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.
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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.
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