I am pretty sure it is Draper Street between Somerled and Cote St.Luc Rd. The new West Hill High School would later be built across the street by the look of the cars.
Not that block on Draper, but very similar style duplexes.
The ones in the photo are clearly part of a group built at the same time during the 1930s. The young trees are all protected by the same "sleeve"--for lack of a better term.
My best guess at this point (considering the shadows) is a downhill street facing south and crossing or terminating at an east-west main street where there is a 3-storey apartment building, with what may be construction sheds or garages just before the intersection.
Otherwise, if we are facing east, on an east-west street, where is that downward slope?
I hate to disagree with the Urban Legend but if you look at the photo you can see an apatrment building at the end of the street. One or more of the houses has the fake Tudor style facade. The front lawns are slightly raised.
If you google 4600 block Draper Street you will notice a number of similarities including the roof tops and that there are no windows on the front sides of the houses.
There is even one building with little windows off of the front doors.
Picture is from the late 1940's. These duplexes may have been built earlier in the 1930's. The duplexes look familiar and are probably of a style quite common in NDG. I remember that in the 1950's and 60's the city planted a lot of trees in people's front yards in Snowdon, using the same type tree sleeves.
Admittedly after only a cursory glance, I was fooled by two things: the street really appears to taper off in a downward slope (which Draper does not...trick of the camera?), and the building on the far right (addresses 4845-4847-4849-4851) has been significantly modified with its second floor balconies currently absent and its former windows walled-in (a pretty drastic decision, really, for how many people would remove their front windows--never mind the balconies--overlooking such a nice residential street as Draper?). The landscaping has clearly changed for the most part with doors and railings upgraded from wood to metal over time, as well.
Lovell's 1948 edition first shows this address and further north up as far as 4881. The address number in later years built closest to Cote St. Luc is 4931.
Most likely when this photo was taken, the grounds across the street were already being planned and landscaped for the PSBGM headquarters on Cote St. Luc Rd. and for the future school at 5851 Somerled, originally named Monkland High School (Lovell's 1953), but later renamed West Hill High School (Lovell's 1954).
Monkland High School was subsequently moved to the building at the northern, circular dead end of West Hill Avenue, which Google maps now lists as the Kendo Club. The first West High School was, I believe, further south on West Hill Avenue near Sherbrooke. I have yet to research this.
Having been a student at West Hill High myself, I would regularly walk down Draper to the snack bar on Cote St. Luc--now long gone and formerly in that yellow-brick building between Draper and Melrose. I remember seeing a student wearing bell-bottoms for the first time out in front!
West Hill High was the only school then with an indoor swimming pool. In 1979 a student tragically drowned while it was unattended briefly, and it was closed for a few years then later re-opened on condition that it be made available to the general public after hours. Not sure if that pool is still there today.
I thought the street looked familiar. The duplexes are right across from the Draper St. entrance to the former Westhill High School, where I went in the 1960's.
And the houses were built in 1947, a year or two before the pic was taken.
Urban Legend: Draper goes very so slightly downhill from Somerled to côte St-Luc; according to Google Earth, on the ≈ 300m between Somerled and côte St-Luc, the altitude drops by a paltry 2.61m, less than a 10‰ grade.
Urban Legend....I accept your appology. LOL. By the way there is a downward slope towards Cote St. Luc on Draper. It isn't a trick of the camera. Most buildings in NDG have been modified in one way or another in NDG in the past 70 years.
I thougt my guess was pretty good considering I haven't lived in Montreal in close to 45 years.
3 kids I went to Willingdon and West Hill lived on this block on Draper when I was growing up. Karen Bolton lived on Draper at the corner of Somerled. Charles Dexter and Andrew Campbell lived a few houses away.
Across the street from the photo is the entrance to the West Hill High auditoreum. When the photo was taken there was a tennis club at the corner of Draper and Cote St. Luc that fell into disrepair in the early 50s. Years later, the Protestant School Board building was built on the the old tennis court site. Mr. Perry was the head guy at the PSB. He was a former principal at Willingdon. For a while his secretary was Cathy Marks, a former student at Willingdon and WEst Hill.
