This past winter I began to write down some of the things, people and places I remember from my childhood. Many of these thoughts involved my years in Swastika (1947-1963). Maybe a few of these will jog your memory. I'd love to hear from you if you spot any mistakes or if you can add anything to these topics that I may have left out. You can email me at

manitou2@mac.com

Our Milkman

We actually had milk delivery in those days. There were two dairies in KL, Lindfors and Producers, both of whom would send their milkmen out in a small truck, bit bigger than a van but looked much the same, filled with one-quart milk bottle in crates. At each house on his route he would carry a few bottles to the door in a wire basket with spots for each bottle. The empty bottles would be waiting either outside the door or just inside, if it was a porch etc. and the number of tickets placed in the bottles would determine how many full bottles he left. There were different tickets for homogenized, skim, chocolate etc. You got to know your milkman very well as he came around every day (our first one was Elmo, as I recall). I can remember coming home after a long day of playing, going to the fridge and drinking down a full quart (bit bigger than a litre) of milk right from the bottle. This was homo milk, not 2% or skim.

Sledding Down Riverside Drive

We lived at 76 Riverside Drive, this street being one that had a grade in it for probably 500 yards. This made for some great fun in the winter. We could sled right on the street as streets in those days were never salted and very seldom sanded, as I recall. The snow was packed by the cars and almost like ice. It was a great ride on our sleds that had metal runners, a wooden top and a wooden bar that was really a "steering wheel". We would start running down the hill, holding the sled in front of us, then jump on and ride "forever" to the bottom of the hill. It was easy to walk back up as we were just walking back up the street. Dad made us a great bobsled by attaching a long board, probably a 2 by 10, to two "baby-sleds", the back one fixed and the front one which could swivel to allow for steering. Three or four kids could sit on it at once and have a real bobsled experience. Jim remembers that there were other kids who also had one of this kind of sled and they would hold races. They would start at the top of Joe Miller's hill that was steeper than the road itself. There were times we had to either clean the road or dodge a few obstacles because Joe Miller, who lived in the bush north of the top end of Riverside, had a horse and sleigh that he would drive down the road in winter, leaving behind some delectable little piles. It was fun hanging onto the back of his sleigh and being pulled along, sliding on our boots.

Dam Building

Winter was a great time of the year for us but as the warmer weather began to melt the piles of snow along our street it was time for another adventure, dam building. A small river of water ran down the side of the road and we would use some of the remaining snow to create huge dams. I'm not sure why this was so fascinating but it was. We would even dig into and under the snow banks to find pools of water that we could channel out to the main stream to build up our "lake" behind the dam. Often the temperatures would fall below freezing at night and this would stop the flow. In the morning we would find a "hollow" lake with a layer of ice on top but no water beneath the surface. Usually by the time we would get home from school the water had been running again and it was time to fix the holes and start to build the lake again. Once in a while we would smash the dam to let loose a torrent of water which we would follow all the way down the street.

Garden Parties at Taylor's

At the top of our street the Taylor family had a big, beautiful house with a very big yard surrounded by a hedge. Shirley and Bill Taylor had four children, Bonnie who was born before Bill left to fight in WW2, followed by Betty, Stephen and David, who came along after the war. Bill was the manager of George Taylor Hardware in Kirkland Lake and I guess I could say they were one of the "well-off" families in Swastika. I have often said that Shirley was my second Mom and I still keep in touch with her (as well as Bonnie and Betty). Anyway one of the social highlights of the year in Swastika was the annual Garden party held at the Taylor's. Three things stand out in my memory (I was quite young when these were taking place). There was always a Scottish pipe band that would play their bagpipes, either to begin the event or at some other time just for entertainment. Secondly I remember that very colourful Chinese lanterns always lighted up the grounds. But the event I most remember is the "Fish-Pond". Oh how I loved that fishpond. It was simply a couple of white sheets like the sides of a tent behind which were a couple of the ladies who made sure a fish was always caught. We kids would be given a fishing pole with a long piece of string at the end of which was attached a clothespin. We'd throw the line over the side and wait for a tug. In we'd pull and wonder of wonders there was always some treat attached, a comic book, a top, or some other 5-cent item that, at the time, seemed like a wonderful prize. The ladies of the United Church that Mom was very involved with may have put on the garden party.

Erecting the Rink Boards

As fall turned to winter (long before Dec 21) we longed for the day when, with enough snow and cold enough temperatures, many of the men from around Swastika would get together at the school to put up the rink boards. The boards had been piled at one end of the playing field since they had been taken down, probably some time in April. Climbing this large pile was one of our spring, summer and fall adventuresI was never very good with heights. These boards were unique among all the outdoor rinks in the township as they were about 7 or 8 feet high, rather than about 4 feet high as most others were. The men spent the whole day at the job and were very precise as I recall. There were tape measures and a transit etc to make sure everything fit just right. Dad was one of these men and if I recall there was some sort of get-together afterwards involving an ounce or two of something to warm them. I do recall that it was Grey Cup day one year so it may have been an annual Grey Cup exercise, the erecting of the rink boards.

