Edmonton Ski Club, Memoir by Nell Godwin
The Edmonton Ski Club, Canada's first organized ski club, began with ski-jumping then added downhill later. The comraderie and mishaps of the club's history are recalled by Life Member, Ellen B. (Nell) Godwin.
Maybe we could sit and chat and you could tell me a little bit about being born in Edmonton and your family.
I was born and grew up here, I went to [? Mckay] School and [McDougal] Commercial, which no longer exists, that was where Percy Page was Principal. So at the time when I went there were quite a few of [girls from the] Commercial Grads basketball team, [which was] very active, [but] was getting close to the end. It was about 1927, [or] early 1928, [so] some of the well know grads [were] about two years or more older than us and I think probably there weren’t too many more shifts [that] came in after that. I think there were some, [? Bay Belongee] was there, she was about my age and she is gone now. I think most of the girls probably have passed on. I didn’t know the older girls personally though because I played basketball but I was not as fit person for their team, I guess. I played it for my own amusement.
Can you tell me about your parents and if you had any siblings?
No brothers or sisters, my parents came to Canada in the early part of the twentieth century and father came over in about 1908 after quite a long stint in the war in South Africa because he was still quite young then, he was just in his early twenties. He was here about two years and then Mother came over and married him and I was born on the following year. There were no more children, I don’t know why because Mom came from big family herself.
Kind of unusual in those days just to have one child.
Well that’s true, Yes, I’m not sure if there was some physical reason, they never talked about things like that. That was a no no.
Was your family in farming or was your father involved in some other kind of work?
When he first came here he apparently was employed as a Teamster for the Hudson Bay Store, so he was all around the city delivering items purchased at that time. I think it was pretty tough go to the south side and then come back by the way of McDougal hill which was not paved, of course, it was just a clay road and I have heard him say that in bad weather they had a terrible time, the horses had a terrible time trying to pull wagons up the hill, the wagons wheels would go down into the mud and it was very difficult for the horses. In due time, the first world war broke out, Aug 3, 1914 and he being an old soldier, even though he was still young – early thirties – he signed up again. I think in the mean time he had changed jobs and was then working for the Dominion Land office, which was run federally. The land department now belongs to the province it was turned back to the province in about 1930 or 1931 but at that time it was all federal.
There weren’t provinces, were there?
Well yes, the provinces inaugurated in 1905, aren’t we celebrating coming up pretty soon, Edmonton this year and the province the next year?
Yes and that is what a lot of this is all about
He was with the Federal Government until then and of course he signed up immediately and became an active soldier with the 19th Alberta 116 [Dragoons?] to start with but I think once they became active in the war the little regiments amalgamated and he was with the 3rd Canadian Mounted Rifles. He was overseas and my Mother being here alone her family were all overseas, she was rather a shy person, she didn’t have too many friends, she made up her mind that if he was going back overseas to fight she was going to go back home to her people and take me and we left Edmonton in April 1915 and she was able to get a booking on a boat to go back overseas. At that time I think there was some danger of attacks on passenger ships, but we managed to get through safely. However I think I was a bit of a horrendous worry for my Mother at the tender age of three. Being April it was still rather rough weather, big waves. I can recall falling, not being able to walk properly, because a three year old is not terribly stable on their feet. I think I was out on the deck with my mother when I probably lurched away from her, lost my balance like a baby would and rolled, rolled, rolled towards the edge where the railings were and I might of slipped underneath the bars (I think they were quite high because they allowed for water to run out) but some heroic young sailor grabbed me before I disappeared over.
You must have been terrified.
Me, I didn’t know… probably thought it was fun
How long did the trip take?
It took a week to get from Edmonton by CP Rail to Halifax or St John and then another week by boat.
And where is back home?
England. My mother came from Yorkshire and Father came was a Londoner originally but did spend I believe close to four or five years in Africa when the Boer War was on. I am not sure of the exact dates but he was only about twenty-one when he finished and actually he joined up when he about sixteen. They didn’t question young boys and apparently he was a rather stalky young man not a slim kiddish looking so he looked a little bit older than his years and they wanted men.
Did he survive the wars?
