We got to go skating at the rink three nights per week with local hockey practice two nights and a game on Saturday. In addition I spent time on a tiny piece of ice in our back yard just shooting the puck at the garage door. When this started to break up the door I shifted to the back fence or just fired the puck into a snowdrift.
When I was about 15 I got to play on the local midget team which was coached by a flamboyant older boy named Jack Crittenden. We got to play in a league with some of the surrounding towns. As country roads were not always kept open in those days,(people used to put their cars up on blocks for the winter) we often travelled by horse and sleigh, using one of the winter school vans described earlier. On one memorable trip to Rapid City (15 miles away) we started off on a Saturday after a storm. On one section east of the six-mile corner we took to the fields rather than plough through the drifts on the road. At one point the van upset and we had to get out and right it. We were lucky that hot coals didn't come out of the stove and set the canvas top on fire. After the game we started home as soon as possible but by the time we reached Wolstenholme's farm (where we had changed horses going in) it was very dark and blowing up a storm. There was nothing for it but to stay for the night; some of us slept in the house on the floor and some in the barn. Sunday morning the wind had died down and the Wolstenholme's served up a terrific breakfast including bacon and eggs; afterwards we harnessed up our own original horses to take us back to Rivers. Surely we had experienced prairie hospitality at its best!
We were a sturdy bunch of boys and what with all the skating and practice we got to have a pretty fair team. I was not one of the best players so I spent some time on the bench. One time we went to a big midget tournament in Hamiota and we only took two forward lines, two defensemen and a goalie. As I was playing defense I got to play full time for the four 40 minute games we played in the tournament. I was elated because I played full time and we won the tournament.
When we got to be 16 or over we were able to play at what was called the intermediate level. As the fathers of all but one or two of us were CNR employees we got some help in calling ourselves the Rivers CNR's and procured new jerseys so marked. A new man in town called Hoddy Cowan was our manager and coach (see team photo) and he did a good job on us. The league we played in included such places as Melville, Sask. and Brandon, both of whom we had to beat in order to win the league championship. As Melville was also a railway town and as their east end train crews ran into Rivers, our dads were getting a certain amount of friendly chaffing, epitomized by such statements as "so your little boys are coming up to Melville". Suffice it to say that we went up and beat them. That just left Brandon to go. Since it was the finals it was to be a two-game series. In the first game we beat them on our hard natural ice in Rivers 2 to 1 so we felt we were on the way. Most of us got our skates well sharpened for the big game in Brandon. But we didn't know about the skating characteristics of soft, indoor artificial ice. This slowed us down greatly on our newly sharpened skates and the result was that we lost 4 to 2. As the series was based on total goals for the two games, Brandon won and we went home a very disappointed lot. That year I held a formal amateur sports card and although throughout my life I have continued to play and enjoy many sports, I have never excelled at any.
While hockey was king in the winter summer was more diverse, with softball, tennis and swimming being the mainstays. As we played softball at school during recess it was only natural for the boys (and the girls) to indulge in numerous pick-up games at other times. There was plenty of room as Rivers in depression times was dotted with many vacant lots where games could take place. Some of these lots were left over when the town's pre WW I boom ended, others were the result of deserted houses being torn down by the town's "relief workers" so as to salvage the lumber! As teen-agers we did have a loosely organized district league wherein we competed with adjacent towns. Mr. Alf Richardson was the local promoter and helped organize transportation etc.. There were a few cars around in the summer so we did not have to go by horse and wagon. As a personal footnote I remember one game played in Rapid City where I didn't play that well and we lost. Being a rather sensitive lad in those days I recall giving way to silent tears on the way home in the car.
Tennis was to be the best sport for me. Mother was active in the Rivers Community Club which ran the tennis club and she got me started at age 12. She encouraged me to play and taught me what she knew of the game. Fees were low (about $3.00 per year for a family) and we could play anytime on the three mixed clay and cinder courts on 4th avenue. Cinders were very plentiful in Rivers and cost only haulage charges as the railway produced a couple of carloads a week from dumping the fires on steam locomotives. I used to like playing singles with Phil Charron and we developed so much interest and rivalry in the game that I recall on one very cold October day when the courts were locked up for the season we shinnied over the wire fence to play with our gloves on. Someimes we used to play mixed doubles with the girls wherein we had lots of laughs and a generally hilarious time. Evening play was sometimes disappointing as the better adult players had priority and were not about to break up a good match to accomodate us teen-agers. As far as real excellence in tennis, that went to my sister Mary, who played in the district leagues and went into the tournaments. She won the western Manitoba junior ladies singles at Clear Lake one year. Though she was just 16 or 17 at the time (see Photo) she partnered with Nellie Nowe to win the senior ladies doubles. Later, while attending university she did very well in the University tournaments. My greatest achievement as viewed by mother was to beat Jimmie Preece of Portage la Prairie in a friendly game of singles. I never got to play in the annual Clear Lake tournament because in my later teens I had to work in the summer (as we shall see later).