This past summer I took a tour of the inside of West Hill (now Royal Vale). Went downstairs to where one of the entrances to the swimming pool was but it was blocked off. I did see the old ticket booth. My guess is the pool has been closed for years. Plaster was coming off of the walls downstairs.
You can see photos I took of the inside of West Hill and Willingdon on my blog.
One of these days I'll have to figure out how that Lovell's directory works.
In the meantime I am sitting here drinking champaign knowing that I ouremembered the Urban Legend.
4400 West Hill was West Hill High starting in 1918. In 1948(?) the building became Westward Middle School. In 1956 it became Monklands High until its closing around 1978. The Somerled/Draper building (the "new" West Hill High)would have opened in the early 50s. The PSBGM HQ was built around 1963, the acquisition of the land involved a scandal which brought down the career of Edmund T. Asselin, MP for NDG who allegedly got a tip about the land and bought it and then flipped it for a profit. The Asselin family were long-time politicos, father J.O. Asselin being Chair of the City Executive Committee in the 1940s. Edmund's daughter Jane ran for City Council in NDG in 1994.
When I was a kid my father told me he had heard stories that Eddy Asselin had cleaned up playing cards on a troop ship coming back from Europe and WW2 and there were some hard feelings when he went around to collect the debts when the boys got home. Eddy Asselin is also mentioned on my blog story about West Hill High.
Yes, the original address number of West Hill High was 450--listed in the 1922-23 Lovell's and later changed to 4400 as shown in Lovell's 1930-31 edition.
Not sure exactly why it swapped buildings with Monkland High after only one year at the 5851 Somerled address. I distinctly remember seeing a photo of the 5851 building with Monkland High School emblazoned along the bricks above the front entrance.
According to a friend of mine, the 4400 address Monkland High was a tough school, whereas the 5851 West Hill I went to was drug-free until I heard rumours to the contrary after I graduated.
Since West Hill became Royal Vale, I wonder what happened to all of the WHS class photos and trophies which lined the walls. Must be some massive warehouse containing all of the many defunct schools' memorabilia!
Photos can be deceiving. How many times I've seen a TV news report with the camera showing a location I've walked along a thousand times or a building I should know, yet the lens they use distorts it beyond recognition. That slight Draper "slope" would fit better in southwest NDG. I got caught.
We will definitely need to drum up a few really old geezers who as kids rode their bikes up and down the west end streets, who can remember construction site details, shops, streetcars, etc.
Hey, MP&I, are you still with us? How about some more horse tales? Can you tell us what you remember about Western Avenue?
I also noticed quite a few out-of-place triplexes on streets below Sherbrooke where only duplexes were supposed to be permitted. They must have broken the rules and gotten away with it. Please...not more scandals? LOL.
I attended Monkland High on Benny. There was an artifical ice rink opposite the school, and two natural ice rinks beyond.
I remember them building the PSBGM building at 6000 Fielding. Pretty nice inside back in the day.
Fielding used to dead-end at Hampton on the East end until 1956? or so and you had to go out to CSL to get to Hampstead.
I attended school, after Iona in Snowdon Jct., at the the OLD Rosedale Church Hall on the SE corner of Mariette and Terrebonne until the FIRST new addition to Rosedale School was added on the NORTH end towards Somerled, giving 4 new classrooms.
The OLD Rosedale Hall was demolished the fall that JFK was shot, as I recall?
For a while, and I might be wrong, as it is over 60 years ago, students doubled-up in class rooms, a morning class for one set, and afternoon class for the other set, using the same desks.
A similar 4-room addition was added on the South end of Rosedale School c. 1959.
The School Janitor lived in the house on the East side of Mariette just to the South end of the Rosedale School playground, his name was Mr. Heron.
At that time the schoolfurnaces were still coal-fired and H.J. Brydges brought the fuel in their tatty old Internationals.
Ashes were hoisted out from the furnace room on a chain hoist by the 'Boys' side entrance facing Rosedale.
Scrap paper and old books were burned in a special incinerator which gave off clouds of smoke when first lit-off.
