Our Canada Our Country Our Stories

by Our Canada Magazine a Division of Reader's Digest

  The Fabric of Her Life

  Practicing the noble art of embroidery

  During the Depression, when I was a preschooler, Mom taught me to embroider. We didn’t have warm, cozy clothes to wear to go out and play in the snowdrifts and my sister Tena had rheumatic fever, so I needed to be kept quiet and busy. Fortunately, the Free Press printed a weekly “Farm Life” quilt pattern. We traced it on bleached flour sack squares. Mom showed me how to thread a needle, knot the yarn and outline stitch the animal of the week. There were 21 blocks to complete, which I proudly did. Mom sewed these together on her old sewing machine and it became a bedspread that we enjoyed showing to visitors.

  As I grew older, my sisters and I embroidered tea towels, pillow-cases, curtains and tablecloths with fancy floral designs. For centuries, it was popular for ladies to do this kind of handiwork. It was often done by the heroine in historic novels.

  In 2000, while travelling in Europe, we saw religious themes neatly stitched on prayer kneeler covers in several cathedrals. After crossing through the Chunnel, I was pleased that our tour of Britain included some embroidery exhibitions. To my delight, I got into a needlework festival in York. The altar cloths and priestly vestments were very impressive. Rich satin and velvet banners, highlighted with intricate patterns, added elegance to the show.

  Even Queen Elizabeth II’s Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh has beautifully stitched bench covers—they were originally a gift to her parents (Queen Elizabeth and King George VI) upon their coronation.

  As a young child, I discovered how much prettier things look when you decorate them with coloured thread. Now, in my 80s, I still like to cross-stitch a motto or French knot, and satin stitch a crewel embroidered bouquet.

  —by Hilda J. Born, Abbotsford, British Columbia

  My Early Education

  Despite the chilly seats and “boot soup,” life in a one-room schoolhouse was not so bad after all

  Education as I knew it some 70 years ago was much different from what it is today. No warm, comfortable buses stopped at the gate, ready to whisk us away to a modern learning centre. No centrally heated and cooled multi-roomed complex awaited our imminent arrival or catered to our every educational need. No vast array of teachers armed with teaching aids attempted to keep our inquisitive little minds occupied. We made do with what we had, and we created our own learning experiences—for better or for worse.

  While we didn’t trudge five miles uphill through waist-deep snow barefoot, we really did walk a fair way to the local stone schoolhouse. Built on a hill, it was just outside the hamlet of Osaca, Ontario. It was a drafty, dank, one-room building, serving students of all ages and grades. Just inside the main back door sat a huge, black, wood-eating monster that was our version of central heating. A long line of stovepipes below the ceiling that ended in the front bracket chimney attempted to keep the frost at bay for those forced to sit near the front of the room. Surrounding the stove was a three-sided galvanized heat shield designed to keep awkward young bodies from getting fried, but it really just served as our own built-in clothes dryer. During winter months, a row of matted mittens, soggy socks and fetid footwear adorned its surface. Responsibility for feeding the fiery beast fell to the senior boys, but try as we might, the front seating area almost always felt like a suburb of Siberia.

  While the school building did have the recently installed luxury of good overhead electric lights, there was no indoor plumbing. Drinking water was obtained from a blue-enamelled, communal drinking cup dipped into a large pail that sat on the windowsill. Germs were something only city folk worried about. The washroom facilities were located outdoors in two little shacks at the far corner of the playground. The seats were known for their lack of comfort and a cold updraft was always waiting to bite occupants where it hurt the most. If the call of nature became too insistent during class, you learned to hurriedly trek back and forth through the drifting snow. Great relief was experienced when you finally arrived back to the warmth of the classroom.

  In those days, clothing was more about function than form. We wore anything that would keep us warm; fashion wasn’t yet one of our priorities. Layering, even then, was a useful and practiced concept. First came a fuzzy pair of woollen long johns—buttoned trap door in back—over which we added a shirt, a sweater and a pair of bibbed overalls. Our feet were encased by at least two layers of hand-knit wool socks pulled up over our pant legs and stuffed into oversized, hand-me-down rubber boots.