I played without distinction while at university and after that never played until about 1958 due to intervention of war service, career work and even lack of courts as tennis in Canada went through a decline in the post-war years. Since 1958 I have played at first occasionally but for the last 20 years quite regularly. I still (1996) enjoy the game regularly in summer and almost every time I play I think back to my dear mother's encouragement to start as the playing not only still gives me great pleasure but helps keep me in good health as the years advance!
Summer swimming was another great activity in those carefree days of youth. My initial swimming was before memory, when my parents took me down to the spot in the Little Saskatchewan River known as "the ford". This was about a mile south-west of the town and was a shallow stretch with sloping banks where horses and wagons could cross the river before the days of road bridges and before the coming of the CPR branch line, which in turn was before the coming of the Grand Trunk Pacific and the town of Rivers. As the photo shows, there is a curly headed two year old sitting on a rock and paddling. By the time I was conscious of my doings the favorite swimming hole had shifted upstream to the deeper water behind the CNR dam. There was not much beach, but a diving board was added and there was the added attraction of the water flowing over the dam (though in the really dry depression summers there was not enough to flow over, just enough to trickle through the rocks supporting the spillway). Early in the depression, the popular spot became "the Tents", presumably named after a favorite Indian camping place and it did have the possibility of a beach. It was almost a mile upstream from the dam, but the water was deep enough for swimming and there was a special hole deep enough for diving. Happily the town with its ready supply of relief labor went ahead and improved the site substantially by building two bathing houses, digging a road access down from the overlooking bluff, hauling sand to make a beach and creating a scenic woodland trail back to the dam including a small lath bridge over an intervening creek. (See Photos.) Some of the older boys got together and built a springboard and a diving tower, the former from scrap lumber and the latter from green poplar poles cut out of the woods. These structures provided the means for us to learn jacknife dives, cannonballs, back flips, summersaults and of course more than a few belly floppers.
What an immense pleasure it was for us on a hot summer afternoon to grab our bathing suits and take off through the town, across the CNR lead and shop tracks and over the prairie path where hundreds of depression bred grasshoppers flew up in clouds before us. One particularly numerous breed showed a flash of yellow under its wings and they made a buzzing sound when they flew. Then to change hastily and escape the heat in the warm but refreshing river, where after diving and playing other water games we could stretch out on the super hot sand space behind the bathing houses alternately dozing or talking to our heart's content. Or we could gorge ouselves on the numerous chokecherry bushes which lined the riverbanks. It was no wonder that some of our teeth were turning black by the end of the season! As with other sports I never became a truly accomplished swimmer in spite of the training gotten at the YMCA in Peterborough as mentioned in an earlier chapter. In more prosperous years at the end of the war a Kiwanis park was established more than another mile upstream near the replacement for the old "Rumble Bridge" which was well north of the CNR "Big Bridge". Again, after the new Public Works high dam was built still further upstream Lake Wahtopanah was established and together with its extensively treed park, picnic and camping grounds became a favorite swimming, boating, fishing and vacation spot for hundreds of prairie denizens and their families. I don't believe I ever swam at the Kiwanis park but I have swum in Lake Watopanah on occasions that our family visited mother while she was still living. Amazing that so many different swimming holes could be established on the same river over one lifetime!
In addition to swimming we boys and girls enjoyed skating six miles upstream to Booth's Bridge. To do this we had at times to skirt close to fast flowing rapids which kept the river open in spots flow. One that I measured was as deep as my hockey stick and had we fallen in we might have been swept under the ice by the current! One time I did fall in but it was at an open quiet water spot near the tents where Jack Hanlon and I were investigating the effect of an flowing spring on the ice. When the ice collapsed beneath me I went in up to my shoulders and Jack said afterwards that my face had turned in a flash from ruddy red to pasty white, so it's obvious it did give me quite a fright. However, I did get out without too much difficulty and we went up to the shower in the roundhouse where we managed to get me undressed and more or less dried out so that mum and dad never knew that it had happened! I worried about getting really cold in the stiff winter breeze on the way to the roundhouse but strangely enough the outer layer of my garments froze stiff and provided an effective combination of windbreak and insulation.