Yes he did, while he was overseas he was carrying messages by horseback because he was in the Calvary and while he was riding from one area to carry the message to one the other sections of the troops he was being fired at by the Boer but they didn’t hit him fortunately. However unfortunately being a young fellow his resistance wasn’t very strong and he became very ill with what they call enteric [typhoid]fever, bowel fever, most likely due to water or foods – things were not probably the cleanest and he was probably not the only one – but he was quite sick. I’m not just sure if it was a doctor or whether it was Winston Churchill that was around visiting the troops at that time, I can’t say for sure, it might have been the doctor because he said, when he saw my father ‘you shouldn’t be here, you should home tied to your mother’s apron strings’ because by that time I guess he looked like a skinny kid. But anyway he survived that and when he went through World War II he managed to survive that without anything serious, he dinged the helmet that he was wearing and I had it for a long time. I turned it over to the museum, it had a big dint in it where a piece of shrapnel struck his head, all it did was bang his head and glance off his helmet. Did its toll for taking care of him. By this time he was in where they were bringing up the supplies. He wasn’t in the firing line with the infantry, he was bringing up the food. They had to make sure that the soldiers where fed and that was also done by horses. The poor horses and they got hit too and blown up and it was terrible for them. He managed to survive the four years.
He was in three different wars?
Two. World War II, he was just a bit too old by that time.
So meanwhile you and Mom are in England. How did you meet up after?
Well he met Mother when he came back from South Africa that was when they became friends and then became engaged. His sister was out here and she wanted him to come out and join him, there were two sisters that came out here ahead of him on a program that was used to bring young girls over to Canada as servants with families, families would pay for their fare over and they acted as servants and helped them with the children
Kind of like a nanny.
Right, and they had to pay that back in order to sort of free themselves.
To end the contract.
Then when they were free, one sister, still younger than he was, he was the oldest one, she married a Scotsman over here and by the time my Mother arrived in 1910 the sister and her husband had a three-year-old daughter. She must have been close to three because I think she was three years older than I was. I wasn’t born until 1911 so she must not have quite three at the time that my Mother married to my Father.
When did you move back to Canada, after you and your Mom were in England?
In World War II we came back at the end off ... you see the war ended in November 11, 1918 but the soldiers still had to be brought back from France and they were kept in a camp in England until things were sorted out. Finally my Father was sent back, he wasn’t discharged probably until he got back to Canada. He was able to arrange for Mother and me to travel back at the same time as he came back although we were probably like the war brides of today, we were in a cabin with other ladies and the men were kept by themselves in another section. We traveled together, we were able to eat together, I remember going to see my Dad, knock on the door in the morning see if he was up and going to come to breakfast. By this time I was seven. Just at the end of the war which was November 11, 1918 shortly after that I contracted whooping cough and you know there where no devices to stop you from getting those...
Immunizations...
I had that darn whooping cough right through until April almost until we left England in fact my Mother was having sixteen fits, she thought for sure I would still be quarantined as it were, at least they would quarantine me and we wouldn’t be able to travel with Dad. I seemed to get over it enough and as we were going up the gang plank to get on this big liner there was a doctor sitting there and he would ask questions of the woman and their children and their babies because a lot of them were just war brides which my mother wasn’t and the fact that I was born here I think probably had something to do with it. She did tell him because I was paste faced, so pale and skinny after that whooping cough for all that long, it’s no wonder I didn’t die. That was when they had that influenza but I didn’t get that, some how. Even my mother and her sister, she lived with her married sister during the war and none of them got it either. We were living in York, the city of York. Everybody was getting it, of course I didn’t know much about that anyway. Finally when I got to Canada of course with a change of climate and with a different kind of weather in deed to what it was over there I seemed to quite quickly to get over that and started school in the fall again on McKay Avenue.
When you came back to Canada where did you guys live? Did you stay with family?
Mom and Dad rented a house on 109 street. You see there were more residences between Jasper avenue and 104 avenue, now they were beginning to build warehouses in that district anywhere from 101 street to 109 street but there were still an awful lot of residences right down there. That was the first place that we stayed, then we moved again to 100 avenue after that, I went to McKay school from the beginning. Actually when I came back here, I should not have been… they put me in grade four and I was only… hadn’t turned eight and I think maybe my parents might have been to enthusiastic thinking I had far more back ground than I had and that was very difficult, very difficult. There were lots of things I was a little further ahead than some of the kids here but on the other hand with the arithmetic and stuff like that I was behind. At that point I did know the multiplication tables and things like that but didn’t know how to apply them for dividing.
And problem solving?
