Hopscotch

Hopscotch. Behind the school, 75 metres away from the wartime house.

Our hopscotch grounds started on the sidewalks. Nobody had chalk, so we drew with pieces of gyproc that had paper on two sides. Holes were punched in walls by wrestling and kicking and sometimes doing somersaults. Our “chalk” was the fringe benefit of our rambunctious natures. Eventually, we graduated to the yellow painted hopscotch patterns in the schoolyard.

Originally, the school that was the first sprawling brick bastion of Shaughnessy Heights had only one hallway running north-south through it. The gym was at the back of the school, on the west side of the big hallway, and the big kids, the grade fives and sixes, were at the far end of the hall in Rooms 11 and 12. Before I was old enough to be in scary Mrs. Palishock’s class at the end of the hall, the population of Shaughnessy Heights had exploded. The kids from Rosser had joined us by school bus and the kids from The Development had joined us from the new row houses that had been built in the fields. They were even building some other boxy places called Willow Park further out in the fields. Because of all of the building, we couldn’t see DeGrave’s anymore.

We embraced this huge neighbourhood improvement.

The downside was the skating rink. It was getting moved north, from behind the school, to way over, past The Development.

“Mom,” I’d call from amid the pile of coats and boots in the front hall, when I was almost ready for our winter outdoors. “I’m going to the Shack!”

We called it the Shack. Sometimes I'd wear my skates over so I wouldn't have to change them outside because you could never be sure if the Shack was going to be open. The snow was pushed into plies at the edges to keep the puck and the kids in the rink, but I can never remember holding a hockey stick. Sometimes there were nets, but there was never a coach or a real team. When we got there, our obsessions were pom pom pull-away and crack the whip. Minus twenty Fahrenheit was nothing to us. Flying we would go, into and over the snow banks. We were lucky. Ours was really just a skating rink. Northwood, way across the tracks, had the hockey rink, so at the Shack we could race and wrestle and skate every day from the minute supper ended until we could go no more, long after dark on those long winter nights.

It stunk of fuel oil in the Shack so none of us spent much time in there anyway. When they moved the rink to the end of The Development, they put up hockey boards and lights for the main ice, and on the other side, they had some open ice for skating. Nobody from around my wartime house used it anymore.

But the asphalt? Now, that was a welcome addition.

I had a scare when it was being laid. To roll it flat, right after it was poured, they used some gigantic concrete hollow cylinders. If you asked me today what they were, I’d say storm sewer segments. The diameter of those pipes was up to my armpits and the inside was almost big enough to run through. They were about four feet long. They were fun and because they had poured the asphalt during the summer we had the freedom of the hot summer afternoons to play in this urban Disneyland. We would curl up and roll each other until we’d smash into the concrete “coal bin” attached to the old school, or into the brand new steps of the new addition. They were heavy buggers, I remember. In grade four I was still only a six-X and weighed about 50 pounds. But I was game. I had barely the strength to get them started when it was my turn to push. Because I was smaller, I often had the joy of seeing the world cycle around me from within. But everyone wanted their turn.

This time there were only the two of us. She crawled and braced herself. Was it Debbie? Was it Shelley? I kneeled to get my shoulder under it to see if I could heave some momentum into this thing. Barely. Hardly. I wanted to give her a really good ride. I wanted to really send her flying and rolling and smashing into the coal bin. Finally, it started to roll. But slowly. And I needed to speed it up. So I gave a little push and took a couple of quick steps back and gave a wicked run for the concrete to push it high and hard. My hands hit it and stuck and up I went. My feet left the ground and time stopped. I hovered on top of this rolling death trap. Arms forward, legs back, balanced like a trapeze artist, seeing the imminent crushing deathblow that awaited my head as the rolling behemoth pulled me down.

I’d seen enough Popeye cartoons to know what the steamroller could do. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that I would pop back out of my flattened state, see the spinach burst forth from my shirt pocket and eject itself directly into my mouth, causing my emaciated arms to suddenly burst into biceps and swing forth in defiance.

I was discovering danger and for the first time in my life, my blood ran cold. I had never known the dry-mouth fear of danger. I shivered uncontrollably at what might have been. What a sheltered life we lived in Shaughnessy Heights. We had laughter and freedom, food and plenty. There were no shackles, no rules. And here I was, bringing it all to an end.