Many classes were 6x6 seating, the older classrooms still having the type of varnished desks with cast-iron frames screwed to the floor with the seats on the desk behind that tilted up on hinges, the desk surface having little brass inkwells with flip tops and a small 'jar' inside for the ink, which was dispensed from a tall bottle with a spout on it.
'Rough' school work was done in pencil on a newsprint-like paper in a Practice Book. 'Good' work done in ink on a shinier Practice Book with blue covers in lined white paper.
The books purchased for 2 or so cents? as required.
'Writing' was done with wooden nib pens which were dipped in the ink wells on the desk, the work blotted, after.
Fountain Pens came later, and you had to fill the latter with a little lever on the side in some models, which depressed a bladder inside which 'sucked' the ink up when the lever was let go.
Light years later cartridge fountain pens arrived where you bought ink cartridges in several colour choices that came in a small box and inserted them into the pen as required.
Ball points were not allowed for quite a while.
Flash cards were used to memorize Multiplication thru 12 x 12, and you HAD to have the answer or you wrote it out on the blackboard.
The new class rooms built after the War at Rosedale had a Greenboard, which was softer on the eyes. All class room incadescent light fixtures were replaced with flourescents in the mid-Fifties
Blackboard chalk came in white or yellow in a stout cardboard box packed in sawdust. A special wood and metal wire holder held 5 pieces of chalk for scribing music scores on the blackboard.
A green 'sawdust' was used by the Janitor to sweep the floor.
All the clocks in the classrooms advanced at the same time, click-clack, controlled by a large pendulum clock in the School Office.
There were a series of 'Bells' operated from a shiny brass panel by the Office. One set to ring inside and outside bells to summon students. Another shrill bell to call the Janitor, and a large gong for Fire.
Fire bells were all standardized in schools c. 1962?
If you were bad, your wrote some little saying out 50 times or so on the blackboard whilst the rest of the class carried on.
We still got the 'Strap.'
One of the first things we did on getting back in class in September was race to the PSBGM calendar up front by the pencil sharpener under the flag and count the red days 'off' at Christmas/New Years.
In the morning we sang 'O Canada' and 'God Save the King' ( at first ) and in later years sang the anthems in English one day, French the next.
Said the Lord's Prayer and Saluted the Flag, the flag being the Union Jack, or the Red Ensign.
Boys had to wear appropriate cuffed dress pants, sometimes with suspenders on buttons inside the belt line, solid colour collared shirt AND a TIE. Girls wore tunics.
Sir Arthur Currie school on Chester opened c. 1954 and helped ease the load.
Later, Wagar High opened down by the CPR Yards, helping ease the conjestion.
It was a long way around to Wagar before Cavendish was pushed North in the Sixties
My Cousin's Uncle on the other side of his family was Principal at the 'New' West Hill High on Somerled, he dying of a heart attack c. 1962?
Monklands WAS a tough school, serving the homes South from Sherbrooke to the CPR at later-Western and the space heater oil-heated apartments around Walkley and environs North from Monkland and North on Walkley thru Chester to CSL. Rd.
At a certain age you received a MTC Bus Pass with photo which allowed you to purchase Student Tickets at a reduced fare.
If there was a 'problem' with the school pass you had to travel to Terminus Craig on school hours to sort it out with the Tramways dudes.
I remember in Van Horne School we weren't allowed to use ballpoint pens either at first because they told us it would make us lazy writers--which I believe is partly true.
To open the classroom windows, the teacher would assign a student to use that long wooden pole to raise way up to the metal notches at the top of the windows, then pull each one downward, thus opening them at the top.
Cloakrooms at the rear of the elementary classes never had lockers in them. That only began in high school where we were each given a combination lock.
I remember when we were about to start an algebra class when another teacher came into the rear door of our classroom to tell us that JFK had been shot. I didn't know until later when I sat down in my dentist's chair that he had died, the radio announcer's sombre voice droning on.
Can you remember in what year coal was no longer used in residences, to be replaced by fuel oil? it must have taken a awhile to be completely phased out. Was your home coal heated?