Yes and I had an awful lot of trouble with that for a long, long time. But nobody analyzed to find out why [since] I was doing fine with everything else - the literature that we had, music and so forth. They didn’t seem to worry, they just thought you were kind of dumb I guess. Nobody would ask you why maybe you were having this problem. Of course as a child and in those days we were not aware of psychological problems or anything else, nobody told you anything. It was hard, so I lost a lot of ground because of that and it was a struggle all the way through school.
How many years did you go to school?
I went through McKay and through to the business college and then quite often I would go back to school afterwards because I was taking shorthand, typing, you know we married young in those days too, so later on I wanted to get work so I had to go back again and freshen up my stenographic skills.
What year did you get married in?
I got married in 1932
Can you tell me a little about you husband?
I met my husband in McDougal school when I was there. Actually my husband’s friend, Wally, was chumming around with my best friend and I needed a date so Wally introduced me to my husband. Then I discovered that I knew his brother.
What was his name?
Donald
How long was your courtship for?
Lets see I was still in high school, sixteen I was when I first met him and I was twenty-one when we married. A girl at twenty or twenty-one in those days is late. Today kids are seventeen or eighteen. We were really late, we were sheltered more, we weren’t allowed to do this or go there, the idea of going away over night, no way. Even when I was chumming around with Don and we just rode our bikes and did things like that and we were interested in sports, track and field and things like that. His mom and dad had a cottage at Alberta Beach and they invited me to go and stay with them but my mother was not a bit happy about that because she was not used to it and she had not met his parents so she didn’t really know what they were like. They were actually just like my own parents but she didn’t know that because they lived 114 avenue and 88 street and I lived 100 avenue and 105 street in that area, quite along way but it was just a trend of the times. As for going away anything overnight like that and especially with me because I was the only one, it was really tough, I couldn’t go anywhere and I didn’t know anything
So you became educated when you got married
I found out the hard way, yes. It’s just a trend of the times... my daughter is 70 and I have grandchildren that are in their forties.
How many children do you have?
I just have the one girl and she had four children and each of them had two children except for one who had three so I have nine great grand children.
Have you always been a very active lady?
Always, Yes in my teens and even when I was a young married woman, which was not looked upon with a great deal of favor. I was into skating at that time, a lot of speed skating.
Competition skating?
Yes, I never set the world on fire but I did compete in the community league races and some provincial races in Banff for which I got silver medals and bronze. Never got a gold, I always did something like tripping or something and never got the gold. At that time we entered competitions with community leagues [which were] very active before the war and at that point I was in my early to mid twenties and that was just a married woman skating and now you know it doesn’t matter.
What year do think that changed or which decade?
I would say after the war, woman had far more freedom to do things and to say what they felt. Anyway at that time I did do a lot skating and also in the mid thirties I got into skiing. We moved down to Cloverdale and I got started skiing just when skiing was really starting to come in. I got into that right from the beginning when skiing was strictly more cross country equipment but was used for down hill because there was no other type at first, no steel edges...
What kind of boots did you wear?
There was an insert of a steel flat piece about 4 or 5 inches between the heel and the sole, now that was to hold your foot firm, which was fine, remember we are using touring skis We used these boots and we had clothes that were looser and the material was heavier and that would keep you warm and it was fairly serviceable; of course if you fell over and the snow stuck to you it would brush off. The boots were fine for a while but when you went to walk in them, when you’re skiing your heel would come out and eventually through using [the boots] for both downhill, climbing and walking the ski rod would push out through the leather at the bottom because of course it’s sharp. It took quite awhile for it to do that, you might have your boots for a couple of years, and it depended how much skiing you did.
Is there a company that made the boots?
They were suppose to be a ski boot, now I am not sure whether those particular boots were copied from Norwegian boots, it’s possible because you see the jumpers had to have boots and they had to have something that would hold the foot firmly in their bindings. Now the bindings you see were just two bindings in the case of myself I just had a piece of iron that went through the skis and hooked in and the strap and over the toe and as time on they had on they had a strap that went around the back of the heel but your heel was very free always so you really didn’t have control as far as turns are concerned.
No, you would have had to be very good.
Now the foot and the ski are just as one but at that time you see we went through an evolution. I started along with everybody else at the beginning.
Now, is this before the ski club?