Swimming

Growing up where we did, we were blessed with good clean water to swim in. It was all around us. In fact we had a river, the Blanche River, running right through Swastika. When I was very young the swimming hole was at "the Mill", named because there was a planing mill owned by Haileybury Lumber close by. It was also quite close to the coal depot beside the railway tracks. As a result the ground all around this swimming hole and the bottom of the river when wading in was covered with fine coal dust. Someone had built a fairly large community dock with a diving board at the end of it. On a hot summer day there was usually quite a crowd of kids and a few adults cooling off in the river and horse playing on and off the dock. I was just learning to swim so was most of the time I was just wading in near the shore and watching the "big boys". Right beside this dock was the house where the Hutt family lived. I talked with Mabel and her "kids" Jim and Penny at the reunion. Mabel was laughing at how she used to yell out her window to tell the BOYS to watch their language. She said it was very tame compared with what we hear today from some teenagers.

A few years later the men in Swastika decided to build a new dock on the other side of the river from The Mill just above the rapids. They built the cribbing out of squared timber soaked in creosote. I still am brought back to this swimming hole whenever I smell creosote. Norval Strong owned this property and lived nearby in the big log-siding house, which at the time was the last house on Athenia Blvd. Mom and Dad eventually built their new house beside the Strongs. So the dock became known as "Strong's Dock" and took over from the Mill dock that was taken down. I was probably ten when it was built and spent many summers, til I left home, swimming and diving at this popular spot. Across from the dock, on the other side of the river, were a number of old wooden boathouses and a fairly new, large boathouse covered with tin. It had a flat top and we often swam across to jump or dive in from the top of this structure.

On the other side of town, just on the outskirts was Culver Park that had a beautiful sand beach. It was a very popular spot for people from Kirkland Lake as well as Swastika. There was a canteen and a dance hall that supposedly had the best dance floor in the area. Many of the mine picnics would take place at Culver as well as celebrations like Dominion Day or the Orangeman's Parade celebrations etc. There was always a question about the quality of the water however as I believe the sewage went into one end of the lake (Otto Lake). But the swimming was great because of the nice sandy bottom.

A 10 or 15-minute bike ride up the Beatrice Road took us to a Lake called Beatrice Lake. The Beatrice Road was really just an old logging or mining trail which started at the top end of Riverside Drive, went up a fairly steep hill, known as Joe Miller's Hill, because Joe Miller lived just over this hill (with his brother "Squeaky") where he had a small farm with a horse or two. There was a rocky point just at the end of the trail that was another place we would swim from. One of the problems with this lake was that there were lots and lots of bloodsuckers (leaches to you faint-hearts). There was a solid rock shoreline that meant that the water was deep right off shore. I can only remember swimming there a few times, although we often would go up there on our bikes as 11 or 12 year-olds just to pass the day. It was also a pretty popular fishing spot. Jim fished there a lot in later years.

The Darlings' House

One house down Riverside from us (next to a vacant lot on the corner of Riverside and Victoria lived the Darlings, Mr. (Ken), Mrs. (Sally), Henry (Badge), David and Nancy. The vacant lot beside them had some bush and a couple of trails through it. Each fall Ken would buy a load of birch logs and there would be a day when he brought in a portable sawmill (circular) to cut them into about 3 ft lengths that would fit in a large wood-burning furnace in his basement. For some reason I remember this as a day when a lot of us kids would gather to watch these logs being sawed up. There was some sort of fascination that probably had something to do with the loud noise and perhaps the obvious danger to those doing the work. Perhaps we were waiting for someone to lose an arm. Obviously this was before the days of the chainsaw.

One year Jim's gang (Jim, Badge, Brian Ashley, Doug Cooper and maybe a few others) decided that they going into the "french-fry" business. They got a big pot, filled it with cooking oil, found an old woodstove which they set up in the bushy lot beside Darlings, got some potatoes which they cut into fries and lit a fire. Some of them went over to the station and "stole" some paper cups from the washroom there to use for the fries. They heated that oil for a long time and threw in the potatoes. For some reason they didn't sizzle like their mothers' fries did at home. They kept testing a fry but it was still too hard. This went on for a long time and they finally realized that their fire just wasn't going to heat that oil hot enough to cook the fries. What the hell!! They took the potatoes out and ate them anyway, a little too hard and a little too greasy but THEIR OWN. I did get a taste but wasn't ready to give them a five star rating!

This vacant lot and the back of Darling's lot bordered the playing field of the school. On that end of the vacant lot was a large sand pit that was a very popular playing area, really a huge sandbox for us kids. We spent countless hours in this pit "playing cars". We would construct yards and yards (like metres to you young people) of roads in the sand and play with our toy trucks and cars. There were bridges and houses etc, all easy to make, as the sand was that red clay type of sand that was easy to mold.