You guys really do have some sharp minds as far as your rememberences go. Amazing details. Probably back in the day parents and teachers had no idea that some of you were watching things a lot closer than others.
I remember too the green grit stuff the janitor used at grade school to sweep up the floors with.It had a kind of smell to it like pine. Mr. Hunter was the janitor at Wiillingdon School. He was also the caretaker at Ephram Scott Church in Snowden.
If you were about 7 years of age on a hot summer's day with nothing to do you could always sit on the sidewalk and follow with your eyes where ants went. If it was raining we would have toothpick races in the gutters.
One guy on here mentioned the strap. I got the strap almost every year from grade 2 until I left school at 17. At Willingdon in was kept in a ledger in a utility room across from the office. It was about 16" long and made of rubber with stitching on it so it wouldn't fall apart. The principal meted out the punishment. You knew that your goose was cooked when you were led into that little room. There was absolute fear in the moments before your name was entered into the book. By high school the principals were leaving their feet to create a harder impact with the strap. In my book, although these guys are long dead, they will always be cowards in my mind. I would have liked to have run into some of them as an adult and seen how brave they were. A number of years ago I coached my son's teams in 2 different sports. I saw how kids at 7 get kind of crazy at a 7 p.m. practice. I saw how small they were. I could never imagine physically punishing them. There are a lot of good things about the past. The strap wasn't one of them.
Love to get comments! Please, please, please speak your mind ! Links welcome - please google "how to embed a link" it'll make your comment much more fun and clickable.
If those little saplings are the beginnings of what are now the gigantic trees in the Monkland area of NDG I'm going to lose my shit.
ReplyDeleteI am pretty sure it is Draper Street between Somerled and Cote St.Luc Rd. The new West Hill High School would later be built across the street by the look of the cars.
ReplyDeleteNot that block on Draper, but very similar style duplexes.
ReplyDeleteThe ones in the photo are clearly part of a group built at the same time during the 1930s. The young trees are all protected by the same "sleeve"--for lack of a better term.
My best guess at this point (considering the shadows) is a downhill street facing south and crossing or terminating at an east-west main street where there is a 3-storey apartment building, with what may be construction sheds or garages just before the intersection.
Otherwise, if we are facing east, on an east-west street, where is that downward slope?
I hate to disagree with the Urban Legend but if you look at the photo you can see an apatrment building at the end of the street. One or more of the houses has the fake Tudor style facade. The front lawns are slightly raised.
ReplyDeleteIf you google 4600 block Draper Street you will notice a number of similarities including the roof tops and that there are no windows on the front sides of the houses.
There is even one building with little windows off of the front doors.
I would bet money....
Sorry Urban Legend.
Yup, that’s Draper allright.
ReplyDeletehttps://maps.google.com/?ll=45.475804,-73.630285&spn=0.004973,0.007274&t=m&z=17&layer=c&cbll=45.475765,-73.63224&panoid=CuS2mKhCDKLSL7sDuMJ7MA&cbp=12,337.5,,0,-0.68
Picture is from the late 1940's. These duplexes may have been built earlier in the 1930's.
ReplyDeleteThe duplexes look familiar and are probably of a style quite common in NDG.
I remember that in the 1950's and 60's the city planted a lot of trees in people's front yards in Snowdon, using the same type tree sleeves.
Amazing after all these years the electric & utility lines still haven't been buried under ground.
ReplyDeleteYes--Draper it is! An early morning photo.
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly after only a cursory glance, I was fooled by two things: the street really appears to taper off in a downward slope (which Draper does not...trick of the camera?), and the building on the far right (addresses 4845-4847-4849-4851) has been significantly modified with its second floor balconies currently absent and its former windows walled-in (a pretty drastic decision, really, for how many people would remove their front windows--never mind the balconies--overlooking such a nice residential street as Draper?). The landscaping has clearly changed for the most part with doors and railings upgraded from wood to metal over time, as well.
Lovell's 1948 edition first shows this address and further north up as far as 4881. The address number in later years built closest to Cote St. Luc is 4931.
