The Day I Grew Up: An Edmonton family memoir, by Sheila McKay

Date: 1915 to 1954

Summer school started September 1953. Things had changed. Most of us had full-time jobs all summer. The gang of girls had gone their separate ways. No more skating at the Edmonton Gardens on Sundays with the girls going clockwise and boys going counter-clockwise so we could see and bee seen. All the while pretending that wasn't what we were doing. We even stopped at the Golden Spike to have our teacups read. 3-D movies were in but you see one, you've seen them all. My Saturday job at Eaton's started in notions but I was moved to men's underwear. Most of my top sales were to farmers from Mundare and Vegreville getting their winter long johns. I could say dusha dobri (phonetically). I thought it meant very good but they would get excited and take four pairs. Every Saturday they would come and see me with their friends and buy more. T. Eaton Co. gave me sales person of the day awards but no bonuses. Still $1 per hour with a half hour lunch. All my life our recreation in summer was quarantined because of polio. We couldn't go to movies, swimming or crowded places. In October Edmonton was hit with a massive outbreak. This was before polio vaccines or antibiotics. Children and adults especially old people died of measles, rheumatic fever, typhoid and pneumonia. Polio decimated Edmonton. Our isolation hospital was overcrowded and extra iron lungs the size of two barrels had to be flown in for those paralysed and unable to breathe. My poor Mom had five other people to look after including two young brothers. She was the best nurse I ever knew. Her Mother, Granny Wards was a Nurse/Midwife who delivered many babies in southeast Edmonton in 1915 onward. She nursed people during the flood in Cloverdale in 1915 when her house had water in the attic. Granny had also nursed all the people during the terrible flu epidemic of 1918. Through sickness and death and helping widows and children survive with no breadwinner. Granny was an excellent nurse. Granddad Wards built a lean-to on the back of the house so Granny could wash, change clothes, and wash her work clothes. No one in the family got the flu. She taught my mother well. Mom put me in isolation from the others. She boiled my dishes and washed my clothes in disinfectant and outside to freeze germs. She read Sister Kenny's treatment for polio and wrapped my shrivelling limbs in hot water wrung-out strips of wool blankets. My strong athlete's body didn't have a chance. I couldn't walk for eight months. My Mom kept me going by telling me to rise above the pain and travel and learn through books. I'm sure I read 200 books and my mom did passive exercises on my shrivelled limbs. On June 1, 1954, it took me over an hour to walk one and a half blacks to Westglen School for the afternoon. I was exhausted. I wrote four of my departmental exams and passed them very well. My friends and I were in different spaces. I had grown up. Good-bye Westglen.


My future plans were bleak. I had wanted to be a Registered Nurse since I was two years old. I brought home every stray animal I could nurse. The doctor didn't think I'd be strong enough. I had to exercise, eat properly and get eight hours sleep every night. No parties or drinking. I finished chemistry and French at Alberta College. I was accepted into the 1955-58 Spring class at the Misericordia Hospital School of Nursing. My first choice (unreadable) But it was worth it.