year. I feel quite at home back with my classmates. University High School is at the opposite end of the Education Building from the Elementary School. A small high school, it has less than 100 students spread over grades 10, 11, and 12. Like last year Dad, Mom, and Owen stay on the farm until mid-October when Curly and Mamie Page take over the farm duties. Meanwhile, Dick has left the formal classroom to study practical farming at the Vermilion School of Agriculture, a two-hour drive east of Edmonton. My temporary accommodation and lunch arrangements are as they were last year. 

High School was a huge change from Grade Nine. There we had two different teachers (three if I include Manual Arts); now we have five, all in different rooms. And the courses are harder; Algebra is a complete mystery, English is more demanding, and French is difficult for me. But Manual Arts (Shop), Social Studies, Art, Chemistry, and Phys. Ed. are easier for me. And Grade 10 exams are not simple tests of knowledge as they were to me in Grade Nine.

Garneau School

A year passes and yet another change for Grade Eleven: The Salisbury School District still does not have a centralized high school. So, to give the whole district access to better high schools two school buses collect rural high students and deliver us to either Strathcona High School or Garneau High School in Edmonton. The bus that passes our farm goes to Garneau, just south of the High-Level Bridge. It is another small school with about 180 students.

Here I am amid a new mix of students. The country buses bring “rustics” from the remote parts of the rural area; “the more worldly” from better-off dairy farms near the city; “coal miners’ kids” from Clover Bar; and “acreage kids” whose parents work in the city. There is also a patchwork of students from the city: University professors’ kids; those from the wealthy crescents across the river, and those from less well-off families. I feel fortunate to be sort of a chameleon - able to relate to anyone no matter their background. Except for the snobby rich kids from across the river, and why would I want to, anyway. Because of this diversity, I feel more at ease here than at University High School last year.

The twice daily forty-minute school bus ride provides a chance to socialize and fosters friendship amongst us country boys (not the girls!).  While the bus offers reliable transportation, I sometimes enjoy driving my old 1928 Chrysler to school instead, just for fun. And, because I think it’s cool enough to impress the city kids, only one of whom has a car.

In the summer after grade eleven Dick and I sell the Chrysler and replace it with a 1932 Plymouth Roadster convertible complete with a rumble seat. If I bring this car, beat-up though it is, to school next year in Grade Twelve I relish the thought that it might make an even bigger impression.

The extracurricular activities at Garneau High include footfall, basketball, badminton, table tennis, and chess. Those of us who ride the school bus miss the after-school activities of the first three, but I do join the table tennis and chess clubs which meet during the noon hour. One highlight is playing to two draws at the Edmonton High School chess tournament. I also attend a few practice sessions with the football team but drop out because they are either after school, or on Saturday when I don't really want to leave the farm.

Although I know I am capable, I lack the motivation to be a good student. Homework is something I can’t be bothered with. On top of that, I often miss afternoon classes by taking streetcar rides across the High-Level Bridge to watch movies downtown. Not surprisingly, the principal, Mr. Clark becomes aware of my morning attendance combined with afternoon absences and calls me to his office to explain. After my sheepish confession, he pronounces my suspension, which can only be lifted through a parental visit to the school. This is hell. I am embarrassed, ashamed, and afraid of how Dad will react when I tell him. He gives me a very stern talking-to before meeting with the principal and arranging my reinstatement. My absence from the class photo taken during this suspension is a reminder of my transgressions. I contritely end my cross-town excursions.

I don't do homework and have not been penalized for it. Maybe it’s because I do okay on tests. Others are not so lucky. The principal, Mr. Clark teaches our Physics 2 class of eight boys, four of whom are cocky city kids. They don’t do any homework either. He first approaches Leroy and asks to see his work – nothing. Second is Wally - still nothing. The third, sitting right in front of me, is Bud, the most obstreperous. Mr. Clark looks down at the blank page, “Where is your work?”, he demands. As he does so, he pushes his rigid forefinger against that page, ripping it out of the three-ring binder. Bud reacts, “Don’t you tear my page!”. Mr. Clark, obviously losing it, growls, “I’ll tear you to pieces!”, grabbing Bud by the shoulders and shaking him. 

Shirley

I am flabbergasted by the drama unfolding in front of me. Bud scrambles out of his desk and pushes Clark away. Clark grabs Bud, trying to subdue him, and the two of them wrestle, falling on a desk and then to the floor. At this point, hostilities cease and Mr. Clark, regaining his feet, and some of his composure, announces, “This class is dismissed”. I never heard of any repercussions from this event, so I don’t know whether there were none, or were kept quiet.

Girls are becoming more of a distraction (attraction?) daily. There is Shirley in grade ten whom I have a crush on. Everything about her is attractive: her smile; her demeanor; her movements; in my eyes, everything! I haven’t the courage to even talk to her, but my hopes soar when I see that the Ping Pong Club randomly paired us in a doubles competition. Alas, for some reason the tournament doesn’t happen. I decide that she is out of my league anyway. Her father is a prominent surgeon who recently led a team to separate eight-month-old Siamese twin girls (neither survived). I never did speak to her.

DeeDee

And then there is DeeDee, also in grade twelve; a good-looking vivacious outgoing social butterfly – very unlike me. DeeDee hangs out with the cool kids, one of which I am not.  But it seems that she fancies me anyway, according to a surprise announcement from my buddy Dick. He confides in me that she has enrolled him to give me this message. DeeDee is not a total stranger, as she is best friends with Pat, whom I have known all my life. This makes it easy for me to ask her for a coffee date after which she becomes my steady girlfriend until graduation (although I am sure I am not her exclusive boyfriend). We have fun going to movies, country dances (where I hardly danced, but DeeDee did – with everybody), coffee dates, school football games, and Sunday drives in the country. She even comes to ball games where I play second base for the Salisbury team. Although she is fun to be with, it is anything but a deep relationship as we share no serious talk about anything that matters to me. Finally, because she seems to enjoy the company of other guys more than mine, I stop calling her. 

June 1951 and the time of reckoning: Final Grade 12 Departmental Exams. The results arrived a couple of weeks later: good grades in English 3, Social Studies 3, and Chemistry 2; fair grades in Algebra 2 and (Mr. Clark’s) Physics 2; and failed grades in French 3 and Trigonometry. I have enrolled in the B.Sc. program in the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Alberta, but my acceptance depends on passing all my courses. Fortunately, I can enroll in a two-week intensive summer school program in Red Deer that provides coaching in these courses for supplemental exams. Now, being more motivated than ever, I achieved good grades in French 3, and Trigonometry. So, in September it’s off to begin the BSc program in the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Alberta.

Grad Photo

And so ended High School.