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Photo Collage: There was never enough time to do it all. Cars, girls, rock and roll were all part of the freedoms that came in the 1950’s.  If was a unique time in the Canada, and we made the best of it. The majority even managed to graduate with distinction. I was one of the non-distincts, however, my sister, Louise McNeill, graduated with a distinct distinction, that being the 1961 Honour Role. This post makes it clear why I failed to do so.

(Photo selection: Jimmy Martineau, Gordie Wusyk, Billy Martineau and drummer in the background, Gary McGlaughlin, playing at the Tropicana Night Club. Below, the Pinsky Cadillac. Harold McNeill and Aaron Pinsky in a “cool” shot at the Roundel Hotel.  Sitting across from us is Dorothy Hartman, an awesome dance partner. We worked out the fine points of the back over flip as shown in the photo top right  (Dance photos from the web).

THIS STORY IS CURRENTLY BEING PROOFED AND UPDATED

Chapter 3: The High School Years

Link Here for Chapter 1 of the High School Years
Link Here for Chapter 2 of the High School Years
Link to Family Stories Index

1. Introduction

Perhaps the best way to pick my way through the final two segments of the Cold Lake High School Years is by selecting random memories. Not to worry, I will be discrete while keeping the history and stories interesting as possible. The post is not meant as a titillating account of a small town as in Peyton Place, but seeks instead to provide an account of how I950’s High School kids in a small town at the edge of the wilderness on the Alberta/Saskatchewan border lived and loved.  For the most part, private matters between consenting students during our time in Cold Lake High would stay in Cold Lake High. That does not mean I won’t pick around the edges.

Peyton Place:  The sizzling movie version of the best-selling book was released in 1957, just in time for our coming of age. While the movie was toned down, it still raised eyebrows and was soundly condemned in many quarters.  By today’s standards, it would be relatively tame.

Another thing that will become evident, this story was written from the male perspective. To make any statements about what girls focussed on in the day will be up to them.  Any girls who wish to add to my descriptions, please write a few chapters of your own, they will be added to the post so we can compare and contrast our views of life in the 50’s.

Two things defined High School boys back then as today – cars and girls. In my day the two consumed an enormous portion of our limited and highly specialized brain space – girls occupied the left hemisphere, cars the right. As we boys couldn’t use both halves at the same time, the balance wavered from day to day. For that matter, our brains stopped working altogether when other parts of our anatomy kicked in.

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Early in the 1950’s the largest RCAF Station ever constructed in Canada was taking shape in Alberta. The small, remote, communities of Cold Lake and Grande Centre, that grew ever so slowly over the first fifty years of the century, would be shaken to their foundations as they struggled to come to terms with a massive influx of workers and their families. Our family was one of the many seeking to find their way.

Chapter 2:  The Silent Generation
(Link to Chapter 2, Cold Lake High 1955 -1960)
Link Here for other Family Stories in this Series

THIS STORY IS CURRENTLY BEING PROOFED AND UPDATED

Dear Reader,

For the several months, I struggled with how to write this post about our return to Cold Lake. To this point, it was easy to tell the stories as they were all generally positive. Even though our family was constantly on the move over the twelve years until this story, everything was relatively stable on the home front. All that changed in 1953 after arriving in Cold Lake and it continued in one form or another until our Dad passed away suddenly in 1965. While I will not dwell on the ugly parts, and there were many, I felt compelled to

express the feelings that enveloped me during those tumultuous years as a means to better understand myself and, perhaps, as a message to others.

I rather expect at least a few of my school friends shared similar experiences and might even take solace in knowing they were not alone.  The background to this story is alcohol abuse, but it could easily have been any of a dozen other things that cause family units to fracture – drugs, infidelity, mental illness, etc.  Children and teenagers, in particular, are vulnerable when this happens and need to know they are never alone, that even when things get really bad, the future can still hold a great deal of promise.

Indeed, this will become evident in parts of this post and in subsequent posts through the High School years and beyond. A great many positive things can happen even if life on the home front has spiralled into periods of darkness.