I screamed. I sausage-rolled. I kicked, and I hit the pavement to the right of the rolling monster. There had been no witnesses. The ride was uneventful for the passenger but for me a near-death experience. I became a cautious girl. I did not want to die the fool. I’d heard about those kids who lived by the river and went out on the ice. Everyone knows not to do that. I was glad I didn’t live in EK – East Kildonan.

But the asphalt? Now, that was a welcome addition.It stunk of fuel oil in the Shack so none of us spent much time in there anyway. When they moved the rink to the end of The Development, they put up hockey boards and lights for the main ice, and on the side, they had some open ice for skating. Nobody from around my wartime house used it anymore.We called it the Shack. Sometimes I’d wear my skates over so I wouldn’t have to change them outside because you could never be sure if the Shack was going to be open. The snow was pushed into piles at the edges to keep the puck and the kids in the rink, but I can never remember holding a hockey stick. Sometimes there were nets, but there was never a coach or a real team. When we got there, our obsessions were pom pom pull-away and crack the whip. Minus twenty Fahrenheit was nothing to us. Flying we would go, into and over the snow banks. We were lucky. Ours was really just a skating rink. Northwood, way across the tracks, had the hockey rink, so at the Shack we could race and wrestle and skate every day from the minute supper ended until we could go no more, long after dark on those long winter nights.One benefit of this growth was a new expansion of the school and a gigantic asphalt slab behind it, painted with every version of hopscotch you could imagine.

Next week: The Brightest of Lights

The Commercial District

The commercial district three blocks away, 500 metres east of the wartime house.



I could hear my mother’s cackling outrageous laughter from across the backyard fence as I skipped eastward away from the house toward the tracks, three long blocks away. It was a treacherous journey for a five year-old among so many big kids. But nobody ever told me to put on shoes. My destination was the store. I had found a Seven-Up bottle and two Pepsi bottles that I could spend as I wished. Six-cent Popsicles. Two for a penny, mint leaves, jawbreakers, strawberries, nigger babies, and lick-a-mades. Decisions decisions. And I wouldn’t have to share.

I didn’t realize until many years later that having a paved back lane was an amazing asset for a neighbourhood. Cities and towns where I lived in the decades that followed had lanes that were often made with either grass or c-base gravel, possibly with some invisible infrastructure beneath, but usually not. In those places, ditches were even found on some front streets! But not in Shaughnessy Heights. Our back lanes were modern. Those were the days long before the dumpsters. Most dutiful homeowners built some sort of garbage-can stand and the garbage was sent out back into galvanized cans or rusty oil barrels for the City trucks to empty on a weekly basis. It was a progressive little neighbourhood.

But I lived on the poor side of the lane. Across the lane from my house were the newer houses with concrete slab foundations. “Slab houses,” my dad called them. Our house was a wartime house. It was built after WWII, for the soldiers coming home. I used to listen to my dad patiently clarify for people the difference between a wartime house and a peacetime house. He was always so polite until we got home where he would slander the idiots for a solid hour. He did have an arrogant streak.

Our part of Shaughnessy Heights made up a small neighbourhood three and a half streets wide and four blocks long. It was a long hike for me to the furthest outpost of the neighbourhood, to Matela’s. The restaurant with red vinyl swirling stools that were so much fun to sit and twirl on, sold dark rye bread with little purple stickers, and hunks of halva for a dime. I might go across the street from Matela’s to Bilyk’s instead. It was a Solo store for official emergency errands for stuff like laundry soap or tomato soup.

But the favourite candy stop was the drugstore around the corner. Peter was the pharmacist. He was the only grown-up whose first name I knew. Funny, he was one of the only professionals in the neighbourhood, and everyone called him Peter. He always had a white coat, white hair, and a white moustache. And he had the best penny candy and the hardest Popsicles. But no drinks. The drinks were at Matela’s. And our neighbourhood’s final commercial establishment on Railway was the hardware store where we shopped for gifts for our parents on birthdays and at Christmas. The lady there always helped us pick out some drinking glasses or an ornament. She would put our gift in a box and we would march back down that back lane, to hide the gift somewhere among the hiding places within that wartime house. These shops anchored Shaughnessy Heights toward the tracks. Beyond the tracks were houses full of kids who went to the next school. They might as well have been on a different planet.