There were two huge trees in their backyard and another in the front yard. The back trees came into play a lot when we played football on the playground, which we did a lot. We often would launch licks that got caught up in these trees and the football would fall harmlessly to the ground rather than hitting the Darling house. There was one branch on one of these trees that was about 5 ft off the ground. Twice every day as I ran through the vacant lot to school I would take one swing on this branch, usually giving a Tarzan yell. It was great living so close to the school. Speaking of football, the best games we would get into often happened after watching a CFL game on TV, which was still a novelty. I don't think we had TV yet as I remember watching quite a few at Johnny Emms' house on their TV. Here's a funny onethere was no colour TV then of course, but Stan Emms bought a sheet of transparent plastic that was blue at the top, red in the middle and green on the bottom and they put this in front of the TV for a "coloured" effect. These plastic sheets were actually sold for this purpose.

The Outdoor Rink

My first memory of the outdoor rink is when I was first put on skates, bob-skates. These were strapped on the bottom of a pair of boots and actually had two blades per skate. I guess the theory was that with two blades you could stand without losing your balance but they were not sharp and I just remember being down on the ice most of the time. I must have got "real" skates shortly after that because I only recall that one day on bob-skates.
I described how the men in town put up the rink boards. They had two other chores: putting up the lights which were strings of high wattage bulbs which stretched from pole to pole across the width of the rink, maybe six strings in alland painting the lines and circles. Both of these chores were done sometime after the ice was made. Making the ice was where we (the kids) came in. Before the flooding started we had to pack the snow down and this was done by playing soccer before school, during our two recesses (15 minutes each) and at lunch (from 12:00 to 1:30). It usually took only a few days to get the snow packed well enough and then the flooding started. Lloyd Gillet, our janitor, was really the one in charge of this event as the hose was stored in the basement of the school and he had to turn on the water. I don't really remember if he did the first few floods but I do remember being let out of school for whatever time it would take to throw a flood on. It was the senior kids, whose grades were good enough to miss a bit of time, who had this privilege. After a flood we had to drain the hose by running it down the hill beside the school and then roll it up on a big spindle and two of us would carry it back down to Lloyd's "office". The first few floods left a very rough surface and shell ice where the water would have pooled but as it froze it was also soaking into the snow below. We were so anxious to be able to start skating that it seemed forever before we had a nice smooth surface but I'm sure it was only a matter of a few days. If it was cold enough we could put on 3 or 4 floods or more in a given day. Finally it was good enough to start playing shinny, which for those of you not familiar with the term was the name given to "pickup" hockey with nothing but skates and stick and few rules. The days of the week were divided into shinny times and public skating times where no sticks were allowed. I remember that Tuesday and Thursday night were shinny nights while the other three week nights were just for skating. I think Saturdays were for shinny and Sundays for skating but I'm not too sure. On Tuesdays and Thursdays you could count on most of the boys in town being on the ice, all at one time, in one gigantic game. Now when I say "boys", the ages in the big game probably ranged from 10 or 11 to late teens but there were often even older adults who would get involved. One I can think of was Terry Twigg who had only one arm, the other being cut off between his hand and his elbow in a mine accident. He was an excellent player and could skate and stickhandle around most of us with ease. He held the bottom part of his stick in the crook of his elbow. He was probably in his early thirties when I remember him playing with us. There were usually more than 6 players on each team and we took turns playing goal. The goal usually consisted simply of two slabs of wood. I know that at times there may have been ten or more players on each team and when a new boy would show up he was just slotted in where he was needed. I really feel that this kind of hockey made us learn how to stickhandle at an early age cause you can imagine how congested the rink would be with that many players on the ice at one time. Besides trying to avoid being checked by an opponent you also had to watch out for the smaller kids who often had their own game going on off to the side of the rink or some of the girls who insisted on just skating, again on the sides. I really can't remember any girls getting involved with the shinny gameswe were chauvinists. If it was snowing we would stop the game when it got too thick to carry the puck and we would go get the scrapers from the shed at the end of the rink shack and do a quick clean of the ice and then get back to the game. There were also shovels in the shed so some of us had to shovel the snow over the high boards once it had been scraped to the sides. Otherwise the games were essentially non-stop with no face-offs. The team scored upon would get to bring the puck up as far as centre before the other team could begin checking. These games would usually start shortly after 6 o'clock and may continue til after 10 or 11. Depending on our age and parents restrictions we would gradually drift home, exhausted but in a really good way.
Playing on an outdoor rink meant that we were dependent on the weather. In those days we had much more extreme temperatures than today with the thermometer often getting -40 Fahrenheit or more. On those days we found other ways to amuse ourselves but certainly we played many nights when it may have been -10 or -15 or more (-25 or so Celsius). It meant that we just bundled up a bit more, usually with a face scarf and made more frequent trips inside the rink shack to warm up and thaw some frozen toes beside the hot fire. When we bought new skates we generally made sure that they were a couple sizes too big so we could put a felt insole inside and still get our feet in wearing a couple pairs of work socks. Our sticks were one-piece wooden sticks until I was at least 10 or 11. These just never broke and often by the end of the year could be worn down to what we called "toothpicks". I could buy one at Critchley's General store across town for about $1.50, a Hespeller Green Flash or a Sherwood. About the only other times that we couldn't play involved a big snowstorm that often dumped a foot or more of snow. There were no "personal snow blowers" in those days so most of the time we would try to clear the rink at recesses, lunch times and after school using big wooden ploughs that had ropes attached to them. One person would pull ahead on the rope while a second person pushed the plough from behind. We would have a small army of kids with the shovels from the shed trying to keep up with the ploughs, shoveling the snow over the tall boards. Only after a few very severe storms would it become necessary to have a big snow blower, I think on a tractor??, come in to clear the ice. Note that most of the maintenance of the rink was done by us kids. Our parents put the boards up but basically that was the end of their involvement. They never stood around and watched us playing shinny, that's for sure.

