I often read essays students in grades 10-12 write using vocabulary about their home lives.  It is a good bilingual exercise but also kind of revealing about their lives.  Many of them in 2012 have part time jobs. They are often in school clubs and sports teams. Though they live in a city of a million people with hundreds of schools, their commute is not always short either. Students may have chosen a program that is only offered at a school farther away and to get there they may have to take a bus and a subway.  The high school students may drive but many do not. They have a lot of homework and value what ‘free time’ they get.

They apparently use it on the computer, going to movies, shopping, watching videos or Tv shows, hanging out with friends.  They kid around with their siblings, often deeply admire their parents and still enjoy some family holidays.  New immigrants in high school taking English as a second language, also sometimes have a part-time job, dishwashing, doing laboring roles. Their home lives are often much less wealthy, with stories of sleeping all in one room.  I would not assume life is easier for today’s kids than a hundred years ago. It is just difficult in a different way.

Kids today don’t get a lot of ‘free ‘ time which is ironic when you think of how many labor-saving devices we have.  They can heat up dinner in a microwave, buy their fresh vegetables and fruit at a store and not have to grow them. They buy their clothes and shoes ready-made and nobody is churning butter or  canning preserves. And yet they have other pressures.  The bar for getting into post-secondary is very high, tuition is costly and they really could use scholarships.  A high school course generally lasts only four and a half very intense months and then they are writing finals already.  The more we know about science and the more advanced calculators we can make, the more knowledge we have to teach kids. There is so much material to cover.

The social world of a high school with 2000 students is very intense too and since all teens want to be liked, there is stress about where to fit in. Who do you eat lunch with? Who do you meet at clubs? Who do you ask to the dance?  In smaller communities where there are only 30 or so students per grade that seems an automatic mix and in some ways less stressful because you can’t avoid getting to know and kid around with others socially. But ironically, the more crowded a place is, sometimes the lonelier it can be.

Schools try to create a social environment. At Lester Pearson High in 2012 there are sports teams for diving, volleyball, basketball, badminton, soccer, cross country, swimming ,track and field, rugby, field hockey and wrestling. Many students are in several of these as the seasons change. The school also offers clubs for yearbook, anime, leadership, speech and debate, model parliament, drama, choir, vocal jazz, jazz band, band, dance shows, volunteer youth corps, girls culture club, math contest, chess, science Olympics, social justice, audio video, recycling, financial management and the school newspapers. Junior high schools have fewer of these clubs, but still a wide range.  Some schools offer trips, sailing on the west coat, going to Costa Rica to practise Spanish, going on a band tour through some US states.  Kids are busy.

We do know that the Internet is a big occupier of kids’ time too, with Twitter and Facebook. A study I heard yesterday said that the average teen tweets about 60 messages a day.  Even just five years ago we were setting policy about making sure students did not use their cellphones or cameras in the building. Now we are  adopting policies that allow them to have some tech devices but we have rules like not using them while the teacher is giving a lesson, not accessing certain forbidden sites, not using personal chat or email during school hours. The schools have found that it costs less to have the students bring their own laptops and Ipads than for the schools to provide them and there is even talk of installing WiFi on rural school buses so students on long commutes can do homework there.

What has shifted is the idea of kids and preteens just going to the park to play. There is a distrust of strangers and parents are encouraged to supervise their children at all times till age 12, either by arranging and dropping them off at play-dates or by making sure if home alone they don’t let anyone in. You don’t often see young kids at a park unless the parent is with them even if the park is right near their homes.  There have been abductions and kidnappings though very rare and there is a great fear of child predators. 

The schools take on a legal obligation to supervise the children any time the student is on school property or at a school based function, even over lunch and at recess. We give them playground equipment and some pretty creative structures really, often funded by community organizations and donations.  I love it when kids make a sandcastle or snow fort and particularly when on a day after heavy snow the playground after recess is studded with snowmen.  Kids still prefer creating things over just observing.

