Growing Up in Postwar Suburbia: Childhood, Children and

Growing Up in Postwar Suburbia: Childhood, Children and Adolescents in
Canada, 1950-1970
A Dissertation Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
Faculty of Arts and Science
TRENT UNIVERSITY
Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
 Copyright by James A. Onusko
Canadian Studies Ph.D. Program
September 2014
ABSTRACT
Growing Up in Postwar Suburbia: Childhood, Children and Adolescents in
Canada, 1950-1970
James A. Onusko
This dissertation explores the intersections between the suburban landscape
both ‘real’ and imagined, childhood, children and adolescents. I contend that there
was a richness and diversity in the experiences of children and adolescents in postwar
Canada that resists simplistic stereotypes that often depict suburbia as primarily
middle-class, dull, homogeneous, conformist, and alienating for residents of all ages.
Suburban living has become the definitive housing choice for the majority of
Canadians since the end of World War II. Suburban homes and communities were
critical in shaping the everyday lives of young people in this period. These young
lives were predominantly safe, comfortable, and enriched in their homescapes. Yet
this was not a universal condition. While class and gender were important factors
shaping childhood and adolescence, my research findings also show that children and
adolescents exercised their agency in this period, and they were active participants in
their lives on personal, educational, community, and municipal levels. Young people
were monitored, regulated and disciplined, but they were not passive receptacles in a
world dominated by adults.
This interdisciplinary study uses a wide range of archival, visual and
documentary sources, and also integrates oral histories as a key methodology. These
oral histories have added important reflections on childhood and adolescence in
ii
postwar suburbia, providing insight into how memory constructs multiple meanings
associated with the dissertation’s key themes.
Ultimately, I offer a pan-Canadian view of changing images and
constructions of childhood by delving into more specific topics to children and
adolescents using postwar Calgary suburbia as a focal point in order to understand
the heterogeneity of suburban life. In studying the intersections of place, space, age,
class, sexuality, ‘race,’ and gender, I demonstrate that the lives of children and
adolescents are woven into the fabric of postwar Canadian social and cultural history
in a profound and meaningful way.
KEYWORDS: childhood, adolescence, children, adolescents, teenagers, youth,
suburbs, suburbia, community, urban, war, education, school, family, women,
gender, girls, boys, postwar, childhood history, history, oral history, Toronto,
Calgary, Banff Trail, Alberta, Canada, Canadian
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In many ways, much of our PhD work, especially at the ABD stage, is done
in isolation. However, only a fool would not understand that all kinds of people and
factors support that work on a continuing basis. Only one person is able to take away
the title of Dr., yet others deserve a great deal of credit for helping us to achieve it.
Funding for my research was provided by the Frost Centre for Canadian and
Indigenous Studies including, but not limited to, the Shelagh Grant Endowment. The
Frost Centre is a vibrant and energizing centre for scholarly discussion and debate. In
immeasurable ways, it shaped my experience as a scholar.
I must recognize my parents at the outset. My father passed away eight years
ago now, but he did see me start out on a path towards a Master of Arts degree from
Athabasca University. He was most pleased by this, and I know he hoped my
academic journey would end, as I wanted it to, with a PhD in the years ahead. He
nurtured in me the twin gifts of curiosity and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge
that I carry with me always. He remains a constant inspiration. My mother instilled in
me a sense of justice and loyalty that has been unwavering. Her support has been
what mothers so often provide – unconditional and filled with love. I am indebted to
both of them in perpetuity.
Joan Sangster has served as supervisor and confidante. She has guided me
with skill and care throughout the past five and one half years. We did not always
agree on everything; however she was always willing to allow me to experiment and
be creative intellectually as I wound my way through the challenges of a PhD
program. Her scholarship and activism has served as great inspiration. Her support
iv
and encouragement has been so much more than any student could ever hope for. She
has the gift of being demanding, yet tempered with great compassion.
So many students, faculty and administrative staff have provided great
support in my time at Trent. Winnie Janzen, Jim Struthers and Meaghan Beaton were
there from the beginning. They made a challenging transition to a new institution,
city and province so much easier with their advice, kindness, and ability to listen.
Dimitry Anastakis, Keith Walden, Chris Dummit and Bryan Palmer have provided
priceless insights into academe. Julia Harrison was a first-rate Frost Centre Director
for the bulk of my PhD studies. She put all of us, as students, first. She embodies the
best of what Trent has to offer. Cathy Schoel and Jeannine Crowe have been
exceptional sounding boards and have been there for me whenever I needed them.
Adam Guzkowski, Sarah McDougall, Jodi Aoki, Pamela Rickey, Kristi Alain, Casey
Ready, Caitlin Gordon-Walker, Amy Twomey, Ted McCoy, Sean Carleton, Julia
Smith, John Marris and others were all associated with the Trent Canadian Studies
program in my time here. I count them all as friends and colleagues.
The staff at the Glenbow Archives in Calgary treated me like family as I
conducted my research. The Glenbow’s Doug Cass must be singled out for his
generosity, wisdom and support. His voice is included as an interviewee in this
dissertation. The other oral history participants were vital in making this dissertation
what it is. You will remain forever youthful to me. Other staff members at archival
sites and schools in Calgary and Ottawa were instrumental in locating primary
sources for this dissertation.
v
My committee members including Keith Walden, Dominique Marshall, Jim
Struthers and Margaret Steffler provided support on a number of levels. Their critical
engagement with my dissertation was outstanding. My External Examiner, Cynthia
Comacchio, has gone above and beyond on so many counts. She is both a mentor and
dear friend.
My extended family and friends outside of academe have been lifelines
beyond the “Ivory Tower.” I now have lifelong friends in both Alberta and Ontario.
I’m not sure that all of them agreed with what I was doing, but they never
discouraged me from any of this. My sister and her family have been supportive and
encouraging. My mother-in-law, father-in-law, and sister-in-law, aided greatly in
making my research trips to Calgary successful. Their support was integral in
allowing me to have productive and worry-free visits that were vital to my archival
research. Thanks must be extended to Kevin and Jackie Bates for your hospitality,
friendship and openness on several visits to Calgary.
Finally, absolutely none of this would have been possible without TT, Belle,
and my wife and partner, Lesli Michaelis-Onusko. My children inspire me every day.
Experiencing their childhood with them has made me a better scholar, father and
husband. Lesli encouraged me to return to my educational studies after a 10-year
absence. I am not sure where I would be without her. I do know that I would not have
completed a PhD and that I would not understand the full meaning of true love. I love
all of you with all of my heart. You make me want to do better each and every day.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract
ii
Acknowledgements
iv
1
Introduction
1
2
Mapping the Childhood Landscape: Home, Streets & Parks
49
3
War, Bombs & Classrooms
91
4
‘Race,’ Class & Work
148
5
Sport, Recreation, Leisure & Play
192
6
Gender, Sexuality & Health
232
7
The Night, Delinquency & Resistances
286
8
Conclusion
337
Bibliography
350
Appendices
375
vii
1
First Chapter – Introduction
Introduction
And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.1
All of us have spent some time, to varying lengths, in the suburbs that grew
out of the spectacular postwar growth that defined most Canadian cities in the fifties
and sixties. The suburbs are polarizing spaces in that most people do not hold firm
views on how they look, what they mean, and their effects on our everyday lives.
First and foremost, suburbia has always been ‘sold’ as a space about, and for,
children, adolescents and families. Suburbia has held promise, hope and possibility
for generations of Canadians, as they settled these spaces and built their homes and
lives, most often as family groupings. Both the popular and scholarly literature
relating to Canadian, American and British post-World War II suburbs tends to
portray them as middle-class, dull, homogeneous, conformist, conservative, and
alienating.2
1
Malvina Reynolds, Little Boxes, accessed 23 February 2014,
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/m/malvina_reynolds/little_boxes.html
2
While there has been ongoing debate about this, I posit that negative views of the suburbs continue
to dominate both the popular and academic literature. William M. Dobriner, Class in Suburbia
(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963); S.D. Clark, The Suburban Society (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1966); Scott Donaldson, The Suburban Myth (New York: Columbia UP, 1969);
Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York:
Oxford UP, 1985); Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 2nd edition (New York:
Vintage Books, 1992); Mark Clapson, Suburban Century: Social Change and Urban Growth in
2
While I do not dismiss this popular view unequivocally, I do question and
contest it. I also consider some of the reasons why this prevailing view continues to
persist in the work of academics, popular fiction writers, and visual artists.3 I contend
that there was a richness and diversity to suburban living for children and adolescents
in postwar Canada that resists simplistic stereotypes, and that children and
adolescents exercised their agency in shaping their lives, an argument that I establish
by exploring postwar Canada with an historical study placed within the sub-field of
the history of childhood. This sub-field remains in a relatively nascent, but
developing stage when compared to other inter-disciplinary fields that grew out of
the social movements of the 1960s and early 1970s, such as labour studies, women’s
studies, Canadian studies and native studies. The new social history carved out new
areas that built upon, but were also distinct from the more traditional history that
focused on politics and economics. Social history attempted to look at history ‘from
the bottom up,’ seeking to examine and analyze everyday social relations, and the
lives of the less powerful as well as influential elites. The one salient difference
between childhood studies and these other areas spawned in the same era is that of
political agency; the opportunities for young people, particularly in the pre-
England and the United States (New York: Berg, 2003); Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green
Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (New York: Pantheon, 2003); Setha Low, Behind the Gates:
Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America (New York: Routledge, 2003); Mark
Clapson, Suburban Century: Social Change and Urban Growth in England and the United States
(New York: Berg, 2003); Richard Harris, Creeping Conformity: How Canada Became Suburban,
1900-1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004); Robert M. Fogelson, Bourgeois Nightmares:
Suburbia, 1870-1930 (New Haven: Yale UP, 2005).
3
Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt, published in 1922, was likely the first novel to satirize the suburbs. Without
question, Malvina Reynolds’ song Little Boxes represented a popular position on suburbia in the
United States (and for some in Canada) for many, and continues to do so. It also served as the opening
theme song for HBO’s Weeds, a recent television series exploring contemporary life in the suburbs.
3
adolescent stage, to be political actors through strictly personal efforts are limited.4
Sources reflecting the voices of children and adolescents are notoriously limited.
While children were included under the rubric of ‘family history,’ particularly if
historians took a life course approach, they were not always the central focus for
family historians, and their voices were quite absent from demographic studies of the
family.5 However, while somewhat limited by external factors, and hidden from adult
accounts, children and adolescents throughout history have exercised agency in
influencing their everyday lives, and in many instances, the lives of their friends,
siblings, parents and extended families.6
The intersections between suburbia, childhood, children and adolescents, are
important ones. Suburban living has become the definitive housing choice for the
majority of British, Canadian, and American peoples since the end of World War II.7
Suburbs embody a great deal of economic, political and cultural power in Canada
and the United States. Additionally, by the late 1950s, youthfulness had begun to be
perceived as an overwhelmingly desirable and powerful symbol, with the sheer
4
For further reading see Neil Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society: Reframing the
Twentieth-Century Consensus (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2000); Colin Heywood, A History of
Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times (Toronto: Polity,
2002); William A. Corsaro, Hillel Goelman, Sheila K. Marshall, and Sally Ross, eds., Multiple
Lenses, Multiple Images: Perspectives on the Child Across Time, Space, and Discipline (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2004); William A. Corsaro, The Sociology of Childhood, 2nd edition
(Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, 2005); Glenda MacNaughton, Doing Foucault in Early Childhood
Studies: Applying Poststructural Ideas (New York: Routledge, 2005); Karen Wells, Childhood in
Global Perspective (Toronto: Polity, 2009).
5
For further reading on the history of families see Bettina Bradbury, Canadian Family History
(Toronto: Copp, Clark, Pittman, 1992); Cynthia Comacchio, The Infinite Bonds of History:
Domesticity in Canada, 1850-1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999); Dominique
Marshall, The Social Origins of the Welfare State: Quebec Families, Compulsory Education, and
Family Allowances, 1940-55 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2006).
6
Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2004), ix.
7
Richard Harris, Creeping Conformity: How Canada Became Suburban, 19001960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 6, 15; Mark Clapson, Suburban Century: Social
Change and Urban Growth in England and the United States (New York: Berg, 2003), 9, 10; Kevin
M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue, eds., The New Suburban History (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2006), 1-2.
4
numbers of young baby boomers being an important contributor to this perception.8 I
have tracked and questioned the ‘truism’ that adolescence and youthfulness defined
this era in Canada, argued most notably by historian Doug Owram.9 In a more
nuanced study, Cynthia Comacchio’s The Dominion of Youth sees this perception
beginning earlier, in her exploration of adolescence and youth from the 1920s
through the early 1950s.
The Canadian scholarship related to my major themes is relatively small
when compared to the scholarship focusing on America, as reflected in my
bibliography. Unquestionably, the American scholarship has informed the Canadian
scholarship and this process will likely continue given the many similarities between
the American and Canadian experiences in the postwar period.10 While there may be
some debate as to how unique the suburban experience is to each country, the
differences are relatively few, and in fact, there are several commonalities in the
American and Canadian postwar suburbs from the perspective of children and
adolescents.11 Further to this, unlike some other scholars of suburbia, I contend that
children and adolescents had experiences unique to the suburban spaces in which
8
Family sizes did increase during this time, and more women, in terms of percentages, were giving
birth compared to the Great Depression and wartime years.
9
Doug Owram, Born at the Right Time: A History of the Baby Boom Generation (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1996). Owram argues throughout his book that this generation was and is powerful,
influential and distinct from previous generations. He also argues that increasingly, families had much
less influence than peer groups in this period. From the perspective of many pre- and early
adolescents, the peer group had much less influence than siblings and families.
10
While I do not want to discount the differences in how the Cold War was experienced and
negotiated by American adolescents and youth, the civil rights movements and its ‘colouring’ by
young peoples, fundamentally, the shared experiences of children and adolescents, far outnumbered
the differences.
11
This is not to say that there was nothing unique about the national Canadian experience, regional
experience, or individual city experience, however, as I posit at various times, there are innumerable
common points in the everyday experiences of children to be found across the continent.
5
they lived.12 Space and place had a profound influence on childhood experiences in
the postwar suburbs.
Earlier full-length monographs on the history of postwar Canadian suburbs
lacked one critical component: the primary consideration of age, and particularly
childhood, children, and adolescents. This, coupled with my effort to search beyond
some of the traditional yet important themes in the history of childhood, namely,
demography, cliometrics, public institutions, the law, child reformers, and child
welfare, allows an analysis of under-explored topics in the postwar period.13 Calgary,
and its burgeoning suburbs, in particular, have had relatively little written about them
in this period, something I address directly.14 Other studies of the suburban
experience have focused mainly on the experiences of central Canadians, with few, if
any comparisons with other regions. My focus on the intersections of class, ethnicity,
‘race’, gender, and culture with children, adolescents and families in this specific
regional ‘space’ contributes to a better understanding of the broader picture of
Canadian childhood without losing sight of the importance of ‘place’ to our social
experiences.
12
Valerie J. Korinek. Roughing It in the Suburbs (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000);
Suzanne Morton, Ideal Surroundings: Domestic Life in a Working-Class Suburb in the 1920s
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995).
13
All childhood historians in Canada are indebted to the work of preceding historians. For
foundational readings see Neil Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1976); Joy Parr, ed., Childhood and Family in Canadian History (Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart, 1982); Neil Sutherland, Growing Up: Childhood in English Canada From
the Great War to the Age of Television (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); Mona Gleason,
Normalizing the Ideal: Psychology, Schooling and the Family in Postwar Canada (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1999); Nancy Janovicek and Joy Parr, eds., Histories of Canadian
Children and Youth (Toronto: Oxford UP, 2003); Cynthia Comacchio, The Dominion of Youth:
Adolescence and the Making of Modern Canada (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2006).
14
The only book to focus exclusively on this period in Calgary is Robert Stamp, Suburban Modern:
Postwar Dreams in Calgary (Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2004).
6
The dissertation concentrates on the period between 1950 and 1970, an era
when the postwar generation came of age, and this temporal framework reveals
important change over time associated with many major themes. Because the
overwhelming majority of postwar suburban communities in Calgary did not break
ground until 1950, as in many Canadian centres (most notably Don Mills, Ontario
broke ground in 1952), and did not begin to take shape until the early 1950s, I begin
the study in 1950.15 Because I am not focusing on infants, toddlers or pre-schoolers,
it was not necessary to begin the study in 1946 (the unofficial start to the baby
boom); however the 1940s are important to consider in order to contextualize the
changes that occurred between 1950 and 1970. For that reason, I look at the 1940s
and early 1970s, though only tangentially. Interestingly, the 1930s and the Great
Depression emerged as a significant topic of discussion in several archival
documents and some oral histories. Many interviewees commented that the Great
Depression’s effects profoundly influenced their parents, grandparents, extended
family, and thus by extension, their childhood and adolescent lives.16
Chronologically, the era falls towards the end of the late modern period,
which I periodize from the late nineteenth century through the late 1970s and early
1980s.17 This was an era in which Western society focused mainly on the future
15
Stamp, Suburban Modern, 85, 95, and 121; Harris, Creeping Conformity, 11, 168, 169 and Kenneth
T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier (New York: Oxford UP, 1985), 243-245, 259.
16
As with many topics though this was not a universal and the degree to which it impacted children
was differentiated. For those children whose parents had emigrated more recently to Canada and
Calgary, the effects had not been devastating. However, many children had parents who had been born
and raised on prairie farms and as is well known, the effects of the Great Depression were devastating
for both urban and rural prairie dwellers. It is estimated that at least one third of Calgarians were on
relief by the early 1930s. Wealth and prosperity has not always defined Calgary.
17
Not all will agree on this usage, but this is the time period I am referencing when I use the terms
modern and modernity throughout this dissertation. For further discussion see Marshall Berman, All
That is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Brooklyn: Verso Press, 1983); Anthony
7
rather than the past. It was a period defined by increasing urbanization, secularism,
commodification, consumerism, and a greater emphasis on applying technology to
‘improving’ everyday life. It was also a time of wide-scale belief in the benefits and
advantages of a market-based democratic system, despite a lot of evidence,
particularly in regards to working-class peoples, to the contrary. Structure, order,
efficiency and control were privileged, and there was a real belief in the ability of
science, medicine and technology to heal and to be ‘progressive’ forces in society.
Psychological advice literature, written by knowledgeable specialists on the child
rearing and social regulation of young people, is a primary example of the influence
of modern ideas on childhood and adolescence in the postwar period.
Unsurprisingly, the effects of World War II also impacted the lives of postwar
suburban children and adolescents, as teenagers and young adults who went through
the war were the parents of the baby boom generation, so there is cursory discussion
of the wartime years.18 Many of the people whom I interviewed grew up in both the
1960s and 1970s, and their experiences did not fit into the tidy bounds that define the
dissertation timeline; therefore, some of my study provides voice to young people in
the early years of the 1970s. Furthermore, I have chosen this framework to coincide
with the end of the immediate postwar period as a beginning, and with the ending of
Giddens, Modernity and Self Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Redwood City:
Stanford UP, 1991); Keith Walden, Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and the
Shaping of Late Victorian Toronto Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997).
18
Interestingly, as I broached the topic of WW II with interviewees, a surprisingly high number of
them had recollections of stories about WW I from great grandparents and grandparents. In certain
instances both wars had been mentioned, but in a few discussions, it was WW I that had remained
with them.
8
one of the more turbulent eras in Canadian social and political history, particularly
relevant to the lived experiences of adolescents in this period.19
While I focus on childhood, children and adolescents in this study, the adult
world and adults themselves, necessarily had a profound impact on young peoples’
cultures. But I have made great efforts to probe the narratives, everyday experiences
and perspectives of people under the age of nineteen, to help define the topics on
which I concentrate. I use the terms child and children in different ways throughout
the dissertation and recognize that chronological age does not correspond perfectly
with these socially constructed age categories. However, in this study, outside of a
cursory consideration of infants and pre-schoolers, I have concentrated on what
became primarily the school-age years of kindergarten through high school.
Children, as I define them at most times, are five through twelve years old. I use
adolescent and teenager interchangeably as an age category; adolescents and
teenagers are thirteen through nineteen.20 The category, juveniles, is based on the
legal definition used during this period, namely young people aged twelve through
sixteen in most of Canada.
I must emphasize, and my research reinforces this, that children and
adolescents were not powerless, and just as importantly, they did not express
powerlessness or passivity during this period.21 Children and adolescents exercised
19
See Bryan D. Palmer, Canada’s 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2009).
20
For discussion of age categories see Howard P. Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History
(New York: New York UP, 2007), xv. In discussing Prairies’ farm children, the author defines them
as between the ages of four to sixteen: Sandra Rollings-Magnusson, Heavy Burdens on Small
Shoulders (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2009), 11.
21
This does contradict what some childhood historians argue, see Sutherland, Growing Up, 260.
Sutherland argues that children, across time, have held an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. For
sources reflecting my position see Joan Sangster, Girl Trouble: Female Delinquency in English
9
their agency in this period, and they were active participants in their lives on
personal, educational, community, and municipal levels. This has become an
important issue in the history of childhood as the earliest histories of this life stage
tended to concentrate on the institutions, adults and social processes that had the
greatest influence on children’s lives versus the lived experiences, voices, and
material culture produced by children. Work in the past fifteen years by scholars of
the history of childhood such as Paula Fass, Stephen Mintz, Mona Gleason, Joan
Sangster, and Cynthia Comacchio reflects this changing position on agency, in
contrast to some of the earliest work in the field by Philippe Ariès and Neil
Sutherland, who did not explore children’s agency in the same manner.22 Children,
and in particular adolescents, had the ability to question, subvert and resist a postwar
world influenced in many ways by adults and their ideals, values, norms and social
mores.23 When I refer to children and teenagers having exercised agency, I have used
the term agency in the broadest context to describe a person, regardless of age, in an
active role versus a passive one.24
Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002), 5; Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race,
and Family Life (Berkeley: University of California, 2003), 238-243; Marta Gutman and Ning de
Coninck-Smith, eds., Designing Modern Childhoods: History, Space and the Material Culture of
Children (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2008), 2; Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine, eds.,
Children’s Geographies (New York: Routledge, 2000), 4-5.
22
Neil Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1976). In this landmark work, Sutherland concentrates on school reforms in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries and their profound effect on Canadian childhood. While it is an incomparable
work that moves beyond the demographic and the quantifiable, it is a study of the discursive and not
the everyday lives of children.
23
While children and adolescents possess agency, I absolutely do not discount that forces and
influences operate on their lives, and that many of these forces, be they state, institutional, familial,
social and so forth, were beyond children’s and adolescents’ control. My key point being that this
power was neither totalizing nor absolute.
24
Leon Kuczynski and Susan Lollis, “The Child As Agent in Family Life,” in Hillel Goelman, Sheila
K. Marshall, and Sally Ross, eds., Multiple Lenses, Multiple Images: Perspectives on the Child across
Time, Space, and Disciplines (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 200.
10
Another of my overarching concerns has been a critical analysis of the power
of children and adolescent cultures to influence the everyday experiences of their
peers and adults from 1950 through 1970. Of course, the influence of childhood on
adulthood did not end in 1970; one profoundly important reason to study childhood
is that our youthful experiences reverberate through adult culture for many years to
come. Society transmits its values and norms through the socialization of children,
and children’s experiences in turn can shape adult lives. Children, often very early in
their lives, are brought into contact with broader society and with some important
institutions.25 While the neo-behaviorists have been proved to be misguided in
arguing for socialization with parents as models and young people as passive
receptacles, recent social science research indicates something much different.26
I focus on the postwar suburbs of Calgary, and more specifically, the
suburban community of Banff Trail. One interesting topic that emerged from my
primary research is that defining this community was, and continues to be, difficult,
not only from the viewpoints of municipal planners, but for many community
members, of all ages and generations. This manifested itself not only in the
difficulties that some had in naming the specific community in which they grew up,
but also in defining its spatial boundaries, which changed over this period. Banff
Trail lots were purchased directly from the City of Calgary; this was one of the last
communities to do so in Calgary and reflected broader change across Canada in this
period. Some interviewees and people who have described this area have called it
Capitol Hill and have included Confederation Park, McMahon Stadium, and
25
26
Hugh Cunningham, The Invention of Childhood (London: BBC Books, 2006), 16.
Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood (Toronto: Polity Press, 2001), 4.
11
Foothills Stadium as being part of their community. The City of Calgary also
changed the boundaries of the community and disputes between Banff Trail and
neighbouring Charleswood (part of the larger Tri-Wood area of northwest Calgary)
began to surface by the mid-1960s. Striving to be expansive in my definition of the
community while researching, I found it necessary to interview some people who did
spend significant time in Banff Trail’s schools, homes, streets, and parks, but lived in
nearby Charleswood. This has provided more depth, contrast and nuance than a study
featuring Banff Trail residents exclusively.27
I make links to postwar suburban experiences across Canada, and argue that
there is a great deal of commonality to be found in the experiences of children and
adolescents in Calgary and other Canadian suburbs. The overwhelming majority of
these young people, from ages five through 19, went to school, played, explored,
discovered, and observed in more similar than dissimilar ways. While there were
unique political, social and cultural developments in Quebec during this era, I believe
there were common experiences for children across English and French Canada.
Having said that, I do not posit that there was a single experience for Canadian young
people in suburbia at this time. Indeed, in listening carefully to the voices of siblings
who grew up in the same house, and at times, shared a bedroom for several years, it
is interesting how varying the reminiscences, memories, and experiences of their
childhood years were in many cases. Links to other childhood experiences of this era,
27
Some of the oral history participants lived only parts of their childhood and adolescence in Banff
Trail. Additionally, the participants who were born in the 1960s referenced the 1970s nearly as often
as the 1960s. This simply reflects the fact that the temporal framework of this dissertation is created
and flexible. I could not ask participants to cease speaking of anything beyond 1970, the project’s
formal end, simply because it did not fit neatly into my parameters.
12
based on comparative sources, is made through archival material, secondary sources
and newspaper articles from the period.28
Historiography
The first section provides an overview of significant works concerned
specifically with suburban histories in Canada, Britain and the United States, with the
emphasis on Canadian texts. I want to be careful to avoid ghettoizing the work of
Canadian academics; however, I do feel that they should be in a distinct section, if
for no other reason than to emphasize that this work is within the broader field of
Canadian Studies along with the history of childhood. Scholarly work has worked in
a circular manner in that Canadian scholarship has been informed by American and
British academe and vice versa. I also believe that because of the concentration of
Canadian suburbia, it is more important to concentrate on Canadian academics and
their work, while demonstrating my indebtedness to non-Canadian scholars as well.
While I touch on suburban studies, this literature is secondary to the history of
childhood. Undoubtedly, it is one key component in my study, but most of my
historiographical analysis on suburbia appears in the footnotes of this section. Studies
of the suburbs span several disciplines including geography, urban studies, sociology
and history. I draw primarily on those historical studies that provide background to
my analysis of childhood, children and adolescents.
28
John R. Seeley, R. Alexander Sim and EW Loosley, Crestwood Heights: A Study of the Culture of
Suburban Life (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963); S.D. Clark, The Suburban Society
(Toronto: University of Toronto, 1966); Franca Iacovetta, “Gossip, Contest, and Power in the Making
of Suburban Bad Girls: Toronto, 1945-60,” Canadian Historical Review 80, no. 4 (Dec 1999): 585625; Doug Owram, Born at the Right Time. Additionally, archival newspapers provide supporting
information, when pertinent, to reference childhood, children and adolescents. The Albertan and
Calgary Herald provide the bulk of the archival newspaper material as they include municipal,
provincial, and national news from various wire services. The Globe and Mail provides much of the
rest.
13
Historiography relating specifically to Calgary is also cursory in my
introduction, appearing in the footnotes, and otherwise in the dissertation’s main
chapters. There is a paucity of scholarly work on the history of the city of Calgary
from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century through the twentieth century.
However, this became a decisive and positive factor in selecting Calgary for my case
study. Much like the popular view of the lack of differentiation of suburbia, many
scholars have a similar view of Calgary, both in an historical and contemporary
context.
Histories of the suburbs have been a popular subject for historians in Canada
and internationally for more than four decades. Several academics, primarily in the
fields of history, sociology, economics, geography and urban studies, have produced
significant academic work relating to this dissertation.29 While many representations
of the suburbs have been highly critical and negative, there have been scholars and
commentators who have seen the suburbs as offering a viable choice of lifestyle to
working, middle- and upper- class families, and while the suburbs have often
appeared very similar in form, this has not necessarily meant that the suburbs have
created complete familial and social homogenization.
McMaster University urban geographer and historian, Richard Harris, has
been the foremost scholar of twentieth-century North American suburbs. His work
29
There are dozens of books on the suburbs in Canada and the United States, for some of the best
work not discussed extensively in my historiography see Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier:
The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford UP, 1985); William M. Dobriner, Class
in Suburbia (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall), 1963; Scott Donaldson, The Suburban Myth (New
York: Columbia UP, 1969). David C. Thorns, Suburbia (London: Granada Publishing, 1972); John R.
Stilgoe, Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1988);
Rosalynn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (New York:
Basic Books, 2000); Mark Clapson, Suburban Century: Social Change and Urban Growth in England
and the United States (New York: Berg, 2003); Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and
Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (New York: Pantheon, 2003).
14
has focused on southern Ontario and on national histories related to broader currents
of urbanization and social movements.30 In Creeping Conformity, Harris posits that
the postwar suburb tended to conformity, both in form, and an increasing sameness in
residents’ thought and actions.31 This is contrasted with his previous work on the
suburbs in the first half of the twentieth century,32 emphasizing the heterogeneity in
suburban form prior to the postwar period. Harris stresses throughout his work that
there is always an historical context to consider when looking at suburbia. In
Creeping Conformity, for Harris, there was increasing and problematic sameness in
the postwar planned suburbs, with few opportunities for many working people to
experience an increasingly expensive, consuming and exclusionary upper middleclass lifestyle. He makes a compelling case, although readers can be left with the
impression that there was an abrupt switch to urban planning and overwhelming
influence of large-scale developers of the suburban housing industry in the early
1950s, particularly in the Calgary context, planning came in fits and starts, with
30
Richard Harris, Democracy in Kingston: A Social Movement in Urban Politics 1965-1970
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press, 1988); Richard Harris and Peter J. Larkham, editors, Changing
Suburbs: Foundation, Form and Function (New York: Routledge, 1999); Richard Harris and Michael
E. Mercier, “How Healthy Were the Suburbs?,” Journal of Urban History 31, no. 6 (Sep 2005): 767798.
31
Harris has not been alone in this criticism of the postwar suburbs and for some of the more well
known criticisms from the 1950s forward see William Whyte, The Organization Man (Toronto:
Simon and Schuster, 1956); Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963); James
Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made
Landscape (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994); Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great
American Cities 2nd edition (New York: Vintage, 1992); David Reisman, The Lonely Crowd: A Study
of the Changing American Character (New Haven: Yale UP, 2001); Andres Duany et al., Suburban
Nation (Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 2003).
32
Richard Harris, Unplanned Suburbs: Toronto’s American Tragedy, 1900 to1950 (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University, 1996). This excellent study emphasizes the change over time by focusing
on Toronto in a case study, but Harris skillfully weaves in a continental narrative to demonstrate the ill
effects of a lack of planning by municipal officials and the increasing difficulties faced by working
people in Toronto in this period. Harris also establishes that many of the suburbs were developed by
working people and that the housing was owner-built. In fact many of these workers walked miles to
work from these suburban homes. The main issue that Harris identifies is that these areas on the urban
fringe were unregulated by the authorities and poorly serviced – to the detriment of the people who
had struggled to create them out of desire for a better and affordable home.
15
design done haphazardly until well into the 1950s and early 1960s.33 Harris’s
emphasis on the tendency to increasing conformity, particularly in individual housing
and neighbourhood planning form, is not undone by this criticism. More generally,
Harris’s work rarely broaches childhood, children and adolescents who form, at
most, a cursory sub-theme in his work.34
Other Canadian scholars have written about the twentieth-century suburban
experience in Canada. Many of these works reflect feminist concerns with issues of
gender relations and familial power structures. Suzanne Morton’s Ideal Surroundings
looks at working-class families in the 1920s in a Nova Scotia suburban community.
Her work focuses on the home environment and how it contributed to, and shaped,
the working-class experience. This book is representative of a larger shift from a
focus on more formal working-class institutions that dominated the earliest studies of
working people in Canada, to more emphasis on family, domestic life and social
reproduction.35 Morton critically analyzes the interconnectedness of class, age and
gender, although she is careful to emphasize that these are not experienced in a
33
In an American context, contemporary work on the suburbs noted this as well, see Scott Donaldson,
The Suburban Myth (New York: Columbia UP, 1969), 65. In Calgary, there were exceptions to this
with the bourgeois enclave of Mount Royal being built in the early 1900s with relatively strict
building restrictions, see Max Foran, Calgary: An Illustrated History (Toronto: James Lorimer &
Company, 1978), 98. An excellent study on Calgary planning, from the perspective of the
municipality see Donald George Harasym, “The Planning of New Residential Areas in Calgary”
(master’s thesis, University of Alberta, 1975), 7, 68, 89, 183, 291. Harasym argues that much of the
planning was not in the public interest and that planners shared an uncritical faith in free enterprise
and avant-garde planning from elsewhere. He notes that despite the move toward a Master Plan
beginning in 1949, the small staff and rapid growth meant that effectively there was limited routine
development control for several years.
34
While children are not central concerns for him, Harris certainly emphasizes in much of his work
that children, adolescents and youth were important in families’ decision-making in selecting their
homes. Additionally in Democracy in Kingston, there is prolonged discussion of the New Left and
political activism among youth in Kingston.
35
Meg Luxton, More Than A Labour of Love: Three Generations of Women’s Work in the Home
(Toronto: The Women’s Press, 1980); Bettina Bradbury, “Pigs, Cows and Boarders: Non-Wage Forms
of Survival among Montreal Families, 1861-91,” Labour/Le Travail 14 (Fall 1984): 9-46; Joy Parr,
The Gender of Breadwinners: Women, Men, and Change in Two Industrial Towns, 1880-1950
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).
16
consistent, hierarchical way.36 Ultimately, larger developments such as regional
deindustrialization contributed to a crisis of masculinity for many working-class men,
female-headed households were not uncommon, and workplace technologies
provided employment opportunities for young women. Similar to Harris’s work,
childhood is not a significant analytical category in her book.
Scholarship dealing with the postwar period is more numerous. For example,
Valerie J. Korinek’s Roughing It In the Suburbs focuses on a reading of Chatelaine
magazine in the 1950s and 1960s through the lens of Canadian women in suburbia.
Korinek argues that while the magazine had a strong feminist bent in the 1950s and
1960s, this had declined markedly by the 1980s and 1990s.37 She also contributes to
the growing scholarship over the past fifteen years that argues women resisted the
circumscribed and prescribed roles that the contemporary media, experts, and some
politicians emphasized. Additionally, Korinek stresses that postwar affluence was not
immediate following World War II, and is better understood as a 1960s phenomenon
across the country, something I found reflected, generally, if not universally, in
several of my oral history interviews.38 Korinek highlights the growing importance of
magazines in connecting Canadian suburban women, and other women from varying
housing backgrounds, who suffered from feelings of alienation and isolation. She
also emphasizes the role they played in spurring “second-wave” feminism that sought
social and economic emancipation for women.39 While the book makes an integral
36
Morton, Ideal Surroundings, 5.
Korinek argues that while the turn away from feminism was to remain profitable, in fact, the
magazine had been both financially viable and feminist in orientation in the earlier decades, primarily
under the leadership of Doris Anderson.
38
Ibid., 25.
39
While I do not deny Chatelaine’s importance to women and feminism in this period, I think it is
important to emphasize that many feminist historians contest the notion of distinct feminist ‘waves’
37
17
contribution to a more nuanced portrayal of postwar suburban Canada, childhood is a
marginal sub-theme. Although Korinek demonstrates the importance of Chatelaine
magazine to postwar Canadian women, she fails, as does Morton, to illustrate that the
suburban experience was differentiated from rural or inner-city women’s experiences
in Canada. In fact, Korinek emphasizes that the magazine connected all women and
reinforced a relatively common experience.40
Veronica Strong-Boag’s scholarship on women and postwar suburbs is also
central to the Canadian historiography. She argues that suburban wives were
primarily homemakers while husbands toiled elsewhere in cities, and that this was
precisely where most Canadians of the early postwar period preferred women: out of
the labour market.41 Strong-Boag also unearths the important roles that women
served in the suburbs, maybe not as community leaders proper, but in facilitating the
building of important institutions such as schools, hospitals, libraries and churches.42
Strong-Boag notes that the suburbs were better than some urban alternatives, the
inner city for instance, and that women, both benefited and were victimized by
and believe that there were permanent waves of feminism from the late nineteenth century through the
twentieth century – with recognized ebbs and flows, but nonetheless ongoing feminist activism
beyond white, middle class, state-directed efforts. Nancy A. Hewitt, ed., No Permanent Waves:
Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2010). For further reading in a
Canadian context see: Joan Sangster, “Radical Ruptures: Feminism, Labor and the Left in the Long
Sixties in Canada,” American Review of Canadian Studies 40, no.1 (March 2010): 1-21; Meg Luxton,
“Feminism as a Class Act: Working-Class Feminism and the Women’s Movement in Canada,”
Labour/Le Travail 48 (2001): 63-88. For accounts of feminist activity in the inter-war years see Susan
Ware, American Women in the 1930s Holding Their Own (Boston: Twayne, 1982); Joan Sangster,
Dreams of Equality: Women on the Canadian Left, 1920-1950 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart,
1989); Franca Iacovetta and Mariana Valverde, eds., Gender Conflicts (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1992); Ruth Frager, Sweatshop Strife: Class, Ethnicity, and Gender in the Jewish
Labour Movement of Toronto, 1900-1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992); Peter
Campbell, Rose Henderson: A Woman For the People (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2010).
40
Korinek, Roughing It in the Suburbs, 100, 374.
41
Veronica Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams: Women and the Suburban Experiment
in Canada, 1945-60,” Canadian Historical Review 72, no. 4 (1991): 473 and 483. This is not
uncommon in earlier suburbs as Richard Harris has noted that in the early twentieth century, most
wives worked exclusively in the owner-built homes in the unplanned suburbs of Toronto.
42
Ibid., 496.
18
certain aspects of postwar enclaves that featured a gendered division of labour.43 She
portrays the postwar suburban development as uneven and differentiated across
Canada; however, I am not convinced that she emphasizes the class differences that
existed not only between suburban communities, but within these communities as
well.44 Finally, while Strong-Boag focuses on wives and family lives, other than
noting the importance of children to family life in the suburbs, childhood, and
portrayals of children and adolescents are not her primary concern.45
Franca Iacovetta’s work focusing on adolescent girls’ delinquency in the
postwar Toronto suburbs is part of a body of scholarly literature that attempts to recast the popular image of the suburb as spaces of serene domesticity.46 Iacovetta’s
thesis is that, despite claims of neutrality and scientific casework procedures,
caseworkers’ professionalism was imbued with moralism, and that their findings
were based on hearsay as much as on ‘scientific’ expertise.47 Iacovetta’s article
highlights the importance of language for adolescent females; denied access to
resources and in some cases, power, they used the strength of a ‘sharp tongue’ in
resisting authorities and ‘others.’48 Much like Morton and Korinek, while the space
of the suburbs is important for Iacovetta, she does not really make a case for this
being unique to the suburban lifestyle. Also, Iacovetta does not make any
43
Ibid., 504.
Ibid., 472. In a nod to S.D. Clark, she does recognize the diversity of the suburban experience in this
period as differentiated, she does not note that within many suburban communities, there was similar
differentiation.
45
This has changed over time. Strong-Boag’s more recent work reflects a greater emphasis on class:
Veronica Strong-Boag, Finding Families, Finding Ourselves: English Canada Encounters Adoption
from the 19th Century to the 1990s (Toronto: Oxford UP, 2006); Veronica Strong-Boag, Fostering
Nation: Canada Confronts Its History of Childhood Disadvantage (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP,
2010).
46
Iacovetta, “Gossip, Power and Contest in the Making of Suburban Bad Girls,” 590.
47
Ibid., 587.
48
Ibid., 619.
44
19
connections to other parts of the country, once again reinforcing the ‘central’ in
another study of central Canada’s largest and most influential city, Toronto. Despite
the continuing popular supposition suggesting suburbia was a post-World War II,
upper middle-class phenomenon with a focus on young people and their well being,
no text focuses exclusively on the history of suburbia as it relates specifically to
childhood, children and adolescents. However, there were examinations of the
postwar suburbs by contemporary academics in the 1950s and 1960s in the field of
sociology. These provide useful insights into the suburban experience, though as
‘primary sources’ they must be read with sensitivity to the broader context in which
they were produced.
Sociologist S.D. Clark undertook the most relevant and influential of these
studies. Over five years, Clark took an in-depth look at five major suburbs of
Toronto, and published his findings in 1966. His study is one of the first to add
nuance to other, more facile interpretations, by emphasizing that there was some
diversity to the postwar suburban experience. Clark was interested in both exclusive
neighbourhoods, and some of the more remote suburbs which attracted some of the
first residents, who were in more strained circumstances. Oftentimes, the earliest
residents were ready to accept what little the primarily rural and underdeveloped
setting had to offer versus what was available, or in many instances, unavailable in
the city.49 Clark also emphasized that it was younger couples who swarmed into
49
Clark, The Suburban Society, 29-31, 34. Clark also emphasizes throughout the book that the more
desperate and poorer families had little choice but to take what they could and that where they wanted
to live had little relationship to where houses were ultimately built. In fact, for many, life in the
suburbs was begun with a heavy burden of debt that caused real financial strain for years.
20
suburbia in the years following the end of World War II. 50 Additionally, he showed
that not only was suburban society built around family units, but that most people
lived the bulk of their everyday lives within the confines of the family group.51 He is
astute in demonstrating that most of the urban experience and society was eventually
transferred to suburbia.52 Clark’s study is unquestionably a classic, but he does fail to
consider some important analytic categories. The discussion of gender is at best,
cursory in his account, nor do the everyday lives of children and adolescents garner
mention in The Suburban Society. This is not surprising in many ways as
structuralism as an academic mode of reasoning was peaking at this time. Gendered
and children’s experiences were not common analytical categories in the social
sciences. What Clark does do a good job of is noting that child rearing in suburbia
seems to reflect the concern of many for conformity along with the creation of the
need for consensus and integration.
The other text garnering lasting notoriety is Crestwood Heights: A Study of
the Culture of Suburban Life.53 This sociological study was interesting in that it was
part of a broader project launched by the National Council for Mental Hygiene. It
was designed with a potentially therapeutic orientation to remedy the cause of the
perceived relatively high postwar psychiatric morbidity. The upper- middle class
suburb of Forest Hills in Toronto was chosen by the authors to reduce potentially
50
Ibid., 84.
Ibid., 191. While I would agree that this was the case in a significant number of instances, I would
disagree that it was a universal, especially through the lens of childhood. As I will demonstrate
throughout this dissertation, friends, particularly as children reached adolescence were often key parts
of the lives of children and large parts of leisure time were spent outside the family environs.
52
Ibid., 221. While this is true after a number of years, I demonstrate that for several years, and some
might argue even longer, in those areas where development was measured, rural experiences remained
a part of the lives of suburban children and adolescents.
53
Seeley, Sim, Loosley, Crestwood Heights.
51
21
‘adverse’ conditions (it was a space associated with great wealth and access was very
open), it was considered to be of national importance, and a disproportionate number
of influential community leaders resided there. It reinforced the prevailing position
that the suburbanites were affluent and not particularly undifferentiated in this era. It
also contended that the Crestwood child, brought up in an environment of prosperity
and success, came to believe that his or her opportunities were limitless.54 The book
ultimately focuses on child-rearing and the growing influence of the social sciences
and their proponents on children and adolescents. The authors, much like StrongBoag, also determined that the women formed the core of the suburban community,
but the authors’ portrayal of these women is decidedly less positive than StrongBoag’s. While children and adolescents were the focus of several chapters, their
voices were not sought out, in any meaningful ways, to illustrate the study’s findings,
as such, they do not tell us much about children’s agency. The authors seemed more
concerned with constructing the archetypal or ideal Crestwood boy and Crestwood
girl rather than seeking the individual experiences of children and adolescents
themselves.55 Additionally, because the study was designed around the theme of
mental hygiene, the focus of the study was on the institution of the school, its
auxiliary programming, the effects of schooling on young people, and their mental
conditioning and health.
A final classic, published in 1962, explored the American suburban
experience with children as an important piece of the study. It was widely read when
54
Ibid., 124.
There appears to be reams of data from this study that could in fact be historicized now for a project
itself. In the Introduction of the original publication, David Reisman notes that similar contemporary
studies were being made in Kansas City, Chicago and elsewhere; all of which could add substance to
such a study.
55
22
published and popularized some of the circulating scholarly themes that questioned
the postwar suburbs, their effects on family life, and young people, more specifically.
Author and journalist Peter Wyden portrayed the American suburban experience as
bleak and undifferentiated. He stressed that the families were primarily nuclear, with
few relatives to provide links with other generations and cultures; also, most families
had comparable social status and incomes.56 Wyden noted motherly efforts to protect
children from the man-made environment as a ‘natural’ extension of the ongoing
coddling of suburban kids.57 He also found that while a city’s residents had limited
input into municipal politics, people in fact influenced their local suburban politics to
a much greater degree.58 Finally, Wyden emphasized that suburban children
possessed a general feeling of security, likely because of the environment that had
been created for them. Quite simply, children appeared to like suburbia very much.
As with the overwhelming majority of the other texts about the suburbs, the children
and adolescents were not social actors in the text and contributed little beyond
serving as objects for study.
Insofar as the historiography of children, and adolescents is concerned, there
has been a significant shift in the academic literature from the first efforts in the
1960s and 1970s to recover children’s history. Initial work often depicted how
individuals and public institutions (records-creators) responded to children and their
perceived issues. From the 1980s forward, the history of childhood has broadened
slowly to include the voices, texts, and cultural products of young people’s everyday
experiences; however, studies of child welfare, education, health and juvenile
56
Wyden, Suburbia’s Coddled Kids, 10.
Ibid., 38.
58
Ibid., 120.
57
23
delinquency continue to be important paths to the history of childhood for many
scholars.59 Locating sources remains a fundamental challenge for all historians of
childhood. Finding archival materials created by children is extremely difficult, and
is particularly a problem associated with working-class children whose families may
not have had the literacy levels, physical space or the material resources to create and
retain these materials. Additionally, written texts, and texts in other forms that could
be ‘read’ or interpreted, including photographs, drawings and so forth, often required
materials for production that were not readily available to many children. With
mandatory schooling being barely 100 years old in much of the West, and even less
in some jurisdictions, official records often have a distinct class, racial, ethnic, and
gender bias as well.
In the United States, Howard P. Chudacoff, Paula Fass, Stephen Mintz and
Peter N. Stearns are four of the most prolific, and widely cited scholars writing on the
histories of childhood and children. Chudacoff has written comprehensive histories
of the United States, American urban histories, and books on childhood in the United
States.60 His book on children at play explores play from a childhood perspective,
and how it has served as an important way for children to assert their independence,
something that he believes has eroded over time with the modernizing of children’s
play over the last century. Much of this erosion has occurred as a result of the
formalizing of play sites, whereas in previous times, and until quite recently, they
59
Robert McIntosh, “Constructing the Child: New Approaches to the History of Childhood in
Canada,” Acadiensis 28, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 127.
60
Howard P. Chudacoff, How Old Are You?: Age Consciousness in American Culture (Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1992). Chudacoff demonstrates that the intense age consciousness in the United States
developed slowly since the late nineteenth century. Chudacoff also argues that until the midnineteenth century, Americans showed little concern or interest with age. This was illustrated by such
things as one-room schoolhouses and children working alongside adults in many instances.
24
were predominantly ad hoc, created by children themselves. Chudacoff also
demonstrates that manufactured toys have become synonymous with play since the
mid-twentieth century, with children becoming avid consumers along with the rest of
American society.61
Paula Fass’s multi-volume Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in
History and Society is the definitive resource for researchers looking for a single
book that outlines the key texts in the field. Additionally, her edited collection,
Childhood in America, is an important resource as it features historians, novelists,
psychologists, legal scholars and humorists who analyze the diverse forms of
childhood from the seventeenth century in America until the present. Like others, she
emphasizes that there have been a number of changes in how childhood has been
conceptualized throughout American history.62 The authors demonstrate that through
much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most children were valued for their
economic contributions to the family whereas by the early decades of the twentieth
century, the majority of children were cast as valuable for the emotional assets that
they provided to families.
American historian Stephen Mintz has written on a number of different topics
ranging from film studies to histories of families and children. His Huck’s Raft: A
History of American Childhood situates childhood in the context of three centuries of
social, cultural, economic and political change.63 Mintz demonstrates that the history
61
Howard P. Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History (New York: New York
UP, 2007).
62
Paula S. Fass and Mary Mason, eds., Childhood in America (New York: New York UP, 2000). As
with many studies of the United States, particularly from this period, I would argue that the
similarities were greater than the differences between the childhood and adolescence experiences
between the two nation-states.
63
Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2004).
25
of childhood is tied to the broader political, economic and social realities in
American life such as colonization, slavery, industrialization, immigration, the
increase in modern bureaucratic institutions, the growth of consumerism, and the
extension of the welfare state.64 Furthermore, he illustrates a continuing discursive
construct that has prevailed for over three hundred years. Americans he contends,
have been convinced that young people are less respectful and knowledgeable,
alienated, sexually promiscuous, and violent than the previous generation of
youngsters.65 Mintz’s work is particularly valuable because he does not regard
children as passive and submissive persons. Rather than being the mere objects of
schooling and socialization, and consumers of products and media made by adults,
his book portrays children as active agents in the growth and evolution of American
society.66 Finally, Mintz emphasizes throughout his work, and particularly in Huck’s
Raft, that while gender, race, ethnicity, and age are important influences in childhood
throughout American history, it is class that is the key determinant of their everyday
lives.
Social historian Peter Stearns’s works are broad surveys that are not as
theoretically engaged or concerned with primary research as they are with situating
his topic in a world studies context. His overriding goal is seeking patterns and
explaining those patterns over broad temporal periods and spatial areas. He does this
64
Ibid., viii.
Ibid., vii. For a similar finding by a sociologist looking at twentieth-century Canada see: Julian
Tanner, Teenage Troubles: Youth and Deviance in Canada, 3rd edition (Toronto: Oxford UP, 2010), 3.
Tanner argues that media commentators and politicians were able to recall a time-roughly 20 years
earlier- young people were not out of control, schools were able to exert authority over students,
‘family values’ remained in place, parents were much more willing and able to supervise children,
police were not handcuffed by bureaucracy, and the courts were able to administer appropriate
punishments. While not over the same number of years, Tanner argues this is a pattern reflected in
discourse in other eras in the twentieth century.
66
Mintz, Huck’s Raft, ix.
65
26
well in Childhood in World History.67 For Stearns, all cultures and societies
throughout history have been concerned with childhood and children.68 He also
highlights the incredible diversity in childhoods from one society and era to another.
Work, leisure time, freedoms, levels of expected happiness, discipline, and so forth,
have not followed any linear progression throughout history. In fact, quite the
opposite is true. It is established that in several Aboriginal cultures in North America,
the disciplining of children was relatively lax, and the notion of child abuse was
rarely found; this is quite different from the Judeo-Christian values about childhood
discipline brought by the earliest European newcomers. While Stearns tackles many
other topics, such as changes over time and regions regarding religion, education, a
paucity of childhood artifacts and records in some societies, and so forth, it is his
emphasis on the differences in childhood based on developments in hunter-gatherer,
agricultural, industrialized, and urban societies, that are particularly noteworthy.69
Dozens of British historians have worked on the history of childhood with
two of the most prominent being Hugh Cunningham and Colin Heywood.
Cunningham’s The Invention of Childhood and Children and Children in Western
Society Since 1500 have broad timeframes, and focus on childhood in Western
67
Peter N. Stearns, Childhood in World History (New York: Routledge, 2006).
While this may not seem controversial, in fact Philippe Ariès, one of the first historians of
childhood, argued that it was been debatable how extensively some societies, particularly in parts of
medieval Europe, dealt with childhood and children. I will look at Ariès’s influential and important
theories on childhood in the next section on theory.
69
Stearns is careful not to universalize when he does generalize though. In a brief discussion of the
comparative viewer responses to Sesame Street, he notes that while American children tend to
‘outgrow’ the show by school age, it is not uncommon for adolescents to watch the program in Egypt.
This builds on cultural studies theory that argues that there are multiple ‘readings’ of programming –
oftentimes negotiated by watchers in that they interpret the programming beyond what the original
programmers may have intended.
68
27
Europe, with a further emphasis on Britain over the past millennium.70 The Invention
of Childhood is a comprehensive history of children and childhood in Britain with a
focus on archival sources such as diaries and interviews. Cunningham illuminates the
histories of children and childhood by delving into the personal, while being mindful
of how gender, class, war, imperialism and industrialization contributed to the
shaping of the personal and familial lives of children. For Cunningham, the
conceptions of childhood have changed over time; these conceptions have not always
regarded childhood as a distinct life stage, nor as prolonged, as modern conceptions
of childhood. He demonstrates that children were loved and considered special more
than one millennium ago, as there are examples of cultural artifacts demonstrating
that children were buried with personal effects such as dolls and rattles. This
provides some indication that children were genuinely loved, valued and mourned,
even in the instance of a short life. Cunningham emphasizes that with modern
childhood being increasingly separated from adulthood, there is a strong argument to
be made to integrate childhood history into broader economic, political and social
processes.71 Additionally, the increasing secularism of the eighteenth century marked
the beginning of a period of important change in conceptualizing childhood and in
the treatment of children. Influenced by Locke and Rousseau, this was the beginning
of a movement away from children representing the embodiment of original sin in
need of salvation, and instead, they were represented as seeds requiring nurturing and
care while growing and developing ‘naturally.’72 This is significant beyond the fact
70
Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500 (Essex: Longman,
2005); Hugh Cunningham, The Invention of Childhood (Toronto: Random House, 2006).
71
Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500, 3.
72
Ibid., 202.
28
that it is a profound shift, as this paradigm of romanticism has had a continuing
influence on how childhood is cast in the West to the present day.
Colin Heywood’s A History of Childhood concentrates on Europe and early
North America from the late medieval period to the outbreak of World War I.73 He
shows that there is a dearth of records relating to children and childhood in the 1500s
with little consideration of childhood or record-keeping about children.74 For
Heywood, modern notions of childhood did not take shape until the eighteenth
century; he maintains that children were predominantly thought of as miniature
adults, thus echoing Ariès in this respect. Heywood agrees in principle with Jenks
and Prout’s work, grounded in sociological theory, that childhood is a social
construct, and that it needs to be considered in concert with class, gender, ‘race’ and
ethnicity. These are themes that I explore in several chapters along with expanding
on Heywood’s contention that children have exercised agency across time.
Scholars from multiple disciplines have focused on the histories of childhood,
children and adolescents in twentieth-century Canada. Historians Bettina Bradbury,
Cynthia Comacchio, Tamara Myers, Joy Parr, Joan Sangster, Veronica Strong-Boag,
and Neil Sutherland have made the most prolific and sustained contributions in the
field. 75 History of education scholars, Jean Barman and Mona Gleason, have also
73
Colin Heywood, A History of Childhood: Children and Childhood in the West from Medieval to
Modern Times (Toronto: Polity, 2002).
74
Ibid., 2.
75
Joy Parr, ed., Childhood and Family in Canadian History (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1982).
Parr’s work is cited elsewhere, but relevant to this section, in this important collection, Parr frames the
collection with the notions that childhood and family are only minimally determined by biology, and
that it is incorrect to believe that childhood and families are natural, as some might assume.
29
produced numerous essays, articles, and monographs that inform, to varying degrees,
my dissertation.76
In both methodological approach and theoretical positioning, the scholarship
of Tamara Myers, Cynthia Comacchio, Veronica Strong-Boag, Neil Sutherland, and
Joan Sangster is the most pertinent to approaches to childhood. Neil Sutherland’s
work continues to be the most cited in the history of childhood in Canada. As the first
major scholar in this field in Canada, he has covered a wide range of topics and his
work has proven groundbreaking in its scope. He was the first to chart the movement
from an economic to an emotional attachment of parents and guardians to their
children in the early part of the twentieth century.77 This movement was tied to larger
processes of urbanization, industrialization, child-saving efforts, and compulsory
education that necessarily made children more vulnerable, and correspondingly, less
vital economically. Sutherland, throughout his work, offers that children came to
influence the lives of their peers to a greater degree over the course of the twentieth
century. This has been one overarching theme of this dissertation; how the lives of
children and adolescents of the 1950s and 1960s in Canadian suburbia can be linked
to Canadian childhoods through the ages. Finally, Sutherland argues that a sense of
powerlessness has been an enduring emotional condition of children in Canada.
Other historians have focused more on issues relating directly to women and
girls in Canada. Their entrée to childhood comes through feminist questions much
like the work of ‘suburban’ scholars like Morton and Strong Boag. Tamara Myers’s
76
I will not focus on all of them in this section – namely Bradbury and Barman. Some of them have
been referenced earlier in the Introduction, while others, whom I reference to a lesser degree
throughout the dissertation, will be noted when I use their work.
77
Neil Sutherland, Children in English-Canadian Society: Framing the Twentieth-Century Consensus
(Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2000).
30
work, using feminist theory, and emphasizing the material conditions of both
women’s and girls’ lives in Canada, has focused on the period preceding World War
II.78 However, her work dealing with girlhood, femininity, and female teenage
resistance in Montreal, produces some interesting points of comparison to the 1950s
and 1960s in Calgary. Especially relevant to this dissertation is Myers’s work on
wartime Montreal that argues that it was a critical time for youth in Canada as urban
social policy brought childhood, children and adolescence into sharper focus for the
authorities. The surveillance of their behaviours expanded in the name of the wartime
emergency, thus inviting important links to the later Cold War ideologies that
influenced the lives of children and adolescents. In wartime Montreal, compulsory
schooling and curfews, operating across religious and ethnic boundaries, permitted
state institutions, through new legislation, to constrain children when parents were
absent or otherwise engaged outside the home.79
Historian Cynthia Comacchio’s scholarship, also from a feminist perspective,
spans the nineteenth through the first half of the twentieth centuries. Comacchio’s
work focusing on earlier periods provides important context for the decades
preceding the postwar period.80 In The Dominion of Youth, Comacchio argues that
age became an increasingly important identifier over the course of the twentieth
78
For further reading see Tamara Myers. Caught: Montreal’s Modern Girls and the Law
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006).
79
Tamara Myers and Mary Anne Poutanen, “Cadets, Curfews, and Compulsory Schooling:
Mobilizing Anglophone Children in WW II Montreal,” Social History 38, no. 76 (October 2005): 367397.
80
Cynthia Comacchio, Nations are Built of Babies: Saving Ontario Mothers and Children, 1900-1940
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1990);
Cynthia Comacchio, The Infinite Bonds of Family: Domesticity in Canada, 1850-1940 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1999).
31
century in Canada.81 By the 1950s, parents and other authorities had more active and
interventionist roles as once “flaming youth” themselves became the parents of
adolescents, as the latter’s schooling and dependency lengthened, and as
“reconstruction” and relative stability after decades of upheaval became key national
objectives.
Veronica Strong-Boag’s feminist scholarship has been different from
Comacchio’s and Myers’s work, focusing on children, families and adoption over
two full centuries. Her work has been essential in contextualizing the themes of
identity, alienation, and belonging that have emerged in both the historical record and
the oral histories.82 Strong-Boag demonstrates the contributions of women in the
postwar suburbs, their key influence on suburbia’s community and neighbourhood
life, particularly as this relates to children and adolescents. She also offers that
women were often lonely and isolated in their suburban homes.83 From the
perspectives of children and adolescents, her argument that women, and especially
mothers shaped the everyday experiences of children to the greatest degree in the
suburbs, carries great weight. As is often the case in accessing women’s history, her
conclusion is challenging to substantiate as the official records do not often reflect
the contributions made by women in unpaid roles as volunteers, organizers, and
committee members, let alone their unpaid work in the home. From the many
81
Cynthia Comacchio, The Dominion of Youth: Adolescence and the Making of
Modern Canada (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2006). In an American context, see Howard P.
Chudacoff, How Old Are You?: Age Consciousness in American Culture (Princeton: Princeton UP,
1992).
82
Veronica Strong-Boag, Finding Families, Finding Ourselves: English Canada
Encounters Adoption from the 19th Century to the 1990s (Toronto: Oxford UP, 2006); Veronica
Strong-Boag, The New Day Recalled: Lives of Girls and Women in Canada, 1919-1939 (Toronto:
Penguin, 1988).
83
Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams: Women and the Suburban Experiment in Canada, 1945-60,”
Canadian Historical Review 72, no.4 (1991): 471-504.
32
interviews I have conducted, it is clear that the Calgary suburbs reflected the
important roles that women played in many postwar communities, with the public
and private spheres often blurred in their everyday activities as organizers and
volunteers.
Historian Joan Sangster’s work on delinquent girls and boys in English
Canada, along with her concerns with gender issues and families through a
materialist feminist lens, though influenced by Foucault, also provided key secondary
source materials.84 Sangster emphasizes that the early juvenile justice system was
created and administered by those adults with the greatest authority, wealth and
cultural capital in order to uphold broader norms of social discipline, the Protestant
work ethic, and the patriarchal family unit. As this shows, a key concern was the
regulation of female sexuality.85 Her scholarship on First Nations youth reinforces
the importance of class, ‘race,’ and ethnicity in shaping childhood, and her
methodological concerns relating to oral histories underscores the importance of
material context in interpreting oral history.
Theoretical Influences & Approaches
In contradistinction to analytical categories such as ‘race,’ ethnicity,
sexuality, gender, and class, age usually is not represented as a central category of
historical inquiry. Philippe Ariès’s, Centuries of Childhood, was groundbreaking in
the history of childhood, and was one of the first monographs to prioritize children as
84
Joan Sangster, “Creating Social and Moral Citizens: Defining and Treating Delinquent Boys and
Girls in English Canada, 1920-1965,” in Robert Adamski, Dorothy E. Chunn and Robert Menzies,
eds., Contesting Canadian Citizenship: Historical Readings (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1987);
Joan Sangster, Girl Trouble: Female Delinquency in English Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines,
2002).
85
Sangster, Girl Trouble, 180.
33
the primary historical category of intellectual inquiry.86 Using medieval Europe as a
temporal framework, and specifically, the lack of representation of children in late
medieval art, he determined that from the age of five or six, children had been treated
as miniature adults, and that the modern concept of childhood did not exist.
Furthermore, one of his key points was that medieval children lived in an adult
world, working, playing and dealing with adults in unrestricted ways.87 Some of his
archival work and accompanying primary texts have been questioned as his
conclusions were based on a limited number of pictures of upper class children and
families. Additionally, he dealt primarily with representative religious art, and he
failed to consider other possible sources in drawing his conclusions.88
Notwithstanding all of this, his greatest contribution was his emphasis on the degree
to which childhood is historically and socially constructed, always changing over
time. For that important reason, it remains a touchstone text in the history of
childhood.
Working from Ariès’s initial positioning, the concept of childhood is not
simply a biological or a demographic classification, but should be viewed more as a
fluid, socio-historical construction. Although both children and adolescents
experience biological changes, which often prompt profound changes in the emotions
and attitudes of young people and those around them, childhood is dynamic. In other
words, what defines childhood is more a matter of human decision-making, or one
86
Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood (New York: Vintage, 1962).
Dominic Wyse and Angela Hawtin, eds., Children: A Multi-Professional Perspective (London:
Arnold, 2000), 4.
88
Joseph E. Illick, American Childhoods (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 58.
Illick located portraits painted after 1770, reflecting a childhood distinct from adulthood. Additionally,
childhood had been extended, both in art and life, and had developed its own visual representations
(clothing, toys, behaviour) in art and, likely in everyday life.
87
34
could say, a cultural versus biological imperative.89 Additionally, age is an important
identifier, along with class, sexuality, gender, and ‘race’ in shaping personal
experience.90 While there is no universal childhood or child, the generalization such
as the notion that a form of childhood has marked all cultures across the globe for
millennia, is incontrovertible. Cultural anthropological research reinforces that
throughout human history, children and childhood have been viewed quite differently
from adults and adulthood, as hunter-gatherer peoples universally viewed childhood
as a unique, distinct stage of development.91
While it is important to differentiate between children and childhood,
discourses of childhood do impinge upon the everyday experiences, values, and
practices of the children who, nevertheless, contribute to the construction of their
individual and collective childhoods. However, modernity, for instance, is not
experienced evenly. Children experience modernity differently due to historical,
racial, socioeconomic, spatial, gender, and familial circumstances.92 This is
demonstrated in this dissertation at even the most basic level with some of the
differences noted not only between community members and neighbours, but also
between siblings who grew up in the same household. Ultimately, as I will argue in
the chapter on work and class, social class, while at times ‘invisible’ to some children
and adolescents, has the most influence on the lives of children. Yet children are
89
Joy Parr, Childhood and Family in Canadian History, 7-8; Sutherland, Growing Up, x; Mintz,
Huck’s Raft, 2; Illick, American Childhoods, ix-x; Stearns, Childhood in World History, 1-4;
Chudacoff, Children at Play, 18, 69.
90
This is not dissimilar to what Labour historians have faced since the 1970s in attempting to address
the simultaneity of class, ‘race,’ and gender relations. See Joan Sangster, "Feminism and the Making
of Canadian Working-Class History: Exploring the Past, Present and Future," Labour/Le Travail 46
(Fall 2000): 127-165.
91
Anthony Volk, “The Evolution of Childhood,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 4, no.
3 (Fall 2011): 485.
92
Gutman and Coninck-Smith, Designing Modern Childhoods, 2-4.
35
dynamic and active agents in the growth of childhood cultures and broader society.93
An important caveat is that this does not preclude the impact of other forces in
helping to shape the lives of individual children and adolescents.94
I have aligned adolescence with teenagehood as an analytical category. It is a
relatively recent age category of all of the constructed ‘stages’ of development, and it
varies most obviously with time and place. Indeed, it is not even recognized or
ritualized, in several cultures.95 While it is constructed, in the West, and particularly
in Canada and the United States, it has had a biological basis as a time of awakening
sexuality and many accompanying physical changes.96 It is also a time for searching
for an identity, and for some, a time to ally with peers in rejecting social mores and
conventions.97 This theme is prevalent throughout this dissertation in that in some
instances, adolescence seemed not much more than a continuation of childhood,
while in other ways, there were profound changes in the lives of some adolescents.
The influence of feminist theory on the history of childhood is undeniable.
The contributions of women to the family, both recognized and unrecognized
throughout human history, cannot be contested; however, despite tremendous strides
in scholarship on gender and women since the 1970s, women remain underrepresented in the historical record. In this context, both materialist feminist and
93
Mintz, Huck’s Raft, ix.
As I demonstrate throughout this dissertation, schools, family institutions, older children and
adolescents, adults, popular media, various components of the state, and so forth certainly shaped
significant portions of children’s and adolescent’s everyday lives. For further reading see Sarah L.
Holloway and Gill Valentine, editors, Children’s Geographies (New York: Routledge, 2000), 10.
95
Michael Zuckerman, “The Paradox of American Adolescence,” The Journal of the History of
Childhood and Youth 4, no.1 (Winter 2011): 13.
96
The timeframe for these physical changes is not static though as puberty, especially among girls, has
been arriving three or four years earlier in recent years, relative to just a few decades ago.
97
Zuckerman, “The Paradox of American Adolescence,” 13. For further reading see Comacchio, The
Dominion of Youth, 1-5.
94
36
Foucauldian theories influence my work, although they may at times be at odds with
each other. As with scholarship on gender and women, the history of childhood is
aligned with previously established agendas demonstrating an unequal and
structurally discriminatory society for both women and children, and one that does
not lead to a universal experience for children. Furthermore, the postwar period in
Canada is viewed as one where suburban women were predominantly in the domestic
and private sphere versus the public sphere, and building on the scholarship of
Strong-Boag, empirical evidence further unsettles the commonly held notions of
gendered, and ‘natural,’ public and private spheres. As demonstrated by scholars
such as Joan Sangster, it is obvious that women were making integral contributions
to household incomes in postwar Canada.98 For instance, in the early stages of World
War II, married women’s participation rate in the workforce was at about 5 percent.
By the early 1970s, more than forty percent of married women worked outside the
home.
Materialist feminism is an important theoretical influence on my thinking.99
First conceptualized in the late nineteenth century, materialist feminism has changed
over time, but has deep ties to Marxist thought. Materialist feminism emphasizes a
perspective on social life that does not separate the materiality of meaning, identity,
the body, or state from the division of labour that supports the desire for profit in
capitalism.100 Furthermore, materialist feminism points out that despite performing
98
For further reading see Joan Sangster, Transforming Labour: Women and Work in Postwar Canada
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010); Joan Sangster, Earning Respect: The Lives of Working
Women in Small-Town Ontario, 1920-1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995).
99
Materialist feminism should be viewed as both a theory and practice to redress the material
inequalities, accented by ‘race’ and ethnicity, experienced by women.
100
Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham, Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference,
and Women’s Lives (New York: Routledge, 1997), 1.
37
most of the world’s socially necessary labour, women remain far more vulnerable to
poverty than men.101 I also use it to emphasize the importance of social and material
conditions in framing the lives of women, children and adolescents in the suburban
environment, and to offer a critical view of the formative influences of capitalism
and patriarchy on women’s lives.
Elements of Foucauldian theory have also influenced my analysis.