There was one winter when, for some reason, the rink seemed to take forever to be ready. A number of boys, including both my brothers I think, decided to go up to Beatrice Lake and try to make a rink on the ice. I went with them and for a number of hours we shoveled and scraped until there was a fairly good-sized area of lake ice exposed. However it was too rough to skate on so a plan was devised to flood it. Being at least a mile from town, of course there was no way to bring water to the lake. So the boys cut hole in the ice and to my amazement the water just poured up through the hole and flooded over the whole area that had been cleared. It was few years before I understood that it was the weight of the snow that drove the ice down into the water and forced the water to come up through the hole. I have used that same principle here at the Island when I made a rink out front a few years ago. Well that was it for the day, as the water needed to freeze before we could skate on it. You probably know what happened. That night we got a big fall of snow, at least a foot, and the boys just said, "forget it, we're not going up to shovel it all off again". In a few days the rink at the school was ready so I never did get to try the lake at Beatrice.

One incident at the rink, when I was probably 10 or 11, is one that I have felt a "bit" guilty about. A bunch of us were playing shinny one Saturday when this little kid, Toller Cranston, came on the ice wearing little black figure skates. He was with his older sister Phillipa. None of us had ever seen figure skates on a little boy before and I remember we teased him until he started to cry and his sister took him home. Nothing came of what we had done and it was something I forgot.until about 10 or 15 years later when I began hearing about this young Canadian skating sensation, Toller Cranston. The Cranstons had moved away from Swastika a couple years or so after this incident but there could only be one person in Canada with that odd name who skated as well. Sure enough it was "our" Toller, who went on to become one of the best-known skaters in Canadian figure skating history. I think we made him stronger by our actionsha! ha!

The Rink Shack and Grandpa Graham

At the east end of the rink was a building with two large rooms and a shed. The biggest room had a big barrel wood stove in the middle and benches around the outside. We really just needed to change from our boots to our skates and head out to the rink. This room was known as the rink shack. There were piles of spruce slabs outside and a pile inside which was used to feed the fire. The stove was very hot, often red hot but since there was no insulation in the walls and the temperature often was 15 or 20 below zero Fahrenheit outside, we really appreciated the heat. I can still smell wet leather mitts that were placed on the stove for a few seconds and the smell of wood smoke in the winter brings me right back to my rink shack days. Each year the town hired an old man, Grandpa Graham, to look after the shack and keep us boys in line. I don't know how old he was but we thought he was ancient. He sat on one side of the shack on the bench with his back up against a cupboard. He chewed tobacco and kept a tin can close by that he would spit into every minute or so. He also had a cane that was by his side and this was what we were afraid of, as he would wave it around when he got mad. Actually I can't remember any time when he had any real trouble with any of us. There was no vandalism that I can recall as I think we knew that we would quickly lose our privileges if that happened. Every night when he arrived he produced a pail of drinking water that sat near the door on the end of the bench. Hanging above the pail was a white enamel cup which ALL of us used to get drinks of water from the pail. It was simply 'dip and drink". Can you imagine that happening today when every kid goes to the rink with his own water bottle?

Skating Nights and "Pump-Pump-Pullaway"

On school nights when we couldn't play shinny we still would entertain ourselves at the rink. This often involved a variation of the game of "tag". One that we called "Pump-pump-pullaway" or as most people seem to know it today as "British Bulldog". I have no idea where our name for it came from but when I first started playing it I thought it was "Pom Pom pull away" and I thought it was named for one of the older kids who often played it, Pom Pom Conroy or Conway. It was a simple game where the person who was "it" stood at centre ice and the rest of us lined up along the end boards. The "it" person would yell "pump-pump-pullaway" and the rest of us would try to skate to the other end and touch the boards without being tagged. The first person tagged would be "it" for the next game but all those caught would line up at centre for the next round. Depending on the number playing there could be many rounds to one game; the last person caught winning that game. It was a great game for learning straight ahead skating as well as dipsy-doodling, trying to avoid a tag. We would often play for a couple hours before heading home.

