Our club, Childhood memoir, 1944, by Alex Latta

Date: 1944

The summer of 1944 was largely uneventful until a few of us neighborhood kids decided to form a "club". The first requirement was to have a meeting place, so we proceeded to build a small shack on the side of a hill below our house at 91st Street and Jasper Avenue.

It was far from elaborate, being about six feet square, with barely headroom. It consisted of many four CM sapling, which we attached to similar upright posts. We dug into the hill to form a back to the shack, and covered the roof with sod to cover the gaps, and thus keep the rain out. During construction, a young neighbor named Maurice Lavoie, who wanted desperately to join our club, bothered us. He was not in our age group, so we ignored him.

Shortly after completing the shell of our cabin, summer holidays intervened, and several of us went away for a couple of weeks. Upon our return, we found that a forest of poison nettles had invaded our shack, including the sod roof. About this time Maurice, asking to join our club, approached us again. Well, the time was right (or wrong) for Maurice. We told him he could join if he cleaned all the "weeds" out of our shack, including the roof. He was diligent to the task and did a good job.

Maurice's father was a member of the RCMP, and after returning home after work, he promptly marched in full uniform over to my house, which was next door. Apparently, Maurice was unrecognizable, and itched over his whole body. The nettles ravaged his bare legs, arms, and face. Needless to say, I was reprimanded severely (between chortles), and spent most of summer confined to the house.

Maurice didn't want to be a member of our club anymore.