To avoid  injury we have made very safe play areas. Why not? And yet this helmeting of kids on skateboards and bikes, this seat-belting of them in cars also may have made them a bit less cautious on their own.  They have not learned discretion. Even the high tech unbreakable polymer apparatus landing on rubberized mats is safe but may not be really enticing kids to be innovative.  There are concerns about detachment from nature, lack of contact with sand, flowers and living things. Some schools have tried to set up their own natural garden area, and take kids on field trips to marshlands, though some do it, sigh, virtually, with pictures online.

In their free time kids in 2012 go far, sometimes even as I overheard one girl, going with her Mom to New York City for the weekend.  Others just stay around town but it is quite the norm on a spring break to go 300 km to Edmonton, out to BC to ski, or to fly even to Australia. Kids come back tanned, more multilingual and pretty adept at the skills of travel. And yet most of them probably do not know how to bake bread, how to unplug a toilet or help an animal about to give birth. Those are skills we may be losing as we detach from the farm and hire out.  Is this a good thing? Hard to say. 

Some things don’t change of course.  Kids still do yarn designs making cat’s cradles. They still in the school yard skip to old  rhymes, they still play baseball and soccer and this time with professionally made equipment.  They still do x’s and o’s and play Hangman.  They still yearn to grow up, to experience the world more and their play at being grown up is their work too.

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Kids in the late 1800s did a lot of work at home and on the farm.  There was some leisure though.  In 1875 the North West Mounted Police made a place at the fort to play cricket . In 1881 a public minstrel show was held at a school house and 15 students attended. In 1885 you could skate on a covered ice rink at Centre street and 6th avenue.  In 1885 you could buy a pony for $2.00. By 1892 the lore of the cowboy was pretty appealing and many rode the family horse and knew about bronco busting. Farm kids even tried riding calves, sheep, pigs.

The horse was for work and also for adventure and scandal.  In 1995 a stage coach on Edmonton Trail was robbed by two masked men and 3 passengers lost $435 and 3 mail bags were stolen.  Kids’ parents might leave town to bring back livestock. In 1997 farmers took 15 riders and a cook and horse wrangler to go bring back 200 cattle.

Kids had their own adventures at home. They got out in nature a lot, to wander in the fields and pick crocuses, wild roses, pussy willows and blow dandelion fluff, make whistles out of thin blades of leaves or hunt gophers. Some built wood rafts to float in a creek, gathered railway ties or driftwood on the river and tried to sail. They made flat rocks skip over the water, waded to catch tadpoles, watched the antics of the animals nearby.  They picked twigs for kindling, went duck hunting.

To get to school in rural areas was often a long commute and it was also long in the city as it grew. In 1882 there was no bridge over the Bow River at all, only a ferry.  Kids could watch logs being floated down the  river in 1886 headed from the Kananaskis River to the lumber mill at Eau Claire.  They heard explosions as Peter Prince dynamited a channel on the south side of the banks to make an island, Prince’s Island.

At home they knew how to take rocks out of a field to help clear the land and they right along with the adults helped till, plant and harvest.  The girls knew how to make soap from grease, ashes and lye and they helped their mothers cook.  Girls did embroidery on towels and pillow cases, twisted rags to make pot holders, rugs or rag dolls. Kids used potatoes to make printing designs using berry juice for paint, used leftover soap chips to make soap carvings and they strung paper and cloth to make kites.

The first piano was brought to town in 1883 by Captain Boynton and the Opera House opened in 1893 and some slide shows were presented there. In 1885 a common amusement was to go to the center of town and watch the stagecoach driver get up onto his driver’s seat to head to Edmonton. 

There were organized sports for the adults and kids could watch them. In 1889 there was an intercity rugby game and in 1896 Calgary played Edmonton in hockey. In 1890 sleds were made of buffalo ribs tied with rawhide and Calgary had lots of nearby hills to sled on. The school board in 1898 planted 50 trees near schools since much of the land was still open prairie.

