Note: Here is a piece I wrote for the 2013 anniversary of Connaught School. Wayne Wick and I challenged friends to recall some nerdy incidents from their school days. . . . Well, here is a start. MEMORIES OF CONNAUGHT SCHOOL 1955-57 By Ted Hainworth I started Grade 1 in 1955 at the age of six. In those days, few communities had Kindergarten. The first day doesn’t stand out much, except for the first hour punctuated by sobs and wails as mothers left their children for the first time in a strange place. I remember being quite proud that I was not among the criers! Our teacher was Mrs. Carin. She had a first name, of course, but no one knew it – or spoke it. Even our parents always referred to the teachers as Mr. or Mrs. (this was well before the days of Ms.) Connaught School, a typical three-storey brick building, was located on Charles Street (now 107th Street) in the 700 and 800 Blocks. Like so many public structures in those days, it was named for some member of the British aristocracy. In this case, the namesake was Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, who was appointed Governor General of Canada in 1911. The school seemed old even then, and I remember being impressed by the stairways, the steps of which had been worn down and “cupped” by years of traffic. I spent grades one and two at Connaught. Both classrooms were on the first floor – Grade 1 on the southwest corner; Grade 2 on the northeast corner. Grade 1 doesn’t stand out much. We learned to read from the Dick and Jane Series, mastering three-word sentences like: “See Spot run.” “See Jane jump.” It was a real adventure. I must not have been an outstanding student, because I remember on at least two occasions “standing in the corner,” which was the ultimate punishment for acting-up or failing at some task. Standing “out in the hallway” was another punishment, but that was reserved for the older grades. That year, 1955, was remembered as the year of a major snowstorm that brought just about everything to a standstill. That day was the first – and I think only – time I was late for school. Mom walked me through the drifts, and I remember being concerned that I would lose my “perfect attendance” standing before I was out of Grade 1. Perfect attendance was a concept drilled into students, and there was some enviable hardware involved – a lapel pin and a bar by the end of Grade 8. I was pretty proud to have been awarded both the medal and bar. On reflection, it was the only award I earned all through public and high school. Grade 2 was taught by Miss Nelson, who lived in an apartment on Third Avenue (now 13th Avenue) a block east of Third Avenue United Church. Her home address stands out because she was beautiful, and we would walk by her house in the hope of seeing her on the weekends. The “we” in this case was me and my best friend, Doug Sevick. We got together in Grade 1, and spent virtually every day and weekend together throughout public school – even after Grade 3, when I was forced to move to King Street School. Our friendship even survived an intense rivalry for the attention of a woman, also in Grade 2 and unnamed in the interests of discretion. I remember one Valentine’s Day filling a small bottle of my mother’s perfume to present to this love of my life. Grade 2 was my first experience with the social structure that existed in schools of that era. Looking back on it now, I realize how damaging this separation of “bright kids” and “slow kids” really was. This is how it worked: We had five rows of desks. The row nearest the windows (the east side of the room) was occupied by “bluebirds.” The next one over was populated by “robins.” So on down the line, the rows (and I forget the next couple) descended until we got to the far wall and its “crows.” Somehow, I started out in the bluebirds . . . then, after a while, Miss Nelson realized I was more robin material. It was traumatic, and now I can only imagine how the crows felt. Thankfully, I think schools have progressed a bit over the years. Connaught School was five “long blocks” from our house. North Battleford folk always made a distinction between long and short blocks – the long ones running north/south and the shorts going east/west. Images fade from those early years, but one that stands out is the skyline on those cold winter days. Most people on our street heated and cooked with coal and wood, meaning there was a fair bit of chimney smoke. I can still “see” the columns of smoke on a windless day, ascending straight up from each chimney. Every grade had a part in the Christmas Concerts. If a child had a particular talent, he/she played an instrument or sang; I did a lot of marching around with the rest of the class. In Grade 1, the theme was “Wooden Soldiers on Parade,” inspired by the Nutcracker Suite. The mothers (just about all of whom were housewives in those days) were given patterns and expected to create costumes for their youngsters. I was a soldier, and dressed up in a stovepipe hat, black pants and blue jacket with white stripes crossing front and back. (Mom saved that uniform, and it is still packed away somewhere.) The theme in Grade 2 was the wild west, and I was an Indian (First Nations people were called that in those days), complete with fringe shirt – created by my mother, again -- and a stereotypical feathered headband. The newspaper, The News-Optimist, took a picture of us. The stage curtain was a big part of Christmas concerts, because it was opened and closed for each performance. Teachers impressed on us that “operating” the curtain was a very important job. So important was it, in fact, that only the older kids could be entrusted with getting the timing just right. Schools in the 1950s maintained a strict separation of girls and boys, which extended to the playground, even entrances to the building. For a kid in Grade 1 this was not a big deal, although it got more important as years went by. The boys were allowed the north half of the school yard, the girls the south. Similarly, the girls entered the south door and used the south stairs, the boys the opposite. Oddly enough, the segregation did not extend to the classrooms. The schoolyard in those days featured swings and a slide on boys’ and girls’ sides. The boys’ side, however, had a unique device known as the ‘fighting pole.’ This was pretty well reserved for the ‘big kids,’ but the small fry got to play on it occasionally. It was a horizontal telephone pole supported on posts a couple of feet off the ground. The object of the ‘fight’ was simple: push your opponent off the pole (you don’t see these things anymore; too dangerous, they say). Sadly, my association with Connaught School came to an abrupt halt at the end of Grade 2. School boundaries were shifting, and the demarcation line for Connaught school was Fourth Avenue (now 14th Avenue). I was on the wrong side of the street. This meant that I was forced to leave my friends and head off to a new school. That new place was King Street School, named for its location on King Street (now 101st Street) and Fifth Avenue, current location of McKitrick School. I remember Grade 3 as my worst school year. The move was not without one positive aspect. After two years as Teddy, I became known as Ted, one small step on the road to maturity, I thought. I did return to my old school for an afternoon each week in grades six and seven to take ‘shop’ from Mr. Kostyna, because Connaught was the only school that had a woodworking program. While the boys were so occupied, the girls took ‘home ec,’ which, on reflection, was probably more useful.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 02:06:02 +0000
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