Bea shares childhood memories from 1930s and 40s

By Joan Janzen

A long-time Kindersley area resident shared her stories about growing up near Beadle, Saskatchewan. Bea Cooke celebrated her 90th birthday last month at Caleb Village, which became her new home on Easter weekend of this year. There, she finds herself surrounded by a family of familiar faces and enjoys the camaraderie amongst friends.

Bea Cooke, who resides at Caleb Village, shared her childhood memories of growing up near Beadle in the 1930s and 40s. Photo by Joan Janzen

On August 7, 1934, Bea Cooke (nee Shea) was born at the old Kindersley Hospital, which was located behind the present Bank of Nova Scotia. She grew up on a farm a few miles south of Beadle with her two brothers and two sisters.

The children walked a mile and a half across two pastures to Mylrea School, a one-room school for grades 1-12. At its peak attendance, Bea estimated there were 27 students.

The school was equipped with a pot belly stove indoors and outdoor toilets. “Whoever did the janitorial work made sure there was a clear path through the snow to the outhouse,” she said. She also remembered the local doctor visiting the school to give the children their immunization shots.

“I loved sports!” Bea recalled. “I got a lot of ribbons from track and field day. I competed against the older kids, and I would beat them.”

Her brothers played hockey with other local boys at a pond on their family’s property. “Sometimes the girls would be on bob skates and play as well,” she said.

The kids would toboggan down the hills surrounding the pond. “We’d pour water down the hill to make it slippery,” Bea said. Her dad used his blacksmith skills to transform an old car fender into a toboggan, which his children enjoyed. “And our German Shepherd would pull us back up the hill,” she added.

“Dad made us skis out of wood and built a ski jump. Now, people wouldn’t believe it,” she fondly recalled. During the summer months, the pond became a swimming pool, and her dad made a ball diamond where all the kids played softball.

Bea was old enough to remember the years of drought, wind and dust. “I remember going down into the cellar when it got really windy,” she recalled. Their farm home was on the top of a hill and an open target for the wind and dust.

The house had very little insulation, so it was a big job to keep it warm and haul coal for the pot belly stove. The coal arrived on the railroad at Beadle, where the family picked it up with horse and wagon. Two kerosene lamps provided indoor light.

The 1930s was a devastating time. “Nobody knows what poor was until you lived in the 1930s. A lot of people didn’t have anything, and we didn’t waste anything either,” she recalled. “At Christmas, we got one gift, and we were lucky to get that. Sometimes it was homemade, sometimes it was from the catalogue.”

Fortunately, the family’s large garden and farm animals provided all the food they needed. “We would take a load of wheat to the elevator and wait a week, and it would come back made into flour,” she said.

Bea’s four uncles served in WWII, and she vividly recalls the day her parents received a telegram informing them that her mom’s brother had been killed while walking on a land mine.

On Saturday evenings, her family gathered around the radio to listen to the news and old-time music. To make this possible, her dad took the battery out of the family car and hooked it up to the radio. After they were done listening, he put the battery back in the car.

“My grandparents lived with us,” Bea said, referring to her dad’s parents. “My mom’s parents lived at Springwater, near Herschel.” It was a huge family outing when they would pay them a visit, pick Saskatoons and stay overnight.

Besides their Springwater trips, the family didn’t venture very far from home. Beadle was the closest shopping area. At that time, it had a grocery store, lumber yard, gas station and post office.

“In the early 1940s, we had a car, and we’d go to Kindersley Saturday nights,” she said. “We’d make butter in one-pound packages and sell it to the grocery store in Kindersley.” Bea and her siblings were excited about buying five candies for a penny.

During that time period, a park was located where the former Peavey Mart building now stands. The park included a cenotaph, tennis courts, and a bandstand surrounded by benches, where families could enjoy a picnic lunch.

Bea took grades 9 to 11 at Kindersley High School and boarded in town. Due to lower attendance, Mylrea School no longer taught Grades 9-12.

“When I was a teenager, I worked for a neighbour in the summer for $1 a day,” she said. There, she was required to do many household chores, including scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees.

Bea and her husband Ray got married in the early 1950s at the Anglican Church in Kindersley. It had rained on their wedding day, so wooden planks were placed along the entrance to the church to protect the guests from the muddy streets. There was no pavement at that time.

There was also construction along Highway 7. “When we left after the wedding, we got as far as Hanna because we had taken detours all the way, and it was muddy,” she said. The newlyweds were pulling a small trailer behind their car, which is where they spent their wedding night.

The couple took over the family farm located three miles east and a half mile north of Netherhill. They worked hard, but they also travelled extensively to Mexico, Arizona and California.

Bea’s husband passed away more than twenty years ago; however, she enjoys receiving visits from her son, two grandsons, and five great-grandchildren. During her past few months spent at Caleb, she observed, “It’s a happy family here.”

As for her many childhood memories, she concluded, “If kids went through half of what we did, they would never make it.”

Thanks for sharing all your memories with us, Bea. It was like taking a journey back in time.