Particularly pertinent to the study of childhood, children and adolescents in the 1950s
and 1960s are the discursive constructs directed at the regulation of sexuality, and
specifically the sexuality of adolescents. Aimed primarily at containment in this
period, discourse can be seen to, in actuality, enhance awareness of sexuality, and in
fact serves as more reason for children, adolescents, and families to talk about, and
focus on adolescents’ sexual activity and sexuality. Particularly relevant to the
discursive construction of childhood is the fact that the influence of institutional
discipline both requires, and has developed, a range of spatial conditions that make
possible its successful implementation. This is central to Mona Gleason’s work on
the disciplining and regulation of children’s bodies by parents, officials,
administrations, and institutional regimes in both the early part of the twentieth
century and later.102 Additionally, I draw on Foucauldian concepts of power as
something more than oppressive, as something productive that may bring about
behaviours and events, with the possibility for resistance by the oppressed.
101
Ibid., 2.
Mona Gleason, “Disciplining the Student Body: Schooling and the Construction of Canadian
Children’s Bodies, 1930 to 1960” History of Education Quarterly 41, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 189-215;
Mona Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal: Psychology, Schooling and the Family in Postwar Canada
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).
102
38
Antonio Gramsci’s theories are also useful as a lens through which to study
the history of childhood. Gramscian thought, while rooted in Marxist theory,
encourages one to recognize that culture is not just the expression of underlying
economic relations, but is part of the organic whole of society.103 For Gramsci, there
can be cultures of ‘race,’ gender, sexuality, and for the purposes of the history of
childhood, age. According to scholar Steve Jones, Gramscian theory posits that these
cultural groups can use things like fashion, shared narratives, and music to resist,
subvert and interrupt the processes of consumption, production, regulation,
organization and normalization by institutions such as the state, families, educators,
schools, popular media, and so forth. As cultural theorist Dick Hebdige has
demonstrated, fashions, music and objects are the means whereby dominated groups
may express their unwillingness to be organized into the dominant order.104 So while
not revolutionary in a classic Marxist sense, these resistances could and did evolve in
some instances into social activism, or at least the political awareness of some
adolescents in the late 1960s.
There has been postmodern and poststructural theorizing related to the
history of childhood.105 Postmodern theory on the ‘death’ of childhood by theorists
such as Neil Postman challenges the very existence of childhood.106 Postman argues
that by the early 1960s, modern technologies had contributed to a blurring of
103
Steve Jones, Antonio Gramsci (New York: Routledge, 2006), 4.
Ibid., 66.
105
Previous discussion of representation, power, knowledge and truth are impinged with what many
term poststructural theory. It is not a unified body of theory and many theoreticians, while using
components of this theory, refuse to identify as poststructuralists or postmodernists.
106
Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (Toronto: Vintage, 1996). Postman’s discussion is
not new nor is it exclusive to postmodern thought. The disappearance has at times been conflated with
the argument that childhood is increasingly experienced by some live-in children well into their
thirties in some instances – rendering it nearly meaningless as a distinctive life stage.
104
39
childhood with adulthood, almost reminiscent of a seventeenth or eighteenth century,
pre-modern concept of childhood that Ariès first theorized in the 1960s. For
Postman, the increasing amount of exposure of young people to previously ‘adult’
content, in written text, and on television and radio was a major contributing factor to
this phenomenon by the early 1960s. Other commentators observe that childhood
has, in fact, been extended into some people’s late twenties and early thirties.
Whether or not this is based primarily upon material conditions, or broader social and
cultural change has been of interest to me and is explored in several chapters.107
Postmodern writing has increasingly become interested in what childhood and
children have meant to adults, how these attitudes have changed over time, and the
ways in which these attitudes can be critically analyzed, specifically drawing on
representations of childhood over time, representation and imagery, versus ‘truth,’
being central to postmodern theory. In Foucauldian language, it would be a concern
more with truth effects, versus a knowable truth. While I maintain a healthy
skepticism to postmodern approaches relating to the history of childhood, certain
aspects are reflected in a limited dialectical engagement with these approaches in
some sections of the dissertation.
Research Methodologies
This dissertation draws on a range of research methodologies. I have
undertaken a close reading of archival materials located at several archival sites in
107
Unquestionably, in the archival records, and in some oral interviews, there was variance, often tied
to the level of happiness in the home, in whether or not young people stayed in their parents’ or
guardian’s homes following high school completion. Because of the proximity of Banff Trail to both
the University of Calgary and the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, many Banff Trail children
stayed in their childhood homes through their young adulthood for ease of access and important
material considerations.
40
Calgary and Ottawa. Notably, I have drawn on collections that reflect the views of
professionals, educators and some state-affiliated officials who were concerned with
monitoring, aiding and regulating childhood. For example, primary archival sources
have included municipal, provincial and federal government documents, dozens of
archival fonds, contemporary local and national newspapers, and school-based
publications such as newspapers, newsletters, art, and yearbooks. In Calgary, I
conducted archival research at Branton Junior High School, the City of Calgary, the
City of Calgary Police Services, the Glenbow Museum, the Southern Alberta
Institute of Technology, the University of Calgary and William Aberhart High
School. In Ottawa, I conducted research at Library and Archives Canada.
Furthermore, I have critically analyzed archival documentaries, television, and radio
shorts from the CBC digital archives and the National Film Board website. I have
also used contemporary novels, movies, documentaries and television shows in order
to provide context, nuance and richness to my analysis of everyday material culture.
Locating material culture created by young people is the greatest challenge,
as it always is when researching and writing the histories of childhood, children, and
adolescents. I have been mindful that the artifacts of postwar childhood culture have
oftentimes been mediated, or in some way influenced by adults in their production;
this is something unavoidable in most instances. If not directly mediated, many
children and adolescents understood that what they were producing was to be viewed
by, consumed and potentially altered by adults in influential positions.
While archival and other textual sources were consulted, I have concentrated
on oral history as a key source for this dissertation. My intent was not to focus on
41
adults who tried to raise children, as much as looking at the world through adult
memories of childhood. I conducted nineteen oral history interviews with individuals
who grew up in the Calgary suburbs, at varying times, between 1950 and 1970. With
a small number of interviewees, coincidentally, initial contact was made at archival
institutions and Banff Trail schools in Calgary, where I was conducting research. I
also posted an on on-line notice on the Banff Trail community website. From there, I
employed a snowballing technique to find further interviews from this initial group
of participants. This yielded the bulk of my research participants. I did try and
maintain a gender and age balance (trying to find an array of people born in the late
forties, the fifties, and the early sixties in my final numbers), and was successful in
this. These individuals now reside across Canada. I used a combination of in-person
and telephone interviews in conducting these interviews. A few respondents did
choose to contact me by email following our discussions to add some small details
that they had wanted noted after reflecting on our interview sessions. The interviews
ranged in time from about twenty minutes through to nearly two hours. All
interviewees responded to the same thirty-four questions. Some questions were
direct, but many were open-ended with an opportunity for the interviewee to take the
response in a number of directions. I transcribed these recorded interviews and did
not use any software programs to do so.
These oral histories provided a wealth of information related to all the major
themes in the dissertation and in several instances, also yielded a level of candour
and openness about those themes that I had not anticipated. Unsurprisingly, some
interviewees initially failed to recall prominent landmarks in their community, dates
42
of significant moves, names of close friends and so forth. None of this is uncommon,
particularly when many of these events happened forty to sixty years prior to our
interview date. Nevertheless, there is little evidence to suggest that people
misremember events, certainly not consciously, and that overall most people retain
memories over long periods of time with little significant memory loss.108 As oral
historians, we remain aware that memories likely contain multiple histories, and have
been reconstituted on more than one occasion. My interviews also reflect the fact that
when asked about the routines of everyday life, even many decades in the past,
people are able to recall in vivid detail the things they carried out on a regular basis:
their walk or bike ride to school, routinized play, or the processes engaged in at
work.109 It seems that people are able to recall what is truly important to them
without great difficulty.
As the brilliant oral historian Alessandro Portelli has taught all oral historian
practitioners, errors, inventions, and myths may in fact lead us beyond facts to
meanings.110 Furthermore, it is imperative to recall that orality infuses the texture of
the ‘official’ written record.111 This does not mean that we must question and in
many instances reject all that we encounter in the historical record; rather, it
reinforces the importance of the historian as interpreter, critical thinker and
aggregator of knowledge. Related to this, and as other oral historians emphasize, I
have been mindful that the individual stories of interviewees likely cast light on the
108
Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory (Toronto: Routledge, 2010), 86.
Ibid., 87.
110
Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories (New York: State University of
New York, 1991), 2.
111
Ibid., 5.
109
43
collective scripts of other children and adolescents from this period.112 While
inductive reasoning may be fallible, it has allowed me to create larger connective
webs to other Calgary suburbs, and with Canadian suburbia writ large. Additionally,
the interview text has become a document infused with the agency of both the
interviewer and the participant.113 There is some debate about how much the oral
history method allows for “shared authority” in the creation of historical writing.
While Michael Frisch promoted this idea, others have argued that shared authority is
ultimately unattainable, given that the scholar relaying the story has the final
interpretive authority.114 These oral histories provide a vital component to this
dissertation and are an important reminder that while the written record was and is
often accurate, it may not be ‘true.’115
Chapter Overviews
Chapter two focuses on space, place and landscapes along with their
meanings to childhood and adolescence. This area of Calgary experienced profound
changes over these twenty years, and by the late 1960s, due to the tremendous
growth to the north and west of Banff Trail, it was much different spatially than in
the immediate postwar years. Necessarily, further national, provincial and Calgary
references have been made throughout each chapter; however, my focus remains on
Banff Trail and its youngest residents from this era. Childhood memory is often
linked to place. By exploring the homes, streets and parks of Banff Trail, as well as
112
Joan Sangster, “Telling Our Stories: Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History,” Women’s
History Review 3, no. 1 (1994): 5-28.
113
Ibid.
114
Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays in the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990).
115
For further discussion see: Bernard Ostry, “The Illusion of Understanding: Making the Ambiguous
Intelligible,” Oral History Review 5, no. 1 (1977): 7-16.
44
nearby sites of the post-World War II era, I will show that childhood spaces and
places had a significant influence on shaping the consciousness’s of children and
adolescents both individually and collectively. These suburban spaces were not
exclusive to the postwar period, so I provide some historical context with a brief
overview of Canadian suburbs in the first half of the twentieth century; I follow this
with an overview of Calgary’s urban-form history in the same period, with a
particular emphasis on the associated effects on Calgary’s young people. I then turn
to the suburban space, and specifically, the Banff Trail community from the early
1950s through to the early 1970s.
The third chapter focuses on war, bombs and postwar classrooms. In this
chapter, I explore another space outside of the home where children and adolescents
spent more time than anywhere else: school classrooms. Since the late nineteenth
century, no formal institution in Canada has had a greater influence on the lives of
children and adolescents than schools. Postwar students spent thousands of hours in
schools for formal schoolwork, and as they aged, extracurricular activities such as
volunteering, yearbook duties, and working with the arts, sports, and so forth. In
certain circumstances, some young people spent more of their waking hours in school
than in their family homes. This volume of classroom contact meant that the school’s
influence, both direct and indirect, was profound on the everyday lives of children
and adolescents.116 Yet these schools did not exist in isolation. The classroom
experience for young peoples reflected and refracted the broader adult threats of the
116
There may be no group of children who can claim more of a school’s lasting impacts than the First
Nations students who attended Residential schools for decades; with almost none of it being positive.
While outside the bounds of this dissertation, for further reading see John Milloy, A National Crime
(Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999).
45
1950s and 1960s, and in particular, the Cold War with its omnipresent chill. While
nostalgia and popular discourse indicates that children, particularly younger ones,
were protected from the details of war and associated fears, the archival record,
combined with compelling oral histories from people who grew up in the postwar
suburbs, suggests otherwise. Ironically, the very term postwar suggests that war and
military realities had evaporated from the minds of children, yet this was not the
case. In fact, not only the Cold War and its effects, but both the First and Second
World Wars continued to impact the everyday of some young lives through stories,
images, and representations. Unpacking the complex meanings of postwar through
the lens of childhood is important in gaining a better understanding of the lives of
school-aged children and their families in the 1950s and 1960s.
The fourth chapter focuses on ‘race,’ class, and the work of suburban children
and adolescents in this period.117 I analyze how ‘race ‘and ethnicity were defined
through the lenses of childhood and adolescence in the 1950s and 1960s. While the
postwar suburbs are often represented as lacking diversity, racial covenants ended in
Canada in 1951 with a landmark Supreme Court decision.118 However, everyday
practices do not necessarily follow new regulations, laws and legislation, and
although children and adolescents discussed ‘race’ and ethnicity in oral history
interviews, and wrote about it in other archival sources, Banff Trail, like many
Canadian suburbs in this period, was not racially diverse to any great degree in the
1950s and 1960s. In terms of social class, Banff Trail did not fit neatly into the
117
Intersections between ‘race’ and labour have been examined critically by several scholars. See Kay
J. Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875-1980 (Montreal: McGillQueen’s UP, 1991); Vic Satzewich, Racism and the Incorporation of Foreign Labour (New York:
Routledge, 1991).
118
Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams,” 486.
46
categories of middle-class or working-class suburb. Especially in its earliest years,
Banff Trail had a mixture of working-class and middle-class families. There can be
no question that these working-class families cannot be characterized as poor. There
were almost no rental properties in Banff Trail, and that reflects the dominant pattern
of home ownership that marks suburbia in the postwar period. While they did not
completely disappear, family-focused versus working-class, community-based
activities did not happen as regularly as they had in the early twentieth century.
Despite this ongoing change, Banff Trail did have a number of vibrant communitybased programs, at a modest cost, enjoyed by several children and adolescents in the
1950s and 1960s. This was one important way that childhood and adolescence was
distinct from adulthood in suburbia in this period.
Chapter five analyzes sport, recreation, leisure and play. Popular culture and
leisure activities were geared increasingly to children and adolescents in this period. I
examine the influence of modern impulses to both emerging suburban children’s
cultures and structured play. Leisure and ‘free’ time abounded and was enjoyed by
nearly all children and adolescents. Nevertheless, play was not expressed in a
universal, undifferentiated way, even within individual households. Suburban
middle-class families did have the means for memberships for leisure activities that
the working class did not. Play and spare time were vital to all children and
adolescents with the post-World War II era serving as a transitional period, across
‘race,’ class and gender lines, in young people having more time to themselves than
previous generations in Canada.
47
The sixth chapter focuses on gender, sexuality, and general health. Boyhood
and girlhood representations, as well as the individual experiences of boys and girls
are distinct in many ways throughout this era. This seems to reflect gender roles in
adulthood for the most part. Within the context of influential advice-givers, the
health and wellness of young people also came into sharper focus, and took greater
hold in institutions such as schools and families by the early 1970s. While class is the
most important marker in childhood and adolescence, gender and sexuality were also
important in determining general well being and how childhood and adolescence
were experienced in the postwar period. For many, these factors helped to define
both childhood and adolescence. Illness and its effects were also an important part of
young peoples’ lives.
While young children and adolescents have been influenced by adult
practices and discursive constructs across time, they have often demonstrated
remarkable resilience and agency in negotiating these powerful influences. The
balance of power did not fall in their favour often, but young people were not passive
recipients in the postwar era. The seventh chapter focuses on the night, delinquency
and crime, and finally, resistances and rebellions. Nighttime is often associated
directly with negative connotations for young people, particularly from the
perspective of adulthood. Darkness has often signaled a time when young people,
particularly pre-adolescents, were both silent and unseen for the most part. I argue
that this needs to be nuanced as many young peoples’ everynight activities were
important to them; a period when some of them believed they could escape some
piercing adult gazes, usually well-meaning, but at other times, disapproving,
48
restrictive and constraining. The archival record and oral histories reveal that
sometimes, suburban teenagehood was marked by crime, delinquency, and violence.
There was a gendered aspect to the violence with suburban boys perpetrating much
of it; and more than occasionally although not exclusively, it was girls who were
victimized by these male perpetrators. Conversely, there were times when young
women were involved in delinquency as well, although at a much lower rate. While
many children and adolescents felt very safe both in the suburbs and in the more
densely populated urban spaces in cities, for some, there was always some sense that
the world was not the comforting, safe place that it was made out to be by older
people. Finally, children and in particular, adolescents resisted and rebelled in myriad
ways in both the postwar suburbs, and in broader Canadian young peoples’ cultures.
The concluding chapter reviews my major findings, poses questions yielded
by self-reflexivity that have gone unanswered, and broaches the topics and themes
that require future exploration. The contention that there was a unique suburban
experience, although similar in many ways to other urban childhoods, is highlighted.
The suburban experience was highly differentiated for children and adolescents; and
family life, gender, and most importantly, class, intersected to create these
differences.
49
Second Chapter – Mapping the Childhood Landscape: Home, Streets & Parks
Introduction
“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place
like…”1
Childhood memory is often linked to place, and for most young people, the
family home anchors memories related to their earliest years. The large majority of
young people spend most of their time, both waking and sleeping, in their homes. By
exploring the homes, streets and parks of Banff Trail, as well as nearby sites of the
post-World War II era, I show that childhood spaces and places had a significant
influence on shaping the consciousness of children and adolescents, both individually
and collectively. For most young people, where they lived was critical to developing
a sense of identity, with homescapes having a profound effect on them both at the
time, and in adulthood. For many, their suburban childhood was not perceived to be
hollow and monochromatic. Instead, it was a childhood marked by relative freedom,
discovery, or occasionally, danger. In other words, the suburban landscape,
particularly in its earliest incarnation, offered much more than serenity. These
suburban spaces were not exclusive to the postwar period, so I provide some
historical context with a brief overview of Canadian suburbs in the first half of the
twentieth century; following this, I offer an overview of Calgary’s urban-form
history in the same period, with a particular emphasis on the associated effects on
1
Dorothy Gayle, The Wizard of Oz, performed by Judy Garland (Hollywood: Metro, Goldwyn,
Mayer, 1939), film.
50
Calgary’s young people. I then turn to the postwar suburban space, and specifically,
the Banff Trail community. I close with an exploration of the imagined postwar
suburbs and their significance to childhood memory.
Canadian Suburbs in the Early Twentieth Century
While there has been debate about this in the historiography, it is generally
agreed that the suburbs are an urban phenomenon. There is also no agreed upon date
for their first appearance, but suburban villas appeared outside major Egyptian cities
several millennia ago.2 In their earliest stages, modern suburban communities reflect
some rural characteristics, but after a handful of years, these new suburbs are
unquestionably urban landscapes. Furthermore, there is no single definition of
suburbs, in either an historical or contemporary context. Suburbs have been defined
and interpreted in a variety of ways by economists, demographers, architects,
sociologists and historians. Each group has focused on different characteristics and
has offered different, yet interrelated definitions. Economists have based their
definition on the macroeconomic relationships between the core city and surrounding
regions, demographers have tended to focus on commuting routes or residential
density, architects on building types and geographical locales, and sociologists on
behaviours or dominant lifestyle of the residents.3 For my purposes, I define
Canadian suburbs as being on the edges of a city, or nearby a city or metropolitan
area, with the criterion that they are a considerable distance from a city’s central
business district, and are less densely populated than other urban residential spaces.
Suburbs feature primarily single-family housing, are relatively high in levels of home
2
David C. Thorns, Suburbia (London: Granada Publishing Ltd., 1972), 35.
Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (Toronto: Oxford
UP, 1987), 5.
3
51
owner occupation versus renting or co-operative arrangements, and despite some
initial rural features, they are urban in both form and lifestyle. Suburbs as political
spaces are not an inherent component of the Canadian definition. As historical
geographer Richard Harris has argued, independent political status as a marker for
suburbs has not been a requisite to the same degree in Canada as it has been in the
United States.4 Due to being under the jurisdiction of the provincial government,
municipality districts do not have the same autonomy as many American cities under
various state and federal laws and regulations.
The postwar suburban housing form is the most familiar; however, as Harris
has demonstrated, suburban forms were relatively diverse in the earliest decades of
the twentieth century. He identifies five main suburban housing forms: the affluent
enclave, the industrial suburb, the middle-class suburb, the unplanned suburb, and the
mixed-use suburb.5 These categories are not easily reconciled with our common
notions of suburban forms, as the affluent enclave and the middle-class suburb have
dominated representations of suburbia since the 1960s. Yet working-class suburbs
were common in many cities; the majority of owner-builders in the suburbs were
working people, and men, women, children, and adolescents contributed to home
construction in the early twentieth century.6 In many smaller cities, suburbs remained
overwhelmingly slums until well into the twentieth century. In Calgary, for instance,
groups of cheap dwellings were built on the narrow flats along the Bow River as late
4
For further reading on the political orientation of Canadian suburbs see Richard Harris, Creeping
Conformity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 22. In an American context see Kevin M.
Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue, eds., The New Suburban History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2006), 6-9.
5
Harris, Creeping Conformity, 99-102.
6
Richard Harris, Unplanned Suburbs: Toronto’s American Tragedy, 1900-1950 (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1999), 4.
52
as World War I.7 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there was a
widespread housing problem across Canada, and escape from crowded, unsanitary
homes in the city core was possible on the suburban fringe; however, many of these
opportunities were eventually closed off to working people by public-health
regulations, planning control requirements and fire codes.8 While Harris does not
mention it specifically, prohibitive suburban housing costs also precluded many
working people from purchasing suburban homes as time wore on.
An additional defining feature of Canadian cities and most suburbs in the late
nineteenth century was that they were not considered healthy or particularly safe for
Canadians, although the rhetoric may have overridden the realities in many centres.9
The suburbs were not necessarily healthier than inner-city neighbourhoods in
Canada. Most suburbs were not pristine and isolated enclaves; many, particularly
those nearest to manufacturing locales, were not often bastions of health. It is
noteworthy that in growing cities across the Prairies, however, the primarily
residential suburbs seemed to hold a health advantage over all other categories of
urban environments.10 It is also notable that in growing cities across the Prairies,
including Calgary, even in the 1920s, barely half of all suburban households had
sewers.11 These suburban spaces were marked both by their diversity and their
relatively few municipal regulations and planning which came to define most
7
Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 25.
John C. Bacher, Keeping to the Marketplace (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1993), 268.
9
There was a near universal sentiment against cities from intellectuals and many artists took to the
romanticized rural lifestyle to find meaning in life. Physical health had become tied to questions of
social, moral and intellectual health. For further reading see John Sewell, The Shape of the City:
Toronto Struggles with Modern Planning (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 4-5, 10.
10
Richard Harris and Michael E. Mercier. “How Healthy Were the Suburbs?” Journal of Urban
History 31, no. 6 (September 2005): 773.
11
Ibid., 785.
8
53
postwar suburbs across the country. In this earlier period, class was vitally important
to the character of many suburbs as the working-class suburbs that grew on the
fringes of cities removed the sights and smells of poverty from the everyday
experiences of wealthier citizenry. Middle- and upper-class urbanites living nearer to
the downtown core or in the less prevalent suburban enclaves, can be likened to the
suburbanites who emerged in the 1970s who chose, and continue to choose gated
communities as a way to isolate themselves from the everyday realities of less
desirable residential spaces.
The working-class composition of many early twentieth-century suburbs, not
just in Canada, but in England and the United States, was a direct result of factories,
plants, and offices moving into the suburban spaces.12 With many workers continuing
the nineteenth-century pattern of walking to work sites, it made sense that working
peoples, oftentimes unable to afford personal transportation, and with streetcar
development in Canada not nearly as widespread as it was in most major American
cities, would seek housing as close as possible to their workplaces. Interestingly,
whereas the suburban lifestyle today is often associated with political conservatism,
many of the early working-class suburbs in Canada were home to some of the more
radical movements in Canadian history. Unlike later fully developed and packaged
suburbs that came to dominate the suburban landscape by the 1970s, many residents
were owner-builders in this era.13
These homes became havens for many of these workers and their families, no
matter how modest these houses might have been. They were sites in which the
12
Mark Clapson, Suburban Century: Social Change and Urban Growth in England and the United
States (New York: Berg, 2003), 29
13
Harris, Creeping Conformity, 42.
54
everyday pressures of the factory or other workplace could be set aside.14 As
Suzanne Morton has demonstrated in her study of a 1920s working-class suburb in
Atlantic Canada, the need and desire for good housing at least partially reflected the
value that many working-class households placed on domesticity and comfort.15 This
domestic life helped to shape the entire class experience much as the workplace and
other working-class institutions, such as labour unions, did in the first decades of the
twentieth century.16 While the model of a skilled, male breadwinner existed, there
were female-headed households and employment opportunities for young women
that, along with technological and economic change in Atlantic Canada, made the
ideal of a sole male breadwinner in the home impractical and unattainable for many
people.17
Much of the urban and suburban growth in this first half of the twentieth
century was unregulated, unplanned and relatively haphazard, despite some nascent
efforts to begin to shape housing standards and community development by the three
levels of government in Canada. By the mid-1930s, with governments across North
America forced to respond to the Great Depression and its devastating effects on
working-class peoples especially, the federal government in Canada reluctantly
entered the housing industry with municipal governments adopting national building
standards over the next fifteen years, followed by provincial governments’
14
Harris, Unplanned Suburbs, 8.
Suzanne Morton, Ideal Surroundings: Domestic Life in a Working-Class Suburb in the 1920s
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 152.
16
Morton, Ideal Surroundings, 7.
17
Ibid., 154. This was not exclusive to Atlantic Canada as these broad changes were experienced, in
some form, across the country.
15
55
involvement after World War II.18 This was done with an ongoing privileging of the
market as cooperative housing and strict rental rate controls were never given
anything more than cursory treatment by the state. This has not changed in the
present day.
Calgary in the Early Twentieth Century
Like the majority of urban development in Canada in the first half of the
twentieth century, spatial growth in Calgary was not coordinated or planned to any
great degree. Similar to several American cities, but unlike some other Canadian
cities such as Toronto, historian Max Foran notes that in Calgary, the most important
factor in guiding the growth of differentiated districts and communities was the street
railway system begun in 1909,19 seen in many American cities as early as the late
nineteenth century. For those people fortunate to have enough capital to build homes,
it made the most sense to build along this line unless other options, such as a private
automobile, were available; however, automobile ownership was not widespread and
the street railway system was the main artery for Calgary’s burgeoning transportation
system until the 1940s. While the city’s administration and associated planning
department were relatively small at this time, there were some building regulations
and restrictions for both residential and commercial builders. One of Calgary’s first
affluent enclaves was built during this period. Mount Royal, now an exclusive innercity community in the twenty-first century, was built well away from the working-
18
Harris, Creeping Conformity, 106. In Toronto specifically, there were some basic housing standards
implemented and this also contributed to owner-builders choosing the suburbs that offered little in
services, but lower taxes and the ability to build more or less as wished. For further reading see Harris,
Unplanned Suburbs, 167.
19
Foran, Calgary: An Illustrated History (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1978), 90.
56
class homes and industrial districts that defined much of the southern part of
Calgary.20
The post-World War II boom was not the first experienced in the city. Young
people in particular were moving to urban centres across the country in the first
fifteen years of the twentieth century and this was not exclusive to Calgary.21
Increased opportunities for work, formal education, and an expanded social life were
all factors in this. The oil and gas sector was also beginning to take shape following
the Turner Valley (a small town a few kilometres south of Calgary) discovery in
1911. By this time, Calgary’s function as a vital service centre for industries such as
meatpacking was well established and the city had become a major supply, market,
and processing centre for a vibrant and important agricultural network.22
In the second decade of the twentieth century, most of Calgary’s residential
development occurred not in the north and the west quadrants of the city, as it would
do in the postwar era, but in the south and east areas of the city.23 These spaces were
also where most of Calgary’s industrial, commercial and manufacturing growth was
concentrated, although an anticipated boom based on the oil and gas discoveries did
not develop in the 1920s as many had hoped. Another reason for this growth pattern
was that the Centre Street Bridge (a major thoroughfare linking Calgary’s north and
south ends) was not completed until 1916 so the north side of the Bow River was
20
Ibid., 98.
As most will know, the country experienced an incredible shift in this period with more people
living in towns and cities by 1911, than in rural settings.
22
Richard A. Baine, Calgary: An Urban Study (Vancouver: Clarke, Irwin, 1973), 27.
23
Calgary is divided into four quadrants based on Centre Street and Centre Avenue in the downtown
core. The four quadrants are Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast. All addresses continue
to carry this designation following the street address.
21
57
slower to develop.24 The Bow River has always served as a major geographical
dividing line between north and south Calgary.
In terms of demographics, while the population did grow in the first few
decades of the twentieth century, the anticipated land boom collapsed just before the
outbreak of World War I with limited further development in Calgary until the mid1940s.25 Unlike the present-day realities of limited land availability and
comparatively high costs in Calgary, it was estimated that by 1919 likely two-thirds
of the land within the city limits had reverted to city control as tax-forfeited property.
This would be an important factor in post-World War II growth as it enabled the city
to have direct land development control by the 1940s and 1950s when pressures to
develop new areas increased exponentially.26
International observers did travel to Calgary in the early part of the twentieth
century to assess the city’s urban planning and one of them was highly critical. In
1918, A.S. Chapman of the London, U.K. County Council visited Calgary and noted
that land should have been set aside along the river for large boulevards “and one
cannot but fear in the interests of this progressive community, that the future
development and street traffic increasing enormously in rapidity and volume, have
not been sufficiently anticipated, nor has the provision of open spaces for objects of
beauty, playgrounds and parks for recreation and fresh air been adequately
24
Bob Shiels, Calgary (Calgary: Calgary Herald, 1974), 108. The Banff Trail community fits this
description well as the city annexed a lot of land in this period and while there was significant growth
in this period, the anticipated boom did not sustain itself for several decades.
25
Donald George Harasym, “The Planning of New Residential Areas in Calgary” (masters thesis,
University of Alberta, 1975), 38.
26
Ibid., 38.
58
considered.”27 It is difficult to know all of Chapman’s motivations, but he had failed
to note the substantial amount of green space in the city available for public use in
this time. Calgary was not without its parks by the end of World War I but many
open spaces were sport-specific rather than designated for general public use. Other
spaces were developed for the public’s enjoyment. Relevant to many young people,
particularly in southern Alberta since its founding, the Calgary Zoological Society
was organized in October of 1928 and the dinosaur park construction began during
the 1930s, featuring thirty replica statues from prehistoric times.28 By the 1930s,
parks and recreation development were formalized within the City of Calgary’s
jurisdiction.29
By the late 1940s, Calgary had become one of the largest cities in western
Canada and was poised to become one of the fastest-growing cities in North
America. As in many other centres, thousands of Calgary residents would seek
affordable housing with limited means and options to do so as young families. By
1950 an agreement between parks and the local school boards brought school
playgrounds and yards into the urban planning mix. These school playgrounds and
yards were now available for public play after school hours and on weekends; these
joint use-sites became standard practice across the city, including Banff Trail in the
fifties and sixties.30
Postwar Suburban Space
27
“Distinguished London Engineer Talks of the City Beautiful and Deplores Narrowness of Streets,”
The Albertan, 15 April 1918.
28
Bob Shiels, Calgary, 101.
29
Chris Campbell, “Parks Have Rich History,” The Calgary Herald, 14 March 1985.
30
Calgary: Celebrating 100 Years of Parks (Calgary: City of Calgary, 2010), 59.
59
Outside of a few regions, namely the Far North and the majority of Atlantic
Canada, nearly all parts of Canada were home to the phenomenon of post–World
War II suburban growth. This phenomenon was not isolated exclusively to this
period, as the suburban lifestyle has remained the first choice for millions of
Canadians, Americans, and British peoples. Calgary’s Banff Trail experienced
profound changes during the postwar period and by the late 1960s, due to the
tremendous growth to the north and west of Banff Trail, it was a much different
landscape than in the early 1950s. By the early 1970s, Banff Trail and a handful of
surrounding communities featured thousands of brand new homes, a newly built
university, shopping centres, and dozens of new businesses.
The suburban space has become one of, if not the most, common residential
spaces for children and adolescents in Canada.31 This suburbanization process, begun
long before the post-World War II period, accelerated at this time. Whereas in the
first, post-Confederation census in 1871, over eighty percent of children lived in rural
households, by 1971, there was a near reversal of this with over seventy-five percent
of Canadians living in urban centres.32 Calgary, like much of the rest of the country,
experienced significant physical and population growth throughout the 1950s and
1960s. New roads, schools, and parks were built across the city and in particular, in
the city’s suburbs as a result of this tremendous explosion in both population and
31
According to the 2001 Federal Census, nearly half of urban dwellers, lived in low-density
neighbourhoods, typical of post- World War II suburbs in Canada. Martin Turcotte, “The city-suburb
contrast: How can we measure it?,” Statistics Canada, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008x/2008001/article/10459-eng.htm
32
“Population, urban and rural, by province and territory,” Statistics Canada,
http://www40.statcan.gc.ca/l01/cst01/demo62a-eng.htm By the 2006 Census, over eighty percent of
Canadians lived in urban centres and most estimates are that nearly half of these urban dwellers are
living in suburbs. In the United States, this percentage is likely higher.
60
size.33 While there was growth across the province during this period, it is significant
that Calgary’s percentage of the provincial population rose from eleven in 1941 to
twenty-five by 1971. Although housing availability was an issue for many Calgary
families in the 1950s and 1960s, the city experienced availability pressures, even
earlier, in the immediate post-World War II period as Calgary’s suburban boom
began. By 1946, more than 2,000 World War II veterans and their growing families
were on a waiting list for homes in the city.34 This reflects a larger national
phenomenon as the same pressures were felt in most of Canada’s growing cities
during this period, particularly Toronto and Vancouver.
As noted earlier, schoolyards and parks became available for children to
spend time in by the early 1950s with changes to agreements made between the city
and the Calgary school boards. In the next twenty years, and in suburbs across the
city, these sites became important play areas. This was particularly so with the
number of new schools that were built and the associated green spaces that children
and adolescents used during and after regular school hours. In some parts of Banff
Trail, especially for those residents nearest to the schools, these spaces were some of
the most important to young children, unable to leave the suburban home without
supervision and for those with smaller yards for play. Not all suburban homes had
large lots dedicated to childhood play and leisure.
While there were elements of the rural in some suburbs in this period, the
residential suburban experience was an urban one, particularly once the built
33
Calgary’s population grew from 104,718 in 1950 to 235,428 in 1960 to 385,436 in 1970. Calgary’s
area in square miles grew from 39.6 in 1950 to 75.8 in 1960 to 157 in 1974. For further information
see City of Calgary, Municipal Manual (Calgary: City of Calgary, 1950, 1960, 1970).
34
Hugh Dempsey, Calgary: Spirit of the West (Calgary: Glenbow and First House, 1994), 131.
61
environment had expanded.35 Suburban space was varied throughout the city of
Calgary, much as it was in other areas on the edges of other growing Canadian cities.
Even into the late 1950s though, Banff Trail had some lingering rural characteristics.
Residents who moved into Banff Trail in 1957, five years after the first residents had
built their homes, recalled how “Morley Trail was not paved when we moved here,
only a gravel road. Our sidewalk was in but we had no lawn. The area behind us was
undeveloped – just prairie grass.”36 Another early resident recalled having “thought
we were out in the country. There was nothing there! Pheasants, rabbits and prairie
chickens all came to our door. It was much simpler then.”37 While this does not often
last for very long, a handful of years at most, it does illustrate a different model than
the rigid controls of many postwar developments. Oftentimes, proposed suburban
sites were not considered prime real estate and land that had little use served the
needs for those people seeking housing who were crowded out of cityscapes not only
in Calgary but across the country.38
The Toronto planned development of Don Mills defined the community
design concept across Canada in the later twentieth century and most notably in postWorld War II suburbs. Its established style became so widespread that many believed
it was the only way residential communities, suburban or otherwise, could be
conceived, designed and built.39 Following the Don Mills’ model, the suburban
35
Harris, Creeping Conformity, 49.
Carol and Elmer Haggerty in Rose Scollard, ed., From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks (Calgary:
Banff Trail Community Seniors, 1999), 12.
37
Maxine L. Mills in From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks, 12.
38
Sociologist S.D. Clark noted that in Toronto, and all indicators are that this was the same in other
parts of North America, postwar immigration and the rising birthrate were the main reasons for these
large increases in population. For further reading see Clark, Suburban Society, 31.
39
John Sewell, The Shape of the City: Toronto Struggles With Modern Planning (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1993), 80-88.
36
62
lifestyle was expected to centre on the community with schools, shopping, and
leisure activities sprinkled throughout. Ideally, in following this model, there would
be an internal walking system through the whole community, avoiding traffic-filled
roads and bordered by trees and parks.40 Levittown, built on Long Island in New
York state, was the American equivalent of Don Mills in serving as a model for postWorld War II suburban form.41 While new Calgary suburbs such as Banff Trail
featured attractive qualities for many resident like modern homes, promises of nearby
schools and parks, close proximity to new shopping centres, there were material
realities that outweighed these pull factors. Much as in other parts of Canada, such as
the rapidly growing suburbs in and around Toronto, at times, where people wanted to
live could have little to do with where houses were built.42 This trend is not exclusive
to this period by any means.
While there were upscale suburbs built across the country in this period, in
simplest terms, many families were drawn to the suburbs by both the high
availability and the relatively affordable prices of lots in these nascent
neighbourhoods.43 In Banff Trail, some of the earliest residents recalled spending
$100 on lots, and once the roof was in place, the city reimbursed them half of that
amount.44 As time went on, other future residents paid more for lots (between $500
and $1000 in some instances) with the important point being that the lot prices were
40
Ibid., 88.
There are a number of books focusing on Levittown and its social, economic and cultural impacts.
For further reading on Levittown from two well written but opposing viewpoints see David Kushner,
Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb
(New York: Walker & Company, 2009); Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics
in a New Suburban Community (New York: Pantheon Books, 1967).
42
Clark, The Suburban Society, 48.
43
Ibid., 68.
44
Gordon and Shirley Fox in From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks, 11.
41
63
in the range of possibility for many young families with modest savings and incomes.
While children and adolescents were not often consulted, they were often considered
in the decision-making process of where to live; indeed, the relative affordability of
Banff Trail was well known by residents of all ages.
Where this Calgary suburb was different than places like Don Mills, which in
the 1950s was situated just outside the borders of Toronto proper, roughly 10
kilometres from the downtown area, was Banff Trail’s closer proximity to the city’s
central business district in the downtown core where several residents worked. In
Calgary, with some effort, older children and adolescents could get to the city’s
downtown core on their bikes.45 The new Banff Trail community reflected broader
changes to residential municipal planning which included the remarkable growth of
Calgary suburbia. Mayor Don Mackay had sought planning advice from several
sources and much of the urban planning was directed from the top down. When
gathering background information in Dallas, Texas, Mackay had been advised by
Dallas’s mayor to annex the surrounding municipalities so that the city could retain
and further establish a single urban identity. By building out, Calgary could avoid the
leapfrogging that supposedly created awkward and unseemly gaps in city form.46
This reinforces the links between Texas and Alberta, not just in terms of the
migration of oil industry workers and management, but of ideas as well. In addition
to this, provincial guidelines also influenced Calgary’s planning. In 1952 the
45
In suburbs outside of Toronto for instance the new postwar communities could be much more than
10 kilometres away from the downtown core and not accessible to younger children by foot or on
bikes. Whereas in cities such as Calgary, where suburban development oftentimes occurred within
established annexed city limits, these suburbs, while on the edge of a smaller city, might be only four
or five kilometers from the downtown core.
46
Bob Shiels, Calgary (Calgary: The Calgary Herald), 196.
64
province had revised the Town and Rural Planning Act which required building
developers to set aside at least ten per cent of new subdivision land (nearly
exclusively suburban) as municipal reserve.47 The plan, as it was for most newly
developed areas in Canadian suburbs, was to see these reserve lands dedicated to the
family-centred activities and particularly the postwar child’s general wellbeing.
In Calgary, and specifically Banff Trail, the postwar era was a transitional
period for neighbourhood design. The gridiron pattern had been the defining pattern
for the first half of the twentieth century and up until 1954. This makes it an
interesting hybrid model bridging two quite distinct eras of neighbourhood planning.
As Banff Trail took shape, significant modifications were made to the basic gridiron
pattern with curvilinear street designs, central schools and parks, and new
neighbourhood shopping centres introduced to the overall community design.48 Banff
Trail, and surrounding Capitol Hill, were noteworthy in that they were also sites for
further innovations in neighbourhood planning from the mid-1950s forward that saw
areas having more well-defined boundaries, adequate park space (mandated by new
provincial regulations), and an internal street system (shaped increasingly by the now
influential Don Mills model) that was intended to be safe, attractive and to
discourage heavy traffic flow directly through the suburban communities.49 From the
language of these reports it is clear that children’s safety was paramount; however,
despite planners’ efforts and concerns, the automobile, streets, and children have a
long and tragic history of not intersecting safely with much success since the archival
47
Harold Coward, Calgary’s Growth: Bane or Boon? (Calgary: University of Calgary Institute for the
Humanities, 1981), 59.
48
Harasym, “The Planning of New Residential Areas in Calgary,” 3.
49
Ibid., 4.
65
record in Calgary holds numerous references to child-related deaths and accidents on
its streets. Entire sections of the annual Calgary of Calgary Police Department annual
reports throughout this period were dedicated to detailing this.50
There were also pragmatic reasons for the changes to the gridiron pattern
design. With the postwar baby boom, and the exploding numbers of school-aged
children by the mid-1950s, there was not enough land allocated to accommodate
larger schools required to serve this growing population. The ever-increasing demand
for housing lots led to a dearth of park space.51 In the new suburban areas, these
pressures were even more acute with three- or four-children families (and even larger
in some instances) rather common. Banff Trail, while not a strict neighbourhood unit
design, did feature garden-city suburb principles such as cul-de-sacs and scattered
park space.52 While the era of large developers and much larger communities became
normalized by the mid- to late 1960s, the early postwar residential building industry
was defined by small contractors who built dozens versus hundreds of units in the
communities springing up across the city.53 The move to broad development by a
large construction conglomerate, namely Carma Construction, did not take place
until later in Calgary. They developed hundreds of northwest Calgary homes in
communities that were near to Banff Trail in Brentwood, Charleswood, Charleswood
Heights, and University Heights.54
50
For further reading see: City of Calgary Police Department Reports, 1950-1970. I discuss this
further in this chapter in the section focusing on streetscapes in Calgary.
51
Ibid., 57.
52
Wayne K.D. Davies & Ivan J. Townshend, “How Do Community Associations Vary?
The Structure of Community Associations in Calgary, Alberta,” Urban Studies 31, no. 10 (1994):
1743.
53
Robert Stamp, Suburban Modern, 87.
54
Ibid., 132. During this early phase they built on more than 1500 lots and worked in other Calgary
quadrants as well according to Stamp’s research.
66
Despite the growing influence of municipal politicians, administrators and
planners, suburban spaces were not designed and shaped solely by these individuals.
Calgarians of all ages were important contributors in these processes. By the 1960s,
citizens regularly established the identity of the neighbourhoods. Their expectations
and needs were important, and growing community associations served as conduits
to communicate those expectations and needs to the City of Calgary.55 From a
planning perspective, the situation in Calgary, similar to Edmonton, differed from
some other growing metropolitan areas across Canada in that both cities contained
within their boundaries, at least until the mid-1950s, a multitude of vacant lots and
substantial land parcels that continued to be primarily for agriculture use.56
Concomitant to this planning was the building of one of the unique parts of the Banff
Trail development that would become a defining feature for decades. This unique
space (in Calgary suburbia) was important as a retail space and several of Banff
Trail’s young people worked in the motels and restaurants built in the post- World
War II period. The triangular-shaped geographical space was Motel Village and was
originally zoned in 1951 by councilors for motel use; initially, the space was made up
of small one-story motels and trailer-pads.57
While the postwar suburbs are often characterized as exclusively residential
they were not, with many North American suburbs featuring restaurants, compact
strip malls with a handful of businesses, and much larger shopping centres featuring
55
Calgary: Celebrating 100 Years of Parks, 65.
Province of Alberta, Report of the Royal Commission on the Metropolitan Development of Calgary
and Edmonton (Edmonton: Province of Alberta, January 1956), City of Calgary Archives.
57
City of Calgary, Motel Village/Banff Trail Area Redevelopment Plan – Northwest LRT Alignment
Evaluation Study (Calgary: City of Calgary, 1984), 19. City of Calgary Archives.
56
67
dozens of stores and huge parking lots for consumers of all ages.58 The building of
large shopping centres began quickly in the United States though less so in Canada.
In Canada, Dixie Plaza was the first to open near Toronto in 1955,59 and in northwest
Calgary, the North Hill Shopping Centre opened in 1958 for Calgarians, only a 15 or
20 minute walk or even shorter bike ride from most homes in Banff Trail. It was in
this growing and changing suburban space that Banff Trail children and adolescents
lived the bulk of childhood and adolescence.
Children at Home
The post-World War II suburban home is often represented as sprawling,
spacious and surrounded by a picture-perfect manicured lawn.60 While most
Canadians cities had some suburban enclaves (as they had for decades) that had these
features, this was by no means universal, nor was it common. By the late 1950s in
Calgary, eighty percent of the new houses were single-story bungalows and while the
average bungalow grew from a floor space from about 900 square feet to around 1
200 square feet by the 1960s,61 Banff Trail homes were more representative of the
postwar suburban norm across North America. By today’s standards, most of these
homes were relatively modest and compact. One interviewee remembered his
childhood home much this way in that “it was a typical fifties bungalow of that era,
about 950 square feet, with an unfinished basement, we had three bedrooms…the
exterior was stucco. Everyone was developing their yards in those days, putting in
58
Historian Dolores Hayden also notes that industrial and commercial spaces with significant square
footage have also defined many North American suburbs in Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia:
Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (New York: Pantheon, 2003), 3.
59
Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 259.
60
For one of the best representations, if somewhat exaggerated, see the main neighbourhood in
Edward Scissorhands, directed by Tim Burton (Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox, 1990), motion
picture.
61
Stamp, Suburban Modern, 92.
68
the grass, planting trees, and building garages. My dad built a garage.”62 Much like
other working- and lower middle- class suburbanites from the 1950s and 1960s
across the continent, many Banff Trail homeowners were skilled workers who
brought with them to the suburbs, personal toolkits of craft knowledge, home
renovation and maintenance skills.63
Another interviewee, Lesley, noted that her parents’ 1400 square foot
bungalow, built in a slightly later phase of development, though larger than most of
the first houses built in Banff Trail in the early 1950s, had similar characteristics in
that the bedrooms were quite small and that there was actually some variance in the
neighbourhood,
[The homes] were quite different [and there were] a lot of 4-level
splits on our street. When I was 15 I moved to the basement. [My
parents] finished the basement when I was probably 10 or 12;
[suddenly] we also had a second bathroom. It had everything we
needed. It didn’t feel like it was a palace, but I never felt ashamed
to bring anyone home.64
These later homes indicated some evidence of the rising incomes of middleclass families by the end of the fifties and into the sixties.
Brian recalled that his first bedroom was very simple and that he did not
have to share his bedroom as there were only two children in his family. He
didn’t have a say in decorating his room as a youngster and didn’t recall having
any real interest in doing so. However, there was a shift as an adolescent, as he
moved downstairs where the basement had been partially finished. There was
62
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, June 2, 2011.
Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, 164.
64
Lesley Hayes, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 26 July 2011.
63
69
both a pool table and a ping pong table for his and his friends’ use.65 Another
female interviewee recalled sharing her upstairs bedroom in her family’s
modest bungalow with her brother during her early childhood years.66 Several
interviewees mentioned that because their rooms were quite small and other
spaces seemed expansive, they did not spend a lot of waking hours in their
rooms; quite simply, it was boring to spend extra time in their rooms given the
limited space for toys, games and so forth.67
Jim recalled that through his elementary years, he also shared his room,
which was not very large, with siblings as part of the home was also rented out
to university students who had room and board with their family.68 This also
indicates the need for some working-class or lower middle-class families to
generate extra income to pay the bills. Another male interviewee recalled that
he always had his own room and that he was allowed to make some decisions
on what was in it; he recalled a fish tank more than anything else.69 Murray
recalled that his bedroom was really not anything special for the 1950s era with
a single bed, cabinet and some personal items on the wall.70 While most
interviewees couldn’t recall dimensions exactly, when prompted, many
estimated that their rooms were about 10 feet by 14 feet, at most, which aligns
with most bungalow floor plans from this period. This truly was a transitional
period as this modest suburb featured many homes right around the 1000
65
Brian Rutz, telephone interview, Peterborough. ON, 12 December 2011.
Karen Hanna, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 24 November 2011.
67
For an excellent overview of children’s sleep in historical context see
Peter N. Stearns, Perrin Rowland and Lori Giarnella, “Children’s Sleep: Sketching Historical
Change,” Journal of Social History 30, no. 2 (Winter 1996): 345-366.
68
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 December 2011.
69
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
70
Anonymous 2, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
66
70
square foot mark, and at times, even smaller by at least 100 to 200 square feet.
Suburban homes by the seventies were often one-and-a-half times, if not larger,
than this. It was also an important separator between childhood and
adolescence as teenagers increasingly had their own rooms by the late 1960s,71
whereas pre-teens, as seen here, often shared bedroom spaces, even across
gender lines. This switch, particularly when there were two genders, is
unsurprising as much of the advice from child development experts for decades
had cited the need for older children to have separate bedrooms as a means of
developing a healthy view of sex and avoiding potential incestuous relations
developing.72
Banff Trail’s development and design mirrored the broader shifts from the
previous decades where community development, while not completely unplanned,
was not closely controlled by large development companies. While some
homeowners did choose to have larger developers build their homes, particularly as
the fifties shifted to the sixties, the conformity in form was not a feature, particularly
from a childhood perspective. As many respondents noted, despite some striking
similarities among homes, such as similar floor designs, yards, and siding types,
there were subtle differences, and through the viewfinder of childhood, all suburban
homes did not look the same. In many instances, homes were changed and renovated
substantially as family needs and wants arose. Unfinished basements were
transformed in a few months of home renovations and the useable living space in
71
For a very good exploration of American teenage bedrooms see Jason Reid, “’My Room, Private!
Keep Out! This Means You!’: Brief Overview of the Emergence of the Autonomous Teen Bedroom in
Post-World War II America,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 5, no. 3 (2012): 419-439.
72
Ibid., 432.
71
countless suburban homes had nearly doubled. This was of particular importance to
adolescents seeking additional space and solitude as they made the transition to
adulthood. Home renovations by residents were not isolated to Banff Trail.
Historians of Levittown have emphasized that even if the Levittown houses all
looked similar when built, within ten years they were different.73
Calgary reflected the changes that happened in suburban neighbourhoods
across North America that saw the 1960s (especially in its last years) bring larger
houses and higher income levels for some working-class people and a larger portion
of the middle class.74 It was in the residential developments in the city’s northwest
quadrant, mainly to the north and west of Banff Trail, that larger houses were built.
Many of these were ranch-style and were not only bigger homes, but also built on
larger lots to accommodate the larger footprint.75 As urban historian Kenneth Jackson
notes, the one-level ranch house was significant because it suggested spacious living,
a comparatively easy relationship with the outdoors, and mothers with young
children did not have to contend with many stairs.76 Many homes came to reflect and
reinforce the idealization of the nuclear family and its most precious resource, young
people. Banff Trail in the earlier 1950s was certainly representative of the postWorld War II Canadian suburb landscape. The homescape was modest and residents
recall that, “there was absolutely nothing north or west of us except for the dairy
farm on the hill…There was a farm fence at the end of our property on the other side
73
Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, 164.
It is important to qualify this though as millions of Canadians were excluded in the postwar plenty.
As historian Alvin Finkel argues, this prosperity was shared unequally by Canadians, and it would be
an incomplete picture (suburban nuclear family amid plenty) if it excluded working mothers, bluecollar works on strike, hungry schoolchildren without lunches, and the growing homeless elderly see
Alvin Finkel, Our Lives: Canada After 1945, 2nd edition (Toronto: Lorimer, 2012), 6, 79.
75
For further reading see Stamp, Suburban Modern, 94.
76
Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 240.
74
72
of which were a few cows. A young neighbour boy four doors east of us would go by
each evening swinging his milk pail.”77
The homescape was particularly important, as it was the primary site for
childhood play with family members and neighbourhood friends. As a form of
expression, play is unmatched in the lives of all children. The sites for suburban
children’s play activities served as a building block in their ways to create and assert
their own childhood cultures.78 While there were multiple settings for children’s and
adolescents’ play, particularly when it was unstructured, suburban homes and
backyards served as the primary sites for free play. Beyond children’s homescapes,
outside the fluid childhood boundaries of Banff Trail, the nearby natural
environment, public spaces such as streets and school playgrounds, and the nearby
University of Calgary campus also served as significant sites for play. Children and
adolescents made the rules of, and for play, while inspired by larger events on both a
national and international scale. Games, play and their rules were created by this
young cohort.79 Informants were keen to discuss the many kinds of supervised and
unsupervised everyday activities in which they participated as they were an important
part of their younger identities and many of them believed that unsupervised
activities were much more prevalent than they are today.
Suburban homescapes often had backyard spaces that were either completely
new to the youngest children or much larger than what they had played in at other
homes. Some yards were large enough to accommodate elaborate play areas that
77
Irene and Garnet Rusk in From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks, 17.
Howard P. Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History (New York: New York UP, 2007), 4.
79
Because I devote the better part of a later chapter to the discussion of play, I will provide only
limited material on play in this section, and more in the context of space rather than its broader
significance in the lives of children and adolescents.
78
73
reflected broader events from the late 1950s and early 1960s. As Bruce, an only child
remembered, the omnipresent rockets from the Space Age that defined the era in so
many ways were a key part of his and his playmates’ outdoor activities. “[The play
area they created] was a rocket launching set of three or four launchers. We dug in
the backyard and we would make missile silos like Americans had in Montana. We
buried these things down, practiced launching them and it was a huge thing during
playtime in our lives, the boys especially.”80 There was a gendered component to
some of this play although siblings, both boys and girls, often played at home with
each other and community friends. Gender was often not a factor in these instances
with limited choices, especially for pre-adolescent young people.
Doug recalled the gendered component to his childhood play as he recalled
the immediate space around his home. He described his main play area in his preadolescence as two or three blocks from his home, and then, what he encountered in
the late 1950s and early 1960s,
I’m not sure quite why the demographics of this worked out, but
my neighbourhood up and down our street, in the natural group of
children that we would play with, was probably 80 or 90 percent
female. I thought that was very odd at the time. Almost all of the
families in our neighbourhood on the two or three streets around us
were almost all girls and I had three sisters… so finding a boy to
play with was a challenge [laughing].81
He didn’t express any real regret over this or that it had been a problem in any
way. It was quite simply, matter-of-fact, that the immediate neighbourhood space
80
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, July 28, 2011.
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011. This is not to suggest that most
children played exclusively in a three block radius, but in the earliest school-age years, others
indicated that they played oftentimes within earshot of their parents’, and especially mothers’ calls to
return home for meals, get ready for bed, and so forth.
81
74
was dominated, at least in numbers, by girls, in his earliest years. He did not
mention if they dictated the activities because of these numbers.
Contrary to some persistent stereotypes, it was not always the case that
childhood play was outside and that all children, and in particular, boys,82 embraced
unstructured and casually supervised outdoors play. Despite the nostalgia that is
recalled by some about this postwar era and its associated childhoods, some children
did not enjoy spending time outside their homes, and were relatively uncomfortable
with the suburban landscape and with what it might have offered them. Alan’s
experience was differentiated from many in that he remembered rarely engaging with
the outdoor suburban landscape and preferred to stay inside for the better part of
most days. He recalled that he’d “ look out over the park [easily visible from a
window in his bedroom] as I was an indoor guy, not an outdoor guy, so I would
watch the kids play but didn’t do a lot of it myself.”83 This experience contradicts a
longstanding trope of gendered childhood play that universalizes boys’ play as active
and outdoors and girls’ playtime as relatively passive and often situated indoors.
Alan also remembered that he “found being a child incredibly boring, so [he] was
just glad when it was over…[he] couldn’t wait to grow up.”84 A statement like this
does well to undermine the ongoing romanticization, by some, of an unfailingly
positive childhood. Not everyone shares in this belief and in this case, this links him
82
The active boy and the passive girl are two childhood tropes that still hold currency with some but
were not reflected in this suburban community. Girls and boys, while not always playing together
were certainly active in childhood and some individuals, of both genders, displayed varying degrees of
activity and passivity.
83
Allan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, July 29, 2011.
84
Ibid.
75
to the adults, and in particular, women, who expressed some boredom and
disillusionment with postwar suburbia.
If we conceptualize the geography of the cultural landscape of childhood as
personalized and composed of expanding circles with the child’s family home at the
centre and the northwest quadrant of Calgary forming the outer ring, this imagery
reinforces that not every child had the same experiences.85 It should not be surprising
to find that some suburban children were quite attached to their inner circle,
beginning with the family home with the increasing domestication of children’s
everyday lives over time. In much of the Northern hemisphere, this phenomenon is
not isolated to the post-World War II period as childhood has become increasingly
centred around the home over the past two centuries.86 While the home was a
centerpiece of young people’s lives in both of these decades, the streets were also key
sites of activities for young suburbanites.
Streetscapes
During the 1950s and 1960s, playing on sidewalks and streets was not
discouraged as it is in some North American neighbourhoods today. Noise and
activity by-laws on some contemporary Canadian streets have put greater restrictions
on children and adolescents in comparison to the post-World War II era. In some
instances, these by-laws have outlawed noise derived from basketball play or in other
situations to the potential threat of property damage from street hockey play. Streets
85
For further reading on geography, personal landscape and childhoods see Neil Sutherland, Growing
Up: Childhood in English Canada From the Great War to the Age of Television (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1997), 223.
86
Sarah L. Holloway and Gill Valentine, eds., Children’s Geographies (New York: Routledge, 2000),
13. While this can be generalized, it is important to not universalize this as many young people,
particularly as they moved into their teenage years, spent less and less time with their families in the
home. Again, this is not exclusive to this era and has ebbed and flowed over the past 100 years across
Canada and the United States.
76
have been a vital part of social lives in North America for urban children, particularly
teenagers, before they became increasingly off limits to many with the establishment
of drinking and driving age restrictions, bans on adolescent smoking, and stricter
enforcement of laws governing sexuality. Collectively these rules had the effect of
spatial islanding and subsequent isolation of many young people.87
The terrain of streetscapes has changed over time. In the fifties, many of the
earliest-built streets were dirt roads in suburbs across North America. Banff Trail was
no exception to this and one interviewee remembered how “when Canmore Road and
Morley Trail were still dirt roads, a friend and I were playing near a badger’s hole
[right next to one of these streets]. The badger started to come out…We had a shovel
near by, which I grabbed, and started to fight with it. The badger became very
ferocious. I started to hit it with the shovel. Adrenaline pumping, I continued to bash
the badger until it died. I was maybe 4 or 5 years old.”88 Suburban children
experienced the intersections between the built and natural environments on a
continuing basis in their childhoods.
Prior to being paved, suburban streets held dangers leading to experiences
that children may or may not have shared with adolescent siblings or adults. Parents
and guardians were not as vigilant in being present in the everyday lives of children
to the same degree as they are in many twenty-first century middle-class childhoods.
In some cases, it was not a matter of choice as they were away from home and
working. Increasingly, city streets were sites for young people clashing with the
87
John Gillis “Epilogue: The Islanding of Children: Reshaping the Mythical Landscapes of
Childhood,” in Marta Gutman and Ning de Coninck-Smith, eds., Designing Modern Childhoods:
History, Space and the Material Culture of Children (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2008), 320
88
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 Oct 2011.
77
growing car culture of the 1950s and early 1960s. What becomes clear is that the car
culture and all that came with it began to mark the lives of children and adolescents,
very decidedly, particularly in city streets. Statistics and accident reports contained
some details relating to children and adolescents in the City Police Annual Reports
and the increasing vehicular traffic, not only in Banff Trail but across the city, is
reflected in the larger numbers. In 1942, for instance, there were 936 accidents with
18 deaths and $82 926.64 in property damage; however, by 1952 in the city, there
were 2 567 accidents with 523 persons injured, 13 deaths and $657 656.66 in
property damage.89 We know that North American automobiles were being equipped
with more safety features by the 1950s, more people owned and drove cars, and that
vehicles were becoming much more expensive by the early 1950s. All of these
factors provide context to these numbers.
By the early 1960s, teenaged students in Banff Trail were discussing the
streets, the effects of traffic, and most notably, implicating parents and teachers in the
traffic accident occurrences. One student article explained how people did not see
cars as being the potential killers they could be. It was argued that as,
Individuals amble down the road expecting cars to edge around
them; children dart out into the road anticipating that traffic will
screech to a halt…but there is always the chance that a youngster
darting out, won’t be seen – until it is too late. By law, the
responsibility for this accident lies on the motorist, but in actuality
it lies on parents and teachers who failed to instill in the child a
knowledge of basic traffic safety.90
Parents and teachers were scapegoated not only by experts, but also by teenagers
themselves, which is unsurprising to most parents and former teens.
89
Chief Constable, Chief Constable’s Annual Report (Calgary: City of Calgary Police Department,
1952), 45, Calgary Police Service Archives.
90
Wendy Birch, “Traffic Safety,” Aberhart Advocate, 17 December 1962.
78
The streets also served as a battleground between local residents and students.
Ironically, it was often community members, with families themselves, and with
friends with children who lodged some of the loudest complaints about children and
in particular adolescents in the streets. This high school article explored how the City
of Calgary police had visited William Aberhart High School in recent months to
address the growing reputation as poor drivers with bad driving records, much of it
based on local community reports,
Dangerous driving may be blamed upon a small group of bad
drivers, but is there not an atmosphere in our school which
condones this kind of action?...If the situation does not improve
quickly, the police have promised that they will start a vigorous
check - resulting in the immediate issuing of tickets to all
offenders. So, buck up and give our school the excellent reputation
that it deserves.”91
To better promote traffic awareness in the early 1960s, the Calgary City
Police began regular visits to all Calgary schools, with various safety campaigns.
This trend to have police force members positioned as ‘friends’ versus disciplinarians
has been noted in other cities in Canada such as Montreal.92 They were joined by
important groups such as the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 58, and from the
early 1960s through the 1980s, over 100 000 Calgary children were taught vehicle
and bicycle safety by transit operators.93 In the 1960 report from Calgary’s Chief of
Police there is a Traffic Safety and Education report written for the first time. Some
of the highlights of the one-page report include: “Lectured to 95 Elementary Schools,
34 Junior High Schools and 6 Senior High Schools at 135 school assemblies. Panel
91
“Aberhart’s Traffic Problem,” Aberhart Advocate, November 1964.
Tamara Myers, “From Disciplinarian to Coach: Policing of Youth in Post World War II Canada,”
(European Social Science History Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, March 2008).
93
Barbara Grinder, Local Colour: A Commemmoration of the 75th Anniversary of the Amalgamated
Transit Union Local 583 (Calgary: Amalgamated Transit Union, 1990), 52.
92
79
discussions on traffic safety conducted at all Junior and Senior High Schools
[Branton Jr. High and William Aberhart High School in Banff Trail]. Active
Participation: Teen-age Rodeos, Pedal Pusher Clubs, Motor Scooter Club, High
School Safety Campaign.”94 By 1962, different statistics were kept regarding traffic
accidents and some of the changes were striking. In the Annual Report there are 11
468 accidents with 1315 persons injured, and 20 fatalities in the city. By this time,
with the changing focus of reporting, the reports contain the ages of persons injured,
with 106 of them under the age of six and 220 of the persons injured in traffic
accidents between the ages of six and 16 in Calgary.95 By 1970, the statistical
categories related to traffic accidents were the same as they were in 1952, Banff
Trail’s first year of existence. In that year, there were 14 134 traffic accidents, 1 563
persons injured, 36 deaths, and $7 638 623.00 in property damage. 89 Persons
injured were under the age of six, and between the ages of six to 16, 291 were
injured.96 Calgary’s streets, whether in the suburbs or otherwise, did pose everyday
dangers for both children and adolescents. The suburban adolescent experience, in
this particular instance, seems to be enmeshed with urban schoolmates in the period.
The heightened awareness of the dangers on Calgary streets was part of a
larger construct focused on youth, safety and wellbeing. The discursive construction
that juvenile delinquency and generalized rule-breaking and lawlessness was on the
rise across Calgary and indeed, the continent, helped fuel much of this hyper-focus.
94
Chief of Police, Annual Report (Calgary: City of Calgary Police Department, 1960), 40, Calgary
Police Service Archives.
95
Chief of Police, Annual Report (Calgary: City of Calgary Police Department, 1962), 35, Calgary
Police Service Archives.
96
Chief of Police, Annual Report (Calgary: City of Calgary Police Department, 1970), 22, Calgary
Police Service Archives.
80
This process had begun in the 1940s in Calgary and in municipal government
documents, references to efforts to stem the rising delinquency patterns were referred
to as being “a modern miracle if they did succeed where parents, teachers, church
leaders, police, probation officers and other interested individuals all have tried and
failed.”97 Despite the attempts to monitor them to a greater degree, streets remained
an important site for children and adolescents to live parts of their everyday lives.
While Banff Trail’s streets were busy with childhood activities, it was the parks and
unsupervised spaces within the community that captivated many children and
adolescents.
Parks & Unsupervised Spaces
While the home and streets were important for many children, it was time
away from the increasingly ever-watchful eyes of adults and older siblings that was
relished by young people. Much of their unsupervised time was spent in parks within
the community, just outside of the community, and particularly in the 1950s and
early 1960s, larger areas of the city’s expanding northwest quadrant including the
corridor towards Cochrane. Bike rides that covered more than 15 or 20 miles in one
day were not uncommon for many young baby boomers when visiting nearby towns
such as Cochrane. The ability to roam and enjoy the space that the edges of the city
offered held a strong pull for some children. One respondent recalled that even prior
to his teenage years “[he’d] get up every morning before breakfast…go for a bike
ride, come home and have my breakfast [before heading off to school or to weekend
activities]. My mother used to get concerned and then she got used to my habits…I
97
City of Calgary, “Brief of the Children’s Aid Department of the City of Calgary,” prepared for
submission to the Royal Commission on Child Welfare (Calgary: Children’s Aid Department, 1947),
Social Services fonds, City of Calgary Archives.
81
never left a note or anything.”98 With their nearby open spaces, the suburbs offered
opportunities for young people to get away from their homes in minutes, particularly
on bikes.
Children have always been resourceful with their uses of space and it was no
different with the sites near to Banff Trail. Some former residents recalled that,
to the west of us, the strip now called Motel Village was designated
as parkland, and was truly enjoyed by our children who spent their
time roaming around and catching gophers and having a great
time…Some summer nights the fathers would put up an old tent we
had, and the neighbourhood kids and our own would spend the
night sleeping out under the stars. In the morning they would all
troop to our house…[for] a nice pancake breakfast.99
Children spent time in community parks and green spaces with other young people
from a wide range of ages and with adults as well. Young people, sometimes on their
own, but oftentimes with others, used, shared or reconstituted spaces for their
activities. At times, and in certain cities, the era was marked by a contest over space
in urban landscapes across the United States and Canada. Cities were increasingly
crowded, and while playgrounds were designated as children’s spaces, youngsters
across the spectrum of age challenged adults for both use and control of the
territories that had not been laid claim to; space that had multiple uses had several
claimants. While Calgary may not have been nearly as crowded as some other
Canadian cities such as Toronto or Vancouver, the rapid expansion still meant that
space was both contested and coveted as the post-World War II era wore on.100
98
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, 17 October 2011.
Madeline and George Gablehaus in From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks, 27.
100
Howard Chudacoff, Children At Play (New York: New York UP, 2007), 5. Hundreds of homes
were built in this area in a few short years and with the growth being mainly north and west in this
particular area, farm and ranch lands, along with comparatively open prairie grew much spacer. This,
combined with increasing restrictions on where children were allowed to play, meant space was of the
utmost importance to most if not all young children and teenagers.
99
82
Banff Trail school’s parks were sites for children to spend a great deal of time
after school. Branton Junior High, Banff Trail Elementary, and William Aberhart
High School were the three main schools within the community boundaries. William
Aberhart High School was interesting in that it served students aged six to 12 in its
first two years of existence (1958-1960). It was not until 1960 that it became a
dedicated high school as space for elementary-aged students was at a premium while
a new high school cohort was forming. At these early stages it was Calgary’s fifthlargest high school; it sprawled over 10 acres and featured 33 rooms.101 All three of
the schoolyards served as play sites for Banff Trail children, with much of the early
evening play unsupervised and spontaneous. School yard green spaces are sometimes
overlooked as park areas but when there are some trees on the borders, for play and
shade, and in the case of William Aberhart High School where there were large
fields, almost all of the interviewees mentioned spending time in these spaces in their
childhoods. This was not unique to Banff Trail as schools, along with churches, often
provided the only non-residential land use throughout many parts of the suburbs in
Canada; in many developments they were in central locations so that children could
reach them easily on foot. 102
Childhood in the postwar era was marked by a great localized mobility, and
suburban children relished the opportunities to explore and discover their
neighbourhoods and nearby expansive spaces. In the early 1950s there had been
limited urban development to the north of Banff Trail and early residents noted how
101
Billy Somers, “William Aberhart High Reflects Modern Trend in Education,” Calgary Herald, 17
Dec 1960, 11.
102
Harris, Creeping Conformity, 165. For further discussion of the centrality of suburban school
spaces see Stamp, Suburban Modern, 117.
83
“[present day] Confederation Park was a wide open area with prairie grass and a
creek running through it. It was a wonderful place to roam through and great for
wiener roasts.”103 Parents from the era remembered the importance of space as well.
