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A collection plate predicament!

By Ilien Coffey – Vernon, B.C. I hurried down from my second floor apartment to catch the bus to get to Sunday church about a mile away. I was wearing my brand new shoes with stiletto [more…]

Dusty old game finds new life

By Hilda Zaiser – Winnipeg, Man. During a fleeting moment of ambition, I decided to create some order in my messy storage room. As I was tidying the shelves, I came across my old Scrabble game. Although [more…]

Kids were designated wartime smugglers

By Mickey (Larson) Lightfoot – Mississauga, Ont. My early years were spent in a tiny village called Northgate, south of Oxbow, Sask., on the border of North Dakota. A bigger town, also named Northgate, was [more…]

Sulfur was used to hide smell of homebrew hooch

By Emil Eirich – Saskatoon, Sask. Stories in The Senior Paper about homebrew reminded me about my father, Dave, and my Uncle Gust making their own homebrew. This would have taken place in the early 1940s [more…]

Depression-era journey was an adventure

By John Seierstad – Nanaimo, B.C. My life was filled with hard work, travel, and adventure, however, none can remotely match the experience of travelling to the north with my father when we left the [more…]

Dozing chap woke up going where?!

By John Moyles – Regina, Sask. Air travel in the 1950s was much different than it is today. Aircraft were smaller, passenger numbers were less, and there was still a feeling of adventure and novelty in [more…]

Will Christmas cards be a thing of the past?

By Hilda Zaiser – Winnipeg, Man. Over the last few years, I’ve noticed a definite decline in the sending of Christmas cards. Many people have stopped sending cards altogether. Some prefer email. That’s understandable considering it’s [more…]

Calm day turned into brutal snowstorm

By Michael Bartolf – Oxbow, Sask. Recent weather events in the news has my memory drift back to a big storm we had in March 1947 at Oxbow, Sask. It started on a beautiful, warm [more…]

Hauling mail led to lucrative side business

By Harold Thom – Nakusp, B.C. We were living at Candle Lake, Sask., north of Prince Albert, during the cold winter of 1946-47. Deep snowdrifts blocked the road between the lake and Meath Park, the nearest town. [more…]

Her first time away from home was tough

By Gladys McCarthy – Tisdale, Sask. I’ve always loved to hear the words “home for Christmas,” whether in a song or even an advertisement. I remember so well the first Christmas I couldn’t be home [more…]

Not all her Christmases were happy

By Maisie Burton – Kipling, Sask. Christmas always brings back memories of when I was a child growing up on the farm with my mother, dad, and several brothers and sisters. Preparation for Christmas always [more…]

Most special evening was January 6th

By Naden Hewko – Macklin, Sask. We knew Christmas was coming when the teacher at our Paynton, Sask., school started to prepare us for the annual concert. The brick school had four classrooms, two on the [more…]

Train crew caught in massive snowstorm

By George Rose – Calgary, Alta. Six months after joining the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) at Medicine Hat as a wiper cleaning train engines, I was a student fireman travelling from there to Swift Current, [more…]

The Senior Paper brings people together!

From Dorothy McLeod – Saskatoon, Sask. After my story “Harrowing trip sadly ended in tragedy” appeared in the in June 2012 issue of The Senior Paper, I had calls from Brandon, Man., Westbank and Kelowna, [more…]

Looking back in time!

Harvesttime in the early 1950s. (Top) Ernest Oddan is pictured on the binder and Leonard Oddan is on the homemade tractor. Raymond Oddan did most of the work building it, while brothers, Lawrence, Edward, Ernest, and [more…]

Doll was not meant to be cuddled

By Gusty Chartrand – Regina, Sask. I had an Eaton’s beauty doll. Mine was tall, about 12 or 14-inches. All her joints were movable: hips, knees, elbows, and hands. If you placed her legs just so, [more…]

‘I observed enemy aircraft in the area’

By Robert Hislop – Shellbrook, Sask. I joined the army, light infantry, in Saskatoon on Nov. 18, 1941. I was Private L3017. I took basic training in Saskatoon and Jolliette, Quebec. I celebrated my 21st birthday [more…]

Excerpts from a soldier’s correspondence

By Ethel (Spillett) Anderson – Calgary, Alta. The following are excerpts from letters and diaries written by my father, Sgt. E.J. Spillett, 46th Canadian Infantry Battalion (South Saskatchewan) during WWI. The memoirs were written while on [more…]

Spent most of his war service aboard destroyers

By Tom Newcomb – Kamloops, B.C. As a boy growing up on a farm in the Ridgedale, Sask. area, I’d planned on making the navy my lifetime career. I joined at age 17. As a boy [more…]

Bombed hotels had not windows or doors

By William Ruf – Prairie View, Sask. I was 21 years old when called to the army on April 17, 1941. I reported in Regina to the Regina Rifle Regiment and then went to Calgary [more…]