  I’m not sure what the girls used for their first layer, but I know they always wore long, full skirts. For warmth, trousers were sometimes worn underneath, and then came a blouse and lots of wool sweaters. Their footwear was similar to ours—socks and rubber boots. Almost everybody kept another pair of slippers or old shoes to wear inside.

  Since there were eight grades to be taught and only one teacher, that usually allowed us a bit of free time between lessons. This was spent by helping the younger grades practice their math and hearing them read from books that were all about the adventures of Dick, Jane, baby Sally and Spot the dog.

  If time permitted, we were encouraged to practice our penmanship. I suspect it was a futile attempt to keep our eager little minds employed while the teacher was occupied elsewhere. Since ballpoint pens were not yet invented, the tools of the trade consisted of an ink bottle, nib and straight pen. After doodling and drawing became dull, a new use for the straight pen was discovered: It made an excellent projectile. If lobbed with just the correct trajectory, the pen would fly and silently stick straight up in the wooden floor. If the angles were calculated incorrectly, however, the missile would clatter noisily onto the planks. The game then ended abruptly, sometimes for several days, if the teacher was not in a good mood.

  During winter months, the government, in its wisdom, supplied us with cod liver oil capsules, supposedly to increase our vitamin D levels. With a practiced flick of a finger, when the teacher wasn’t looking, those vile concoctions could be reduced to harmless, smelly, smoldering smudges on the hot stove.

  In keeping with the spirit of the times, the community also organized a system of hot school lunches to help augment our afternoon learning experiences. Since there were ten families represented in this school section, it was agreed that each family would supply something hot one day in a two-week rotation. The rules were simple: Each of us would bring a bowl and spoon from home and the senior girls would dole out the heated ingredients from a huge pot simmering on the stove. We were supposed to consume it, along with the capsuled cod and our sandwich from home. After lunch, we’d wash our utensils, place them in the cupboard and finally escape outside for the remainder of the noon hour.

  For me, this posed a problem; I don’t really like soup at the best of times, but my freedom outside was precious. While probably nutritious, the quality of those offerings varied greatly. Mother’s contribution to the hot lunch program was more of a hearty stew than a soup. At my request, it contained extra meat, carrots and onions, but no tomatoes.

  Although somewhat biased, I considered Mother’s creative cuisine, if one had to eat soup, as quite palatable. Other contributions were passable, some semi-edible and a few barely so, but there was one family’s concoction that defied description. It was a greasy gruel in which floated a couple of bloated, dead tomatoes, a few scraggly bits of limp onion parts and some chunks of what I think used to be stale bread. This, I determined, I was not going to eat!

  The problem for me, though, was that it had to be consumed before I was allowed outside. What to do? How was I going to follow the rules, show an empty bowl and escape to freedom if I didn’t choke it down? There had to be a solution! Then inspiration struck. After much blowing and stirring to cool the gruel, I secretly slipped the slimy contents down the open top of my rubber boots when nobody was looking. Dutifully, I showed my empty bowl, rinsed it, grabbed my coat and hat, and, foot sloshing in gruesome gruel, hurried outside.

  My first stop was at the hand pump on the well. There I pu
lled off my boots and socks, pumped them full of water and tried to rinse away the evidence. The operation was a success! I’d escaped having to eat any dead tomatoes, gained my freedom and my footwear would be dry by the time I needed it for the homeward trek. This little episode was repeated faithfully every other Wednesday all winter with no apparent repercussions. Mother did mention, however, that she often wondered why my feet frequently seemed to smell a little swampy.

  Now, as I look back from the perspective of more than seven decades, I must admit that I actually enjoyed the trials and tribulations of my early education. In a one-room rural school, I was started on the proper path to higher “learnin’ ” and given the basic tools for success. The rest was left up to me. Now, after working 35 years in education, and earning three university degrees along the way, I hope I haven’t let anybody down.