Access to this space was open for most children from the northernmost edges of the
Banff Trail suburb,
“by walking north some 100 feet and climbing over an original
barbed wire fence one would find themselves right out in the
country. Only a few old time farm homes dotted the area between
us and Nose Hill. Several people who owned horses pastured them
right across the road from us, and [from] Nose Hill. Our
children…had a happy childhood there and enjoyed the wide open
spaces, the crocuses, the buffalo beans, the birds and the horses.”104
This necessarily draws on tropes of that romanticized, carefree, agrarianbased childhood that some have enjoyed, but indeed exists as much in the
mind as it does in reality.
Following its first phase of construction in 1960, the University of Alberta at
Calgary (it would not become the University of Calgary until 1966) was located
within walking distance of Banff Trail across present-day Crowchild Trail. Many
Banff Trail residents considered the new university and its modern facilities to be
part of their larger community landscape. Banff Trail’s children, adolescents and
adults made continual references to the university campus throughout the archival
record that I examined. By the mid-1960s, young people thought of it as an extension
of their space to explore, long before many of them had made their way to the
university for post-secondary studies. One recalled that by the time he had reached
103
104
Lucille and Ewan Lawrence in From Prairie Park to City Sidewalks, 34.
Roy Farquharson in From Prairie Park to City Sidewalks, 58.
84
adolescence in the late 1960s and early 1970s the university was essentially a
playground,
A lot of our friends and I used to just go over there, hang around
and fool around on the elevators. It just became my hiding place…I
just loved the campus over there. It was very modern, back when it
was brand new, so modern and futuristic and the buildings, the
design, the architecture was just amazing. I spent a lot of my time
hanging around the campus at night.105
These experiences with his friends link him temporally to other young peoples’
experiences. Historian Howard Chudacoff notes that urban children in the early
twentieth century were resourceful in that instead of having relatively large rural
spaces in which to play, urban kids appropriated and transformed streets, sidewalks,
vacant lots, dumps, rooftops, and buildings for their shared amusement.106
Unfortunately, cityscapes, even in developing suburban areas (and possibly even
more so given the large number of construction sites), also held potential dangers for
children and adolescents.
For some young people peril and tragedy coloured their childhoods in Banff
Trail. Regardless of whether children live in urban or rural settings, accidents will
continue to be a part of young lives and have been in the past.107 Children have never
been immune to the horrific elements of certain dangers. Despite greater surveillance
of young people, and the increased hyper-awareness of where children are at all
times over the past half century, elements of chance or risk will never be removed
completely. Jim discussed how a young boy from the Banff Trail community died
105
Anonymous, telephone interview, 4 November 2011.
Chudacoff, Children at Play, 129.
107
Calgary crime reports were not broken down into districts in this period although the tenor of the
reports indicates that crime rates were highest in the downtown area which makes sense given the
concentration of both businesses and population, especially in the fifties and sixties.
106
85
and another boy narrowly escaped with his young life while playing in one of the
unsupervised spaces of the nascent community. He discussed in detail how some of
the neighbourhood kids had dug some tunnels in the sand hills and were playing in
them, before lunch, just west of the Banff Trail Elementary school,
After lunch I wanted to go back and play some more. My father
forbade me to go; he had just recently been in Toronto at a
conference, [where] some boys had been killed while playing in
sand hills. At that moment, Barry MacDonald’s dog came barking
at full tilt, followed by some of the boys who were hollering that
the tunnels had caved in. Barry MacDonald and Bobby Johnson
were unaccounted for. My Dad and I grabbed some shovels and ran
to where I had been that morning…A pair of legs was exposed
from the waist down, inverted in the sand. My Dad started digging
the boy out…It was Barry MacDonald, who lived directly behind
us and he survived…Bobby Johnson was found by a fireman using
a shovel to dig. The shovel scraped Bobby’s spine and that’s how
they found him. He had been buried too long to survive.108
With the near-frenzied pace and volume of land development in the post-World War
II suburbs, it was almost inevitable that these things could and did happen. Other
informants had mentioned the number of construction sites there were, well into the
mid-1960s, and that it was surprising that other more serious accidents had not
happened given the number of children and the amount of time that they had spent
unsupervised in many instances.
Children and adolescents have never lived their everyday lives in complete
isolation from tragedy. Childhood accidents are inescapable and the post-World War
II suburban landscape was no exception to this despite the efforts by nearly all adults
to ensure that children and friends would come to no harm; however children and
youth were safer in these less densely populated parts of Calgary versus the
108
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 Oct 2011. Many other oral history
informants had recalled this same story. None of them had been on the scene as Jim had been with his
father as the tragic event unfolded.
86
downtown areas.109 At its heart though, the suburban landscape offered the
opportunities for spontaneity, creativity, and countless hours of activities for children
and adolescents. These childhood landscapes existed materially and in the
imaginations of those who lived there.
Imagined Suburban Spaces
The suburban space of the post-World War II period has been imagined and
re-imagined untold times over the past decades by residents, visitors, casual
observers, and staunch critics. It has served as a site of promises (realized and
unfulfilled), dreams, and for some, fantasies.110 At times, representations have come
to define these suburban spaces rather than what has been found in the material
spaces in the postwar era. Historian Brian Osborne posits that landscapes are culture
before they are nature, and that once a certain representation of landscape, or a myth
establishes itself in a real place, it has a strange way of mixing categories, of making
the metaphorical more tangible than their referents and of being part of the
scenery.111 However, there are times when the imagined has reflected what many
early residents found in the post-World War II suburbs. Margaret Atwood presents
one literary representation in her novel Cat’s Eye that focused on that era, and
specifically the Toronto area’s burgeoning suburbs. The comments by her main
character, Elaine Risley, suggest that the realities of her suburban childhood did not
meet the expectations. When moving in, she intimates that the “road in front is
109
Chief Constable, Chief Constable’s Annual Report (Calgary: City of Calgary, 1950-1970), Calgary
Police Service Archives.
110
For further reading see Hayden, Building Suburbia, 3. She also adds that the suburbs, across many
time periods have been the landscape of the imagination for many Americans; I believe this applies
equally to Canadians as well.
111
Brian Osborne, “Landscapes, Memory, Monuments, and Commemoration: Putting Identity in its
Place,” Canadian Ethnic Studies 33, no. 3 (2001): 39-77.
87
muddy too, unpaved, potholed. Dust is on everything: the windows, the window
ledges, the fixtures, the floor.”112
Atwood’s protagonist later adds that the process of developing and
modernizing their suburban community takes much longer than her childhood
patience allows and that the collective experience in these patchwork suburbs is a
“far cry from picket fences and white curtains, here in our lagoon of postwar
mud.”113 Atwood’s depiction reflects the images recalled by Banff Trail’s earliest
residents experiencing similar circumstances in the early 1950s.
From the memory banks of people who experienced their childhood in Banff
Trail, many also expressed the sense of security and warmth they had felt in younger
years.114 Even contemporary critics of North America’s post-World War II suburbs
such as Peter Wyden acknowledged that there was widespread agreement that
suburban spaces gave kids the undeniable feeling of security, possibly because they
like the suburban environment so well.115 Relative economic security and its effects
on young persons’ psyches should also be considered. Comfort is oftentimes
associated with place for young people. Literary representation often reflects this.
Because home can serve as the site for satisfying the basic needs for shelter and food,
the depiction of stable and secure housing in narratives for children can be read as the
112
Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1988), 33.
Ibid., 35.
114
This is a generalization and cannot be universalized when applied to the suburban childhood
experience. Alternative experiences will be explored in detail in the chapter on resistance, delinquency
and the night.
115
Peter Wyden, Suburbia’s Coddled Kids (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1962), 120.
113
88
adult commitment, or promise, that the world is a place in which young people can
not merely survive, but flourish.116
For those with positive remembrances (though as argued in other chapters this
was not the case for all), the imaginings of suburbia has continued to influence
former childhood residents as they have chosen to live in other suburban
neighbourhoods, and in some cases, in Banff Trail itself. For some of these people,
the search for a familiar and comfortable childhood home was also a search for a
sense of the childhood security that they may have experienced, but in many ways, is
an imagined one by the time they reach adulthood.117
Whether it is nostalgia or not, more recent defences of suburbia have not
often come from academics but have appeared in some of the letters, interviews, and
books by the children of post-World War II suburbia.118 The sense of community,
while imagined in some ways now, was much more rooted in place in the postwar era
for these children. Community in that period referred to the children and families
defined geographically and spatially by where they lived, worked and played.119
This should not be surprising as some of our first spatial and environmental
relationships are with our homes and the communities in which we grow up and
these childhood places are marked in our imaginations as given, perhaps even
116
Mavis Reimer, Home Words: Discourses on Children’s Literature in Canada (Waterloo: Wilfrid
Laurier UP, 2007), xiii.
117
Setha Low, Behind the Gates, (New York: Routledge, 2003), 77.
118
Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, 167.
119
Low, Behind the Gates, 230. Low goes on to argue that many place-based definitions broke down
as different social groups increasingly came to be the basis of social and cultural identification as
many urban neighbourhoods became more heterogeneous. This is reflected in Calgary in some areas
by the mid-1970s as well – particularly with certain ‘ethnic’ or ‘racial’ communities dominating parts
of the growing city.
89
natural.120 One of the most common imagined features of suburbia is that it is placed
well away from the urban centre; however, contrary to this familiar representation,
significant post-World War II suburban development did not routinely take place in
isolated fields, far from the city core. Much as in Banff Trail, several new housing
developments were integrated into existing centres, and, at a community scale, there
was a good chance that there was already a ‘place’ in these new places.121
Conclusion
Banff Trail was representative of hundreds of postwar suburban
neighbourhoods in that working-class families were undoubtedly pressured by rising
home costs,122 especially by the mid-1960s with the ever-increasing privatization of
housing development, not only in the suburbs, but in all cityscapes across Canada.
Public housing has never taken firm hold outside of a few pockets in Canada. In this
period, Toronto’s Regent Park was the most notable attempt to house thousands of
low-income, working peoples.123 The suburbs of the post-World War II era did not
do the same. While working peoples, their families, and children were able to find
modest and at times, affordable homes, this was done within a system that
encouraged large mortgages and private home ownership. People seeking alternative
models, such as public or co-operative arrangements would not find this in the
average suburb, which Banff Trail serves as in the 1950s and 1960s. While the social
welfare state did grow in this period, public housing, a national childcare system and
120
Ibid., 77.
Tom Martinson, American Dreamscape: The Pursuit of Happiness in Postwar Suburbia (New
York: Carroll and Graf, 2000), xvii.
122
Stamp, Suburban Modern, 111.
123
There is a lot written on Regent Park and Canada’s dearth of affordable public housing. For an
explorations of Regent Park see Sean Purdy, “Ripped Off” by the System: Housing Policy, Poverty,
and Territorial Stigmatization in Regent Park Housing Project, 1951-1991,” Labour/Le Travail 52
(2003): 45-108.
121
90
efforts to establish a guaranteed minimum income for all Canadians never
materialized despite the best efforts of many Canadians to lobby for these social
welfare initiatives. Misguided critics across the continent feared that public housing,
much like medicare, public education and government pensions, would be deemed a
right and that the majority of citizens would demand its implementation.124
In the next chapter, I explore another space where children and adolescents
spent more time outside of the home than anywhere else, the school classroom. Since
the late nineteenth century, no formal institution in Canada has had a greater effect
on the lives of children and adolescents than schools. Postwar students spent
hundreds of hours in schools for formal schoolwork and extracurricular activities
such as volunteering, yearbook duties, sports, and so forth. Some young people spent
more of their waking hours in school than in their family homes. Its direct and
indirect influences are profound and undeniable on children and adolescents;
however, schools did not exist in isolation. The Cold War can be linked directly to
the suburban classroom and this had implications for both children and adolescents.
124
Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, 93.
91
Third Chapter – War, Bombs & Classrooms
Introduction
We’ve been living under School Board Regulations for so long that
we no longer even hope for the enlightened reform. This accounts
for the shock of last Friday’s announcement concerning the
relaxing of clothing regulations…On Monday morning, though, the
Bubble of Hope was cruelly burst. For some reason the interdict on
trousers for girls was slapped back on…We doubt that the sight of
a girl in a pair of pants will corrupt anybody’s morals. The
regulation is no doubt founded in the society of ten years ago when
pants were for casual affairs only.1
This editorial from the Aberhart Advocate student newspaper is illustrative on
a few levels. In some ways, it is surprising that it was written in 1969 when nostalgia
often points to the 1950s as more likely to be home to these kinds of discussions
regarding gendered clothing and its messaging to young people. It also indicates, in a
meaningful way, that adolescent women had ongoing challenges to meet in the era’s
suburban classroom which adolescent men did not. While it may seem trivial to
some, the inability to wear slacks or long pants to school suggests just a slice of the
larger pie of rules and regulations that children and adolescents faced in the context
of the Cold War; gender roles, conformity, and control created tensions with
‘freedoms,’ democracy, and the choice that all Canadians were promised as benefits
of western democracy in a polarized and politicized world.
In this chapter, I explore another space outside of the home where children
and adolescents spent more time than anywhere else: school classrooms. Since the
mid-nineteenth century, no formal institution in Canada has had a greater effect on
1
“Editorial,” The Aberhart Advocate, vol 11, no. 8, 6 February 1969, 3.
92
the lives of children and adolescents than schools.2 Post–World War II students spent
thousands of hours in schools for formal schoolwork and extracurricular activities
including volunteering, yearbook duties, fine arts, sports, and so forth. In certain
circumstances, some young people spent more of their waking hours in school than
in their family homes. This volume of classroom contact meant that the school’s
influence, both direct and indirect, was profound on the everyday lives of children
and adolescents.3 Yet these schools did not exist in isolation. The classroom
experience for young people reflected and refracted the broader adult threats of the
1950s and 1960s, and in particular, the Cold War with its omnipresent chill. While
nostalgia, some contemporary accounts4, and, at times, popular discourse indicate
that children, particularly younger ones, were protected from the machinations of war
and associated fears, the material culture from schools, combined with compelling
oral histories from people who grew up in the postwar suburbs, suggests otherwise.
The Cold War is linked directly to the suburban classroom during the 1950s
and 1960s. It has been accepted by many scholars that leisure and a relatively
carefree life increasingly came to define large parts of the childhood experience in
this period. The common refrain is that Canadians, regardless of age, wanted to move
forward with their lives following the horrors of World War II and the devastation of
the earlier Great Depression. Toronto’s Crestwood child who had been reared in an
2
Paul Axelrod, The Promise of Schooling: Education in Canada, 1800-1914 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1997).
3
There may be no group of children who can claim more of a school’s lasting impacts than the
Residential school students with almost none of it being positive. While outside the bounds of this
dissertation, see J.R. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1996); John Milloy, A National Crime (Winnipeg: University of
Manitoba Press, 1999).
4
Kate Aitken, “Children’s Art Brings Their Homelands to Life,” The Globe and Mail (17 September
1960), A15.
93
environment of prosperity and success, who came to feel that life’s opportunities
were limitless, and that (s)he could become anything (s)he wished to become, is a
lasting representation of the suburban child. While this relatively benign childhood
was a reality for a small minority of suburban children, particularly those growing up
in upper-middle class suburbs, I argue that many more suburban children were, in
fact, exposed to aggressive imagery, discursive constructs and everyday practices
that attempted to discipline them generally, for potential military service and ongoing
participation in civilian defence. These images, constructs and practices created a
cultural landscape that prepared them to engage with ‘enemies’ who lay both within
and outside postwar Canadian suburban spaces. Nowhere was this more apparent
than in school classrooms. Ironically, the very term postwar suggests that war and
military realities had evaporated from the minds of children, yet this was not the
case. In fact, not only the Cold War and its effects, but both the First and Second
World Wars continued to influence the everyday lives of young people through
stories, images, and representations. The influence of World War II is not surprising
given that almost one in ten Canadians had served in Canada’s Army, Navy or Air
Force just a few years earlier.5 Unpacking the complex meanings of postwar life
through the lens of childhood is important in gaining a better understanding of the
lives of school-aged children and their families in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Cold War Classroom
5
Alvin Finkel, Our Lives: Canada After 1945, 2nd edition (Toronto: Lorimer, 2012), 4.
94
By the postwar era, Canada had a history of educating young people dating
back more than 100 years to the pre-Confederation Canadas,6 and all children
attended school in some form. The importance of formal education in youngsters’
lives by the early 1950s was, and has remained, undeniable to most. This had not
always been the case, as in the early 1800s, most children were not enrolled in a
formal school, and only a small minority attended schools.7 As education historian
Mona Gleason has noted, the first Free School Acts had been passed in present-day
Quebec in 1846, Prince Edward Island in 1852, Nova Scotia and Vancouver Island in
1856 and then in Ontario, New Brunswick, and Manitoba in 1871 (although the
achievement of ‘free schools’ was delayed in all jurisdictions except Ontario).8
Furthermore, compulsory education, at least at the elementary level, was achieved in
1871, and between 1890 and 1920, the extent of state control over English Canada’s
school system increased markedly; increased layers of administration, training, and
surveillance characterized school classrooms by the early twentieth century.9
Historically, the Canadian public education system has not included all young
people across ‘race,’ class and gender lines. Of particular note, First Nations
children’s experiences were distinct from wider nineteenth and early twentiethcentury developments as residential schools were their key sites for primary and
elementary schooling during this period. The residential school system was an abject
failure and nothing short of an ongoing national tragedy on all levels for the young
6
For further reading on the early Canadian and Quebec education systems, and broader social change
in the nineteenth century see Paul Axelrod, The Promise of Schooling; André Dufour, Histoire de
l’education au Québec (Montreal: Boreal, 1997).
7
Axelrod, The Promise of Schooling, vii.
8
Mona Gleason, “Disciplining the Student Body: Schooling and the Construction of Canadian
Children’s Bodies, 1930-1960,” History of Education Quarterly 41, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 190.
9
Ibid.
95
children and adolescents who were subjected to it for several generations.10
Reverberations from the residential school system in Canada continue into the
present and the last school was not closed permanently until the mid-1990s.11
By the early 1950s, while the individual experiences for students were highly
differentiated, school classrooms provided an opportunity for young people to
explore other sides of their personalities, attempt new activities, build new
friendships, and quite simply, spend time away from parents and guardians while
learning about and navigating the postwar world. As childhood historian Neil
Sutherland has noted, for those from large families (describing many of the postwar
suburban groupings), school was an important setting for young students in which
their personal qualities and characteristics could be acknowledged and developed.12
Historian Cynthia Comacchio has demonstrated that by the 1950s, the central, and
most important institution of adolescence, was unquestionably the high school.13 She
also notes that by 1950, and this holds true throughout the postwar era as well,
adolescents came to identify and be associated more with school, recreation and
leisure than with paid labour.14
This period was one of recovery from the Great Depression and the effects of
World War II, and tremendous growth for public education in Alberta for all age
groupings. Increasingly, teachers were able to specialize at specific grade levels
10
Milloy, A National Crime.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada continues to conduct its investigation into the
residential school system and its meanings to First Nations peoples and broader Canadian society.
More information on its findings, recommendations and so forth can be found here on the Truth and
Reconciliation site, accessed 11 November 2012,
http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=3
12
Neil Sutherland, Growing Up: Childhood in English Canada From the Great War to The Age of
Television (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 217.
13
Cynthia Comacchio, The Dominion of Youth (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2006), 99.
14
Ibid., 128.
11
96
versus teaching in multi-grade classrooms. More and more students completed high
school across Alberta as they did across the country. Throughout the 1950s, Alberta
had the highest per capita spending on education in Canada,15 within the context of
economic growth and increased provincial government spending. Tremendous
growth in Calgary’s school population was constant and a 1962 Calgary Herald
article titled “School Population Up By 5,000” provides a good snapshot of the year
over year changes that happened across the expanding city, and in particular, in
Calgary’s expanding suburbs,
Calgary’s school population has grown by more than 5,000
students over last year…There are a total of 58,848 pupils behind
desks this year, as compared with 53,786 last year. The Calgary
Public School Board counts 48,279 students in its classrooms,
while at the same time last season there were 45,119. There are
10,569 pupils attending separate schools in the city. Last year there
were 8,667.16
By the end of the 1960s, little had changed in that new school infrastructure
was badly needed across Calgary. While there was need for expansion as early as the
late 1940s, these needs did not stop with the official end of the baby boom in 1964.
As the 1960s closed, this newspaper article detailed the existing school construction
and the anticipated system needs in the city.
Calgary’s ever-growing public school population is forcing school
board officials to provide within three years a record $33,000,000
worth of new schools and additions – 13 times as much school
construction as they needed just 12 years ago. With more than
3,200 additional students entering the Grade 1 classes each year,
the Public School Board is faced with providing 13 new schools
and 8 additions as soon as possible… The new schools required are
in addition to the nine new schools, 14 portable classrooms and 20
15
16
Amy von Heyking, Creating Citizens (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2006), 92.
“City School Population Up By 5,000,” The Calgary Herald, 19 September 1962, 38.
97
additions to existing schools the Public School Board currently has
under various stages of construction.17
Despite the ending of the baby boom in 1964, its reverberations continued to
be felt in the everyday realities as these youngest boomers were not entering
formal education institutions until 1969 or 1970.
Throughout the postwar period, some influential policy makers held specific
concepts and made recommendations on how the increasing number of young pupils
should be educated. Alberta educationists such as the University of Alberta’s
Professor Hardy argued that education for democracy did not mean that children
should be given the same schooling or the same courses. He recommended the
establishment of special classes for the gifted that would use more traditional
methods of instruction and a more rigorous academic curriculum.18 The school
curriculum, while always written by an elite, academic or professional, sometimes
imposed ideas about citizenship on schools, and at other times attempted to respond
to people’s concerns in the province.19 Everyday concerns ranged from programming
content, to quality of instruction, to streaming and ‘special’ classes. These issues
were not unique to this era by any means.
The Alberta government established the Cameron Commission in 1957 to
assess and recommend changes to the province’s approach to education. The final
report, released in 1959, contained more than 250 recommendations for the
development and improvement of education and school curricula in Alberta. The
recommendations focused on concerns as diverse as the pedagogy and merits of
17
Allan Battye, “School ‘Spiral’ Problem Grows,” The Calgary Herald, 3 February 1968, 1-2.
von Heyking, Creating Citizens, 95.
19
Ibid., 115.
18
98
progressive education, the beginnings of the space age, the frustration of business
with the supposed unsatisfactory skills of graduates and the dissatisfaction of
university groups with the alleged inadequacy of high school programs.20 The
Cameron Report recommended core subjects, highly specialized curriculum,
standardized testing, direct teaching methods, and citizenship training reflecting
many influences. Some aspects of the report were in line with the broadest outlines of
Dewey-inspired progressive education but it is too simplistic to characterize it as
either progressive or anti-progressive. It had elements of both. Alberta was not alone
in Canada in undertaking a major study of its education system. Between 1960 and
1970, every province in the country examined its systems of elementary, secondary
and post-secondary education.21 Alberta classrooms reflected both progressive and
anti-progressive (formalist) elements in the 1950s and 1960s.
The progressive tradition is associated directly with modernity. It began in the
early twentieth century and was represented first by American education philosopher
John Dewey. It has always been rooted in an institutional setting, has stressed both
the need to accommodate curriculum and teaching to modern stages of child
development, and the systematic integration of the student into broader society
through experiential learning. In the progressive tradition, education is seen as a
vehicle for limited social reform and for the broad dissemination of democratic
20
Nick Kach and Kas Mazurek, Exploring our Educational Past: Schooling in the Northwest
Territories and Alberta (Calgary: Detselig Enterprises, 1992), 204.
21
The Hall-Dennis report was the Ontario equivalent of the Cameron Commission and called for
sweeping educational reforms, R.D. Gidney, From Hope to Harris (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1999).
99
principles and practices.22 There was tremendous debate regarding progressive
education and it was not limited to one particular region of Canada. In 1953, Hilda
Neatby, a prominent member of the Royal Commission on National Development in
the Arts, Letters and Sciences (known by its more common name, the Massey
Commission),23 published So Little for the Mind, a scathing critique of Dewey and
American-influenced progressive approaches to education. Based on her own
experiences, and addressing all provincial education systems, she argued for a return
to more ‘traditional’ educational approaches. Her claims against progressive
approaches to education were an important part of the dialogue across Canada. The
majority of administrators and educators rejected her central position and her core
ideas that condemned pure egalitarianism and democracy in the classroom.
Nevertheless, some popular discourse as reflected in the media, and particularly from
the earliest years of the postwar period, reflected a healthy scepticism of the
implementation of progressive education tenets in Calgary classrooms in arguing that
“if Junior is courteous to the school janitor and isn’t shy, he will get a good mark on
his report card. And Calgary school officials consider such characteristics as
important as high marks in arithmetic, spelling, and the other school subjects.”24
Neatby’s objections certainly tapped into one stream of public consciousness that
was against progressive education.
Another lengthier editorial mocked some of progressive education’s central
features in the early 1950s. The editorial lamented the perceived lack of historical
22
This is a very basic rendering of progressive theories and methodologies that could take myriad
forms depending on the provincial jurisdiction, school board’s administration, individual principals,
changing curricula, and classroom teachers’ interpretations and personal beliefs.
23
Paul Litt, The Muses, The Masses, and the Massey Commission (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1992).
24
“New Report Cards Show Children’s ‘Attitudes’,” The Calgary Herald, 25 November 1950.
100
perspectives held by many citizens, and reflected in contemporary curricula that had
moved away from some of the ‘core’ subjects such as history and literature among
others. The editorial implied that ‘educated’ students produced by the current system
would not offer much to broader society. In another section not quoted here, the
editor stressed that today’s approach was also ahistorical in orientation. This piece
reflects what historian Amy von Heyking has noted, that prominent critics of
progressive education argued that, in trying to educate all children, schools had
developed programs that did not demand much from any of them.25 This Calgary
Herald editorial illustrates this commonly held position well in focusing on utility
and learning in traditional subjects.
The school is so busy developing what it chooses to call the child’s
personality that it has little time for book learning…We are
rejecting history, geography, language and literature…The present
educational system seems to imply that our age is the best of all
possible ages… But let me remind fathers and mothers that this is
the Age of the Common Man and while the Common Man has
never done anything much more remarkable than grumble about the
government, we can hardly expect children of today to receive
anything more than a Common Education.26
The two major Calgary daily newspapers in this era were the Calgary
Herald and The Albertan. While neither paper could be described as
moderate, The Albertan editorial tones, along with what it trumpeted in
many headlines, indicate overwhelmingly that it was much less progressive
than the Calgary Herald on most pertinent issues.
While there was palpable angst expressed by opinion shapers of such
editorials, questions remain regarding whether or not progressive tenets in education
25
26
von Heyking, Creating Citizens, 95.
Editorial, “A Common Education,” The Calgary Herald, 9 July 1951.
101
moved down to the actual classrooms, and whether or not young people experienced
them.27 For instance, corporal punishment, not part of progressive education theories,
remained in some suburban classrooms, late in the era. One interviewee described his
generalized experiences from sixties classrooms this way:
School was quite a disciplined situation. The strap was in vogue…I
never got it [as] I was one of those kids that avoided that kind of
thing. It was pretty [strict]; kind of, follow the rules. By the time
we got to junior high a little more open… I was in the
Matriculation Program of Honours group so we were pretty tight.
We had the same class for three years so you really got to know
them well; the good and the bad about that.28
Bruce mentioned some of the tensions of the time between progressive and
more traditional education practices, with the latter still focusing on discipline,
corporal punishment and pervasive everyday regulation. Towards the end of this
particular discussion he also stressed that divisions emerged by high school, not
necessarily along class lines, but along the lines of those students who were
university-bound and those who were not. Oftentimes, at least from his recollection,
the students who were not university-bound tended to be more immersed in the
emerging drug culture of the mid-sixties. It can be inferred that conformity and
regulating behaviours gained favour with some teachers in suburban classrooms. But
it must be stressed that everyday practices did not necessarily change despite
recommendations from educators. With the new cadre of administrators,
professionals such as psychologists, social workers and so forth, there were new tools
at the disposal of those leading schools in the 1950s and 1960s not only in Alberta,
27
Mona Gleason, “Disciplining the Student Body: Schooling and the Construction of
Canadian Children’s Bodies, 1930-1960,” History of Education Quarterly 41, no. 2 (Spring 2001):
196, 219.
28
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 28 July, 2011.
102
but across the country. High school guidance counsellors probed adolescent
personalities (along with intelligence) in schools across Canada and the United States
by the 1960s, and the findings were recorded in closed, permanent records.29
Historian Mona Gleason has noted that as in other modern institutions involved in
heightened surveillance, like prisons and hospitals, elementary, junior high, and
secondary schools were places in which young children and adolescents were
observed and classified, required to obey rules, measured in terms of their
relationship to specific standards, and directed to modify behaviours and physical
appearances.30
In some cases, progressive education was presented as a positive feature of
truly modern and ‘superior’ schools with the increased use of technology-driven
teaching aids, new architecture, and changes to traditional curricula.31 School
principals and vice principals were critical in shaping representations that came to
define the era in many ways. Their messages were placed prominently in yearbooks
and at times, principals and vice principals, wrote short essays directed at students
that defended some of the core values of traditional education. Many of these
principals, exclusively male in Calgary suburban and in non-suburban schools, had
been involved in the Canadian, British or American school systems for several
decades so there were some more traditional exhortations to work hard and persevere
in these messages. In most settings, principals were now being asked to oversee
hundreds of students and dozens of teachers while implementing more complex
systems and curricula than there had been in the interwar period when many of their
29
Martin L. Gross, “The Three Rs and P (for psyche),” Life, 21 September 1962, 11-14.
Gleason, “Disciplining the Student Body,” 194.
31
Ibid., 122.
30
103
teaching careers had begun. This particular yearbook message, directed at a wider
audience than just students, was the first principal’s message from the newly built
Branton Junior High School in Banff Trail. The qualities stressed by Borgal in this
Principal’s Message, and emphasized by many others, were relatively basic and
grounded in traditional teaching. There was a focus on personal development in the
form of good habits in the hopes of creating better citizens.
In both regular studies, and extra curricular activities you have set
up standards that will establish precedents for future years. I wish
to congratulate you upon your private effort toward the progress of
the school as a whole. Individually, your success in school can be
measured to a large degree by the attitudes and habits you have
established. I hope you have learned to be industrious, cooperative, self reliant, and dependable…Be regular and enthusiastic
in all your work and play. These character traits and habits will stay
with you and will be assets to you in any walk of life.32
It is clear that the goal of schooling, at least for this principal, was to
produce industrious, conscientious students for the capitalist workplace
above all else. There was an emphasis on the individual as opposed to
anything construed as ‘collective.’
In this same landmark 1957 yearbook, Branton school’s namesake, W.A.
Branton, echoed much of what Principal Borgal had expressed in his message. One
added emphasis was that these school years were not only important, but the most
important of young students’ lives. Again, this reinforces the counter-narrative that
emerged in both the archival records that I found, and in many oral history interviews
to a carefree, young suburban life without significant consequences for actions or
free from responsibilities and pressures. The appeals to individual achievement are
prominent again with hard work and discipline at the core of the message.
32
E.M. Borgal, “Principal’s Message,” The Branton Yearbook (1956-57), 2.
104
The future success of this school depends much on how well the
foundations are laid upon which a tradition for academic
attainment, a high standard of fair play and sportsmanship and a
worthy school spirit are engendered into the minds and hearts of the
student body…There is no substitute for hard work; there are no
short cuts…Apply self-discipline to the end that first things come
first…You are passing through the most important years of your
life.33
Another principal from a prominent Calgary high school (home to both innercity and suburban students during this time) also weighed in on these debates and set
up an interesting binary that pitted traditional academic studies versus Dewey’s
progressive recommendations. In fact, he seemed to argue that one style, the
traditional one, was academic, while the new progressive program was not. He
argued that students who fail in the more traditional forms of academic education did
so because the required rigour is beyond their efforts. Not included in this particular
excerpt is the reference to these discussions happening in a broader forum as well,
such as the popular press weighing in at times. While he wrote that most good
students would follow the path to university, he inferred that this pursuit was
utilitarian in nature.
Perhaps at no other time has there been such a searching enquiry
into education as today…The controversy has raged mainly over
whether education should follow traditional academic lines,
developed and proven through the ages, or along progressive lines
advocated by Dewey…The staff of Central High believes in
academic education…I know you students believe in academic
education. You have selected Central with its traditional program
because you wanted the best our schools could offer. Some of you
have faltered when the going has become tough, for it is hard work
to discipline and train the mind but the majority have persisted and
I know the future will reward you.34
33
34
W.A. Branton, “Message From Mr. Branton,” The Branton Yearbook (1956-57), 4.
Principal G.W. Foster, “Foreword,” Central High School Analecta (1954).
105
In Alberta, as it was across Canada, 1950s and 1960s curricula focused on
imparting the values of utility and hard work; the public, politicians and educators
continued to discuss creating ‘good’ future citizens.35 The other virtues that educators
mentioned ad nauseum, such as responsibility, freedom, persistence and reliability,
were at most turns, associated with ‘successful’ and ‘pertinent’ employment. Most
educators failed to discuss qualities like creativity, personal initiative, and
independent thought.36 It was within the context of the Cold War that these qualities
were emphasized, and then deployed. Education in Canada had to be seen in all ways
as superior, since it was both perceived and believed to be one of Canada’s ‘national
resources,’ and a critical investment in the competitive and ideologically volatile
postwar world.37 Immediately following the end of World War II there was a
profound change at a macro level, and this had a very chilling effect on the education
system as a result. A new enemy had been identified and targeted.
As early as the late 1940s, the shift in popular discourse from anti-fascism to
anti-communism was underway, and the Alberta’s Teachers Association was
compelled to declare publicly that young children and adolescents were not being
exposed to known communist teachers in classrooms. With the overarching fear of
the spread of communism, the criticisms of the practice of ‘authoritarianism’ by
teachers had an added imperative.38 The Albertan newspaper, the more conservative
of the two Calgary dailies, featured the bold headline “No Communist Teachers on
Staff, A.T.A. Says” and accompanying text in 1950:
35
von Heyking, Creating Citizens, 112; Neil Sutherland, “The Triumph of ‘Formalism’: Elementary
Schooling in Vancouver from the 1920s to the 1960s,” BC Studies 69, no.70 (1986): 175-210.
36
Von Heyking, Creating Citizens, 113.
37
Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal, 120.
38
Ibid., 127.
106
Eric C. Ansley, general secretary-treasurer of the Alberta Teachers
Association, has denied suggestions that there are Communists in
Calgary’s teaching staff and on the Faculty of Education staff both
in Calgary and Edmonton…Mr. Ansley said that to the best of his
knowledge there are no Communists employed. This was in reply
to a report that the Calgary Young Progressive Conservative
Association had passed a resolution to that effect in Calgary.39
What is interesting about this is that the response was necessitated following
accusations from an association comprised of young Albertans, who in this
case would have been in their late teens and twenties. The paradigm shift
away from anti-fascism to anti-communism seemed to have a swift effect on
certain young people in short order in the province. But this use of education
and young people in the war against communism was not isolated to
Calgary as other prominent educationists promoted the importance of
education in this ‘battle.’40
Other students in the postwar era were more than willing to discuss and
critique shortcomings in the education system. In much of the adult discussions, there
was an emphasis on healthy bodies as much as healthy minds as ways to distinguish
Canadians from potential enemies and their way of life in the post-World War II
period. As interviewees emphasized time and time again, communism and the Soviet
Union were cast in direct opposition to the relative freedoms enjoyed in the Canadian
democratic system. The emphasis on responsibility, utility, and hard work was
attached easily to the benefits of physical activity and sport. However, not all young
people accepted this emphasis wholeheartedly and actively. Young people
questioned both the curriculum content and the pedagogical focus that they were
39
“No Communist Teachers On Staff, A.T.A. Says,” The Albertan, 25 September 1950.
David Spurgeon, “Teachers Love Worldly Talks, But Parents Spoil Social Life,” The Globe and
Mail, 15 August 1958, 13.
40
107
experiencing. This can be read as an anti-activity statement, but I think it also reflects
a genuine resistance to the pedagogy of the times.
There are many factors in today’s society which indicate that the
mind is fast losing in the battle of brawn versus brains…Mind Over
Matter is a statement which is becoming quite difficult to believe as
far as the acceptance of the diligent student against the outstanding
athlete is concerned…The duty of any school is to exercise and
train the mind, rather than to train and exercise the body. There is
little benefit in the exercises in which one participates in the
physical education…One can learn physical fitness at home where
it should be taught. Sport does have its place in school, but only as
an extra-curricular activity.41
In this 1964 piece “Is School Spirit Necessary?” resistance to being
considered a ‘bad patriot’ and ‘lacking national spirit’ for not participating in or
supporting school sports events, is front and centre. School-based sports and
recreation activities were often cast as a critical way to maintain healthy bodies in the
increasingly competitive Cold War world. There was also discussion of ‘democratic
principles,’ ‘citizen’ and ‘patriot.’ This author also pointed out that many high school
students would be entering adulthood the following year by virtue of their age and
that many of these activities were foolish for those on the edge of being adults
regardless of actions. The editorial ends with the declaration that young people need
to be treated as individuals and emerging adults with complex interests and qualities.
Most of us come here to be educated, not to be bellowed at for our
lack of school spirit…The school is run on democratic principles
and… that being so, is a citizen of that state called a bad patriot and
lacking national spirit because he does not attend football games,
join the curling league or bowl with the bowling team? Some
people have never seen a football or basketball game, never held a
curling broom or a bowling ball but they are not called bad
citizens…We are now “young adults” and many have interests in
41
“Causa Belli,” The Aberhart Advocate, vol 2, no. 9, May 1960, 5.
108
things other than school clubs…We are individuals with varied
interests and should NOT be massed together as a group having
stereotyped avocations.42
There are some age-old arguments being made here by teenagers on the
cusp of adulthood who see themselves as something much more than
children, already engaging in work and driving cars for example. There is
also a tone of defiance that they should not be lumped together as a mass of
adolescents.
By the early 1970s, adolescents continued to seek answers regarding
education and its meanings. This student expressed some reservations about an
education system, and its adherents, focused more on the results (often being the
right job and material gains), rather than the pursuit of broader knowledge for
knowledge’s sake. It also reflects some of the sexist language still in wide use with
men assumed to be the future leaders.
The average person…does not think of education as being the quest
for knowledge and truth but rather the medium by which a person
is able to acquire material things…One of the fondest expressions
of the teacher is, ‘Oh! You don’t have to bother with that, they
never ask about in the finals.’ When teachers of today take that
attitude, what can you expect of the leading men of tomorrow?43
Within the context of the Cold War and its widespread effects, progressive
education had a very real influence on a large portion of education curricula for
young students in Calgary’s suburbs. Popular discourse still offered critiques of what
was and was not being taught in the classroom much as it had in the 1950 editorial
presented earlier. Solutions to identified problems seemed straightforward and
42
43
Editor, “Is School Spirit Necessary?” The Aberhart Advocate 6, no. 3, January 1964, 1.
Laura Fowler, “Education Editorial,” The Lead Balloon 1, no. 1, December 1970, 2.
109
obvious in this 1968 Calgary Herald editorial “Why Can’t Johnny Read?” that
announced recent Calgary Public School Board announcements.
By September 1969, a developmental reading program will be
included in the curriculum of all junior high and possibly in senior
high schools as well… By high school, students should be able to
read easily and intelligently. Some can. But there are others who
cannot. Indeed, an estimated 30 per cent of students entering Grade
7 have serious reading deficiencies…Where the school system
should be concentrating its attention is at the elementary level
where it is quite obvious that too many children are not being
taught to read properly.44
While this is an op-ed piece and does not necessarily represent the views of
all, it can be inferred that elements in the general public, questioned
progressive education tenets and wanted to see traditional teachings be
emphasized in Alberta classrooms as early as elementary school. These
discussions were not isolated to Alberta.45
By the end of the 1960s, young suburbanites were also offering sophisticated
critiques and analyses of their Cold War classroom experiences. While not endorsing
some of these new practices outright, there was an obvious curiosity about the new
practices used in some contemporary Canadian classrooms. It lobbied for a learning
experience that would operate outside the bounds of the classroom.
…All over Canada small isolated phenomena known as “free
schools” are popping up, demonstrating that there is, perhaps, a
more joyful alternative to the academic grind. A free school is a
place where a child is given freedom of choice as to what he will
learn, and how and when he will learn it. He even has the option to
decide not to learn at all. It is a place where teachers and students,
unhampered by regulations and restrictions, can let their curiosity
lead them to the slums, to the zoo, to the courthouse, to the
slaughterhouse, any place where they can probe deeply into matters
44
“Why Can’t Johnny Read?,” The Calgary Herald, 3 May 1968, 4.
C. Tower, “Is Your Child Wasting Eight Years of His Life in Today’s Primary School?,”
Maclean’s, vol 83, Sep 1970, 29-32.
45
110
of great interest…Admittedly, in a society smitten by the Protestant
work ethic, the idea that learning can and should be fun is a bit hard
to take.46
This piece also took a swipe at Protestantism and its lingering effects on
pedagogy in classrooms
There is a general impression that the education system as a whole was
constantly expanding and more inclusive than ever during the postwar era; but this
was not the case in all aspects for all age groups. Representative of others in the
province, for many years in this period, young suburbanites were not able to attend
kindergarten in a public school in Banff Trail, with no appropriate funding from the
provincial government as outlined in this Calgary Herald article. It noted that the
Calgary public school board would no longer fund “immature” children for
kindergarten beginning in 1956:
[It] was based on results of surveys of Canadian and U.S. school
systems and upon recommendations from Home and School
Associations and staff teachers…To gather information on school
admittance, the committee sent out questionnaires to 20 school
superintendents in the U.S. and Canada… Alberta cities, it appears
are the only cities in the survey without kindergartens in the school
system. Calgary, up to the fall of 1954, was the only centre in
Alberta where kindergartens were operated as part of the system.47
This also reinforces that other school systems, even outside of Canada,
could, and did influence decisions made in the city. All schools, regardless
of geographical location, were part of a larger whole in some ways, although
this did not mean that certain communities, such as Banff Trail residents,
could not take direct actions as well.
46
D. Hunt, “Free Schools: The System of the Future?,” The Aberhart Advocate 9, no. 8, 6 February
1969, 7.
47
“School Entry Facts Outlined,” The Calgary Herald, 15 October 1955, 1, 2.
111
Kindergarten schooling did not stop with the end of direct provincial funding
as communities cobbled together programs in order to help educate these youngest of
students. Many believed that this early childhood education was critical in preparing
these young children for more formal education. Provincial funding for kindergartens
did return in the early 1970s. Banff Trail was one community that did implement a
program in the interim and a former teacher remembered that she had 25 to 30
students and that the community supplied equipment. She taught from 1963 to 1971
and the community kindergarten closed in the early seventies when the province
decided to offer kindergarten across the province.48
Education For the “Gifted”
Other forms of special education were hot-button topics in the postwar
period. However, special education, at least in the public school system, did not
include almost any allowances for those youngsters with severe learning
challenges.49 The concept of streaming within schools and individual classrooms has
been an ongoing debate since the early twentieth century in Canada. Within the
broader context of the Cold War classroom, analysis of special education, namely
education for gifted students, in the postwar suburbs is pertinent. Debates over
identifying and nurturing gifted children, continues to engender debate among
Canadian teachers, administrators, academics and parents.50 While I use the term
48
Daisy Dancey, “The Banff Trail Kindergarten,” in From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks, 43, 44.
J.E. Bowers, “Study of Children With Unusual Difficulty in Reading and Arithmetic,” Canadian
Education and Research Digest, vol 4, December 1964, 273-278 and Vera C. Pletsch, Not Wanted in
the Classroom: Parent Associations and the Education of Trainable Retarded Children in Ontario,
1947-1969 (London: Althouse Press, 1997).
50
The theme of gifted education emerged mainly during my oral history interviews when I determined
how many of my interviewees had been accelerated in their early elementary years. The ones who
experienced special education were accelerated, and were part of some type of clustering and
streaming as well.
49
112
gifted to describe these students, many of them did not think of themselves in that
way, nor were they necessarily labelled as such by parents, teachers, or
administrators in Calgary’s suburban schools. While the term was beginning to be
used across North America during this era, its common usage was not as widespread
as it is today. While teachers were important in the process of identifying children for
acceleration and streaming in this period, they often administered intelligence tests to
determine this, and this process privileged psychological expert’s knowledge over
their own judgements.51 While one interviewee recalled his mother being involved
with the decision to hold him back in grade seven because he was not ready to move
on to grade eight for various reasons,52 not one of the former students recalled their
parents discussing their accelerating or streaming with them, their teachers, or
principal.53 In fact, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and beyond in many Canadian
jurisdictions, information about a student’s I.Q. was inaccessible to parents and
guardians.54 The themes of gifted education, and memories of being chosen as one
part of special education emerged during several oral history interviews.
Standardized policies and practices associated with gifted programming were
not features in Calgary’s public education system in the postwar era. As noted
previously, while influential discourses were circulating more broadly based on
theories and commission findings by the provincial government, what was enacted at
51
Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal, 128. This was not standardized throughout the period though as
some students were not administered intelligence tests in Grade 1 for instance and were instead
accelerated based on their ability to master early required tasks and skills by teacher.
52
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 October 2011.
53
This does not mean it did not occur. It is significant that it was not recalled by one student and
stands in stark contrast to today’s methodologies for the Gifted and Talented Education program run
by the Calgary Board of Education that requires parents to fill out an extensive application for their
children to be considered for the gifted program.
54
Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal,129. Only teachers and school officials were able to access this
information.
113
the classroom level was oftentimes something much less than official, if at all. As
was the case with education at its broadest levels, links between the Cold War, gifted
education, and gifted students can be made in the context of these students’ creative
importance as they aged. There are countless references to this in the 1950s and
1960s academic literature, with one article offering that, “a gifted child is an
awesomely powerful force, especially a creatively gifted one. It has given us our
great advances in scientific discovery and medicine. It has also given us war,
plunder, and the atomic bomb. The creative energies of gifted children need to be
activated and guided early, or else they become virtually extinct or even
dangerous.”55 In other words, the harnessing and directing of this youthful giftedness
by Western society was necessary, or else the associated power could be put to
dangerous uses which might not align with a market-based, democratic society. We
can extend this to conclude that the concern with identifying gifted students can be
loosely linked to Cold War concerns about keeping up with Soviet progress.56
Most of the existing scholarship on gifted education does not integrate young
voices from the past despite the importance of their views in understanding their
experiences intellectually, socially, and emotionally as exceptional students. In the
literature on gifted education and students from the late 1950s, there are limited firsthand accounts from gifted students. One article includes several quotes from young
students that emphasize the fun they had in various programs and the enjoyment of
the social aspects of their new relationships with other gifted children. 57
55
E. Paul Torrance, “Adventuring in Creativity,” Gifted Child Quarterly 7, no. 4 (Autumn 1963): 87.
Angelo Patri, “Can’t Ignore Arts for Science,” The Globe and Mail, 21 February 1958, 11.
57
Joseph L. French, “Reactions of Gifted Elementary Pupils,” Gifted Child Quarterly 2, no. 4 (Fall
1958): 69-70.
56
114
Interestingly, a large majority of the oral history participants viewed their
acceleration and enrichment as a positive experience on several levels, and some of
them in a very profound and meaningful way. One informant offered this when
describing his childhood briefly in the context of gifted streaming in Calgary’s
suburban classrooms, emphasizing that he seemed to feel more at home with an older
cohort than he did with his own age group.
I thought it was amazing, it was like wow, I’m with the big kids
now…I would just have hated to have had to associate with the
kids that were in the year behind me…I felt way more mature than
kids that were even a year older than me when I was growing up so
I thought it was great. I felt very special. It was a nice present.58
Trying to define giftedness has remained challenging for educational
professionals, academics and parents. It is like trying to define other complex human
characteristics such as love, beauty or justice. Both current and past literature
contains several synonyms for giftedness, including bright, advanced, prodigy,
exceptional, superior, creative, special, genius, and so forth. The existence of so
many descriptive terms, holding so many different shades of meaning, demonstrates
how elusive and wide-ranging the concept of giftedness really is. In simple terms,
students who are gifted demonstrate significantly advanced cognitive abilities.59
Within the Calgary Board of Education, gifted learners today are identified by
the coordinated efforts of the school personnel, the child's parents, and an assessment
by a psychologist. This team approach was not always common practice, with
parents in the postwar era not being the instigating force that they can be today. What
58
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
“Students Who Are Gifted,” Alberta Education, accessed 1 July 2012,
http://education.alberta.ca/media/1234009/13_ch10%20gifted.pdf
59
115
has not changed significantly in public schools is that programming for students with
special education needs builds on, rather than supplants the provincial curriculum—
the knowledge, skills and attitudes that a student is expected to learn at specific grade
levels. The content, learning activities and instruction may need to be adjusted to
meet an individual student’s ability level and learning needs; however this has not
always been the case. Additionally, the memory of acceleration was not a
universalized one for oral history informants. The unsaid was much greater than what
was recalled for one interviewee, as the sum of what he had to say was that
“elementary school was Banff Trail [Elementary School]. I skipped grade four,…that
was interesting,…[and] a few friends stand out.”60 That was all he shared in talking
about his acceleration and what it may have meant to him.61 Later in his interview, he
did mention his schooling implicitly when talking about the intellectual challenges
and support he received at home from his parents and siblings in both his formal and
informal education on a wide range of topics. There were others that similarly almost
brushed off the experience and wondered what might have become of many of the
students who had been deemed as exceptional in the early stages of their formal
educations.
As with the majority of interviewees who talked about their acceleration and
enrichment, Doug had much to say, including the fact that he ended up attending a
different school than other family members because the 1960s Matriculation Program
of Honours program was not offered at all junior and senior high schools in
60
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 5 Dec 2011.
I did not ask any specific questions about gifted education, acceleration, enrichment and so forth.
What emerged from interviewees was within the context of questions about what stood out from their
years in school. Some interviewees had much more detail to provide during our sessions.
61
116
Calgary,62
They pushed me ahead quickly and got me through three grades in
two years. Out of my class…three of us that did [that] rather than
going to Branton, where all the rest of my family went. I ended up
going over to Senator Patrick Burns…So I went from grade seven
to grade eleven with the same class of kids. When I went to school
at Aberhart a few of them dropped off…and went to other high
schools…The thing I particularly remember about that is that there
was quite a bit of camaraderie among those people despite all of the
kinds of conflicts that sometimes arise with kids in school…There
was quite a lot of friendship between those people that…going to
new grades all the time wouldn’t have experienced.63
It is noteworthy that he chose the wording, “pushed me through in two years versus
three” in describing his first two years of elementary school. There was no sense that
this made him uncomfortable or had been taxing in a tangible way. He never
indicated that anyone outside of the school administration was involved in the
decision-making. In particular, he did not seem to be involved in the decision about
acceleration, or in entering the Matriculation Program of Honours. Doug also
emphasized the collegiality, as did others, among this peer group versus the potential
competition that one might anticipate within a group that likely was more driven
academically than some students in their larger cohort. He stated that the smaller
group staying together actually eased tensions that were present in some junior high
experiences of peers and other family members for instance. This is part of a
continuing methodology for educating gifted students known as cluster groupings in
which small groups of students receive advanced instruction in reading, mathematics
and other content, or in some instances, work on alternate assignments. In the
62
This was not unique to Calgary in this period, nor is it in the second decade of the 2000s given the
current funding shortfalls for public education programming. In several North American school
districts, of varying sizes, all special education programs cannot be offered in every school.
63
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011.
117
literature on acceleration from the late 1950s and early 1960s, this topic was
broached repeatedly. While there is no formal consensus in these articles, there are a
number of arguments made in support of children being promoted in groups for the
broader purposes of positive social adjustment.64
When one informant discussed the Cold War and some broader events, he
also emphasized the enrichment he experienced by being with a group of students
that expressed a greater interest in world events than being with other students who
may not have shared similar interests. One component in the multilayered definition
of gifted children both today and historically, is that many of them express greater
empathy and a connection with the broader world. They possess a greater desire to
connect with events and people beyond their immediate everyday lives. In the
academic literature on giftedness, streaming, cluster grouping and so forth in the late
1950s and early 1960s, programs were often cited for the benefit of the introduction
of young students with high capacity and special intellectual requirements to one
another.65 When asked a follow-up about discussing some of the major historical
events from the 1960s, Doug responded with,
[We discussed these], probably in high school, and [they were]
probably quite extensive discussions. I remember a couple of
teachers who would once a month, sort of throw it open for
discussion; we’re not doing math today, we’re going to talk about
what’s going on in the world. Particularly with the group of people
I was with, they were all very, very clever and very attuned to what
was going on out there.66
64
Rt. Rev. Clarence Elwell, “Acceleration of the Gifted,” Gifted Child Quarterly 2, no. 2 (Spring
1958): 22.
65
French, “Reactions of Gifted Elementary Pupils,” 70; E. Szulner, “Geniuses? Why the Woods Were
Full of Them,” Maclean’s, vol 74, 7 October 1961, 26-27, 61-63.
66
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011.
118
Again, the social aspect of the cluster grouping is emphasized at the end of
this quotation and expanded upon by another interviewee. In much of the formal
literature on giftedness found today, the social or emotional benefits are not
highlighted to the same degree, while this is something stressed time and again by
these former students. Lesley described how,
at Banff Trail [Elementary] there were pretty good teachers, it
helped very much. I accelerated, so in grade one they took ten of us
and kind of hived us off and at Christmas moved us into grade
two…We were this little experimental group. We would be in a
class of kids that were a year older than us. In elementary school it
was awesome. In junior high it was tough to be a year younger. But
by high school it didn’t matter again. In elementary school I was
part of a group of ten and I think there was one kid that moved
away…of course nobody could join us.67
The exclusivity of the accelerated group appealed to her, along with the fact
that they often studied separately from the larger group of young students. What she
and others did not discuss in any detail, was whether or not they bonded closely with
other students, who were not identified as exceptional and placed into special classes.
She goes on to mention that they were part of a larger ‘experiment,’ and how that
exceptionality was positive, at least from the perspective of childhood. With the next
set of memories, she discussed the emotional and academic effects of changing the
program by her junior high years when the streaming was stopped. She also
expressed some questions about how much planning there really was in the program
design in the late 1960s and early 1970s when she was part of the acceleration and
67
Lesley Hayes, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 26 July 2011.
119
streaming. What to do with these bright children was part of larger discussions across
the country,68
I think it was something that they did for a few years in the school
board… [They were not certain about] what do we do with these
kids that by week three of grade one are going, are you kidding
me? Okay, I’ve learned that, now what…It made for a tight little
group…because we were different and they kept us together. But at
junior high…I went from being one of nine of us… to being one of
125…I remember in particular our teacher in grade five and six (we
had the same one) would just feed you whatever you wanted to
do…and then get to grade seven and they are saying we need you
to write two pages, and I’m like okay what if I do twenty and
typewrite them. I remember handing the first one in grade seven
and the teacher going, ‘holy crap what do I do with this?’ So it was
different.69
Lesley emphasized the feelings associated with the quality of the schoolwork that
was expected from these students when they were in the more academically
challenging streams. The validation that she received from working hard, a theme
that we have seen emphasized throughout this era, is palpable with teachers
recognizing her efforts. At other times, she simply challenged herself. She was very
open in talking about how the lowered expectations of junior high led her to have
lower expectations of both herself and the curriculum as time wore on.
Another interviewee expressed some relatively common feelings for many
gifted children about identifying with older children, often from a very young age.
This interviewee stressed that being moved to a new cohort had positive social and
emotional effects versus the rigidity inherent in most public school systems of
chronological age dictating your grade for twelve to fourteen years,
I skipped a grade. I did the acceleration thing, which I think they no
longer do in school. But I skipped grade four because I think they
68
69
T. Ferguson, “How to Help Kids Who Are Too Bright,” Maclean’s, vol 78, 1 December 1965, 3-4.
Lesley Hayes, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 26 July 2011.
120
took about ten or twelve out of us out of school because we were
superior or something. I don’t know. We went basically from grade
three to grade five which was pretty cool for me because suddenly I
was with older kids. I spent the rest of my schooling with older
kids.70
He also mentions, that from a childhood perspective, little was explained to the
students despite the fact that all of them would likely have benefited from a deeper
understanding of the acceleration and what it might mean to them academically,
emotionally, and socially. His ability to identify with older students is something that
was identified as early as the 1950s in research on gifted children which argued that
studies had demonstrated that gifted children were often physically and socially more
advanced than their chronological cohort where they would normally be placed.71
It is important to realize that there were thoughtful teenagers who had grave
concerns about the quality and structure of Alberta’s education system. But not all
student voices were in unison. This editorial from the Aberhart Advocate was highly
critical of the education system, as the writer had experienced it as a student. The
thrust of the argument is that most classroom learning demanded rote memorization
versus critical thinking skills that would lead to a higher level of intellectual
maturity,
Philosophy is the basic problem of the younger generation. The
children of Sartre, Coca Cola and roll-on Ban just don’t really
know where they are going. All the institutions seem to be
degenerating… As usual, the educational system is largely at fault.
Philosophical excursions are for the most part absent, or
discouraged, and the pressures of a mark oriented [sic] system
curtail self motivated [sic] thought and study…It’s about time at
least some programs became more creatively organized and less
directed towards the memorization-regurgitation pattern. People are
70
71
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
Elwell, “Acceleration of the Gifted,” 21.
121
not memory banks, and those who are trained as such will probably
be put out of action by automation.72
Many questions remain unanswered about these forms of streaming and
cluster grouping, starting with the long-term effects of these alternative education
methodologies on both the childhood and adult lives of these chosen students.
Integrating these voices from the past helps us to understand better their experiences,
intellectually, socially, and emotionally as exceptional students. It also brings
additional understanding to the history of education in the postwar period. These
participants viewed their acceleration and its corresponding enrichment as a positive
experience intellectually, socially, and emotionally, some of them in a very
meaningful way. Yet there were loud voices of dissent that did not believe that the
streaming of gifted children would lead to positive results for society as a whole.73
The issue of religion in the classroom was another contentious topic for many in the
postwar period.
Religion in Cold War Classrooms
Discussion around faith(s), religion and education was also prominent in the
postwar era. Progressive education, as understood by some in the 1950s and 1960s,
was considered amoral because it was irreligious and rejected the notion that the aim
of education was to walk with God.74 While some Canadians, of all ages, remained
fervent in their religious beliefs and practices, ties to formal church institutions grew
weaker for many young people across the country. Alberta had a strong element of
72
“Editorial,” The Aberhart Advocate 11, no. 9, 19 February 1969.
“Russians Not Ahead of Canadian Pupils, U.S. Expert Asserts,” The Globe and Mail, 6 November
1961, 5.
74
von Heyking, Creating Citizens, 96.
73
122
religion in everyday life and politics with the Social Credit Party staying in power
from 1935 through 1971. Although a relatively diverse group of people was involved
in its founding, its founder, William ‘Bible Bill’ Aberhart, had a tremendous
influence on the party and the province as a whole.75 In this context, and with
increasing secularization in curricula and classroom practices, some parents came to
resent this new education. Certain elements of a generational schism are evident in
this 1968 letter to the editor in the Calgary Herald. This mother of a William
Aberhart High School student addressed other parents directly and expressed grave
concerns about late sixties pedagogy and the powerful influence of the secularizing,
progressive suburban classroom and the extra-curricular activities of the time,
Are you aware of how the teachers have made going to church and
believing the Bible as foolish sentiment? Did you attend the play,
Inherit the Wind?...Is this what you want your boy or girl to learn at
school? I don’t. We spend hours teaching our children to obey God,
live by the precepts of the Bible, obey parents. Our school spend
[sic] days breaking down our efforts, destroying the faith they have
in God and our Savior, the Lord Jesus and the truth of the Bible
because they have that 35 hours a week to indoctrinate their ungodly theories.76
Students also placed themselves into this larger conversation. This student
newspaper editorial on religious teachings in schools appeared a few years previous
to the Calgary Herald parent letter, reflecting elements of the progressive teachings
of the time. Students once again demanded to be considered as individuals with
distinct and complex needs. A ‘one size fits all approach’ to religion and religious
training was rejected on several levels,
75
Alvin Finkel, The Social Credit Phenomenon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989); Janine
Stingel, Social Discredit: Anti-Semitism, Social Credit and the Jewish Response (Montreal: McGillQueen’s UP, 2000).
76
A Mother, “Letter to the Editor,” Calgary Herald, reprinted in The Aberhart Advocate, vol 1, no. 6,
December 1968, 6.
123
One of the most pertinent subjects of the day, a subject upon which
students’ attention is directed in this issue is to the question of
whether or not religious training should be given in our public
schools. We say no! Religious training is a highly personal matter,
a matter which is the business of the individual…To teach religion
in school is wrong, both morally and legally…Must religion be a
cut and dried thing, confined to the pages of a textbook, and the
interpretation of a single teacher?77
Leaders in the education of young Catholic students (in Banff Trail, high
school students attended St. Francis by the mid-1960s) did not seem to have an
unending faith in the church and its pedagogy. In this brief excerpt from a lecture by
Father O’Byrne, he offered a more holistic approach to education that may have
included additional secular learning in stating that,
In spite of the high hope for the influence of the schools, it was
becoming evident that the school can’t initiate what isn’t in the
home. The school can fortify and help. The home is still the
important factor…Maybe children of separate schools should at
some periods attend other schools where they might get a broader
view of the community.78
The suburban home, similar to schools, did not exist in a vacuum. There were larger
processes circulating that influenced these institutions greatly, as well as the
everyday lives of younger children and teenagers. These lives were not
uncomplicated and defined by non-stop bliss. In fact, it was a challenging time for
both children and adolescents on several levels.
The Cold War, Children & Adolescents
The 1950s and 1960s, and in particular, the late sixties, were periods of great
social change despite the arguments that for many, and in particular, middle- and
77
Editors, “Should Religion Be Taught in School,” The Aberhart Advocate 3, no. 4, December 1960,
2.
78
Educational Progress Club of Calgary, “Minutes of Meeting,” Nov 1966, Educational Progress Club
of Calgary fonds, M8874, box 1, file 1, Glenbow Archives.
124
upper middle- class young peoples, this was a time marked by a comparatively
carefree existence.79 Most representations indicate that children and adolescents were
either shielded or blissfully unaware of the machinations of war and the growth of
the North American military-industrial complex during the twenty-five years
following the end of the Second World War.80 The overarching societal concerns
focused on the perceived threat of communism and the concomitant threat of nuclear
war brought home by Cold War-inspired events. The archival record from schools
reflects, and oral history informants from the suburb also recalled, with some
vividness, the ongoing discussions and longstanding impact of both the First and
Second World Wars on their everyday experiences as children and adolescents.
In its simplest terms, the Cold War refers to the cool diplomatic relations, yet
never direct combat, between the U.S.S.R. and its allies, versus the United States and
its allies.81 Canada’s position was based on its historical, political, economic, and
cultural ties to both the United States and the United Kingdom, coupled with its
fundamental opposition to the communist Soviet regime. There were several key
events that marked the Cold War. They included the Gouzenko Affair (1945), the
Korean War (1950-1953), the launchings of Sputnik & Explorer (1957), the U2 spy
plane shot down over the USSR (1960), the Bay of Pigs invasion (1961), and the
79
While the efforts of many young activists, particularly university-aged, are well documented in the
historical record in Canada, I would argue that the exploration of the thoughts, feelings and nascent
political leanings of pre-adolescent and early adolescent persons has been limited. For some limited
discussion of this younger cohort see Doug Owram, Born at the Right Time (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1996). Young people and children were depicted in quite uncomplicated ways in
influential television shows such as I Love Lucy, The Ozzie and Harriet Show and Father Knows Best.
80
While there are references to issues for young suburban children and adolescents in Crestwood
Heights for instance, these are normally concerned with mental hygiene, familial concerns, and
psychological maladjustment. Again, political awareness regarding communism, the bomb, and the
Cold War is limited to older adolescents versus the young peoples I focus on here.
81
For one of the best accounts of the earliest years of the Cold War in Canada see Gary Marcuse, Cold
War Canada: The Making of a National Insecurity State, 1945-1957 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1994).
125
Vietnam War (1959-1975). As Reginald Whitaker and Gary Marcuse note, the home
front was essential to the prosecution of the Cold War, because domestic support for
the use of taxes and other resources for rearmament, diplomatic, and military
commitments, had to be prioritized and sustained.82
The H-bomb surface testing by both sides of the Cold War from 1945 through
the early sixties contributed to an atmosphere of an ever-present threat of nuclear
devastation for many suburban children and adolescents.83 It was not only educators
and state officials who made anti-communist education part of their social agenda.
As Whitaker and Marcuse argue, anti-communism was realized through intervention
in the NFB, labour unions, and many other civil society organizations. NFB
filmstrips and films, of course, were widely used in Canadian schools so this would
have shaped what children could see or hear about the Soviet Union. Also, many
women’s volunteer organizations took up the cause. As Katie Pickles points out, the
IODE, which had previously been concerned with immigration and ‘race,’ turned its
primary attention to anti-communist education in the postwar period. So too did other
women’s groups – also traditionally involved with children’s education – ranging
from social democratic to conservative in their orientation.84
The following article from a 1955 Calgary high school newspaper conveys
what many young people were experiencing in various media in terms of the Cold
82
Whitaker and Marcuse, Cold War Canada, 6.
Ibid., 364. The authors note that Canadians seemed to have embraced (not necessarily
wholeheartedly though) the bomb and the possibility of nuclear war. They are referencing an adult
perspective though as demonstrated throughout this chapter, young suburbanites were not necessarily
supportive of the bomb and its potentialities.
84
Katie Pickles, Female Imperialism and the National Identity: Imperial Order Daughters of the
Empire (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2009); Brian Thorn, "Visions of the New World Order: Women
and Gender in Radical and Reactionary Movements in Post-World War II Western Canada” (PhD
diss., Trent University, 2006); Gary Kinsman, et al., Whose National Security?: Canadian State
Surveillance and the Creation of Enemies (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2000).
83
126
War and more specifically, A-bomb testing in the United States. It doesn’t state so
explicitly but it is an interpretation of another account of these events (the writer was
not on site for the testing). It is largely descriptive, does not offer any sustained
analysis of the developments, and at some points, is flippant in its commentary and
terminology; however it offers insight into how young people interpreted these
events with some humour and obvious interest in what was going on in the larger
world,
There were radiomen, reporters, television operators, contingents of
the Canadian Army and some ordinary public spectators allowed on
the scene. All these people arrived on the cold windy Yucca Flats
in Nevada the day before the blast was schedule…Most personnel
were so overjoyed at being allowed to see an Atomic blast that not
one complaint was heard…When the bomb was dropped, at 5:30
a.m., a brilliant flash illuminated the area for miles around,
followed by a sudden surge of heat. When contact was made with
the closest trench, the spectators there were quite disgruntled,
because after flying dirt and rock, blown into the air by the bomb
has landed on their helmets, a cloud of dust had surrounded them,
so preventing them from seeing anything.85
While I found no evidence of the building of any Banff Trail bomb shelters,
the emotion expressed by several oral history participants when talking about the
Cold War was palpable at several turns, particularly when they discussed the fears
associated with war. Bruce recalled the adversarial nature of the war and that there
was recognition that the Soviet Union was something to be feared,
That was a huge influence…the Soviet Union, they were the
enemy…[and] represented kind of the opposition. You had to be
careful about what you said about them, that kind of thing.
Certainly in the 60s it was us against them. [We were] right with
the Americans all the way.86
85
86
“A Damp Squib,” Central Collegiate Weeper, (1955).
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, July 28, 2011.
127
Not every young child or adolescent experienced the broader, shared events in
similar ways. Much is shared in childhood but individual children often report a wide
variety of personal experiences owing to age, class, gender, and ‘race.’
Suburban children and youth engaged with and used several forms of military
imagery, material culture, disciplining practices and play within their bounded space
(schools, streets, homes, parks and unsupervised sites) throughout the postwar
period. Teachers, administrators, and school curricula reflected the Cold War’s
influence on the lives of students both inside and outside the classroom. While I
uncovered much of this in the archival records, it was during my oral history
fieldwork that this theme was revealed more fully. This fieldwork with oral history
informants offered a profound and meaningful change in my understanding of this
history through a new dialogue. It involved a conversation which reflected the fact I
was not merely researching ‘sources.’ What was reinforced time and again, was how
limited in meaning the written record was without the special dimension that the
memories of interviewees brought to bear on historical documents.
As oral historians, it is vital to note that the memories recalled consist of very
personal experiences, things that certainly happened to informants and to those
closest to them, and these individual memories exist in relation to the memories of
close family and friends. When people are interviewed about the habits and routines
of everyday life, even when they took place several decades in the past, many are
able to recall in considerable detail the things they carried out on a routine basis: their
walk to school, conversation from around the dinner table, and ongoing Saturday
128
morning rituals involving family and friends.87 The same held true as participants
discussed topics related to the Cold War, the Canadian military, and their effects on
their young lives.
As influential oral historian Alessandro Portelli has taught all oral historians,
errors, inventions, and myths may in fact lead us beyond facts to meanings.88
Furthermore, it is imperative to recall that orality infuses the texture of the ‘official’
written record.89 This does not mean that researchers must question all that we
encounter in the historical record; however it reinforces the importance of the
historian as critic, interpreter and gatherer of knowledge. Additionally, the interview
text has become a document infused with the agency of both the interviewer and the
participant.90 However, more power rests with the interviewer. These oral histories
provide a vital component to historical studies and are an important reminder that
while the written record was, and is often accurate, it may not be ‘true.’91
Interestingly, when I broached the topic of World War II with interviewees, a number
of them had recollections of stories centred on the First World War from
grandparents in particular, and at times, other family members and friends. In some
interviews, both wars had been mentioned, but in several notable instances, it was
World War II that had remained with interviewees, and many of those people closest
to them.
87
For further discussion of this element of oral history interviews see Lynn Abrams, Oral History
Theory (Toronto: Routledge, 2010), 87.