Photo: If taken between October and December 1958, I was seventeen, Louise fourteen, and Dianne four.  Louise remembered our ages as she recognized the skirt as one she sewed in her Grade 9 Home Ec class. Look at Louise for a moment. For those who know her daughter Karena, can you see Karina’s sassy smile and eyes? Looking at clothes, I also remember the day those grey ‘flecked’ dress pants arrived by mail order from Sears.  They became my favourite dress up in High School.  And, as for that sweet, innocent little girl on the right, my heart aches for having completely missed knowing her when she was young. 

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July, 2011.  The Aurora Theatre, in downtown LacLaBiche looks exactly as it did when Louise and I attended the Saturday matinee’s in 1952-53. The Gypsy Family McNeill, after 11 moves in 11 years, had landed LacLaBiche.  (The Aurora story appears in Chapter 4, below).  Sadly, the theatre closed in 2014.

Link to Next Post: The Journey Begins (First of Part VI)
Link to Last Post: Pibroch
Link to Family Stories Index
Feb 4, 2017 (2900)
Sept 4, 2017 (3047)

Chapter 3: Gypsy Years, LacLaBiche 

Introduction

With moving to different homes once or twice a year in each year of our short lives, Louise and I were becoming old hands at the practice.  While each move provided new adventures, there was still plenty of uncertainty.  What would the school be like? Would the kids be friendly? How about the teachers? How far from our home?

While it was always a comfort to be with Mom and Dad, this year would see more change and another separation on the horizon.  Even Louise and I would end up going in different directions.  For me, it would create a personal crisis of immense proportion.

Dad continued his practice of finding new things to challenge me when he decided to ship me into the wilderness for a little more “life experience”.  And, while talking about life experience, as Kenneth (my Grade 5 friend and soulmate) and I grew towards our teens, we suddenly discovered ‘girls’. And, an awesome discovery.

Join Louise and me as we tackle life in LacLaBiche in the early 1950s.  Photos for this post may be linked at:  McNeill Life Stories Facebook Page  Additional photos will be added as they become available.

1. Off to LacLaBiche, Alberta 

With the sale of the Murfitt farm in Pibroch (link to Pibroch) on the horizon, Dad began his search for a new job and home for the family.  For one year we enjoyed the total engagement that comes with living on a successful farm filled with all things beautiful – fresh air, land, animals, family, friends, hard work, a sense of purpose and a peace of mind that often eludes those harnessed to the hustle and bustle of the city. As Dad and Mom were defined by a wilderness style of living that required a high degree of self-sufficiency, the thought of moving back to Edmonton to find work would be a bitter pill to swallow.

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Photo (From Web)  Pibroch, AB, main street as it looked in 1951 when we arrived. During a trip to that area in 2010, the main street had not changed all that much.

Link to Next Post: LacLaBiche
Link to Last Post: Edmonton
Link to Family Stories Index

THIS STORY IS CURRENTLY BEING PROOFED AND UPDATED

Chapter 2  The Gypsy Years in Pibroch

January 9, 2015:  This post is brought forward for the accountant we met in San Francisco who looked after the accounts of several Hutterite Colonies in Alberta. He is retired but at one time worked with the Colony in Pibroch that is featured in this post.  If that accountant happens to pick up on this post please leave a message.  Regards,  Harold

1. Introduction:

After bidding a final farewell his youth, the years used up toiling away on a rock farm near Birch Lake, Saskatchewan, Dad was being drawn back to farming. In the spring he had taken over as foreman on the Murfitt spread in Pibroch, Alberta, a mixed farm with 200 head of cattle and about half the 640 acres under cultivation. It provided Dad with an opportunity to reconnect to animals and the land after having spent several years mink ranching, logging and doing construction work.

While horses had given way to tractors during the intervening years, Dad still had plenty of farming skills that made his services eagerly sought after and, as well, Mom would again be working in unison Dad. Taking over the farm kitchen she would work her magic as she cooked for a half dozen full-time farmhands in the off-season and twice that many during the harvest.

For Louise and me, it would be a new school and new friends, something we were becoming accustomed to as we shifted from pillar to post over the past two years. The great news about this move – Louise and I would be reunited with Mom and Dad in a country setting that was reminiscent of our early years. Our time at HA Gray Junior school in Edmonton was rapidly coming to an end as we would be heading North as soon as the school year was complete.