In cutting through the undulating prairie the river had formed quite a valley; at times the water level was a hundred feet below the general level of the countryside. The drop in elevation was often gradual enough to provide various hilly sections suitable for skiing or toboganning. While we did both, skiing was our favorite and we sometimes made excursions to what we called the "Alexander Hills" which were 4 or 5 miles to the southwest of town in the general ldirection of the village of Alexander. Our skiis were toestrap only so that steering was very difficult and in general we had to zip down from the top of a hill and hope we would not hit a tree. Sometimes I still wonder how we managed to survive the bitter cold for most of a day with only windbreakers, mitts and what we called airplane helmet hats. We did in fact often have our noses, ears, fingers or toes nipped and occasionally built a fire in the sheltered woods in order to thaw out. Yes, having that lovely little river just half a mile from town to its nearest point was a tremendous asset for our active pre-television outdoor lives! Even when it flooded in the spring of 1936, due to the sudden breaking of a an ice jam at the Big Bridge the resulting downstream flows of ice and water caused us great excitement. As it was Easter holidays we were able to watch the ice floes chewing up the banks, the bathing houses being displaced (see photo) and a huge outflow over the CN dam which came within an ace of surrounding and washing out the abutments!
Very few things I have ever gotten in my life have given me more fun or more usefulness than that bike. Mary used it some, but not nearly so much as I. With other boys we rode to the river, we rode to the fairgrounds and we made Saturday excursions to Rapid City, Minnedosa, and Brandon. I even rode it all the way to Neepawa, about 50 miles away where I visited overnight with Jack Corbett, whom I got to know at Holmfield when his dad was CPR Agent there (before he got moved to Neepawa). I used the bike to ride out to farms where I worked, took it to Winnipeg while I attended University, used it in Kingston, Ont. while I worked there, rode to the airport in Rivers when I worked there and took it to Halifax while I was in the Navy. After the war it followed me to every place I lived until we got to Toronto in the 1960's. There it still served myself and the children, (along with other bikes they had procured). Finally, when Jim was using it to ride to school it was stolen and we never saw it again. I could not guess what its total 30 year lifetime mileage might have been, but I know I racked up over l0,000 miles on the odometer during my teen years. After losing it in 1965 I bought a new Raleigh 3-speed at a Toronto cycle shop. I still have it (1996) and it helps us get by with the expense of just one car as I use it to get to the tennis courts, the curling club or the mall whenever Fran needs the car. I sometimes have the urge to buy a ten-speed job such as my sons use, but I don't have any major hills to climb so I keep the Raleigh. One thing in life which I did pass on to my sons was the love of bikes and cycling. Robin in particular is much devoted to his and rides several miles to work from his home in Kitsilano to his office in Yaletown.
As we grew up we progressed through many indoor activities, card games, board games, whist drives and learned Cribbage from my dad. Phil Charron and I spent many happy hours using checkers to curl on mum's ironing board on which we had drawn a set of rings. By flicking the checkers so they spun on delivery it was actually possible to make them curl! When we got older, we boys used to play poker for matches. Some of the railway men used to play for money in the back of Toy Lam's cafe, though such gambling was frowned upon by the general run of citizens. Also, during the depression and its heavy unemployment, many of the young men hung around the pool room. I was seldom in there because my dad inveighed strongly against associating with these "loafers". However, when the call to war came in 1939 most of these dilletants joined up, did their part and returned to society to take productive jobs. I did enjoy playing with my American Flyer toy windup train and with my No. 2 Meccano construction set, both of which were presents on succesive Christmases. My mother gave the trains away when I left to go to university but the Meccano has survived to this very day and I have now got my grandson, Wolf taking an interest in it.