88
Allessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories (New York: State University of
New York, 1991), 2.
89
Portelli The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories, 5.
90
Sangster, “'Telling Our Stories:’ Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History,” Women’s History
Review 3, no. 1 (1994): 5-28.
91
See Bernard Ostry, “The Illusion of Understanding: Making the Ambiguous Intelligible,” Oral
History Review 5, no. 1 (1977): 7-16.
129
Some of the young people born in the 1950s recalled that World War II had
been important on more than one level. The war had contributed to familial cohesion
in some instances and Allan recalled the discussions during Sunday dinners as
positive from the perspective of a child. The stories were likely sanitized for the
young ears that were present,
My father and his two brothers had served [in World War II]. It
wasn’t an overriding thing. It was more what…they talked
about…and all the guys that would come over for Sunday dinner. I
know there was a marriage that came out of that, one of my father’s
cousins. It was really expressed in positive, in kind of family terms,
it’s not like, I don’t think anyone got killed.92
As the following Calgary Herald newspaper headline and article excerpts
from February of 1950 demonstrate, there were concerted efforts to engage
Canadians of all ages in everyday practices associated with the military. Canadians
were to follow the lead of the United States as the Canadian defence department
increased efforts to embolden a continental defence system at several levels,
The Canadian defence department likely will consider
establishment of a civil air raid warning system for the whole of
Canada after it completes its blueprint for over-all civil defences…
The Canadian warning system may be planned along the lines of
the system to be established in Western United States…An air raid
warning system… could be put into operation by the air force, it
was learned, with the civil population made responsible for
operation and maintenance.”93
This air-raid system was implemented in thousands of towns and cities across
Canada and the United States by the late 1950s and early 1960s.94 By that time, there
92
Allan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
“Air Raid Alarm System Considered For Canada,” Calgary Herald, 23 Feb 1950, 1.
94
For an overview of the Cold War, pedagogy and American schools in the postwar period see
Andrew Hartman, Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School (New York:
Palgrave MacMillan, 2008). Hartman argues that Dewey’s progressivism was not perceived as stable
enough to thwart conservative tendencies on the part of educationists in this period, at least in the
United States.
93
130
had been further developments in the Cold War that led to suburban children having
a heightened awareness of the events associated with the potential armed struggle
and practices for dealing with a potential Soviet invasion or bombing. One
participant remembered larger events like the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba
and everyday disciplining practices from the early 1960s this way,
I can remember we had to run home from the school and they
would set a timer. The parents would record the time or you had to
get them to phone in it took you to run home. It was grade two or
three and…I remember being told to run home as fast as you can
and then the time was recorded. We didn’t have the air raid siren.
They had one at Capitol Hill School... [and] you could hear that
thing from miles away. It was kind of scary at the time…It brought
back memories for some parents of being in England and the air
raids.
The air raid sirens prompted him to think of the Soviet Union and the Cold
War in a broader context as well. It is clear that the Cold War had a very
real effect on his young psyche and certainly shaped some childhood actions
and language in the 1960s. He also mentioned how these Cold War practices
and sounds had merged with the memories of some survivors of the German
bombings in England during the Second World War. The same participant
recalled, in vivid detail, the evacuation route from Calgary’s northwest
suburbs that children were instructed about in the event of a nuclear attack,
I can remember the evacuation sign, it was sort of a blue,
rectangular sign. It had Emergency Evacuation Route with some
kind of symbology. [If something were to happen] your dad would
come home from work with the one car you had. You’d be home
already because you’d run home quickly, your parents would be
ready to load the car to leave town and those [signs] marked the
quickest evacuation routes out of the city.95
95
Ibid.
131
There was a matter-of-fact attitude about this. Despite not having seen this
sign for over forty years, he was able to recall the shape and colour of that
important sign. This everyday practice had become so ingrained that it
became almost a ‘natural’ part of his childhood experience in the mid1960s.
The military-like disciplining of children took several forms. While this
account of a trip to an international jamboree in Ottawa appears in a newspaper from
a school outside of Banff Trail, suburban youngsters took similar trips in the 1950s
and 1960s.96 Noteworthy in this article, entitled “Boy Scout Jamboree at Canada’s
Capital, 1953” is the reference to several disciplining practices, involving clothing,
being well-organized, producing useable items, and so forth, something seen
throughout this period, along with the focus on other outdoor skills gained
specifically in boy scout training,97
All Calgary scouts who went to the Jamboree worked for many
months ahead of time…Besides passing many tests and badges we
made small articles to trade with foreign scouts. We finally got to
Connaught Camp which is just outside of Ottawa, and “piled off”
the train…We then put on our “Stetsons” and “jeans”, got our
chuckwagons out and proceeded to “live-up” the camp for the first
of many times. After causing a “minor riot” with the new camp’s
first “Chuckwagon” race down the main street we stopped to cook
and “dole out” a few hundred “flapjacks”… Attending the camp
were 3,500 scouts from every province in Canada, from the U.S.A.
from Cuba, Mexico, Australia, England, Scotland, Grand Cayman
Island, Sweden, Norway, Greece, Italy, [and] France.98
These adolescent boy scouts reinforced many Calgary stereotypes on this
trip, but also emphasized the hard work, basic skills and testing that was
96
Banff Trail youngsters attended several schools outside of Banff Trail prior to the late 1950s and the
building of schools to serve students of all ages in this rapidly growing area.
97
Robert Baden-Powell, An Official History of Scouting (London: Hamlyn), 2006.
98
“A Boy Scout Jamboree,” Central Collegiate Weeper, 1955.
132
central to scouting. This meshed well with much of the utilitarian focus in
school curricula emphasized by school principals and vice principals in their
essays to students and papers as seen in earlier in the chapter.
One informant, Doug, recalled the importance and popularity of scouting
within the Banff Trail community by the late 1950s and early 1960s. As with many
other childhood activities, he noted that it was parents who had initiated and fostered
his participation in that “scouting was something they [my parents] would have just
signed me up for at six or seven. Almost all of my close friends were from that group
of boys. At one time, I remember people talking about St. David’s having one of the
largest scouting programs in all of Canada; four scout troops with 24 boys in each.99
The cadet program was designed to prepare adolescents more directly and
fully for later military training. Bruce recalled that, despite the program’s prime
intents, he had not necessarily joined the program to serve later in Canada’s armed
forces. This is significant in demonstrating that young people may have individual
motives when they enter into formal programs and that they may or may not be
interested in the adult-oriented goals prescribed by adult programming. Bruce also
stressed the continuing importance of World War I and II remembrances in the lives
of young boomers, particularly in Banff Trail,
Of course the war, sacrifices that Canadians had made so there was
a great respect around Remembrance Day. I went into Cadets with
that interest. It didn’t mean I wanted to be in the Armed Forces
necessarily…Dad told me a lot of stories about the war and what
had happened to him and my uncle. That shaped our respect for the
Armed Forces and the military, it was a positive attitude towards
that – it was a positive thing. Within the context of Banff Trail
there was pretty pro-military, pro support for what had happened in
the war.
99
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, June 2, 2011.
133
Additionally, newspapers in this postwar period featured dozens of headlines
related to Cold War developments. While the youngest children did not read the
newspaper, many school-aged children did read them, and thousands of adolescents
across the country delivered these newspapers door-to-door on their paper routes. In
the early 1950s, as Banff Trail took shape, headlines and accompanying stories in the
Calgary Herald, at times, blared headlines like “Chinese Fortress Falls: Allies Mop
Up ‘Iron Triangle.’” This particular article described the advancing forces moving
across the central Korean plains and ‘rubbing out’ the Communists’ iron triangle that
had been set up.100
For some youngsters, World War II, and some of the earliest events
associated with the Cold War, had important residual effects on their young lives.
This informant was an older baby boomer, born in the late 1940s. She remembered
there being huge numbers of kids on Banff Trail’s streets due to the postwar baby
boom but also some more sobering memories associated with the Second World War,
included a friend’s father whose personality still showed,
There were a million kids everywhere, you never had to look
anywhere for entertainment there were always 50 kids on your
street; there were eight in every house so that was a huge impact of
the war [World War II and returning veterans]. I had a friend whose
father was quite grim. My understanding was that he had come
home from the war that way so that was one experience that I
knew… I certainly had the sense [as she grew older] that World
War II was a just war, which was so interesting, because I
immediately knew that Vietnam was not.101
There are some interesting components to her memories, not only in the perception
of the two wars, which speaks to an important difference between childhood and
100
101
“Chinese Fortress Falls,” Calgary Herald, 14 June 1951, 1.
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
134
adolescence. While the two major wars were represented in very different ways, as
an adolescent she was thinking much more critically about war and its meanings.
Later on in the interview, she suggested that her friend’s father was likely suffering
from undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his duties associated
with World War II, something she had not necessarily thought about as a young
person.
Bruce recalled that family stories about World War II had shaped his
childhood understandings of both war and Canada’s military. This also affected how
he felt about the Vietnam War as a junior high student in the mid-1960s. He recalled
that there seemed to be general support for the Vietnam War, despite several
documents from the archival record and remembrances to the contrary, from other
informants indicating that this was not the case; yet this is what he remembered. His
account is important in order to gain a richer and more nuanced understanding of
how children and adolescents tried to understand these conflicts,
Dad told me a lot of stories about the war and what happened to
him and my uncles. I think that shaped our respect for the armed
forces and the military…When the Vietnam War came out later,
there wasn’t that negativity within our group. In the context of
Banff Trail, it was pretty pro-military, pro-support of what had
happened in the war [World War II] for those who had veterans or
family members who were participating.102
It is noteworthy that early 1950s newspaper articles, citing Canada-wide
public opinion polls, reflected a shift away from having Canada’s older male
teenagers and young adults serve in the Canadian armed forces, regardless of whether
or not they had the desire to do so. In this short excerpt from a Calgary Herald article
entitled “Public Tends to Oppose Younger Age for Draft” from 1951, public opinion
102
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 28 July 2011.
135
was firmly in favour of Canada not having a universal draft. Public opinion was also
shifting in considering the continued blurring of teenagehood and young adulthood
by raising the draft age, if conscription were in place, to twenty-one years old, from
eighteen years old,
Today, only about three in ten Canadians favor the calling-up of
men for the armed services, but if conscription became necessary,
the largest single group of voters would set the age limit at twentyone years or more, rather than the eighteen year limit which has
previously prevailed. Latest national study by the Canadian
Institute of Public Opinion shows that only 30 percent of Canadians
would favor setting the initial limit at 18 years.103
Despite this overwhelming public sentiment, there was a clear focus on
recruiting young people growing up in suburbs and elsewhere in Canada. In the late
1940s through the late 1950s, it is striking how many recruiting advertisements were
found in nearly every Calgary school yearbook.104 These advertisements contained
action-oriented, and aggressive military representations as well as outlines of the
potential duties and benefits of serving in the armed forces. Often, representations
drew on World War II imagery in appealing directly to teenagers.105 Furthermore,
these advertisements appeared in both junior and senior high school yearbooks. The
following, from Crescent Heights High School attended by some of the earliest Banff
Trail resident teenagers, is representative of dozens of similar armed forces
103
“Public Tends To Oppose Younger Age For Draft,” Calgary Herald, 19 May 1951.
Without question, there are more recruiting advertisements in the late 1940s and early 1950s;
however, it is surprising that these advertisements remained common in the late 1950s. I was even
more surprised to see these advertisements still appearing in the 1960s and in high school, college, and
university yearbooks and newsletters. Yearbooks from other centres, namely Edmonton and the
metropolitan Toronto area, display similar advertisements in comparable volume.
105
It is not uncommon to find imagery featuring hand-to-hand combat, rifles with bayonets, and
somewhat antiquated military dress found from the two previous World Wars. This was contrary to an
emphasis on the modernizing of Canadian military equipment and armaments reflecting the nuclear
age entered in the 1940s.
104
136
advertisements. It stressed the flexibility available to male recruits only and the
national importance of enlisting,
Young men graduated from high school with a minimum Standard
of Junior Matriculation, may become officers in the Canadian
Army Active Force. If accepted you begin training at Camp
Borden, Ontario as an officer cadet…This training will consist of
three courses totalling a period of twenty-eight weeks. When you
are granted a commission you will then serve for period [sic] of 3,
4 or 5 years as you choose under the Short Service Commission
Plan. At the end of this service you may apply for a permanent
commission. This is a chance to serve Canada at a time when
defence stands as a most important national concern.106
The ending can be read as ominous, considering that it was written in 1952,
seven years removed from the end of World War II. Children and
adolescents were clearly not immune to these references.
Another interviewee made reference to an uncle who had not wanted to
discuss his role in the Second World War. She also recalled that she had held some
childhood fears related to the Cold War in the 1960s and what could happen because
of the ongoing conflict. While she did not think of these events as having a profound
effect on her childhood, there was implicit importance in both her words and tone as
she recalled that the silence surrounding her uncle’s participation was important in
itself,
Well, in school yeah, we studied World War II and certainly things
were brought up…My uncle never wanted to talk about it. Because
my dad never served, it was never brought up much. I know from
my cousins, their dad didn’t like to talk about it. [Do not recall a lot
about the Cold War] other than I remember the drills and I
remember the Soviet Union was bad, it was a bad place, because
they were against the United States. I distinctly remember watching
TV and President Kennedy on when he had to deal with the Bay of
Pigs…
106
“Canadian Army advertisement,” The Crescent Heights Bugle, (1952).
137
This reinforces that young people were in fact aware of the effects of war on
former combatants. This informant wasn’t clear if she had reflected on this
prior to adulthood, but she did remember that she knew as a child that this
topic was not something to be broached with her uncle. The fear associated
with these disciplining drills was also emphasized,
…I remember being a little scared, I think because we practiced
these drills. I don’t think we understood why we were doing them
so much other than the Soviet Union was a bad place, maybe they
could invade; and communism was bad. It must have been when I
was in lower elementary, end of the 50s, and the early 60s.107
These memories are important in that they reinforce much of what I found in
student essays, articles, and editorials, in that young people, particularly preteenagers, often felt ill-informed about many of the reasons why there were
told to do some things. This speaks to some of the marginalization
experienced by children in that it is assumed that they are unable to deal
with some of these issues cognitively and emotionally. What this informant
seems to be saying is that the untold and the unexplained likely heightened
fears for some children.
Another informant recalled other incidents directly associated with the Cold
War events. She remembered expressing some empathy with child victims of the
Korean War. As with so many other interviewees, the overarching themes of danger
and impending disaster were prominent in these formative years, as she remembered,
I was sick, didn’t want to eat and I suggested that someone could
send the food to the starving kids in Korea. Really, I understood
that things were very, very dangerous. I don’t recall thinking that it
was just the Russians that were dangerous. It was the situation that
was dangerous. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis and…thinking
107
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 2 August 2011.
138
I’m going to be out of class the next day and thinking what will
they let a girl do…I can’t remember being virulently anticommunist [because at home] there was not a lot of demonizing [of
the Soviet Union]. Krushchev was considered funny and a fool…I
certainly had a sense of huge danger growing up.108
This particular oral history thread was very clear about the perceived
imminent danger and the effects it had on adolescents. Clearly there was
more sophistication in critically analyzing these events from the viewpoint
of adolescence. This interviewee also expressed some frustration associated
with her gender and not being confident that a young girl would be allowed
to do something about the crisis if it were to ever escalate.
While there was discussion about the atomic bomb, there were ongoing
student discussions of World War II into the 1960s. In this brief editorial from the
Aberhart Advocate, this student expressed the importance of the twentieth century’s
two world wars and the uncertainties of the future in the context of the ongoing Cold
War. This student seemed to have some sense of the past and that it continued to
influence the present,
‘Ideological battles are not won on the poppy sales corner, they’re
won in the minds of men.’ But I believe that the horror of two
world wars must never be forgotten, if we are to press onwards for
peace in our time, and I for one, would not like to leave such
ideological battles to the author of the above statement…We are
inheriting a world with a threat of war, horrible beyond the realms
of imagination. In our hands will the nightmare become reality, and
the fiction fact? The future is hours [sic] but the past must not have
been in vain.109
Another informant mentioned the overriding angst that defined the time for
many children and adolescents. He also broached the topic of the United States’
108
109
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
“Taps Editorial,” The Aberhart Advocate, vol 2, May 1960, 6.
139
relationship with Canada, and that from his perspective, the mutual respect between
the two countries seemed at a higher level in the late 1960s.110 While he was nearly
twenty years younger than the oldest boomers, he also recalled some resonances from
World War II and its importance. He did note that while not all children were as
moved by Remembrance Day, he certainly was as a child,111
[I] remember the reverence around November 11 and
Remembrance Day. I remember being hyper aware of the respect
factor and World War II. It was more of a topic than it is now. I
remember a sense of American history being pervasive. Big
Brother was watching over us from the States. I remember it being
much more respectful of the United States. I can remember still
feeling the effects of the Cold War, the scares and the missiles of
October and Khruschev. People were still nervous about where the
world was going. I remember that being pervasive and that kind of
awareness.112
In this case, “Big Brother” was not viewed in an Orwellian sense from the
perspective of childhood. This was a younger boomer who was comforted
by having the larger United States as an ally and how it benefited Canada in
a global context. A review of Alberta textbooks from the period also reveals
the emphasis on the positive United States-Canada relations emphasized
throughout this period, especially in the context of broader geo-political
happenings.
For other interviewees, the Cold War had not seemed to affect their
childhoods to the same degree. Surprisingly, despite it ending decades earlier, echoes
110
Despite some of the ongoing resistance to American hegemony that continues to get attention in
academic literature in the form of George Grant’s Lament For a Nation, and the rise of the Waffle
faction in left-leaning political circles, there was widespread support for the United States (including
greater economic integration) across Canada by everyday Canadians, Finkel, Our Lives, 27.
111
Of particular importance is that some interviewees from the suburbs expressed a belief that they
were alone at certain times in their sentiments. This reflects adult echoing in many contemporary
studies of the post-World War II suburbs detailed earlier.
112
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
140
from the Great War continued to be heard, and some young people continued to
experience that war, vicariously. This interviewee also recalled anecdotes from the
First and Second World War that had been passed down from older people in the
family, including former combatants,
Again not too much, [in term of the impact of the Cold War]; [it
was] more World War I. Most of how things impacted us from the
time of World War II were told to us…I remember Dad mentioning
that on the radio they were listening to how Hitler had hid out in
the bunkers and finally it was victory for the American troops and
the English…Dad’s father had a wonderful story that got written up
in Reader’s Digest about World War I, swapping buttons at the
front and on Christmas Eve, going out with a football and playing
with the enemy on a field in between, yeah, on Christmas Eve.”113
A story like that, despite appearing in Reader’s Digest, and told from the perspective
of adulthood, was almost child-like in that it made combat palatable for a wide
readership. It shifted focus away from the violence, misery and brutality that marked
trench warfare in Europe in World War I.
The Cold War also inspired poetry and other creative writing from several
young people, particularly once they were in suburban high schools. It also
demonstrated well, a clear line between childhood and adolescence. It was
powerfully written and suggests a very active and engaged mind. The poem’s
language is both haunting and angst-filled. In other words, it does not read as being
created by a worry-free teenager, unaware of a world outside an insular suburban life,
I am a citizen of a silent world.
Grey and stark against a crimson sky
Stand the ruins of an age gone by.
And I.
Rubble and stone have chalked the crying ground.
Torn and scarred, this a dying land.
113
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December, 2011.
141
Destruction wrought by one misguided hand,
Un-planned.
I alone, am left to rule a world,
Alone, beneath a hungry waiting eye,
I could live. But for what reason:
why?
I die.114
As time passed, and the Cold War’s effects on young suburbanites changed,
there was a different tone found in children’s and adolescents’ material culture.
While there was no question that the sense of foreboding remained with many, some
essays expressed hope for a future that might be better than the present (early 1960s).
While children have been mobilized and continue to be used as sources of inspiration
for the future, at times, they also cast themselves in this role.115 It is also notable that
many adolescents did not look through rose-coloured glasses and that they were able
to understand at least some of the complexities of the international geopolitics that
seemed to make less and less sense to some young people over time. While many
were prone to hyperbole, this piece began by stating that many young people were
frightened to turn on the ‘idiot box’ for fear that war had broken out,
The first person to suffer is the small, innocent, helpless citizen
who is immediately compelled to hate, and if possible, to fight the
enemy who he doesn’t know and more than likely doesn’t give a
damn about!...I say that if our elders not yet realized the situation
that they are entering us into, it is time for us to speak out and make
our parents…and the leaders of today realize this predicament…[It]
would be a long hard struggle, probably longer and harder than
most of us can imagine. But, it would mean that our children, and
their children’s children would grow up in a green, peaceful
world.116
114
‘Tex,’ “H-Bomb,” The Aberhart Advocate 2, no. 9, June 1960, 5.
We must remain mindful that different editors exerted varying degrees of influence on student
contributors as well. While some students reported having a great deal of editorial and creative control
of their work, there were suggestions that certain teachers, overseeing the student newspapers and
newsletters, had significant influence over the publication’s final editions.
116
A Student, “A Hope For the Future,” The Aberhart Advocate 5, no. 4, 20 March 1963.
115
142
It is interesting that in this proposed scenario, young people could lead their parents,
and that there was some sense of collective consciousness as well. For this teenager,
individuals could do little, but as part of the masses, great things could be achieved.
This also resists much of the discourse prevalent throughout the period that stressed
individuality, resourcefulness and gaining competitive advantages versus working
with the collective toward something beyond strongly individualistic goals.
In another article, entitled “Space Law,” a teenaged Aberhart Advocate writer
explored one of the significant Cold War issues from the early 1960s: negotiating and
managing governance and law in outer space. The potential for space to become a
theatre for war was discussed along with some of the similarities between outer space
and the high seas,
In recent years, especially since man’s first journey in to space, the
problem of law in space has arisen…The legal aspect of space
breaks down in to three major categories: airspace sovereignty,
control of vehicles and control of celestial bodies such as the
moon… The most feasonable [sic] solution to the problem of space
vehicle control would be to apply the rules of the high seas…This
is no assurance that space could not, like the high seas, be turned
into a theatre of war if a vehicle was stationed there for the purpose
of conducting war-like activities. The only difference would be the
magnitude of the consequences.117
The fact that students had concerns about the spread of conflict into space
demonstrates again how much aggression, war and angst had come to
influence their thinking.
Yet, the individual differentiation in childhood experiences is important.
Despite many similarities, for some children and adolescents of the late 1960s, the
Cold War, while still important, did seem to wane slightly in significance. While the
117
Editors, “Space Law,” The Aberhart Advocate 4, no. 9, June 1962.
143
Soviets remained the enemy, some young people believed that military confrontation
might not mean total destruction for the major powers, and that Canada was on the
periphery in some ways. Lesley, one of the younger boomers, remembered that by
the early 1970s,
I mean, definitely the Soviet Union were the bad guys. They
were…communism, which was bad and [Canada which was]
capitalism was good. It was very black and white…Canada was a
little bit [separate from the United States]…it was the U.S. that was
fighting the Soviet Union. It was kind of something we watched as
opposed to [engaging in it ourselves]; I always felt pretty safe…I
thought there might be bombs overhead one day, flying over, but I
never felt they could land here and my dad would go to war.118
Lesley’s commentary contradicts the popular representations of childhood
and adolescence as carefree and unaware of international conflicts found in several
editorials from the period. Oftentimes, to varying degrees, and at different levels,
children and adolescents did comprehend and grapple with broader issues derived
from the adult world. In this era, and others, some children and a larger portion of
adolescents have reacted to a complex world.119 The following Albertan newspaper
editorial, clearly the more conservative of the two Calgary dailies in 1969, offered
some sweeping generalities that were not supported by the words of most of my
informants and the material culture they produced in the late 1960s. While the
editorial grants that there are serious conflicts around the globe, it does not ascribe
many, if any, positive qualities to children and youth. It dismisses many in the group
as privileged, incapable of working hard, and essentially immoral,
118
Lesley Hayes, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 26 July 2011.
The history of childhood and adolescence is interwoven with broader cultural, social and political
events in North America. For a good discussion of this in an American context see Steven Mintz,
Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2004), viii.
119
144
Young people today deserve our deepest sympathy for they have
been born into a savage, barbarous age, in many respects worse
than that of Samson’s day. Youth lack sensible discipline, and,
without rules to guide them, never learn rules for mature
living…Many of them have been ‘spoiled,’ brought up in homes
where they have been ‘given everything.’ Children today have been
brought up in the atmosphere of war and rebellion. Many believe
there is nothing wrong with stealing; it’s being caught that’s the
sin…Youth see that the older generation has made lying a way of
life. They see the lies about Vietnam, about the lives of public men,
about disarmament talks and nuclear bomb testing.120
Contrary to much of what is postulated in this editorial, adolescents produced
satirical pieces and were able to play with words and concepts in a sophisticated
manner. In this clever piece “Musical News Report” from the Aberhart Advocate, the
writer matched the Cold War’s Cuban Missile Crisis, with some contemporary
music,
Premier Nikita Khruchev [sic] has been trying to maintain his
friendship with Fidel Castro of Cuba to strengthen the ties between
their two countries (Let’s Get Together). Castro said that his
country would always be one of Russia’s most valuable allies (This
Land is Your Land). Khruchev [sic] assured him that he would try
to do what is best for them both (Tell Him). On October 22
President Kennedy announced to the public that he had discovered
that missiles and missile bases were being shipped from Russia to
Cuba (Johnny Get Angry). Khruchev [sic] denied that this was true
(Rumoured). Kennedy, however, said that he had had pictures
taken and could prove that they were being built. He was very
shocked at Khruchev’s denial (Your Nose is Gonna Grow). When
Khruchev [sic] finally admitted the truth Kennedy said that a
quarantine would be put on all ships going to Cuba until the
missiles were shipped back to Russia (Return To
Sender)…Kennedy’s quick action on this matter will undoubtedly
make Communists more cautious of him in their plot to spread their
idea (Big Bad John)… At a U.N. meeting early this year Khruchev
[sic] in a heated argument found it necessary to pound the table to
emphasize his words (If I Had a Hammer). Unfortunately he didn’t
so he used his shoe.”121
120
121
Editorial, “The Tragedy of Today’s Children,” The Albertan, 25 October 1969.
W. McKnight, “Musical News Report,” The Aberhart Advocate 5, no. 4, 20 March 1963.
145
Quite clearly, at least some teenagers were very attuned to the broader world
and had a very clear sense of right and wrong, at least in their minds.
Young people also wrote jokes associated with the Cold War, found
throughout the archival record. This one, from a 1950s high school yearbook, was
written shortly after the Russian launch of one of the Sputnik satellites,
Joe: Did you hear what Sputnik got for Christmas?
Jim: No, what?
Joe: A guided mistletoe?122
In a similar vein, Alan recalled being somewhat irreverent regarding some of
the disciplining practices of the time, something explored earlier, in more detail, in
this chapter. He recalled that some religious teachings broached the Cold War and its
potential for ending the world. His words also reinforce that much like adults,
adolescents coped with important issues in differentiated ways. He made light of
some of the practices that young people were asked to perform as part of a reaction to
a potential bombing by the enemy. He also found some humour in what these
disciplining practices meant, in terms of basic logistics related directly to the
comparatively harsh winters in Calgary’s suburbs,
[In recalling what the Cold War had meant to his childhood and
adolescence] other than putting our heads under our desks during
1962 and 1963, really nothing. It was always expressed in a larger
context of you know, with the Christian Armageddon kind of stuff
more than a direct focus on [the Cold War]. The only thing was that
you got to get home from school early, put your head under your
desk, to the whole idea of an Atomic Bomb. It was really much
more fun than serious – it was a bit of an adventure. We had all
these hot bikes so we could get home in two minutes. You just
hoped they didn’t drop an atomic bomb in January and you’d have
to put your snowsuit on.123
122
123
“Editorial,” The Centralian, (1957-58).
Alan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
146
Conclusion
The research indicates that while previous academic study, nostalgia and
popular discourse suggests that children, particularly younger ones, were relatively
protected from the machinations of war in a world that wanted to move beyond the
devastating realities of depression and World War II, young peoples’ material
culture, contemporary magazine and newspapers,124 and oral histories from people
who grew up in Calgary’s post-World War II suburbs, indicates alternatives. There
were myriad representations of the military that reflected something other than a
movement away from war and its concomitant horrors; rather, this remained a
significant part of many young suburban lives. All of this indicates that there is a
need to reconsider the peaceful serenity of domesticity that supposedly defined the
lives of suburban childhood lives in the ‘postwar’ era.
The community of Banff Trail offered families a unique choice in Calgary for
much of the late 1950s and 1960s in that students could attend elementary through
post-secondary institutions within walking distance of all of their homes. One
resident remembered “moving into the Banff Trail Community…March 3rd,
1960…our children all attended Capitol Hill Elementary, Branton, William Aberhart
and the University of Calgary.”125 Another informant also recalled that the close
proximity to the nascent University of Alberta at Calgary campus, well within
walking distance of their new home, had drawn his parents to the Banff Trail
community in the early 1960s.126 The school, as institution, was central in the lives of
124
“Cold War Tactics Deplored,” The Globe and Mail, 25 February 1963, 13; “Nuclear War,
Children, Spock’s Latest Fight,” The Globe and Mail, 20 May 1964, 11.
125
John and Doris Watson in From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks.
126
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November, 2011.
147
families, adolescents and children. It remains so to the present day in most families
across Canada.
Since the early twentieth century, schools have had a tremendous impact on
both childhood and the everyday lives of children and adolescents. By the postwar
period, students spent the better part of their weekdays in these institutions while
doing formal schoolwork, along with extracurricular sports, volunteering and
socializing. Outside of their suburban homes, there was no other institution that
occupied young suburbanites to the same degree; however, these schools could and
did not exist in isolation. Despite popular representations of suburbia that featured a
relatively carefree existence for young children and adolescents, oral history
interviewees and the archival record offer much to contest these lasting
representations.127 From the perspective of childhood, the era was ‘postwar’ in name
only to many suburban young people.
The next chapter analyzes the intersections between ‘race,’ ethnicity, class,
and the work of children and adolescents in the postwar period. I look at how ‘race’
and ethnicity were defined through the lens of childhood; how class pertained to the
everyday lives of suburban children and adolescents; how children defined and
performed work in the suburbs; and how the work of young people fit into their
larger suburban family economies. While most children and many adolescents were
economic liabilities to their families by the postwar era, several young suburbanites
were doing a great deal of hidden, unpaid and paid work in the 1950s and 1960s.
127
There were several shows that represented 1950s and early 1960s childhood in a very benign and
idealized way. The more popular contemporary television shows consumed in North America were
Leave it to Beaver, I Love Lucy, Father Knows Best and The Andy Griffith Show. Because of
syndication, these shows continue to influence perceptions and the romanticizing of the 1950s and
1960s by viewers of all ages.
148
Fourth Chapter - ‘Race,’ Class & Work
Introduction
This chapter focuses on ‘race,’ class, and the work of suburban children and
adolescents in this period.1 I explore how ‘race ‘and ethnicity were defined through
the lens of childhood by young people in the 1950s and 1960s. While the post-World
War II suburbs are often represented as lacking diversity, racial covenants ended in
Canada in 1951 with a Supreme Court decision.2 This did not lead to a sudden
flooding of visible minorities, or marginalized ethnic groups, into the postwar North
American suburbs.3 However, everyday practices do not necessarily follow new
regulations, laws and legislation. Although children and adolescents discussed ‘race’
and ethnicity in oral history interviews, and some of the adolescents wrote about it in
certain instances, Banff Trail, like many Canadian suburbs in this period, was not
racially diverse in the fifties and sixties.
In terms of social class, Banff Trail did not fit neatly into the categories of
middle-class or working-class suburb. Especially in its earliest years, Banff Trail had
a mixture of working-class and middle-class families. Working-class family life
continued to change and the increase in more family-centred activities clearly
1
Intersections between ‘race’ and labour have been examined critically by several scholars, Kay J.
Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875-1980 (Montreal: McGillQueen’s UP, 1991); Vic Satzewich, Racism and the Incorporation of Foreign Labour (New York:
Routledge, 1991).
2
Veronica Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams: Women and the Suburban Experiment in Canada, 1945-60,”
Canadian Historical Review 72, no. 4 (1991): 486.
3
The well documented ‘white flight’ from the inner cities to the suburbs in the United States has been
explored and debated by many urban historians. The African-Canadian population was much smaller
in this period and we don’t see this same process happening in Canada. See Kevin M. Kruse, White
Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007); Maria Amy
Kenyon, Dreaming Suburbia: Detroit and the Production of Postwar Space and Culture (Detroit:
Wayne State UP, 2004).
149
continued from the 1920s and 1930s into this period, as argued by historian Bryan
Palmer.4 Despite a shift by many families to turn their focus to the nuclear family
unit, Banff Trail did have a number of vibrant community-based programs that some
children and adolescents enjoyed in the late fifties and sixties.
As shown in a previous chapter, because of the increasing importance of
public schools in the lives of young people, and some of the homogenizing effects of
these schools, cultures of childhood were not as divergent as they once had been,
particularly along class lines. By adolescence, some informants seemed to gain a
broader understanding of class, with most of these young people being from working
class or lower middle class backgrounds. Class was not a prominent topic among
many adolescent suburbanites according to informants and there was limited
discussion of class in the material culture created by students found in school
archives. Despite this apparent lack of awareness, children and social class were
topics of discussion in contemporary discussion.5 Even though young people may not
have been aware of it, social class remains the most important determiner in the
everyday lives of both children and adolescents. While ‘race,’ gender, and ethnicity
cannot be discounted as important influences, class is invariably linked to health and
healthcare, family status, education, work and leisure activities in childhood and
adolescence across all temporal periods.6 There was a degree of homogeneity that led
to some of these young people not recognizing class, but also class lines were blurred
culturally in that middle class young people attended the same schools, played the
4
Bryan Palmer, Working Class Experience: Rethinking the History of Canadian Labour, 1800-1991,
2nd edition (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1992).
5
Maya Pines, “Social Class, Child Development Linked,” The Globe and Mail, 10 July 1960, W3.
6
Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge: Belknap, 2004), ix.
150
same sports, engaged in similar activities and had comparatively similar homes in
Banff Trail, much as it was in other early postwar suburban developments. Certainly
some middle-class children had ‘extras’ such as memberships in clubs, but the
suburbs seemed to mute class differences in many ways. Prominent professionals,
such as Dr. M. S. Rabinovitch at the second Canadian Conference on Children,
advocated for an easing of class, racial and religious differences through education
by the late sixties.7
In both working-class and middle-class homes,8 suburban children and
adolescents were working in the 1950s and 1960s. From the 1930s and forward, as
Neil Sutherland has emphasized, youngsters’ incomes were more their own, versus
contributing to the family economy as a whole. According to informants this was the
case in Banff Trail. Nevertheless, even if children’s wages were not absolutely
necessary to the pooled family economy, suburban children were working a great
deal, and in one instance, doing heavy manual labour before the age of ten in the
1960s.9 There were many reasons offered for why young people worked, and
divergences on whether or not the impetus to work, both paid and unpaid, was their
own or their parents. While some interviewees were indifferent to the paid and
unpaid work they did as children and adolescents in their households and outside of
7
“Mixture of Students for All Schools,” The Globe and Mail, 3 November 1965, 12.
I am defining middle class as those families that were headed by a working professional or in some
instances, operating a small business, often with a post-secondary degree or certification. These
individuals, therefore, had more control over their work lives in comparison to the blue collar or
working-class families in Banff Trail.
9
This discovery was very surprising when it was revealed by an informant that he had worked on a
Taber sugar beet farm during one of the summers before his tenth birthday in the 1960s. His account is
found later in this chapter. In general, the number of children and adolescents who were doing both
paid and unpaid work in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s was revealing as children’s increasing
leisure time is often emphasized as being the norm, particularly in middle class families, by the mid1960s.
8
151
them, many of them discussed how their work contributed to their changing sense of
identity. Before exploring work by adolescents and children, I turn to ‘race’ and
ethnicity in the postwar suburbs.
‘Race,’ & Ethnicity in the Suburbs
Hostile Indians all over our plains,
Now there’re houses and fields of grains;
Just a covered wagon, with a driver named Joe.
Now speeding cars and buses we know;
All around there are Indian teepees.
Now beautiful houses with rows of sweet peas.
Calgary’s seventy-fifth birthday! Oh, boy!
Everyone’s filled with loads of joy.
Snow in the winter is lots of fun.
Swimming pools in summer, or on beaches we run;
Seventy-five years ago we wouldn’t have this,
What a lot of fun we all would miss!
All I can say is, “I’m glad to live here
With all my friends, loving and dear.”
And now comes the last sentence SO GRAND,
“I GO TO BALMORAL, THE BEST SCHOOL IN
THE LAND!”10
This poem, titled “Excitement” from a 1950 school yearbook, touches on
several important themes from the period relating directly to childhood and
adolescence including progress, modernization, growth, and explorations of ‘race.’
All of these themes were found in school yearbooks, newsletters and in countless
advertisements and articles, as well as in youngsters’ creative writing. The reference
to “hostile Indians” and “teepees” is notable, as the longstanding underrepresentation
of Indigenous peoples in the suburbs is well known to demographers, sociologists
and urban studies scholars. Banff Trail in the 1950s and 1960s was no different. For
almost all of the informants who grew up in Banff Trail, or in the nearby community
of Charleswood, North American ‘Indians’ were imagined constructs, and essentially
10
Donna Kimmel, “Excitement,” Balmoral Junior High School Yearbook (1949-50).
152
exotic. The annual Calgary Stampede, occasional trips into the nearby foothills, or
the growing mediascape provided nearly all of their childhood contacts and
subsequent conceptions of Canada’s First Nations peoples.11 Banff Trail, like the
overwhelming majority of Canadian suburbs in the postwar era, was not a common
home for First Nations peoples.12
The concept of ‘race’ is now centuries old, first appearing as a word in the
English language in the sixteenth century. Despite ‘race’ being an important
analytical category, the majority of twenty-first century academics in the humanities,
social and natural sciences consider it to be a social construct.13 So, while human
differences are real, the ways in which researchers choose to organize differences
between human populations are methodological ones. Importantly, these differences
cannot be hierarchized or ranked (the process of racism) as has been done in the past
by myriad anthropologists and evolutionary biologists.14 It must be emphasized that
11
Only one informant recalled a First Nations classmate in their suburban classrooms and the dozens
of yearbooks that I used in researching both place and time reflected this paucity of First Nations
students in Banff Trail and other Calgary suburbs as well.
12
Despite the trend across Canada that sees First Nations peoples moving increasingly to urban
centres, this is not reflected in suburban spaces. For a pointed discussion on ‘race,’ and urban space
see Sherene Razack, “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatialized Justice: The Murder of Pamela
George,” in Sherene Razack, editor, Race, Space and the Law: UnMapping a White Settler Society,
(Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002), 121-156.
13
It is important to understand that the concept of ‘race’ has changed over time. While almost no
serious academics will ascribe positive or negative differences between human population groups
based on genetic differences today, there remains an understanding that there are differences and
diversities among human beings and human population groups. George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A
Short History (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2002); Audrey Smedley, Race in North America: Origin and
Evolution of a Worldview (Boulder: Westview, 1999); Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man
(New York: Norton, 1996).
14
While few supporters of racist hierarchies in academe remain, one notable and infamous one was
the recently deceased Western University professor, J. Philippe Rushton. He placed humans into three
main racial groupings with distinct hierarchies in various categories. For his main theoretical
positions, supported by a handful of racist academics into the present, see J. Philippe Rushton, Race,
Evolution and Behavior: A Life History Perspective (Huron, MI: Charles Darwin Research Institute,
1996).
153
contemporary racial differences cannot be conceptualized as absolute and
unchanging. Genetic variation is continuous and has several influences.15
Of course, our modern concept of ‘race’ was not necessarily shared by
postwar children and their families when they encountered non-white, non-Anglo
‘others.’ Since the late nineteenth century, and the building of the Canadian Pacific
Railway line through Calgary, there have been people from China or with Chinese
roots living in and around Calgary. As noted by historian Hugh Dempsey, a space
resembling the Chinatown that existed by the 1950s was forming in the downtown
area by the early 1920s with its own school, Freemasons, and Chinese family
associations or tongs; over time it was to become the social and cultural heart of
Calgary’s Chinese community.16 For Banff Trail’s young people from the 1950s and
1960s, Calgary’s Chinatown was one of the few racialized spaces in the city. One
interviewee remembered suburban diversity in the late 1950s and early 1960s,
[Long pause] There were Catholics [laughing]. You know I don’t
think so [there being any racial or ethnic diversity]. I mean a couple
of [Chinese families]. You went to Chinatown and had Chinese
food. There wasn’t really pizza back then so we didn’t know about
the Italians [laughing]. There was a Chinese family that lived
behind us and they lived beside the Catholic family so that was the
really ‘bad’ side of the alley [joking and laughing]. The local
grocery stores were run by Chinese families. Natives, we saw them
in the Stampede Parade, and then the Indian Village, that was it. I
didn’t have any stereotypes. I didn’t really see the disadvantaged
side of the Native side. I just saw the kids wearing feathers and
leather on the Stampede grounds.”17
So from Allan’s childhood perspective, First Nations people were not a part of his
everyday experiences. Despite his claim that he had no stereotypes, he (like others)
15
Kay J. Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875-1980 (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s UP, 1991), 12.
16
Hugh Dempsey, Calgary: Spirit of the West (Calgary: Fifth House, 1999), 93-94.
17
Allan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
154
clearly did; Native people belonged in the Stampede, part of a pageant, a past, not the
modern present. He also brought up the issue of religion. There was a concentration
of Protestants in Banff Trail although there were some Catholic families as well. One
or two interviewees mentioned some Jewish families, but they were relatively
uncommon in Calgary as a whole. In several interviews, the lack of diversity, not
only in Banff Trail, but across the entire city, particularly in the first two decades
following World War II, was noted in retrospect. This is supported by the data from
the period. In 1951, just 32, 033 Calgarians, or 24.6 percent of Calgarians were
foreign born. Almost 27, 000 of these people were from Great Britain, the United
States, Scandinavia, Germany and Italy. In other words, given the ethnic and racial
composition in those countries at the time, these would not have been visible
minorities. Just over 4, 000 Calgarians were Asian, Others and Unspecified.18 Further
to this, although the raw numbers increased, the percentage of foreign-born
Calgarians actually decreased to 22.7 percent by the early 1950s.19 In terms of
religion, the United Church was the dominant church in the city, by 1961; with the
influx of people from Eastern Europe, the Catholic Church was the second largest
denomination, followed by Anglicans.20 As Doug said,
there was very little diversity, certainly. I don’t remember anyone
ever being concerned about it or thinking about it in any particular
way. Up until the mid-seventies there wasn’t any type of significant
non-WASP populations in Calgary. In school there were a few
Chinese boys and in our Scout troop. There was no change
whatsoever [in the broader city].21
18
Census of Canada, 1951.
Ibid.
20
Census of Canada, 1961 and 1951.
21
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011.
19
155
Doug was not the only interviewee to remember Banff Trail in this way. Wendy
echoed his memories in recalling the lack of diversity ethnically and racially outside
of a small number of Banff Trail families in the 1960s. She recalled that there was,
not much of a variety; very white and middle class. We did have a
couple of Chinese students, and they were the children of the 2
families that owned the two grocery stores near to the school. We
didn’t have any other minorities. I was looking at my grade three
picture and it was pretty white. I don’t remember a lot of diversity
within the community. Not certainly within our friends…Within
the city, there might have been the occasional person but I don’t
remember much at all. Even in high school [in the 1970s], it
doesn’t spring to mind, that there were kids of other minorities.22
Bruce also remembered that a lack of diversity marked both the larger suburb
and his classrooms in elementary and junior high. Again, as it had been for other
young Calgarians, it was at the Stampede that he came in contact with several First
Nations peoples from the Calgary area. This representation was contrasted by the
single classmate that he recalled from his elementary school years. This was borne
out by the numbers as well as just 335 individuals were identified as Native Peoples
in Calgary in the 1961 Census.23 When asked about any diversity in the racial and
ethnic landscape in Banff Trail, his immediate response was,
No. We had maybe two Oriental families I can remember in my
particular class. There was one girl, Emily, the first Native person I
had ever met. Other than at the Stampede, you see them. It was
very, very white-oriented. I don’t remember any black children at
all until high school [1970s]. It was pretty much Caucasian-oriented
in Calgary [more generally].24
While most informants recalled that there were at least a few ChineseCanadian families in the Banff Trail community by the 1960s, one woman recalled
22
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 2 August 2011.
Census of Canada, 1961.
24
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 28 July 2011.
23
156
that from the perspective of her childhood there was one notable ‘exotic’ family from
another part of the Northern hemisphere,
I did have a Chinese friend in junior high. I think there were a
couple of Chinese kids in my class. There wasn’t any [non-white
kids] in my acceleration [classes]. But there was a kid from Iceland.
That was exotic and his brother was called Thor. I think it was
junior high [the 1970s in her case] before I saw kids from Jamaica,
Africa or that kind of thing.25
Like almost all other informants, Lesley did not recall there being any visible
African-Canadians or young people from the Caribbean nations until the 1970s.
Again, these childhood memories were reflected in the larger data. Calgary suburbs
were not the only spaces to reflect ‘whiteness.’ These recollections from childhood,
as is so often the case with childhood studies research, demonstrate much of the
inherent racism that has been an element in Canada’s immigration policies for
centuries now.26
Despite the lack of diversity, or possibly because of it, the majority of
informants did not recall any racist acts or words committed by fellow schoolmates.27
One informant recalled that in the context of what was happening in the United
States in the mid-1960s, things seemed quite different in suburban Calgary, and in
Canada as a whole. This perception was not uncommon in this time,28 despite some
very real conflicts across the country. Ontario had some very real human rights issues
25
Lesley Hayes, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 26 July 2011.
Franca Iacovetta, Gatekeepers: Reshaping Immigrant Lives in Postwar Canada (Toronto: Between
the Lines, 2006); Valerie Knowles, Strangers at Our Gates, revised edition (Toronto: Dundurn, 2007);
Ninette Kelly and Michael Trebilcock, Making of a Mosaic: A History of Canadian Immigration
Policy, 2nd edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010).
27
Locating individuals who experienced racism and identified as something other than ‘white’ would
have helped greatly in this respect. The fact that one informant recalled some overt racism leads me to
believe that while it may not have been rampant, it existed without question.
28
D. Bell, “Is ‘Foreigner’ a Dirty Word to Children?,” Maclean’s, vol 80, August 1967, 4b, 68b.
26
157
centred on towns such as Dresden,29 Quebec was rife with conflict regarding a
number of social issues,30 and Native Canadians, as part of a larger Red Power
movement, continued to demand increased rights throughout this era, with varying
degrees of success.31 This informant did reveal that as a child, she might very well
have been unaware of any overt racism that was happening,
I believe there was not a lot of ‘racist’ behaviour or else I didn’t
notice it…That was one of the things I was proudest of about
Canada…that we weren’t terribly racist in our neighbourhood. I
enjoyed being a friend of triplets [three black children] that were
just around my age…I had some friends at my church and they
were lovely. I remember that skin scars differently and I noticed
and was interested in the colour of their scars. I noticed how a scar
for a black person looked really shiny and mine just looked ugly
and red.32
However, not all memories regarding ‘race’ in childhood and adolescence
were positive. One informant recalled racism being part of his childhood landscape;
this was evident as some Native children were teased and taunted at his elementary
school. He said his,
earliest recollection of the existence of different ethnic [and racial]
groups was probably in…grade three or grade four. I knew that
there were Asian Canadians because you had the Chinese grocery
store and some of those kids were in your class, and so Asian
Canadian kids were ‘normal.’ But we had a couple of kids come to
the school that were Aboriginal or First Nations kids and I
remember those kids getting a hard time with some hurtful
adjectives and descriptors and that was sort of the first time I was
aware of and conscious of ethnicity, ‘race’ and racism. [There was]
an understanding at school and in the community that there were
people different from me. [I remember] first the Asian-Canadian
population and then the Aboriginal population. It wasn’t until
29
For an excellent exploration of some of the issues around certain practices in terms of ‘race’ and
ethnicity in Dresden, ON, the site of the final terminal for the underground railroad see Dresden Story,
Julian Biggs, dir., National Film Board of Canada, 1954.
30
Bryan D. Palmer, Canada’s 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2008).
31
Peter Kulchyski, The Red Indians (Winnipeg: Arbeiter Ring, 2008).
32
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
158
junior high that I recognized different races and cultures. So people
from Asia… Indian and Pakistan and that sort of thing [early and
mid-1970s]. Things have really changed in the city in that regard.
Banff Trail was fairly homogenous…I couldn’t tell you when I saw
my first black person [across the entire city] which is probably a
pretty narrow view, but those are my childhood recollections of
race and diversity.33
It is interesting that he thought of this view as narrow from an adult perspective.
Despite this concern, it did not seem to change what he recalled. His memory was
likely very accurate as diversity did not mark the Calgary ethnic landscape,
particularly in the 1950s and early 1960s. Outside of Western European peoples,
there were not many other groups represented in Calgary. By 1961, Calgary was a
city of a quarter of a million people with Asian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish
and ‘Others’ comprising less than 45,000 people, just over 20 percent of the total
population. In terms of appearance, the majority of these children would have been
white, thus not appearing as ‘others’ to children and adolescents at this time.34 This
was reflected in Canada more broadly as the proportion of foreign-born among the
general Canadian population was well under 16 percent until the early 1980s.35
Most informants did not recall a great deal of formal discussion about ‘race,’
racism and ethnicity in their classrooms. Many recalled discussions increasing by
adulthood, which for many was the mid- to late 1970s. Doug noted that the
expanding mediascape of the 1960s provided a virtual forum although by the late
1960s, some discussion had begun in certain suburban classrooms as well,
33
Brent Harris, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 9 December 2011.
Census of Canada, 1961.
35
Statistics Canada, “Proportion of Foreign-Born Among the Canadian Population, 1901 to 2017,”
Canadian Demographics at a Glance, (2008), 31 http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/91-003-x/91-003x2007001-eng.pdf
34
159
Probably the forum for discussing ‘race’ was what’s on television
in terms of the U.S. civil rights. [When it was] talked about in
school or on television; pretty arm’s length, academic kind of
environment. [The discussions were] very much, pro, in favour for
civil rights and equality.36
Again, as other informants had mentioned and what a lot of the material
culture left by students reflects, there was a much greater focus on the
United States, race relations, the Civil Rights Movement and so forth, versus
a focus on ‘invisible’ Canadian social issues related to ‘race.’
Additionally, most interviewees did not recall discussing ‘race,’ racism, and
ethnicity to any great degree at home with friends and family. One did though, and he
specifically remembered feeling that as a child he was missing out on a more
cosmopolitan world in his particular suburb. Exposure to diverse ethnicities and
‘races’ was experienced more vicariously for him until he reached adulthood. While
discussed in school and at home to a degree, it was not the same as having the
opportunity to befriend and spend time with people from other ethnic or racial
backgrounds. As he remembered the late 1960s and early 1970s,
There were a lot of Asians growing up, but absolutely zero black
people. I remember thinking I wish there were more black people. I
remember one guy in junior high…really nice guy and I was
fascinated by him because he was the only black guy I had seen in
school. Every single kid in elementary school was white. I
remember thinking it wasn’t giving me much life experience…It
seemed like I grew up in white bread ville. I remember learning
very early on about the taboo of racism, of being very tolerant of
other people and races. It seemed very textbook-like because we
didn’t have any real-life examples of it. I felt like an observer of it
[versus experiencing the multiculturalism displayed in school
curricula].37
36
37
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011.
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 4 November 2011.
160
It was a thoughtful and fascinating admission. This particular informant was
not an adolescent until the early 1970s, so it’s not that he was describing the
early fifties in Calgary. Whiteness truly defined the ethnic and racial
landscape for most of these suburban children with little exposure, or at least
no memory of any exposure to Africville in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Native
peoples’ revolts, and nearby reserves (except for the odd casual reference).
While Calgary’s racial mix was beginning to change, and the racialization of
space that occurred by the late seventies and forward was yet to happen, there really
was limited diversity across the entire cityscape. These changes reflected larger
Canadian immigration patterns that saw many visible minorities coming to Calgary
from East Africa, the Caribbean, southeast Asia and so forth. As noted by researchers
in the City of Calgary’s Social Service Department as late as 1963, “any scheme
recommended for urban renewal in Calgary is not complicated by large racial
segments.”38 The use of the term ‘complicated’ is revealing in that it reflects the ease
by which ‘whiteness’ defined the Calgary landscape.
Finally, another informant, Murray, described the situation succinctly not
only in the suburb of Banff Trail, but in the larger city when he recalled that in
thinking about the 1960s that “any sort of ethnic diversity, it’s pretty thin in Banff
Trail. In the larger city, I recall when northeast Calgary really began to expand and
there was some ‘colour’ coming into the city [by the 1970s]. I had some Chinese
friends, but that was about it. [It was] pretty lily-white.39 There really was a mixing
38
City of Calgary, “The Social and Human Aspects of Urban Renewal in Calgary,” (Calgary: Social
Services Department of Calgary, 1963), 16, Social Services Department fonds, City of Calgary
Archives.
39
Murray Fitch, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
161
of perception and reality for these young suburbanites. Ruth Frankenberg’s research
on whiteness is crucial in understanding that whiteness and its corresponding
privilege is fundamental in structuring ‘race’ relations. In her landmark study
featuring thirty oral history interviewees, many white adults admitted to never
thinking about ‘race’ as children and were unable to place themselves within broader
contexts of ongoing ‘race’ relations.40 This mirrors Calgary where whiteness was
naturalized, quite simply, as ‘the way it was.’
Class & Suburban Childhoods
Defining class within the context of childhood is a complex process.
Inevitably, a child’s social class is and has been defined by their parents’ or primary
caregivers’ class. But as feminists have argued, a large part of the story is untold
when women’s class has been defined based only on their male partner’s class. While
this is problematic on a few levels, there really is no other way to determine
childhood class. As other childhood historians Stephen Mintz and Annette Lareau
have argued, there is no more significant determiner of well-being in childhood than
social class, despite ‘race,’ gender, and ethnicity being powerful factors in young
lives.41
I conceptualize class on the basis of people’s relationships to the work that
they do. I also consider parents’ education level and household income in
determining class. Children and adolescents were identified in terms of class by what
40
Frankenberg’s work focuses on race relations in the United States, but is strikingly similar to what I
have located in these memories of baby boomer suburbanites. Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race
Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
41
Mintz, Huck’s Raft, ix. For further reading on the impact of class on both family and childhood lives
see Annette Lareau, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2003), 236.
162
their parents, and in most cases, by what their fathers did. But it is important to note
that post-World War II children and adolescents experienced several
intersectionalities in terms of class, gender, age, and ‘race’ relating to work, and most
significantly, children were limited in the amount of power they wielded in their
relationships with their employers. Beyond paid work, the large majority of
childhood and adolescent work has been, and remains through this period, menial
and unpaid. Most of this work was under the direction and orders of parents and
older siblings.
Some informants, for at least a portion of their lives as children and
adolescents, had mothers who worked outside of the home for years. As more
research, focusing on the postwar period and women’s working lives is done, this
turns out to be not exceptional in many ways. As Joan Sangster has demonstrated,
while some women entered the workforce within the era of the Fordist accord, in
unionized positions, other women, particularly new immigrants and Aboriginal
women, entered into more precarious work. Mothers entered the workforce in
numbers not seen previously.42 Quite simply, despite the prevailing discourse that
families were best served by Canadian women acting as housewives associated with
the male breadwinner model, this was not reflected in the realities of these suburban
lives. These mothers worked long, challenging hours in their homes and many did
paid work, outside the home.43 They often engaged in the double day that saw them
perform many of the household duties once they had done paid work outside of the
42
Joan Sangster, Transforming Labour: Women and Work in Postwar Canada (Toronto: University of
Toronto, 2010); Leah Vosko, Temporary Work: The Gendered Rise of a Precarious Employment
Relationship (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).
43
Veronica Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams;” “Grace MacInnis, “Bill Proposes Wages for Full-Time
Mothers,” Canadian Labour, vol 13, Jan 1968, 12.
163
home for a varying number of hours. This was in line with broader currents of
women’s work in this period. After an initial overall decline in paid work for women
in the postwar period, working outside the home increased over time for both single
and married women. On average, in 1961 17 percent of females in Canada worked
less than 35 hours per week.44 There was also a tremendous growth in older women
working in Canada from 1951 to 1961 with the absolute number doubling in those
ten years which had been unprecedented in Canada up until that time with increases
greatest in health, education, hospitality and provincial/federal government.45
This was reflected in many of the interviews as people discussed the work
that their mothers did both inside and outside the home. In several instances, mothers
did not work outside the home until the children were older and their critical role of
providing childcare in the home was no longer needed. This speaks to the lack of
availability of affordable childcare in Alberta (which some interviewees mentioned)
and the fact that in many families, women’s roles were centered on working inside
the home with a focus on taking care of their families.46 When women did have
working opportunities outside the home it was often depicted as part-time or on an
occasional basis. One informant said, “my Mom was mainly a homemaker. She had a
side career as a dietitian. She had a degree in home economics.”47 Allan recalled that
his “father was in the oil business. He was a payroll supervisor. He worked at the job
for his entire life. My mother used to work at a health food store. She worked part-
44
Byron Lew and Marvin McInnis, The Changing Structure of Women’s Work and Its Rewards,
Canada, 1911-1961 (Queen’s University Economics Department, 2003), 21.
45
Ibid., 22.
46
For a comprehensive look at the history of daycare in Alberta see Tom Langford, Alberta’s Daycare
Controversy: From 1908 to 2009 and Beyond (Edmonton: Athabasca UP, 2009).
47
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
164
time which was pretty radical back then, it seems to me.”48 These memories are
important as many of these children were from working-class or lower middle-class
backgrounds. Their mother’s wages were likely important to the total household
incomes, given their father’s incomes. Avoiding poverty, if at all possible, was part
of a larger discussion, often led by academic experts and other professionals that
explored the damaging effects of poverty on the poor, working and otherwise.49
There appeared to be a real belief by leaders that the ‘ills’ of the family, particularly
those ones most in need, could be addressed directly through a greater participation
in Canada’s democratic way of life, and that the time was near to challenge the
voluntary structure (led by middle-class activists) with its potential as a critical
training ground for good citizenship in a democracy.50
Doug’s response to what his parents did was quite typical of interviewees in
stating that “my mother didn’t [work outside the home], she stayed at home. My
father was in the construction business and started out as a welder.”51 Another
informant also recalled that his father worked outside the home while his mother did
not until he was much older. He said, “my father was a lawyer and then became a
judge. My mother was mostly at home and she was also an English teacher. She
wasn’t teaching at all until I got quite a bit older.”52
One informant was able to provide what all the heads of household
(exclusively male) had done on his particular Banff Trail block in the 1960s. He also
48
Allan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
Benjamin Schlesinger, “Multi-Problem Families,” The Globe and Mail, 25 July 1963, 11.
50
Nathan E. Cohen, reported in “Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Vanier Institute of the
Family,” Vanier Institute of the Family (1968), 30, Family Life Education Council of Calgary fonds,
M6239, File 171, Glenbow Archives.
51
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011.
52
Anonymous 2, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
49
165
included what his own father did. His father’s job and the hours spent outside of the
family home were illustrative of what a lot of suburban fathers did in this post-World
War II period. Jim said:
On our block there were a couple of welders, three firemen, Sears
repairman, newspaper printer, truck driver, couple in the oil patch,
school teacher, janitor, shoe salesman, telephone lineman, garage
owner, carpenter, farmer, pharmacist, accountant, optometrist, but
mostly people did blue-collar work. Dad sold life insurance for
Prudential Insurance Company for 35 years. We didn’t see him a
lot. His workday was from about eight in the morning until about
10:30 at night.53
Most of these fathers, whether blue or white collar, did not control the means
of production in their places of work and ultimately, had little control over their
working lives which oftentimes were located outside the Banff Trail suburb. This
links them to untold commuting male suburbanites in this era, most of whom were
fathers, who did paid work far from the suburban spaces in which they lived.54 The
trend of the home being more and more separate, physically, particularly in the case
of suburbia, and ideologically across class lines, from the public work site is
emphasized by historian Veronica Strong-Boag. She noted this trend happening in
the interwar decades and certainly it applies to this era as well.55
Banff Trail was not an exclusive or affluent enclave nor was it a workingclass suburb solely. As is the case with many postwar suburbs, there was a mixture of
working class and middle class people. The following account, detailing this family’s
move into the suburbs, is typical of many experiences not just in Banff Trail, but in
hundreds of Canadian suburbs in the 1950s and early 1960s. It highlights the
53
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, 17 October 2011.
William Whyte, The Organization Man (Toronto: Simon and Schuster, 1956).
55
Veronica Strong-Boag, The New Day Recalled: Lives of Girls and Women in English
Canada, 1919-1939 (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman Ltd, 1988), 92.
54
166
difficulties and challenges that many experienced as they moved to these nascent
suburbs and built their new homes,
In the spring of 1952 the City of Calgary was expanding, opening
up a new district on the outskirts of Calgary in the north west, now
known as Banff Trail. Lots were selling for $500.00 each and that
was a lot of money those days. We managed to get the money
together and were the proud owners of a ‘piece of land.’… The
following spring, 1953, we started to build. Roy was a carpenter by
trade, and we could save money by doing it ourselves. We moved
in the first of June although it was far from being
completed…There was no heat, only the sub floor, wide boards
with cracks, doors were still to be hung, and walls taped, but it was
a home of our own.56
This family memory is significant in that it links their experience to that of
families in an earlier time, and in other Canadian suburban spaces. As
historian Richard Harris has determined, Toronto’s working people in the
early twentieth century were involved directly with building and renovating
their homes, with the entire family often involved.57
Material considerations were most often the decisive factor in where a
family moving to the suburbs was able to purchase an existing home or able
to build a modest new home.58 For some Banff Trail families, struggling
financially despite the booming Calgary and larger Canadian economy in the
early 1950s, the process of purchasing a family home was not a smooth one.
Community lending institutions versus the ‘Big Banks’ were sought to help
with financing. In addition, community organizations provided furnishings
for some families who did not have the means to purchase new furniture for
56
George and Alaine Skoreyko, “The Rooster in the Garage and Other Wild Tales,” in Rose Scollard,
ed., From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks (Calgary: Banff Trail Seniors, 1995), 75-76.
57
Richard Harris, Unplanned Suburbs: Toronto’s American Tragedy, 1900 to1950 (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University, 1996), 16.
58
William Dobriner, Class in Suburbia (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall), 15.
167
their homes. This anecdote highlights these conditions well for a young
working-class couple who sought a home in Banff Trail. Their description of
their limited and second-hand furnishings indicates that the material
consequences of life, especially at this stage in the family’s life, were still
felt, just as they would have been in an inner city or small town,
The bank would not lend the money to us so we went to Tuxedo
Credit Union…We explained that we wanted to borrow money for
a down payment on a house…After some friendly conversation, we
told her a little bit about our background. Then she pulled the
cheque book from her desk and wrote us a cheque for $1, 500.00.
We immediately deposited it in the bank just in case she changed
her mind…We could not afford a refrigerator so we bought an
icebox which we used for two years…We had plastic curtains…We
did not have any furniture so we used orange boxes for our storage
cupboards. We also went to the Salvation Army to get our chairs.
We got a really nice rocking chair for one dollar and a standing
bronze lamp for the same price.59
For other early Banff Trail residents, the lack of a sizeable down payment,
and the concomitant limitations on home purchasing choices, had led them to this
community on Calgary’s edge. This was similar to what S.D. Clark had observed in
several Toronto-area suburbs in the late 1950s and early 1960s.60 The heavy financial
burden was long lasting for many families, and the initial landscape was not
impressive, as noted by these Banff Trail residents who moved into the community,
not yet two years old, in August, 1955,
After looking at a great number of houses – most of which had
down payments well beyond our means – Vernon and I took our
future in our hands and signed an agreement to purchase a home.
We were given a little green book (which we still have) by the
insurance company that held the mortgage. It showed the amount of
59
George and Elaine Skoreyko, “The Rooster in the Garage and Other Wild Tales,” in From Prairie
Grass to City Sidewalks, 75-76.
60
S.D. Clark, The Suburban Society (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), 68.
168
our monthly payments for the next 300 months...We had a “dirt”
yard, no fence or trees, no sidewalk and a rutted mud road.61
Many Banff Trail families, like some other post-World War II
suburban families across North America, were not wealthy. Some of them
struggled to furnish their homes, and had saved and borrowed for down
payments on houses that some of them readily admitted, may have been
beyond their means.62 There was a wide range of list prices in contemporary
newspapers in the early 1950s. Houses in nearby communities to Banff Trail
listed in a range from about $6, 700.00 up to $13, 000.00 with most of them
requiring a downpayment of at least $5, 000.00.63 In Calgary, much like
everywhere else across Canada, public housing was not a priority for any
level of government, in any jurisdiction.64 It was within this larger context
that children and adolescents were working throughout this period in many
roles that linked them to other young people across time and place.
Children, Adolescents & Household Or Unpaid Work
Household work, as noted by other historians of childhood, is where workingclass and middle-class children and adolescents made their most significant work
contributions, not only in this period but for the first sixty years of the twentieth
century.65 This work was also highly gendered, something that has applied across the
61
Eileen Stearns in From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks, 103.
For discussion on mortgage financing in the early 1950s in Canada see Richard Harris and Doris
Ragonetti, “Where Credit is Due: Residential Mortgage Finance in Canada, 1901 to 1954,” Journal of
Real Estate Finance and Economics 16, no. 2 (1998): 223-238.
63
Classified Listings, Calgary Herald, 9 Dec 1950.
64
For the two surveys of Canadian housing policy see John C Bacher, Keeping to the Marketplace:
The Evolution of Canadian Housing Policy (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 1993); Sean Purdy,
‘“Ripped Off” by the System: Housing Policy, Poverty, and Territorial Stigmatization in Regent Park
Housing Project, 1951-1991,” Labour/Le Travail 52 (2003): 45-108.
65
Sutherland, Growing Up, 114.
62
169
twentieth century, and earlier as well. Historian Veronica Strong-Boag notes that the
suburban home was first and foremost a workplace for women, but that this not the
case for men in the post-World War II period.66
Informants often commented on this gendered nature of suburban household
work. This applied to both the work of young people and adults living in suburbs in
the 1950s and 1960s. There was modeling done by children of all ages in many
informants’ families, with one noting specifically that,
it was a gendered kind of arrangement. I was expected to cut the
grass and shovel the walks. The girls were supposed to help Mom
and help with the dishes. That just seemed liked the natural order
and I didn’t mind that as I probably had a lot less work than they
did. Probably when I was about eight or nine, I would think. My
mother did all the cooking until my sisters got to be quite old. All
the cleaning, all the laundry for six people, she did all of those
things exclusively up until I went to university. I had to keep [my
own room] tidy.67
Other informants noted the gendered aspects of household work, one noting
that he and his brother did not have to do much of anything around his childhood
home outside of some basic tasks and some outdoor yard work. He recalled how “my
mom did most of it [the housework]. My brother and I were pretty spoiled as kids. I
remember a lot of yard work…and I hated it. I don’t remember any housework,
[except for] maybe making the bed. We had everything handed to us. I don’t
remember doing the dishes.”68
Other informants echoed the fact that not only was the household work
gendered, but heavily weighted in that women and girls did much more of it. One
interviewee, Brent, also noted that there was not a lot of structure or scheduling to
66
Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams,” 490.
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB 2, June 2011.
68
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
67
170
work done either as young children or adolescents. Brent said his Mom basically did
everything of consequence,
My brother and I were given the odd chore. We were responsible
for putting our own laundry away. I was certainly introduced to
grounds maintenance early in my career, walking the dog, picking
up after the dog, shoveling the walk, cutting the grass, and pruning.
We all pitched in but we were certainly told what to do. There
wasn’t really a schedule, it was more ad hoc. It was part of being a
family member [doing our housework].69
As Neil Sutherland has noted there were real differences between the sexes
with most boys doing limited or no work in the female ‘domestic’ sphere.70
The female sphere was almost exclusively indoors (however in some
circumstances women did the majority of gardening), while men and boys did
the majority of yard work. This discrepancy is also related to what Sutherland
noted in this period as many overworked mothers often turned first to
daughters for help with household work.71 Some of these families had as
many as five or six children, so it is unsurprising that some mothers needed
older daughters to help with familial child care and perform other critical
household work duties.
In families with only boys, there were some notable differences according to
informants. With similar amounts of work as in other homes, boys, out of necessity,
did more work inside the home in comparison to families with both boys and girls.
Additionally, fathers also seemed to be more involved than in some other
69
Brent Harris, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON 9 December 2011.
Neil Sutherland, “‘We Always Had Things To Do’: The Paid and Unpaid Work of
Anglophone Children Between the 1920s and the 1960s,” Labour/Le Travail 25 (Spring 1990): 113.
71
Ibid., 110.
70
171
households, although this was not the case in all families by any means. Allan, who
did not have any sisters, recalled that in his home his,
mother was responsible for the laundry, I remember her ironing
most Mondays. My father was probably more helpful than the
stereotype. He would do some of the cooking on the weekends. We
had a vegetable garden and that was his realm. We all learned to
cook. My father would do most of the cooking when we were on
vacation…He was pretty helpful. I don’t remember him doing the
vacuuming. We all took turns doing the dishes; or fighting to not do
the dishes.72
Jim reinforced that a further split, beyond gender divisions, was among age
differences. Older children, particularly adolescents, often did much more than
younger siblings and were models of working behaviour in the home. In his large
family, that included five siblings, Jim said,
housework was shared. We all had chores to do. Myself, being
male, I was mowing the lawn and shoveling the walks. We all took
turns washing, drying and clearing table of dishes. Every week we
had to clean our rooms and make our beds daily. There were six
kids in the family. It fell to the older ones to entertain the younger
ones. The girls helped my mother quite a bit.73
Jim made it clear that his parents, and in particular his father, believed the
household work was important in learning the values associated with hard
work and manual labour. It was conceived as character building and it was
not exclusive to working class families as many middle class parents also
required children and adolescents to help with household chores.