The kids could buy a few toys but mainly made their own . The Eaton’s catalogue in 1889 sold double doll cradles, tea sets, toy guns,  swords and wooden trains.   If you could not buy things it was easy enough to whittle wood, elk or buffalo bones to make them.  School children got very excited about parades and when Queen Victoria ‘s diamond jubilee was celebrated in 1897 kids saw the fireworks.

Calgary itself was not very big in 1902. It was only the area of one square mile from 4 street west to 6th street east and from the river to 17th avenue south.  The north hill was still open prairie and though there were only  28 houses in Bridgeland, the area was not part of Calgary.  Hillhurst was private land belonging to the Riley family and the area of Sunnyside belonged to the McHughs.   In the 1880s many of the people who had moved to Sunnyside worked for the railway or the lumber mill. Killarney and south Calgary did not exist- they were still farm land and Elbow Park was a racetrack. Mission had 7 homes in it south of 17th avenue and was not part of the city.

There was an indoor swimming pool on 5th avenue in 1900 and there was a bowling alley. People played basketball in front of the firehall.   In 1904 Calgary schools had an annual day to compete in races and soon there were more sports available. By 1906 Calgary had a golf club, a tennis club and the city even had a road race for trotting horses.  Foot races were a common past-time for adults and some professional runners challenged native runners like Blackfoot and Deerfoot who were extremely fast. Calgary set up some boxing events at a local theatre and there were roller skating races. Some schools set up after school clubs for sports and Central School in 1900 had a small boxing ring in its basement for kids to have sparring matches.

Talking on the telephone was a rare privilege and in rural areas as phones came in, listening in on others’ calls on a party line was a prank.  In 1902 Calgary itself had 207 telephone numbers.  Through it people heard faster of tragedies like the Frank Slide in 1902 where 70 people died when part of a mountain came down in the night, burying a small town and 3 sq km of land in 90 seconds.  A week later a horse, Charlie emerged from the rubble, having eaten walls of a mine shaft to survive.

 If you had a Sears Roebuck catalogue in 1902 you could order board games like dominoes.  Parents made swings for the kids out of rope and wood and kids played many outdoor games that needed very little equipment. They would use a tree stump as the base to make a merry go round, an empty shed to play house, and would make  play cookies of snow and ashes.  Two pieces of wood with a foot rest could be come stilts.

Once the schools had cleared the yards of thistles and rocks, the playground was available for many games. There were wheelbarrow races,  one person running while holding onto the legs of the person walking on his hands in front and other foot races, gunny sack races and in later years, races carrying an object in a spoon. There were even races to push a peanut with your nose. At the annual picnic in some rural areas a common race in 1910 was to try to catch a greased pig.

Parents wanted to keep their children safe. In 1892 saloons had to be licensed but there were a lot of them and in 1903 they were open every day at 8AM.    Parents were concerned when by 1910 Calgary had 14 billiard halls  and by 1912, 21 of them, where children may be tempted to skip school and not study.   The lure of what seemed evil included concern about drinking but also about playing cards or dancing. Though these were legal, by 1920 prohibition changed the rules about liquor. Some high school students then would sneak drinks into their hip pocket flask for a school dance or football games.

The city set up playgrounds before 1910.  In 1912 it was common for adults to go every afternoon to watch horse races and by 1914 schools set up baseball, basketball activities and even a few skating rinks on the property.  By 1915 a big public swimming pool opened, the Crystal Pool and ice rink.  Sometimes skating rinks even had music played loud from a cylindrical  record gramophone.

Though schools did not officially take part in all aspects of the Stampede, kids informally enjoyed lots of them.   In 1907 they enjoyed the roller coaster, watching the diving ponies, listening to the dancing and music theatre performances and watching the rodeo. Some children competed too, riding calves.  In 1908 the first ‘long distance’ phone call was made between Calgary and Edmonton. In 1910 a mail order catalogue could get children a drawing slate, jack in the box, musical top, kaleidoscope, or even wool or fur toy animals.