In hindsight, I admit I was afraid to use the front street to go to the store, whether on my own behalf or on an errand for an adult. There was a bigger chance of seeing some big kids, and I learned how to avoid them. I knew every feature of that back lane, every fence and fenceless yard. I knew every garage to shelter me from the wind. And I knew where the peacetime houses began, when I crossed Leo Novak. Who was Leo Novak anyway?

It was a long walk for a kid, but in this neighbourhood, there were no restrictions on playing outside. It would not be an exaggeration to say that 400 kids lived in that four-block grid. There were a few old folks, but they kept their heads down. The wildness of youth dominated Shaughnessy Heights.

To the north the wind howled across the fields into our little corner of the world. If you stood on the edge of the field, at the back of the school, which marked the north-west edge of the neighbourhood, you could see the barn and the big white house on deGrave’s farm a mile or more away. We weren’t allowed to go there, but René and Julian deGrave were the Royal Dairies milkmen who greeted our moms daily, up and down the four blocks of our four little streets: Selkirk, Pritchard, Manitoba, and Magnus. The south sounds were of the rail yards. Years later, I realized they were called the Weston shops, but to me it was just the CPR. In summers we slept to the sounds of trains being staged, banging and hooking together. It was a lullaby. On hot summer nights, every Wednesday we could listen to the whistling roar of the speedway in Brooklands, a mile or more to the west. Crescendo, decrescendo over and over again as the hot rods rounded the speedway, until I fell asleep in the breezeless heat.

We were surrounded and isolated in this flat city corner, but we were not forgotten. We had the bus on our street, so our moms had a way out to Eaton’s or Oretzki’s. Every second Selkirk bus journeyed past McPhillips into Shaughnessy Heights and all the way to Keewatin. When I awoke to darkness, still in my bed, the gentle shaking of the house and the moving light across my slanted bedroom ceiling told me that it wasn’t the middle of the night yet. The bus was still running, rumbling past our front door.

Nobody spoke about class or status in Shaughnessy Heights, but there were strata. The houses with basements were the coveted properties. The bungalows on Selkirk were the ultra-modern, even though they faced the CPR yards. I envied the kids in the gingerbread slab homes on Pritchard and on Manitoba toward Keewatin. They had cleaner houses, yards, and clothes than we did. Up past Leo Novak, the kids in the peacetime houses were all older teenagers, and their parents were older too. And over on Magnus, across from the church, at the north end of Railway, some of the houses were really old, like the ones across the tracks. Who knew what kind of spooks lived in those places? In our block, it was a free-for-all. We ran through the yards, ran and jumped and walked fences, raided gardens, and climbed on sheds.

1-2-3 on Larry! Home free! Draw a snake upon your back, who pokes IN? The cedar pole that served as a streetlight standard on the front street was the nearest thing to a tree in our block. That was where the hide-‘n-go-seek was based. There was no point in playing unless there were at least 15 kids. And we kept track. There was no limit and no rules. And, man, could we run. It was all barefoot.

In winter, the road had to be cleared to let the bus through, and the piles of snow were half again my height and the smooth paths along the top brought the kids to school. Up and down over the piles of snow the boys and girls scampered, fighting and pushing, and daring to throw one another in front of the next bus.

When I was a child, I thought everyone’s address rhymed, just like mine.

Sixteen Twenty-two Manitoba Avenue

Sixteen Twenty-two Manitoba Avenue

Of course, life was a continuous rhyme.

She didn’t read the poem to me, but she pointed to the book where it was. Nana would just tell us the poem and sometimes in her urgency she would roughly scramble to the page and make sure I could see the little acorn-shaped cap on the little people, and I’d jump on the chesterfield and yell the rhymes to her while her hands were covered with flour and her duMaurier was dangling from her mouth.

And then out I’d go, running across the street to gather a friend. Nose pressed against the screen.

“Can Shelley come out?”

“She’s in the back” would come the gruff, smoky reply from her busy mom.

Into the rhubarb patch we’d jump, yanking the ruby red stems and chomping them from the bottom up, daring each other to do so without making a sour face. My mouth waters still at the thought of the effort and success we had in this yearly contest. Sometimes Dawn Rae would come out of her house next door with sugar, but no, I was tough, I could do it without sugar.