In some homes, there were gendered aspects to certain tasks, but not to all.
Personal interests and initiative also seemed to matter, and particularly by the late
1960s, some girls seemed to become more involved with some tasks that had been
72
73
Allan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 October 2011.
172
done mainly by boys previously. The work done by adults was clearly delineated by
gender though. One informant remembered some of these complexities this way,
Everyone had their own little tasks. My mother always did all the
cooking, baking, and cleaning because she was home all day. My
specific chores were always washing the dishes. I did that from
standing on a stool so I could reach the sink and that was from the
time I was five…My sisters dried and my brother bugged us, he
never did anything, he always got away with that because he was
the oldest [laughing]. My father was a great builder and he built our
basement. I helped him…measuring things, holding boards when
he cut, but I didn’t do the cutting. I enjoyed helping him out.74
This informant made a salient point in that childhood work, particularly in
North America, may now be viewed as exploitative, or at the very least,
inappropriate, yet many children and adolescents chose to work willingly in the postWorld War II suburbs. While the family home was the primary worksite for almost
all suburban children and adolescents, one unique project drew together hundreds of
children, parents and teachers from Banff Trail. The workspace was unique in
Calgary and I have not found a similar project in the post-World War II Canadian
suburban landscape. A Banff Trail resident remembered the building of the ‘The
Worm’ at Branton Junior High School that had begun due to a planning era that
meant a portion of the school was dug 10 feet deep rather than just a crawl space. It
ended up being a 14, 000 square-foot area filled with broken concrete that was
ultimately turned into a training facility including a running track with banked turns.
A resident recalled that over 500 young people and 22 teachers contributed to the
building,
Some P.E. classes were used but most of the work was done on
Saturday and after schools. Such tools as rakes, shovels, pickaxes,
crowbars, and wheelbarrows brought from homes in the area were
74
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, 27 July 2011.
173
used. The boys did most of the work, clearing the broken concrete
left behind by construction workers. The girls helped by raking the
area flat…Because the school board did not support upkeep the
students watered and raked the pits every day.75
The space was used for more than four decades but was eventually filled in due to
some environmental concerns. While unpaid work was a critical component of
suburban childhoods and adolescence in this period, paid work was very important to
nearly all informants and there was a lot of archival material culture related directly
to it.
Children, Adolescents & Paid Work
The prairie winds are calling
Soft and sweet and low,
They tell about the pioneers
Who came so long ago.
They tell about the struggle,
The sweat, and work and toil,
As day by day they tried to make
Their living from the soil.
They sing of perseveranceThe women and the men
Who came-and failed-undaunted stillThey tried and tried again.
They tell of humble homesteads
Surrounded by the snow,
While wrathful gods from up above
Made blighting blizzards blow.
They carol of the Springtime wind
That pushes back the cold,
They tell about awakening land
In hues of green and gold.
They whisper of the rising hopes
Of all the pioneers
To make this land the best of homes
Within the future years.76
75
76
Amanda Queen, “The Worm,” in From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks, 50.
Shannon Bathall, “The Voice of the Prairies,” Aberhart Advocate 4, no. 2, November 1961, 3.
174
This poem, written by a William Aberhart High School student in 1961,
broaches many of the values related to work and the work ethic promoted in both
working-class and middle-class homes in this period, including perseverance,
‘pioneering spirits,’ and humility. Sprinkled throughout the accounts, there was
language about the growth of Calgary suburbs that harkened back to an earlier period
in Prairie history. This was an imagined history that saw the unoccupied land
developed by hard-working white settlers who faced nearly insurmountable obstacles
in building the Canadian West. Some of Banff Trail’s youngest citizens worked
relatively hard in the 1950s and 1960s, and although the work they did was much
different than the paid labour of children and adolescents, it indicates an enduring
focus on the Protestant work ethic in many families. Some of this work that young
people did was also paid.
As historian Neil Sutherland has noted, interviews and other evidence
demonstrate that some 1950s children worked as hard as earlier childhood cohorts
and at similar tasks.77 Certainly this held true in Banff Trail, as both inside and
outside the home, paid and unpaid work were important components in the lives of
children and adolescents. While Sutherland ends his study in the early 1960s, I found
evidence of work remaining an important part of many lives of Calgary’s young
people into the late 1960s and early 1970s. What did change, and this mirrors the
findings of other childhood historians, was full-time child labour as a widely
perceived social ill across the country.78
77
Sutherland, Growing Up, 139.
Sutherland, “We Always Had Work to Do,” 135. Additionally, as Sutherland notes, familyallowance cheques for mothers did help to ease the financial burdens for thousands of Canadian
families.
78
175
Suburban children and adolescents did paid work well into the 1960s. While
there were standard jobs for the majority of young people – babysitting, delivering
newspapers, and cleaning positions being the most common – the reasons for
working were wide-ranging. The following excerpt from a 1952 school yearbook
titled “Day Duty at a Service Station” captured some of the mundane day-to-day
activity in a Calgary service station job held by countless urban and suburban
adolescents,
Some people think a Service Station is a place where you go to
work hard all day long. But you can have fun if you set your mind
at it. A customer comes in and wants his oil changed. You start to
drain it when all of a sudden you accidentally step in the way of the
flow of the oil. It flows all over your head…It saves you from
putting hair oil on your hair when you get home. Then you get
sloppy and spill some grease on the floor. Well, a customer comes
along and “Whoops” … “thud”! He screams “I’ll sue you for
this.”…Comes twelve o’clock and you sit down to lunch when in
comes a car for gas. The old boy stands and talks to you so long
your sandwiches have icicles on them when you get back…Even if
you do make a few LITTLE mistakes once in a while, the public
always gets served.79
This student was not more than 12 or 13 years old as this excerpt was from a
junior high school yearbook. As with many student articles and essays, there is a lot
of humour integrated into the text, and while the work was likely quite repetitive,
there seemed to be some challenging moments, particularly for an adolescent just
beginning his or her paid work life.
One striking theme found in the archival record, and noted by some
informants, was that there were not limitless job opportunities. In the 1950s, there
seemed to be more work available; however, by the late 1960s, this was not a
universal condition for young people. The enduring myth that there were more jobs
79
Peter Baptie, Balmoral Yearbook (1951-52), 7.
176
than people in the entire post-World War II era, did not apply to young people. In
other words, young workers were not spared from the downturns inherent in the
industrial capitalist system. There were downturns through most of these twenty
years, as evidenced by this short excerpt from a 1950 newspaper article,
large groups of men and women graduates from all faculties of
western and eastern universities still are unemployed according to
the monthly report of the prairie region of the Unemployment
Insurance Commission…Alberta coal operators also were
concerned over a lack of demand for coal and although Calgary’s
wholesale and retail business was good, no help was required.80
This era is often associated with boom and relative material comfort. But as
with other topics, this was not universal based on differences in class, gender, ‘race,’
or age. In another article from The Albertan in May of 1950, “Students Exceed
Number of Jobs,” it is clear that there were employment issues for young people in
their late teens and early twenties,
It’s a case of hunt for a job this year…In the oil industry, graduates
in specialized fields were readily available, but oil companies were
showing a preference for men who had worked in the field and then
returned to university for post-graduate studies…In fact, the supply
had become greater than the demand here, as Calgary had become a
centre for hundreds of university graduates from various parts of
Canada, U.S. and Britain.81
Much of this was echoed in the 1960s as well. Student employment for
university and college students, dozens of whom were living in Banff Trail at this
time, was a key topic in the University of Calgary’s student newspaper, The
Gauntlet. This wouldn’t have been the entire student workforce, but the low levels of
employment were likely indicative of the broader picture in the city. The article
posed the question,
80
81
“’U’ Graduates Still Jobless,” Calgary Herald, 23 Jun 1950.
“Students Exceed Number of Jobs,” The Albertan, 31 May 1950.
177
Summer employment for university students? A big problem…
About 1200 students applied to the employment service for
jobs….Sluggish construction in the city increased the difficulty for
employment officials. About 50 per cent of students wanting
employment were placed as compared to 68 per cent last year.82
Adolescents, regardless of gender, shared the challenges that many women
faced increasingly in the postwar period and later. A lot of the work was
becoming more precarious in nature in that it was low paying, often did not
include benefits, and was temporary in nature.83 Influential professionals
such as the Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW) noted the
challenges that youth faced in the mid-sixties in securing employment, and
the CASW emphasized that a large portion of young people were
unprepared to assume productive roles as they reached adulthood.84
Five years later, young people across the country continued to be challenged
in their job hunts. Agencies working on their behalf were working desperately to
secure summer employment for students who struggled to find work, in particular in
Calgary. In Montreal only 25 percent of students who were seeking employment
through Canada Manpower found work and only 37 percent in Toronto were
employed. The situation in Vancouver and Victoria was described as even gloomier.
While in Calgary, where an average of 57 phone calls were required to place one
applicant, Manpower employed only eleven percent of its applicants.85
82
Beth Waters, “50% of Students Jobless – Baker,” The Gauntlet, 23 September 1963, 4.
Leah F. Vosko: Precarious Employment: Understanding Labour Market Insecurity in Canada
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2005).
84
CASW, Social Policy Statement Booklet (Ottawa: CASW, 1964), 1, Canadian Association of Social
Workers fonds, MG 28, I 441, Box 23, File 23, Library and Archives Canada.
85
Tom Elsworthy, “Student Unemployment: What Is To Be Done,” The Gauntlet, 11 September 1968,
4.
83
178
In a 1970 report prepared by Ken Brown for the Association of Universities
and Colleges of Canada, students across the country faced many of the same issues
with finding employment. I suggest that rather than seeing a tremendous degree of
difference between the early 1950s and late 1960s, we actually see some continuity
in the general experiences of older teenagers. The transition to adulthood and work
was not expected to be easy, nor were the final years of teenagehood as Mr. Brown
states in his preamble to the full report,
Rather than put down in writing the comments used to describe the
Canadian student’s summer employment prospects- suffice to say
that it is of national, as well as student, concern. Pressure must be
placed on the federal government to find a solution. The reports on
Manpower’s efficiency range from ‘good’ down to ‘very poor’,
with more tending to be on the low scale…Even here, the job
prospects, especially for those with liberal arts degrees, are poor.
The question that must be resolved is: Is university training for an
education or for a job?86
Despite these challenges, many suburban young people did find work through
various means. This connects them with other working young people across Canada
in the post-World War II period who worked in a wide variety of jobs both part-time
and full-time.87 Wendy did significant paid work in her early teenage years. By the
early 1970s, she had a job as a playground supervisor that required both dedication
and time. The level of responsibility and accountability was also high and she
remembered it being hard work from a teenager’s perspective. She was required to
do a lot on a daily basis,
I babysat, that’s how I made the bulk of my money. There was a
family, just two blocks away whose mom was highly involved in
the community. That was probably the bulk of my earnings until I
86
Ken Brown, “Report on University Visits” (Ottawa: Association of Universities and Colleges of
Canada, 1970), 3, University of Calgary Archives.
87
Sutherland, “We Always Had Work to Do,” 123.
179
was 16 or 17. [Later on] I was a playground supervisor…The kids
would come every day to us. We would have to plan recreational
activities and crafts. My friend and I ran the program together. We
had to come up with weekly plans…We were in another
community that was over about a ½ hour bike ride. We worked
really hard for what little money we made. We had a lot of
responsibility. I eventually became a supervisor [involving
evenings in later years].88
The fact that Wendy began doing paid work as a babysitter is unsurprising.
There is a long history of babysitting in North America and as historian Miriam
Forman-Brunell has noted, babysitters have been culturally typecast in many
different ways. In the early postwar era they were viewed as irreverent “bobbysoxers,” and by the sixties, as energetic and arousing.89 Interviewees did not mention
any of these cultural representations and seemed to feel quite respected and valued in
their roles. One key point is that all of these babysitters said that they babysat only
for people that they knew in their community, which may have elevated the respect
level they seemed to enjoy from their employers. This was not a universal experience
as across the continent, in this period and earlier, there seemed to be a different tone
to the workplace as babysitters formed unions, wrote manifestos and contracts,
lobbied for raises, and by the latter half of the twentieth century, largely eliminated
any housework from their paid duties.90
Babysitting was not immune to the attempts by many to standardize countless
activities by mid-century in Canada. The following Albertan article, “Urges Training
For ‘Sitters,’” urged some formal training for teenaged babysitters before beginning
88
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, 2 August 2011.
Miriam Forman-Brunell, Babysitter: An American History (New York: New York UP, 2006).
90
Forman-Brunell, Babysitter, 13.
89
180
their work as well as a call for babysitters to be a minimum of 14-years-old.91 There
were also several recommendations and guidelines from the Canadian Home
Economics Association regarding babysitting in Canada,
Told parents to seek older women sitters through community
organizations, leave written instructions with sitters and don’t let
girl sitters go home alone after dark. The association based its
recommendations on results of questionnaires sent parents in 60
cities and to 6,000 students in grades five-12 in nine provinces.
Some of the facts the association gleaned were: 1. The age range of
sitters is 11-19 years. 2. Students spend one to 40 hours weekly
sitting. 3. From 22 to 50 percent of girl sitters are allowed to go
home after dark. 4. Only one-third of parents leave instructions
with the sitter. 5. An average of 40 percent leave only a telephone
number. 6. Some parents turn off the heat and the house gets cold.
7. Some parents do not lock the doors when they leave.92
There are innumerable references to babysitting in the archival record. As
noted by others, the rising prosperity in Canada after 1945, allowed more workingand middle-class families in to hire babysitters as a choice versus necessity.93 This
invariably increased the efforts by some, such as national associations noted above,
to have the ‘right’ babysitter available for childcare. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there
was some resistance from teenagers about the work required when babysitting. The
following creative writing piece, titled “Babysitting,” reflected some common
sentiments, and infused some dark humour, about what was hopefully a fictitious
evening of babysitting for a Banff Trail high school student. It also reinforces that
babysitting was not a positive experience for all females and that some suburban
babysitting experiences were likely quite trying and negative,
91
This era saw babysitting courses offered by organizations such as the Red Cross, YWCA and St.
John’s Ambulance, with many of these programs continuing to the present day across Canada.
92
“Urges Training For ‘Sitters,’” The Albertan, 18 Jul 1950.
93
Sutherland, “We Always Had Work to Do,” 129.
181
According to Mr. and Mrs. Turnip, babysitting is a plush job;
possibly, the easiest in the world – especially if you happen to be
lucky enough to babysit their angelic pair. What they don’t realize
is that the minute they step out the door, Bobby Turnip dissolves
into a blubbering pool of tears and Billy starts to break the
flowerpots and trample the dirt into the rug, tear down the curtains
and generally wreak havoc. In short the “angelic pair” have become
a couple of little demons. It is eight o’clock; the sitter has been
specifically ordered not to put the two to bed until eight thirty.
What can she do? Let us follow the poor deluded teen-ager who has
been shanghaied into sitting with Bobby and Billy as she pursues
(and I do mean pursues) the course of an evening with them…
Following a series of incidents at:
8:59 – Billy wants a glass of water, too. Our heroine takes an axe,
murders them both, and goes back into the living room to settle
down and watch “Outer Limits.”94
As Forman-Brunell has noted, while many adults look back longingly to the
postWorld War II period as a time when babysitters were abundant and affable, that socalled golden age of babysitters never existed, not even in the mind’s eye of many
fifties and sixties parent-employers.95 For Janice, babysitting, when she was in her
early teenage years, was one of her few options for paid work. Most of these former
adolescent girls seemed resigned to their limited options, but wished they had had
more of them. The work was also important in helping to shape her identity, both in
terms of the tasks themselves, and what it allowed her to explore. She also touched
on the hopes, that money earned, rested upon. That timeless motivator for work for
many in childhood and adolescence, having enough money to run away from home
(mostly tongue-in-cheek), was also mentioned as she recalled what she did for paid
work as she moved into teenagehood in the mid-1960s,
94
95
“Babysitting,” Aberhart Advocate 5, no. 3, 16 December 1964.
Forman-Brunell, Babysitter, 69.
182
I was always saving money to run away from home. I did
babysitting; you were quite limited [as a young girl]. My parents
paid me for babysitting [my younger brother]. At 17 I got a job
downtown in the Bay in the grocery department. What I did with
my money was save it. I had very different tastes from my family. I
was a nut for Broadway musicals. I’d go to the library and read
them. So, music, I spent money on fabric, made my own clothes,
and went to movies, and after the age of fifteen, bought cigarettes.96
Another interviewee recalled that she had started her “own babysitting
business when I was 13. I would buy material to make clothes with the wages and I
saved some.”97 This seemed to be a common age to begin paid work, especially for
teenaged girls as Karen also recalled that when she began working she “babysat
when I was in junior high. I was around [12 or 13]. I had been doing that at home for
my Mom, unpaid at home. For one summer I babysat my grandmother. It was mostly
to earn money.”98 Even for those from working-class families, the money earned as
adolescents; was retained for personal spending. Some did mention having to give
part of their earnings towards certain items that their parents felt they could
contribute towards such as sporting goods items for instance.
While most babysitters were girls, some of the interviewees did mention
doing some babysitting as boys in Banff Trail. Babysitting by teenage boys, has not
been uncommon in North America and as Forman-Brunell has noted, in fact, from
the Great Depression to the new millennium, male sitters were consistently portrayed
as models of masculine identity for impressionable little boys threatened by
feminized suburbs and female-headed households.99 As Doug remembered it, “I did a
96
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 October 2011.
98
Anonymous, telephone interview, Calgary, AB, 24 November 2011.
99
Forman-Brunell, Babysitter, 10.
97
183
little bit of babysitting when I was in my mid-teens; that was very rare if my sisters
or one of the other girls in the neighbourhood wasn’t available.”100
In other words, he was not a first choice for parents, and that is not surprising
as many informants mentioned that people seemed to prefer adolescent girls, owing
to common gender stereotyping. He did not seem to find the work unpleasant, but it
was not something that he sought actively. This was similar to Jim’s experiences as
he readily performed the role of masculinity that persisted in this era (and many
would argue continues today). He was solicited to babysit within his Banff Trail
suburb when his sisters could not deal with other young boys and he accepted the
role gladly. In some ways this mirrored the education system where men were
principals and vice principals and women were teachers. One role required more
nurturing and caring while the other was focused on order and disciplining. In talking
about some of the work he did in his teens he said, “I used to babysit. It was $0.15 an
hour and at Christmas, $0.25 an hour. My sisters babysat. Whenever they had trouble
with the kids they babysat I would be the next one to go around.”101
The issues that his sisters had experienced seemed to dissipate which also
speaks to the lack of respect that some younger children were exhibiting towards
older girls who were serving as babysitters and authority figures. Ultimately,
teenaged boys were much less likely to babysit than were adolescent girls. Boys were
more much more likely to be involved in delivering newspapers and the routes in
suburban Calgary were similar to what historian Neil Sutherland located across
Canada in the period. Much as in Banff Trail, he found that newspaper routes ranged
100
101
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011.
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 October 2011.
184
in size from a minimum of forty or fifty papers to just over one hundred.102 Murray
was one of several interviewees who delivered newspapers from a young age. He
said, “my earliest paid job would have been a paper route…It would have been an
early morning job because The Albertan was a morning paper. From grade six
through grade nine. I was encouraged to save but not forced to put ten to fifteen
percent into a savings account. I was able to blow the rest.103 Allan also recalled the
he “had a paper route. It was a Star Weekly route. I delivered the papers at Monday at
noon.” 104 Bruce remembered that he had worked as a newspaper delivery boy and
that by “grade nine I had a paper route, flyer route that I was involved with and I
earned some extra money. By Grade 10, a high school teacher… got us involved in
Camp Horizon, the handicapped children’s camp for one summer.”105 The one
interviewee who mentioned what he did with his earnings had some guidance from
his parents, but ultimately, the choice was his. This reinforces that there was a
growing prosperity within both working class and middle class families. Some
adolescents did purchase clothes and other staples, but earnings were not turned over
to their parents as they had been in previous eras.
Some informants did recall other types of paid work they had done as
teenagers. One recalled that he had started a small business with a friend that was
relatively lucrative given the hard work they did in both securing the work and
actually doing it. For him, as in the cases of so many other young people, it was an
important way to assert some independence as he transitioned from childhood to
102
Sutherland, “We Always Had Things to Do,” 126.
Anonymous 2, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
104
Allan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
105
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 28 July 2011.
103
185
adolescence to adulthood. He remembered that he “used to mow lawns in the
neighbourhood with a friend and we had a little enterprise going; lawn mowing,
edging in the neighbourhood. The job was fun, it was part of the independence
thing.”106
Another interviewee also discussed the importance of her musical work in
that it was something that she excelled at from a young age and in fact, was able to
turn it into some reasonably well-paid work. She enjoyed it and it allowed her to be
with groups of older people that she identified with much more readily than her peer
group in her adolescent years. As it had been for adolescent males, the money she
earned was hers to keep, as it was for most working-class and middle-class children
in the post-World War II period. It also reflects a more consumer-oriented
teenagehood as few adolescents were saving their earnings; although she was one
adolescent who did save her earnings. She remembered doing “a lot of singing gigs. I
was naturally singing in my younger years and enjoying it. One of the things I
enjoyed best, was music. My sister and I got quite good at doing duets and playing
instruments together. We would sing for certain banquets and weddings for pay and
that was quite exciting. The wages went into our account at the bank.”107
Suburban spaces were not only connected to nearby cities, but in some
instances, they could be tied closely to more remote areas in the province. While
traditional forms of child labour were foreign to the vast majority of post-World War
II suburbanites, the following Albertan story, titled “Child Labor in South Beet Field
Charge” regarding work done by First Nations families, and in particular, their
106
107
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
186
children, near the southern Alberta town of Taber, provided context for the
experiences of one Banff Trail youngster from the era,
Conditions of work in southern Alberta sugar beet fields are forcing
six-year-old children to labor beside their fathers and
mothers…Present conditions result in family breakdown and Indian
cultural degradation for the approximately 2,000 workers in the
sugar beet fields…During that time, he learned that beet pickers are
under contract to hoe fields, and net $17 per acre for first hoeing –
with an acre determined as 23,760 lineal feet of sugar beet
rows…When the largely illiterate families arrive, they find it
necessary to enter the contract with farmers…To fulfill terms of the
contract, children are forced into the fields to work alongside the
father and mother, partially because there is no one to watch them
if they stay at the housing accommodations.”108
Paid work for children from Banff Trail in the 1960s was
unexpectedly tied to this larger experience that had been heavily criticized in
most media reports. There was also a racial component to some of this as
many workers were First Nations people who had limited choices in finding
employment in Alberta. This suburban informant was not traveling from a
reserve, but he was performing child labour in an era where this was no
longer the norm. A few years earlier, one informant, Jim, prior to his tenth
birthday, had worked in these same fields. He recalled his experiences from
this first paid employment this way,
I was 9 years old. I went down to Taber for a summer holiday and I
hoed sugar beets. Hoed the fields every day from early in the
morning. Get up early in the morning, move pipe, come in for
breakfast, move pipe, come in for lunch, move pipe, come in for
supper, and then move pipe before I went to bed because it was an
irrigation pipe.109
This is interesting on multiple levels as Jim was obviously being facetious
108
109
Jim Witte, “Child Labor in South Beet Field Charged,” The Albertan, 16 March 1970.
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 October 2011.
187
in describing the summer employment in Taber as a “summer holiday.” On another
level though, while this was not commonplace, it does link working-class childhoods
temporally. This work was atypical of nearly all of the work that children, and in
particular, suburban children did at this time. It connects Banff Trail to other parts of
Alberta and across time to children who were expected to do hard labour as part of
their childhoods.110
The transition to paid work in adulthood was prominent even in junior high
yearbooks in the 1950s and early 1960s. In nearly every yearbook (both junior and
senior high school) from this period, both nationally- and locally-based companies
bought advertising space seeking potential employees from the student body.
Secondary and post-secondary education, while increasingly important in this period,
was not the ultimate goal for a significant minority of students. The following
Hudson’s Bay Company advertisement excerpt from a Branton Junior High
yearbook, titled “For Graduates…Seeking a Future,” provides a good example,
There are over 50 varieties of jobs at the Hudson’s Bay Company
Wherever your particular talents lie, buying, selling, personnel,
accounting, publicity, or management…at “The Bay” you’ll find a
wonderfully diversified field of opportunity. Jobs-with-a-future,
limited only by your own capabilities and initiative. Our Personnel
Office will be happy to tell you more about the possibilities for a
professional career.111
Unsurprisingly, given the broader discursive focus on individual initiative and
personal responsibility, there is an appeal to the future and to students being
limited only by their own abilities. As explored in the previous chapter,
110
Children and adolescents on many farms continued to labour on farms during this period, see
Sandra Rollings-Magnusson, Heavy Burdens on Small Shoulders: The Labour of Pioneer Children on
the Canadian Prairies (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2009).
111
“For Graduates Seeking a Future,” Branton Yearbook (1957-1958), 36.
188
progressive teachings often centred on the individual and personal initiative,
and a pronounced movement away from the strength of the collective and the
community-minded in some respects.112
In another Bank of Montreal advertisement from Crescent Heights in
1954, a school that many Banff Trail suburbanites attended prior to William
Aberhart opening, there were promises of a bright future, good pay, and
opportunities that seem boundless if the young person seizes them. Much like
the Hudson’s Bay advertisement, and countless other ones produced for
young people in the 1950s and 1960s, everything in the advertisement
focused on the future and made little if any reference to the company’s or
Canada’s past,
In sorting out your plans for the future, have you considered a
career in banking? Today, banking offers a wider variety of
interesting and better-paid jobs than ever before. Consider it
seriously in reaching your decision. When you enter the service of
the B of M you are counted a potential executive. You are trained
accordingly, with time-consuming routine cut to the bone, and you
are given every opportunity for advancement. The rest is up to you.
If you are interested in a career with a future…first-class pension
plan…steady increases…a genuine combination of opportunity and
security…have a chat with your nearest B of M branch manager.
You will like his helpful attitude.113
Young women were often targeted directly, and informants did
discuss how in some families, girls were not always being expected to
continue their studies following their high school years. The options were
limited not just for teenagers, as some stated, but continued into early
112
The threat of the Cold War, communism, collectivism and so forth can never be marginalized as we
have seen. The messages in most advertising copy were normally direct in this regard.
113
“Bank of Montreal advertisement,” Crescent Heights Bugle (1954), 72.
189
adulthood. The following advertisement was directed exclusively at young
women and again broaches many of the themes of a new and modern society,
Opportunities are better than ever. Prepare for a good
position…everyone has heard of the ‘Way to Success’. But how
many of us know what it actually means? It means a sound
business training acquired from a modern up-to-date business
school. Success results from planning…so plan now to attend
Henderson Secretarial School, and you will be following in the
footsteps of hundreds of young Henderson graduates who have
learned the secret of the ‘Way to Success’. Enquire about our
special summer courses.114
Work, both paid and unpaid, was an important element in the lives of
some children and most adolescents in the post-World War II suburbs. It was critical
in shaping young identities and allowed many young people to assert some
independence as they transitioned to adulthood.
Conclusion
I have looked at how ‘race’ and ethnicity were defined through the lens of
childhood by young suburbanites in the 1950s and 1960s. The post-World War II
suburbs are represented as being nearly exclusively white, and Banff Trail, like many
Canadian suburbs in this period, was no exception to this generalization. It was not
racially or ethnically diverse in the 1950s and 1960s. Neither children nor
adolescents seemed aware of the privilege associated with this whiteness. ‘Race’ was
a rare topic of conversation, although by the late 1960s, it was discussed mainly in
the context of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States; racial and ethnic
concerns in Calgary and more broadly in Canada, were simply not discussed. In the
1960s, nearly 70 percent of Calgarians identified their ethnic origins as either British
114
“Henderson Secretarial School advertisement,” Crescent Heights Bugle (1952), 146.
190
or German.115 By the late 1960s, immigration patterns into Calgary were changing,
and the landscape in the 1970s was quite different in this regard, not only in Banff
Trail but also across Calgary. This trend has continued to the point that in 2011,
337,425 people belonged to visible minorities, and made up almost 28.1 percent of
the total population.116
Banff Trail did not fit neatly into the categories of middle-class or workingclass suburb. Particularly in its earliest years, Banff Trail had both working-class and
middle-class families that allowed for limited diversity in terms of class. Most
informants did not recall any real sustained consideration of class from a childhood
perspective, and it did not seem part of their consciousnesses as children or
adolescents despite class being the key determiner in children’s education, personal
wellbeing, health and so forth. Indeed, as the example of Aboriginal child labour in
the sugar beet fields indicates, ‘race’ and class were significant determinants of
children’s experiences. Their relatively comfortable suburban experiences, however,
tended to shield them from this knowledge. Children of both classes spent countless
hours doing both unpaid and paid work inside and outside their homes. Work was
gendered and mirrored the adult world in most ways. This work was important to
many of them on several levels and was critical in shaping their changing identities.
In the next chapter I explore what suburban children and adolescents were
doing with their leisure time. Despite increased pressures on their free time, young
people still had significant time to engage in sport, recreation and play within Banff
115
Census of Canada, 1961.
“Ethnic Diversity in Canada,” Live in Calgary, accessed 22 March 2013,
http://www.liveincalgary.com/overview/calgary-facts/demographics/ethnic-diversity
116
191
Trail and in the larger city. For many informants, it was these activities that continue
to hold a great deal of importance in their memories of childhood adolescence. The
chapter analyzes sport, recreation, leisure and play. Popular culture and leisure
activities were geared increasingly to children and adolescents in this period, a
recurring theme. Leisure and ‘free’ time abounded and were enjoyed by nearly all
children. Nevertheless, play was not expressed in a universal, undifferentiated way,
even within individual households. Sport and recreation defined the lives of many
children and adolescents, yet not for others. The Guides’ and Boy Scouts’
movements were particularly strong in this part of Calgary in this period, due in part
to a very dedicated volunteer group operating within a strong United Church
congregation.
192
Fifth Chapter: Sport, Recreation, Leisure & Play
Introduction
My brother had a motorcycle when he was 18. He’d chase me and
my friend around the neighbourhood. He’d send us off, [we] would
run away, terrified, down some alleys in Banff Trail area and we’d
wait until we’d hear the roar of the motorcycle. I remember being
so terrified. That’s a game I remember playing. [We were] just
playing around the neighbourhood; the good old days when the
evening seemed to go on forever.1
If play and leisure time are a fundamental way that children and adolescents came to
define their childhood cultures, often without revealing much of it to the most
important adults in their lives, this informant’s recollections describe well how some
youngsters played in the post-World War II suburbs. Time seemed to pass
differently, in comparison to adulthood, for many of them. At the end of this
recollection, the interviewee recalled that time seemed to have a different quality
when he was a child. Particularly for younger children, not yet on regular schedules,
clocks and watches were not yet primary in their lives. Adolescence brought more
regulation and time constraints than childhood had, a theme broached in the material
culture and several interviews.
This chapter analyzes how postwar suburban children engaged in sport,
recreation, leisure activities, and play. Popular culture and leisure activities were
geared increasingly to children and adolescents following World War II, and were
the result of forward-marching modern ideas about organizing and formalizing
youngsters’ activities. In this chapter, I examine the effects of postwar life on
1
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
193
emerging suburban childhood cultures, recreation and leisure, and play. Nearly all
children in North America enjoyed leisure and ‘free’ time, and suburban young
people were no exception to this. Nevertheless, play was not experienced in a
universal, undifferentiated way. Both class and gender helped to shape both
childhood and adolescence in terms of leisure, recreation and play. While sport and
recreation were important elements in the lives of countless children and adolescents,
it was not the case for all. The Girl Guides and Boy Scouts movements were
particularly strong in the Banff Trial suburb in the post-World War II period. One
reason for this is that churches, of various denominations, continued to influence the
lives of children and adolescents in the 1950s and 1960s in northwest Calgary.2
Because the scouting movement and other programs such as Hi-C and Canadian
Girls in Training (C.G.I.T.) were centred in the church, this helps to explain the
number of young people, normally in mid-childhood, who joined these organizations,
oftentimes on the advice of their parents.3 These organizations were also critical in
helping to shape distinctive gender roles for young people as traditional ideas of
femininity and masculinity were emphasized in these organizations.4 This is where
an important distinction between childhood and adolescence can be made as some
children had limited say in what activities they undertook while adolescents were
allowed to express their hopes and desires much more fully.
2
This contradicts some of what other historians like Owram have concluded in Doug Owram, Born At
the Right Time (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).
3
There is no causation link to be made here, but it is certainly correlative. Church life was a part of
many suburban households although the children had varying levels of commitment to religious life.
Some accepted teachings wholeheartedly while others were not interested outside of attending church
as part of familial duties.
4
Kristine Alexander, “Can the Girl Guide Speak? The Perils and Pleasures of Looking for Children’s
Voices in Archival Research,” Jeunesse vol 4, no.1 (2012): 132-145.
194
Play and spare time were important to all children and adolescents with the
postwar era serving as a transitional period, across class and gender lines, in that
young people had more time to themselves than did previous generations in Canada.
We have also seen how suburban spaces, both in homes and outside of homes, were
increasingly designated as dedicated for children’s and adolescents’ use.5 What was
beginning to change, although not wholly as a previous chapter argued, was that
older adolescents’ increasingly busy schedules were filled with more leisure time and
play activities; at the same time, there was a loosening of the previous hold of work
and familial duties.6 The most profound change in the lives of Canadian children and
adolescents, regardless of where they lived, was the movement towards a childhood
defined by education, sports, recreation and leisure, although to call it ‘carefree’
would be inaccurate as we have seen that young people negotiated difficult peer and
sibling influences and challenges from several institutions such as families and
schools.
Childhood Sport, Recreation & Leisure, and Play in Historical Context
While the early post-World War II era was a period of economic growth, and
saw a rapid expansion in consumer products, families, both working- and middleclass and in particular, children and adolescents, had begun to have more leisure time
available to them as early as the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth
centuries. Age, gender, ‘race,’ and class were important factors in the preferences
5
Rumpus rooms were often built in suburban homes, particularly bungalows, and oftentimes, children
began to have their own bedrooms. This is explored in greater detail in my chapter focusing on space
and place in the suburbs.
6
For further reading see Howard P. Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History (New York:
New York UP, 2007), xv. While Chudacoff’s research focuses on America, these experiences
generally seem to be mirrored across Canada and the United States.
195
and styles of childhood play.7 These characteristics and others, affected the
accessibility that young people had to recreational and leisure activities prior to
World War II. In Calgary, in the late nineteenth century, early non-Aboriginal
residents were drawn to the Bow River for leisure and refreshment where they
enjoyed community picnics and shared family time.8 Additionally, the first organized
hockey game was played in 1888, while even earlier, in 1884, soccer, badminton,
tennis, rugby and lacrosse were played on today’s 6th Avenue.9 While younger
children were not necessarily involved directly in these team sports, adolescents and
young adults often were represented. In most pictures from the era, even if they were
not participating directly, children can be found as prominent and enthusiastic
spectators at most major sport and leisure events.
For Canadian children and adolescents, the first organized sports were end
ball, volleyball, scout, newcombe, stoolball, rounders, football, informal hockey, and
cricket; these were just a sample of the variety of team games that were played on
early North American schoolyards.10 With the implementation of compulsory
schooling across Canada, schoolyards became primary sites for sport, recreation, and
play, particularly when organized. Along with the natural environment, streets (for
urban young people), homes, and schoolyards were, and continue to be, central to
childhood and adolescent cultures. An influential school of thought among experts
asserts that young people acquire important social, physical, emotional, and cognitive
7
Ibid., 2.
Calgary Celebrating 100 Years of Parks (Calgary: City of Calgary, 2010), 23.
9
Bob Shiels, Calgary (Calgary: The Calgary Herald, 1974), 175.
10
Susan Herrington, “Muscle Memory: Reflections on the North American Schoolyard,” in Hillel
Goelman et. al., Multiple Lenses, Multiple Images: Perspectives on the Child across Time, Space, and
Disciplines (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 101.
8
196
skills through play, that play eases a child’s adjustment to the present environment,
and most importantly, it makes life meaningful.11 As outdoor recreation came to have
increasing value, historian Sharon Wall has argued that it was one of many important
antimodernist responses to late nineteenth and early twentieth-century modern life in
Canada. Antimodernists criticized the pace and direction of cultural change, the
unchanging rhythms of modern living, and the impacts on young people, which they
termed “overcivilization.”12 Additionally, as Susan Herrington notes, Canada was at
the forefront of educational pedagogy in incorporating the highly influential Frobel’s
theories into the public education system.13 Organized sports were seen to hone
boys’ masculinity and girls’ reproductive capacity, addressing health problems, and
maintaining population growth among European settlers.14
Modern impulses (primarily increasing urbanization and industrialization)
from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also contributed to shaping and
fuelling ideas in that an older, agrarian ethos was supplanted by the ongoing shift that
saw urban dwellers increasingly ordered by the clock, controlled by the factory or the
business of cities.15 While this process had begun much earlier in Europe, historian
Jack Berryman notes that in the United States, and this was true too in Canada,
regulated and administered sport programs by organizations for young boys did not
begin until after 1900.16 This was concurrent with the scouting movement that had a
11
Chudacoff, Children at Play, 1.
Sharon Wall, The Nurture of Nature: Childhood Antimodernism, and Ontario Summer Camps,
1920-55 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), 4. There is more generalized discussion of this in several
pages of the book’s concluding chapter.
13
Herrington “Muscle Memory,” 94.
14
Ibid., 97. This is a concept in which I will go into more detail in the chapter that focuses on gender
and sexuality.
15
Ibid., 102.
16
Jack W. Berryman, “From the Cradle to the Playing Field: America’s Emphasis on
12
197
profound effect on youngsters’ activities across the globe, and in Banff Trail
specifically, as explored in greater detail later in this chapter.17 Founded by Robert
Baden-Powell in England in 1907, scouting emphasized the importance of the
outdoors and its positive effects on young boys and girls along with the glorification
of British imperialist ideology. Scouting for boys aimed to make men out of them.
The Canadian frontier was a suitable backdrop as it provided a model for the real
man who should be toughened, resourceful, and virile.18 Baden-Powell’s worldwide
scouting movement embodied the antimodernist response to modernism in
emphasizing the need for children to engage with the natural environment in a more
meaningful and disciplined way. These values also dovetailed well with the
traditional values emphasized in principal’s messages and curricula throughout this
period. These effects, experienced decades after the scouting movement’s inception,
were echoed when one informant recalled that in the 1960s,
Other than that, all our other activities would have been through
scouts and CGIT. It got to a point that it was almost every single
weekend. We went for a hike around Old Forestry Road, Cochrane,
Bragg Creek and into the mountains. [There were] camping trips,
six to eight times a year, it was pretty intense programming.”19
Beginning in the early twentieth century, these activities gained greater
value as leisure time was increasingly scheduled and was intended to hold
greater purpose than it might have in previous North American childhoods.
Some historians argue that in the case of nationally organized sports which
Highly Organized Sports for Preadolescent Boys,” Journal of Sport History 2, no. 2, (1975): 112.
17
The movement did not target specific classes and has remained relatively cost effective for families
throughout its history. However, it has been aimed at reinforcing masculinity in young boys which
would likely target middle-class boys versus working-class boys who would be more likely to be
associated with the ideals of hard work, the outdoors and so forth.
18
Robert McIntosh, “Constructing the Child: New Approaches to the History of Childhood in
Canada.” Acadiensis 28, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 135.
19
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011.
198
were spreading across the United States in the interwar period, these heavily
administered activities became one of the most pervasive forces in the lives
of many young people.20 These same processes were at work in Canada
during this period.
Across North America, organized activities increased during the interwar
periods, and responsibility for schools, playgrounds and a handful of private groups
such as the Y.M.C.A., the Boy Scouts and Boys & Girls Clubs, shared in providing
these activities to both children and adolescents.21 This also happened in Calgary,
where there were some modest programs provided by the City of Calgary as well, but
the Parks Department was not directly involved until the late 1940s. However, by the
1930s, the scouting numbers, and their activities, were significant in Calgary, as
referenced in this 1939 Calgary Herald article,
Calgary Boy Scouts, 1,000 strong, got out their bicycles early this
morning and began calling at homes to collect toys for the ScoutGuide-Sunshine toyshop. During the first two hours nearly 100
homes were visited by Cubs and Scouts, the boys reaping
everything from armless dolls and wheelless doll buggies to a shiny
last year’s model toy automobile, large enough to seat a small boy.
For the scouts it was hard work. Their errands took them to almost
all parts of the city…But as one 12-year-old…put it: “It’s a lot
better than spending the morning in bed. I get a kick out of going
into all these homes.”22
This toy shop initiative helped to reinforce the social need for charity and
accompanying class distinctions as these would have been predominantly
20
Berryman, “From Cradle to the Playing Field,” 112. Again, Berryman is considering American
children and teenagers but these same processes were well under way in Canada as well. While on a
smaller scale due to a much smaller population, there was much piggybacking as there continues to be
in contemporary Canada as well. Wall also discusses this in the Canadian context as advice literature
began to flourish in the early decades of the twentieth century that advocated rigidity and organization
in childhood lives. For further reading see: Wall, The Nature of Nurture, 253.
21
Berryman, “From Cradle to the Playing Field,” 115.
22
“Scouts Call at City Homes For Toys Worth Repairing,” Calgary Herald, 2 December 1939, 11.
199
middle class adolescents gathering items for the poor whose families had been
suffering greatly from the effects of the Great Depression. There was a
blending of leisure and ‘work’ for these youngsters who were openly proud in
performing these duties. They embodied and practiced precisely what
organizers hoped they would be learning from these drives, namely to help
other, underprivileged children. Civic duty, hard work and contributing time
and dollars to charities are often cited as paramount when former boy scouts or
girl guides discuss these childhood and adolescent activities recalled from the
perspective of adulthood.
Also, throughout the early twentieth century, the ideas of Garden City
planners influenced the way cities were shaped. In the context of childhood,
planners, with their well-placed mistrust of the automobile, and their disdain of
the street, believed the solution to keep children off the streets and under wellmeaning surveillance, was to build green spaces for them in the centres of large
city blocks.23 Many parks were built in Calgary with Edworthy Park, along the
Bow River, being one popular leisure destination for families. A few decades
later, noted urban planning expert Jane Jacobs, would be critical of the concept
of urban green space for its own sake, and believed that park space needed
some dedicated park facilities with equipment for young people to enjoy. In her
view, space would be appropriated for uses with many unintended
consequences–delinquent or even criminal in nature at times. This meshed well
with the dominant position of educationalists that young people needed
23
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 2nd edition (New York:
Vintage Books, 1992), 79.
200
directed and administered activities. If this did not happen, the idleness would
lead them on the path to immoral behaviour, or even more serious to many,
juvenile delinquency, then to a path of adult crime.24
Insofar as the history of childhood in Canada, the early twentieth century is
most significant to this study because young people of all ages came to be associated
increasingly, not with work, but with school and leisure time.25 This seems ‘natural’
from today’s perspective, but it is a relatively recent phenomenon in considering the
long view of the history of childhood. One important exception, in a North American
context, is with the First Nations peoples living here before contact. Many First
Nations groups held important traditions of having lengthy periods of childhood
dedicated to leisure and free time versus formal work.26 However, these childhoods
were also filled with important and intricate learning based on modeling adult
behaviours in the natural environment versus a formal classroom setting for
education.
Not all of the early twentieth-century leisure activities were carefree.
Especially in the case of competitive sports, historians note there was a belief that
competitive sport, especially when it was embedded within school curricula, was not
only important for physical fitness but for promoting general education, quality
24
On juvenile delinquency in Canada see Joan Sangster, Girl Trouble: Female Delinquency in English
Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2002); Tamara Myers, Caught: Montreal’s Modern Girls and
the Law, 1869-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006); D. Owen Carrigan, Juvenile
Delinquency in Canada: A History (State College: Pennsylvania State UP, 1998).
25
Cynthia Comacchio, The Dominion of Youth (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2006), 128. Comacchio
also notes that adolescents began to self-identify with these non-work activities.
26
It is also accepted that many Europeans believed the First Nations peoples were lax in disciplining
young children as corporal punishment was an accepted practice in the majority of European families.
Jan Noel, Women in New France (Toronto: Canadian Historical Association, 1998).
201
citizenship, democratic living and better sportsmanship.27 This was not confined to
the early part of the twentieth century. ‘Proper’ citizenship and democratic living
associated with sport, recreation and leisure activities were also referenced countless
times in the historical record by both adults and young peoples in the context of the
Cold War.28 The importance of these activities was cited time and time again as a
weapon against the threat of communism. Healthy-bodied and minded young people
would be better equipped to resist the menace of communism than the sedentary
child or adolescent. However, young people still made important decisions regarding
their time away from school and work. Oftentimes, spare time was theirs to fill. This
was true despite the efforts of parents, teachers, volunteers, and public administrators
to guide them into directed activities. The immediate post-World War II era in
Calgary saw a new emphasis on young persons’ activities, as facilities and
opportunities would explode in number, coinciding with the baby boom across the
rapidly expanding city.
Leisure Time
We moved into Banff Trail when I was five; it was a new
neighbourhood then…There was non-stop action depending on the
season…In the spring we always played baseball in our back yard
until a window got broken. Then we had to go to [one of] the
community park[s] to play…In the summer there were picnics,
fishing trips, kick the can at night. The fall was back to school and
football on the crescent boulevard.29
For many young people, particularly pre-teenagers, the Banff Trail suburb
was the main site for most activities. Teenagers’ activities were not
27
Berryman, “From Cradle to the Playing Field,” 116.
This also conflicts with the popular belief held by some critics of childhood in the twenty-first
century who believe that competitiveness and specialization in sport are a recent development.
29
Art Irwin in Rose Scollard, editor, From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks (Calgary: Banff Trail
Community Seniors, 1999), 51.
28
202
necessarily centred in the community. Their interests were more varied than
children’s, and they enjoyed increased mobility, as they were able to drive
to other places. Because there were so many children in the immediate
neighbourhood, if children wanted something to do, it was more often than
not, as simple as walking out the front door to find willing playmates.
One interviewee said he “enjoy[ed] physical activity more than
anything. I’d be out playing hockey for hours and hours in the winter. In the
summer, throwing footballs around, throwing Frisbees. [Sometimes I was]
riding my bike with friends or more likely by myself.”30 While there were
always other young people to play with, Murray enjoyed and appreciated
significant time alone. While the suburbs are often represented as confining
and restrictive, particularly from the perspective of adulthood, many
children found ample space and time to spend it alone, and many were
content with the relative freedom in this era.31
Another informant remembered that she might have been given too
much freedom when she reached adolescence. She was not necessarily
doing anything illicit or illegal, but still felt she had been granted too much
latitude to do what she pleased,
My mom affected my parenting [the interviewee said that she is
much stricter as a parent] in that she probably gave me too much
freedom. I didn’t have any boundaries. I would go out on the
weekends and she would never know where I was. She never
30
Anonymous 2, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
For another perspective that emphasizes the agency and mobility of suburban adolescents in this era
see Franca Iacovetta, “Gossip, Contest, and Power in the Making of Suburban Bad Girls: Toronto,
1945-60,” Canadian Historical Review 80, no. 4 (Dec. 1999): 585-625.
31
203
seemed to be very concerned with where I was and I know what
kinds of things I was up to.32
Not having interviewed her mother, who was a single parent for some of this
informant’s childhood and adolescence, it is difficult to know if she was
consciously allowing her daughter to assert some independence at a young
age, too busy to notice, possibly not overly concerned, or it may have been
something else. It also indicates, although it wasn’t stated explicitly, that
many adolescents from working-class families likely had less supervision
given that parents were absent for work more so than in middle-class
families. It does illustrate that suburban youngsters had some latitude to
spend time away from parental supervision from time to time.
Urban studies experts from this period, such as Jane Jacobs, lamented the
increasing absence of opportunities for young people to have spare time that was
their own, time that was not organized and programmed. In her classic study of cities,
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she observed urban children
discovering outdoor life intermittently, at best. She concluded that outdoor activities
happened after school while children pondered what to do, while waiting to be called
indoors for supper, in the brief time between supper and homework, or finally,
between homework and bedtime.33 She wrote with great sensitivity and noted that
children were at the mercy of convenience more than any other age group, except the
elderly. After attending school, engaging with the increasing number of organized
activities (sports, arts, and so forth), outdoor leisure and play occurred incidentally,
32
33
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 11 November 2011.
Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 85-86.
204
and had to be wedged in.34 Many informants did not believe that they were as busy as
young people today, yet several discussed how many organized activities they were
involved in as youngsters. Donna said that she did “whatever was available in TriWood; the baseball, soccer, and hockey [programs]. Soccer took over mostly. I
belonged to the Y, swum at the Y and did the stuff they had there. I golfed [and
played] tennis.”35 While most of these activities had small fees, they were,
nevertheless, geared towards middle-class children and adolescents, and towards
those working-class families that were experiencing a modest increase in household
income and available leisure time. For Donna, there was a mixture of the leisure and
recreation programs mentioned here, but the larger point is that similar to what
Jacobs noted, children and adolescents were already fitting in spare time in the 1950s
and 1960s. This demonstrates well that this phenomenon for young people is not
isolated to contemporary lives only. Another interviewee said,
We weren’t involved in any organized sports. I don’t remember any
organized sports being available. Everything was very informal.
We’d maybe get together and have a baseball game. Just a bunch of
kids would get together and say, “Do you want to go to the park?’”
In high school we did some bowling and those kinds of things with
my friends. Roller skating at the roller rink were the things that we
would do. We played outside all the time and played informal
games all the time.36
Wendy did not recall there being any organized sports available, but there
were several available in Banff Trail, and in the nearby Tri-Wood
communities by the late 1960s. This helps to explain that, regardless of
adolescents’ agency and desires, if parents or guardians did not allow,
34
Ibid., 85.
Donna McLaren, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 11 December 2011.
36
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 2 August 2011.
35
205
encourage or facilitate formal extracurricular activities, they likely did not
happen for some young people.37 Again, some parents would not have
presented options to their children and adolescents if the money were not
available for such activities.
While the suburban and urban landscapes provided a multitude of options in
which to spend spare and leisure time, there were also popular indoor options. The
ubiquitous television set became the focus of leisure time for young people. For
many, it was time spent in front of the television, watching the increasing array of
programming for youngsters and families that occupied a lot of time. While not quite
everywhere, by the early 1960s, television sets were in 82.5 percent of Canadian
households.38 Historian Howard Chudacoff has argued that 1955 was a watershed
period in that The Mickey Mouse Club aired and that seven months earlier [in
January], one-half of all Americans had watched the TV version of the Broadway hit,
Peter Pan; additionally, in July, 1955, Disneyland, an amusement park designed
primarily for children, opened in Anaheim, California.39 As Neil Sutherland notes, by
the 1970s, television consumed as much of young people’s time as school did, and it
had penetrated their everyday lives to an even greater degree than radio or the movies
had done in previous decades.40 Doug recalled its importance, particularly seasonally,
when he said, “In the winter time, television was a big part of all of our lives. We had
37
Granted, some of this may have been due to memories that can be reconstituted several times over
the years but she recalled other activities vividly which indicates to me that these other activities were
not a part of her or her siblings’ experiences. Additionally, she was involved in several other
organized activities such as C.G.I.T. so it was not that she was unable to recall any childhood
activities.
38
Neil Sutherland, Growing Up: Childhood in English Canada From the Great War to the Age of
Television (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), x.
39
Chudacoff, Children at Play, 154.
40
Sutherland, Growing Up, x.
206
our favourite shows and routine around that. I never did any homework, so that was a
major part of the schedule in the winter time.”41 As it was in many families, in his
suburban family, watching television was a family event, and households in the late
1950s and early 1960s rarely featured more than one TV set. Choice was limited as
prior to cable there were only a handful of available channels at most. Wendy echoed
that television watching was a shared activity in recalling, “We did a fair bit of TV
watching as a family, there were a number of shows that we would enjoy
[together].”42
Bruce recalled that even in childhood, the television had become a tool in
making connections to a broader world, a world that seemed to offer so much
promise and hope from a childhood perspective. He said,
[The significance of Walter Cronkite’s delivery of news and that]
there was always something going on every month. Apollo 13 or
Gemini, there was always something being launched into space,
and it was a big part of growing up, and watching it on TV. The
landing on the moon in 1969, everyone was involved in
experiencing that. That was a big thing.43
It’s interesting that Bruce emphasized that “everyone was involved in that,”
in talking about the shared experience via television. Historian Steven Mintz
notes that television broadcasting produced a shared culture for many young
people in this era, that was unprecedented in history, and that it stretched
across class and regional divisions.44
41
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011.
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 2 August 2011.
43
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 28 July 2011.
44
Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood, (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2004),
298.
42
207
Television was also vital to the growing commodification of childhood and
Chudacoff notes that The Mickey Mouse Club and Barbie illustrate the two major
themes of adult domestication of children’s play since that period: commercialization
and the co-optation of time and activities.45 Yet this was not a universalized
experience, even in suburban childhood cultures. One informant recalled that his
family “didn’t have a TV until [he] was in grade 12. We did have a console stereo.
We spent a lot of time listening to the different radio plays that were on like the Lone
Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy.”46 As one of the older baby boomers, he and his
family were different than most in not having a television set until almost 1970. He
did recall watching TV at friends’ and relatives’ homes throughout his childhood.
Another informant fell in the middle of the spectrum and said, “I enjoyed [watching]
TV. We didn’t have much [to watch on television] and we didn’t have cable. We
really weren’t terribly interested in getting cable until we were way past 18 years old.
Our first colour TV wasn’t until grade ten. When we were young there were only two
channels.”47 This illustrates well that not all children and adolescents were consumed
by television, and as has been demonstrated throughout this dissertation, young
people, and in particular, adolescents, were not merely passive receptacles of
intended messaging. While many young people and adults were enamored with
television programming, this was not a universalized experience. Other informants
stressed this about television and it was reflected in several school newspaper essays.
Discussions about television, its content and its effects, marked this era as TV
sets appeared increasingly in the majority of youngsters’ homes as reflected in the
45
Chudacoff, Children at Play, 157.
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 October 2011.
47
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
46
208
1961 census. High school editorials in both the fifties and sixties offered adolescent
perspectives on television and these discussions are another example of children
inserting their voices into the debate first with this 1955 article from Calgary’s
Central High School’s paper, the Central Weeper in an article entitled, “T.V. - Good
or Bad?”
T.V. or not T.V. – that is the question. That is the question that a lot
of parents and teachers are asking lately. And whether it is good or
bad, many people will still watch it (sometimes to the exclusion of
almost all else). There are things to be said, both for and against
television and both sides have their strong points…but the fact
remains that there are a great many interesting programs which are
not educational…Also there are many programs neither interesting
nor educational, but ones which are watched avidly for the aforementioned reason, to get out of doing homework...It is up to the
individual to decide which he (or she) will be, a televidiot or a
normal viewer.48
The 1950s and 1960s saw a rise for many and was reflected in a broad survey of
Calgary young people in that watching television and movies, and visiting were the
most frequently mentioned activities in the all-year basis.49 Audience numbers are
limited for this period but Rutherford concludes that in 1959, children (he has also
included adolescents here) were in the slight majority of viewers from 4:00 pm until
6:00 pm and that they remained in substantial numbers until about 9:00 pm.50 These
viewing times are unsurprising as they match up with the end of the school day, and
then with bedtimes consistent with younger teenagers. Programming, particularly
Canadian programming for children and adolescents, was sparse, with low-budget
48
“T.V. - Good or Bad?,” Central Weeper, February 1955, 1.
City of Calgary, Recreation in the City of Calgary: A Survey of Interests, Activities and
Opportunities, by Department of Youth Research Division (Calgary: City of Calgary 1966), 419, City
of Calgary Archives.
50
Paul Rutherford, “Researching Television History: Prime Time Canada, 1952-1967,” Archivaria 20
(Summer 1985): 91.
49
209
shows like Rocket Robin Hood, The Mighty Hercules, The Friendly Giant and Mr.
Dress Up being the most popular shows among Canadian children. Locally produced
children’s programming, also cheaply produced, did not receive much critical
acclaim with Chatelaine noting that the young “guests are panicky preschoolers in
their Sunday best, kept in line by a gimlet-eyed, syrupy-voiced lady.”51
Much like adult viewers, young people demonstrated that they were
not passive receivers when reading texts such as television shows and
movies.52 While it is impossible to universalize adolescents’ experiences
with media, articles such as this one from the Aberhart Advocate school
newspaper reflected older teenagers as viewers who negotiated with, and
could offer reasoned critiques of the media with which they engaged,
One of the most repetitive and often boring pastimes nowadays is
T.V. Most of the time you do not realize you are seeing the same
thing over-it is cleverly disguised changing the names, gestures,
and make-up of the guilty…Now all we have to do is suffer thru the
deodorant commercial, the alternate sponsor, the week from next
Thursday’s semi-annual sponsor, three station breaks and seven
local commercials before the fun starts all over again.53
This reflects what communications theorists such as Stuart Hall have argued
for decades. While there is no question that students received editorial input
from older peers and teachers, critical thinking skills and an ability to
engage, or in many instances, disengage with television content is clear. It
seems obvious that suburban adolescents were something more than
unthinking sponges, merely soaking up the exploding 1950s and ‘60s North
51
“Kids’ TV: The Best and Worst,” Chatelaine, Sep 1974, 39.
For further reading on audience reception theory specifically related to encoding and decoding see
Stuart Hall, `Encoding and Decoding in Television Discourse', CCCS Stencilled Paper 7, University
of Birmingham, 1973.
53
“T.V. Or Not T.V.,” Aberhart Advocate 7, no. 2, Nov 1964.
52
210
American mediascape. Many viewers were active and engaged, despite the
reservations that some held about the ‘idiot box’ and its effects on
youngsters. Young people did have downtime in this era, and for many, it
was their spare time that meant the most to them.
Spare Time
Most postwar children and adolescents, much like young people today,
relished spare time as much as anything in their young lives. The opportunity to do
what they liked, obviously within certain spatial, legal, temporal, and ethical bounds,
was extremely important to suburban children and adolescents in the 1950s and 60s.
It was a time for free expression. Adolescents especially sought time to themselves as
they made the transition to adulthood. Doug said,
Reading was big for me. I was about 14 or 15 and fell in love with
Mad magazine and would beg my parents to buy it for a $1.00 as
often as I could for three or four years. I also read a huge amount of
fiction by Jules Verne, books that were serious books about grownup things but meant for children. I read all the Dr. Doolittle books.
I would find a particular author at the library and go through
everything they wrote. Under the influence of my father, it grew
into just history. Eventually, just Canadian history…my father
loved all of that stuff too. We shared all the books. I’d read them
and then he’d read them. I did that all the way through until his
death. That was kind of our thing, discussing them.54
This informant mentioned getting a lot of books from the public library and this
represented an important difference between working class and middle class homes.
Home libraries were not often a part of working class homes in this era. The
importance of spare time to children and adolescents cannot be overemphasized. One
of the overarching themes that defined childhood and adolescence in this period and
into the next decades was the ubiquitous schedule and ever-increasing adult controls
54
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011.
211
over young peoples’ time.55 This was reflected in surveys in Calgary at this time as
the majority of respondents of all ages believed that teenagers were most in need of
more leisure activities.56 Rather than spare time, many adults held the belief that
more recreation and leisure activities would best serve idle youngsters.57
This was reflected throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In their 1951 Annual
Report, the well-respected Calgary Boys Club opined that,
Socials once a month on Saturday nights should be sponsored to
keep the boys from seeking other and perhaps undesirable outlets.
Dances should only be allowed occasionally and then under strict
supervision, and should be confined to membership and their
friends and not open to the general public. On no account should
adults (except as supervisors) be admitted.58
This type of discourse reinforced the idea that spare or leisure time should
not be teenagers’ own, that it needed to be regulated and organized by
adults. The delineation between childhood and adulthood was also
emphasized. There was a cocooning and necessary protecting of young
people from some adults who might prove to be harmful to them. The
Calgary Boys Club was, at most times, aiding teenagers, not normally from
middle-class backgrounds, who had had some previous issues either at
home, school or with the Calgary police services.59
55
One of the major themes of this influential book on the history of childhood is the increasing
regulation of time for young people. See several chapters in Chudacoff, Children at Play.
56
City of Calgary, Recreation in the City of Calgary: A Survey of Interests, Activities and
Opportunities, by Department of Youth Research Division (Calgary: City of Calgary 1966), 442, City
of Calgary Archives.
57
Suspicions that idleness could or would lead to evil have been held since early Judeo-Christian
times. These ideas persist into the twenty-first century and filling youngsters time with scheduled
activities remains important for many adults.
58
Calgary Boys’ Club, Annual Report (Calgary: Calgary Boys’ Club, 1950-51), 115, Boys and Girls
Clubs of Calgary fonds, M7547, File 1, Glenbow Archives.
59
The Calgary Boys Club and its directives will be explored in greater detail in the chapter focusing
on delinquency and crime.
212
Lesley recalled that there did seem to be some significant time to do what she
wanted, despite some of the pressures and constraints put on many young people in
this time. Regarding her spare time, she said,
[We spent time] going to movies, we’d organize that, reading, I
was a voracious reader. [Spare time] was often unstructured, go out
and see who you can find, get on your bike and go down to the
tennis court with your racquet and see who you can find to play
with. My mom wouldn’t know exactly where I was, for hours. It
was a whole different leash system.60
Despite larger warnings about ‘stranger danger’ and so forth in this period,
many who grew up in the postwar suburbs had relative freedom and latitude
to create their own activities during their spare time. There were real
tensions between what some of the larger messages were and what in fact
was happening in everyday childhood and adolescent lives. There was
heightened awareness of harm that could come to children, yet the suburban
experiences of the overwhelming majority of informants, combined with the
childhood and adolescent material culture, reflected little of this. Lesley, as
she thought of it in the context of the era, was surprised to recall that her
mother did not know exactly where she was for hours on end, from time to
time. The availability of spare time was essential to doing other activities,
but as I have articulated throughout the dissertation, class and material
circumstances were often the decisive factors in what many of these children
could and would do. Contemporary studies in Calgary reflected this as well,
60
Lesley Hayes, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 26 July 2011.
213
as time was the major requirement for participation in desired activities for
teenagers, followed by money, equipment and facilities.61
Reading was mentioned by a large majority of the informants and
countless times in the material culture left by youngsters. Reading and the
importance of books was something encouraged and nurtured mainly by
middle-class parents, to a lesser degree in working-class families, but also in
advice columns for teenagers right from the first years of the postwar period.
This syndicated column from 1950, features some not so subtle advice on
reading habits and material,
What are your reading habits, chum? Do you go for comics
exclusively? Do you skim through the picture magazines? Don’t
you EVER settle down with a good book? Good books aren’t
necessarily the classics…A lot of popular current literature is fine
reading-well-written and interesting…At least one of the reprint
publishers has a line of junior books – new editions of teenage stuff
that has been best-selling material. These junior paper backs are
tops in entertainment. Mystery stories, western, career books, joke
collections. So shop your corner drugstores and stationery shops,
kids.62
This advice column was representative of the hierarchizing of reading
materials with comic books and pulp fiction almost always placed much
lower than literature. Cost was a factor here as well, with middle-class
adolescents much more likely to have the money for purchasing books
whereas lower-priced items and borrowing items were the likelier options
for working-class teenagers.
61
City of Calgary, Recreation in the City of Calgary: A Survey of Interests, Activities and
Opportunities, by Department of Youth Research Division (Calgary: City of Calgary 1966), 422, City
of Calgary Archives.
62
“Teen Topics By Sally,” The Calgary Herald, 11 January 1950.
214
One interviewee remembered that he did a lot of reading as a young
person the late 1960s and early 1970s. He did not recall the specific titles of
books, but did remember that he did much more reading in his childhood
and adolescence than he has ever done as an adult. That was another
common refrain as many informants wished they had some of the spare time
that childhood and adolescence had offered. He “seemed to remember a lot
of television. Way more reading than I do now. Comic books and I was into
a lot of drawing and cartooning. That would be a lot of my free time.”63
Interestingly, in both the material culture produced by high school students
and in interviews, no female informants recalled reading any comic books.
Some romance books were mentioned, with a mother’s reading habit
sometimes influencing these choices, with clear ideology about male and
female roles and romance, as this was what was available in home libraries
in middle-class suburban homes.
Another informant recalled that spare time was often spent with friends with a
focus on it being quality and reflective time. She would meet up with her “[best
friend]. She and I would walk every night. [There was] lots of walking, yakking, and
hanging out. Not necessarily planned activities…I was involved in church stuff,
every church activity; choir, Guides. I did not enjoy teenage social activities. I
wanted to be Greta Garbo.”64
This informant mentioned Garbo and the movie star’s influence on her young life.
For some, these iconic representations offered hope and examples of lives outside the
63
64
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 27 July 2011.
215
suburban existence. Quite simply, some of the mainstream teenage activities were too
boring for her, and this was mentioned by other female interviewees as well who
sought activities with younger adults versus spending time with their peers.
Going to movies became a large part of spare time for many adolescents and
children. Doug recalled that in the early 1960s, “[downtown theatres] had Saturday
matinees for $0.25 and we [he and sisters] took the bus. It would stop right by the
Bay and we would walk from there. We did that up until the time I began working.”65
This was all part of a larger trend noted by historian Cynthia Comacchio who has
emphasized that popular recreation had increasingly become a consumer product,
dependent on a growing web of related forms of consumption for young people –
from clothing to grooming through the new technologies – youngsters bought into,
and contributed to the creation of a modern youth culture by the mid-1950s.66
Going to theatres and movie watching were most often for entertainment
purposes, but for some, they were more than that. One interviewee recalled that he
“used to live at the North Hill Cinerama. It used to be this great old Cinerama theatre.
That was kind of my haven when I was growing up. There was also a theatre at the
Brentwood Mall.”67 These spaces were more than a place to spend spare time. Space
was vital to adolescents as they created their own cultures centered on their preferred
activities and their peers. As other historians have noted, the new malls, which
housed many of these theatres, became the key place where adolescents could
express their youth cultures, independent from home and school; unlike adults and
65
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011.
Comacchio, Dominion of Youth, 212.
67
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
66
216
young children, teenagers existed increasingly in separate spaces, separate worlds.68
While the number of movies that targeted young viewers increased in this period,
music made for and by young people also kept many children and adolescents
occupied.
Several informants mentioned how important music was for them as
adolescents, and this was reflected in the material culture from the era. A
1964 article, entitled “Modern Music Dictionary” discussed the ubiquitous
Beatles and their influence on adolescent cultures at the time,
What’s the hottest group in teenage music today? Silly question,
isn’t it? Several new words have imposed themselves upon the
Queen’s English and some of you out there in Beatleland might like
to pass this around to your poor, innocent, uninformed, uncorrupted
acquaintances…Beatle…Beatlemania…Beatlemaniac…Beatlenaus
ea…Beatlephobia…Beatlephonia…Beatlephonic.69
The fusing of music and popular culture was just one process. Jim also
remembered the importance of music and recalled the Festival Express tour
that went across much of Canada and came to Calgary’s McMahon Stadium
in 1970.70 McMahon Stadium stands a few minutes walk from Banff Trail,
and the concert featured some of the biggest acts of the late 1960s and early
1970s. Jim said,
In 1970 Festival Express came to Calgary…Some of the
participants were Ian & Sylvia Tyson, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan,
Jimi Hendrix, The Band, [and the] Grateful Dead. It was loud
enough and close enough to our home that we just sat in the
68
Rosalynn Baxandall and Elizabeth Ewen, Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (New
York: Basic Books, 2000), 230.
69
David Wasserman, “Modern Music Dictionary,” Aberhart Advocate 6, no. 4, 17 March 1964.
70
The Festival Express was a train tour of some of the most popular North American musical acts of
the late 1960s and early 70s. Performances were held in Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary. One of the
best sources for further information is a 2003 documentary that focuses on the acts, the travel, and the
impact on the people who went out to see the show. For viewing see Bob Smeaton, dir., Festival
Express (United Kingdom: THINK Film, 2003).
217
backyard and enjoyed the concert. Another concert came to
McMahon Stadium that was so loud and created so many
complaints by the neighbourhood that Calgary brought in its AntiNoise by-law that still exists today. The band was The Eagles.71
Teenagers were not just interested in listening to music and watching their
favourite singers or bands. There were youngsters who were involved in creating and
performing their own music as well. Brent said that in his “junior high and senior
high years, [he] drove down to Mount Royal College for that practical and theoretical
trumpet lesson.”72 It was not only adults who traveled to work from within their
suburban communities, as teenagers lived important parts of their lives outside their
suburban communities. This blurs the line between young people and adults, as some
adolescents did have to travel long distances for activities which were scattered
across the Calgary area. Another interviewee echoed this as she said that, “beyond
singing and piano, I enjoyed drawing and painting.”73 Her singing took her all across
the city as she performed with family members at various functions. It was what she
enjoyed doing and she had some input into what she would perform and where she
would do so. As they aged, adolescents had an increasing voice and control over
what they were doing with their leisure time.
Finally, for some, their spare time was some of the most memorable time
spent in their childhoods. Because the countryside was easily accessed by car, the
opportunity to take extended afternoon trips was a highlight. Allan said,
The favourite part [of his childhood] was going for Sunday rides.
That was the biggest enjoyment that I had. My parents, I remember
when I got older, wished I quit coming. To me, it has always been
amazing. That was probably the real joy that I had, Sundays. My
71
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 October 2011.