Comic Books

Today's kids spend a lot of time watching cartoons on TV. When we were small there was no TV but we did have our Comic Books. I always had a pile of at least 30 or 40 of them with titles like; Superman, Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, Batman, Archie, Little Lulu, Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger, Combat Kelly (a WWII character), Joe Palooka (a boxer), and many others, including The Classics. These were many of the stories by famous authors like Dickens or Robert Louis Stevenson, put in the form of a comic book with lots of pictures. Most of us were introduced to many of the really good books like Treasure Island or Tale of Two Cities through these comics. They were pretty cheap in those days, selling for all of 10 cents, if my memory is correct. The Classics may have been a bit more but I often spent my allowance (25 cents) on one or two of these treasures. But because all of the kids in town had their own stash, we spent a lot of time "trading comics". It was the barter system at its best. We often left school yelling at one of our buddies, "Do you want to trade comics tonight?" Comics without covers were deemed to be worth less than those WITH covers, so you might trade 5 coverless ones for 3 with covers. By trading with kids all across town we usually had "fresh" ones to read each day. On the back of these comics we could always find ads for the neatest stuff for kids. There was usually one for Raleigh bikes, one for B-B-guns etc and although I almost never sent for any of this stuff, I do remember getting a Disguise Kit this way, but waiting for many weeks for it to arrive. Our parents may have wished that we would read "real books" more but I'm sure that we did improve our reading skills, if not our imaginations, by reading these comic books.

Mr. Cooper's Garden and Manure Pile

Our next-door neighbour, Austin Cooper, had a large vegetable garden, right next to the fence between our two houses. Everything he grew was really big and healthy looking. I think his success was partly due to the fact that each year he added a full truckload of manure to the garden. I'm not sure where he got the manure but my guess is that Joe Miller, who had horses a bit back in the bush at the top of our street, was the probable source. (Note: Grant Copper told me at the reunion that it was not Joe Miller but he couldn't remember the name of who it was.) Anyway whoever it was would dump the load just outside the fence around his garden, right next to the sidewalk. That meant that until he wheel barrowed it inside, this pile sat there for a few days giving us something to smell and get on our shoes as we passed by. I think that's why to this day I love the smell of horse manure, and I now put lots of it in our garden, supplied by our Ruby and Max.

The Bakery and Mrs. Cooper's Bread

Most people love the smell of fresh-baked bread and for me this started when I was very young. Even though Swastika was very small, it had its own bakery for a number of years. It was across town on the other side of the railway tracks that sort of divided the town in two. I have few recollections of the bakery except, of course, the great smell but I do remember going inside with Mom and watching them putting the loaves in wax paper wrappers and sealing the ends by holding them up against a vertical hot plate on the wall. This really fascinated me for some reason. I guess the bakery closed down cause it just couldn't compete with the larger ones that gradually put these little ones out of business. Mom seldom baked bread but Mrs. Cooper (Sybil) next door was a great cook and every week baked a number of loaves and often would send one over (or hand it over the fence), to our delight. She also baked great pies and cookies.

Stores and Restaurants in Swastika

For a little town we had quite a few stores. The closest one to our house was Eddies, owned and run by a neighbour up the street from us, Eddie Seguin. It was a little grocery store with a butcher shop at the back where Eddie would cut and wrap fresh meat. It carried the usual line of canned goods etc but what I really remember is the candy. My favourite treats were blackballs, a hard round candy with a black licorice tasting outside and a tiny nut in the very centre. We could buy three for a penny and that's very often all I would go in with. They were always put in a tiny little paper bag. I could make those three last for days. Eddie died at quite a young age from a heart attack and the store closed soon after.

On the other side of town was another grocery store, Critchleys, run by George Critchley in the same way as Eddies was run. The store was a bit bigger than Eddies and I think he had more variety including hardware. But he was also a butcher so everything was cut fresh. Mom dealt mainly with Critchleys and ran a bill up which she paid each month I believe. It's interesting that he would also deliver your groceries and would even take phone orders.

There was a little variety store on the next street from Critchleys, closer to the station, owned by Dickie Woods. It carried pop, chocolate bars etc, magazines and papers and he even had a barber chair in the store, pretty versatile guy. One of the magazines he carried had a title containing the word "Sun" something or other but it was a "Nudist Colony" mag and you could actually catch a glimpse of parts of REAL breasts. A bunch of us boys would go in together and when Dickie was distracted some of us would quickly check out one of these mags and WOW, sometimes we'd actually see something....pant, pant. Amazingly tame when you consider what's out there now but it was lots for us!!

A few doors from Dickies, closer to the station, was a Chinese Restaurant, known to us as Greasies. Greasy was one of the Chinese gentlemen who ran the place and the other's name was Jim. Greasy was a grouchy old bugger but Jim was the friendly one. It actually was a restaurant, although I don't ever remember having a meal there. We just went in for pop and chocolate bars etc but could sit at a table while eating. There was a pinball machine, the only one that I remember being in town, so that got lots of play. In the spring I used to go sucker spearing down the rapids with Jim and his friends and I'm told that a lot of the suckers ended up at Greasies where they became the fish in his fish-and-chips.

Next to Dickies was another store, Lamothes (run by Pee-Wee Lamothe), that I think sold fishing stuff and hardware but what I remember getting there was minnows that they kept in big cement tubs in the basement.

There was a Drug Store right across from the station run by a man known as Doc Eddis. I don't remember being in it very often as Mom and Dad usually got prescriptions etc from one of the drug stores in Kirkland Lake (not sure why).