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Collage: The above photos provide a small representation of the five years a group of young people spent completing Junior and Senior High in Cold Lake, Alberta. The following story places a context around their world, a world that was becoming vastly different from the one in which their parents and grandparents had spent their teen years.

Link Here to Chapter 2: The Silent Generation
Link Here to Chapter 3: Cars, Girls, Rock and Roll
Link to Family Stories Index

THIS STORY IS CURRENTLY BEING PROOFED AND UPDATED

Chapter 2: The Silent Generation

September 1, 2014: Sorry for the delay. Chapter 18 along with about 300 photographs of our High School Years through to graduation, will be posted within the next two weeks.

The Silent Generation, a name coined to define those born between 1925 – 1945.  While it was applied to those of us who filed into Grade 8 at Cold Lake Junior (photos in the footer) in September 1954, we were so close to the cusp it seems to have missed the mark. Our small group preceded the Baby Boomers by a few years and in the months following graduation, we helped to add a tidy number of Little Boomers to Canada’s rapidly growing population.

The Silent Generation! Really? It seems the Time Magazine reporters who defined our group obviously never traveled to Cold Lake High in the late 50’s, nor did they do any first-hand research at those week-end ‘retreats’ at French Bay, English Bay or Marie Lake. For that matter, all they had to do was drop by one of the week-end parties at the Ruggles, Hill’s, Sanregret’s, Poirier’s or any of a dozen other homes when the parents were away. People called us many things, but ‘silent’ ‘grave’ and ‘fatalistic’ were not the adjectives that flowed past their lips.

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December 2010:  (Dallas Road, Victoria, at the Breakwater): The path to peace of mind and happiness can be elusive. When these two men were young, how did their lives intersect? It was just a Moment in Time.
January 2017 Update (1171)
January 2018 (1230)

Finding a path through life.

Just over a half century ago, at the tender age of twenty-two, I left Cold Lake, Alberta, to embark upon a new life in British Columbia. Only one time prior had I been more than three hundred miles from my home in Cold Lake, that being while attending the Fire Department, Crash Rescue Training at Camp Borden, Ontario (Firewalkers).

I had never been to the Rocky Mountains, never smelled the pungent odour of ocean air and never walked along a fog shrouded, craggy coastline. From my apartment on Michigan Street in the James Bay of Victoria, I can still remember the mournful sound of the foghorn at Trial Island. For a born and bred prairie boy, it was the stuff of dreams and I was living the dream – almost!

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Photo (From Web): The stately H.A. Gray Elementary School in Edmonton where Mom registered Louise and I in late August, 1949. It was a far cry from our one room school in Harlan, SK (see Chapter 2). Also, reference footer photo for comparison to a similar building in Victoria.

Link to Next Post: Pibroch
Link to Last Post: Dad is Missing (Last of Part IV)
Link to Family Stories Index
Link to the Old School House (First in the Harlan Series)

THIS STORY IS CURRENTLY BEING PROOFED AND UPDATED

Chapter 1: The Gypsy Years

When Dad and Mom (Dave and Laura McNeill) took Louise and me ¹ to live with Aunt Liz and Uncle Warren, in Harlan, Saskatchewan early in the spring of 1949, it was the first time we were separated from our parents. While we had made many moves in our short lives, this was just the beginning of being away from them for various periods of time ranging from a few months, to nearly a year. Our lives became a whirlwind of short-term home stays, new schools and new friends, many of whom remained steadfast for the rest of our lives.

Even our old pal Shep, the amazing Collie Cross, was left far behind in the care of our good friend Mr. Goodrich, our trapper neighbour at Marie Lake (A Final Farewell). Although the loneliness of being separated from Mom, Dad, Shep and our wilderness way of life, left a gapping hole in our lives, we had every reason to believe the hole would be filled once we settled in Edmonton.

Well, things did not turn out as planned and, in fact, Edmonton would bring the near death of our Mom and her younger sister, Aunt Marcia and the death of our one our best friends.

¹Aunt Liz’s first husband Tart, a rodeo bronco rider, had passed away a few years earlier and Aunt Liz, Dad’s sister, had married Dad’s friend Warren Harwood around the time we were all living north of Cold Lake. (Smith Place)

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