Brent Harris, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 9 December 2011.
73
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
72
218
father would always find some new place to go or even just going
to get the eggs on Sunday he would find a new route to go and that
kind of led to my career choice – my second career.74
Simple pleasures were broached often by informants and in the archival record as just
walking and talking with friends was mentioned countless times. There is no question
that some children enjoyed highly organized activities with very clear goals. But
there have always been young people, just as there are many adults, who prefer to be
left to their own devices. It is a recurring theme that children and adolescents
appreciated the opportunity to spend some time alone, or at the very least, to be able
to daydream without feeling, or being told, that this spare time was wasted time.
While there were an increasing number of indoor activities geared to young people in
this period, and activities centered on the exploding car culture of the 1950s and
1960s,75 sport and outdoor recreation activities were very important parts of young
suburban lives.
Sport & Outdoor Recreation Activities
The immediate post-World War II era features an even greater shift to more
organized sport and recreation activities for children and adolescents. As noted
earlier in the chapter, there were important changes earlier in the twentieth century,
but with the baby boom and many adults with more free time, at least to some extent,
to be more involved in their children’s activities, unsurprisingly, adults began to lead
and direct even more activities than they had for previous generations. These
activities were designed to be safer, with an overriding goal of shaping children and
74
Allan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
For a comprehensive discussion of the importance of the automobile in Canadian culture see
Dimitry Anastakis, Car Nation: An Illustrated History of Canada’s Transformation Behind the Wheel
(Toronto: Lorimer, 2008); S. Katz, “Candid New Report on the Teenager and the Car,” Maclean’s, vol
77, 2 Dec 1964, 9-11, 26.
75
219
adolescents into disciplined beings who would become orderly, responsible adults;
leaders had transformed some play into managed activity with such groups as Little
Leagues, scouting, and boys and girls clubs.76 Sport, and in particular competitive
sport, had come to be viewed as having the power to promote physical health,
democratic living, good citizenship, general education and appropriate
sportsmanship.77 Certainly, much of this was more of a middle-class phenomenon,
but working-class families were able to access some of these activities, especially
those that were community-based or church-based and therefore less costly.
The disciplining nature of many of these activities was reflected in adults’
stated goals as they designed programs for young people. In several instances, older
teenagers actually designed and delivered programming for pre-teenagers and young
adolescents. This contradicts some of what historian Shirley Tillotson concludes in
The Public at Play where she concludes that women and girls were marginalized in
the bureaucratization of the recreation movement. Although this is not a focus of my
study, women and girls appeared to maintain some influence related to recreation and
leisure in Banff Trail and nearby communities where they worked from time to time.
They held leadership roles and appeared to make several key programming decisions.
Many of them held some heightened sensitivity to younger children, but there were
clear directives being set out here.78 One Calgary Herald article from 1950 laid out
76
Chudacoff, Children at Play, 64.
Berryman, “From Cradle to the Playing Field,” 116.
78
Shirley Tillotson, The Public At Play: Gender and the Politics of Recreation in Post-War Ontario
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). My findings reflect more of what Strong-Boag
concludes in Veronica Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams: Women and the Suburban Experiment in
Canada, 1945-60,” Canadian Historical Review 72, no. 4 (1991): 471-504.
77
220
clearly what was to happen in the city-provided summer programming within the
exploding local parks and playground systems,
Supervised playgrounds, 22 of them giving blanket coverage to the
city, opened their two-month season Thursday as hundreds of funloving youngsters poured into having a good time. Kids, ranging
from bewildered six-year-olds to belligerent teenagers set on being
‘first for scrub’ gathered at neighbourhood playgrounds to take
advantage of the city’s organized sport and recreation program. The
city’s summer program for the children has a three-pronged
objective: 1. To introduce and develop within individuals a varied
range of life interests. 2. To provide a program of purposeful
activity. 3. To carry over into the spare time of the children those
activities which had had their start in the curricular program of the
schools…The real purpose of the program is to have fun.79
However, for many former adolescents, although they appreciated the organized
programs that were available to them, they recalled that it was the ability to choose
their own activities, along with the opportunities to organize themselves, that they
preferred. Barry said,
My fondest recollections were when we self-organized. When we
played football in the park or walked to the skating rink. I did play
a little bit of organized hockey; it just wasn’t part of what I did. We
were given freedom. We spent lots of time out and about. The bikes
would go as far as they would go. Later, as teens, we rode our bikes
to Banff. [It] took 2 ½ days to get out there.
In this respect, Barry expresses the importance of independent thought and creativity
in choosing outdoor activities. This conflicted, as Chudacoff noted above, with the
growing trend, among adults especially, to organize and discipline young people.
Interestingly, children and adolescents enjoyed these informal activities for countless
reasons. Ultimately, it is impossible to universalize how young people wanted to
spend their time engaged in non-school activities. Generally, broader surveys of
Calgary teenagers reinforced this in the mid-1960s, as over half of the respondents
79
“Youngsters Have Fun As Playgrounds Open,” Calgary Herald, 7 July 1950.
221
indicated a preference for more informal recreation, while one-third preferred
organized recreation programs.80
Regardless, the organized activities were very important for some children
and adolescents. There were tens of thousands of young people using these summer
programs in Calgary on an annual basis by the early 1950s. Although the future
Banff Trail proper was just beginning to take shape at this time, there were a growing
number of houses in the area, with some of these recreational programs available in
and around the burgeoning community. An Albertan article detailed the profound
impact that these programs had on many children, and in particular, those young
people from families who did not have the means to afford more costly programs that
were available in increasing numbers, not only in Calgary, but across the country. As
Korinek has noted, while an increase in postwar affluence is undeniable, it should be
seen more as a sixties phenomenon81 and certainly it was not universal with many
working class people continuing to struggle financially throughout the period.
More than 95,613 children took part in the sports at the 21
playgrounds this summer Alex Munro, Parks Superintendent, told
the January meeting of The Alberta Council on Child and Family
Welfare Friday in the Hudson’s Bay Company store
auditorium…Wherever a new subdivision was opening up the
Parks Department was asking for a block or more be reserved for
playgrounds. The city develops these playgrounds and then the
community takes over he explained. There are now 58 skating
rinks, 47 hockey rinks, 16 major playgrounds and five smaller ones,
he said.82
80
City of Calgary, Recreation in the City of Calgary: A Survey of Interests, Activities and
Opportunities, by Department of Youth Research Division (Calgary, City of Calgary 1966), 407, City
of Calgary Archives.
81
Valerik J. Korinek, Roughing it in the Suburbs (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 25.
82
“95,613 Children Make Use of 21 Playgrounds,” The Albertan, 28 January 1950.
222
This excerpt illustrates how these new playground facilities were administered
following their construction. After a short period, the new community associations,
directed and led by local parent groups, were responsible for the upkeep of these
expanding play areas. A broader network of community associations developed over
time and did work together; however through the fifties and sixties, this was a very
localized phenomenon. With the number of young people growing up in these
communities, these spaces teemed with them, irrespective of the season.
All of this participation, in many ways, contradicts what historian Doug
Owram offered in his history of the baby boom generation in which he implies that
the rapid decline of religion and the weakening of activities like scouts and guides,
shows that youthful “barbarians” were not fully under the control of adults.83 He may
have been overstating, and this is likely an important difference between what was
going on in suburbs like Banff Trail where scouts and guides programs were in fact
growing and flourishing in the 1950s and 1960s. This excerpt from a Calgary Boys’
Club annual report in 1961 captures much of the purpose of outdoor activities,
particularly for boys,
We believe that camping is one of the most rewarding experiences
in the life of a Canadian boy. Learning the art of simple living in
the out of doors, and the practice of learning to live together with
boys of their own age is the central purpose of Camp Adventure.
The activities were planned around the natural interests of the
boys.84
This highlights the essence of what scouting and guiding was to offer to
young people across the globe, as discussed in more detail in the earlier
83
Doug Owram, Born at the Right Time, 110.
Calgary Boys’ Club, Camp Adventure Annual Report, by Jack F. Way (Calgary: Calgary Boys’
Club, 1961), 1, Calgary Boys Club fonds, M7547, File 14, Glenbow Archives.
84
223
section on recreation and leisure, in an historical context. Scouting and
guiding played a large part in many young lives in Calgary from the early
1950s through to 1970. This article excerpt from 1952 in the Calgary
Herald reinforced the movement’s relevance across Canada along with an
emphasis on the high levels of participation in Canada,
Appreciation of Canada’s contribution to the world Guide
movement was expressed Thursday by world Chief Guide Lady
Baden-Powell at the annual meeting of the Canadian Council, Girl
Guides Association. The meeting was told that Canada’s Guide
population, third largest in the world association, numbering 87,762
has seen an increase of 9,034 girls.85
Primarily, organizations like C.G.I.T. and the Girl Guides were designed to
exploit the ‘character building’ possibilities as well as providing
opportunities to shape adolescent girls into feminine, domesticated,
responsible and faithful citizens;86 however, young people also used these
organizations and associated activities for their own purposes.87 One
informant recalled that he excelled in the program not just to earn the
intrinsic rewards, but also to explore a wider world outside of Banff Trail,
Calgary and at times, Canada. He said,
I’m the kind of guy that collecting a merit badge meant something
so I would do lots of that stuff but I mostly played indoors. By 14, I
was the highest badge you can get in Scouts, a Queen Scout, I was
about two years younger than anyone else. I went to a world
jamboree at 14. I went to a national jamboree in the U.S. Later, I
did an exchange visit with a kid out of Montreal. I traveled back by
85
“Girl Guide Ranks Increase In Canada,” The Calgary Herald, 2 Jun 1952, 7.
For further reading see Margaret Prang, ‘The Girl God Would Have Me Be’: The Canadian Girls in
Training, 1915–39,” Canadian Historical Review 66, no. 2 (1985): 154-184; Veronica Strong-Boag,
Janey Canuck: Women in Canada: 1919-1939 (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1994).
87
While it was not often expressed as cynicism, throughout the archival record, it was striking how
many adolescents ‘played’ with the higher ideals of many organizations. Many of them had obviously
learned what answers were required of them, but did not necessarily espouse these ideals wholly.
86
224
train. Seven days on a train at 15 or 16 by myself was kind of
cool.88
By the early 1970s, newspaper articles contributed to new representations of
guiding in arguing that Girl Guides were doing much more than the prevailing
stereotype of them selling cookies door-to-door as their primary mandate. In this
Calgary Herald article from 1970, this broadened role was presented officially as,
Selling cookies is just part of the game, say the 300,000 Canadian
Girl Guides who celebrate their diamond jubilee this year…Today,
mini-skirted Calgary Guides assist at blood donor clinics, collect
books for libraries on Indian reserves, work on local Safety Council
campaigns and donate carefully made layettes to the Providence
Creche…Recreation and outdoor activities are an equally important
part of the contemporary program.89
Many of the activities had been a part of the guiding program for decades but in the
ongoing efforts to recruit new members, articles such as this one, of which there were
many in the popular press, were used to emphasize the community activities beyond
the recreation and outdoor pursuits that had always been prime features and draws in
Scout and Guide programming. Young people, and especially teenagers, did other
activities in their spare time. Shopping, in many forms, was in important part of
young peoples’ lives.
Shopping
Ever-increasing consumption and shopping are often associated with urban,
and in particular, suburban living, in the immediate postwar period. While there was
increasing prosperity, it was uneven as it was not experienced universally by all
families, and more specifically, not by all children and adolescents. One key
indicator of this is the fact that Boys’ Club membership by 1960 had reached 600
88
89
Allan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
Elaine Seskevich, “Guides Don’t Just Push Cookies,” Calgary Herald, 14 January 1970, 59.
225
boys in Calgary. The Boys’ Club has always been overrepresented by the children of
the unemployed and working class peoples. Granted, Calgary’s populations was
increasing, but there were a number of young people in need, with the Calgary club
being the largest Boys’ Club not only across the Prairies, but west of Toronto.90 As
much as the commodification of childhood within the broader context of increasing
consumerism,91 is a popular topic among childhood historians, a significant number
of young suburbanites did not embrace shopping, and specifically, spending on
consumer products. For some, there was not much choice in this as disposable
income was not plentiful. This editorial from the Aberhart Advocate in 1960
expresses some of the resistance and questioning of the commercialization of
Christmas from a suburban teenager’s perspective,
RADIO, TELEVISION, NEWSPAPERS, CHRISTMAS LIGHTS,
SLOGANS, POSTERS, TV, COMMERICIALS, ADS, MAIL, and
anything else business can dream up as an advertising media, has
been informing me of that singular fact for the past six weeks. Did
you notice that some of the stores stuck fat, jolly, red, Santas on
their windows and counters with the same tape that one-half minute
before had held glaring black cats and grimacing pumpkins in
place? I get so tired of our commercial Christmas. Gaudy lights
blink obliquely at the masses of silent, expressionless people
plodding through the streets for their personal Grail; the gadget
they saw advertised on TV that would be just the thing.92
This editorial expressed well the dizzying array of media, older and newer, that
young people faced, something seen throughout the archival records that I found.
This was coupled with marketing and advertising on a new level. The process of
90
Calgary Boys’ Club, Executive Director’s Report (Calgary: Calgary Boys’ Club, 1960), 1, Calgary
Boys Club fonds, M7547, File 1, Glenbow Archives.
91
For further reading on consumerism and mass consumption in Canada see Steve Penfold, The
Donut: A Canadian History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008).
92
“Editorial,” Aberhart Advocate, vol. 3, no.2, December 1960, 1.
226
commodification was not new, but the volume of advertising was unprecedented.93 It
was also noted that there was no break in the advertising onslaught as the Halloween
decorations had just been put away and the Christmas decorations replaced them
immediately.
This response did not exist in isolation. What students were responding to is
captured well in the 1951 Calgary Herald article below. Not only does it encourage
consumption, but it also displays some of the racism and ethnocentrism in this era,
along with the gendered biases behind the marketing of ‘appropriate’ toys for young
boys and girls. Throughout this postwar era, there was a concerted message, enabled
by the growing mainstream mediascape that I have noted in several places. This
mediascape also influenced the lives of young people and what were once deemed
lowbrow - radio, television, and movies - became the new arbiters of style and
taste.94 The communication channels were often one way, although mediated by
young people as they were consumed. In addition, new technologies also became a
productive tool for some more creative youngsters. One informant recalled,
I got a movie camera for my tenth birthday. It changed my life. It
was something I wanted and I petitioned for years. I developed a
really early fascination with the movies. That shaped my childhood
in that I was given an incredibly creative outlet at a very early
age…I was just so obsessed with this hobby.95
This new technology and media was also important in childhood and adolescence as
radio, feature-length movies, and popular literature in this era now inspired countless
93
“Two Guides to Canada’s Rich Burgeoning Teenage Market,” Financial Post, vol 61, 14 October
1967, 20.
94
Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, 146. This was embodied in a new generation of stars such
as Frank Sinatra, and to the greatest extent, Elvis Presley who burst onto the American television
scene in 1955, had dozens of chart-topping hits, and starred in a long string of movies that featured his
music.
95
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
227
toys and games.96 Additionally, newspapers, as they had for decades, continued to be
significant. The Calgary Herald had several recommendations, reinforcing still
popular gendered ideals for Christmas shopping at the beginning of the 1950s,
You can let the children play at either war or peace this
Christmas…Many boys whose fathers are or have been in the
service will want guns or ships for routing the enemy and girls like
C.W.A.C. or other uniforms. They also will enjoy playing cowboy
and Indian, and the Indian seems to have scored a big advance over
the cowboy this year…On the other hand, you can help to develop
aptitudes and prepare for peacetime careers with all types of
building toys (road building equipment holds new interest) and
mechanic’s or carpenter’s kits for boys. Girls may develop dishpan
hands at an early age, for even two-year-olds will like a new toy kit
which includes dish rack, garbage can, mop, brush, wash cloths and
all other essentials of efficient dish washing.97
The themes of war and conflict are also prominent in this article, reaffirming
that there was no time in this era when any childhood or adolescent
experience was unequivocally carefree in nature.98 The utilitarian nature of
certain gifts was emphasized in this article, and in several others, as some
toys were perceived to be important tools in creating good citizens.
However, as historians of childhood have argued persuasively,
commodification is not a simple process of transference, imposing
consumerism upon independent, individualized children and adolescents,
nor is it something which blackens “pure” childhoods; instead, it comes to
form one of the major building blocks of modern young persons’ cultures.99
Bruce remembered shopping and some leisure time from childhood and
96
Chudacoff, Children at Play, 138.
“Wide Variety of Toys For Children This Christmas,” Calgary Herald, 20 Dec 1951.
98
Whether it was the shadow of the devastating effects of the Second World War, or as I have argued
in other chapters in this dissertation, the Cold War and its effect on children, war and its consequences
were an ongoing motif throughout the post-World War II era.
99
Daniel Thomas Cook, The Commodification of Childhood (Durham: Duke, 2004), 6.
97
228
adolescence that involved some nearby suburban shopping spaces such as
the North Hill Shopping Centre as well as other large malls located in the
south of Calgary,
There was the Big Boy hamburger place and Sears [in the North
Hill Shopping Centre) were the big ones. Market Mall, by the high
school years [in the early 1970s], was the big thing…I still
remember that Chinook was the big draw when you could get there.
I remember the Woodward’s store had the big display [and at]
Christmastime sitting and watching the angels display; downtown,
not so much [as a space for shopping]. Movie theatres were only
available downtown, the Palace and some of those older theatres.
We’d hang out and chase around there.100
Local spots like the Chang’s grocery store and the Wig Wam with milkshakes were
also spaces where adolescents would gather to eat and socialize. Department store
shopping was prominent in both the material culture (in dozens of advertisements in
school yearbooks) and in the memories of a large majority of informants. Sears was
mentioned several times as it was an anchor store in the brand new North Hill
Shopping Centre which was built in 1959.101 In the United States, Sears and Roebuck
actually extended credit to older children and adolescents, who, with regular
allowances, were able to apply for their own Sears credit card.102 One interviewee,
Wendy, recalled that shopping was very much a social outing with her mother,
whereas with her father, shopping was practical. This was echoed by several
informants and mentioned the gendered aspect to going shopping within their
families. At times, many families included a meal as part of the shopping experience,
whether it was at the newly built malls, or in the downtown core where families
100
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 28 July 2011.
These large shopping centres were centerpieces in most suburbs with Don Mills Centre being the
first one built in Canada in the post-World War II suburbs.
102
Baxandall and Ewen, Picture Windows, 152.
101
229
would travel to on a regular basis and some familial patterns focused around these
shopping trips. Wendy recalled going to the North Hill Mall as well,
My mom used to get all dressed up in her dress and gloves and
everything. It was like a social outing. In those days the Sears was
quite fancy and I remember carpet and the mall was open. You’d
go outside to go to Zellers. We’d go there quite often and we’d take
the bus, of course my mom never drove. The only thing I remember
going shopping with my dad for was building materials or big
grocery amounts. We would go grocery shopping to Co-op every
Friday night so we would terrorize the downtown Co-op and we
would run up and down the stairs. They had a little counter and we
would get a dinner – a burger and fries – we’d have our family
dinner there sometimes. We used to go to downtown a lot for
shopping too.103
In his influential book focusing on the baby boomers, historian Doug Owram
emphasizes that for young boomers, the western world seemed to have a near endless
ability to produce material goods and meet the wants of this influential generation.104
But not all young people felt welcomed in all stores.105 Ageism can take several
different forms and one interviewee recalled that in Banff Trail “there was a drug
store and the Chang’s corner store right across from Aberhart [High School]…and
the [drug store proprietor] hated kids. He’d always try and kick us out of there. The
Chang’s guy was pretty darn friendly.”106 There was obviously conflict at the
everyday level of adolescents’ lives, with shoplifting or loitering (actually carried out
or the possibility of it) a likely reason for the owner’s disdain, despite the business
that teenagers brought into the store. What is most notable is that youngsters’
consumer cultures have taken shape in a morally contested space. The degree to
103
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 2 August 2011.
Owram, Born at the Right Time, 310.
105
W. Reynolds, “‘Youthful Rebels Resisting Role of the Docile Consumer,’” Financial Post, vol 63,
25 Jan 1969, 63.
106
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, Calgary, AB 2 August 2011.
104
230
which this occurs has changed over time, but nevertheless, it has existed wherever
and whenever the market intersects with children and adolescents.107
Conclusion
Childhood play, in its myriad forms, remains the key way that children
express themselves individually and their childhood cultures. Play and spare time
were important to all children and adolescents with the post-World War II era,
serving as a transitional period, across class and gender lines, in that young people
had even more time to themselves than previous generations in Canada. A profound
change in the lives of Canadian children and adolescents, regardless of where they
lived, was the continuing movement towards lives defined more clearly by education,
sports, recreation and leisure. It was not a carefree childhood or adolescence, but
young lives were no longer defined mainly by long working hours, regardless of
place of residence. Also, youngsters’ activities were increasingly organized and
formalized despite many informants discussing how much they enjoyed playtime
they organized as children. This confirms Chudacoff’s findings that one of the most
profound changes in play over the past three centuries in America is a shift to formal
rather than ad hoc play areas.108 Clearly the same was true in Canada. Despite the
fact that the postwar suburban experience was often characterized as sterile and
planned, a majority of young people seemed to find both the spaces and time to enjoy
free time and roam on foot, bicycles, and later, in their cars.109 We have also seen
107
Cook, Commodification of Childhood, 10-11.
Chudacoff, Children at Play, 215.
109
On suburban teenage mobility see Franca Iacovetta, “Gossip, Contest, and Power in the Making of
Suburban Bad Girls: Toronto, 1945-60,” Canadian Historical Review 80, no.4 (Dec 1999): 585-624.
108
231
that despite an expanding mediascape, and growing consuming culture, not all
adolescents endorsed or embraced the push to shop and consume.
The next chapter focuses on gender, sexuality, bodies and health, a topic that
connects, at some levels, to sport and leisure activities. Boyhood and girlhood
experiences and representations are distinct throughout this era. All of this reflected
rather similar gender roles in adulthood. Within the context of influential advice
literature, the health and wellness of young people also came into sharper focus and
took greater hold in institutions such as schools and families by the early 1970s.
232
Sixth Chapter: Gender, Sexuality & Health
Introduction
When I started there [at Branton Junior High school] we still had to
wear dresses. I can remember taking skating in Grade Seven and
the community hall was right across the street. The assistant
principal was horrified that we had worn pants and he made us go
change for the ten minutes of home room. Then we had to go
change for skating across the street…It was very straight-laced.1
As this interviewee expressed well, there were ongoing tensions concerning
dress, appearance and bodies that needed to be negotiated by young people in the
post-World War II period. This informant was one of the younger baby boomers so
this was not a memory of events dating to the late 1940s or early 1950s. Some of
these practices continued well into the sixties and even the seventies in some schools.
‘Progressive’ attitudes did not come easily to some educators and administrators, and
as some of the more vulnerable people in society, children and adolescents have
often endured some of the worst sexist and uninformed attitudes and practices from
not only peers, but from some adults.
This chapter focuses on gender, sexuality, and youngsters’ health. Boyhood
and girlhood experiences and representations are distinct throughout this era. This
reflects idealized postwar adult gender roles in many ways, although the everyday
did not always reflect these idealized roles. Within the context of influential experts,
including psychologists, medical doctors and academics, the health and wellness of
young people also came into sharper focus and took greater hold in institutions such
as schools and families by the early 1970s. This chapter includes discussion of sexual
education, both formal and informal, multiple definitions of sexuality and gender and
1
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 2 August 2011.
233
who defined them, how childhood sickness and injury were experienced and treated,
and finally, how diet was a point of emphasis for some children and adolescents by
the late 1960s and early 1970s. While I have argued that class is the most important
marker in childhood and adolescence, gender and sexuality were extremely important
in determining general wellbeing and how childhood and adolescence were
experienced in the postwar period.
Gender
Gender has been one of the central topics in the historiography of North
American suburbs and its residents. I have broached it as an analytical concept
throughout the dissertation as it is not easy to isolate it from other areas of study.
Therefore, it does not get full treatment here. Because of its intersections with play,
socialization, education, sexualities and so forth it has been emphasized throughout
this dissertation. What I will provide is a brief treatment of the intersections between
gender and suburbia in historical context.
In Stilgoe’s influential study on the nascent American suburbs of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he concluded that women shaped not only
much of the philosophy underlying early borderland life, but that they actively
shaped the landscape as well.2 They were integral to the well-being and care of not
just the inhabitants, but of the environment itself, both built and natural. This
phenomenon was not confined to the United States, as historian Suzanne Morton
determined in her study of working-class suburbs in the 1920s. She located ongoing
class and gender conflict in suburban households, but more importantly, she
2
John R. Stilgoe, Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820-1939 (New Haven: Yale UP,
1988), 16.
234
ascertained that the idealized model of sole male breadwinner homes conflicted with
the realities of female-headed households and broader employment opportunities for
women.3 Another key finding was Morton’s conclusion that gender was experienced
in different ways at different ages.4 This is a salient point in the context of gender,
childhood and adolescence. One informant echoed this in recalling gender in the late
1950s and early 1960s in the context of school, as she observed, “Hitting Grade
Seven [at Branton Junior High], it all changed. Girls’ roles were gone. There was a
huge shift, particularly for someone like me, who had gotten to do whatever I
chose.”5 Interestingly, she saw the shift to adolescence, occurring in junior high
school for almost all young people, signaling a constricting and restrictive period
based on gender. Whereas many tend to associate greater autonomy with an increase
in age (later bed times, ability to do more things without parental supervision, and so
forth), she believed firmly that her situation did not in fact improve as she reached
her teenage years. The fact that some challenge the belief that young people, and in
particular girls, acquire greater power or autonomy as they age, and that it is not
necessarily a steady progression of increasing independence, is key to understanding
the complex and often untidy shift toj adolescence from childhood.
In Chudacoff’s noted work on the history of children at play, gender was a
salient factor, and notable across several temporal periods from the late eighteenth
century forward. He conceptualizes gender as sex-segregated play, but he is
referencing gender in noting that it had been the characteristic mode of play in
3
Suzanne Morton, Ideal Surroundings: Domestic Life in a Working-Class Suburb in the
1920s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 154, 155.
4
Ibid., 13.
5
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
235
America since colonial times.6 There have always been alternatives to these practices
throughout history, though, which Chudacoff also emphasizes. The unstructured play
of boys and girls, often segregated, has also been a gender-integrated activity at many
turns.7 This is unsurprising as other historians argue that gender ideals, irrespective
of age, are not exclusive, and any society likely has multiple ideals simultaneously
for the same gender.8 Veronica Strong-Boag uncovered some of this previously
hidden history in focusing on girls and young women in the 1920s and 1930s. These
young women had restrictions in school, less rewarding job options and limited
political opportunities;9 conversely, adolescent girls were more likely to do well in
school and to graduate from high school.10
In Illick’s broad survey of American childhoods, he demonstrates that as
early as the mid-nineteenth century, the divide between male and female was
considered so wide that influential child-advice books were aimed solely at either
males or females; powerful emotions were the key difference, with anger being the
most important as little girls needed to quell emotions while young boys had to
master them without losing that vital competitive edge that it might bring to their
adult lives.11 It is important that this was a simple binary for advice-givers as there
was no consideration or discussion of anything other than male or female genders,
whether it was in adulthood, adolescence or childhood.12
6
Howard Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History (New York: New York UP), 143
Ibid., 200.
8
Morton, Ideal Surroundings, 6.
9
Veronica Strong-Boag, The New Day Recalled: Lives of Girls and Women in English Canada, 19191939 (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman Ltd., 1988), 217.
10
Ibid., 22.
11
Joseph E. Illick, American Childhoods (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 64.
12
See Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in TwentiethCentury America (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1991).
7
236
As many institutions attempted to impart certain values to young people in
the first part of the twentieth century, key gender differences were often emphasized.
This was true in the case of summer camps, one of a wider range of formal activities
introduced in this period and often promoted to urban girls.13 Historian Sharon Wall
notes that one of the key features of camp life leading up to the post-World War II
period was its sex-segregated nature.14 In getting these children and adolescents out
of cities, there were attempts to cultivate the true ‘natures’ of boys and girls;
organizations and their adult leaders attempted to address waning urban masculinity,
while those targeting girls tried to keep girls appropriately feminine.15 This was in
concert with Robert Baden-Powell’s scouting movement that, at least initially,
focused exclusively on boys, as explored in another chapter in this dissertation.
Unquestionably, this movement had a profound effect on shaping boyhood in the
twentieth century as it aimed to produce men, and the frontier provided the
framework for the ‘real’ man in waiting: virile, resourceful and toughened.16 This is
all linked strongly and directly to boyhood and girlhood by mid-century. In contrast
to post-World War II boy cultures, stressing competition, construction and physical
play, girlhood cultures were focused on love, playing with dolls, hairdressing, and
grooming.17
13
Strong-Boag, The New Day Recalled, 32
Sharon Wall, The Nurture of Nature: Childhood, Antimodernism, and Ontario Summer Camps,
1920-55 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), 201.
15
Ibid., 8.
16
Robert McIntosh, “Constructing the Child: New Approaches to the History of Childhood in
Canada,” Acadiensis 28, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 135.
17
Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2006),
284. For an exploration of postwar masculinity relating mainly to adults see Christopher Dummitt,
The Manly Modern: Masculinity in Postwar Canada (Vancouver: University of British Columbia
Press, 2007).
14
237
As the postwar suburbs were taking shape, not only in Banff Trail and
Calgary, but across Canada, these large tracts of new housing embodied a separation
of the sexes that had women mainly responsible for home and family, while men
provided the bulk of economic support and leadership in the new communities
forming.18 This was not uniform, as Richard Harris’s research has demonstrated that
in the great majority of new suburbs, local community associations had to be formed,
and oftentimes it was women who led the way,19 if not always providing figurehead
leadership in all instances. One informant remembered how women, and in
particular, his closest friends’ mothers, shaped his early childhood with their
prominent roles in the homes he visited and played in as a child. He said, “my sense
is when I think about going to my friends’ places, there was always a mom there. It
was just understood that a mom was doing all that stuff [necessary and vital caregiving work within the home].”20 Sutherland had similar findings based on research
on the paid and unpaid work of children in this period. He determined that baby
boomers had remembered that being a “mother hen” to other young people was so
important to many girls’ experiences that being a young girl and childcare were
bound together inextricably for many.21
This work included primary childcare, at all times of day, for most mothers.
With limited formal daycare providers in Calgary at this time, these children
benefited greatly from an informal network of mothers that provided varying levels
18
Veronica Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams: Women and the Suburban Experiment in Canada, 194560,” Canadian Historical Review 72, no. 4 (1991): 471.
19
Richard Harris, Creeping Conformity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 38.
20
Brian Rutz, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 12 December 2011.
21
Neil Sutherland, “’We Always Had Things To Do’: The Paid and Unpaid Work of
Anglophone Children Between the 1920s and the 1960s,” Labour/Le Travail 25 (Spring 1990): 110.
238
of supervision for these suburban children.22 This reality reflected broader constructs
associated with gender and idealized roles. Gender-specific lives were key in a
number of important and influential books that were circulated across Canada in the
post-World War II era.23 The formal ideologies and theories behind much of this
were legitimated additionally by the functionalists who dominated the growing
Sociology discipline as it established itself and grew across the country.24 These
functionalists focused on consensus in Canadian society and how important
institutions such as families, schools and the state produce order, stability and
productivity in a well-functioning modern society.
One interviewee remembered distinct gender lines from his childhood. He
recalled this in the context of how expectant mothers, who were also teachers in
Banff Trail in the 1960s, were never teaching and in the classroom for very long after
becoming pregnant. Again, this was not in the 1940s or 1950s, but well into the
1960s as well. He said, “[gender roles] I’d say… were very different than now.
Women were not considered to be included in certain roles or job expectations. I can
never remember a teacher even being pregnant. As soon as they were, I guess the
teacher was gone. I knew there were some in the younger grades.”25 Suburban
children noticed these things, and even if they were not discussed endlessly with
peers, their parents, or even with the teachers themselves, the fact that something like
22
For a history of childcare in Calgary and Alberta more broadly see Tom Langford, Alberta’s Day
Care Controversy: From 1908 to 2009 and Beyond (Edmonton: Athabasca UP, 2011).
23
Strong-Boag, “Home Dreams,” 476.
24
Ibid., 477.
25
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, 28 July 2011. For studies of the histories of education,
pedagogies and teachers in Canada see Ruth Sandwell, To the Past: History Education, Public
Memory, and Citizenship in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006); Sara Z. Burke and
Patrice Milewski, Schooling in Transition: Readings in Canadian History of Education (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2012); Douglas O. Baldwin, Teachers, Students and Pedagogy: Readings
and Documents in the History of Canadian Education (Markham: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 2008).
239
this was not discussed openly contributed to young people not being exposed to basic
topics related to gender and sexuality.
Fatherhood, boyhood and masculinity were also tightly interwoven in the
post-World War II period.26 While girls had serious challenges to overcome, based
on gender, so too did boys, if not to the same degree.27 One female informant said
that in the end, “it was much easier for girls to be more bold than it was for boys to
be more timid…For guys it would have been deadly for them to take on a more
female–type role.”28 This is a factor that can be easily overlooked. Fathers, while
oftentimes well meaning, had to meet the idealized role of fatherhood, as well as
contribute to the shaping of their sons with both everyday actions and words.29 These
fathers of the postwar children and adolescents, suburban and otherwise, were part of
a generation that had married comparatively young, gained residential independence
earlier than their own fathers, and had fathered their children during a baby boom;
this was reflected broadly as significant differences between their own childhoods
and parenting years.30
Some informants spoke of the reasons why their fathers and mothers had
chosen the Banff Trail suburb. Inevitably, other than the relative affordability,31 one
recalled that the proximity for his children to the new University of Calgary and good
26
On boyhood during these years see Christopher J. Greig, Ontario Boys: Masculinity and the Idea of
Boyhood in Postwar Ontario, 1945-1960 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2014).
27
L.H. Garstin, “Our Schools Are Loaded Against Boys,” Maclean’s, vol 76, 23 Feb 1963, 13-15.
28
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
29
Mothers also contributed to this as most male interviewees mentioned that mothers often
encouraged sons to spend time with they fathers with a wide variance of success in it being quality
time. When it was organic, it seemed to have the most meaning for most informants.
30
Robert Rutherdale, “Just Nostalgic Family Men? Off-the-Job Family Time, Providing,
and Oral Histories of Fatherhood in Postwar Canada, 1945-1975,” Oral History Forum 29 (2009): 5.
31
S.D. Clark, The Suburban Society (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 1966.
240
public schools was a key motivator.32 In other research focused on the suburbs, it is
notable that fathers frequently spoke of the positive values of the suburban
experience for their youngsters and emphasized, in particular, the outdoor play and
the natural environment not found elsewhere.33 As I explored elsewhere in the
gendering of space in the suburbs, generally, the work inside the home fell to
mothers and girls, and as Sutherland found in his study of work, most boys did very
little or no work in what was traditionally the feminine sphere; when parents did ask
sons to do some work inside the home, they normally did not expect the same levels
of good performance.34 This was not universal, but several female informants, and a
handful of male interviewees confirmed that this was indeed the case in both their
own suburban homes, and in the majority of the other homes that they spent time in
as young people. Further to this, there were no real age divisions related to gender,
especially between boys and men, with very few fathers contributing much inside the
homes, outside of some basic renovations, light maintenance and repairs.
As I have emphasized throughout, academics, social workers, sociologists,
child psychologists, pediatricians, prominent authors and so forth continued to gain
influence over parents throughout this time, and never more so in the history of
western childhood and adolescence. Most organizations adopted the basic tenets of
the most popular theories in crafting their guiding philosophies for what boys and
young men needed. This mid-1950s report excerpt, entitled “Free Time Needs of
32
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
Susan Saegert, “Masculine Cities and Feminine Suburbs: Polarized Ideas, Contradictory Realities,”
Signs 5, no. 3 (Spring 1980): 105.
34
Neil Sutherland, “We Always Had Things To Do,” 113.
33
241
Boys” from the Boys Clubs of Canada, commissioned by the City of Calgary in the
mid-1950s, illustrates this well,
Every boy in any community should have the opportunity of free
time activity; the companionship of boys in a good environment
under good leadership. Every boy needs guidance in the choice of
his free time activities, in behavior, in his attitude toward others,
family and church relationships, girls, education, employment and
government…Every boy should have the opportunity of receiving
physical training, athletics, and the development of physical fitness.
Every boy should have the opportunity to learn and practice
wholesome health habits. Every boy should have opportunity for
education on a personal interest basis, to develop vocational skills,
and to uncover latest vocational aptitudes. Every boy should have
the opportunity to develop his interest and skills in hobbies and
cultural activities which enrich his life. Every boy should have the
opportunity to experience outdoor life away from cities.”35
The overwhelming focus is on physical activity, good general health and learning
‘proper’ values.36 This idealized version of masculinity was not new to this period,
and both young and adolescent boys understood it by interpreting the actions of
others, implicit messaging and overt instruction as outlined in the advice given
above. There is also an intrinsic pastoral element to this, something that it was
believed the suburbs could provide with the relative open space and outdoor
opportunities versus more urban settings nearer the downtown cores of cities that
were dominated by the rapidly expanding built environment. In Rutherdale’s study,
fathers, as have other elders across societies, yearn for a past characterized by the
pastoral myths of pure settings and a shared culture of traditional societies; the past
35
Boys Clubs of Canada, Study of the City of Calgary (Montreal: Boys Clubs of Canada, September
1956), 42, Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs of Calgary fonds, M7547, File 11, Glenbow Archives.
36
For further reading on the idealized active, controlling gendered boy see Mona Gleason, “Embodied
Negotiations: Children’s Bodies and Historical Change in Canada, 1930 to 1960,” Journal of
Canadian Studies 34, no.1 (Spring 1999): 119.
242
was an imagined space, and for these children of the Depression years, as one of
hardship and difficult constraint.37
But, as with young girls becoming adolescents, there seemed to be a clear
delineation between boyhood and male adolescence. One female interviewee
remembered that play seemed relatively undifferentiated when they were elementaryaged. She said, “We all played together because I enjoyed the outdoors so much. We
were playing army, snowball fights, they might try to say, ‘Oh I’m a guy, you’re a
girl.’ The backhanded compliment I would get would be that you can run as fast as a
guy, or you can throw a ball just as far as a boy.”38 This interviewee, along with
many others, said that sexism in late childhood and adolescence was overt. In her
peer group, it was just assumed that as a girl, she was not welcomed to participate
actively in certain games and activities being played by boys exclusively. Much of
this was modeled on adult gender roles stressing femininity for young women and
masculinity for young men. She also mentioned that when she got older, “I never
took up golfing and I think the guys were happy about that so I wouldn’t go along
[when they did go golfing].”39 It seems likely that she not only challenged them
because she was a girl, but also by the fact that she was a very good athlete who
might actually beat them on the golf course. Bruce also noted this transition between
the elementary years and junior high years when he said that, “by junior high, we
started formulating our ideas about how girls couldn’t do the same things as boys.”40
This distinction is important and while there are likely several reasons for it, the
37
Rutherdale, “Just Nostalgic Family Men?,” 25.
Judith Williams, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 13 December 2011.
39
Ibid.
40
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 28 July 2011.
38
243
effects of the peer group, something we, as researchers know is extremely important,
was as big a contributor as all of the other information circulating in this period that
emphasized the fundamental differences between the two genders.41 Tensions arising
from adolescent sexuality were an important influence as well. The influence of the
peer group did change over time, but in the junior high years, it seemed to take on
added importance for at least the junior high years, and for some, extending even into
their high school years.
But young people were not mere receptacles, waiting to be filled with beliefs,
ideologies and “right” thinking by adults and material culture. One interviewee
remembered seeing things that did not make sense, even from the perspective of a
young adolescent. He recalled that the nearby, “Highlander Motor Hotel was a place
where my parents sometimes went to have a drink. There was a men’s, ladies and
escorts entrances. That always got me.”42 Former post-World War II baby boomers,
when writing fiction at a later time, have also discussed this through their characters.
One character in Margaret Atwood’s novel Cat’s Eye remembered that the stories
from school textbooks represented an idealized gendered suburb that she never
actually knew. Atwood’s character recalls that, “the father goes to work, the mother
wears a dress and an apron, and the children play ball on the lawn with their dog and
cat.”43
41
There were several contributors to this but this influence of the peer group, one of the largest ones in
recent Canadian history due to the baby boom, cannot be forgotten. For further reading on the
influence of this peer group see Doug Owram, Born at the Right Time: A History of the Baby Boom
Generation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).
42
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 28 July 2011.
43
Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1988), 30.
244
For several interviewees, gender, in terms of the restrictions, was just not
something that was discussed, particularly as young children. Wendy said, “it was
more informally with us; this is what boys do, this is what girls do. I don’t remember
my parents ever telling me I couldn’t do anything because I was a girl.”44 This
represents an important shift for young girls, and demonstrates that at least in some
postwar suburban homes, the highly gendered adult world45 wasn’t simply replicated
and encouraged in childhood and adolescent cultures.
An interesting line can be tied from here to Tina Block’s research on
fatherhood and religion in the postwar era. Much of her research is based on the oral
histories which emphasize that while church membership was high in the era,46 it did
not necessarily translate to a heightened spirituality in postwar Canada. Related to
gender and in particular, fatherhood, she emphasizes that humorous remembrances of
irreligious and indifferent fathers highlighted many oral histories, and that taken
together, these memories hint at the apparent, even amusing, nature of male religious
apathy in the post-World War II world. While this theme was not talked about a great
deal by interviewees in this study, or reflected in the archival record, it was broached
by some boomers. In other words, regular church attendance did not translate into
regular prayer at home, and in a number of these suburban homes in Calgary, fathers
44
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 2 August 2011.
While highly gendered, the instances of women working outside the home and doing something
other than homemaking has been explored elsewhere for some of the best works across temporal lines
see Joan Sangster, Transforming Labour: Women and Work in Postwar Canada (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2010); Suzanne Morton, Ideal Surroundings; Franca Iacovetta and Mariana
Valverde, eds., Gender Conflicts, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992).
46
Tina Block, “’Toilet-seat Prayers’ and Imperious Fathers: Interrogating Religion and the Family in
Oral Histories of the Postwar Pacific Northwest,” Oral History Forum 29 (2009): 19.
45
245
did not participate in church services and activities regularly.47 This also suggests
that in many postwar homes, women were in fact the leaders in terms of church
attendance for adults, and for guiding children and adolescents to church.
The following article, “Equality Versus Supremacy” from a Calgary high
school newspaper in 1957, illustrates some of the tensions of the period surrounding
gender,
Men have been educated to the fact that everyone is equated equal;
yet they seem to think that they have certain privileges. At some
time, at almost every party, the men swarm into a corner to swap
jokes…Women are also considered to be naïve in regard to
business. True, there are few great women scientists, business
heads or politicians. This is because women have been tending the
home, which is natural and right, but while they are doing this
worthy job must their conversation and thinking be confined to
diets or sales. I believe that if women were invited more often to
discuss these topics, they would feel honored and
important…Women in previously all-male occupations are either
looked upon as unfeminine or are told that they are wasting time
and energy because they will only get married anyway.48
The article underscores the challenges that women of all ages faced in this
period, as well as reinforces some of the prevailing gender ideals that
promoted women working in the home as both ‘natural’ and right. What it
does demonstrate well is that adolescent women, like this writer, were
thinking about some of the wider tensions that marked gender relations,
regardless of any existing age divisions. It also highlights some of the
practical challenges that girls and women faced in social situations. The
author laments the fact that men will often hive themselves off at parties to
discuss ‘masculine’ topics that they believed to be, patronizingly, unsuitable
47
This was differentiated though as some fathers were referenced as being religious and attending
services on a regular basis throughout interviewees’ childhoods.
48
Margeurite Glow, “Equality Versus Supremacy,” Central Collegiate Weeper, February 1957, 31.
246
for mixed company. Wrestling with these topics, both intellectually and
practically, did not know age boundaries or constraints.
Another informant captured this well when she said, “there was lots of
informal ways of making sure that girls did things. I remember when we finally got
to wear pants to school and we got to be a little more normal. [I remember thinking]
finally they are kind of waking up; wearing dresses and being super feminine [is not
necessary]. I remember that for junior high [was] when it actually shifted…there was
a little shift in thinking.”49 So it was more than just wearing pants. It was about
choice and knowing that identities, sometimes based on gender, could be linked to
these choices (or lack thereof). From the perspective of most adults, many of these
issues may seem trivial, but from the perspective of adolescence, it was a different
matter altogether. It adds context to note that this was happening at Branton Junior
High in the late sixties, a time that we often idealize as a much more ‘progressive’
and ‘liberal’ than the previous decades. While it may seem to trifling to some, to
adolescent girls, this was an important step in exercising some agency with one’s
wardrobe at a time when individual choices were not always readily available.
This editorial from the William Aberhart school newspaper in 1969
captures the issue further, and in particular, the frustrations of adolescent
girls,
One fails to see the logic in making girl students wear skirts just to
write a ninety-minute exam…This brings us to the subject of dress
regulations in general. Why does this administration spend so much
time and energy on such trivia as dress rules when administration
members and guidance counselors are so overworked that most
students who need individual attention simply don’t get it?...Most
49
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 2 August 2011.
247
of us learned how to dress ourselves before we entered grade one;
we do not need twelve years of dress regulations.50
This reflects some critical thinking about the state of school dress and other
regulations, as there are other issues broached such as the alleged misuse of
time by some school administrators. Students expressed frustration with the
bureaucracy and red tape they faced, and being unable to address other more
important issues with those in power positions. The condescension and
sarcasm is also evident by the end of the article in underlining that teenagers
are not small children, and that they do not require aid in making basic
wardrobe decisions either. In some ways, this can be seen as part of
resistances to authority explored in more detail in the next chapter.
Taking a broader view, gender issues did not simply pit men against women
and boys against girls. Both men and women interviewees recalled that they were
conscious and supportive of feminist causes in the 1960s and early 1970s. As we
have seen, suburbs are often cast as bastions of conservatism, particularly in the
United States, but there were also at least some elements of ‘progressive’ thinking
present in several households.51 This male interviewee, when asked about gender and
possible meanings from his childhood and adolescence, remembered that “my
parents were very liberal and very convinced of the equality of the sexes so that
message came through. We probably talked about it in the context of those idiots that
didn’t meet that line of thinking, whether it be local, provincial or national
50
“Editorial,” Aberhart Advocate 10, no. 11, April 1969, 3.
Radicalism was obviously quelled in student publications and the interviewees for this dissertation
would never be confused with militant radicals. There were certainly individuals who had experienced
the stirrings of progressive views by their late teens, but nothing beyond that was located in the
material culture or in the oral histories.
51
248
politics….We talked about it in what would probably be considered a very modern
way.”52 There was no mention of follow-up in terms of direct activism, but this does
demonstrate a degree of differentiation that defined the suburban landscape, versus
the generic representations that often brand the era. While it is impossible for
interviewees not to be influenced by the present, others corroborated this growing
consciousness and as we have seen, adolescents’ material culture also reflected a
growing awareness around issues of gender inequalities. Related to gender, were the
themes of adolescent sexualities and bodies that were the subjects of great turmoil
and debate in the post-World War II period.
Adolescent Sexualities & Bodies
Unsurprisingly, from the perspectives of baby boomer children and
adolescents, the era, particularly in the 1950s and early 1960s, was defined by
silences, misinformation and denials regarding changing bodies and emerging
sexuality. One informant, an older baby boomer, described her sexual education as
beginning, not unlike that of other young, curious children in a barn at the age of
four,
Yeah, it [the lack of discussion and meaningful information] was an
appalling gap on our parents’ generation’s part. You know, really,
by the time we got anything in school it was useless…I was not
sexually active, but I had more knowledge and experience than I
needed to have. Nobody gave you anything useful, like this is a
condom and this is how you put it on…girls just disappeared [when
they became pregnant]. I can think of two good friends that gave up
their babies…it was criminal to do that. And to the boys that lost
their children too…I have nothing good to say about how sex was
dealt with.53
52
53
Anonymous 2, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
249
This informant touched on a number of themes mentioned by other interviewees and
have been touched on by researchers working on this era. Noteworthy, and echoed by
older boomers who were in elementary school in the mid sixties, is the lack of
information that was made available to older children and adolescents, as well as the
lack of dialogue that existed between adults and even teenagers, particularly in the
1950s in Calgary and elsewhere. The stigmatization of pregnant young women has
not been completely removed even today, but the forced ‘invisibility’ of pregnant
teenagers was a powerful and damaging statement to other adolescents.54 Teenage
pregnancy numbers are very difficult to quantify, as we know that pregnancies did
not always end in births. The topic of unwed teenage pregnancy remained at the
forefront of media coverage across the country in this period.55 The rate of reported
teenage pregnancies (referred to as illegitimate until the early 1970s) has dropped
since the late 1960s and early 1970s, as reflected in official health statistics.56 This
topic of pregnancy affected both children and adolescents as another informant
discussed earlier in this chapter when referencing never seeing a pregnant teacher in
the classroom even in the late 1960s.
When asked about formal sex education in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the
lack of meaningful information was echoed by another older baby boomer. He said,
“There were lots of things you never talked about. I didn’t know anything about sex
54
It seems clear that the subject was taboo through the sixties as well. Not one article or essay
appeared in any school newspapers or newsletters in this period about teenage pregnancy and
motherhood. It is not until the mid sixties that we begin to see some serious and meaningful discussion
about teenage sexuality.
55
“Teen-age Mothers – YWCA Study,” Canadian Welfare, vol 40, May-June 1964, 140-141; “More
Teen-age Unwed Mothers,” The Globe and Mail, 2 March 1967, W2.
56
See Heather Dryburgh, “Teenage Pregnancy,” Health Reports from Statistics Canada,
http://www.sfu.ca/~mfs2/FALL%202012/340%20Maria%20Research/Teenage%20Pregnancy.pdf and
for teenage pregnancy, especially from the perspective of teenagers themselves see Robert Coles, The
Youngest Parents (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997).
250
until I had a conversation while washing dishes with my mother one night…I had
female cousins that I’d meet under the stairs and a couple of girls in grade six that I
met behind the school; that’s how I got my sex education.”57 Another female
interviewee, born in the fifties, said sex education and personal relationships didn’t
get talked about at home. She recalled “asking my mom about fish fertilizing their
eggs…and I don’t think the answer was clear…I felt pretty much in the dark about
it…in junior high, I did fool around with one boy…As a 10-year-old, I shared a bunk
bed with my 5-year-old cousin and was terrified that I would be pregnant.”58 When it
came to formal sex education in this period, while adolescents were often segregated
for learning purposes, there was little difference in what they were being taught (or
not being taught). Additionally, parents did not seem to be any more open or tightlipped with boys versus girls.
This dovetails interestingly with the work of Mona Gleason whose research
highlights that, as early as the 1930s, important expert discourse on youth and
sexuality was influenced greatly by members of the highly regarded medical and
religious communities.59 But what is not always stressed is that not only do the
people receiving this information filter and interpret it, but that at times, the targeted
children and adolescents had little or no opportunity to discuss it in a give-and-take
process with adults. As the informant above emphasized, information was oftentimes
withheld. Gleason also notes that by the 1950s in Canada, both psychological and
medical professionals urged parents to confront the sexualized body and sexuality
57
Allan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
Donna McLaren, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 12 December 2011.
59
Mona Gleason, “Embodied Negotiations,” 123.
58
251
itself as part of the normal course of development and maturation.60 Other historians
have also argued that by the sixties, high-circulation reading material, such as the
influential Chatelaine magazine, featured feminist pieces and editorials, general
interest topics such as abortion, birth control, lesbianism, and women’s sexuality, and
that its influence should not be underestimated.61 But it appears that at least some
suburban mothers and fathers, at least until the mid-sixties, despite being exposed to
materials regarding sexuality and bodies, chose not to discuss this with their preadolescent or adolescent youngsters. One female interviewee was succinct in
recalling that for, “Sex education, we got shown the videos and you could read the
materials; no discussion. There was no discussion with parents, siblings and friends;
nothing.”62 Others remembered it in a similar way, particularly those born in the late
forties or early fifties. One male interviewee said that “there was no sex education; [it
was all] street talk.”63 This is instructive because it represents a real shift in larger
discussions around pedagogy and curricula in the late 1950s and early 1960s in
Calgary. This 1962 Calgary Herald article “Early Sex Schooling Urged,” highlights
some of the discussions from a three-day convention held in Calgary where it was
concluded that,
sex education should be introduced at a grade one level. Delegates
agreed the instruction should begin in an informal manner, with the
teacher answering questions which might arise spontaneously in the
class room…Only one discussion group favored integration of
sexes during instruction on sex education. Children should realize
from the beginning, the group argued, that they are different, and
these differences should be explained in each other’s presence.64
60
Ibid., 129.
Valerie J. Korinek, Roughing it in the Suburbs (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 369.
62
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 27 July 2011.
63
Barry Matthews, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 31 October 2011.
64
“Early Sex Schooling Urged,” The Calgary Herald, 2 Feb 1962, 23.
61
252
It is noteworthy that children and adolescents, as is often the case in matters
that can affect them directly, were not consulted in any of this discussion.
Also, there was a consensus arrived at, that discussion should begin as early
as grade one. There was no consensus reached on integrating the sexes for
discussion, which is unsurprising given the broader prevailing discursive
constructs regarding masculinity and femininity. The larger path, to actually
begin educating young people formally was finally implemented by the later
1960s and early 1970s when students began to receive sex education in
Calgary schools.
One interviewee, a Banff Trail baby boomer and later a Calgary
Board of Education teacher, recalled the first attempts by educators at
formal sex education within his school Senator Patrick Burns in the
centennial year,
It wasn’t a single class. It was all of us in one grade in the gym.
[There were] 300 kids at least. There was a question box and
teachers [to answer some of the questions]. It was a whole brand
new thing. Lots of conversation; all the kids were involved with it.
[It was] a brand new thing that they had never attempted. I think it
helped the parents open up the conversation.65
As mentioned by other interviewees, the dialogue, let alone any one-way lecturing
regarding sex information, was very limited. However, the discussion at least
prompted some conversations at home with adolescents’ parents. The methodology,
at least at these initial stages, can certainly be questioned as there would be a level of
frankness not possible in a group of 300 young teenagers, including both boys and
65
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 28 July 2011.
253
girls. The use of sex education films was introduced in other jurisdictions around this
same time, linking these Calgary childhoods with others across the country.66
As historians have noted previously, and as most young people will divulge
when asked, there were alternatives to formal sex education for young people to gain
knowledge and experiences. Mary Louise Adams concludes that comics, girlie
magazines, and pulp fiction suggested other ways of making sense of sexuality, ones
that could potentially unsettle the dominance of a family-based, monogamous
heterosexuality.67 One male informant recalled these alternative contexts when he
said, “sex education was learned in the schoolyard…I don’t think I ever had any sex
education chats with my parents. It was avoided in the sixties and seventies…it was
never discussed in my house; [it was] mainly through friends. Or the truth is, it’s
your brother’s Penthouse collection.”68 Again, he illustrates that, despite some larger
changes to sex education curricula and what seems to be quite clearly an opening in
dialogue, not all young people felt they had engaged in any formal learning. He
emphasizes that adolescents found ways to gain information by any means necessary.
If it was not forthcoming from adults in positions of authority, they found other
sources often through their siblings and other peers.
Another interviewee also gained sexual ‘knowledge’ from illicit sources that
objectified female bodies and were never intended to be educational resources for
adolescents, although they likely served similar purposes for thousands if not
millions of adolescent boys throughout the postwar period and later. Allan said, “I
66
“Sex Films Approved for Grades 7, 8 and 9,” The Globe and Mail, 2 February 1967, W4.
Mary Louise Adams, The Trouble With Normal: Postwar Youth and the Making of Heterosexuality
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 164.
68
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
67
254
remember one of the guys had a Playboy collection and that’s kind of where I learned
the anatomy of a female. I could never talk to my father about that kind of stuff.”69
This informant did not say why he could not talk about such subjects with his father,
but his was not an isolated experience.
What these other sources potentially provided was something counterhegemonic. When children and adolescents were exposed to ‘normal’ sexuality, as
designed in post-World War II advice books, magazines, movies, and sex education
curricula, in legal, psychological, and popular discursive constructs, it was inevitably
the preserve of married, adult hetero couples who produced children, and of
teenagers who were preparing themselves to fit into that societal framework.70 But
there were resistances to these prescribed roles and behaviours. One interviewee
discussed sexuality and some of the alternatives to the dominant heteronormativity of
the time,
I had a brief homosexual experience with [a friend], a kind of
experimental thing…There was also a kid in junior high school at
Branton that I look back on as flaming. He must have led a very
lonely life, though unlike today no one seemed to even be aware. I
know I was not, though later found out that his interest in Petula
Clark was a give-away, but who knew?71
It was a fascinating admission. With the existing legal system that
criminalized homosexuality until the late sixties, combined with strict
religious teachings in this time regarding homosexuality, it’s unsurprising
that the topic was not broached among many adolescents. Yet, children and
adolescents are naturally curious, and it is highly likely that this
69
Allan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
Adams, The Trouble With Normal, 167.
71
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
70
255
interviewee’s experiences were not isolated. But as childhood historian
Mona Gleason notes, the social norms promoted in schools, particularly
those regarding obedience and cultivating appropriate attitudes towards
gender, class and ‘race,’ were connected closely and depended upon
disciplined and normalized bodies.72 Necessarily, there was a mind-body
connection made that meant children implicitly understood that behaviours,
bodies and minds all needed to be synchronized and “normal” in order to be
acceptable. This informant’s belief was that no one seemed to be aware of
what this other young and likely conflicted adolescent may have been
experiencing in regards to his emerging sexuality.
Another young boomer echoed this lack of recognition and awareness within
the community. He discussed the late sixties and early seventies when he recalled
that it was ‘unthinkable’ to be gay,
In high school, among my social group, we were fans of the band
Queen. We were also fans of Elton John. I remember with Elton
John, thinking that he may or may not be gay. With Queen, as
completely obvious as it is, I don’t remember any connection to
them representing gay. One guy who wasn’t part of my inner circle,
I remember him as ‘stereotypically’ gay but I talked to friends later
that it didn’t even cross our minds. To be gay in that
neighbourhood was unthinkable, it was beyond thought…it was
suppressed.73
There seemed to be little recognition or acknowledgement of lesbian or gay
adolescents despite the fact that there obviously were some gay teenagers in
Calgary’s suburbs, particularly by the early seventies. This informant
indicated that it was not part of his individual consciousness or of the larger,
72
73
Gleason, “Disciplining the Student Body,” 215.
Brian Rutz, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 12 December 2011.
256
dominant peer group, which could not have identified that someone was
homosexual. Additionally, there was a disconnect between some of the
earliest pop music icons directly associated with homosexuality and
perceiving them in this manner. He used the words, “suppressed” and
“unthinkable,” indicating that the Calgary suburbs can be seen as somewhat
representative of the dominant and broader mainstream heterosexual
adolescent and adult cultures.
However, other interviewees recalled some nuance here, and that in
fact, there was a very real consciousness, in some groups, about
homosexuality. According to one informant, while it was suppressed,
adolescents were aware of alternatives to the idealized heteronormative
family that was presented to them, uncritically in most instances. This
informant remembered details about a designated day that was created by
adolescents to express their non-heterosexuality,
Thursday was called Fruits Day. You were supposed to wear green
and [if you did] you were supposed to be a fruit. Speculations
[abounded] about various teachers, most of which were probably
spot on…I remember one guy [fellow classmate], positive he was
not attracted to women; [he had] the car, the girlfriends, the whole
thing. He could have had a better life if he had been able to explore
what he might have wanted.74
This was an adolescent cultural practice in a suburban high school that was
rarely broached in the school yearbooks and newspapers in the fifties and
sixties. Some of this speaks to what made it through editorial controls placed
on student editors by older students and teachers, but also to the types of
students who may or may not have been involved with school publications.
74
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
257
It also demonstrates that speaking of teenagers or adolescents in universal
terms is highly problematic in what may be missed when looking at
everyday practices. This oral history also demonstrates that in many ways,
adolescent patterns, whether it was sexual repression as it was likely to have
been in this case, can sometimes reflect the adult world, regardless of intent.
As Adams argues, the ever more important influence of psychoanalytic
theories in the early part of the postwar period, in particular, also meant that
heterosexuality was not only a means of organizing relationships, but an
expression of ‘maturity,’ and it could determine one’s ability to claim
normalcy, that integral element of post-World War II social classifications.75
While teenagers were thought, by some, to be malleable and easily
influenced – characteristics that many adults thought could mean their
turning into either model, sexually responsible adults or deviants and
delinquents76 – they absolutely questioned what was presented to them by
those individuals charged with guiding young lives. Historian Mona
Gleason notes this process of mediation. She emphasizes that in the instance
of embodiment, it was influenced equally by individual experiences, desires,
and needs as it was by imposed social ideologies and official
pronouncements.77
This process of mediation is demonstrated well in the reactions by
adolescents to a visit from a person of influence. A 1969 visit from a high-
75
Adams, The Trouble With Normal, 9.
Ibid., 167.
77
Gleason, “Embodied Negotiations,” 131.
76
258
ranking Calgary Police Services officer was discussed in the William
Aberhart high school article entitled, “Andy Little,” this way,
When Mr. Little spoke to a sociology class…he got down to such
specifics as homosexuality and drugs. He has a very harsh attitude
towards homosexuals, and is against the proposed legalization of
homosexual relations between consenting adults. He stated that sex
offenders are incurable, and should be locked away where they
cannot do society any harm…Although some students found the
inspector’s attitudes objectionable and his arguments feeble, his
visit was a great success.”78
The officer’s position was very much a standard one in the 1950s and 1960s among
many influential adults who found themselves in situations to address young people.
With the criminalization of certain behaviours by marginalized individuals (based on
their sexual orientation), self-identified homosexuals, along with other sexual
outsiders like transvestites, transsexuals, and bisexuals, oftentimes, were defined
medically and culturally as mentally ill and most perceived these individuals to be a
real threat to the safety of others, including adolescents and children.79 As Marshall
McLuhan first argued shortly before this time, in this instance, the medium (in this
instance the police officer) was also the message.80
The fact that a police officer discussed sexualities in a presentation spoke to a
larger societal shift. While most of the oldest boomers did not receive much, if
anything in the way of formal sexual education, this changed in suburban junior high
and high schools, and in Calgary’s inner-city schools by the late 1960s.
Unquestionably, the school, with the ever-increasing professionalization of its
78
D. Hunt, “Andy Little,” Aberhart Advocate 11, no. 6, December 1969, 7.
Elise Chenier, Strangers in Our Midst: Sexual Deviancy in Postwar Ontario (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2008), 5.
80
See Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1994).
79
259
administrators and staff, was gaining increasing power and influence late in this
period. While this process did not occur overnight, these changes and
recommendations are illustrated well in the following excerpt from a Calgary
Elementary Education Committee report focusing on the changing needs of society
and what individuals required to live in modern society, “society is turning to the
institution it created specifically to take charge of the formal education of the young
with the request, sometimes the demand, that the school become consciously
involved in the education of children in personal and interpersonal relationships,
specifically those concerned with family life, including sex education.”81
By the end of the 1960s, the topic of sexual education for teenagers had
entered the mainstream flow of information with the tone of the official message
changing quite decidedly in terms of its frankness and openness. A very real shift in
pedagogy occurred. A doctor who had been part of the committee to present the brief
on sex education to the Calgary school board in the late 1960s spoke with students at
William Aberhart High School. Dr. Hatfield’s visit was noted in the school paper and
the article said that he,
pooh-poohed the idea that sex education would rob the home of its
natural roles, stating that too many kids were simply not getting it
at home and the course could act as a supplement, not a
replacement, for what the parents had already taught…He claimed
that sex education would be only a small part of a much broader
“family living” course, that would include financial management,
driver training, drugs, alcohol and especially personal
relationships… The doctor maintained that any opposition to sex
education was an emotional response, rather than on a logical
appraisal of the facts.82
81
Family Life Education, Sex Education and Other Aspects of Family Life, by Elementary Curriculum
Committee (Calgary: September 1968), 6, Family Life Education Council of Calgary fonds, M6239,
File 16, Glenbow Archives.
82
D. Hunt, “Sex Education and Us,”Aberhart Advocate, vol 10, no. 10 March 1969.
260
So by the end of the sixties, the topics of sexuality and personal relationships were
finally becoming part of the everyday conversation in schools, and in reality,
catching up to the activities that many teenagers had of course been engaging in
across nearly all temporal periods. While certain cultural practices become more or
less common over time, personal, and often sexual relationships among adolescents
are as old as humankind.83
Dating and Relationships
By the early 1950s, as historian Cynthia Comacchio has noted, dating and
“going steady” were mainstream teenage practices and no longer mere modern
trends.84 The city of Calgary was characterized as a hotbed for teenage dating.
According to a contemporary newspaper article this dating existed to a greater degree
than in other centres in Alberta, likely because there were more opportunities to do so
in a larger centre than in other towns and smaller cities. The article detailed some of
the findings from a conference involving a group of adolescents representing twenty
of Alberta’s urban centres, although, as is so often the case, no consensus was
reached on personal relationship topics as they were tackled in 1950,
There was a lively discussion on the question of intimacy between
boys and girls. It was generally agreed that a boy should not kiss a
girl on the first time out together. However, after that, kissing was
definitely considered a part of dating. The girl should set the limit
in embracing…The question of drinking on dates did not present
much of a problem…In summing up it was felt that in all phases of
a boy and girl relationship, the girl should set the standard and the
boy live up to it.85
83
Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
(Toronto: Harper, 2010).
84
Cynthia Comacchio, Dominion of Youth (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2006), 97.
85
Eleanor Burritt “‘Going Steady’ System Popular in Calgary,” Calgary Herald, 21 April 1950.
261
On the surface, it might seem empowering that adolescent girls would set
limits on physical contact, but this was yet another example of advice-givers
guiding young people in the need for active adolescent boys to be limited by
more responsible, mature and less active girls. It reflects the simplistic and
wrongheaded mantra that “boys will be boys” that continues to hold sway
with an uninformed, but loud minority of individuals.
A handful of informants refuted the sexualizing of all male-female adolescent
relationships. One female informant said she “wanted a boyfriend just so I could
throw a football with him.”86 That wasn’t the exclusive reason, but it is the reason
she highlighted when she talked about what having a boyfriend would have meant to
her. She couldn’t find other girls who were interested in sports to the same extent that
she was, so having a boyfriend would have allowed her to indulge her passion for
sports, especially during a time when sports for young women were limited much
more so than today. The same interviewee did get some unwanted adult male
attention though in a place usually touted as safe for children and adolescents. She
recalled that in her junior high years, “there was a janitor that took a little too much
interest in me at times. So there was a little bit of that going on.”87 This was echoed
by another older female baby boomer who said, “there was all this snickering,
teasing, passes made to me regularly by guys driving me home from babysitting,
were they legit or not, [I don’t really know].”88 Unfortunately this was not unique to
86
Donna McLaren, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 12 December 2011.
Ibid.
88
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
87
262
this era or to the suburban experience. It is a prominent theme emphasized
throughout the definitive book on the history of babysitting.89
However, many postwar teenagers were dating and debating whether or not
going steady was the best choice. This school article from Central High School in
Calgary, “This Steady Business,” appeared in 1957 and presented arguments against
the practice,
Why go steady when you are young? When teen-agers go steady
they miss all the fun of meeting different types of boys and girls.
Far too much time is spent in each other’s company and hence the
school work suffers. Going steady means that you have to adjust to
the other person’s life…Besides, if your mother is anything like
mine, she wholly disapproves of it, for her own secret little reasons.
“Variety is the spice of life.” This quotation explains why young
people should, as we say, “play the field”.90
Written by a female adolescent, the author reiterates much of what adult advicegivers, in myriad roles, were offering to students; it had them focusing on their
school marks, maintaining one’s individuality, and the pitfalls of focusing too much
attention on just a single member of the opposite sex. It also reinforces that at times,
mainstream articles in newspapers often reproduced the hegemonic ideals and values
offered to young people; in other words, teenage rebellions and resistances were in
no way a universal state, that individuals could ‘toe the line’ at times, and resist
vehemently in other instances.
While there was information flowing down to young people, there was also
information gained and exchanged between teenagers about personal relationships
regarding the opposite sex. This short piece, “How To Find a Mate,” appeared in the
89
90
Miriam Forman-Brunell, Babysitting: An American History (New York: New York UP, 2009).
Peggy Barnsley, “This Steady Business,” Central Collegiate Institute Weeper, June 1957, 5.
263
Aberhart High School newspaper and reflected what teenage boys and girls were
looking for in a potential partner when surveyed about potential positive qualities,
We found that 80% of those asked put personality in top place, and
that intelligence and looks shared the other 20% equally.
Second position revealed 80% intelligence, with 15% personality,
and 5% looks. Third place had 50% looks, 35% popularity, 10%
intelligence, and 5% personality. Popularity rates 65% in fourth
position, with looks taking the other 35%. Therefore, the most
popular order is personality, intelligence, looks, and popularity.91
The 1963 survey was interesting on a few levels and echoes much of what
interviewees talked about when they discussed gender, sexuality and personal
relationships. While there is a tendency by many adults to marginalize the emotions
and personal relationships that develop in teenage years - think of the derogatory
‘puppy love’ often referred to so often - this survey, even if it is a small sample size,
demonstrates that teenagers were seeking something more than what many adults
might think. While there can be real questions asked about how adolescents actually
quantified intelligence and personality, it does demonstrate something beyond a
focus on looks and the ever-present social hierarchy of high school.