Yes, at that point the ski club was mainly a jumping club. It wasn’t until close to 1939 we finally got an instructor from Switzerland and his name was Peter Vadja and he introduced us to Alpine skiing as we know it today with the basic principals still used, however the equipment started to change a lot . We got firmer toe irons but we still had the problems with heels being loose and also for a long time we were still using skis with no steel edges. Making turns on our hills in Edmonton was a dream that we all had. You know how hard packed snow gets when people walk on it, well the same thing happens when you ski on it constantly. If you don’t have something with an edge you can’t hold your skis on your turns, so everybody was pretty well able to make one turn and then their skis slid out from under them and they slid from the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill. Hardly anybody ever made any more than two turns but eventually it got to the point where we could get skis that had edges and those edges were put on in strips on the bottom of the skis. The jumpers had them too. You could control your skis better they didn’t slide out sideways.
Do you remember around the year that happened, that you were able to start making turns?
It would be 1939 or 1940 approximately. I can’t be definitely sure about that. Also we were getting to the point we were getting better towing
... where you put a cable around your heel and it hooked into a bar that you threw down and that pulled the cable tight and held your foot down, but it also had two little loops that the cable went under to hold your foot down otherwise if you didn’t put the cable under these loops your heel would come up and give you a loose heel again. They were a combination downhill and cross-country or touring ski and we used those for a long time. We skied in the mountains, we climbed the mountains of Lake Louise and places like that each touring season. We put skids on them for climbing. It wasn’t until well after the war that they started to get plastic boots and different types of downhill equipment that makes so the people can’t help but turn right. The way they do things now, they have engineered things so well.
You have a lifetime membership with the ski club – what does that mean?
We had to have 25 years of continuous paid up membership to entitle ourselves to life membership so there aren’t too many of us. I have forgotten how many, and some of them are gone now of course. That is how they assessed it and of course at the time that they did that the old time skiers that initiated the club in the first place were pretty much in line for the membership but not all of them. I guess they didn’t all pay their membership.
So were you apart of that original group?
No, because that original inauguration covers the year that I was born, 1911.
That would be jumpers.
That’s right, it was a jumping club organized by Norwegian men in Edmonton and Camrose and they had their own little teams. I’m not too sure when your grandpa, Harold Bretelle, joined but he was a member when I joined, I remember that. I didn’t see him doing too much, I don’t know whether he got to the stage where he wasn’t doing it anymore. He used to be around there working and with the club members and doing things so he was there long before I was a club member.
We have the big picture of him jumping through the fire hoop
Oh yes that’s right they did that in fact I think I have some pictures... [conversation regarding pictures they are looking at]
Did you get into professional skiing yourself?
Oh yes I did, well I did instructing.
How long?
That would be in the 60s for downhill but my later instruction was for cross-country and I did 12 seasons of that for the city. They were all club members pretty well but we all got into it together and instructed the cross-country skiing, we had to take a course, we had to get certification.
So do you still ski?
Not now, because everybody that I skied with is gone and it would not be wise for me to go out down by the river or down on the golf course all by myself, in my nineties. You can go on those trails they are up and down and they are rough and if you fall sometimes you could get your ski caught in the bush and you can’t get out and it’s not easy to get yourself out of the harness sometimes. In other words you should never go skiing without a buddy, it is not the thing to do.
So when did you retire from skiing?
I had to give it up because of a knee problem. Downhill I skied until I was about just close to 87. I skied out at Snow Valley – I was with the gang that [was] started by Reg [? Rault]. Reg and a whole bunch of others started the Snow Valley Hill and we used to out there and work on it and clean it out with brush knives and things like that and then when we got it cleaned up so that it could be skied on safely then we started lessens and we kept that up for quite a while. It was quite a long way out for me and I was working at the time and I was involved with the other club too so I didn’t get out as much as some of the others but I was entitled to become a life member because I was there when they started.
What year was that?
That would be in the early fifties.
Have you been involved, other than sports, in some type of movements that have effected Edmonton?
I play golf in a sort of a way like most of us do.
Turned recorder back on and we are talking about Bennett School.
I’ll say with regards to Bennett school in Cloverdale I would suggest it was one of the first public schools in the city to adopt downhill skiing instruction as apart of its phys. ed and that was because Mr. [? Hustler] had a great interest in it, he was principal and the only thing was it was at a time of the Great Depression about 1939 just around the time the war broke out. Nobody had any money and the poor kids that wanted to ski would ski on any hill they could find that would run. They did not have equipment, some had little ski poles, and the odd one had a pair of boots most of them just had old shoes that they used or rubber boots. Now if you have ever tried to ski in rubber boots and makes turns with nothing but a toe strap and that was of course we were using the procedure the downhill techniques that were available at that time, most of the kids would fall over and fall right out of their boots and their boots and their skis go down the hill and kids left lying in the snow in their socks. Some of them I do meet occasionally to this day and of course have long grown up and have families of their own and may recall these stories.