  —by Jim Soul, Erin, Ontario

  Hockey Night in Hedley

  Fond memories of a small but vibrant town and its love of Canada’s favourite pastime

  I grew up in the tiny but mighty (back then) town of Hedley, British Columbia. The town’s two gold mines and two mills drew workers from around the world before, during and after the Great Depression.

  Any boy who could skate could join the Hedley scrub hockey team in the late 1930s. With no official coaches, the boys’ abilities improved by playing shinny—not through drill practices. Some of the dads with previous hockey experience, and who showed up in town for mining work, volunteered tips at irregular intervals. Occasionally, even the company superintendent shared his hockey expertise. Other times, the butcher’s helper leaped onto the ice. The boys would shout, “Hey, Syd, show us how to do stuff.” He’d stickhandle, zoom around and shoot past the startled goalie. My brother Donnie would shout, “Hey! When Syd skates backwards, I can’t catch him!” Syd would reply, “Okay, boys, let’s play the game. They’re fired up now.”

  Adult volunteers would take turns refereeing, but they didn’t have to work too hard, as the ice had no blue line, red line, crease line—or any other lines. Any spot was a faceoff spot. Mostly, the referee whistled to signal time, or when the puck arced over the wooden fence. He’d ignore minor infractions. But body checking, checking into the boards, slashing, high sticking and fighting were disallowed because only the goalie, my other brother, Alex, could brag of having padding at company cost. He and a couple of others wore padded gloves. Otherwise, the boys’ uniforms consisted of toques, sweaters and knitted mitts, as well as trousers with newspaper stuffed up the pant legs. When Donnie, a right winger, took a turn at being captain, he goaded his teammates into playing harder and skating faster through any zone—his only offensive strategy.

  The rink, of unknown dimensions, was built on a pond partially comprising runoff from the mill, and featured a couple of floodlights. The one penalty box gate opened onto a snowbank, which served as seating. But it was seldom used and there were few injuries because games were weekend “friendlies” with scrub teams from nearby neighbouring towns.

  Family and friends, who attended evening home games without fail, stood ankle-deep in snow at the railings and whooped as loud as any Hockey Night in Canada crowd we’d hear on our static-filled mantel radio. A volunteer stood behind each goal and held up a hand when the puck slid, wobbled or flew into the net. Another volunteer scraped the ice with a makeshift Zamboni made of boards nailed to a two-by-four.

  Our team’s trips to surrounding towns—Blakeburn, Princeton, Copper Mountain and Keremeos—each no more than an hour’s drive away, were composed of carpooling dads, the few who could afford a sedan big enough for players to cram into; coupes with rumble seats lose their appeal in sub-zero temperatures.

  I recall my friend Finlay’s 1937 Hudson Terraplane with swooping fenders and a bulbous rear end, as well as my dad’s dented Ford with the cracked windshield. Frozen ruts beneath fresh snow showed their true nature when the cars skidded and fishtailed along narrow mountain roads. Flat tires were not unheard of.

  The Hedley rink at the town’s heart thrived due to the skaters’ shack. Its worn benches lining the walls appeared plush to tired players and spectators alike. The potbelly heater full of crackling and spitting frost-coated wood warmed noses and toes. Some of the miners who rode the skip into town on weekends enjoyed the banter with rink rats of all ages. There were no flashing scoreboards, twirling towels or thundering music to celebrate our team’s win, just glowing hearts amid the falling snowflakes winking in the lights.

  —by Gloria Barkley, Coquitlam, British Columbia

  Ice Dreams

  Skating along the Rideau Canal caps off a perfect Canadian winter day

  As I drove along the glorious, winding road leading away from Toronto and towards Ottawa, I could feel the tension from a month of challenges at work melting away in the warm air blasting from the car heater. Lost in the beauty of the Canadian countryside, I contentedly drove by meandering rivers, frozen lakes and snow-capped trees towards my destination.

  The pink light of the setting sun was melting away over the far horizon of trees as I pulled into the driveway of my friend’s country-cottage home. I frowned momentarily as I thought of the last-minute bombardment of paperwork that had delayed my arrival by an hour and prevented me from seeing an unobstructed sunset from her kitchen window, which overlooks an open country field. I tried to conjure up an image of the majestic sight I had missed as I grabbed my backpack from the trunk.