Swastika had one gas station/garage (except for a few years when Fina opened a station). It was an Esso station and run by Eric Thiel, who could fix just about anything. His garage didn't have a hoist but a ramp outside which ran over a pit. He would drive your car over that ramp when he needed to work under the car. Dad always bought used cars (mainly Fords) so we got to know Eric quite well. By the way gas sold for 39 cents a gallon when I started to drive in 1958.

Trains

Swastika was actually just a railway junction before it was a town. The railway station became a main focus for the town for many years. It is on the direct rail line from Timmins and parts north to Toronto and other locales in the south. As youngsters we watched trains come into the station, load up with coal and water, head out again in a cloud of smoke and steam, its shrill whistle blowing over and over. Yes the engines in those days were steam engines, the real "choo-choos-trains". I can still smell the thick, black smoke that trailed from the smokestack at the front of the engine. Just a short distance from the passenger platform was a coal storage area and further down the tracks was a water tower with a spout that could be lowered to fill the water tanks on the engine. Even though Kirkland Lake was a much larger town, anyone wanting to travel by train to Toronto had to come out to Swastika to board the train. I really loved travelling this way, especially when it was an "overnighter". At bedtime the porter, who was usually a coloured man, would come and convert our seats into beds and fold down the upper birth to make another bed. Although I easily got motion sick in a car, I loved going to sleep with the train car swaying from side to side and the clickety-clack, clickety-clack in my ears. At the reunion I was reminded that the train to Toronto was old "Number 47".When our Mike was a little boy we spent many days at Mom and Dad's place overlooking the river and the station. Mike wouldn't go to bed until the "choo-choo" came in around 7:30 PM and he would run to the big window and yell "choo-choo-train". I don't remember when the diesel engines took over for the old steamers but for those of us who had grown up with the smells and sounds, it was just not the same.

Swastika Public School

There was only one school in town so almost all the kids went to it, no matter what their religion, and there were many, many of them who were Catholic. A few came by bus from places like Kenogami or Matachewan to the northwest of Swastika but everyone else walked to school. The school was an old building built in 19 and consisted of four rooms, each holding two grades of kids. For many, many years Room 1 on the ground floor was Mrs. Elsie Armstrong's room, where she taught grades 1 and 2, and Room 2 on the second floor was where Mrs. Kay McCartney taught grades 3 and 4. When I first went to school in grade 1 (there was no kindergarten) Mr. Bill Armstrong (Elsie's husband) was the principal and grades 7 and 8 teacher who occupied Room 4 on the ground floormore about him later. Over the years that I was there the principals changed a few times as did the teachers in Room 3 on the second floor. Each room had a cloak hall where we hung our coats and removed our snow boots in winter. The top two rooms had fire escapes that was accessed through a door in the cloak hall and ran down the outside of the school. The washrooms were in the basement, one on each side of the building with separate staircases. Next to each washroom was a fairly large open room that was used at recess on days when it was too miserable to go outside. In the middle of the basement, between the girls and boys sides was Lloyd Gillet's office/workshop and the big furnace and boiler that heated the school (Lloyd was our janitor). The main staircase between the first and second floors ran up the middle of the school and the principal's office was at the top of these stairs. When the strap was being administered by the principal to some "delinquent" the sound could be heard throughout the whole school, sometimes followed by some wailing.

I was a pretty timid kid in grade 1, probably because I was scared "shitless' of Bill Armstrong. He had a very loud, very stern sounding voice and a menacing, penetrating look whenever he saw something he didn't like. He was good with the strap and didn't hesitate to use it. I forget how long he was there after I started school, but I was sure happy when he left. On the other hand, his wife Elsie was a great teacher, very compassionate and warm and sang with the voice of an angel. She was strict but in a nice way. They were good friends of my parents and their kids, Mary-Joan and Bruce, were great. We sometimes went to their house for dinner and even then he looked menacing. A few memories of grade 1 stand out. I certainly remember learning to read with the Dick and Jane series of books. These are very famous. We used a big, thick, black pencil to print with in our exercise books. Once in a while pages that we could cut out and make into a little booklet accompanied the stories she read us. For some reason this was the best part of grade 1 for me. As I mentioned, Elsie was very musical and we had a rhythm band that year. She played the piano and we played different instruments like the sticks, the triangle, the tambourine etc, that we would keep time with. Somehow when it came time for us to be judged, Elsie made me the conductor and I had to stand in front of everyone with a little baton and "conduct". I can still do the "moves". The Board's music teacher, Mr. Wiggins (appropriate name as he actually did wear a toupee), who came to each school each week, judged all the rhythm bands from the schools and we were one of the ones chosen to compete in the finals in at Queen Elizabeth School. Jeez they made me wear a little cape and a hat I think when I conducted there. Not one of my favourite moments although I think we did win that year. We started each day by standing and singing "God Save the King" and saying the Lord's Prayer. King George VI was still on the throne that year.