Tell me the story about this motorcycle when you were 85.
I wasn’t riding at 85, I was 65. I guess I quit riding when I was about 66 or 67. The first motorcycle that I had was in 1932 was a Harley Davidson was what they called at that time a big single cylinder and they don’t make that model anymore. It was very big cylinder indeed, it was very hard machine to kick-start. What we did later on… after my husband and I were married we decided we would trade that one off between the two of us we would get a bigger bike, a twin cylinder bike. We did, but by this time there was a baby and we needed a side car and one might say that did not go over very well with the neighbors or anyone else who saw us. That was another no-no, what was I doing riding aroung on a motorcycle with a baby?
You were quite the rebel.
I was one of the hippies of the day I guess and so was my husband too. It was the only way, we couldn’t afford a car but we could afford a bike with a lot struggling and a lot of juggling and we were able to go around a little bit. People resented it, they just resented it because everybody was so hard up. We were happy and we were having fun. We had nothing, no house, no nothing, no home, struggling to get these things just like the young people do today. What we did with the side car, it was very roomy and so the baby underneath in the sheltered part in the front end and just as safe in that as she was in the car and she was riding around in that thing until she was a good 3 years old or older. Finally things got really tough and we had to sell the sidecar to pay for the bike. By this time she was a bit older and she could ride in between us, well that really did it. We had that bike right up until he joined up to go overseas and we got rid of it when he did join up because it was getting old. It was already a second hand bike but he was very good as a mechanic and able to do a lot of work on it and keep it in good running order but he said when he wasn’t there if it went on the blink all it would be doing was sitting around rusting so while he was away we would be better off to wait until he came back and maybe see if we could get another one. Well, we got rid of the bike anyway and I ended up riding a bicycle during the war. My girlfriends and I, we had bikes and we used to go play tennis and we used to ride our bikes over to the tennis courts. So that ended the bikes at that time. So Don came back and we did not get a bike for some reason or another. We got involved in other things and we bought a house, eventually this house. It was quite some time it was early to mid fifties we finally got a car, we had never had a car before so we were quite proud of that and we used the car up until his death in 1971. I inherited the car of course, and it was one of the first vans that was converted into sleeping and eating so I traveled around in that. Just before he died, I was working for the city. Now he was one of the unlucky people with a cancer that sort of lingered on and on and finally he had to go into the hospital. The city had one stall that they kept for the employees that need to use it for emergencies. Now I tried to see if I could book the stall to use to run to the hospital at noon hour, well they had a list of names like a telephone directory waiting for one stall and I thought “oh, how am I ever going to be able to go and see him.” At that time I was secretary to the aldermen and the only secretary for 12 aldermen.
What year was this?
At the time this happened it was 1970, I am speaking of the time he was getting to his worst and I thought ‘I have got to do something, I’ve got to do something.’ So I went over to one of the little Honda shops and I was able to pick up a very small Honda. There was no use me getting a big bike because I would eventually use it on a back of a van but I could not lift it had it been a big bike. I had to think of what I was going to cope with and of course I had always hoped that maybe he would get better and maybe we could go on a little trip and we could take this little bike just to run around on. I bought that bike and I had to pretty well retrain myself all over again, I used to get up around four in the morning and would drive that bike around to get the feel of it because it was quite different from the Harley, completely different. So anyway I did manage that. I got licensed for it and insurance then I started to drive it to work and then I could park that thing anywhere because it was small I didn’t need their services anymore. Occasionally I could even get away at my lunch hour and go down to the Royal Alexander and help him with his food and always go down after work help and so I did that right up until he died. One of the most important changes over the many, many years is the fact that they got all the roads ashphalted because years ago the residential roads a lot of them were just dirt roads.
What are your thoughts on how the sports are with children today?
I certainly think that community leagues have contributed a tremendous amount to general sports.
Words of wisdom for the City of Edmonton?
Do not cut back on the budget for the recreational facilities for all age groups because they are the most important thing there is health-wise. If you want to save money on medical care and so forth, contribute a little more to keep people healthy.