Lacrosse was an interest some of the settlers had from back home and Central high in 1912 set up a lacrosse team, the only one ever in the province to play against other institutions. A big amusement for Calgary kids was to watch and marvel at new ways to get around.  They heard about train wrecks in the late 1890s in southern  Alberta where some train cars had crashed into each other, or had fallen off a bridge into a creek. They could watch the creation of the Centre Street Bridge in 1911, with its four sandstone lions, modelled after Trafalgar Square in London.

Money was tight.  A club sandwich in a restaurant was 50 cents in 1912, an amount not all could even afford.  Free time had to involve  things that did not cost much.

Kids also could watch the building explosion. The new Hudson’s Bay building of 1912 had a playground and sandlots, desks for writing at, and a library, hospital and even a restaurant. It was closed Sunday but open all others day 8-6, except Wednesday afternoon.  Kids could watch the new Palliser hotel going up in 1914. It had what at the time was amazing- a 45 meter rotunda in the lobby, a garden and sun parlor on the roof, an open fireplace and wood mantel, marble finishings and a moulded ceiling. It was designed in an E shape so that every hotel room had windows and natural light and the top floor had a city view. They could watch the new schools going up too or the seven steel truss bridges the city was making including Shouldice bridge.

By 1911 they could go to the new park out at Bowness, eight miles from downtown, where on a summer afternoon families could picnic, rent a canoe, swim in a fenced off area or even play miniature golf. There was a merry go round there and even a dance pavillion.  The city’s street car was a source of fascination with its mirrored sides reflecting your image as you watched it go by. It had seats in tiers, higher every level nearer the back so everybody had a good view too. In 1909 it had started with only 16 miles of track and was the main way people got out to Bowness.

In the winter of 1913 the Stampede grounds made the side of its grandstand into one big sledding hill. Curling became popular at an indoor year round ‘roller rink’.  In 1913 adults even had a rugby team that played at Hillhurst Park. It was the Tigers. Kids took part as they were able, often without formal equipment.  A baseball for them might be strips of denim sewed with cord.  If they lacked a football and had none, sometimes they used an inflated pig’s bladder. They might play crack the whip with friends on skates.

The early schools often had no real playground.  Students at Sleepy Hollow High in 1914 had no gym, no auditorium and no playing field.  Some kids at the early schools brought their own material from home, maybe their own softball that they bounced so much all the way to and from school that it became lopsided.  They would bring their own marbles and jacks and at recess play sweepsies, or scrubsies.  They would bring their own skipping ropes.

When war came in 1914, Alberta sent four squadrons to the fight. Many former farm boys ended up in the light cavalry because of their experience with horses. King George, Colonel  Walker and Hillhurst schools organized interschool basketball games  even in the war years.  Teachers in rural areas, aware that the dads of many had gone off to war, tried to keep the mood positive, sometimes asking for a piano or reed organ if the board could fund it.

In 1915 the issue of prohibition came to a head. In Calgary several thousand adults protested and the vote was close- 58,295 to 37.509. The Alberta Temperance Act came into being in July 1916.  Women were anxious to protect their households and their children. 

With a long winter, and even at war, kids created sports about ice and snow.  In 1916 some would clamp on bobskates to their regular boots, or real blades for hockey, which also attached to boots.  Kids would skate on sloughs, on flooded back yards and the puck might be a tin can or a ball or even a frozen cow pie.  One year curling sheets were set up right on the Elbow River.

In 1917 students at Stanley Jones were given seed potatoes to plant and harvest on the school land.  Since most schools had flag poles, some recess games involved around the flag pole.  At home many mothers were collecting bottles and cans for the prisoner of war fund and kids helped them.

After the war as the soldiers came back, there was more optimism.   Though 6,000 of the Albertans who went to war had died, 33,000 returned.

In the summer kids might use a thick tire inner tube to roll around inside or might float down the river in it. In the 1920s the skill some kids had using penknives was put to work in the schools as they learned to make wooden birdhouses or hobby horses.