With two grades in the same room the kids were split down the middle in the room with the grade 2's sitting on the window side. In Grade 2 we got to actually use a pen and ink. The pens were a long round "stick" with a removeable nib at the end. An ink bottle sat in a hole in the top of our desk and we dipped the nib of the pen in this ink to "fill" it. While writing with this pen there were usually spots of excess ink here and there that were left behind. These spots would be soaked up by a paper blotter that we kept on our desks. I remember very little about grade 2 except that I think that was the year King George died and Elizabeth became Queen. It was Elsie Armstrong who told us about the King's death and got us up to sing "God Save the Queen" which sounded really strange. I found the schoolwork to be pretty easy, as did another boy Roy Ross. I think it was that year that the two of us started doing grade 3 work as well with the idea that we would go into grade 4 the next year, not skipping a grade but doing two grades in one year. The big thing we had to learn was how to do "long division"no sweat!! Now I could be wrong and we did 3 and 4 togetherbit foggy on that one. But in any case it made us a year younger than most of our classmates when we got into the higher grades.
I had Mr. Ross Munro in grade 5. He was a young guy, perhaps in his first year of teaching, but he was a good teacher and we all liked him. I missed a number of weeks of school that year as I got the mumps bad on one side, then just after I went back to school I came down with them on the other side. I think I missed almost a month of school and really got hooked on all the soap operas on the radio. I guess I still did all right in school because I don't remember having any real problems. For some reason I got Munro's home address in Ottawa (he was single and lived with his parents in the summer) and the next summer when we were passing through I talked Dad into finding his street. I remember it was 6 Bronson Ave.now why would I remember that?? Dad was not happy to be taken off his intended schedule but Mom talked him into it and we did find Ross.very short visit though. There was a very well known war correspondent that I later learned of with the same name Ross Munro, who also lived in Ottawa so I always wondered if they were father-son. Maybe I can find out on the Internet.

Grade 6 (same Room 3) was taught the next year by Mr. Clayton Young, another fairly young guy, who was a great modern piano player. That was the year that I took piano lessons from Mickey Godfrey in Kirkland Lake so I thought it was neat that my teacher could play that kind of stuff. We had him for dinner one night and he played for us. He was also the coach of our Flyweight hockey team that won the Northern Ontario Championships in Sudbury (see full story on that one).

I had Mr. Tom Tait for grade 7 and Mr. Don Parkhill for grade 8, both of whom were the principal of the school at the time and both quite good teachers. One of the things we got to do in grade 8 was go by bus to Manual Training at Queen Elizabeth School in Kirkland Lake once a week. The girls went in for Home economics (girls were meant to become house wives and needed to learn to cook and sew ha! ha!). Basically the Manual Training room was a woodworking shop and was run by a Mr. Washington. We made an ashtray stand, a serving tray and a wooden lamp. I know this is where I picked up my love for working with wood. I also took woodworking in grade 11 at KLCVI. At the end of grade 8 I won an award called the Earl McDermid Award as the top graduating student that year. I had to go into Eddie Duke the photographer in KL for a picture to go up on the wall in the school with past winners. Mom wanted me to wear a suit but I would have none of that. Eddie Duke was disgusted that I didn't show up in a suit but took my picture anyway. Don't you love my hair!! I guess Mom got it from Eddie Duke about the "no-suit" so she had me go in when I was in grade 9 or 10 and have another taken WITH a suit.
I have to say that my experience in grade school was very good. I really did like school and the whole atmosphere generated by having everyone, smart and "not-so-smart", rich, middle class, poor and very poor in some cases, Protestant and Catholic, French and English, young and old, all in the same school. I never experienced any sort of prejudice although it may have existed to some degree. Many of my very good friends lived in, what we know today as, poverty but never blinked an eye. I often went to friends' houses where there was no running water and an outhouse for a bathroom, woodstoves for heat and cooking and in one case cardboard on some of the inside walls. But although I noticed these things it didn't seem all that wrong to me because the family seemed pretty normal and it didn't seem to bother the kids. One thing I can say is that all the kids lived with two parents, with one exception among my friends. Ronny Cook lived with his Grandma. While I mention his name, Ronny was exactly the same age as me and we sat next to each other in grade 2. On our birthday that year we each brought one of our presents to school with us and it was the same present, a box of crayons (Crayola in the orange box) with plastic crayon holders that you put the crayon into and as it got worn down you pushed a little tab up to expose more of the tip. We were pretty surprised to find that we both got the same thing. He still owes me a quarter he borrowed from me one year ha! ha!

Recess

Twice a day we had 15 minutes recesses to get outside and let off steam, if the weather was OK. In the fall and late spring we usually played softball on the playing field. When we came running down the school steps toward the field, we would be yelling, "First up, second up, pitcher, first in field", etc, which determined our position and how long it would take to get up to bat. I remember almost no squabbles about who said what and when, and the game would begin very quickly. If a batter was put out, either striking out, flying out or being put out at a base, he then went to the outfield and was "last in field". We all knew the pecking order. Sometimes we would agree to keep that order frozen until the next recess, and then continue on. There was a Boys end and a Girls end to the field. Each end had its own ball net, a steel structure with wire mesh that served as a backstop and also something to climb and swing from when we weren't actually playing ball. These nets often were found in the strangest parts of town the morning after Hallowe'en, as they were not tied down and could be carried by four or five boys.

