Child's World around the Mill Creek Ravine, 1940s and 1950s, by Jean Crozier

The house my parents bought in the early 1940’s was on 77th Avenue between 89th and 91st Streets. The city’s utilities went no farther east or south then, and neither did the bus lines. When my older sister and I reached school age, we were enrolled at Ritchie School for our first grades, then we transferred to Mill Creek School. Both of those schools were on the west side of the ravine, quite a distance from our house on the east side.


Sometimes, on the coldest winter days, we took the bus (tickets were thirteen for a dollar). Occasionally, after our father had poured boiling water into his car’s radiator and cranked the engine, he would say, “If you’re ready in five minutes, I’ll drive you to school.” What a rare treat, to be delivered right to the school yard. But we usually walked the mile or so, down through the Mill Creek Ravine and up the other side.


We would first walk a short distance to 91st Street, then head down the wooden stairs into the valley. The first flight of stairs ended at the flat part in the middle of what seemed, to my six-year-old eyes, to be a forest. A few steps further along took us to another flight down to the railroad tracks. A path led the rest of the way down to the sidewalk bordering 76th Avenue, the road that went through the ravine and up the other side.Sometimes we took a shortcut. From the bottom of the first stair flight, a path led through the trees, and angled westwards to the railroad tracks. It was cool in the woods, and full of forest scents. White poison-berry bushes grew along the path, along with pink-flowered wild roses. If we had time, and were lucky, we found wild strawberries or hazelnuts before the birds or squirrels got them.


Hidden in the woods, somewhere close to the path, lay the grave of our neighbour’s beloved dog. When it died, its owners buried it in the forest hillside below their house. My six-year-old self knew that the dog’s ghost lived among the trees, and that someday it would find me. It lurked behind the trees or under the leaves, waiting till I was there on the path all alone. Every day that I travelled that shortcut, my arms and legs goosebumped with the forest’s shadows and crackles.


The Edmonton Yukon and Pacific trains travelled the track beside 76th Avenue, several times a day until the late 1940’s or early 1950’s. The steam-driven freight trains carried bellowing cattle to the Gainer’s plant on the west side of the valley, and other goods for delivery elsewhere. A wooden trestle had been built just north of the road, to carry the train across the creek. There was an extension about halfway along, big enough to hold two barrels of water. And a couple of little girls, in case of emergency. The trestle seemed endless. In fact, it might be 100 yards long! My sister never wanted to take the easy way, by crossing the tracks and walking along the sidewalk. She wanted to walk the trestle. And she insisted that I walk with her. “Oh, come on,” she’d say, leading our steps onto the heavy, oil-soaked railway ties. “Don’t be such a ’fraidy-cat.”She loved to look down between the ties, to see the water in the creek below. I knew that the train would come along soon. For sure, my foot would slip and I’d fall between the spaces of the ties (they were at least two inches apart) to the creek below. It never did, of course.


Although 76th Avenue had been asphalted, the sidewalks were wooden boards, 1 x 6’s nailed securely to sunken 2 x 8’s. After a rain, both the road and the sidewalk became slippery with mud, garter snakes and earthworms. The worms were big, elongated, washed out things, stretched way beyond their elastic limits. Ugly, ugly, ugly. “Oh, look,” teased my sister, “there’s one that’s really squished. Look, it’s still wiggling. I’ll pick it up so you can see it.” As she shoved it at me, the thought of the horrible, cold, grey thing close to my face was just too awful. “Leave it alone, I don’t want to see it,” I shouted in revulsion, and raced toward home, knowing that she could easily catch me if she wanted to.


On the western side of the 76th Avenue hill, and just a block north, was a stable where Shetland ponies could be rented by the hour. Most of the ponies were shaggy, nasty-tempered creatures, that tried to bite their inexperienced riders. My sister loved riding, and sometimes persuaded me to go with her.


“We’ll go to the stable on the way home today,” she’d pronounce after we left home in the morning. “I took some of my allowance out of the piggy bank.”


And so we’d buy a half-hour’s time, and try to get the stubborn beasts to leave their yard, even for a few minutes’ walk along the paths that edged the ravine. They preferred to stay home, where there was always a bit of hay to nibble on.


When it was really cold in the winter, we caught the bus a block from school, and rode it east along 76th Avenue to the bus turn-around on 89 Street. From there, we only had a block to walk home. We passed Whyte’s Confectionary where sometimes we bought bacon (“Slice it very thin please, Mrs. Whyte, my mother likes it that way”), ice cream by the scoop (“I’ll have six scoops today, please, we have a visitor”), and vinegar out of the barrel (“I didn’t let any of the ‘mother’ go into the bottle,” Tommy Whyte said). Past the house where the Hales kids lived (they’d made my mother really angry one summer when they ate the peas she’d left to dry on the screen on the front porch). Past the house where the Woodman’s lived -- they had a piece of marble right in the counter-top, so she could make good pasty (that’s what my mother said). Past Myler’s house where the big black dog lived, the one that barked ferociously and whacked us with his thick, wagging tail. Past the house where the kids who’d got diphtheria lived (they were very sick, but they did recover). There was our house, stucco with a front porch and white pillars, surrounded by a caragana hedge. The welcoming scent of freshly-baked bread drew us quickly inside.