On this day, March 4th, in 1966, the City of Winnipeg was hit with a huge blizzard.
Many who were living during the time of the 1966 blizzard would consider it one of the worst they’ve ever experienced. It had been preceded by a forecast a few days earlier that predicted only small flurries. By this time, Winnipeggers had experienced extreme cold throughout the winter of 1965-1966, reaching -45 degrees celcius.
It was only 30 minutes before the storm began that the forecast shifted to predict a major blizzard. At 2:00am on March 4th, 1966, the storm reached Manitoba. By 8am, radio stations were announcing school closures and advising people to stay home from work.
Businesses, transit, and the post office closed down for the day. For the first time in its history, the Winnipeg Grain Exchange shut down due to weather. Department stores opened their doors to those stranded in the storm to provide warmth and. shelter. Both Eaton’s and the Hudson Bay Company took in over 1000 people, providing food and clothing as needed.
The blizzard lasted for 24 hours, with a total snowfall of 38.1 cm in Winnipeg (in some Southern Manitoba cases it reached 60 cm) and wind gusts of up to 110 km per hour. The late winter snowfall resulted in a spring flood, the last Red River Valley flood to hit the Winnipeg area before the completion of the floodway.
(information provided by Jim Smith)
The winter of 1965 was one of the coldest on record for Winnipeg, Manitoba; but for my Lancashire born Mum, it might have well have been a Hudson Bay outpost in the middle of the Arctic. The bitter windy corner of Portage and Main in the inner city is no joke and the ensuing flood that followed, I remember well…..
Marjorie had never seen snow piled this high, nor had she ever had three children under five to care for. In fact, motherhood had come as a bit of a shock. Faded memories of independence, a budding nursing career as a midwife in London, England and an income of her own, were sure to bear down on her psyche as she literally dug very deep to find her way through three rental homes and raise a young family. A new rental every year – three years spent in St. Vital, a suburb of Winnipeg. The memories for me are positive and my mum and I share them. I was my mum’s best friend during those years and I am only now starting to realize that playing the victim in this situation hurts only me. I remember sitting in a chair outside the change room of a department store and helping my mum pick out a dress for an event with my Dad. My Dad’s career had taken off and he was on the top of his game during these years. He was in his early 30’s and full of dreams and hope. We often went to his boss’ house with its tall white staircase and a daughter my age who had a lot of stuff. Her room was all ruffles and pink and I thought to myself, “man is she ever spoiled” …She just didn’t have her feet on the ground, in my opinion. I was six. When you are that young you have a number of different personalities you are still working on. When you care about your mum more than you care about yourself you grow up fast. I never paid any attention to this however, because I also had three wonderful siblings that to this day I adore. Janet, Mark and Louise during hose years are a keen snapshot in my mind – particularly my brother because our British uncle Tom took him to the barber when he was only little and had a crew cut remove all of Mark’s wonderful blonde curls. I was pissed. So was my mum. I didn’t think Tom had any business cutting Mark’s hair. Imagine, I still remember that as a fairly sharp memory. My Dad had a perchance for imagination and used to sit at his typewriter on a lawn chair in the backyard and write. To this day, I have never known what he was woking on but, eventually he became absorbed by music and documented hundreds of albums in black binders. Music of all sorts became a great passion and he studied Coleman Hawkins, Max Webster, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa, like he was taking a Degree in Music. Later, he showed great pride in my English Degree from Trent University. I only wish he had the opportunity to study at a university.
On one particularly cold winter afternoon, I caught hell when I arrived on the doorstep soaked in pee and ready for lunch. I have scolded my mum in my mind for years because of her reaction but today I understand it so much better. Mum was pregnant with Louise; Mark and Janet were still toddlers and here I was peeing on the doorstep, wearing my only winter coat. The wintry walk down Maplewood Avenue is one I will never forget. Ms. Medal my grade one teacher would wrap our scarves around our necks and tell us to go STRAIGHT home – absolutely no playing in the ten foot snowdrifts and no dallying with friends. I remember clearly soldiering through the snow determined and a little afraid. I was six and I was on a mission. It was during this grade one year that I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I am certain this calling was very influenced by my mum’s stories about her nursing career. The magic of learning to read fascinated me. I was also very concerned with the children in the school who appeared to be misfits. Roy once stood on his desk and screamed then jumped and ran around the room. I still remember his name and I remember wondering why on earth he was so upset. Then there was Gary three years older than me who spent an exorbitant amount of time with his desk in the hallway. His desk was IN the hall. I clearly remember stopping at his desk and saying, “Are you okay?”. I just could not imagine doing that to a child, and I never did. I am guessing he was a difficult student, but from experience, I know that he probably had not caught on to the magic of reading. Little girls want to play school while many boys just aren’t ready. This became a bugaboo of mine for the duration of my teaching career. Little boys arriving into my kindergarten classroom still unable to articulate many sounds and floundering with pronunciation and language. Most boys struggled to communicate their needs effectively and I would have to get down on my knees and look them in the eye in order to understand their concern. This applied to some of the girls but, I found it astonishing that this malady affected boys more acutely.