In the middle of winter, after the rink had been cleared of snow a number of times, there was a mountain of snow piled up outside the boards, which was soon packed down and became our mountain. The favourite game was to play "King of the Mountain", which was simply one boy standing at the top trying to keep any challenger from getting up to his level. This game was nothing more than friendly wrestling and rolling down the mountain. As you might imagine, we usually went back to class covered in snow. This often meant sitting in wet pants or with wet feet until school was over, either at noon or at 4 PM. As I have mentioned before, if the rink was covered with a fresh fall of snow our time at recess would be spent out on the rink plowing and shoveling. Other winter activities included playing ball hockey or even soccer on the rink. I do remember playing soccer right after the rink boards went up, to pack down the snow in preparation for the first flood.

When the weather warmed and the snow began to melt we got out our marble bags to prepare for marble season. This was the time when the ground right next to the school was bare but in general the rest of the rink and playground was mushy. We played marbles up against the cement basement wall. The basic marble game was very simple. The first player would throw a marble against the cement and it would bounce off, landing a few feet from the wall. The next player would do the same, trying to make his marble come off the wall and hit the first marble. If he did then he took both marbles. If no marble was hit, this process was repeated until finally somebody managed a "kiss" and collected ALL the marbles in play. Sometimes there would be 10 or 15 marbles scattered on the ground before someone finally won "all the marbles" (that's where the expression comes from). There could be more than two players in the game but most of the time it was "mano-a-mano". Each of us had our favourite marbles in our bag. There were "cats-eyes", "peewees" and "crokers"-the big ones, and some other names I have forgotten. We kept them in a cloth bag with a drawstring at the top, and would cart them back and forth to school each day during this season.

While the guys were playing marbles, the girls were usually skipping, chanting those well used skipping verses, "I like coffee, I like tea, I like the boys and the boys like meetc etc". Maybe Sharon remembers some others. BUT once in a while, to show off I guess, some of us boys would join the girls, especially when they were skipping "Double-Dutch". I got pretty good at it. These recess activities were mostly ones we took part in during our more senior years in Public School. To be honest I don't much remember recesses in the early grades.

Cabin Building

Living in Swastika meant living only a few minutes' walk from the bush. One of the things that many of us loved to do was to "try" to build a log cabin. I remember starting at least two, one with Bruce Donig and one with John Emms. We used the traditional method of notching the corners of the logs and piling up layer upon layer, nailed together at these notches. The only problem was that we never finished them and I have no idea why. The older boys built one cabin that was finished, Jim's gang, including Badge Darling, Doug Cooper, and many others. They built a real cabin with floor, roof, stove and pipe, and some old beds if I remember correctly. It was like a clubhouse where they would have sleepovers and just generally hung out. It was built at the top of, what we called, the "big hill" (see more about it). I remember going up one morning after the boys had had a sleepover and having my first cup of tea with them, no milk or sugar. They were having a great breakfast of bacon and eggs and toast. One of the things I "really" noticed was their latrine, which consisted of a dug pit over which was a log situated just so, making it impossible to miss the pit. Wow I thought these guys were so smart. Unfortunately the cabin burned to the ground one night and although it was never proved, the Suspect" was a boy named Hud Beaudoin, who was somewhat retarded. Some of us younger boys had hoped that it might get passed down to us in the future but it was not to be. One cabin that John Emms and I did finish was not built in the woods and was not built with logs, but lumber. John's father, Stan, owned and operated one of the two sawmills in Swastika (more about that later). As a result John and I had all the discarded lumber that we could ever use, piled down at the mill. We decided to build a cabin in the vacant field across from his house (the Separate School was eventually built there). Stan helped a bit in the "design" and before long we had a little house with a roof and a door on hinges and we even set out to insulate the walls with sawdust, again being very easy to get at the mill. Unfortunately we ran into a snag. The person who owned the lot, someone who lived out of town, saw what we had done on a visit to Swastika and demanded that it be removed. Well Stan was ready to kill the guy for being such a jerk but we did finally move it over to the Emms's yard. Stan used some of his heavy equipment to pick it up in one piece and put it on one of his logging trucks. We were pretty proud of our "first house" but I really don't remember that we used it all that much once we completed it. I guess it's where I got my first lessons in house building, which I used many years later to put additions on our two houses.

John McBean and The Lincoln

As I mentioned above, the father of John McBean, one of Jim's good friend's, became quite financially successful when John was a teenager. By the time John was driving, his Dad had bought a big, black Lincoln, which John was allowed to drive. In those days, the minute you got your driver's license at 16, you could drive without any restrictions. One day I went for a drive in the Lincoln with John and Jim and a couple others of their buddies. We drove into and around KL to show off the new car to any of the young lasses that we met. But it was on the drive home that was most interesting and scary. John decided to see what this baby could do and floored it on the straight stretch just outside Chaput Hughes. When he reached 120 miles per hour (around 190 km/h) I just closed my eyes, I was so scared. There were no seatbelts in cars then so you can imagine what would have happened if John had lost control, but he didn't and we made it safely home to Swastika. I think all the guys were pretty scared at that speed but no one would admit it of course.