Royal Visit, 1939, "To See the Queen." A teacher raises $26 to take students to parade, story by Beatrice Daily Huser.
A young teacher helps to raise $26 to take thirteen students to watch the King and Queen pass by during the Royal Visit.
Date: 1939
In 1939 I was an enthusiastic twenty-one year old teaching the one-roomed country school of Millerdale, six miles from Kitscoty. Grades one to either, thirteen pupils, salary $750 per annum.
Early in the year an official letter came: Alberta school children are invited to Edmonton see King George VI and Queen Elizabeth on their official visit to the city in June. So, like the pussy cat in the nursery rhyme, we went to the city to see the Queen.
I called a meeting of parents. Times were very hard; no one had much money. We decided to raise funds by holding a spring concern and bazaar in the school. The children would make items to sell. Parents would donate things newly-made or on hand from home. I volunteered to work through a youth club I’d organized, “The Shooting Starts”, to get concern numbers as well as to train some of my students in song, dialogue and choral speech.
A busy month followed. The children worked like the proverbial beavers. Even the boys learned to embroider, appliqué, knit and sew. The youngsters were very proud of their handiwork; tea towels, aprons, needle books, pot holders, etc. The play our youth group put on was hilarious. At one point, I had to whack an over-zealous suitor over the shoulders with an umbrella. On concert night he brought the house down with his antics. (No one dreamed that within a year he would march off to W.W. II and never return).
Our money raising venture was a success. We cleared $26, enough to pay the train fares of the eleven pupils who were making the trip, nine of my students in grades four to eight and two grade ten girls who were to help me care for the younger ones.
In the early dawn of June 2, I walked over the cold grass to meet a farmer parent who was taking his own two daughters to Kitscoty to catch the 5:30 a.m. train. Excitement ran high. For most of the children, it was their first train ride, their first trip to the city. Five hours and we arrived in Edmonton.
I had the day planned. We’d all packed ample lunches. With my charges clutching these, I boarded them onto a streetcar bound for the south side. We disembarked at Riverside Park (now called Queen Elizabeth) and found a picnic spot under the big trees. One exuberant eleven year old flung his arms as far as he could reach around a stately spruce.
“Now I know what you mean by a tree, Miss Daily!” he cried.
Lunch over, we climbed the hill, walked across the High Level Bridge, then toured the Legislative Building. The afternoon was passing; streetcars would soon not be allowed near the parade route. We caught the last one to Portage Avenue (now Kinsgway).
It was a gala scene. Hue crowds, many of them school children, filled the avenue, moving slowly to the bleachers to which they’d been assigned. Officials handed out Union Jacks. Policemen and Boy Scouts took their places along the route. Schools identified themselves with special yells. Finally the first car came into view. The air grew tense with expectation.
“Here they come!”
Flags fluttered wildly. Crowds rose to their feet and cheered as the black limousine rolled slowly past. The handsome, uniformed King George VI saluted. Elizabeth, his regal, beautiful, serene Queen, smiled and waved. Then they were gone.
We moved with the crowd back to 101 street, went window shopping in the downtown area, had supper in a little restaurant. Then we cause the train for the long ride back home in the night.
At school, we did a follow-up of oral and written reports, discussions and drawings. I was delighted to see how much the children had assimilated in the one never-to-be-forgotten day. As they watched, on television, the crowds cheer the Queen Mum on her 100th birthday, and again this year as her flat-draped hearse rolled slowly along London streets. I’m sure my eleven thought of that long-ago day when their world – and their Queen – was young.