  My good friend Stefany welcomed me and, after I freshened up, we grabbed a late dinner at a Chinese restaurant in town. The atmosphere of the small Renfrew establishment instantly brought me back to my years teaching English overseas in Beijing, China. I breathed in the familiar aromas of garlic broccoli and other stir-fries as Stefany and I caught up on our news.

  Early the next morning, we were on our way into Ottawa, where we were joined by Stefany’s sister Kat to enjoy the winter festivities. Scattered throughout the city were ice sculpture competitions in progress and parties hosted at restaurants. The city was buzzing with excitement and we followed the electricity towards the frozen canal.

  The Rideau Canal freezes over in winter and locals skate it for fun and as an alternate route to work or school. I was told that, on occasion, you would see a business person gliding along the frozen river to work, briefcase in hand.

  We strapped on our skates and joined the crowds already skating, sliding and stumbling along the ice and past booths where you could buy cocoa, soup and Beaver Tails; the scent of the pancake dessert wafted in the air, trying to entice us to skate over and buy some.

  As we gracefully skated towards the heart of activity, I caught glimpses of the happy faces of people as they whirred past me in the oncoming lane of skating traffic. My parents, keeping with Canadian tradition, had made sure that I had my first pair of skates as soon as I was stumbling-walking. As children, we would skate no less than three times a week at the local community centre or on a friend’s backyard rink. I was signed up for figure skating lessons long before I was attending school full time.

  My education started on the cold ponds of Canada, where I experienced “toe freeze” and runny noses, and learned how to properly bundle up to protect against the winter elements. Then, as a young teenager, my mother decided we should all enroll in speed-skating lessons. Every Friday night for three years, my older brothers and I would load into our station wagon and together, as a family of five, we would learn another great Canadian tradition. As a result of all of my years on skates, I could easily navigate the roughest ice; thus, where the river nearer to Ottawa’s downtown region got choppier from the greater number of skaters, my body instinctively picked through the ice with ease.

  The sun was nearly setting as we walked off the ice, skates slung over our shoulders and our feet happy to be back in boots. The air was cool, but we were both warmed through and through, thanks to our invigorating skate. I smiled back at the skaters and holiday-makers still on the canal as we grabbed a cup of cocoa and walked
up the staircase back to the car. French music, blasting from a booth below, reminded us that the celebrations would go on well into the night as we continued with our outing.

  Tired, warmed and relaxed, we were content to wander into a few shops before heading homewards to cuddle down into our warm beds for a long sleep and to dream of what else we might do the rest of our Canadian winter weekend.

  —by Leesha Nikkanen, Newmarket, Ontario

  This Old Sugar Shack

  Making syrup, sharing stories and building memories for generations

  Our sugar shack is located in Bloomingdale, Ontario, and has been in the family for five generations. Created in the early 1900s by my great-grandfather Titus, it was passed down to my grand-father George, and then to my father, Gord, and now to me and my siblings and our respective families. Every year, we gather to make our “liquid gold,” with my sister Lynda and her family travelling all the way from Alberta to join us.

  Maple trees surround our house, so in the spring, we tap the trees and the process begins. In the early days, making syrup entailed cooking the sap in a pan over an open fire in the bush and finishing on a stove in the summer kitchen of the house. Now, it’s all done on a wood-fired evaporator in the sugar shack.

  We use the traditional method of tapping when spring temperatures are predicted, usually beginning in early March and lasting two to six weeks, ending in April. We watch many weather forecasts, beginning in January, for the correct conditions—warm during the day with a freeze overnight.

  The trees are tapped with drills and a spile is inserted into the hole. Adults and children follow with buckets and lids to be hung, sometimes two or three on each tree. During this time, a day is set aside to prepare the sugar shack for the boiling-down process. A large smokestack is erected through the roof and the gathering tanks and evaporator are set up.