During my foundational years I also learned that my mum had struggled in public school. My mum was bullied and teased because she was poor, had her head shaved because of lice, and let’s face it, I know the was difficult. To this day Mum is a bit of a lone wolf. I have had to gently remind her that it might be important that she gets along with her peers now that she is in a facility. Childhood experiences never really leave you and I am certain that being reprimanded on the stage by a principal and then wetting her pants in front of the entire student body, is a memory that she has never forgotten. If she has, I assure you, I haven’t. When I heard those atrocious stories I was frankly horrified and my defence of my mum was steadfast. Nobody was gonna mess with my mum. Mum eventually was not allowed to go out at recess because she was getting into too many fights on the playground, so the principal had her make tea for the teachers. He had a change of heart when she wet herself. Stories shared about this principal and one of her teachers have stuck with me forever. When I became a teacher I wanted to be Jane Greeves.. I wanted to save kids like my mum. this is no joke. As I grew up I was always acutely aware of kids who were bullying my brother or my sister and I wanted to wring their scrawny little necks. When I was in grade six a very big boy stole my brother’s brand new toboggan and I completely lost it. I went to his house and demanded he return it. When he argued and tried to close the door, I jammed my foot in the door, looked him straight in the eye and through gritted teeth said, “No problem. I will just have to speak to your mom, ” and I bloody well meant it. The sled was returned immediately and that same boy made sure to give me a bloody nose in the spring. He was bullying another little kid and I jumped on his back. Imagine him turning around and punching me in the face – it’s a funny memory actually. I felt that same rage when I saw that stuff happening in my grade six classroom. I just didn’t tolerate it. One student came crying to me one day saying that someone had called his mother a slut and I lost it. I sat everyone down and used the word “slut” out loud and looked around the classroom for a red face. I pretended I knew and said to my students that I never wanted to hear the likes of this ever again. I didn’t have to “punish” anyone, I put the entire class on standby and told them they had to protect each other. I often sat the bullied child with a more compassionate student and would explain how important it was to work as a team. We all took turns helping out the less fortunate and we talked about it a lot.
Small towns are funny like that. If a kid or a kids’ parent has a reputation, look out. Same was true in Seedley, Salford in the cotton mill suburbs of Lancashire. Never a more destitute dirty place could be found back in the 30’s and whatever atrocities had been dealt out by colonialism around the world, was certainly alive and thriving in this factory village. The flats are called “one up, one down”. That means you have about 800 square feet on the ground floor, a heater that you had to put money in to stay warm, a small cooker and an outhouse. My grandmother was still living there in 1980 and yes; there was still an outhouse. When the place was torn down about ten years later my brother said the mold in the walls and floors was unbelievable. They threw the settee down the stairs and it crashed through the railing on its way to the main floor. Nobody in this town was gonna make it to university. They were all destined for the cotton mill and my mum knew it. Making tea for teachers during recess with a shaved head, was enough of an experience for her to decide that there was no way in hell she was going to the cotton mill. The cotton mill was where everyone on my mum’s side of the family had worked since they were 13. My mum told me that when the 11+ exam (a test administered at 11 years old to determine if you were going to grammar school) was administered; she was dam determined to pass. I don’t know how she did it honestly. The rationing of food, the bombing and threat of war on their doorstep, the abandonment of her mother. It’s a crazy story. Mum had to live with her grandmother and eventually her aunt before saying “I’m outta here.”
Not only did she ace the 11+ exam but, she also managed to get herself a scholarship and best grades at a nursing school in London. She showed them, but more importantly; she showed herself. That is what is the key to this story. She delivered hundreds of babies in the 40’s to women all over London. And, she never looked back. She purposely lost her Lancashire accent, read extensively and made a pact with herself that she was going to go to America, in fact California to deliver babies.
I have always known that had she had the opportunity mum would have been a doctor. When she returned to Toronto after three years in Winnipeg, she had a nursing job in weeks and it wasn’t long before she was Head of Obstetrics. She told me stories about babies being born at Scarborough General Hospital and her gently touching the doctor’s hand, telling him to “hold on a minute.” Mum was radically opposed to caesarian sections and knew a breach when she saw it.
Her career as a Head Nurse was something I was very proud of. As a kid I remember realizing my mum was the only working mum on my street. That wasn’t without its caveat because I also remember feeling very much alone when other mother’s clearly were disgusted with the four of us rambling around the neighbourhood in bare feet in summer months. It’s funny because I can remember not really caring and also knowing we wouldn’t be there long and sure enough within 18 months we were on the road again – this time to our own house in a swanky upscale neighbourhood. My only worry was that we were not going to fit in! How would we play ten house hide and seek when all the lawns looked so manicured, or free range bike tag all over a large swath of these fancy suburb neighbourhoods?
Marjorie was born October 30, 1934; just five years before the onset of WW II, into a marriage that wasn’t going to last the bombing of London. Marjorie’s mum, Ida; pregnant at 17, had made an abysmal mistake getting pregnant with handsome Jack’s baby. She described the encounter as an act of lust, happening standing upright against the back wall of of an unknown location. I know. Because I asked her. She was my grandmother. My mum came from a place of great poverty with no real escape and yet she found one. She still has a pair of the horrible clogs that the cotton mill gave to its factory workers. Shame on them; is all I have to say.
My Mum is 92 and still thriving. This is where the story gets difficult for me, because I love her very much and I understand her. This story I have written is years in the making and could have been expressed in many different ways. I am just so happy that this is the one I chose.
Yesterday I touched the hand of a woman not much older than me, as her son redirected the folding of newspaper around two beautiful rice bowls I had purchased. She had been struggling to fit the newspaper under the bowl to protect it and after 50 years of running the store, her son was having to help her. It was a moment. I looked her in the eye and said “You raised a good boy.”
Thanks for reading. This is my first draft. I’m following Stephen King’s advice from his book called, “On Writing”. Pretty sure he would have waited before posting such a rough draft, but, I’m not Stephen King.
Kathryn Kastner 