In 1920 those who had a radio could now huddle around it and listen to serial shows like The Happy Gang, the Shadow. By that year too,  kids got to see some early cars, like the Model T Ford which people called a Flivver or the Tin Lizzie. For years after that many people called their  own cars ‘Lizzie”. The Dusenberg was the Doozie, the Studebaker, the ‘Steady Braker”.  Until 1922 cars in BC drove on the left side of the road but not all kids knew that for few families went that far away.

The rural areas had many of the same basic past-times too.  Skating was so popular that in 1926 some teachers extended lunch and shortened recess so kids would have more time for a game.  The kids might in the summer try to dam up a creek and create a swimming hole with an informal log plank diving board.  A baseball bat might be homemade but the fun was the same.

Kids could go to movies if they saved enough money and many got part-time jobs to save. You could get five cents for the sale of every two issues of the Calgary Herald and many kids made money for a movie or streetcar ride that way in 1929.  They could earn money pulling weeds. Movies in 1925 cost six cents for the Saturday matinee.

In 1928 kids could watch an active community as they headed to school. Bread, milk ice and even laundry services were still delivered by horse drawn wagon.

It was a time of adventure. In the country in 1928 a boy came to school with news his dad had been arrested for making moonshine. In another rural area an older boy was often sleepy in school and when the class got to talking about moonshine and the teacher admitted she never tasted any, the boy looked at the pail he brought and said she could taste some of his.

Adults bought cigarettes for ten cents for a pack of ten and sometimes kids, jealous would try to sneak some or improvise. In 1929 one boy tried rolling up dried grass into brown paper but his efforts to set the end of it on fire resulted in a scorched nose.

Kids were amazed at the early airplanes that flew in exhibitions and even at the small ones that landed near town.  Stanley Jones school in 1929 was so near the airport at Renfrew that it had a revolving beacon itself, to warn the planes.  Airport rules stated that runways must not be closer than 180 metres from the school.

In the  1930s when hard times hit the prairies, the kids lived the experience too. In the country  one problem after another  had devastated crops and livelihoods – hailstorms, dust storms, army worms, cutworms, grasshoppers eroded crops.  By 1926 55% of the rural population had left the area and 80% had gone bankrupt.

Many kids had to quit school and get jobs to support the family. Some families, not able to afford to feed the kids, had children stay in school but live as hired hands at the neighbor’s.  Kids on the prairies saw cattle starving due to lack of food or water and when the parent’s answer to most toy requests was no, kids lived a different life than they might have in better times.

Still they coped.  When the price of wheat in 1932 fell to $9 a ton, less even than sawdust which cost $10 a ton, many had to abandon the farm.  Unemployed adult men in Calgary in 1932 marched in a ‘hunger parade’ and in 1934 there were protest strikes of those on welfare to get grocery vouchers increased. By 1935 a  train trek was set up across the country  for 1500 unemployed to go to Ottawa to protest. The group passed through Calgary from  BC and went on to Regina but the CPR stopped them there and would not let them go further.

In those years kids had games that did not cost much and teachers suggested many of them.  There was a game of throwing a ball over the building and having kids catch it, unseen to the thrower, on the other side. This anti-I-over was played over barns and sheds or even over the school.  Kids did tumbling and pyramid displays in gymnastics and some even did a display of the skill at the 1934 Stampede. They laced on makeshift skis and cross-country skied on the school grounds at recess.

Kids tried to help with money. When they were paid one cent per gopher tail they brought their trophy tails to school for the teacher to count. At one school in 1936 the teacher noticed the pail of tails was so full and so old,  that worms had even hatched there.

