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Housing in Our Community

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#1 & #2  Norquay Park. (1950) Everyone
called me by my nickname, Tappy.
(now only my family does)

#4 (1950) neighbourhood boys in the front
yard of 103.

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Before they built the first Pumping Station (1951?) our front yard was much larger than the rest of the houses on the street.  Selkirk Avenue came straight down and there was a small cul-de-sac at the end of the road for cars to turn around and our driveway curved back up toward the house, then to the garage. After the Station was built we lost a large area of grass and the new roadway was built right next to the sidewalk. We lost about 12 feet of driveway.  Dad could no longer park the car in the driveway and had to park it on the street.   We also lost the cul-de-sac.  The new road was only about 12 feet wide.  The second Pumping Station (brick) wasn't built yet when we moved in 1955.

From the picture my cousin took in 1982 we saw that the garage was now gone, I wonder if the cement sidewalk is still there – when my dad poured that concrete he imprinted our names and our handprints in the sidewalk by the garage. (Tappy and Fort -our nicknames)

#1 1950 neighbour boys & me in front yard
before Pumping station went in - see how
much grass there was? the sidewalk you see
in this picture is now part of the road.

#6 picture taken in 1982 and the garage is gone.
This was taken at almost the same angle and
view as the picture #4 of Dad and his car.

I’ve already mentioned the time we got into trouble going to the ‘gambling den’ in the hedges, and as I write down more of my memories, I can understand now why my teacher at Norquay was always rolling her eyes and ‘tsk’ing every time she came near me! 

There were two ‘dumps’ in the neighbourhood that we kids spent many hours playing in.

The first one was in the Austen/Pritchard area or slightly past there.  We used to bring home many treasures and my dad would encourage us (much to my mom’s trepidation) by saying every time, that he was amazed at what people would throw out and that he could sell it to the scrap-dealer for extra money.

One day we kids came across boxes of partially burned paper butter-wrappers and in another area of that dump we found large blocks of a whitish waxy substance.  We enlisted the help of a neighbourhood boy who had a wagon, and got the idea to make money  by wrapping the goop and selling it for butter…um…it turned out to be a block of lye soap and did our eyes ever burn – small wonder we didn’t blind ourselves. 

The other dump was behind the Clinic, on the banks of the river. Although most of the garbage there was always well-burned, we were able to salvage and gather quite a collection of blue, brown and amber coloured bottles.

That fun was quickly halted when we decided to share our favourite bottles with our moms, and we were in trouble for not only playing with ‘medicine’ bottles from the clinic dump, but for going along the river to get there. 

In the area at the end of Pritchard there was a small marina and I can't remember getting into any sort of trouble there because that  was always off limits!

My father loved gardening and was always working in the backyard. He built a nice white picket fence around the front of the house and an arbour and gate entrance to the backyard.  He also built a wooden swing set, teeter-totter, lawn chairs and a picnic table.  It was very park-like and some people would wander in thinking it was a public area.

For Easter one year, we got two goslings from the Mennonite market and they grew into very big, very protective geese!  No one but my parents could go into the back-yard, as those geese would come between  anyone else who came near my brother and me.  Many visitors got nasty nips trying!

One day a family parked their car on the cul-de-sac and proceeded to set up a picnic in our yard…but it didn’t last long – within minutes the woman was at our door, wondering who she could phone to complain about the rabid geese.  My mom set her straight, telling her, “That’s my backyard and those are my geese and you, madam, are trespassing” (You really have to appreciate my mom’s standing up for our pets, as she was the most quiet and shy person I have ever known.)

In time, the geese were gone and my dad explained that they ‘flew south’ and we were invited to my parent’s good friends, Caroline and Leo, for the best chicken dinner I’ve ever tasted!  Mom, Dad, Caroline and Leo had tears in their eyes, they were trying so hard to suppress their laughter. I was not so amused to find out it was our geese we’d had for dinner. 

Oh, and something else - there used to be a laneway running from the true back of all three of these houses from Selkirk Ave, to Pritchard and I have a story to tell about that laneway... I don't know what year it was (maybe 1951/2) there was a commotion on the laneway one night, and the next morning my dad related to us that the police had wild-goose chased a couple of crooks through the streets of Winnipeg and had caught up with them on the laneway between our house and the one next door. One police cruiser came down the laneway from Pritchard and another cruiser chased them from Selkirk and boxed the crook's car in. It would be interesting to see if there was a write-up in one of the newspapers of that caper in the news archives!

One spring when the river was high, some neighbourhood boys came and told my mom that a dog was drowning in the river.  There was a fence with (grape?) vines growing on it near the bank, which was now flooded and the dog must have gotten caught in it.  My mom made her way along the fence (the water was past her waist) untangled the dog and brought him in the house.  The dog was really thin and ratty looking but after bathing, drying and brushing his fur we realized he was purebred Irish Setter.  My dad let the authorities know we had found him. We named him Rusty.  He was a beautiful, friendly, well-behaved dog and within the few weeks he was with us, we fell in love with him.  We were devastated when the owner showed up.  The owner was a very nice looking young man, who drove a fancy new car (I think he was an architect) My brother and I bawled our eyes out and the owner must have really felt bad taking the dog away from us, by the look on his face.  Although he had thanked my dad for taking such good care of his dog when he picked him up, he sent my dad another thank you note and a nice sized cheque.

The Backyard Fences: here are several pictures taken at different times in front of the fence that separated our 103 Selkirk yard with the neighbours 101 Selkirk. (101 is no longer there)