One interviewee recalled that she had several friends who were
experimenting with boys in their teenage years in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but
not necessarily dating the boys on a steady basis. She said, “I would always go along,
I don’t think I felt jealous. I wasn’t the one doing it. I wasn’t one of the girls meeting
up and it was okay with me, to a point.”92 While she didn’t remember engaging in
these activities as an adolescent herself, she did express some regret that she didn’t
either take the opportunity to do so, and that she was never asked to do so by her
91
92
“How to Choose a Mate,” Aberhart Advocate 5, no. 4, 20 March 1963.
Donna McLaren, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 11 December 2011.
264
male peers. This reflected the broader Calgary data from the period that was
collected in a City of Calgary survey. In that 1966 study, high school respondents
said that they had a tendency to date more than four times per month and did not
show a strong bias to date one person in a steady relationship.93 Of course, many
young people did continue to date on steady basis,94 but it does indicate some change
over time in dating patterns, as noted by Comacchio’s research, and that while there
are always certain practices exercised by many, there is always differentiation within
such a diverse group of people, regardless of age. The pill also became available and
would have a profound effect on sexual practices on people of all ages if they chose
to use this new form of contraception.
Another informant discussed the late 1960s and 1970s this way in the context
of personal relationships with both her parents and her peers. She began by saying
that there was a classmate who got pregnant in Grade 12, but,
if any of my [close] girlfriends were sleeping with guys it certainly
wasn’t things that we talked about…I always stayed friends with
my parents…I could always talk to them. If I had a boyfriend I
could always tell them. It wasn’t something I announced to my
mother, “Hey, I just had sex last night.” I was also 17 and not 12…I
felt I was old enough to make a reasonable decision and it was with
a boyfriend. I didn’t feel like I was going against social norms or
that it was particularly risky.95
Much like many of the informants who grew up as baby boomers in Calgary’s
suburbs, she had a relatively healthy relationship with her parents. There was good
two-way communication in many regards, but when it came to certain topics, quite
93
City of Calgary, Recreation in the City of Calgary: A Survey of Interests, Activities and
Opportunities, by Department of Youth Research Division (Calgary: City of Calgary 1966), 405, City
of Calgary Archives.
94
“Teen Topics by Sally,” Calgary Herald, 27 February 1950; “Mrs. Thompson Advises: Girl, 16,
Too Young to be Able to Choose Husband Wisely,” The Globe and Mail, 28 October 1959, 17;
Eleanor Burritt, “Majority of ‘Teeners Approve ‘Going Steady,’” Calgary Herald, 17 January 1950.
95
Lesley Hayes, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 26 July 2011.
265
simply, they were never discussed. Parents didn’t ask, some did not feel the need to
share certain personal experiences with adults, and many mothers and fathers in this
period made it clear that they were not particularly interested in full disclosure from
their changing and maturing adolescent children, regardless of gender.
Health & Wellness
Health and illness touch all children’s and adolescents’ lives in some way.96
The health of young people had been improving steadily since the late nineteenth
century in Canada as the health of children and adolescents became an important
focus for healthcare practitioners. The field of pediatrics exploded, efforts increased
to erase rather high infant mortality rates and disease control gave way to concerted
efforts to prevent illness with science and technologies.97 Mental health experts, in
the immediate post-World War II era, also broached the dangers of unchecked mental
health issues and what they might mean to Canadian society.98 Postwar young people
were subjects of concern, and in Calgary, headlines blared various warnings
regarding these issues. Stories about the possible dangers to children and teenagers
were prominent, right from the beginning of the era. The article, “Cancer Takes Toll
Among Children and Teen-Agers,” appeared in 1950 and brought up the topic of
childhood cancer despite it being relatively rare,
It ranks second only in pneumonia as a cause of death from disease
among children between one and fifteen, according to an article “Is
Cancer a Danger to Your Child?” appearing in the March issue of a
96
See Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500 (Toronto: Pearson,
2005).
97
See Neil Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society: Framing the Twentieth Century
Consensus (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2000); Mona Gleason, Small Matters: Canadian Children
in Sickness and Health, 1900-1940 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2013).
98
J. D. Griffin, M.D., “Problem of Mental Health in Canada,” in The Social Worker 15, no 1 (Sep
1946), 5, Canadian Association of Social Workers fonds, MG 28, I 441, Box 21, File 6, Library and
Archives Canada.
266
women’s magazine. One reason for high mortality rates is that
parents are not sufficiently alert to early symptoms.99
As with so much of the advice giving from the era, the onus was placed upon parents
to be vigilant in monitoring their children for potential cancer symptoms. If parents
were not responsive to symptoms, their child could be the next one at risk. For young
people growing up in Calgary’s suburbs, the environment was touted as one of the
best possible places for a young person to grow and prosper in their formative years.
Although, as the era began in 1950, Calgary was not noted as a bastion for health and
wellness spending on its youngest citizens. Calgary was singled out for not spending
the dollars on children’s health, and health care more generally, that some other
municipalities were. A 1950 newspaper report revealed that: “while Calgary spent
$1.05 per citizen on medical health services, Toronto spent $2.40, Vancouver $2,
Hamilton spent $1.78 and Winnipeg $1.60.100
Suburban life has often been and continues to be held up by developers and
city planners as a healthy lifestyle alternative for prospective homebuyers. This is not
a new selling point, and as explored in several places in this dissertation, it was a
motivator for many post-World War II families deciding to live in the suburbs.101
The suburban ideal includes an inherent view about the physically healthy influences
of a rural lifestyle.102 As explored earlier in the chapter on space, some of this builds
99
“Cancer Takes Toll Among Children And Teen-Agers,” Calgary Herald, 22 February 1950, 7.
“Money Needed to Care For Children’s Health,” Calgary Herald, 29 November 1950, 6. This predates universal health care in Canada that was instituted in 1966. While layers remained in the state
system, this was the birth of a system with national standards. See Alvin Finkel, Social Policy and
Practice in Canada: A History (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2006).
101
For further anecdotal evidence see S.D. Clark, The Suburban Society (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1966); William Dobriner, Class in Suburbia (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1963).
102
Laura J. Miller, “Family Togetherness and the Suburban Ideal,” Sociological Forum 10, no. 3 (Sep
1995): 396-397. Miller also argues there was a moral aspect to this as well with cities proper cast as
sinful and potentially able to lure people away from familial activities.
100
267
on an idealized concept of pastoralism that grew as a response to the urban and
industrialized spaces that have marked the industrial-capitalist age. But suburbs,
cities, and in particular Calgary, have not always been bastions of health and
comfort. Richard Harris’s research demonstrates that for the first part of the twentieth
century Canadian cities were not healthy places.103 This was not exclusively a
Canadian phenomenon. Countless works exist on the unhealthy conditions that
marked cities in industrial England. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, the United States was marked by rapid urban growth, overcrowding and
unhealthy conditions given the haphazard mixing of commercial, industrial and
residential uses.104 The unhealthy conditions had several causes but their
unprecedented size, along with the cramming together of so many individuals (not to
mention factories and horses), created several health hazards.105 In Calgary,
specifically, large areas in the city were relatively unhealthy. Historian Max Foran
notes that squalor and poverty forced many families to live in dismal surroundings in
the early twentieth century, and contrasted scenes of relative prosperity and
individual affluence.106 This was not unique to Calgary, in terms of the unevenness of
suburban development as even in the early 1920s just over half of all Canadian
Prairies’ suburban homes had sewers.107 The larger point here is that the suburbs,
regardless of what city they were associated with, have not always been islands of
103
Richard Harris, Creeping Conformity: How Canada Became Suburban, 1900-1960 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2004), 54.
104
Oliver Gillham. The Limitless City: A Primer on the Urban Sprawl Debate (Washington: Island
Press, 2002), 39, 45.
105
Richard Harris and Michael E. Mercier, “How Healthy Were the Suburbs?” Journal of Urban
History 31, no. 6 (September 2005): 767. For an exploration of the Garden City Movement in the
United States see Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 2nd edition (New York:
Vintage Books), 1992.
106
Max Foran, Calgary: An Illustrated History (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 1978), 116.
107
Harris and Mercier, “How Healthy Were the Suburbs?,” 785.
268
health and wellness, although by the early 1950s, new suburbs such as Banff Trail
were likely as healthy, from an environmental standpoint, as any in North America,
particularly after a few years of development of infrastructure and services. While the
Banff Trail development was a relatively modest development versus other, more
affluent enclaves, it was part of a broader network that had some family-oriented and
often affluent migrants whose suburban lifestyle fostered the growth of local
organizations and also a concern and interest about the local community and its
environment.108
For children, adolescents and parents, polio was easily the biggest health
scare regardless of where they lived.109 Newspapers from the early 1950s featured
countless articles on polio and its far-reaching effects on the everyday lives of young
people. This article titled “Students’ Long Holiday Ends,” detailed what the outbreak
in the late summer of 1952 had meant to so many,
Thousands of Calgary’s younger school children returned to their
classes today, ending three extra weeks of summer vacation,
ordered because of the 1952 poliomyelitis outbreak. Three new
cases were reported in the city during the weekend–only one of
them a school age child….Although the opening has been
sanctioned by the city board of health, some parents are still
worried about polio and are keeping their children away from
school as long as new cases are reported…110
While most baby boomers were not yet of school age, this did affect the oldest ones
and continued to do so across this period even after the Salk vaccine was introduced.
One informant recalled that there was a “kid on our crescent who had polio. There
108
Wayne K.D. Davies & Ivan J. Townshend. “How Do Community Associations Vary?
The Structure of Community Associations in Calgary, Alberta,” Urban Studies 31, no.10 (1994):
1743.
109
For a history of polio see Gareth Williams, Paralysed With Fear: The Story of Polio (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
110
“Student’s Long Holiday Ends,” Calgary Herald, 22 September 1952, 1.
269
was another kid who was autistic. The parents had a big story about being in Africa
and he got sick and now he had autism. At that point it was still blamed on bad
parenting…He talked a bit. He used to stand and look at the sprinkler…very low
functioning. He came to our house looking for ‘the Man.’”111
While polio touched all lives, in some way, it was interesting that this
informant recalled the neighbor with autism more vividly. This particular autistic
child never attended school with the rest of the neighbourhood kids,112 yet this
former boomer recalled this peer with fondness and could not recall him ever being
treated with anything other than kindness within the neighbourhood, which indicates
that childhood and adolescent networks were quite strong in Banff Trail, at least in
memory. As with all oral histories, we need to remember that while informants will
not often purposefully mislead researchers, their memories are interwoven with the
present and with how they may want to represent the past.
Advice on dealing with illness and treating others with health issues was a
popular topic in newspapers, magazine articles and popular literature.113 Advice like
this from the Teen Topics series that ran nationally, and in the Calgary Herald, is
illustrative,
How do you treat the sick, the injured, the crippled?...The basic
rule is to act toward the ill and injured as you would wish them to
act toward you. First, don’t pay them so much attention that you
embarrass or tire them. Then, fit your services to the patients’
needs…Don’t try to wait on him hand as well as
foot…Unnecessary aid will depress and annoy him. Never give a
sick person medical advice kids. And don’t tell him the story of
YOUR accident or ask details of his.114
111
Lesley Hayes, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 26 July 2011.
For a history of autism see Adam Feinstein, A History of Autism (Mississauga: Wiley-Black, 2010).
113
“GP or Specialist for the Children,” Financial Post, vol 54, 11 Jun 1960, 70.
114
“Teen Topics By Sally,” Calgary Herald, Jan 1951.
112
270
This type of advice was rampant in this period as basic medical advice and popular
psychology was as widespread in the public sphere as it had ever been. As Mona
Gleason has noted, psychology’s technologies of normalcy, represented by the
modernizing school system, the child guidance clinic, Canada’s public health care
system, television, radio and magazine coverage, conflated the normal with social
norms and values.115
Suburban adolescents also engaged with health issues on an intellectual level
throughout this period. Most contemporary health-related topics were discussed to
varying degrees by teens. The issue of euthanasia received some thoughtful treatment
in a 1962 Aberhart Advocate school newspaper article that also explored some of the
religious aspects as well,
Can it be considered a crime to release a person from misery
through an act of mercy, to allow that life a painless escape from
what can no longer be thought of as life?...If a person has strong
beliefs in a Supreme Being, that is to say in God, and uses the Bible
as the basis of these beliefs, it is doubtful that that person could
ever reach an opinion on killing in the act of mercy for it states in
the Bible...“Thou Shalt not kill.”… I for one fail to see how a
human being, compassionate towards his fellow man…could refuse
a man or woman eternal peace through a simple act of mercy which
would be unconcernedly administered to any dying animal.116
The analysis reflects some careful consideration of the religious implications
associated with euthanasia, which remains a current debate in North America among
families, politicians, legal professionals and health care professionals. The article
appealed to the spirituality of religious persons in that it took the act of euthanizing to
be something god-like in its merciful nature. As in today’s debate, the article also
115
Mona Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal: Psychology, Schooling and the Family in Postwar Canada
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 9.
116
“Euthanasia,”Aberhart Advocate 4, no. 9, June 1962.
271
associates the act with what is done for pets and that the action is as just and kind in
easing the pain of a human being.
Teenagers also felt the need to raise the topic of smoking that was
increasingly becoming a hot topic in broader society. One 1962 letter to the editor of
the Aberhart Advocate argued that,
In a recent survey taken in Calgary High Schools it was found that
about 46% of the boys and 32% of the girls smoke. This has
aroused a grand campaign to take the cigarettes out of the mouths
of babes. Before you print anything in your puritan paper, I would
like to condemn this campaign. In the first place it has not been
conclusively proved that they do any harm…Besides, when one can
smoke in a crowd it gives you a feeling of belonging and quiets
your nerves. They also taste good. My parents both smoke as do
my brothers and they live normal healthy lives as I’m sure I will.
COUGH, COUGH 117
Smoking was much more socially acceptable in this period than today,118 although
many interviewees mentioned that they recalled discussions, particularly by the mid1960s, that began to focus on health-related issues associated with long-term
smoking.119 This teenager focused on the social benefits of smoking along with the
lack of data supporting smoking being harmful to one’s health. However, while there
were some tensions, even within the health industry regarding smoking, by the end of
this period, the anti-smoking message was beginning to gain momentum, certainly
when compared to the 1950s.
Advertising continued to target teenagers throughout this period though as it
would be another two decades until legislation would be brought in to make changes
Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays in the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990).
117
Letter to the Editor, Aberhart Advocate, February 1962 4, no. 5, 2.
118
For the cultural history of smoking in a global context see Sander L. Gilman and Xun Zhou, eds.,
Smoke: A Global History of Smoking (London: Reaktion, 2004).
119
“Only One-Quarter of Our Teenagers Smoke,” Financial Post, vol 59, 27 February 1965, 23.
272
to 1908 legislation regarding the sale of tobacco to adolescents.120 One interviewee
recalled a growing consciousness about the linking of smoking with adverse health
effects when he said,
My father was a very heavy smoker; it was everywhere. Not so
much among women but among men it was extremely common.
Secondary smoke and that sort of thing was something we all had
to deal with. That’s what ultimately what caused all of my father’s
health problems...I don’t think people thought of it as a big health
issue…I don’t remember any other fathers having quite as severe a
health scare with smoking…I think a lot of people started to cut
back, maybe into the 1970s.121
This informant recalled that it was ubiquitous in the era and that secondary
smoke and its potentially harmful effects did not seem to be part of
mainstream society’s consciousness. But some adolescents were aware of
some of the research and that advances being made in the study of linking
some kinds of cancers with smoking, as early as the late 1950s. A 1959
article in the Aberhart Advocate asked readers whether or not they smoked
or if they were starting to think about the habit. It broached the topic of
linking smoking with cancer based on laboratory testing and that it was
gambling with your health to begin smoking in adolescence.122 What this
reinforces is that adolescents were grappling with issues from many
different angles. Coupled with this is the fact that despite being cast in many
instances as passive victims in need of adult protection for the most part,
some adolescents in the post-World War II period wrestled with some of the
biggest issues of the times with thoughtfulness and care.
120
For a timeline of the changes see “A Legal History of Smoking in Canada,” CBC website, accessed
17 Jun 2013, http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/a-legal-history-of-smoking-in-canada-1.982213
121
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011.
122
“Think Twice Before Starting to Smoke Cigarettes,” Aberhart Advocate, vol 1, June 1959, 1.
273
For some, the intellectual discussion merged with their personal
experiences with the smoking habit. It also reinforces that smoking was not
an issue for adolescent boys only as adolescent girls also struggled with
smoking and its effects on their everyday lives. This 1965 article described
well what many teens experienced, with a linking of smoking to body image
being one factor that continues to affect women more than men as it is often
cited as a reason for smoking – speeding up one’s metabolism,
For years I have been telling people what a crummy habit smoking
is…After we moved to the big city, I stopped mainly because there
was no-one here who smoked and no place to smoke in secrecy.
Well, I woke up the other day and decided it was time to start
again…I admit that I cut down on my food, I quit biting my
fingernails, and I quit fidgeting quite so much–but I must also
admit that the smelly fingers, the lousy taste in my mouth, the
crummy taste it gave to the food I did eat, the sting in my eyes, the
coughing, the stench in my room, and the general unsuaveness of it
all was driving me out of my skull. Finally, I decided. What would
you rather be–a skinny, calm corpse, or a fat fidgety quick?123
Beyond the excellent visceral descriptions here, place, as it related to health, was
important to this suburban adolescent. The perception, right or wrong, was that urban
young people were not smoking as much as rural kids, and that there was nowhere to
smoke without detection in the city. There are no strict numbers from the era in terms
of a rural/urban split with smoking; however, anecdotally, it does seem that the
practice may have been less scrutinized, and somewhat more acceptable, outside of
cities.124 Smoking was at the forefront of health discussions among adolescents, but
other health issues were important in both the fifties and sixties.
123
“My Experience With the Habit,” Aberhart Advocate 7, no. 6, April 1965.
A handful of interviewees mentioned this and with broader discussions that I have had from
individuals who spent a lot of time in both rural and urban Alberta in this period, indicates that
smoking was more common in ‘the country.’
124
274
Informants remembered being ill with various ailments, childhood diseases
and injuries as both children and adolescents. Doug recalled that his family was
pretty healthy and that he didn’t “know that anybody had any chronic illness. [There
were] typical childhood diseases: measles, mumps, chicken pox. I broke my arm
once when I was 16, out tramming around in the mountains and fell down a cliff.
Other than that, nothing of any note, none of us had any operations.”125 This was a
very typical response from a small majority of interviewees who remembered being
healthy children and adolescents, along with most friends, classmates and family
members, although this should be seen as a generalization versus a universalization.
Another interviewee said, “I never missed a day of school for 10 years, grade one had
the measles and grade two the chicken pox and I never missed another day…Other
than colds, I never really was sick.126 Much of this should not be really surprising
with some of the advances in medicine and treating childhood diseases and ailments.
Vaccinations were much more widely available, the first childproof medication cap
was invented, Rh immunoglobin was developed, thus eliminating Rh disease,
vitamin D was introduced into milk, and important vaccines for mumps, measles and
rubella (German measles) were introduced by the early 1970s.127
Another informant, slightly younger than these two informants, and born in
the early 1960s, remembered it being the same for her. She said her “health was
pretty good. I was quite active. I did have hay fever and allergies, so I had to be
125
Doug Cass, personal interview, Cochrane, AB, 2 June 2011.
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 28 July 2011.
127
The importance of all of this cannot be overstated. These measures not only helped to prevent
illness, but in most instances, they kept both children and adolescents alive. For an excellent study of
young peoples’ health in Canada in a global context see Cynthia Comacchio, et al., Healing the
World’s Children: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Child Health in the Twentieth Century (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s UP, 2008).
126
275
careful with the dust.”128 Another male interviewee said, “I was pretty healthy. I was
very into bombing around on my bike. I had a few bad wipeouts…there were two
concussions out of those. Overall, not very sick; no allergies or anything like that. I
didn’t spend any time in the hospital.”129 Outside of some relatively minor conditions
and accidents, the majority of interviewee responses indicated that children and
adolescents were relatively healthy in this period of increased wealth and
prosperity.130 In the case of these suburban young people, nearly all of them
mentioned going to the nearby Foothills hospital regularly, or one of Calgary’s other
hospitals on a consistent basis for treating ailments, injuries, or visiting patients.
Outbreaks did continue from time to time, including a German measles outbreak in
the mid-sixties across North America that led to broader discussions of childhood
disease and vaccinations in widely read publications.131 It points to working-class
and middle-class families having better access to health services in part owing to the
establishing of a national Medicare system and the expansion of the Welfare State in
Canada in this period.132 The number of physicians in Canada was increasing, and
more importantly, the ratio of the Canadian population to physicians also improved
significantly throughout this period. In 1955, there were 17, 221 physicians in
Canada, 25, 481 by 1965 and with federal Medicare entrenched, 31, 166 physicians
by 1970. In 1955, there were 934 Canadians for every physician, 779 in 1965 and
128
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 13 December 2011.
Brian Rutz, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 12 December 2011.
130
Owram came to this similar conclusion, see Owram, Born at the Right Time.
131
George P. Hunt, “Two Mothers and a Brave Doctor,” Life, 4 June 1965, 3.
132
While many would argue that this expansion did not go nearly far enough, there is no denying that
there were critical improvements in health care for most Canadian citizens in this period. For further
reading see Alvin Finkel, Social Policy; Dominique Marshall, The Social Origins of the Welfare State:
Quebec Families, Compulsory Education, and Family Allowances, 1940-1955 (Waterloo: Wilfrid
Laurier UP, 2006).
129
276
things had improved to 689 Canadians per physician by 1970.133 Many childhood
diseases such as mumps, measles and chickenpox had been effectively eliminated by
1960 while diphtheria rates had dropped dramatically from previous, relatively high
rates from the 1920s through the late 1940s.134
While many of these youngsters’ parents had lived through some brutal
economic times, this was not the case for most of these baby boomers, even in
working-class families, which may not have had some of the advantages enjoyed by
some. There was provision for poorer families in Calgary’s history as the Junior Red
Cross had opened its doors in May of 1922 and was designed to provide care to the
young people of families who could not afford to pay for medical care.135 This small
hospital, housed in a three-storey house, existed until 1950 before it moved to the
Richmond Road location; it was operated by the Red Cross until 1958, and after that
by the Alberta government until the 1970s.136
There were times when young people were ill and while many boomers did
not recall being ill, or others being ill, there was actually a high degree of
differentiation among interviewees regarding health. Some of this speaks to the
tensions that can exist between memory and lived childhood experiences. One
interviewee said that she “used to see sick people, and people used to die. I had a
good friend die when I was in high school of cancer. My mother had polio. My aunt
133
Canada, Series B82-92, Number of physicians, dentists and nurses, population per physician,
dentist and nurse, number of graduates of medical and dental schools, Canada, 1871-1975, by R.D.
Fraser (Kingston: Queen’s University),
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-516-x/pdf/5500093-eng.pdf
134
Canada, Series B517-525, Annual rates of notifiable diseases, Canada, 1926-1975, by R.D. Fraser
(Kingston: Queen’s University),
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-516-x/pdf/5500093-eng.pdf
135
“Junior Red Cross Hospital Formally Opened in Calgary,” Calgary Daily Herald, 20 May 1922, 1.
136
Gayle Herchak, “Hospital Care of Yesteryear Goes on File,” Calgary Herald, 27 June 1980.
277
ended up in a wheelchair and never got out…My mother was very overweight so she
was always very conscious. She said she married a tall thin man so she would have
tall, thin children.”137 Some of this speaks to the way some families dealt with illness
and death. In this era, most hospitals had policies in place that would not allow
children and adolescents to visit ill family and friends, and many children did not
attend funerals, particularly before their teenage years.
One male informant described what health and illness had meant to him as a
child, at nine or ten years old. He said,
When I was fairly young, my mom got really, really sick. She had a
bad problem with her uterus and she was in the hospital for a while.
I remember there was a feeling she might not make it. I remember
going there every day and my dad would buy us a glass bottle of
coke and we’d wait in the waiting room. We never saw her in the
hospital and my dad would sit us down in the waiting room and he
would visit her. It was for at least a couple of weeks…I didn’t
know how sick she was…I didn’t hear until later. I don’t know
what I was thinking…I don’t remember thinking this could be
bad…I was probably just shut down.”138
Other interviewees shared similar sentiments in recalling that they often felt very
isolated, and even alienated from friends and other ill family members, when they
were in hospitals. This was the most trying for children and to a lesser degree,
adolescents, who were often unable to spend time with family and friends when they
were hospitalized. For another female interviewee, the hospital was an intimidating
space, one that she feared a great deal. She said, “I remember my father was very ill
and I remember spending a lot of time going to the hospital…It was a scary place.”139
This interviewee did not talk about how much contact time she had with her father.
137
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
Brian Rutz, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 12 December 2011.
139
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 27 July 2011.
138
278
This particular illness was experienced in the early 1970s so practices and regulations
were beginning to change by this time with a lot of hospitals changing both in terms
of architectural design and everyday regulations and practices, even in the late 1960s
across North America.140
Another informant recalled some of her angst associated with an ill brother.
She said, “he was really ill when he was about four. He was hospitalized for quite a
significant potion of time. I remember being left with a babysitter because my
parents would go to visit him at the hospital. I was worried because my parents
seemed to be very worried and we stayed at home…I think probably at that time,
there was a policy that I couldn’t go.”141 She did not specify which hospital that her
brother was at, but many hospitals were working actively to change their policies.
However, families’ everyday practices and informal rules did not necessarily change
with official rules and regulations. Some families simply did not feel it was
appropriate for young children to spend time in hospitals unless it was absolutely
necessary. This interviewee did emphasize though that she did know that something
was obviously wrong and that her anxiety was quite high as she could ‘read’ her
parents’ worries quite distinctly.142 Yet illness and injury were not always associated
with negativity or doom and gloom.
While not mentioned as often, some young people truly enjoyed being ill or
injured as it could have some unintended consequences, many of which were
140
For histories of hospitals see Guenter B. Risse, Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of
Hospitals (Toronto: Oxford UP, 1999); Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of
America’s Hospital System (Baltimore: Hopkins Fulfillment Service, 1995); Rosemary Stevens, In
Sickness and In Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth Century (Toronto: Harper Collins,
1990.)
141
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 24 November 2011.
142
Rita Kramer, “All Things Start Earlier For Today’s Children – Even Worrying,” Globe and Mail,
11 September 1969, W4.
279
positive. Lesley said, “to be sick, was great. You got to watch TV; once my Mom
was working, you got the house to yourself, and you got the TV.”143 The increasing
draw of the television is obvious here and while not always mentioned, it had become
an important point for control as adolescents, in particular, sought to exercise some
agency in television viewing choices. Being home from school, particularly for
adolescents who were then unsupervised, and having the ‘run of the house’ allowed
for this, as there was suddenly no competition from siblings, friends and parents for
what would be watched.144
Another female interviewee recalled “thinking this could be a pretty sweet
deal. I got a lot attention. My father liked me sick; he would pay attention to me in
ways he wouldn’t otherwise…Mother was a frustrated nurse with no one to practice
on… I was aware that this was a favoured role and that this could be something I
could play.”145 For some young people, in other words, it was much less about the
illness or injury, and much more about how you were treated and perceived when
most vulnerable. This informant knew that her condition would allow for attention
she would not otherwise receive from her father (and to a lesser degree her mother),
and that the way she felt as a result of this much needed attention, was actually
‘dangerous’ to her as she could manipulate these situations and the resulting actions
of others. This is a key difference in gender experience as this attention seemed to be
sought only by adolescent girls versus boys. This would fit well with a larger
discourse that we have seen throughout this period associating strength, power and so
143
Lesley Hayes, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 26 July 2011.
For further reading on postwar television viewing, individualization and increasing consumption
see Sonia Livingstone, “Half a Century of Television in the Lives of our Children,” The ANNALS of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science 625 (2009):151-163.
145
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
144
280
forth with masculinity and weakness, passivity and so forth with femininity. Illnesses
were used in different ways by adolescents and meant different things to those who
were ill.
Children’s and adolescents’ diets were also discussed by interviewees as this
era saw items such as processed foods, in various forms, begin to be marketed to
families more aggressively and on a widespread scale than previously. Cheez Whiz,
Tang and other processed foods were popular food products of the 1950s. While food
processing had been around for decades, there was a confluence of growing wealth
(for many families), an exploding commercial food industry, and a growing appetite
for fast food.146 One interviewee recalled that his,
mother was always looking at different diet things. We were a
pretty heavyset family. Fresca was one of the first diet drinks and I
hated it… [We] consumed a lot of chocolate bars and things were
frowned upon. People encouraged you not to do that, but kids did.
A lot of kids spent their extra money at Chang’s [the local
confectionery] and no one was really supervised…there was a lot
of extra calorie consumption going on there.”147
Unsurprisingly, there were competing discourses here, with many parents,
advice-givers and educators on one side and the growing and persuasive food
industry often pitted against one another. Advertising extended its reach in marketing
vitamins to all family members. Advertising copy stressed that people were eating
too many empty calories and that even if meals were well-prepared and healthy,
oftentimes, they went uneaten because of children and adolescents making poor food
146
For an exploration of the North American fast food industry in historical context see Eric
Schlosser, Fast Food Nation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001). Another book detailing some of the
cultural history and psychology associated with food see Leon Rappoport, How We Eat: Appetite,
Culture, and the Psychology of Food (Toronto: ECW Press, 2003).
147
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 28 July 2011.
281
choices.148 Much like people of all ages, young people chose to use their disposable
income for various items and some young people spent it on candy and fast food in
some instances. Another younger female interviewee recalled that this was an “era
where we lived on Kraft Dinner and fried bologna. My sister, seven years older, was
a bit of a hippie, made homemade pizza and threw home cooked ground beef on
it…She was my first exposure to looking after yourself.”149 Another interviewee
recalled the defining features of diets from the era, from the childhood and
adolescence perspectives. She said, “one of the things that was dreadful was the
amount of canned vegetables, and fresh vegetables really weren’t bought…The
processed foods were terrible and people didn’t realize it.”150 This was echoed by an
informant who said, “Like many families, we ate white bread, processed cheese and
nobody thought anything of it. We had fresh vegetables and stuff, but it wasn’t a
focus.”151 There were differentiations within families, from day to day, as there are
today. Family schedules, seasonal availability of certain foods, changing family
incomes and so forth were some of the factors affecting changes in household diets
changed. With many mothers working outside the home by the 1960s and early
1970s, adolescents were at times preparing more meals for themselves. The TV
Dinner can be traced back to World War II and the U.S. Army, but it was in the late
1950s and 1960s that it entered into many family homes.152 Some families,
148
“Too Many Empty Calories,” Life, 16 February 1962, 46.
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 13 December 2011.
150
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
151
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 24 November 2011.
152
There are no numbers to be found specifically in Canada, but U.S. companies such as Swanson,
who also sold dinners in Canada, were selling millions of dinners by the mid- 1950s. For further
reading see Paul Farhi, “The Man Who Gave America a Taste of the Future,” The Washington Post,
22 July 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/07/21/AR2005072102249.html
149
282
especially those that were identified quite easily as middle class, did seem to be
relatively stable in their eating patterns, and unsurprisingly, it was almost always
mothers who led the way in at least trying to provide less processed foods for their
families. They were decisive in making family food decisions and many of them,
even when working long hours outside the home in some instances, focused on the
food choices available at home to children and adolescents. By the late sixties,
articles began to surface focusing on children’s diets and their importance to good
health and wellness.153
One male informant said, “My mom was a dietitian and focused on nutrition.
I remember her focusing on diet. I remember her saying when I was seven or eight,
no more white bread, no more sugared cereal. I don’t remember a lot of discussion.
We definitely were really well-fed as kids.”154 Another female interviewee recalled
that, “when we were kids we weren’t super overweight. I don’t remember that being
an issue. Certainly my parents wouldn’t have brought it up. We had a big garden, a
lot of what we ate was healthy and out of the garden…we weren’t devoid of salads
and vegetables.”155 Several interviewees made direct links between their relatively
healthy diets and the lack of childhood and adolescent obesity in the Calgary suburbs
in this era, although the topic was discussed in the mainstream media by the mid1960s, again pointing to tensions between oral histories and what was found in
newspapers from the period.156 Nearly every informant mentioned the relative rarity
153
“Children on Good Diet Show Growth Spurts,” The Globe and Mail, 10 July 1969, W3;
“Malnutrition Check of Canadians is Ordered by Health Minister, The Globe and Mail, 21 February
1969, 11.
154
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
155
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 2 August 2011.
156
“MD Urges Slimming for Chubby Children,” The Globe and Mail, 8 October 1968, 10; “Fat
Children Termed Lazy Rather Than Greedy,” The Globe and Mail, 26 April 1967, 10.
283
of overweight young people in the post-World War II era, and there were almost no
references to weight issues in any of the material culture produced by young people
in the 1950s and 1960s. There were no contemporary studies on diet and weight in
children and adolescents, which likely speaks to healthy weight not being at the fore
of medical inquiry. This is in stark contrast to the contemporary discussion regarding
body image, diet and exercise regarding teenagers. This does not mean that issues did
not exist, but yearbook pictures, showing most if not all students, reflected this
‘picture of health’ as well.157 One male interviewee said “his mother was very
conscious of eating good food. I don’t think health as a general topic was talked
about…None of us were overweight. My mom said, ‘Eat well and get outside and get
some exercise.’ It was a stock phrase.”158 Barry, one of the older baby boomers,
recalled that fast food was not as prevalent in the early to mid-1960s in Calgary. He
said, “I don’t remember any soda pop, I don’t remember much of that kind of thing.
The local fast food wasn’t prevalent then.159 Fast food chains were not prevalent in
Calgary suburbs until the early 1970s.
Outside of home economics and the introduction of programs like
Participaction in the 1970s, students did not receive a lot of guidance at school about
health, diet and so forth. The Canada Food Guide had been established in 1942, but
while it was in wide circulation due to various educational campaigns, interviewees
and brief references in the archives indicated that it was largely ignored.160 While the
157
For a cultural history of obesity, with some emphasis on childhood see Sander L. Gilman, Fat: A
Cultural History of Obesity (Cambridge: Polity, 2008).
158
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
159
Barry Matthews, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 31 October 2011.
160
For a comprehensive look at the Canada Food Guide and the changes to it see “Canada Food
Guide,” Canada, accessed 9 September 2013, http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guidealiment/context/fg_history-histoire_ga-eng.php
284
focus on children and adolescents increased throughout this era, the heightened focus
shown by many parents and grandparents today did not define this era, even by the
late sixties.
Conclusion
Experiences and representations based on gender remained distinct in many
ways throughout this era. Adult gender roles modeled, both knowingly and
unknowingly by young people, certainly influenced childhood and adolescent
cultures. The health and wellness of young people also came into sharper focus and
took greater hold in institutions such as schools and families by the early 1970s.
There was a distinct change in formal sex education over this period although it was
experienced in different ways by young adolescents. Informal sexual education
remained the primary way that both males and females explored emerging
sexualities. Class mattered in the health of young people. It improved drastically in
this period owing to numerous scientific advances and the working and middle class
children and adolescents in Banff Trail were obvious beneficiaries of these
advancements. While not spared from illness, injury and death, nevertheless, they
enjoyed comparatively healthy, young lives. Despite much of this being positive,
adolescents in this period, and especially young women, continued to struggle with
aspects of being young women. There were inadequacies in many ways with the last
word going to one female informant who graduated from William Aberhart High
School in the late 1960s. She said that she “remembered sitting there for my grade
twelve exams, [and thinking to myself] if I left now [I might escape all of this]… I
285
was not one of those people that fit into suburban gender roles. I had friends, I was in
lots of clubs, [but none of it had] given me the capacity to do what I wanted to do.161
We also know that Canadian children and adolescents continued to be victims of
abuse, regardless of class, in this period.162
The next chapter explores resistances, delinquency, petty and serious crime,
and the night. I will explore the multiple meanings of the nighttime for children and
adolescents, both metaphorically and in everyday and everynight lives. Furthermore,
I will probe some of the resistances and rebellions of children and adolescents when
they exercised their agency. Suburbia has never been free from delinquency and
crime as evidenced by some of the historiography associated with the suburbs, the
archival records and oral histories. I also look at the emerging adolescent cultures
around drugs by the mid-1960s, and how they differed from the earlier part of the
postwar period, which saw alcohol as the main choice among recreational drugs with
teenagers.
161
162
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
Benjamin Schlesinger, “The Child Beaters,” The Globe and Mail, 24 October 1964, A13.
286
Seventh Chapter: The Night, Delinquency & Resistances
Introduction
“These are not ordinary men but the other kind, the
shadowy, nameless kind who do things to you.”1
I am a child of darkness
Of darkness and the sea
I am a child of darkness
No one cares for me
In my mind I am alone
With no one to love and trust
And the key to my heart
Long ago turned to rust2
While young children and adolescents have been influenced by adult
practices and discursive constructs across time, they have often demonstrated
remarkable resilience and agency in negotiating these powerful influences. The
balance of power did not fall in their favour often, but young people were not passive
recipients of what was presented to them by the adult world in the postwar era. This
chapter focuses on the night, delinquency and crime, and finally, resistances and
rebellions. The night has often been associated directly with negative connotations
for young people, particularly from the perspective of adulthood. Darkness has often
signaled a time when young people, particularly pre-adolescents, were both silent and
unseen for the most part. I will argue that this needs to be nuanced as the everynight
period for some adolescents is a critical time, a period when some of them believe
they can escape some piercing adult gazes, usually well-meaning, but at times,
disapproving, restrictive and constraining. It marks another division between
1
2
Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1988), 51.
Pat Hagen “Child of Darkness,” Aberhart Advocate 11, no. 9, 19 February 1969.
287
childhood and adolescence, as it is adolescents who are especially active under the
cover of darkness. While peaceful domesticity defined the post-World War II
suburban experience for some critics, this interpretation is too simplistic when
viewed from the perspective of adolescence. The archival record and oral histories
reveal that sometimes, suburban teenagehood was marked by crime, delinquency,
and violence. There was a gendered aspect to the violence with suburban boys
perpetrating much of it; and more than occasionally, although not exclusively, it was
girls who were victimized by these male perpetrators. Conversely, there were times
when young women were involved in delinquency as well, although at a much lower
rate. While many children and adolescents felt very safe both in the suburbs and in
the more densely populated urban spaces in cities, for some, there was always a sense
that the world was not the comforting, safe place that it was made out to be by older
people. Finally, adolescents resisted and rebelled in myriad ways in both the postWorld War II suburbs, and in broader Canadian young peoples’ cultures.3 At times,
adolescents were at odds with the larger world and experimentation with alcohol,
illicit recreational drugs and so forth, became increasingly common, much as it did in
adult cultures by the late 1960s and early 1970s. Much of this is reflected in the
material culture that teenagers created in this period. Many young people were not
reticent in exploring some of these experiences in different ways and for various
reasons. Parents were left to deal with this not just in suburban Calgary, but across
3
Dorothy Sangster, “Why Teen-Age Girls Run From Home,” The Globe and Mail, 30 May 1963, 15.
288
the country.4 This chapter focuses much more on adolescence experiences versus the
experiences of children for all of these reasons.
The Night
Nighttime has always seemed to carry unknowns, promise, and potential
dangers for humans regardless of age or personal circumstances. However, darkness,
for many, offered sanctuary from the everyday, the opportunity, as shadows grew, for
people to demonstrate inner impulses and in some instances, realize certain desires
both in their waking hours and in their dreams or nightmares, however innocent or
evil in nature.5 These somewhat conflicted impulses are also reflected in adolescence
and childhood. As dusk turned to early night in postwar suburbia, some pre-teen
youngsters used the encroaching cover of darkness to spend additional time with
friends. Quite simply, it was an opportunity to express themselves through a love of
playing with friends, and not under the watchful eyes of adults. One informant
recalled that,
At night, I would sneak out my window and…collect [my closest
friends]. We’d play in one of their yards. My sister was my
accomplice; she’d help me back in the window [after we were done
playing]. I was usually sneaking out at 8:30 as it was getting dark.
It was always me going to fetch the two of them.”6
This reflects the benign nature of some childhood resistances associated
directly with the night. Bedtimes were often not negotiated, particularly for
4
J. Dingman, “How to Live With ‘The Child You Don’t Like,’” Chatelaine, vol 43, Jan 1970, 16, 6869.
5
Roger A. Ekirch, At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, (New York: Norton, 2005), xxvi.
6
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 27 July 2011.
289
pre-teenagers, and with the increasing regulation and compartmentalization
of children’s daytime activities in the twentieth century, the cover of night
was an opportune time to play for some suburban children.7 From an adult
perspective, sneaking out to play after dark may not seem to be a
particularly noteworthy act; but, in the minds of pre-teens getting to spend
time with friends, without adult rules, and in complete secrecy, was
significant. It reinforces that youngsters were quite capable of carving out
some time and space, however short and small, from time to time in this
period regardless of what adults believed they were doing and where they
were.
Curfews and restrictions on youngsters’ movements, well beyond individual
family rules, are not a new phenomenon. They date back as far as William the
Conquerer who may have set an 8 p.m. curfew in England as early as 1068 following
the Norman invasion.8 By the late nineteenth century, as a new focus emerged on
children’s and adolescents’ welfare, rescuing and addressing their moral health,
stories of children roaming the streets after nightfall in towns and cities abounded in
Canada.9 While this was seen as an issue across North America, and despite its
repressive and limiting qualities, Canada holds the distinction of being the first
country to use a curfew against young people with a juvenile curfew first established
in Ontario in the 1880s in the city of Waterloo. By the post-World War II era, while
the suburb landscape may not have been deemed dangerous for youngsters by
7
See Susan Kohl Malone, “Early to Bed, Early to Rise?: An Exploration of Adolescent Sleep Hygiene
Practices,” The Journal of School Nursing 27, no. 5 (October 2011): 348-354.
8
Tamara Myers, “Solution: A History of Juvenile Sundown Regulations in Canada,” in Lost Kids,
Mona Gleason et al., eds., (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), 97.
9
Ibid., 98.
290
parents, the idea of the importance of a long and good night’s rest as part of a healthy
mind and body, held sway in most families. But for some young people and as
studies of the night, nightfall and darkness have demonstrated, while the night is
different, its opposition to daytime and light marked by darkness and potential
dangers, its fears can be balanced by its potential freedoms.10 On an everynight level,
suburban spaces, by the late 1950s and early 1960s were well-lit, so while there was
the cover of darkness, there was enough artificial light from homes and street lights,
that even pre-teen youngsters could easily find space in which to play and return
home to bed as the one informant explained.
Older teenagers also expressed themselves in the context of the nighttime.
Suburban high school students were inspired to create material culture associated
with darkness, dreams, nightmares and the night. One poem explored themes of
redemption and love associated with the magical qualities of the night from the
perspective of teenagehood,
The night
descends from the twilight sky
in coils of endless
black thread
weaving dreams
and sewing together
the day’s torn hearts.11
There were dozens of poems, essays and short stories scattered throughout the
archival record that explored the nighttime through the lenses of both childhood and
10
Bryan D. Palmer, Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression (New
York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 13.
11
John David Pare, “The Night,” Aberhart Opus 8 Yearbook, 1965-1966, 97.
291
adolescence.12 What this particular poem suggests is the differentiation of
experiences for young people. Where many adults have looked at the nighttime as
dangerous for children and teens, or at least a liminal time, we can see that it inspired
and positively influenced some young minds. As in the case of other people, most
often adults, late evenings and nighttime held great allure and potentialities. For
some, freed from some conventions of day, nighttime’s shadows can, in fact, shield
the oppressed from the intense glare of power and night could be a positive period of
alienation’s transcendence, a space for the individual’s realization in acts of resistant
alternative.13
The importance of nighttime as both a space and time are noteworthy,
especially within the context of the postwar suburbs. In several oral histories, former
suburban young people noted that while time was important, they were able to claim
suburban spaces for their own use by the mid-1960s. Much of the activity was
escapist in nature, such as when one informant recalled going to the University of
Calgary at night where it served as a teenage playground where he spent a lot of time
just hanging out.14 Another interviewee echoed this, recalling that on weekend
evenings, he would go to the movies over at the Social Sciences theatre at the
University of Calgary with friends from Banff Trail.15 For these young teenagers, this
served as an opportunity to spend time with older teenagers, free from parental
supervision. While it was often not much more than watching popular movies, it was
more importantly, an opportunity to spend time with their age cohort in a social
12
There were also several references to nightmares in essays, poems and short stories.
Palmer, Cultures of Darkness, 6.
14
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
15
Brent Harris, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 9 December 2011.
13
292
setting. Furthermore, this period pre-dates most North American university and
college campuses developing sophisticated and expensive camera surveillance to
monitor space and activities. This claiming of space can be seen in the context of
what Ekirch has termed a transfer of power. He notes that following nightfall,
oftentimes, power has shifted from the mighty to the meek.16 Some adolescents were
prompted to create based on shadows, darkness and the night, nighttime space and
time were significant in helping some to navigate the struggles of suburban
teenagehood.
Not only did it spark imaginations, stimulate creative writing, or pure
escapism for some, but for others, the night provided a lifeline out of their
problematic suburban experience. For some teenage suburbanites, connections
with others did not come easily, and some of the alienation experienced by adults
in the postwar suburbs was a reality for adolescents as well.17 One interviewee
recalled that she had only a few close connections with classmates and friends
within her suburban community, and expressed throughout our interview a general
resentment of her suburban childhood. For her, it was stifling, marginalizing and
limiting. It constantly reinforced her feelings of difference. Suicide was attempted
more than once and she had been diagnosed as clinically depressed in her teenage
years. In the interview notes produced from our discussion, I had termed it as dark
and shadowy when reflecting on her adolescent years. She also expressed that she
was simply hanging on as she approached adulthood in the hopes that her life
16
Ekirch, At Day’s Close, xxvi.
See Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963); Lewis Mumford, The City in
History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World,
Inc., 1961); William H. Whyte, The Organization Man, (Toronto: Simon and Schuster, 1956).
17
293
would improve once she left her teenage years. She did talk about the importance
of the night for her, and how the nighttime allowed her to transcend her complex
everyday realities. She said,
The biggest influence on my childhood was the midnight
movie…The TV was outside my basement room and I could sneak
out every night. I discovered Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, Greta
Garbo; all these strong women...I used to say I was raised by the
movies…I was an insomniac so I watched pretty well every night.
If my parents did know I was doing this, they never said
anything…When my friends were going on about Sandra Dee, I
would say why would you want to be Sandra Dee when you could
be Greta Garbo? They’d say who was Greta Garbo?…It was a
lifeline to me. It gave me a sense that that there was a bigger life I
could have here.18
Although she wasn’t leaving her suburban home physically, the cover of night
allowed her to move beyond both time and space that were normally restricted, or at
least constrained. That basement area, as it was for so many teenagers when it was
accessible in any way, could be a true refuge. Space was vital for teenagers, and
when they could have it to themselves, even for short periods of time, it was
extremely important. For this interviewee, it is not an overstatement to say that this
space, and the nighttime, may have even been a lifesaver. Movies are often seen as
an escape from the everyday, but in this instance these movies served as a reflection
of a reality that she sought so desperately. As I explored earlier in the section on
youth and leisure, she was able to bring different meanings to these movie as texts,
and they had a profound effect on her young life. Unable to find strong female role
models in her daily life, some of these iconic actresses from these early Hollywood
movies provided hope across both time and space.
18
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
294
Another female interviewee mentioned that time spent alone wasn’t isolating,
but was necessary for her mental health as well. She said, “I actually enjoyed being
quiet and at home. I wasn’t really into going out…It wasn’t until I was 20 or 21 that I
was involved in going out.”19 This reflects some of the differentiation between
teenagers that simplistic constructs can never capture wholly about any age group,
but especially a group that did not have the same access to power, nor the means to
control decision-making as did the adults in their lives. While several informants
mentioned curfews, in-home groundings, early bedtimes, and references are
sprinkled throughout the archival record, some young people circumvented these
regulations with varying motivations. The root cause often was to simply exercise
some agency, even if the activities and practices did not reflect what they may have
been doing with fewer rules and dictates.
Brian recalled that the late evenings and early nighttime were also important
as a shared experience as he entered his early teens. While some seemed to relish
some time dedicated completely to themselves, for others it was an opportunity to
spend some leisure time with their peer groups in a safe and private setting. He said,
I fondly remember there was a mixed social group [gender-wise]
that formed…It wasn’t a big group, pretty formal…There were five
girls and five guys. There was a steady stream of birthday
parties…invariably there would be a rec room in the basement of
these houses, except for mine…luckily my parents would leave [if
he hosted]. We’d go down in the basement to socialize.20
For some, it was an opportunity for boys and girls to socialize outside of the
classroom, in an informal, private space that many suburban middle-class homes
could provide. We have seen that recreation rooms were increasingly common in
19
20
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 8 December 2011.
Brian Rutz, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 12 December 2011.
295
many suburban homes in this period, even if they were smaller bungalow-style, and
often they were co-opted by young people for their use, regardless of the time of day
or night. As this informant recalled, his parents would leave the young teens at home
to socialize without parental supervision. The adults likely knew most if not all of
these kids personally, and contrary to some of the prevailing myths and discursive
constructs of that period that continued to follow young people, these young people
simply enjoyed each other’s company without adults hovering over their shoulders.
Not all parents and adults placed this same trust in children and adolescents though.
In many instances across North America, historically, coercive strategies such
as criminalizing young people’s presence in public spaces after sundown to control
their behaviours were reinforced, allegedly, by the dangers of the night and
vulnerability of children to pernicious factors.21 While the sensationalism and drama
of nighttime crime, delinquency and vandalism has held the attention of many adults
over the past two centuries, there are no hard statistics that support the belief that
more delinquent or criminal activity occurs after dark. Quite simply, the majority of
young people are not out after dark, and their ability to organize and commit petty
crime and other acts is severely curtailed. In recent years, as more study has been
21
Tamara Myers, “Solution: A History of Juvenile Sundown Regulations in Canada,” 108 and 109.
With on-line luring, stalking and generalized issues around child pornography today, there are many
parents concerned now when young people are in the privacy of their rooms given the access to the
Internet at their fingertips. These ‘safe’ places are no longer viewed as havens for older children and
teens as many high profile cases demonstrate clearly. One of the more infamous cases now in Canada
is teenager Amanda Todd’s experience in British Columbia that ended in her tragic suicide as a
fifteen-year-old in 2012.
296
undertaken about juveniles’, or now young offenders’ crimes,22 findings demonstrate
that the majority of crimes committed by teens happen during the daylight hours.23
Until teenagers had access to cars their after dark activities, both indoors and
outdoors, were limited. This was discussed in contemporary student publications and
is not unique to this period.24 One Aberhart Advocate editorial noted that there were
insurmountable difficulties in appeasing parents and local law agencies in trying to
find nighttime activities across the city. Places that students wanted to go were often
licensed, and therefore unavailable to high school students who were not yet 21. The
editorial suggests that Red Deer would be hosting a new teen night club and that “if
such a club can be established offering food, fun and friends under one roof, we say
let’s support it.”25 Mobility would have been paramount here with Red Deer being
140 kilometres north of Calgary on highway No. 2.
The automobile, whether it was borrowed or owned, changed the suburban
experience for those that had access to it. One informant, who happened to be one of
the older baby boomers, was straightforward in saying, “We got cars and life
changed. We’d go to parties. I didn’t hang at the mall or anything like that. We were
also big sports fans and went to sporting events.26
22
The term juveniles is not used in today’s discussions of teenage crime with the implementation of
the Young Offenders Act in 1994, its subsequent repeal, and replacement with the Youth Criminal
Justice Act in 2003. The original legislation was the 1908 Juvenile Delinquency Act.
23
Jason van Rassel, “Majority of Teen Crimes Occur in Daytime,” Calgary Herald, 11 March 2008.
24
The car allowed much wider access for adolescents as they expanded their horizons both literally
and metaphorically over the course of the twentieth century. For further reading on how it affected
adolescent mobility in the postwar period see: Franca Iacovetta, “Gossip, Contest and Power in the
Making of Suburban Bad Girls: Toronto, 1945-60,” Canadian Historical Review 80, no. 4 (Dec 1999):
585-624.
25
Gordon Selkirk, “Editorial,” Aberhart Advocate 5, no. 3, December 1962.
26
Barry Matthews, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 31 October 2011.
297
While parents could and did shuttle young people around at times, it was not
to the extent that happens in many North American households today. As we’ve seen
in the context of school and other daytime activities, young people were walking or
biking to activities and informal social events after dark, oftentimes well into their
high school years. Alan recalled that in his pre-teen years there were, “games in the
park like kick the can; and raiding the occasional garden.”27 This additional green
space was a key marker for suburban and small-town young people as the access to
parks in less green and open urban spaces was limited. Garden spaces, outside of
very small plots, were not present in almost any inner-city Canadian neighbourhoods
in Calgary or elsewhere in this period. As other youngsters got older, we’ve seen that
house parties were common, but going out with friends was also an important
nighttime activity for most.
This was also reflected in teenager’s material culture from the period.
Literature from school newspapers reflected teen’s everynight lives and what they
found themselves doing after dark in cityscapes, as evidenced in this excerpt entitled
“I Won’t Be Back,”
When night is almost done,
I hurry home to bed.
That party sure was fun,
But I am almost dead.
The house is locked up tight,
There’s no way to get in.
I’ll be out here all night,
Oh! Where’s the aspirin?...
I think that I’ll skip town…
This life has got me down,
I won’t be back no more!28
27
28
Allan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
Ron Fenerty, “I Won’t Be Back,” Central Weeper, June 1957, 17.
298
Once again, themes of escape, nighttime parties, possible alienation from one’s own
home, and that ever-intriguing draw of just escaping from one’s life for adventure are
present here. These themes are prominent across both the fifties and sixties.
Jim, born in the early 1950s, recalled that neither he nor most of his close
friends had curfews. When he was really young he played hide-and-go-seek in the
dark in parks, back alleys and swamps until called in by parents. As he got older, it
was “just walking different places. I used to go to older parties with an older crowd. I
suppose in grade ten I was going to grade twelve parties…it was just social
parties.”29 There were teenagers also writing about some of the banal experiences.
Nighttime activities often involved just wandering around and exploring spaces that
could be quite different from young persons’ perspectives than they were during the
day. One poem, entitled simply, “The Night,” explored some of these activities of
walking in the park, some of the dullness of teenage life, alienation among others
(presumably adults), and the trials and tribulations of being a young person. In this
1966 Aberhart yearbook excerpt a student wrote,
The night is very dull and dark
And as I walk through the park
The people stop and stare
They wonder why and where
I do come from…
Only others of my kind and race
Know all the hardships that I face
Love and opportunity…
That’s all I want.30
She also broached ‘race’ and potentially ethnicity in the line “only others of my kind
and race.” Although it is unclear whether she is adopting an identity for the purposes
29
30
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 October 2011.
Sharyn Bennett, “The Night,” Opus 8 Yearbook (1965-1966), 100.
299
of the poem, or commenting on the bigotry she has either witnessed or experienced.
Night can also be seen as a metaphor for adolescent alienation in this particular
poem.
If youngsters weren’t going into their peers’ homes or wandering the nearby
suburban parks and playgrounds, by the early 1960s, newly-built larger shopping
malls and smallish strip malls were also offering teenagers opportunities to go to the
popular movies of the day at theatres. While movie-going had become a popular
pastime for kids for decades, since the introduction of the Saturday serial matinees,
the postwar period featured an even greater focus on adolescents and movies
designed for their consumption specifically.31 One informant recalled how important
the North Hill Shopping Centre and its Cinerama were. He said, “I used to live at the
North Hill Cinerama. That was kind of my haven.”32 Wendy had similar memories of
the late 1960s and early 1970s in remembering that “we would go to a lot of
movies.”33 As others had recalled, suburban shopping centres became central to
teenage nighttime activities. Brent said, “We had a movie theatre in the Brentwood
Village Mall and that was the first kiss with a girl. Saturdays or Sunday evenings we
would go to the bowling alley in the North Hill Mall.”34
The night was not only about leisure activities. We know that teenagers
continued to do paid work outside the home during this period. As the chapter on
work demonstrated, not just in Calgary’s suburbs, but a significant number of
31
See James A. Clapp “Growing Up Urban: The City, the Cinema and American Youth,” The Journal
of Popular Culture 40, no. 4 (2007): 601-629; Steven Cohan, Masked Men: Masculinity and the
Movies in the Fifties (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997).
32
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
33
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 2 August 2011.
34
Brent Harris, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 9 December 2011.
300
teenagers did work outside the home even into the 1960s, although those numbers
were lower than earlier decades when fewer Canadian children were required to be in
school.35 Historians note that in earlier times, children’s use of the streets blinded
some middle-class understandings of children working at night or very early in the
morning out of sheer necessity.36 This did not stop completely in this period as one
interviewee immediately associated work with the nighttime, particularly as he got
into his late teens in the late 1960s.37 This also linked him to the late 1940s and early
1950s economy in Calgary when there were references to teenagers and nighttime
work. One article discussed some of the perils of working at night on city streets for
young people. The 1950 article, “Night-Riding Telegraph Boys Now ‘Illuminated,’”
noted that, “Calgary’s night-riding telegraph boys are being illuminated so that
motorists driving along dark streets can spot the dark-uniformed cyclists about half a
block away…All of the telegraph boys…must have generated-operated headlamps
and tail-lights, in addition to the reflector-type tail-lights.38 Others recalled brothers,
sisters and friends who worked in fast-food restaurants, much more so by the mid1970s as the service economy employed young Calgarians in low-paying jobs.39 As
explored in the chapter on work, we know that tens of thousands of papers were
delivered in the dark in the early morning hours by teenagers. While it was not
35
Neil Sutherland, “‘We Always Had Things To Do’: The Paid and Unpaid Work of
Anglophone Children Between the 1920s and the 1960s,” Labour/Le Travail 25 (Spring 1990): 10541.
36
Myers, “Solution: A History of Juvenile Sundown Regulations in Canada,” 109.
37
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 October 2011.
38
“Night-Riding Telegraph Boys Now ‘Illuminated,’” Calgary Herald, 28 March 1950.
39
This was anecdotal but mentioned by several interviewees. The Census reveals that roughly one in
five (21.1%) of young Canadians aged 15-24 were employed on a part-time basis in Canada. This
number has dramatically increased to nearly half or 47.3% by 2012. Statistics Canada, Work
Employment Rate: Indicators of Well-Being in Canada, http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/[email protected]?iid=13
301
nighttime work, it was certainly work performed under the cover of darkness on
many early mornings, especially in the late fall and winter months in Calgary.
Some teenagers, especially by the late 1960s and early 1970s, experimented
with alcohol and drugs at nighttime, something explored in more detail later in this
chapter. Parks and quiet suburban spaces were popular sites for this. Once again, the
adult gaze could or would not often reach teens using spaces that were otherwise
used for recreational activities like hiking, skiing, tobogganing, cycling and so forth.
As one informant noted,
some parents were stricter than others so it was simply easier for all
to be out of their parents’ sight. She said they often spent time in
Confederation Park…There was a place called The Pit…that was
built in 1967…It had a built-in fire pit…We’d smoke cigarettes and
maybe dope, hang out, flirt and stuff grass down the chimney. The
whole valley would fill with smoke and the fire department would
show up. We’d also do something that wasn’t healthy; we’d
hyperventilate, take a couple of deep breaths, someone would come
up behind you and squeeze you and then you’d pass out.40
What has been difficult for some adults to understand, across time, is that
most of this idle nighttime and evening time, was not spent by teenagers engaging in
illegal or illicit activities. Curiosity and concomitant experimentation were key
themes in the overwhelming instances. As the material culture and the oral histories
illustrate well, for many teenagers, the night was an opportunity to socialize with
peers, oftentimes solely with this group. At most other times, adults, particularly in
middle-class families where both parents were not working full-time hours outside
the home, were present or nearby. For others, it was an opportunity to have time
completely to themselves. With all this in mind, without question, juvenile
40
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 13 December 2011.
302
delinquency marked suburban teenagehood as it did for some teenagers in a broader
Canadian context in the 1950s and 1960s.
Delinquency & Crime
I never ended up in a juvenile home or anything like. A lot of the
kids I knew…about 13 or 14 kids [with small motorbikes] at
Branton Junior High, the cops would be there once or twice a week
[to deal with nascent gang members]. Those same kids in high
school formed motorcycle gangs from around town…Some friends
were docile. Others were on the borderline of getting in serious
trouble. I was comfortable with both groups, much to the chagrin of
my mother.41
This interviewee was describing an underbelly of the postwar suburbs that is not
often broached, let alone analyzed in the historiography.42 These were also places
where not much happened according to some contemporary sociologists and other
critics who gave suburbia cursory treatment at most. While they were not home to
incessant crime, vice and peril, Calgary’s suburban spaces were sites for delinquency
and more major crime than some might think.
The social control of young people by adults, to varying degrees, is as old as
humankind itself. In pre-contact North America, Native societies had their own
practices of social control for young people that often emphasized mediation,
restitution or ostracism versus direct incarceration.43 These methodologies and
practices would be viewed by some today as being lax in punitive and remedial
qualities. What is often lost in the broad discussion of delinquency in historical
context, is that youngsters account for a fair percentage of property crimes, like
41
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 October 2011.
See Franca Iacovetta, “Gossip, Contest, and Power in the Making of Suburban Bad Girls: Toronto,
1945-60,” Canadian Historical Review 80, no. 4 (Dec. 1999): 585-625.
43
Joan Sangster, Girl Trouble: Female Delinquency in English Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines,
2002), 9.
42
303
shoplifting, and various nuisance actions in visible, public spaces. These issues have
often been exaggerated in their seriousness.44 This is often done within the broader
discourse of youth in peril or the loss of values in the younger generation. By the
late nineteenth century in Canada, what was recognized as juvenile delinquency was
firstly property crimes in cities, committed mostly by young, working-class children
and teenagers against wealthy upper-class adults.45 This was gendered criminal
activity in that it was normally unsupervised boys who were particularly problematic
in roaming urban streets and sometimes working as bootblacks or newsboys.
However these boys were also exposed to more serious crime and adult vices like
gambling and drinking.46
A preoccupation with the transgressions of juveniles, much of it beginning in
this period – and continuing to the present day – makes it difficult for many of us to
picture a time when young people were not collectively burdened with the perception
of deviance; however before the mid-nineteenth century, they were rarely a topic of
public concern.47 A direct correlation to industrialization and urbanization can be
made here as young people migrated to cities with their parents, and otherwise, with
the steady shift away from agrarianism and rural living in Canada. In the post-1850s,
industrial schools for truants and minor delinquents were created in what would
become Canada, and they became a convenient method for housing quite large
44
Marta Tienda and William Julius Wilson, eds., Youth in Cities: A Cross-National Perspective (New
York: Cambridge UP, 2002), 145.
45
Julian Tanner, Teenage Troubles: Youth and Deviance in Canada, 3rd Edition, (Toronto: Oxford
UP, 2010), 29.
46
Sangster, Girl Trouble: 9.
47
Tanner, Teenage Troubles, 27.
304
numbers of neglected young people.48 By the early twentieth century, there was a
codification of federal and provincial regulations and rules regarding the policing and
incarceration of juveniles.49 This basic framework would remain in place until the
early 1980s, when the federal Young Offenders Act replaced the earlier federal
Juvenile Delinquents Act (JDA).
In 1908 the JDA was implemented in Canada. This act, and its counterpart in
many other areas of the English-speaking world, guaranteed that young people were
potentially liable to arrest, punishment, and forced treatment.50 There was some
nuance here as under the JDA, delinquents were not only defined as youngsters who
broke a law; they could also be children presumed to be abused or neglected,
possibly likely to break existing laws or become corrupted by their immoral
families.51 Additionally, they could simply be acting in such a manner that was
deemed inappropriately adult given their age; delinquency, was, and remains, a
flexible concept, measured in ideological terminologies.52 It must be emphasized that
juvenile delinquency’s complex definitions changed over time and that these
definitions were interwoven with class, gender and as time passed, ‘race.’53 All of
this was done in the context of modernist impulses; the female delinquent came about
as the product of new and expanding knowledge from the fields of medicine,
48
Robert McIntosh, “Constructing the Child: New Approaches to the History of Childhood in
Canada,” Acadiensis 28, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 129.
49
For a history of social work in twentieth century Canada see Therese Jennissen and Colleen Lundy,
One Hundred Years of Social Work: A History of the Profession in Canada, 1900-2000 (Waterloo:
Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2011).
50
Ibid., 31.
51
Sangster, Girl Trouble, 5.
52
Ibid., 5.
53
Ibid., 6.
305
sociology and psychology.54 In many ways, the juvenile justice system in this period
dealt with young women as malleable, and identified teenagers as capable of being
reformed.55
By the early 1940s, the Second World War saw the production of a
continuing discourse on delinquency as an awful ailment caused by wartime
pressures on families and schools.56 In large cities like Montreal, as a component of
the campaign to prevent and contain delinquency, schools mobilized young people,
and this fostered an increased effort to create ‘good’ youngsters and patriotic
citizens.57 The larger point is that, regardless of whether or not one believes there
was inherent wrongheadedness on the part of many, delinquency was not dealt with
solely by punitive measures.58 There were also some efforts to prevent delinquency
and to address root causes in an effort to re-direct delinquents.
As the 1950s began, changes were made in Alberta, as they were elsewhere,
in how juvenile delinquents would be handled. Across the country, social workers
attempted to address delinquency as a social disease which could be cured by the
professional social worker and their modern techniques.59 The province reduced the
juvenile age for boys from eighteen to sixteen resulting in less protection for older
54
Tamara Myers, Caught: Montreal’s Modern Girls and the Law, 1869-194. (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2006), 9.
55
Ibid., 4.
56
Tamara Myers & Mary Anne Poutanen, “Cadets, Curfews & Compulsory Schooling: Mobilizing
Anglo Children in WW II Montreal,” Social History 38, no. 76 (2005): 389.
57
Ibid., 369. These efforts to create good citizens span across the entire postwar period and continue
into the present day.
58
Unfortunately incarceration was still used as were forced medical exams in certain instances. For
further reading see Tamara Myers, Caught; Joan Sangster, Girl Trouble.
59
City of Calgary, Annual Report, by Children’s Aid Department (Calgary: Children’s Aid
Department, 1965), 3-9, Social Services Department fonds, City of Calgary Archives; Canadian
Conference on Social Welfare, Annual Reports (Ottawa: Canadian Association of Social Workers,
1964-66), Canadian Council on Social Development fonds, M28, I 10, Box 362, File 4, Library and
Archives Canada.
306
adolescent males in the province. One Calgary newspaper was supportive of this and
noted enthusiastically that,
For too long police court magistrates have been frustrated by
Alberta law which, contrary to other provinces, sheltered sixteen
and seventeen-year-old hoodlums from the weight of justice. Now
these misfits can be properly sentenced and placed in the Bowden
institution…where they can be disciplined and re-educated apart
from hardened criminals…The government has taken a progressive
first step. We trust there will be more in the future.60
While this Calgary Herald editorial was not advocating for these young people to be
put in with the general prison population, there is tacit approval for the more
disciplinary shift in the treatment of juvenile delinquents. This was in accord with
other constructs of juvenile crime that were presented as a relatively new and
disturbing issue; Canada’s teenagers, it was claimed, were being corrupted by the
postwar prosperity, a shift in morals and so forth.61 Other editorials emphasized that
this was a national issue in Canada as part of a larger discourse that wayward youth
had been pampered in Alberta whereas when boys of 16 years or older in
Saskatchewan or Ontario, got into trouble, they were sent to the criminal courts and
were treated accordingly.62 Other articles, in magazines read widely across Canada
and the United States, discussed the critical issue of juvenile delinquency and what
measures needed to be taken to address the problem.63 Not all editorials wanted
delinquency dealt with harshly though as this particular editorial expressed well
another discourse seen elsewhere that argued for a need for a return to positive
community and familial influences to help in the prevention of delinquency before it
60
“Alberta Stops Babying Delinquents,” The Calgary Herald, 2 November 1951.
Tanner, Teenage Troubles, 3.
62
“Lowering the Boom on Juvenile Crime,” Calgary Herald, 28 May 1951.
63
S.M. Katz, “Truth About Teen-Age Drinking,” Maclean’s, vol 71, 21 Jun 1958, 13-15, 51-54; D.L.
Stein, “‘Have’ Delinquents: Why Do They Go Wrong,” Maclean’s, vol 77, 25 Jan 1965, 22-23.
61
307
occurred.64 Some Canadian journalists echoed this need for patience and
understanding of some of the underlying issues often associated with delinquency.65
By 1952, the City of Calgary decided that the levels of juvenile delinquency required
a dedicated unit of officers to deal with juveniles who had run afoul of the laws. The
Calgary Police Juvenile Investigative Force was initially comprised of four men.
These first staff members were chosen for their ability to relate to young people,
along with their previous job experience with the force. By the early 1970s, this
detachment had increased to 14 dedicated officers.66
This Investigative Force received some significant fanfare in the local press
when it was formed with a number of prominent articles written about it in January
1952. This favorable publicity made mention of the new relationships being formed
between youths and officers as a result of this necessary initiative. One article
stressed the rising problems with juvenile delinquency and that the unit was created
“jointly by civil and provincial authorities in the hope that it could…stem the rising
tide of juvenile delinquency and replace it with young people who had a healthy
regard for the law and a…desire to become good citizens.”67 Editorial praise, as seen
in the Life editorial for increasing policing and disciplinary measures to stem
delinquency, was not a constant in this period. By the end of the 1960s, the Calgary
police’s youth department was described as a farce and ultimately ineffectual in
64
“What to Do About Juvenile Crime,” Life, 15 March 1954, 24.
Angelo Patri, “Woodshed Treatment No Help to Delinquent,” The Globe and Mail, 13 June 1956,
15.