Most likely when this photo was taken, the grounds across the street were already being planned and landscaped for the PSBGM headquarters on Cote St. Luc Rd. and for the future school at 5851 Somerled, originally named Monkland High School (Lovell's 1953), but later renamed West Hill High School (Lovell's 1954).
Monkland High School was subsequently moved to the building at the northern, circular dead end of West Hill Avenue, which Google maps now lists as the Kendo Club. The first West High School was, I believe, further south on West Hill Avenue near Sherbrooke. I have yet to research this.
Having been a student at West Hill High myself, I would regularly walk down Draper to the snack bar on Cote St. Luc--now long gone and formerly in that yellow-brick building between Draper and Melrose. I remember seeing a student wearing bell-bottoms for the first time out in front!
West Hill High was the only school then with an indoor swimming pool. In 1979 a student tragically drowned while it was unattended briefly, and it was closed for a few years then later re-opened on condition that it be made available to the general public after hours. Not sure if that pool is still there today.
I thought the street looked familiar. The duplexes are right across from the Draper St. entrance to the former Westhill High School, where I went in the 1960's.
ReplyDeleteAnd the houses were built in 1947, a year or two before the pic was taken.
Urban Legend: Draper goes very so slightly downhill from Somerled to côte St-Luc; according to Google Earth, on the ≈ 300m between Somerled and côte St-Luc, the altitude drops by a paltry 2.61m, less than a 10‰ grade.
ReplyDeleteUrban Legend....I accept your appology. LOL. By the way there is a downward slope towards Cote St. Luc on Draper. It isn't a trick of the camera. Most buildings in NDG have been modified in one way or another in NDG in the past 70 years.
ReplyDeleteI thougt my guess was pretty good considering I haven't lived in Montreal in close to 45 years.
3 kids I went to Willingdon and West Hill lived on this block on Draper when I was growing up. Karen Bolton lived on Draper at the corner of Somerled. Charles Dexter and Andrew Campbell lived a few houses away.
Across the street from the photo is the entrance to the West Hill High auditoreum. When the photo was taken there was a tennis club at the corner of Draper and Cote St. Luc that fell into disrepair in the early 50s. Years later, the Protestant School Board building was built on the the old tennis court site.
Mr. Perry was the head guy at the PSB. He was a former principal at Willingdon. For a while his secretary was Cathy Marks, a former student at Willingdon and WEst Hill.
This past summer I took a tour of the inside of West Hill (now Royal Vale). Went downstairs to where one of the entrances to the swimming pool was but it was blocked off. I did see the old ticket booth. My guess is the pool has been closed for years. Plaster was coming off of the walls downstairs.
You can see photos I took of the inside of West Hill and Willingdon on my blog.
One of these days I'll have to figure out how that Lovell's directory works.
In the meantime I am sitting here drinking champaign knowing that I ouremembered the Urban Legend.
4400 West Hill was West Hill High starting in 1918. In 1948(?) the building became Westward Middle School. In 1956 it became Monklands High until its closing around 1978. The Somerled/Draper building (the "new" West Hill High)would have opened in the early 50s. The PSBGM HQ was built around 1963, the acquisition of the land involved a scandal which brought down the career of Edmund T. Asselin, MP for NDG who allegedly got a tip about the land and bought it and then flipped it for a profit. The Asselin family were long-time politicos, father J.O. Asselin being Chair of the City Executive Committee in the 1940s. Edmund's daughter Jane ran for City Council in NDG in 1994.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a kid my father told me he had heard stories that Eddy Asselin had cleaned up playing cards on a troop ship coming back from Europe and WW2 and there were some hard feelings when he went around to collect the debts when the boys got home.
ReplyDeleteEddy Asselin is also mentioned on my blog story about West Hill High.
Yes, the original address number of West Hill High was 450--listed in the 1922-23 Lovell's and later changed to 4400 as shown in Lovell's 1930-31 edition.
ReplyDeleteNot sure exactly why it swapped buildings with Monkland High after only one year at the 5851 Somerled address. I distinctly remember seeing a photo of the 5851 building with Monkland High School emblazoned along the bricks above the front entrance.