Those were the days when even bank tellers were losing jobs, when by 1935 so many unemployed were riding the rails to go west to the forests or east to the mines that the CPR did not always even enforce its rules against hitching rides by train.  Stories are told of Calgary women going down to the train station, talking to the unemployed there and giving them paper, an envelope and a stamp, urging them to write home and make sure they told the family how they were.  Calgary set up a soup kitchen in 1935 and ordinary families let strangers sleep in their kitchens if they needed a shelter for the night.By 1937 over 21,000 people had left Alberta looking for work

Kids however had to still have a childhood and parents went to great lengths to give them one. Amusements were again low cost ones. Kids went fishing on the Elbow River bridge. They went tree climbing.  They saved up five cents for a chocolate bar Oh Henry, Sweet Marie or Cherry Blossom.  In 1937 the candy treat was often a jawbreaker or licorice root for a penny, peanut brittle, cinnamon teddy bears or a sucker, gumballs, icing sugar in a bag, licorice in the shape of a pipe, white candy shaped like a cigarette. In 1937 the movies, which cost about 50 cents,  showed Snow White, and in 1939 Pinnochio.  Kids played kick the can in the alleys, Run sheep run, Red Rover, Simon Says and Mother May I? At recess teachers encouraged some of these games.

In their free time in 1939 kids liked yoyos and merchants would even come to the school grounds at recess to show off tricks and sell them. Kids folded paper boats and airplanes just like kids had years earlier, played street hockey by the streetlight, using a tin can puck and pieces of lumber as hockey sticks.   Several pieces of lumber could become a treehouse. One game was to challenge friends to throw a pocket knife into dirt so it stuck pointed down, and then to get your knife closer and closer to the center of a circle drawn at each landing.  Old pieces of wood became stilts, orange crates became soap box wagons.

When people could not afford a car, and got a horse to pull their vehicle, they could not any more have car races. Then they raced cutters, wagons and horses. A cutter, like a sleigh with a closed in caboose and stove and windows could be like a chariot and racing it was  not unlike a chariot race.

On sports day in 1935 kids competed in foot races, high jump, broad jump, sack and obstacle course races.  The school board often could only afford to issue each school with one baseball a year so kids mended and re-mended it.  In winter they made snow angels, snowmen, snow tunnels.

The kids were innovative just as their parents were before them. The kids came, after all, from creative pioneers for whom coping was a way of life.  In 1939 when gas was rationed at 120 gallons per car per year, a special type colored purple, was still allowed for farm vehicles without a limit on it.  The police did random checks to see if the gas in your vehicle was orange or purple. What some people did was to buy the purple gas and since it was not allowed in ordinary cars, filter it through bread to remove its color. Then it showed as if OK.

It was the same community that improvised a telephone. In the 1930s farmers had discovered that if you tapped the barbed wire fence and used old radio hand speakers and earphones you could hear conversations over the wire. It was the same people who when they had a radio but could not afford batteries, improvised one. They discovered that if you used a piece of  lead ore crystal and touched it with wire it often would let you hear through earphones a nearby radio broadcast.   Some people made a primitive crystal set using an oatmeal box, wire and a lead wire.

In 1939 the zoo now had 20 cement and steel model dinosaurs and kids were even allowed to climb on the largest one, 90 feet long and 30 feet high, named Dinny. The head of the zoo, Tom Baines, even lived on the zoo property.

When war came the kids heard the sirens and again took part in cadet training.  Street lights were turned off at  midnight and a soldier’s camp was set up at Mewata Park.  By 1939 there were trial blackouts for air raids.  The schools mobilized too.

In rural areas when gas was rationed, people attending an evening meeting at the school brought their own gas lamps. Elbow Park school was set up as an emergency hospital if needed.  As the casualty lists came back, students discovered names of many of the people they knew including sadly, parents, neighbors, and even of students from their own school, just graduated.  Women volunteered for the army, navy and air force too.

 Kids collected books and magazines for soldiers at their training camps and six inch squares for blankets that teachers sewed together for soldiers. They brought in flour sacks and cotton batting to give to the Red Cross. The school was often the drop off point for these collections. Every Friday at some schools kids brought their 25 cents to buy war savings stamps.

Money was so tight that stories were told in awe of anyone who had a twenty dollar bill. One man went to several city dances with a twenty and being unable to get change from any cashier for a bill that high, got in free for weeks and weeks.

In 1940 a movie ticket cost a child ten cents, but an adult who got in for twenty five cents could win free cutlery, dishes or glassware.  Some mothers went to the movies to get the household supplies. Colonel Walker school in 1940 had a radio quiz show where four member teams competed on air for the prize of a war bond.

