Lorna (Buglas) Gaudet Memories

I have the pleasure to connect to a girl friend from early Gallivan School Days, dating back to 1950's. I asked her to write her memories of those days. 70 years has gone of grades 5 and 6 at Gallivan Public School. 

Back row- Arnie Anderson, Clifford Laing
 Front row- Lorraine Bertrand, Lorna Buglas, Gail Laing, Elaine Scott 

From Lorna ( Buglas) Gaudet (January 11, 2021)

In July, 1950, Jim and Mary Buglas and their children: Connie, Fred, Lorna, and Kathleen moved to an almost hamlet of Gallivan, Saskatchewan. It was not a promising move: filthy house, no electricity, weed (mostly tansy) choked garden and yard, and two grain elevators: Pool red “B” storage elevator (plugged full of spoiled barley) and grey metal-sheeted “A”, supposedly clean and ready for operation. It turned out that the clean referred to all the office furniture that had been cleaned out by the previous agent, who had also been hired to make the Pool house’s attached garage into a kitchen. He and a crony did so using a few bags of wood shavings and a hundred small pieces of drywall—larger sheets having somehow got sidetracked to a private project back in his homebase of Wilkie.

The Buglases had moved from a newly refurbished electrified Pool cottage with a changed roofstyle, an extra bedroom, an enlarged cellar (almost a basement!), their much-loved home in the Village of Adanac, near Unity. We were moving from a tidy place where Jim had one grain elevator to operate for the Sask Wheat Pool among friendly rival buyers for the Searle, Reliance, and United Grain Growers. The Village had a general store and post office, regular daily train service (on the second most important CPR line across Saskatchewan), a lumberyard, a livery barn, a hardware and vehicle repair service, a hotel, with ice-cream parlor, a skating rink with permanent boards and changing house, an elementary school, a town hall, wooden sidewalks, two churches with rectories (Anglican and United), assorted houses, two farms on opposite sides of town. But no highschool.

Gallivan had a CNR branch line stationhouse used as a “section house” (inhabited by the Section Foreman (section men kept the track in shape by daily patrols and hard work in all weathers, patrolling from their speeder—noisy gas-engine fueled and fumed open vehicle). Gallivan had two stores, one with post office and garage vehicle repair. Both had gas pumps and fuel delivery services. There was one farm at the north edge of the hamlet, a United Church with manse (rented out), two schools (the hamlet hall doubled as the highschool), four other dwellings. The hamlet water sources appeared to be the Cut Knife Creek, curling its way around the hamlet and a few farms, and the store\post office’s drilled and handpumped well.

The Buglases soon adapted to the friendly people in and around Gallivan. A lot of hard work and Jim’s carpentry skills began to furnish the elevator office, added our Adanac “playhouse—guest bedroom” hauled by truck from Adanac (built from Buglas-bought lumber, not Pool-owned) but tacked as a leanto on the northside of the Pool cottage. Very soon, with the start of school, the Buglases met their classmates as friends.

Early in September, Lorna’s Grade VI classmate, Lorraine Bertrand brought a supper invitation for Lorna and Kay to join the family of Ovide and Hughenna at their farm a short half-mile from Gallivan. It was a momentous occasion for us. Their home had the most wonderful barn with two gleaming silver cupolas, a wonderful garden-orchard, electricity, water, and a dear welcoming family. Ovide (farmer-electrician) charmed us forever by telling shy us that he charged a nickel to all guests passing him to slide onto the bench seat in back of the long table, and Hughenna won our hearts with her kind words and delicious meal.

As that school year went on, Lorna discovered that she and Hughenna were READERS with very similar tastes. Hughenna lent Lorna her bookclub copy of T.H. White’s lovely novel “Mistress Masham’s

Repose”, published in 1946 . It was magic—a long-past its glory days eighteenth century palace Malplaquet in rural England with a manmade lake and a Greek Temple inhabited by a kidnapped colony of Lilliputians. The Palace is the home of ten-year-old Maria, an orphan and her wicked governess Miss Brown, and so the adventure begins. Dad and I both loved that book and others Hughenna lent us. In my twenties I found a copy of White’s book in a Saskatoon used book store, bought it, and have reread it every two or so years since. That childhood magic happiness returns.

Another Mrs. B. moment came the fall I was twelve. Kay and I had gone home with the Bertrand family from our two schools. During the summer the hall had been moved from behind the United Church to a wonderful basement, engineered by Bob and son Clayton Mclain. They built cement foundations like they should be built. Of course, the many bystanders, of those summer days had lots of advice. But for vandalism and neglect on the part of us who loved that dear hall/school/basement, it would be standing still.

Back to the story, Lorraine and I were in Grade VII (high school now) and Arthur and Kay were in Grade V, with David in Grade I at the elementary school. When we reached the farm, Kay was recruited to help with the afterschool chores, while Mrs. B. appeared with two lidded metal pails (lard pails, I think). She handed one to me and said, “You come with me.” We went to the orchard-garden and sand(choke)cherry tree. We picked sand (choke)cherries and talked until our pails were full of ripe dark purple fruit. We talked books and life. She wanted me to promise her that I would let nothing stand in my way of going to University and becoming a writer. If only-- The pail of cherries I picked Mrs. B. sent home to Mom who very gratefully made jam and returned the pail via Lorraine and Art to their mother. Of course, my mother, another good cook had filled it with cookies or possibly date squares (also known as matrimonial cake).

For years after that, Mrs. B. and I exchanged books and information on them (what was good in the Sask Wheat Pool travelling library (a cooperative program with the Provincial Library) or book clubs. Through Lorraine’s wonderful Memoir, I can relive my treasured friendship with Hughenna B.