According to a friend of mine, the 4400 address Monkland High was a tough school, whereas the 5851 West Hill I went to was drug-free until I heard rumours to the contrary after I graduated.
Since West Hill became Royal Vale, I wonder what happened to all of the WHS class photos and trophies which lined the walls. Must be some massive warehouse containing all of the many defunct schools' memorabilia!
Photos can be deceiving. How many times I've seen a TV news report with the camera showing a location I've walked along a thousand times or a building I should know, yet the lens they use distorts it beyond recognition. That slight Draper "slope" would fit better in southwest NDG. I got caught.
We will definitely need to drum up a few really old geezers who as kids rode their bikes up and down the west end streets, who can remember construction site details, shops, streetcars, etc.
ReplyDeleteHey, MP&I, are you still with us? How about some more horse tales? Can you tell us what you remember about Western Avenue?
I also noticed quite a few out-of-place triplexes on streets below Sherbrooke where only duplexes were supposed to be permitted. They must have broken the rules and gotten away with it.
Please...not more scandals? LOL.
PSBGM. 1.
ReplyDeleteWas in for surgery and am still shaky.
I attended Monkland High on Benny. There was an artifical ice rink opposite the school, and two natural ice rinks beyond.
I remember them building the PSBGM building at 6000 Fielding. Pretty nice inside back in the day.
Fielding used to dead-end at Hampton on the East end until 1956? or so and you had to go out to CSL to get to Hampstead.
I attended school, after Iona in Snowdon Jct., at the the OLD Rosedale Church Hall on the SE corner of Mariette and Terrebonne until the FIRST new addition to Rosedale School was added on the NORTH end towards Somerled, giving 4 new classrooms.
The OLD Rosedale Hall was demolished the fall that JFK was shot, as I recall?
For a while, and I might be wrong, as it is over 60 years ago, students doubled-up in class rooms, a morning class for one set, and afternoon class for the other set, using the same desks.
A similar 4-room addition was added on the South end of Rosedale School c. 1959.
The School Janitor lived in the house on the East side of Mariette just to the South end of the Rosedale School playground, his name was Mr. Heron.
At that time the schoolfurnaces were still coal-fired and H.J. Brydges brought the fuel in their tatty old Internationals.
Ashes were hoisted out from the furnace room on a chain hoist by the 'Boys' side entrance facing Rosedale.
Scrap paper and old books were burned in a special incinerator which gave off clouds of smoke when first lit-off.
Many classes were 6x6 seating, the older classrooms still having the type of varnished desks with cast-iron frames screwed to the floor with the seats on the desk behind that tilted up on hinges, the desk surface having little brass inkwells with flip tops and a small 'jar' inside for the ink, which was dispensed from a tall bottle with a spout on it.
'Rough' school work was done in pencil on a newsprint-like paper in a Practice Book. 'Good' work done in ink on a shinier Practice Book with blue covers in lined white paper.
The books purchased for 2 or so cents? as required.
'Writing' was done with wooden nib pens which were dipped in the ink wells on the desk, the work blotted, after.
Fountain Pens came later, and you had to fill the latter with a little lever on the side in some models, which depressed a bladder inside which 'sucked' the ink up when the lever was let go.
Light years later cartridge fountain pens arrived where you bought ink cartridges in several colour choices that came in a small box and inserted them into the pen as required.
Ball points were not allowed for quite a while.
Flash cards were used to memorize Multiplication thru 12 x 12, and you HAD to have the answer or you wrote it out on the blackboard.
PSBGM.2.
ReplyDeleteThe new class rooms built after the War at Rosedale had a Greenboard, which was softer on the eyes. All class room incadescent light fixtures were replaced with flourescents in the mid-Fifties
Blackboard chalk came in white or yellow in a stout cardboard box packed in sawdust. A special wood and metal wire holder held 5 pieces of chalk for scribing music scores on the blackboard.
A green 'sawdust' was used by the Janitor to sweep the floor.
All the clocks in the classrooms advanced at the same time, click-clack, controlled by a large pendulum clock in the School Office.