When I was older, but still years from wearing a bra, I wanted to show the boys in Elmwood, by my auntie’s house, how tough I was.

“Watch this!” And I yanked a two-inch wide hunk of rhubarb from a patch a few doors away and calmly chomped into it without flinching.

They looked at me, and roared and barked at each other.

“Here – try this one,” some kid dared me back. It was an onion. I could handle an onion. What’s the big deal? I took the dare. I bit in. Chomped. I felt the heat rising in the sides of my neck, not because of this unusual fruit, but because I was embarrassed and I didn’t want to show it. I knew my face was turning brilliant red against the dark brown gigantic freckles that covered my face. In an instant I knew I had become a clown. And yes, the boys roared with laughter and pointed their fingers and rolled on the ground. It was their joke.

But I didn’t really get it. I felt the humiliation. I swallowed the bitter onion, turned and ran back to my aunt’s yard and climbed into the back seat of our car. They would not see my tears. The itchy cloth seat and the door-to-door rope hold on the back of the front seat had been a common playground for me and was a satisfactory refuge. I was still short enough to stand on the seat and jump, holding the safety cord. It was hot August, but I would not venture out. Those kids were history. Get me home to my own world.

I waited in the car and probably fell asleep. Finally, the family piled back into the car to head home to Shaughnessy Heights, and they instantly howled with disgust. All eyes were on me.

“Jeezus Christ – what have you been into?” My mom lit a cigarette and rolled down the window to get some fresh air in.

My dad looked at me and laughed. “You smell like a Bohunk.”

Nobody grew garlic in Shaughnessy Heights. At least we didn’t. I knew everybody’s gardens. How was I supposed to know? If I was to believe my family, I must have stunk for a month, or maybe forever.

Pink Pink You Stink

Red Red Pee the Bed

Yellow Yellow Kissed your Fellow

Green Green Washing Machine!

To this day, I’m glad I wasn’t living in Elmwood. All the bikers came from there.

Two four six eight

Ten twelve fourteen sixteen

Eighteen twenty

Two four six eight

Thirty

Two four six eight

Forty

Two four six eight

Yell-singing in two-four time was a specialty in Shaughnessy Heights. There were no quiet kids. Not a single one. It was a prerequisite in our part of the North End. Well, maybe over in the slab houses or in the bungalows you might find a quiet kid, but not here in the wartime houses.

Plains claps Rollers backs

Highs lows Heels toes

Criss cross Over she goes

Sevens sixes fives fours threes twos ones.

We used the lacrosse ball. And we were ruthless with the lacrosse ball. On the steps of the school there was a red brick wall in front and another behind. It was a natural handball court. And we played there for hours. Jump ball with lines of five or six kids, or elimination seven-up. It was cutthroat.

“Aunty aunty over the shaaan-teeee!” the gang of kids yelled together. I was in a perpetually rhyming world. Pigtails. Aunty aunty over the shaaan-teeee. “Pigtails!” came the reply.

“Aunty aunty over the shaaan-teeee. Over!”

“Aunty aunty… Whew! They missed it.” And all our eyes were up at the top of the peak of the house as they called again from the backyard.

“Pigtails! Aunty aunty over the shaaan-teee. Over.”

There it is. Coming right at me. “Get it! Get it!”

It hit the ground, so we would have to throw again.

“Aunty aunty over the shaaan-teeee. Over!” We listened. There was no call back this time. It was all quiet and we were edgy, on alert. And then we would all scream. Everyone. Both teams would scream as they roared at us from both directions, hands cupped, all but one pretending they were holding the ball. The whole team had to switch sides. I needed to get to the backyard before I was tackled or belted with the ball. If I was hit or caught, I would have to go onto the other team.“Gotcha. Gotcha.” Every team needed a thrower and a catcher. There were really no jobs for the other team members other than screamer or tagger. A few windows were put out in this game. Lots of people built half-yard fences, separating the front yard from the back, to keep the kids from playing aunty aunty over the shanty, but that never stopped us from playing statues where in someone’s front yard we’d swing kids, or be swung around and chucked for a landing. Then the thrower had to guess what you had magically become upon landing in a strange and twisted posture. Or we’d play fruits where all but one kid would sit on the front steps. If that one kid, the guesser, guessed your fruit, you’d run around the house as fast as you could and get your bum back into the empty space first. It was the Shaughnessy Heights version of duck duck goose. Apples oranges peaches pears plums bananas. And the ones who liked to run always chose one of those. And the ones who hated running and didn’t want to lose their seat on the steps tried to think of a really obscure fruit. I was always torn between finding the most obscure fruit to make them guess, and getting to run the fastest. It was never ending, from morning to night. Hours and hours of fruits and statues and hide and seek and aunty aunty and seven-up. Or Skipping.