A lot of children suddenly had to grow up. Even those in school still, had farm chores to do in 1941 that were the workload of adults.  At the rural schools kids spent recess preparing their horses for the ride home, checking them for cuts and bruises. They were not just interested in horses. The horse was vital to the family’s well-being.

School kids collected scrap metal and iron from broken farm machines, and even tinfoil and sent it for the war effort to be melted down. The community held quilting bees to raise money for the Red Cross. Teachers meanwhile put up with a real lack of funds for resources. One teacher in 1944 noticed that the classroom dictionary was falling apart so badly that when a window was opened, its pages started blowing around the room.

You could of course go shopping in the 1940s but nobody had much money. A summer coat for an adult cost $35, a winter coat $40,  a dress $12, shoes $25.

A teen who babysat in 1942 could earn about 25 cents for the evening, with a ten cent bonus per hour after midnight. Some kids tried to make money by selling magazines door to door.  They could save up money for a subway ride or $7 to buy a bicycle. In 1942 kids could also buy a Coey single shot rifle to kill gophers.

The war brought scary news but also camaraderie. Kids along with parents listened on the radio to songs like My Buddy, the Boogey Woogie Bugle Boys of Company B, When Johnny Comes Marching Home.  The movies when kids could afford them now showed not just double features but cartoons and a newsreel.  Kids were in awe of the stories of the airplanes, the Spirit of St. Louis that Lindbergh flew in 1927 to Paris, the Spruce Goose, the Enola Gay. They heard about and acted out having tommy guns, whispered the saying  “Loose lips sink ships”. Stores sold model airplanes and kids even had races of their creations. The RCAF in 1942 asked schools to provide model wooden airplanes from shop class to help in the training of gunners.  In 1942 a plane flew overhead around Calgary dropping brochures advertising war bonds and some kids could tell the make of a plane overhead by the sound of its engine.

In 1942 two small airplanes collided above Calgary, one falling at a residential intersection killing a horse pulling a milk wagon and setting a house on fire. The second plane landed near the racetrack and the pilot of that one died.

In the 1940s the war hero pilot of the F for Freddy was seen flying vertically just above trees along the Elbow River stunting in his twin engine de Havilland Mosquito 200. In 1945 the same plane crashed into the McCall field control tower.

In the 1940s Calgary’s street car system had several loops and kids loved to ride the streetcar.  One still went to Bowness and kids and families would sometimes stop half way and get ice cream. One loop went to the Elbow River and the Sarcee army camp. Another loop went to the CPR irrigation canal to the east and one loop went up to Nose Hill.

New toys were available too by catalogue or sometimes at the local stores.  The movie The Wizard of Oz came out in 1940, Bambi in 1942 and kids loved the themes. They could get a slinky or silly putty  in 1943.  The war was not just a theory for the kids- sometimes soldiers were right on the premises.  In Edmonton in 1941 a school was taken over for airforce training.

When the war ended, the good news was that most of the women and men were back, fathers and husbands were again home. The bad news was that some were injured. In 1945 the tally was made –  77,703 Albertans had gone to war, 3350 Albertans had died.

When the war ended and the troops came home, many kids got something else in the next few years – baby brothers and sisters. The post-war baby boom was a mark of optimism and in 1947 when oil was found at Leduc, much of that optimism seemed justified.

A further roller coaster would ensue of course.  The frisbee arrived in 1948, transistor radios in 1953, the Barbie Doll in 1959.  Calgary got its first TV station in 1954 and in 1960 kids would be watching Rin Tin Tin, Donald Duck and Leave it to Beaver.

In 1971 kids would see the VCR, in 1972 video games, in 1979 the cellphone.

Vietnam, Calgary economic slowdowns in the 1980s, boom times and bust times were ahead.  Through it all though teachers tried to make sure kids still had time to play.

It was the same ethic of pioneer teachers- kids deserve a childhood.