There were a series of 'Bells' operated from a shiny brass panel by the Office. One set to ring inside and outside bells to summon students. Another shrill bell to call the Janitor, and a large gong for Fire.
Fire bells were all standardized in schools c. 1962?
If you were bad, your wrote some little saying out 50 times or so on the blackboard whilst the rest of the class carried on.
We still got the 'Strap.'
One of the first things we did on getting back in class in September was race to the PSBGM calendar up front by the pencil sharpener under the flag and count the red days 'off' at Christmas/New Years.
In the morning we sang 'O Canada' and 'God Save the King' ( at first ) and in later years sang the anthems in English one day, French the next.
Said the Lord's Prayer and Saluted the Flag, the flag being the Union Jack, or the Red Ensign.
Boys had to wear appropriate cuffed dress pants, sometimes with suspenders on buttons inside the belt line, solid colour collared shirt AND a TIE. Girls wore tunics.
Sir Arthur Currie school on Chester opened c. 1954 and helped ease the load.
Later, Wagar High opened down by the CPR Yards, helping ease the conjestion.
It was a long way around to Wagar before Cavendish was pushed North in the Sixties
My Cousin's Uncle on the other side of his family was Principal at the 'New' West Hill High on Somerled, he dying of a heart attack c. 1962?
Monklands WAS a tough school, serving the homes South from Sherbrooke to the CPR at later-Western and the space heater oil-heated apartments around Walkley and environs North from Monkland and North on Walkley thru Chester to CSL. Rd.
At a certain age you received a MTC Bus Pass with photo which allowed you to purchase Student Tickets at a reduced fare.
If there was a 'problem' with the school pass you had to travel to Terminus Craig on school hours to sort it out with the Tramways dudes.
Have to go.
Meds await.
Thank You.
Interesting memories, MP&I.
ReplyDeleteI remember in Van Horne School we weren't allowed to use ballpoint pens either at first because they told us it would make us lazy writers--which I believe is partly true.
To open the classroom windows, the teacher would assign a student to use that long wooden pole to raise way up to the metal notches at the top of the windows, then pull each one downward, thus opening them at the top.
Cloakrooms at the rear of the elementary classes never had lockers in them. That only began in high school where we were each given a combination lock.
I remember when we were about to start an algebra class when another teacher came into the rear door of our classroom to tell us that JFK had been shot. I didn't know until later when I sat down in my dentist's chair that he had died, the radio announcer's sombre voice droning on.
Can you remember in what year coal was no longer used in residences, to be replaced by fuel oil? it must have taken a awhile to be completely phased out. Was your home coal heated?
You guys really do have some sharp minds as far as your rememberences go. Amazing details. Probably back in the day parents and teachers had no idea that some of you were watching things a lot closer than others.
ReplyDeleteI remember too the green grit stuff the janitor used at grade school to sweep up the floors with.It had a kind of smell to it like pine.
Mr. Hunter was the janitor at Wiillingdon School. He was also the caretaker at Ephram Scott Church in Snowden.
If you were about 7 years of age on a hot summer's day with nothing to do you could always sit on the sidewalk and follow with your eyes where ants went. If it was raining we would have toothpick races in the gutters.
One guy on here mentioned the strap. I got the strap almost every year from grade 2 until I left school at 17. At Willingdon in was kept in a ledger in a utility room across from the office. It was about 16" long and made of rubber with stitching on it so it wouldn't fall apart. The principal meted out the punishment. You knew that your goose was cooked when you were led into that little room. There was absolute fear in the moments before your name was entered into the book.
By high school the principals were leaving their feet to create a harder impact with the strap.
In my book, although these guys are long dead, they will always be cowards in my mind.
I would have liked to have run into some of them as an adult and seen how brave they were.
A number of years ago I coached my son's teams in 2 different sports. I saw how kids at 7 get kind of crazy at a 7 p.m. practice. I saw how small they were. I could never imagine physically punishing them.
There are a lot of good things about the past. The strap wasn't one of them.
That floor-cleaning compound with the pine smell is called Dustbane.
ReplyDeleteCheck it out on Google.