After months on the stage at John Ware never understanding why we were there one November morning we were asked to pull the plastic drawers out of our desks and to listen carefully to the instructions before lining up and filing out we were told we were going to walk single file from John Ware to Nellie McClung with our desk drawers in our hands to ensure there would be no mix up of our books miscellaneous hardcover textbooks Ginn most certainly miscellaneous Dick and Jane and limp newsprint tablets and Pink Pearl erasers the teacher called rubbers and Eagle Mirado pencils because stick pens in black or blue were not permitted until Grade 4 when Mr. Young had Woodward's Department Store at Chinook order a box sold by the each at 19 cents each reminding the clerk we were Mr. Young's before continuing on with dollar forty-nine day and a dozen honey glazed or mixed produce in a bag we were told by Miss T...

Eastwick and Milne kept me safe for a while until the next stage rehearsal this time in Calgary at a school where we were temporarily housed Nellie McClung wasn't yet ready but it held great promise being purpose built so we were told with a central library ringed by open concept classrooms the fact that Ms. McClung had been a suffragette and an MLA was lost on use 7 and 8 as we were wanting only a playground or a hopscotch grid painted on the compound so we could trace our steps chasing after house keys because in those days we were all latchkeys or wanted to be if we weren't there was something about the charm of a fridge that dispensed ice and the possibility of snacks to be had dreamed of all afternoon and if you got there first snacks to be snatched before brothers could take them with construction on Nellie McClung behind schedule and school opening delayed we sheltered at John Ware a place that had a...

South-west Calgary was continuing its march--more south than west.  The children of the Big Generation were filling schools faster than they could be built.  There were many Albertan heroes who gave their names to the new schools, and patiently waited for their doors to open.  Nellie One Lung.  John Where.  Louie Re-al.  And that year the Chinook winds were so strong they blew over the first brick walls of Louis Riel, not once, but twice. As children we watched astonished as Nellie McClung took shape before our eyes.  It looked like the star ship Enterprise--its bridge, the new library, described a full circle.  In a circle around it, classrooms set up in open concept, with dividers on wheels, and the occasional stubby bookcase defining the area and driving in each teacher's land claim stake from the September gold rush.