Processing the wood supply was surely the largest chore in the viciously cold prairie winter climate and us living in uninsulated houses where sometimes the drinking water in the kitchen would have ice on the top in the morning, because we did not attempt to keep the kitchen stove going all night. The furnace was better because its coal fire would last 'till near morning, but even there it was necessary to have warm blankets and comforters on all the beds. The wood we used for fuel was mainly poplar as this was the most common variety available in the vicinity. You could buy it by the load from a farmer or you could go to the bush and cut your own, as Emil Kervanki, John Goodeve and I did one winter (see photo). It took about four sleigh loads of tree trunks to keep us going for the winter. After these were delivered to the back yard it was nescessary for us to saw them into stove lengths with either a crosscut saw or a swede saw. Then they had to be split with an axe and piled along our side fence. As the wood was green it had to dry in the pile so you always needed some carryover from the previous season to get you started for the winter. Then it was my job to carry in several armfulls each day as they were required. Dad always was proud of having a good supply of kindling wood on hand for starting the stove each morning. He would buy a big load of scrap wood from anyone who had it in the town and would generally split it himself. My job then was to carry it to the basement and stack it under the basement stairs. Anyway, this wood experience has meant in later life that I can still split wood for our fireplace, which is used only for occasional comfort.
The only chore that I really enjoyed was taking my dad's lunch to the railway yard office each morning. This was necessary because during the depression the yard office was cut back to two shifts and the train times were such that the the shifts ran from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m.. Dad took the early shift and worked it until the war started. He rose at 5 each mornihng, lit the ready set fire to boil water for his tea, grabbed the old barn lantern and walked the half mile to work in the worst weather as well as the best; talk about faithfulness, he was it. Thus I had to deliver his lunch before going to school at 9, mother having prepared it after she got up at 7. As these visits to the yard office had special significance for my own life I will revisit this item later.
Another working scheme involving George Kervanki was when Emil and I used to drop down to the railway roundhouse after supper. Not much was going on at that time of the evening except George who was the hostler's helper also fired the boiler which provided steam heat for the railway's needs and for driving the steam turbine which generated electricity for the railway and the town. He of course let Emil and I fire the boiler just for fun, but in addition paid us five cents a load for shovelling the ashes into a wheelbarrow and trundling them up a steep plank ramp, finally dumping them over the side of the waiting gondola car. Because the ashes had been hosed down to quench them they were plenty heavy, and it was all us young fellows could do to get a load up the ramp. This relieved George and John Shusko the other fireman so they could have a little rest. While I may be making it sound as though they were exploiting us, in truth we really enjoyed doing it! Another time, I got briefly involved with the other end of the town's electrical distribution system when I was hired by Charlie Gabe, the Town Clerk to read the electric meters.
During the summer vacation in 1937, a little better type of job came along. This was the time when Trans-Canada Airlines was formed and there was need for a new air strip and meteorlogical facilities for what was to be a passenger carrying airline. The old airfield and beacon light close to town had been set up earlier (about 1930) for Canadian Airways, which was mainly carrying mail, but which could not be sustained under the harsh financial conditions brought about by the depression. Now a new start was being made with a new field and emergency landing facilities almost out to Wheatland. Myself and a number of other unemployed young men of the town were hired by the contractor responsible for putting in the foundations for the meteorlogical building and three houses needed for the round the clock staffing. I got the job of shovelling gravel into the cement mixer, which really tested my strength and endurance for the short period of time that the job lasted. The task was lightened to some degree by an understanding mum who was most anxious that I would make something of myself; she went to special pains to provide me the most ample and delectable lunches that any man ever had. To her, and to my dad, anyone who did not learn to work and support himself and family was described as "no good" and they didn't want any of their kids to fall into that category. I survived the job which paid a solid 25 cents per hour and when it was done I went down to the Alexandra Hotel where the foreman was staying, and drew my pay in cash with great pride.
An equally important thing happened to me on that job when I got to know the resident engineer, an amiable young civil engineering graduate by the name of Russ Sharpe. At that time of my development I didn't even know there was any such thing as engineering or an engineering profession as there was no such thing in Rivers. I became fascinated with the drawings Russ showed me of the new buildings being erected and thought what a wonderful thing it would be to become a draftsman. I had already been greatly interested in the ordinary type of drawing taught in our school and used to amuse myself drawing pictures of locomotives. Anyway, Russ fired my imagination with the kind of things that professional engineers did and this was a critical thing for me, even though I had no idea at that time that such a career could be open to me. When the opportunity came to attend university, as we shall see later, I jumped at it with the single minded aim of studying engineering.
The working activities described so far were things that led to our becoming young adults, and thus moving on to more education, steadier jobs and great adventures beyond our wildest dreams!