66
Maxine H. Wray, “A Study of the Operation of the Specialized Juvenile Investigative Force,” City
of Calgary Police Department, 26 March 1976, 1, City of Calgary Archives. While it was inferred that
this increase in the size of this unit showed an increased focus on prevention and safety, much of this
was due to the population explosion in Calgary from the late 1950s through the early 1970s.
67
“New Attitude Toward Police By Teenagers,” Calgary Herald, 22 January 1952.
65
308
fighting delinquency due to a lack of parental control and broken homes.68 Much of
this way of thinking was misguided though and inflammatory, as the article argued
that “the best shoplifters are in the eight, nine and 10-year-old range; housebreakers
run between six and eight-years-old and the ones who wreck buildings under
construction usually go to about age 15.”69 These criticisms did not take into account
the near tripling of the population in Calgary from the late 1940s through the early
1970s which saw it grow from just over 129, 000 people to over 400, 000 by 1971,70
and that the large majority of these offences, although potentially troublesome and
bothersome, were relatively benign in their nature and scope.
There was a persistent discourse, as there has been at other times in twentiethcentury Canadian history, of a reference back to a time, roughly 20 years earlier,
when youth delinquency had not been as serious a problem.71 This was not a
universal position though as there is documentation from the early 1950s that makes
reference to the late 1930s and juvenile delinquency, when the Great Depression and
its effects were certainly being felt in Calgary. In a 1955 Calgary Boys’ Club report
the circumstances around the origins of the Calgary chapter, 17 years earlier, were
broached. The report stated that because delinquency had reached such alarming
proportions, steps were taken to do something for the boys with delinquency records
as well as for those whose social circumstances were such that they needed help
outside of their families.72 Other Children’s Aid Department reports echoed this and
68
This line of argument can be traced back to the nineteenth century and is found easily in many
recent articles regarding delinquency and crime committed by young people.
69
Graham Pike, “Youth Dept. Is Farce,” The Albertan, June 1961.
70
Calgary’s population increased from 129, 060 in 1951 to 403, 319 by 1971. Census 1951 and 1971.
71
Ibid., 3.
72
“Executive Director’s Report,” Calgary Boys’ Club Annual Report, 1954-55, 2, Calgary Boys and
Girls Clubs of Calgary fonds, M7547, File 1, Glenbow Archives.
309
characterized juvenile delinquency as a social disease that was running rampant and
nearly unchecked through the communities in many of Canada’s major urban
centres.73 Social workers, both in Alberta and across the country, called for increased
funding and the ongoing professionalization of social work through education as a
bulwark against juvenile delinquency and other social diseases.74
Some newspaper articles provided graphic details that spoke to the violence
that defined many teenage gangs in the early 1950s that continued to operate
informally into the 1960s in different forms. Gangs, as some suburban baby boomers
discussed, did reach across urban spaces, and the gangs’ exploits were featured in
dozens of newspaper stories. It was common for the gang members to be described as
cowards and brutal, with details about beatings from a perpetrator who, for example,
“had his hand encased in roughened strips of leather which tore the skin each time he
hit…They use large rings, knuckledusters, key chains wrapped around their hands
and carry “shivs”…to intimidate youths and girls who arouse the ire of gang
members.75 Another article, from the same day, but from the other Calgary daily
newspaper, quoted a teen gang leader of the 10th Street Boys who were alleged to be
attempting a ‘terrorist’ campaign between high school students and perpetrating
assaults on young people, as saying, “We don’t see how the cops can break us up.”76
73
City of Calgary, Annual Report, by Children’s Aid Department (Calgary: Children’s Aid
Department 1962), 8, Social Services Department fonds, City of Calgary Archives.
74
Southern Alberta Branch, Executive Meeting Minutes (Calgary: Canadian Association of Social
Workers, March 1962), Canadian Association of Social Workers fonds, MG 28, I 441, Box 25, File 6,
Library and Archives Canada; Canadian Association of Social Workers, Southern Alberta Branch,
General Meeting Minutes (Calgary: February 1962), Canadian Association of Social Workers fonds,
MG 28, I 441, Box 25, File 6, Library and Archives Canada; Joy Maines, “Through the Years in
C.A.S.W.,” (Ottawa: Canadian Association of Social Workers, 1959), 1 Canadian Association of
Social Workers fonds, MG 28, I 441, Box 1, File 1, Library and Archives Canada.
75
“Youth Scarred After Beating By Teen Gang,” Calgary Herald, 9 January 1951, 1.
76
“City Juveniles Defiant After Police Warning,” The Albertan, 9 January 1951, 1.
310
These types of stories illustrate well how some adults may have been convinced that
these described behaviours were the norm versus the exception among teenagers.
This phenomenon of focusing on delinquency and teenage crimes was not isolated to
Calgary or Alberta in this era. One content analysis of postwar samples of national
and local newspapers in Canada demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of
adolescent stories had a negative orientation in focusing disproportionately on
deviancy.77
The meager statistics available are also inconclusive in many ways as
reporting changed over the course of this period. The age of juvenile males, for the
purposes of being classified as juveniles in the justice system, dropped by two years,
and the city’s population, both in the urban and suburban areas, exploded. In the case
of housebreaking in 1950, seven juveniles were held responsible and dealt with by
Children’s Aid. In 1949, the number of housebreakings had been ten. In the case of
shopbreaking, the Children’s Aid had dealt with 75 juveniles in 1949, while in 1950,
this number was a comparatively low 24 juveniles.78 Additionally, the Calgary Police
Court, which handled juvenile delinquents, saw 50 males and seven females dealt
with under the JDA in the same year.79 These numbers reflect a very small proportion
of Calgary children and adolescents with some crimes going unreported as well.
Some of the reporting lumped overlapping age groups together with one report line
indicating that 185 young people between the ages of 15-20 were arrested for more
77
Tanner, Teenage Troubles, 6.
“Chief Constable’s Annual Report,” City of Calgary Police Department, 1950, 23, Calgary Police
Service Archives.
79
Ibid., 24.
78
311
serious crimes such as assault and arson.80 Young people were committing both petty
and serious crimes; however, the position held by many that there was an explosion
of juvenile delinquency in Calgary, as it was suggested in most other North
American centres,81 was clearly unfounded.
Despite this disproportionate amount of negative publicity, there were
counter-narratives that detailed the fact that delinquency was not actually the
problem that some journalists, social workers, psychologists, sociologists, the police
and the public who picked up on this, said that it was.82 There were a few stories in
the early 1950s that explained that the numbers didn’t support the discourse of fear.
In one such 1951 article, it was explained that in fact, in Calgary, “delinquency in
1950 was the lowest it has been for 20 years.”83 Later in the decade, even as tales of
middle-class delinquency such as wealthy suburban young people engaging in sex
and drugs emerged, people did not assume that the adolescents of exclusive enclaves
like Toronto’s Rosedale were the really dangerous potential criminals.84
But despite the quietude that defined some suburban lives, suburbia was the
site of horrible events for some young people. Unsurprisingly, these had gendered
connotations. Novels that have focused on the post-1945 suburbs, in this instance just
outside of Toronto, broached this topic of potential dangers as teenaged Elaine, the
main character in Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, explains that, “[walking home]
we’ve been told not to do this alone, and not to go down into the ravine by ourselves.
80
Ibid., 34-35.
R. Erlam, “Getting to the Heart of the Matter: War on Juvenile Delinquency in Whitehorse,” North,
vol 14, Jul-Aug 1967, 2-5.
82
It is difficult to assess the why here, but without question, some of it might have been a justification
for employment and to establish the need to address the issue in a multitude of ways within a larger
discourse of wanting to protect, aid, yet punish if needed, the troubled adolescent.
83
“Juvenile Delinquency Lowest in 20 Years,” Calgary Herald, April 1951.
84
Sangster, Girl Trouble, 6.
81
312
There might be men down there...”85 While men were often thought to be the ones
most to fear, it could be other, older suburban teenagers who were potentially
dangerous foes for even pre-teen girls in the late 1950s. One informant who spent
several formative years in Banff Trail remembered one such occurrence in a
relatively secluded liminal space between the nascent suburbs and the nearby
countryside,
I was abducted at the age of 11. I was down in the area that became
the golf course. I was grabbed by an older boy. I knew his sister.
He was 17. I was dragged off to a little wooden structure and there
was another boy as a lookout. It was not a good situation. My next
younger brother ran home, hysterical. The most instructive thing
was my reaction to not scream…I also had a sense you wouldn’t
necessarily be helped. I remember thinking to keep my wits about
me, and making some smart-assed comments. He said he was going
to have some fun. I don’t recall how long it [the entire episode]
was. My older brother and his friend came tearing down and caught
this kid at the end of the field. I got home, and my mother was on
the phone…She didn’t get off the phone. All she said was, “Did he
put his thing in you?”…My father went to talk to his father. My
father said he didn’t want to see the boy’s life ruined. My thought
was whom did he go after next? He was a rough customer; it was a
rough family. He got information that this was okay from [a person
of some authority]. My quintessential moment of my childhood
[taught me that] it’s not safe to depend on men. They’ll circle the
wagons and protect the guy…I sure knew that all of this crap that
women don’t have to do anything because men will take care of
them [wasn’t true]…That’s the underbelly of the niceness of the
1950s and we will look after the girls; bullshit.86
It was a stunning and emotional revelation: one that exposed what could, and did
happen to some young people, and in particular young women, in the postwar
suburbs, and likely went unreported in many cases. Was it common though? Likely
not, but it would seem naïve to believe that it might have been isolated. It also brings
up other questions about why it went unreported with the perceived shame that
85
86
Atwood, Cat’s Eye, 51.
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 25 July 2011.
313
involving the police may have brought to the family. The interviewee gave no
indication that she ever spoke about this to friends, extended family, or anyone else
in the community afterwards. In a broader context, in the 1950s and 1960s in both the
United States and Canada, there was an increase in concerns about sexual assaults
against young people, and it led people to look for new, innovative methodologies for
dealing with the issue.87 This reflected the consensus that held that sex criminals
suffered from a mental condition, rather than a criminal indifference to fellow
citizenry.88 It would have been nearly impossible for this interviewee’s parents not to
encounter these discourses in the 1950s.
While this topic of delinquency and crime in the post-World War II suburbs
remains comparatively unexplored, we know that suburban girls in Toronto were, at
times, eager to escape rough home conditions, or were motivated by the draw of
youth cultures beyond their own communities.89 There were echoes of this from
women who had grown up in Calgary’s suburbs, but made their way to downtown
Calgary in the late 1950s and 1960s to engage in some activities that their parents
certainly never knew about. One informant discussed her activities, which included
minor legal infractions, although she never had any contact with Calgary’s juvenile
authorities. She recalled,
I used to get together with a friend in downtown Calgary. A few
times we hitchhiked, shoplifted, once or twice, little things like
that. Not in any big ways [were we delinquent or rules breakers];
we had a lot of freedom. I went to my brother with clubs… he
would have been in university so I was 13 or 14 going into these
87
Elise Chenier, Strangers in Our Midst: Sexual Deviancy in Postwar Ontario (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2008), 3.
88
Ibid., 4.
89
Franca Iacovetta, “Gossip, Contest, and Power in the Making of Suburban Bad Girls: Toronto,
1945-1960,” The Canadian Historical Review 80, no. 4 (December, 1999): 594.
314
clubs, I probably looked older than I was…to listen to groups and
bands in downtown Calgary.90
This reiterates much of what is in the official juvenile delinquency statistics from the
period. When young people were caught, it was most often for relatively minor
indiscretions.
This era marked the apex of the belief that delinquency could and should be
addressed by contemporary means.91 While there was a presiding judge, families and
juvenile court depended upon psychological experts and social caseworkers who
observed court proceedings, emotional well-being, identified causes of conflict, and
ultimately, recommended the most appropriate individual treatment.92 While there
was a veneer of professionalism, we know that class, gender and ‘race’ of
delinquents were also huge influences on how justice was meted out. Additionally, in
the instances of identifying and dealing with problem girls, though supposedly based
on neutral casework procedures, social caseworkers’ professionalism was interwoven
with their moralism and oftentimes, final assessments were based on hearsay as much
as on ‘scientific’ determinations.93 Parents were also targeted as their neglect of
parenting duties were cited as a fundamental cause of delinquency by social service
workers and administrators.94 While young people did not face an adult system
geared exclusively towards incarceration and punishment, these words from the
“Calgary Boys’ Club Executive Director’s Report from 1957,” are suggestive of the
era. He posited that,
90
Wendy Glidden, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 2 August 2011.
J.C. Spencer, “Work With Hard-To-Reach Youth,” Canadian Welfare, vol 36, 15 Jul 1960, 165170.
92
Iacovetta, “Gossip, Contest and Power in the Making of Suburban Bad Girls,” 586.
93
Ibid., 587.
94
City of Calgary, Annual Report, by Children’s Aid Department (Calgary: Children’s Aid
Department 1965), 9, Social Services Department fonds, City of Calgary Archives.
91
315
When a boy is referred to us, individual attention is given to his
need, and soon we are able to help mould his character into a
channel leading to good citizenship. Boys’ Club is known for its
patience and tenacity in dealing with so called problem boys, and I
feel that to be the reason parents come to us when they have a
problem with one of their children.95
The term ‘good citizenship’ is necessarily loaded with myriad problematic
connotations, yet the focus, as it has become for many critics in the twenty-first
century, was not on ensuring that these young people would ‘pay the price’ for their
transgressions. These organizations had a strong commitment to preserve their
version of Canadian society as it existed. They were not looking to radicalize youth
to attempt to change a system that was not responsive enough to broader social issues
such as health, poverty and housing.96 Reports by social workers from the period also
discussed openly the fact that the public, at least from their perspective, did not
support social assistance for many. In one report it was argued that the general public
regards welfare recipients oftentimes as lazy, shiftless and unworthy of social
support.97 Social workers, generally, had a firm belief in their work, unsurprisingly,
and reports are heavily infused with language that stated clearly that programs were
vital in strengthening family life in the way of counseling services and so forth.98 The
95
Calgary Boys Club, Executive Director’s Report (Calgary: Calgary Boys Club, 1957), 6,
Boys and Girls Clubs of Calgary fonds, M7547, File 1, Glenbow Archives.
96
While there can be no doubt that efforts were made to expand the social welfare state in the postwar
period, ultimately, the welfare state peaked in the late 1960s with the creation of a universal medicare
system in Canada, but no real national housing strategy or national childcare system. See Alvin Finkel,
Social Policy and Practice in Canada: A History (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2006).
97
“Brief to the Government of Alberta, Recommending the User of Cash Payments in the Social
Allowance and Social Assistance Programmes,” by The Alberta Association of Social Workers
(Calgary: Alberta Association of Social Workers, 1966), 7, Canadian Association of Social Workers
fonds, MG 28, I 441, Box 25, File 1, Library and Archives Canada.
98
“Brief for the Patterson Committee on Adoptions,” by The Alberta Association of Social Workers,
(Calgary: Alberta Association of Social Workers, April 1965), Canadian Association of Social
Workers fonds, MG 28, I 441, Box 25, File 1, Library and Archives Canada.
316
preventive role of child protection services was characterized as being of vital
importance in family cohesion.99
Much of this discourse, heavily influenced by the belief in the growing social
sciences and progress, is prevalent throughout the late 1940s through the early 1960s,
especially.100 In literature from 1947, Children’s Aid social workers were part of a
larger cohort advocating that most youngsters in need, “given the proper type of
training, [they] could be saved and moulded into very useful citizens.”101 None of thi,
was truly about unsettling the system, but merely to reinforce it, and producing
young adults who would contribute to it as proper ‘citizens.’ Advice was never far
away, at times coming in magazine articles for harried parents. Arguments were
made that parenting had taken a real beating in the past twenty-five years and while
the parenting should not be based on terrifying children, as it had been for these
parents as children, that parents should not be terrified of their children either.102 For
all of these efforts, there were other influences on post-World War II teenagehood.
Suburban spaces and teenagers were also touched by broader gang activities
in this period, a topic that was popular with the movie-going public as well in feature
films like Rebel Without a Cause, Blackboard Jungle and West Side Story. One
informant recalled that adults would not have been privy to these happenings in any
meaningful way. Violence among young teens after school was not uncommon and
99
Ibid.
Family Life Education, “Brief on Family and Community Living,” (Calgary: Family Life
Education Council, 1969,) 3, Family Life Education Council of Calgary fonds, M6239, Box 15,
Glenbow Archives.
101
City of Calgary, “Brief of the Children’s Aid Department of the City of Calgary,” by Children’s
Aid Department (Edmonton: Royal Commission on Child Welfare, 1947), 18, Social Services
Department fonds, City of Calgary Archives.
102
Ann Landers, “Justified Gripes Against Parents,” Life, 18 August 1961, 86.
100
317
like a lot of the history of childhood and adolescence is part of a hidden history in
many ways. One informant recalled,
When we saw a cop car outside the school [Branton Junior High],
we knew who were they coming to see…A lot of them were
delinquents, getting in trouble, theft, that sort of thing…We used to
have belt fights in grade seven where you’d take off your belts and
whip each other. First one to draw blood, won…and it drew a
crowd. In those days, after school, there was always scrapping after
school…So I was scrapping quite a bit; for me, it was
entertainment. They were your friends and you weren’t going to let
anyone beat them up.103
What separates this from much of Iacovetta’s work is that these activities took place
on school grounds in a relatively new Calgary suburb. While some broader activities
were based around the wider Calgary area, prompting discussion about male
delinquents,104 postwar suburban spaces were sites for behaviours not often
associated with them. This can be compared to texts on other North American urban
and suburban spaces where memoirists from the first half of the twentieth century
recalled that streets, playgrounds, and unoccupied lots were sites for conflicts, and at
times fisticuffs – one kind of youngsters’ battleground.105 Another interviewee, who
was a younger boomer growing up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, said that he
“had one bad experience where one guy who terrorized us went on to be in a
penitentiary for killing his wife; the school bully who became the murderer.”106
Bullying was recalled offhandedly by a few interviewees, and it was mentioned
relatively casually in some student publications. It may have been more normalized
103
Jim Farquharson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 17 October 2011.
City of Calgary, “Brief of the Children’s Aid Department of the City of Calgary,” by Children’s
Aid Department (Calgary: Prepared for Submission to the Provincial Committee on Adoptions,
Alberta, 1965), 5, Social Services Department fonds, City of Calgary Archives.
105
Chudacoff, Children at Play, 149.
106
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 4 November 2011.
104
318
and tolerated in the period, but with the sheer numbers of young people, it might
have been impossible to address it as an issue in the same way as it is today, given
the size of the baby boom cohort. In contrast, it has been seen as, quite possibly, the
major issue of childhood and adolescence in the past ten years.107
As the 1960s came to a close, the Banff Trail community was rocked by a
murder committed by a local teenager on a summer morning at William Aberhart
High School. A 17-year-old teenager from Banff Trail was charged and convicted of
murder under adult law. He was charged with non-capital murder in the slaying of a
50-year-old caretaker at William Aberhart High School. The teenager was a former
student of the school and had graduated in the previous spring. The caretaker was
shot in the abdomen with a .303 calibre rifle shortly after arriving for work. Police
had found him on the first floor landing close to the main entrance of the school.
Detectives had noted evidence of a break-in as the main floor window on the west
side of the high school had been broken. The caretaker had been employed at the
school for seven years and was described by school principal Larry Parker as a
“really nice man.”108 The motive for the killing, if any, was not released publicly in
any Calgary newspapers or included in the police records from 1968. It reveals
deeper layers and complexity to suburbia, adolescence, and childhood in this period.
This was by no means a crime-ridden community. When oral history informants did
mention this murder, it was almost a surreal for them. There was a palpable sense
that it was a very unfortunate isolated incident that certainly did not come to define
107
Further research could and needs to be done on bullying in this period as the acts themselves did
seem to occur, without all of the attendant technology of today, nevertheless, it was present. Those
that did mention it felt it was often brief and simply a part of their childhood or adolescence
experiences.
108
Wayne Bill, “City Youth Charged With Murder,” The Albertan, August 1968.
319
the community in any real way. Juvenile delinquency and larger crime statistics were
not broken down into districts in this period, but we know that the majority of
reported offenses occurred in more densely populated urban areas, especially because
they were mixed-used spaces, and there were more stores (for shoplifting and store
break-ins), from 1950 through 1970.109
To suggest, in any real way, that the bulk of delinquency, by suburban young
people or otherwise, was serious throughout this period would be wrongheaded. One
former resident recalled that in 1956, the year that Branton Junior High School was
built, young vandals smashed the courtyard windows and that this was the talk at
school for months.110 This suggests that these types of delinquent acts were not
common in this period in this nascent suburban community. One interviewee
discussed what was involved in his delinquent activities in this period. He said, “store
security saw me changing a price tag on a tape and they caught me. My parents got
called in and it went to juvenile court…where the judge just slapped me on the
wrist…That scared me straight.111 Much like the earlier female interviewee who said
she committed some petty crime, it is clear that these offences were inconsequential
for the most part; these were not hardened criminals in the making.
There are dozens of contemporary student articles that responded to how
teenagers were portrayed in public discourse. In one 1952 article, resistance from
young people to these representations was clear. Delegates to a Y-Teen conference, a
group that teens in Banff Trail were a part of during this period, believed that the
109
There are brief reports about juvenile delinquency in each Chief Constable Annual Report from this
era. Usually there is a table that details the offences for that year.
110
Faye Esler Hall, “Branton Junior High School,” in Rose Scollard, ed., From Prairie Grass to City
Sidewalks (Calgary: Banff Trail Community Seniors, 1999), 48.
111
Brent Harris, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 9 December 2011.
320
public did not differentiate between law-abiding teens and juvenile delinquents. One
teen expressed that “the press and radio [should be] criticized for giving adverse
publicity to the teen-agers by allegedly playing up the actions of delinquents and
giving little publicity to the good side of the picture.”112
By the mid- to late 1960s, a shift occurred across Canada, as voices of
displeasure with the operation of the JDA were loud and clear. They ranged from the
legal profession through politicians (at the bidding of families who had had negative
contact with the juvenile justice system) to some important reform organizations like
the Elizabeth Fry Society which had been first established in Ontario in the 1950s.113
The Vanier Institute of the Family, founded in 1966 and began to hold annual
meetings and help to fund various groups around the country, including Calgary
which would spur a renewed commitment to the family and re-establish a
commitment to families and human values.114 In the 1960s, official government
inquiry may not have re-made the system, but it did produce a moment of reevaluation; this spurred political events that would mean significant change in the
next 15 years.115 By the seventies, criticisms morphed into a widespread attack on the
existing juvenile justice system for its overreliance on subjective evidence, heavy use
of non-legal personnel, little public accountability, and an absence of due process.116
The Young Offenders Act would mean a different era in Canada where delinquent
young people were offered more protection than older criminals and rule breakers,
112
“Teen-Agers Protest Poor Publicity,” The Calgary Herald, 17 April 1952.
Sangster, Girl Trouble, 171.
114
Dr. Colettte Carisse, “The New Families in Modern Society,” in a paper prepared for the 1968
Annual Meeting of the Vanier Institute of the Family, M6239, File 3, Glenbow Archives.
115
Sangster, Girl Trouble, 176.
116
Iacovetta, “Gossip, Contest, and Power in the Making of Suburban Bad Girls,” 623.
113
321
although there were more similarities to the broader justice system than what there
had been under the JDA regime.117 Delinquency, and at times crime, did exist in the
postwar suburbs. While many of the activities were benign, young people were both
the victims and perpetrators. Certain events changed young lives and would stay with
them into adulthood. Children and adolescents also engaged in other forms of
resistances and rebellions.
Resistances and Rebellions
I questioned a lot of things as a kid. In elementary I was leaning
towards being an agnostic…My mother, being an academic,
allowed me to ask those questions. I asked for permission to leave
the gymnasium during school assemblies when they recited the
Lord’s Prayer. [At each assembly] I was dutifully asked to leave
the gymnasium in front of the whole school. My mom supported
me, my parents certainly stood up for me against the school
administration… and this was grade 5. It was an interesting
challenge for a young fella in the late ‘60s.118
This interviewee exhibited a comparatively mature form of
resistance to prayer recitation that was very much a part of daily school life
not only in Calgary suburbs but across the country during this period. He
spoke admiringly of the support of his parents, and in particular, his mother
in this matter with the school administration and teachers. In the popular
media, parents were seen to be catalysts for young peoples’ general
rebelling.119 While parents are often the focus of resistance by adolescents,
this anecdote reminds us that they could also be allies under certain
117
Owen D. Carrigan, Juvenile Delinquency in Canada: A History (Toronto: Irwin, 1998); H. Litsky,
“Cult of the Juvenile Court,” Canadian Welfare, vol 46, Jul-Aug 1970, 8, 15.
118
Brent Harris, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 9 December 2011. This questioning of faith
and religion fits in well with broader currents that see the influences of churches waning by the late
1960s and early 1970s in Canada. See Magda Fahrni and Robert Rutherdale, eds., Creating Postwar
Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007).
119
“Parents Accentuate Rebellion, MD Says,” The Globe and Mail, 23 November 1967, W6.
322
circumstances for older children and pre-teens.120 The idea that young
people are somehow naturally inclined toward resistance and nonconformity
is relatively recent in the long history of childhood. The beginnings of this
idea can be traced back to the world spawned by the industrial revolution.121
The empirical evidence makes it clear that across the past century, only a
small minority of adolescents experience their teenage years as a time of
rebellion or a significant break with the past.122
Also noteworthy is that the creeping conformity that historian Richard Harris
argues exists in this period, was not a constant in the long history of Canadian
suburbs. In earlier twentieth-century history, many suburbs, including the urban
edges around Canadian cities, were settled by immigrants and working-class peoples,
and during the 1930s and 1940s, many of these suburbs supported and nurtured leftwing politics.123 In a similar vein not only were left-wing politics fostered in some
suburbs but a few of the more radical movements in modern Canadian history began
in working-class suburban communities.124 Other postwar Canadian suburbs featured
many working-class homeowners who had come from working-class circumstances
120
Bruce West, “What Gap,” The Globe and Mail, 1 August 1969, 23.
Tanner, Teenage Trouble, 27-28.
122
Michael Zuckerman, “The Paradox of American Adolescence,” The Journal of the
History of Childhood and Youth 4, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 14. However, this area does need to be
explored more and an evaluation needs to continue of the forms and expressions of rebellion that
result from childhood and adolescent rebellions.
123
Richard Harris, Creeping Conformity: How Canada Became Suburban, 1900-1960 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2004), 5.
124
Ibid., 42. I think the distinction to left-wing politics and radical movements should be made as leftwing politics are often interested in making the Canadian political framework better for working-class
people, while radical movements are often encouraging a different political system or major changes
to the existing one, at the very least.
121
323
in many cases,125 although political radicalism did not define Banff Trail or these
postwar Toronto suburbs.
One resistance, across age lines, that worked and came to define the area in
this period for some residents, was the initial plan to have one of the city’s main
landfills placed within a few minute’s drive north of Banff Trail. Several informants
remembered their parents directly involved in the lobbying to have the site located
elsewhere in the city, and some informants, children at the time, attended meetings to
protest the plan. One resident recalled that when the City of Calgary announced the
plan the “neighbours were naturally up in arms. A committee was formed and I was
one of those representatives who fought this horrendous plan. We were finally
successful in its defeat.” 126 Ultimately, the Spy Hill site was chosen and the
proposed site became important to both suburban young people and adults by the late
1960s, as it had been for the earliest Banff Trail residents. The large area was left in a
relatively natural state (excepting a public golf course) and became a park. In 1967
the park area was formally recognized and became Confederation Park.127 As noted
throughout, this area was not an exclusive suburban enclave defined by professionals
and wealth. Many residents were working-class with blue-collar jobs mixed with
some lower middle-class families which didn’t afford them the privileges that often
accompany wealthy and more influential residents when they are involved with “Not
In My Backyard” campaigns.
In negotiating and experiencing the most important institutions in children’s
and adolescents’ lives, there can be no denying that the balance of power lay with
125
S.D. Clark, The Suburban Society (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966).
Roy Farquharson in From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks, 58.
127
Dennis and Ruth Hunt in From Prairie Grass to City Sidewalks, 23.
126
324
adults during this period. While older teenagers began to enjoy increased levels of
power and autonomy as they aged, as evidenced by being able to drive, work outside
the home for pay, not reporting their whereabouts at all time and making choices in
activities. Power, nevertheless, was not fully in their grasp. Instances of resistance –
such as the interviewee who was questioning his religious faith as an elementary
student – along with conflict and negotiation, define well-functioning relationships as
much as cooperation does.128 Debate, disagreement and true dialogue cannot be
characterized as rejection as it sometimes is by some adults.129 On an individual
level, this means that some children and adolescents constantly try to resist,
challenge and re-make adult influences according to their individual goals and
personal traits.130 Along with the family home, the school was the most likely site for
young people to exercise their agency. At times, this began even with the youngest
schoolchildren.
With the Cold War in full force, it was a paradox that, despite the constant
claims to freedoms and democracy, students, regardless of age, were not seen as
partners in their education. Historians of education in Canada have shown how
progressive tenets did not necessarily move down to everyday classroom
experiences.131 Even that initial walk to school for five- and six-year-olds could
become an opportunity to test childhood bounds. One informant recalled that she’d
been shown her walking route to and from her classroom, and then was expected to
128
Leon Kuczynski, ed., Handbook of Dynamics in Parent-Child Relations (Toronto: Sage, 2002), 21.
“More Complex Decisions: Social Worker in Favor of the Generation Gap and Wishes it Were
Bigger,” The Globe and Mail, 18 April 1969, 10.
130
Dominic Wyse & Angela Hawtin, eds., Children: A Multi-Professional Perspective (London:
Arnold Publishers, 2000), 61.
131
Mona Gleason, “Disciplining the Student Body: Schooling and the Construction of
Canadian Children’s Bodies, 1930-1960,” History of Education Quarterly 41, no. 2 (Spring 2001):
196.
129
325
follow this route to and from school. She said, ‘the first day, I went the wrong way
[on her own accord]. I confessed to my mom that I had gone the wrong way. It was
the first time I had broken the rules.”132 Often these were small acts from an adult
view, but from the perspective of childhood, and well over 40 years later, this single
event still stood out as an effort to have some decision-making ability. It also
reflected an ability to act on this decision, rightly or wrongly. Another interviewee
recalled that in elementary school he really liked a teacher. He remembered getting in
trouble purposefully because she “was a teacher…who I was in love with; she had
great boobs and I liked her perfume. Like any grade four boy, I was naughty so I
could get detention and spend extra time with her.133 Boys modeling some adult
behaviours (boorish and otherwise) obviously started very early for some. But this
was not exclusive to boys. Unsurprisingly, some adolescent girls also sought
attention from older male teachers. Donna recalled that as she was moving into
adolescence “I would do things to get detention…With one teacher, I had to sit
beside his desk for months and I wanted to do that…The teachers…were all young,
had long hair; they were stylish for the times. I was really interested in their attention,
but they thought they were giving me detention.”134
Older teenagers also expressed resistances through the material culture they
created in schools. From speaking to former editors, we know that they did not hold
final editorial control on school newspaper columns, yet their concerns are still
evident. Teenagers’ frustrations and questions are prevalent throughout the archival
record.
132
Anonymous, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 27 July 2011.
Allan Matthews, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 29 July 2011.
134
Donna McLaren, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 12 December 2011.
133
326
This school newspaper article focused, with three main points, on what some
teenagers were doing in high school and what the consequences were for such
actions,
1) Many schools have complex and intricate systems of disciplining
students.
2) Most forms of punishment are silly and ineffectual. They serve
only as negative reinforcement of unacceptable behavior patterns.
By enforcing detentions, and suspension, the administration
successfully wastes their time, the student’s time, and the teacher’s
time. Meanwhile, they have done nothing to solve the original
problem.
3) There is a great deal of discrepancy between the way students are
treated in one school and the way they are treated in another.135
The article then detailed what the consequences for these actions were at certain high
schools, with Banff Trail’s William Aberhart appearing to be rather “lax” in its
consequences for students. For being late, students had to go to the office and after
three occurrences they were spoken to about it. For skipping classes they were to be
punished by the vice principal. For committing unauthorized activities, they could be
suspended. Finally, long hair could see you expelled from Western High School in
this period, while at William Aberhart, it would garner snide remarks from
teachers.136 It is clear that provincial guidelines, student handbooks and other official
documents could be interpreted and enforced in very different ways at the everyday
level. This information came from a student-conducted survey that had sought
information from 18 other students at other Calgary high schools. Dress codes,
restrictions on the length of hair for males and so forth were prevalent across North
America at this time, with some of these regulations in response to the sixties
135
136
“Discipline,” Aberhart Advocate 10, nol.11, 3 April 1969, 8-10.
Ibid.
327
counterculture that permeated all of society and held influence among multiple age
cohorts.137
Teenage students were also critical of the education system at an intellectual
level. Suburban and urban teens were canvassed for a Calgary Herald piece in 1966,
and expressed frustration with both content and pedagogy in their curricula. While
not a large sample size, the Herald had surveyed 48 students in nine high schools.
The graduating students questioned not only the value of their education, but its
administration as well. The report also found that the “majority of students
questioned whether the system was accomplishing its main purpose…to induce
learning. Several… said their education…particularly during high school years,
seemed to be little more than cramming and memory work…The most serious
problem…was the lack of necessary guidance.138
Some of this affirms the conclusions of other historians that the majority of
adolescents are not overtly rebellious. In fact, these students, albeit high school
graduates, and likely heading to post-secondary institutions, believed they had
needed additional guidance from experts.
Nevertheless, other suburban students at William Aberhart did focus on
questioning and resisting both teachers and administrators. Some of the school
newspaper’s leaders decided to sponsor a grievance bureau for those students who
may have felt they were treated unfairly in certain circumstances. The bureau sought
students who were willing to speak objectively and honestly about what they had
experienced. Ultimately, they posited that the purpose of this “bureau [was] to find
137
Bryan D. Palmer, Canada’s 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2009).
138
“School Grads Raise Doubts On Education’s Value,” Calgary Herald, 4 July 1966, 22.
328
out whether there is injustice within the school system, and if you can help us with
this research the results may also be beneficial to you.” 139 This 1969 article does
represent a shift in tone and focus from school newspapers from the 1950s.
Unquestionably, we see young people influenced by, and beginning to influence
social movements, across North America. Students were coming home to view
riveting images of dead Vietnam soldiers and violent student clashes on television by
this time. As the 1960s progressed, some adults were scandalized by the antiVietnam war and civil rights activism of young people, their long hair, and their
countercultural attacks on what they termed the establishment.140
There was a cascade of images flowing across television screens and
newspapers on a regular basis. While it may not have been as constant and ubiquitous
as it is in the new millennium, suburban adolescents were exposed to national and
international movements around the world. While we saw discussions around
Sputnik and the A-bomb discussed in the late 1950s, the material culture reflects an
escalation in examples of adolescent engagement with issues in the 1960s, given the
larger unrest and break with the past. In the context of the student protests in Quebec,
some suburban students argued that the “epidemic of student rebellion is only an
indication of the infection that has for many years been part of the educational
system…Unless students, educators, and administrators can collectively come up
with some solutions, 1968-69 may be the year of a national student rebellion. Vive
139
“The Advocate Opens a Grievance Bureau,” Aberhart Advocate 10, no. 11, 3 April 1969, 1.
Michael Zuckerman, “The Paradox of American Adolescence,” The Journal of the History of
Childhood and Youth 4, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 17.
140
329
l’ecole libre.”141 As with so many other issues, teens were obviously divided in what
kinds of actions could, or should be taken.142
Many of the articles from the Aberhart Advocate were cryptic in terms of
what might be some intended consequences of the student groups seeking change.
Intrepid reporters, students themselves, seemed unconvinced that such groups needed
to exist in suburban Calgary and what relationship they may or may not have to
student ‘revolutionaries’ in other countries. This 1964 article focused on the secrecy
of the Student’s Revolutionary Council and what it might mean to the school and the
broader community. The newspaper’s stance was clearly one of appeasement and did
not want there to be anything as ‘dreadful’ as a strike as there had been recently at
another Calgary high school to protest construction noise. The writer hoped the group
would “respect law and order, and not act in an unseemly fashion. Student riots have
occurred in the USA; students helped to overthrow the Bolivian president; the
radicals always include groups of students. It would be a pity if anything like the
strike at Henry Wise Wood ever occurred again in Calgary.143 Whether or not that
Wise Wood group ever stuck against something on a more intellectual level, versus
construction noise, was not mentioned. Nevertheless, clearly students were
influenced by broader events. Regardless of residency, there were varying degrees of
engagement with these issues. The level of sophistication was unsurprisingly uneven.
Similar to many adults, some students seemed to grapple and identify with certain
issues and causes. For others, this engagement was primarily facile and superficial at
most. As others have emphasized, in many ways, the significance of an emerging
141
“Students are Revolting,” Aberhart Advocate 11, no. 3, 1 November 1968.
V. Del Buono, “Youth in Revolt,” World Affairs, vol 35, Mar 1970, 5-6.
143
“Student’s Revolutionary Council,” Aberhart Advocate 7, no. 2, November 1964.
142
330
youthful counter-culture was the increased politicization of the non-political.144
Much of the idealism of the era, focused on young people, meant that important
(from primarily an adult perspective) causes or social concerns – Vietnam,
international coups, First Nations issues, educational reform, women’s liberation –
could gain the support of young people who did not identify as political activists.145
As we have seen, in Banff Trail classrooms, the Vietnam War, educational reform,
and the women’s movement were discussed in several instances. There was some
additional meaning to the Vietnam War discussions for many, as there were a large
number of American schoolchildren living not just in the Banff Trail area, but across
the city in the postwar era.
Emotions did redline at times. Occasionally, it came to the point where some
teenage students needed to remove themselves from the activities that had been of
vital importance to them. Some of the students who were running the school
newspaper believed they could no longer continue in their duties, and the Aberhart
Advocate was actually transformed into the Lead Balloon due to several student and
administrative concerns. Students expressed grievances about several issues they
faced as school newspaper contributors. Ultimately, students believed they could no
longer produce a paper that accurately reflected their viewpoints due to the
unreasonably heavy hand of the school administration. They also argued that their
right to elect their own editor had been compromised as the administration was
imposing a hand-selected choice onto the newspaper staff. Finally, they argued that
they were “threatened with dissolution if we took our ‘bitches’ to the
144
Owram, Born at the Right Time, 215.
Ibid., 217; J. Ruddy, “Stop the World – They Want to Get Off,” Maclean’s, vol 78, 1 Nov 1965,
20-22, 47.
145
331
principal…Viewing this and the treatment we have received…we can no longer bring
ourselves to contribute our efforts to the school paper. Therefore we dissolve rather
than sacrifice our values and self-respect to this…institution.146 All of this took place
in the final months of the 1960s and the student newspaper was re-invented as the
Lead Balloon for the early 1970s. Would this have happened in the 1950s? It seems
very unlikely given that the tone of yearbooks and school newspapers did seem to
reflect and even mirror broader counter-cultural ruptures that questioned institutions
that seemed to many in society as increasingly unresponsive.
Some of this resistance also took the form of teenagers, or older pre-teens
experimenting with recreational drugs. It was not a universal experience though as it
is clear that many adolescents had no interest in experimenting with drugs in any
form. Bruce noted a shift among his peers by the late 1960s and said, “things
changed with the drug culture coming in. I wasn’t involved in that at all. But some of
your friends kind of separated apart. There was a real division by that time [at
William Aberhart High School].147 Discussions were held across Canada and the
United States around the drug culture with the legalization of marijuana discussed by
doctors in Life magazine by the late 1960s. As usual, adolescents’ lack of life
experience as well as their developing life habits were cited as potential issues with
legalized drug use. Because teens were able to get cigarettes easily, the argument
continued that they would have easy access to legal marijuana.148 The same argument
was made in Canada as the RCMP viewed marijuana use, within the larger drug
146
“Press Club Letter,” William Aberhart High School, 17 March 1970, William Aberhart Archives.
Bruce Wilson, personal interview, Calgary, AB, 28 July 2011.
148
Dr. James L. Goddard, “Should It Be Legalized?: ‘Soon We Will Know,’” Life, 31 October, 1969,
34.
147
332
culture, as a grave danger with increasingly visible marijuana use as an inevitable
stepping-stone to the use of harder drugs and they worked to develop support in the
medical community for not legalizing marijuana.149 Increasingly, the daily
newspapers also began to shift their focus from gangs and gang violence to the drug
problem that parents with teenagers now faced.150 Conferences, symposia and
discussion groups were held to address the issues, although there are no formal
Canadian numbers on drug use among adolescents in this period. It is difficult to
quantify use, particularly with illegal substance use, but as with many other
adolescent issues, it seems plausible that information from U.S. Gallup Polls were
likely similar to Canadian numbers. In a 1969 Gallup poll, the first year that Gallup
asked Americans about drug use, only four percent of American adults said they had
tried marijuana. Thirty-four percent said they did not know the effects of marijuana,
but 43 percent thought it was used by many or some high school students.151 As
usual, parents were targeted as one of the major causes of a lack of education
regarding drugs in Calgary, despite having some limited knowledge of drugs and the
associated problems from an adult perspective. There was support in several articles
for “the proposition that drug problems are a symptom of failure in child-parent and
149
Marcel Martel, “Law Versus Medicine: The Debate Over Drug Use in the 1960s,” in Creating
Postwar Canada: Community, Diversity, and Dissent, 1945-75, Magda Fahrni and Robert Rutherdale,
eds., (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008).
150
“Use of LSD Among Average Teens Likely to Grow, Parents Warned,” The Globe and Mail, 4
January 1968, W4; Peter Whelan, “A Subculture of Users in High School: Girl, 16, Tells of 3 Tabs of
Acid, Suicide Run, 18 Months in Drug World,” The Globe and Mail, 18 November 1969, 1; Richard J.
Needham, “Give Us This Day Our Daily Drug,” The Globe and Mail, 31 October 1969, 6.
151
For a three-part series based on Gallup data see Jennifer Robison, “Decades of Drug Use: Data
From the ‘60s and ‘70s,” Gallup, accessed 2 December 2013,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/6331/decades-drug-use-data-from-60s-70s.aspx
333
child-teacher relationships.”152 The youngest suburban baby boomers described the
late 1960s and early 1970s as a different time that saw some youngsters trying,
dope from the…age of 12. Dropping acid when we were 15. In
high school, we were exposed to things like cocaine…I had lots of
influences in the home…that was the setting by the early 1970s,
that was more the norm...We were sexually promiscuous at 15 and
16. We skipped school and drove in cars when no one was licensed
or insured…A lot of kids died on motorcycles, kids committed
suicide…Kids died when drinking…We were very experimental…I
wouldn’t categorize us as being evil or anything like that…This
was not at all exceptional for that time.153
As with other informants, the activities within her social group were seen as the
norm. While young people were influenced by their peers and adults, many of them
kept quite small circles of friends outside of their families and this reality came to
define their lives.
Different texts can be read for how these changes, both real and perceived,
were traced. National Film Board (NFB) documentaries reflected these changes over
time. Documentaries in the 1940s and 1950s focused on community-based, adultorganized activities featuring everything from little league baseball to hot rodding to
majorettes; however, by the early 1970s, these documentaries are replaced by darker
texts best represented by Summer Centre (1973), in which local property is
vandalized by adolescents operating from a community recreation centre.154 The
1950s also saw the NFB produce films on delinquency and treatment methods, but
there was no mention of drugs other than alcohol.155 This was somewhat different
152
“The Drug Problem,” Calgary Herald, 2 October, 1971, 4.
Anonymous, telephone interview, Peterborough, ON, 13 December 2011.
154
Brian J. Low, NFB Kids: Portrayals of Children by the National Film Board of Canada, 19391989 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2002), 222.
155
For a good documentary example see Fergus McDonell, director, Borderline, National Film Board
of Canada, 1956.
153
334
south of the border though, as there was the odd article that focused on illegal
narcotics such as heroin, in major U.S. cities in the early 1950s, and these drew on
discursive constructs that portrayed children as relatively innocent victims at the
hands of evil-doing adult pushers, pimps and so forth.156 Also, the official reports
coming from the Calgary Police Services, reflected references to illegal substances
other than alcohol and tobacco, for the first time, by 1970. 14 juveniles and 10 youths
were identified for glue sniffing and nail polish sniffing while 23 juveniles and 11
youths were identified as involved with narcotics under the JDA.157 While it is likely
that other incidents had been identified prior to 1970, they were not reported in the
Chief of Police’s annual official reports in the fifites or sixties. The “war on drugs,”
targeting both young people and adults, would be launched by the early 1970s and it
would become one of the hot button issues associated with childhood and
adolescence by the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Conclusion
Regardless of class, gender, ‘race,’ or age, some young people exhibited
remarkable abilities to resist the world around them, not just in the postwar suburbs,
but in broader society as well.158 Young people were not isolated in hived-off
suburban enclaves, oblivious to events and issues outside of them. Their childhood
156
There are also solutions offered based on new modern technologies in medicine to treat addicts,
and in particular young ones. For further reading see Herbert Brean, “Children in Peril: ‘Pushers’ Are
Selling Narcotics to Thousands of Teenagers,” Life, 11 June 1951, 116-126.
157
“Juvenile Delinquency Detail Report for Year 1970,” The Annual Report of the Chief of Police,
Police Department, City of Calgary, 1970, Calgary Police Service Archives.
158
Richard J. Needham, “Beards, Beatniks and Bare Feet,” The Globe and Mail, 8 August 1966, 6;
Bryan Wilson, “The Here and Now of Hippy Escapism,” The Globe and Mail, 31 March 1967, 7.
335
and adolescent cultures emerged, in some instances, as a way to negotiate the adult
world that influenced their lives a great deal.
The night and darkness have often been associated with uncertainties and
danger for young people. In the nineteenth century, youngsters once roamed the city
landscape and were a part of the nighttime fabric until the early twentieth century;
with compulsory schooling, the outlawing of child labour, curfews and so forth, this
was no longer an accepted practice. Public spaces, particularly at night, became off
limits for children and young teens. Young people did turn inward, however, and as
we have seen, they continued to infuse their everynight experiences with importance
and vibrancy.
Suburban young people participated in delinquency and petty crime, with
much of it unknown to the most important adults in their lives. Juvenile males were
overrepresented in committing crimes across Calgary and elsewhere in Canada,
although there were circumstances when young women were involved in this as well.
However, while the majority of children and adolescents felt secure both in the
suburbs and in the more urban spaces in cities, for some, there was always a sense
that the world was not as welcoming and safe as they might hope for it to be.
Adolescents, and to a much lesser degree children, resisted and rebelled in
myriad ways in both the postwar suburbs, and in Canada more broadly. Some
teenagers found themselves at odds with the larger world, and experimentation with
illicit drugs, became increasingly common, much as it did in adult cultures by the late
1960s and early 1970s. It is clear that some teenagers felt no need to rebel and resist;
for them, the status quo was acceptable or there was a sense that there was not much
336
they could about it as a young person. On more than one occasion, oral history
informants were either hesitant or unwilling to reveal illicit and delinquent activities.
The reasons for this were likely personal ones, especially for those not requesting
anonymity, but I would offer that it demonstrates that at least a portion of them quite
simply had not felt compelled to engage in these kinds of activities. Notwithstanding,
it seems clear that the late sixties were quite different than the early fifties in terms of
adolescents questioning the status quo and authority in general. But not every young
person was doing this and this highlights the differentiation in experiences that I have
emphasized throughout the dissertation. Generalizing is useful, while universalizing
is almost impossible when it comes to the everyday experiences of young people.
337
Conclusion
The postwar suburbs were a vibrant space for young people. There was a richness
and diversity to suburban living for children and adolescents in post-World War II
Canada that resists simplistic generalizing. The histories of children and adolescents are
often hidden but I have addressed that directly in this dissertation in an attempt to reveal
some of what happened in Canada’s postwar suburbs. As historians, we act somewhat
like translators, as the dueling languages of the present and the past are navigated
constantly. In creating histories with honesty and care, one of the biggest tensions that we
inevitably deal with is in the translation work that we do.1 The children and teenagers I
encountered in the archival record, and the former young people I was able to engage
with in dialogue, did not agree on many things. However, I was able to construct a
conversation with them that did not smooth all of the edges of the past and, it is in these
spaces of contention that all of us can bring added meaning to our historical work.
Researching the history of childhood is fascinating on another level as your
readership can lay claim to having lived what you are re-creating, at one time –
something that many other historians do not have the opportunity to take advantage of in
their work. It is clear that ‘race,’ ethnicity, gender, and especially class, shape both
childhood and adolescence experiences to a great degree. Young people, and in particular
adolescents, also shaped their everyday lives with the agency that they exercised
throughout the postwar period. These youngsters were rarely marked by passivity or
inactivity. Children, and in particular adolescents, had the ability to question, subvert and
1
Paul A. Cohen, History in Three Keys (New York: Columbia UP, 1998), 297.
338
resist a postwar world influenced in many ways by adults and their ideals, values, norms
and social mores.2 In the end, the majority of young people had positive experiences in
the postwar suburbs. Yet, while postwar suburban spaces were a safe place for most
young people, this was not always the case. Harm did come to some. But this was a group
that always had a lunch,3 which is not something we can say about all children and
adolescents then, or today, in Canada. These middle-class and working-class youngsters
from Banff Trail were not an impoverished group, although few of them qualified as
wealthy either. Their relative material comfort had a profound and positive impact on
everything from the organized activities they were offered, to the food they had available,
to the institutions that provided them with good educations and comparatively good
health care. As Mona Gleason reminds us, government surveys reveal that roughly
twenty per cent of Canadian children live in poverty despite our ability to place highly in
the U.N. rankings of the ‘best countries in the world’ to live.4 It is a highly problematic
issue that all of us need to address, whether we live in city centres, the suburbs, smaller
towns, or the countryside.
Suburban living has become the definitive housing choice for the majority of
North Americans since the end of World War II.5 Despite some drawbacks, millions of
people choose to live in suburbia, in its many forms. Additionally, by the postwar period,
2
While children and adolescents possess agency, we know that forces and influences operate on their lives,
and that many of these forces, be they state, institutional, familial, cultural and social, were beyond young
people’s controls.
3
I don’t intend to be flippant here, but I found no evidence of any of these working-class or middle-class
young people wanting for the necessities.
4
Mona Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 143; Laurie
Monsebraaten, “Child Poverty Rates in Canada, Ontario Remain High,” Toronto Star, 25 November 2013.
5
Richard Harris, Creeping Conformity: How Canada Became Suburban, 1900-1960 (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2004), 6, 15; Mark Clapson, Suburban Century: Social Change and Urban Growth in
England and the United States (New York: Berg, 2003), 9, 10; Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue, The
New Suburban History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 1-2.
339
being young had begun to be seen as a desirable and powerful figure, with the numbers of
young baby boomers being an important contributor to this representation. I have argued
that children and adolescents had experiences unique to the suburban spaces in which
they lived. Space and place had a profound influence on childhood experiences in the
postwar suburbs and these young people also helped to shape their suburban landscapes.
Focusing on Banff Trail allowed me to offer a detailed analysis of suburban lives and to
provide depth that a multi-community study would not have allowed. Important studies,
from various times, based nearly exclusively in central Canada, provided key
comparative contexts for my research and allowed me to make linkages to other
experiences and influences. This study has expanded on these place-based studies by
concentrating on postwar Calgary.
The large majority of these postwar young people, from ages five through 19,
went to school, played, explored, discovered, and observed in more similar than
dissimilar ways. While there was no single experience for Canadian children during the
postwar era, more was shared than was not. But nuance is necessary in listening carefully
to the voices of siblings who grew up in the same house, and at times, even shared a
bedroom for several years; it is revealing how different the reminiscences and memories
of their childhood years were, despite their experiences being quite similar on many
levels.
This dissertation has reinforced the maxim that what defines childhood and
adolescence is more a matter of human actions and choice, or in other words, a cultural
versus biological necessity.6 While there can be no universal childhood or child, the
6
Joy Parr, ed., Childhood and Family in Canadian History (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1982), 7-8;
Neil Sutherland, Growing Up: Childhood in English Canada From the Great War to the Age of Television
340
position that some form of childhood has marked all cultures across the globe for
millennia, is undeniable. Adolescence is a relatively recent age category in the constructs
of children’s and adolescents’ development, and it varies most obviously over place and
time. In fact, adolescence is not acknowledged or ritualized in many cultures around the
world.7 While adolescence is most often constructed in the West, and particularly in
North America, it also has a biological basis as a time of nascent sexuality and many
associated physical changes.8 It is also a time for establishing an identity, and as
evidenced by the findings of this dissertation, a time for some to ally with peers in
questioning and resisting conventional social norms.9 Throughout my research, there
have been instances when adolescence seemed not much more than a continuation of
childhood, while in other ways, there were profound changes in the lives of several
adolescents as they aged and matured.
Childhood memory and nostalgia are often linked to place, and for most young
people, the family home serves as an anchor for memories associated with these early
years. Childhood spaces and places had a significant influence on shaping the lives of
children and adolescents, both individually and collectively. There have been all kinds of
examples of this. For most young people, where they lived was critical to developing a
sense of identity, with homescapes having a profound effect on them, both at the time,
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), x; Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American
Childhood (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2004), 2; Joseph E Illick, American Childhoods (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), ix-x; Cynthia Comacchio, The Dominion of Youth (Waterloo:
Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2006), 211-212; Peter N. Stearns, Childhood in World History (New York: Routledge,
2006), 1-4; Howard P. Chudacoff, Children at Play: An American History (New York: New York UP,
2007), 18, 69.
7
Michael Zuckerman, “The Paradox of American Adolescence,” The Journal of the History of Childhood
and Youth 4, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 13.
8
The timeframe for these physical changes is not static though as puberty, especially among girls, has been
arriving three or four years earlier in recent years, relative to just a few decades ago.
9
Zuckerman, “The Paradox of American Adolescence,” 13. For further reading see Comacchio, The
Dominion of Youth, 1-5.
341
and as they aged as adults. As many informants and several young people discussed in
the archival record, their suburban childhoods were not perceived to be alienating and
unfulfilling. Instead, these years were marked by discovery, freedom or occasionally,
danger. The postwar suburban space, especially in its infancy, offered much more than
calm serenity. We have also seen that postwar suburbia has been imagined and reimagined continually in the decades since, by residents, guests, casual observers, and
determined critics. It has served as a site of countless promises (realized and unfulfilled),
hopes, and for some, fantasies.10
The oral histories, which provided so much information related to all the major
themes in the dissertation, especially the themes of space and place, also yielded a level
of candour that I had not anticipated. Like other oral history practitioners, I am cognizant
of the fact that memories likely contain multiple histories, and have been reconstituted on
more than one occasion. Much of what informants told me was positive, and ultimately, a
narrative was constructed by using a snowballing technique based on grounded theory.
The overwhelming majority of interviewees were articulate, educated and proud of their
childhoods and teenage years. It was an enthusiastic group, many of whom were shaped
by a relatively positive experience in postwar suburbia. While some negative and violent
aspects of everyday lives were mentioned, the oral history participants were able to
exercise the ability to choose what they shared. They possessed a degree of agency as
research participants, even if the balance of power resided with me as the researcher.11
10
See Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000 (New York:
Pantheon, 2003), 3. She also adds that the suburbs across many time periods have been the landscape of the
imagination for many Americans and all of this applies equally to Canadians.
11
Valerie Raleigh Yow, Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2nd
edition (Walnut Creek: Altamira, 2005); Studs Terkel, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day
And How They Feel About What They Do (New York: New Press, 1997); Joan Sangster, “Telling Our
Stories: Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History,” Women’s History Review 3, no. 1 (1994): 5-28;
342
We must remain mindful of the fact that orality also infuses the texture of the
‘official’ written record.12 Meeting minutes and first-hand accounts of events, even when
written and recorded, are inherently oral. This reinforces our importance as historians as
interpreter, critic and compiler of knowledge. In the broadest context, informants’
personal stories have shone a light on the collective material culture produced by postwar
young people.13 Textual sources, particularly those created by parents, administrators,
educationists, professionals and volunteers, demonstrated time and time again, that
children and adolescents needed to be monitored, regulated and moulded into industrious,
conscientious, efficient, positive, productive, and law-abiding citizens. Yet, the material
culture that young people produced, and what many informants emphasized throughout
our conversations, was that they had the ability to negotiate with these important
influences. While this agency should not be conflated with power, it did result in them
being something much more than passive receptacles, incapable of responding to a world
dominated by adult cultures. It was the adults within their own suburban community who
had the greatest influence on their young lives. A deep sense of community, imagined or
romanticized in some ways now, was rooted in place in the postwar era for youngsters.
Homespace was critical in that bedrooms served as an important separator between
childhood and adolescence as teenagers increasingly had their own rooms by the late
1960s,14 whereas young children often shared bedroom spaces, even across gender lines.
Michael Frisch, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (New
York: State University of New York, 1990).
12
Alessandro Portelli, The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories (New York: State University of New
York, 1991), 5.
13
For further reading on the use of oral history in a similar context see Joan Sangster, “Telling Our Stories:
Feminist Debates and the Use of Oral History,” Women’s History Review 3, no. 1 (1994): 5-28.
14
For a very good exploration of teenage bedrooms in the postwar era in an American context see Jason
Reid, “‘My Room, Private! Keep Out! This Means You!’: Brief Overview of the Emergence of the
343
This was important for teens in that it helped to shape their identity as something more
than a child, if not yet full members in adulthood.
Beyond the home, postwar students spent countless hours in schools. At times,
particularly as adolescents, young people spent more of their waking hours in school than
in their family homes. We have seen that the classroom experience reflected and refracted
the ever-present adult threats of the 1950s and 1960s, and in particular, the Cold War. It
is clear that not only the Cold War and its effects, but both World Wars continued to
influence young lives through stories, images, and representation. From the perspectives
of childhood and adolescence, the fifties and sixties were ‘postwar’ in name only to
suburban young people.
Even though young people may not have been aware of it, social class remains the
most important determiner in their everyday lives. While ‘race,’ gender, and ethnicity
cannot be discounted as important influences, class is invariably linked to health and
healthcare, family status, education, work, and sports and recreation activities in
childhood across all temporal periods.15 Class also shaped childrearing practices and the
amount of time that children and adolescents were able to spend with their parents. There
was a degree of homogeneity that led to many young people not recognizing class; class
lines were blurred culturally in that middle-class and working-class young people
attended the same schools, played similar sports, engaged in the same activities and had
comparatively similar homes in the suburbs. While the structural relations of class may
be a social reality, how we view or interpret them, if at all as children, differs given the
historical context; a certain sensibility about the importance of class may be ideologically
Autonomous Teen Bedroom in Post-World War II America,” Journal of the History of Childhood and
Youth 5, no. 3 (2012): 419-39.
15
Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge: Belknap, 2004), ix.
344
obscured or glossed over for many reasons. Much like the focus on ‘race’ should not be
only on people of colour, attention to class does not simply mean focusing on workingclass children. We need to understand the complex relations of class in all levels of
society, both as a structural reality and how people did – or did not – interpret their
relations with other classes. Ultimately, these young suburbanites lived comparatively
healthy, safe and comfortable post-World War II lives.
Although there was increasing leisure time in the fifties and sixties, suburban
children and adolescents were also working. While some interviewees were indifferent to
the paid and unpaid work they did as children and adolescents, much of it at home, many
of them explored how their work contributed to their changing sense of identity as
adolescents. It was not a carefree childhood or adolescence, but young lives were no
longer defined mainly by long working hours, regardless of place of residence.
Neither children nor adolescents seemed aware of the privilege associated with
the “whiteness” that marked Banff Trail as it did many postwar Canadian suburbs. ‘Race’
was a rare topic of conversation in the fifties among young people, although by the late
1960s, it was discussed increasingly, mainly in the context of the Civil Rights Movement
in the United States. In the 1960s, nearly 70 percent of Calgarians identified their ethnic
origins as either British or German.16 This has changed greatly in Calgary in that in 2011,
337,425 people were visible minorities, and made up almost 28.1 percent of the total
population.17 This reflects a similar change in major urban centres across Canada.
Both class and gender helped to shape both childhood and adolescence in terms of
leisure, recreation and play. While sport and recreation were important elements in the
16
Census of Canada, 1961.
“Ethnic Diversity in Canada,” on Live in Calgary website.
http://www.liveincalgary.com/overview/calgary-facts/demographics/ethnic-diversity
17
345
lives of countless children and adolescents, it was not the case for all. This is where an
important distinction between childhood and adolescence can be made as most children
had limited say in what organized activities they undertook, while adolescents were
allowed to express their hopes and desires to a much greater degree. Childhood play, in
its many forms, remains the key way that children express themselves individually and
through their childhood cultures. Activities were increasingly organized and formalized,
despite informants discussing how much they enjoyed leisure time that they, and not
adults, organized as children. Despite the fact that the postwar suburban experience was
often characterized as sterile and planned, a majority of young people seemed to find
both the spaces and time to enjoy free time and roam their suburban space and larger
Calgary areas, both on foot, bicycles, and later, if they had the means, in their own cars or
ones they borrowed from their parents.18
Boyhood and girlhood experiences and representations are quite distinct
throughout this era. This reflects idealized postwar adult gender roles that promoted
women as passive, inactive and working inside in the home. The idealized suburban
father was active, outdoors, action-oriented and the sole breadwinner. Some of this began
to be challenged by people of all ages as the sixties wore on, although these roles
remained dominant throughout the period. Within the context of the advice and
recommendations of influential experts, such as nurses, doctors, psychologists, social
workers and so forth, the health and wellness of young people also came into sharper
focus and took greater hold in institutions such as schools and families by the early
1970s. Class mattered to the health of young people. Their health improved drastically in
18
For further reading on the mobility of teenagers in the post-World War II suburbs see Franca Iacovetta,
“Gossip, Contest, and Power in the Making of Suburban Bad Girls: Toronto, 1945-60,” Canadian
Historical Review 80, no. 4 (Dec 1999): 585-624.
346
this period owing to numerous scientific advances, better access to physicians,
vaccinations, health care, and so forth. The working- and middle-class children and
adolescents in Banff Trail were obvious beneficiaries of these advancements.
Challenge to the belief that children, and in particular, girls, necessarily acquire
greater power or autonomy as they age, and experience an automatic steady progression
of increasing independence, is key to understanding the complex and often untidy shift to
adolescence from childhood. By the end of the 1960s, the topic of sexual education for
teenagers had entered Canadian society’s mainstream flow of information with the tone
of the ‘official’ message changing quite decidedly in terms of its frankness. A very real
shift in pedagogy occurred. However, informal sexual education remained the primary
way that both males and females explored emerging sexualities.
While peaceful and serene domesticity defined the postwar suburban experience
for some observers, this interpretation is too simplistic when viewed from the perspective
of adolescence. While relatively safe, suburban adolescence could also be marked by
crime, delinquency, and at times, disturbing violence. Many young suburbanites felt
secure and comfortable, but for others there was a belief that the world was not the
peaceful place that it was made out to be by older people. Adolescents, and to a lesser
degree, children, resisted and rebelled in several ways in both the postwar suburbs, and in
broader Canadian youth cultures. The social turmoil that defined the late sixties in
Canada had a huge influence in this regard. At times, adolescents were at odds with the
larger world and experimentation with alcohol, illicit recreational drugs and so forth,
became increasingly common, much as it did in adult cultures by the late sixties and early
seventies. It is clear that young people were not cocooned in isolated suburban enclaves,
347
unaware of larger events and issues outside of them. In a related vein, juvenile males
were perpetrators in committing various crimes or delinquency across Calgary and
elsewhere in Canada. This gendered difference has been the case since record keeping
began in Canada, yet there were circumstances when young females were involved in
these activities as well.
It is fascinating to research and write on analytical categories and an era that so
many people claim at least a slice of knowledge about based on their own experiences,
memories and myths that they carry with them. It is exhilarating, humbling and daunting,
all at the same time. My primary task has been to try to better understand postwar
suburbia in Canada through the viewfinder of childhood and adolescence, and explain it
in a meaningful way. The children of that time have begun to grey, yet this era seems to
stand still in time in many ways. So many of us think of it as an idyllic time when
unending hope and prosperity went hand in hand for most. These oversimplifications do
not capture the nuances and subtleties of these times. It was both a complicated and
complex era, enriched by the people of all ages who shaped it. In tracing what some of
our youngest citizens contributed to that history, it became clear that our writing of
history entails tremendous simplification and a compacting of what has gone before us.
Yet, even if we don’t get everything ‘right,’ surely the meanings that have been located
make us better able to understand how we might continue to strive to make society more
equitable in the present, for a life without hope for better times for all, and especially for
our children, is not one that any of us should wish to live.
No study can be exhaustive, and there were several themes and topics that were
merely raised, or not explored to the depth that I would have wished. An entire
348
monograph could be devoted to children’s health and wellness in this era. Mental health
and bullying received cursory treatment, and those topics, in an historical context,
certainly deserve much more attention from academics in the years ahead. With the
obesity and inactivity epidemic that we are dealing with in North America currently,
understanding what was going on in these relatively active times for young people may
provide us with some ideas for a dialogue on what we might be able to return to in order
to help ease the problems associated with the troubling health concerns related to a
sedentary lifestyle. Spirituality and formal religion remained vital to many young lives in
the fifties and sixties despite increasing secularization across North America. More study
needs to be done on these topics through the lens of childhood and adolescence, as
spirituality and religion remain as important forces in many young lives. Many of these
childhood lives extended into the early seventies. The archival record and oral histories
yielded some significant shifts in childhood and adolescence by the early seventies,19 and
in the end, I was unable to explore the seventies in any sustained way as it fell outside the
bounds of this dissertation. That study needs to happen in the context of broader
childhood history. Another fruitful area of study will be linking baby boomer childhoods
to aging. This influential cohort has continued to grab headlines into this new millennium
with the first retirees from that group now approaching their early seventies. The boomers
will once again need society’s help in very real ways, and understanding their life courses
in a more meaningful way will help all of us as we navigate our lives. Finally, more
trans-national studies of suburbia and its intersections with young people are needed.
While I was able to link the American experience to Calgary and Canada to an extent,
19
Doris Anderson, “If the Family’s So Great, Help It,” Chatelaine, vol 43, Feb 1970.
349
Asia and Europe could provide some relevant material, as the suburbs are an important
part of many young lives on those continents.
The influential urbanist Jane Jacobs had so much right when she spoke about the
importance of community and neighbourhoods and their abilities to influence positive
change in resisting the worst aspects of unchecked ‘progress’ in the 1950s and the early
1960s. Contrary to what some will try to convince us of, people do care about other
people, particularly when relationships are personalized and we feel we have a vested
interest in each other’s lives. I believe that one of the best measures of a community, of
any size, is how it treats its youngest, most vulnerable, and wisest members who usually
happen to be the most aged.
If we are not young now, we once were. This undeniable fact cannot and should
not be forgotten or discounted. Young people offer hope and promise. They represent an
ongoing state of becoming. We are all richer if they are valued, respected and consulted
as important members of compassionate and caring social groupings in Canadian society
that seek to erase the acute inequalities that continue to plague us in so many ways in
2014.
350
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APPENDIX 1
Interview Questions for Research Participants
In which community did you grow up?
Please describe your neighbourhood/community as you remember it from your
childhood. Do you think this view has changed over time?
Please describe both the exterior and interior of your home.
Can you describe your room to me? Did you share it with any siblings?
Was your suburban home your first home? If not do you remember other places of
residence before? Did you move elsewhere afterwards? If yes, where?
Where did you attend school as a child? What do you remember the most about your
years in school?
What school-related activities did you participate in as a child and youth?
When, if at all, do you remember breaking the rules in any setting whether it was at
home, in school, in the streets or anywhere else?
Did your parents/guardians work outside the home? If so, what did they do?
How was housework handled in your home?
Did you do any paid work as a child or youth? What did you do with earned wages?
When did you start working? How did you find this work?
Did you travel to do this work? If yes, how did you do this?
What kind of work did you engage in, inside your home? Did you have regular tasks?
Were they recognized or rewarded in any way?
Do you recall your siblings or friends working both outside and/or inside the home?
What did they do?
Can you talk about how your family, and in particular your parents, shaped your
childhood?
How did your friends and siblings contribute to this as well?
376
Do you feel that your parents, siblings, or friends had the most influence on your
childhood or youth? How was the influence exercised?
What sports, recreational and leisure activities did you, siblings, or friends engage in?
Did these activities take place in your community in which you lived or elsewhere?
Were the roles of boys and girls topics of discussion at home, at school and in
popular culture? When and where did you first experience sex education?
Do you recall discussing these topics with friends, siblings, parents, or teachers?
What did you enjoy doing in your spare time? Do you remember participating in any
specific evening or nighttime activities?
Was there a diversity of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ in your neighbourhood? How about in
the larger city? As a child/youth do you remember how ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ were
defined and by whom or what institutions?
Do you recall discussing the Great Depression as a child and/or youth? With whom
and where did you have these discussions?
What do you recall about World War II and how it impacted your childhood? Do you
recall discussing it during this time?
What did the terms Soviet Union, A-Bomb and communism mean to you, if anything
at all, as a child and/or youth?
Did you spend any time shopping in Calgary? Where did you do this and who did
you go with?
How was your health as a child? Do you recall being injured or sick? Can you
remember how you felt about injury and/or sickness as a child and/or as a youth?
How would you describe the health of other family members, friends, and
community members during your childhood?
Do you remember discussing health, diet, weight and exercise as a child? Where and
with whom did you discuss this?
Did you spend time in the streets of your community, in the parks, or in nearby
spaces?
How did you perceive your community and other community members as a child?
How would you characterize them from an adult perspective?
377
Have you ever lived in a suburban community since leaving your childhood? If you
have, how would you describe your suburban home?
Do you recall any negative aspects of your childhood experiences? What was your
favourite part of your childhood?
378
APPENDIX 2
379
APPENDIX 3