Winter Fun at School, 1940’s – 50’s

The winters back in the 40s-50s usually dumped plenty of snow on McGill. This always caused a crisis among us McGill heathens. We believed that the snow was put there for one purpose and that was for us to go sledding, building snow forts, snowball throwing etc.. The big crisis was that we had to waste our weekdays at the local gulag sitting in stuffy classrooms.

Since we knew that we were in the higher levels of intellectual thinking, it was obvious that school days should only occur on horrible weather days. Like severe rainy or windy days. Also extremely hot days. There should be enough of those days to make up a school year. We would even forego recess.

Unfortunately, however, those of a lower intellectual level determine the school schedule. Could be they had a bad childhood and wanted to punish us for it. Who knows?? The Shadow does, but he is not talking. We renegades were left with only one option, grin and bear it. So, every school day we left home and trudged through 10 feet of snow, below zero temperatures and blizzard like winds to the schoolhouse 22 and 1/2 miles in the distance. To keep us from total rebellion, the classrooms were nice and warm. That was mostly due to the great efforts of the school janitor, Mr. Coy Munson.

We survived the horrendous trek through the frozen wastelands and once inside the school we shed our winter wraps and sat in our assigned chairs. One of the greatest sounds in our young lives, was the ringing of the recess bell.

We dashed to the cloak room, quickly donned our coats and headed out into the cold air. We were free again, if only for a short time.

During our K-5 imprisonment, we were in the old school building.

Once outside, several boys and girls quickly built a new ‘Fox and Geese’ setup on the area where the gym is now. Most of the boys hurried to the west side of the school. Just below the many back steps was a sidewalk like area heading down hill. We made a ‘slippery slide’ on it. With a good run and some fantastic athletic ability we could slide on our boots for a long way. One had to be careful and not crash into the flagpole halfway down the slide. The pole was in the middle of the sidewalk. As you arrived at the end of the slide we had to be ready to run or trip on the gravel.

The bell cut our fun short and we had to return to class. The bell in the afternoon rang and the teacher announced that class was over for the day. It also meant freedom. We raced outside and headed for home to get our sleds and go sledding and forget the agony of another school day.