The wind the wind the wind blows high

It blows Nancy across the sky

She is fair and she is pretty

She is the girl from New York City

She can play accordion one two three

Oh Pray Oh Pray Oh who is she.

Roger Roger says he loves her

All the boys are asking for her

Put her in the garden, sat her on his knee

Asked her a question, “Will you marry me!!”

Yes No Maybe So Yes No Maybe So Yes No.

Had a little car.

Nineteen forty-eight.

Drove it down Main Street.

Put on the brakes!

What I don’t get is why this accordion-playing girl was so popular? I always put on the brakes at NO! during pepper because I would not be stuck with Roger. They always sang his name because he was the only kid who had more freckles and was shorter than me. Ick.

One two three O’Leary

My first name is Mary

If you think it’s necessary

Look it up in the dictionary

There was lots of noise in Shaughnessy Heights. And it came from the kids. Not from boom boxes or hot rods. No, just kids, hundreds and hundreds of very loud kids.

Mom worked at Eaton’s on Fridays and Dad always went to pick her up in the white Pontiac Laurentian with the red interior. That was why Nana was there, making the scones, smoking the DuMaurier. Wee folk. Good folk. Trooping all together.

That was the summer they put the trees in our boulevard. Such skinny little things. You couldn’t even climb them even though we tried. Snap! Maples. No, those aren’t real maples. They’re Manitoba maples. But they were just too skinny.

I peeked through the front door, but the grown up, Mr. Brown, the new guy from across the street was in our front room. He wouldn’t let me into my house. I saw Nana lying on the front room rug.

I shouldn’t have been playing outside. I should have been in the house with her. I was invisible. The grown-ups were all hanging around out front. They took her away. People brought whiskey. I ran and hid beneath the laundry pile at Shelley’s. Her mom and dad and all of the other moms and dads and everyone after dark were all humming this low drone. I couldn’t hear anything. Usually when there was whiskey everyone was wild and singing and the kids were crazy, jumping on the beds and climbing out of windows. But not this time.

Then, finally, it was about me, and where was I? Was I sleeping? Was I hiding? I was found and they dug me out from beneath the neighbour’s laundry and my dad carried me home. That was the first time I saw the dime. And I saw it many many times after that. It was the dime of silence. The dime that was not a dime. The thing that could not be described. It floated between my mind and what I could see. I could hear it better than I could see it and could even feel it with my tongue. As I lay still on the big bed in my parents’ bedroom, it came to me from the Other Side and I was afraid of it. It was the underside of my mind, the first clue that maybe I was not right.

It was smooth and shiny and perfect. A destination. A goal. And it was in a race against the big and shapeless lumpy cloud that could not be seen or even described. The garbage. The dime was always just beyond reach, and I was always sliding backwards within the lumps. Sucked in by the garbage. Slowed down. Swallowed by the murkiness. But if I closed my eyes and held my breath, maybe, just maybe I would be the dime or know the dime. Perhaps I had known it and it had left me behind that day.

Nana had left me with this untouchable and indescribable floating talisman of the mind that became a cue to awareness of the Other Side. A gate to the unknown and the unspeakable.They buried my Nana during the total eclipse, but all the kids had to go to the Palace Theatre on Selkirk to watch 101 Dalmations or else we’d go blind. She’s still over there in Brookside with the rest of them. Watching the airplanes come and go.

Next Weekly Episode: Hopscotch

The Red Corduroy Skirt

I was a tiny child. I was always the first person in the front row of the school photos. Every year the shortest two kids in class were Roger and me. On top of that, I was also the youngest because my birthday did not turn until January. I hated being the youngest and the smallest, so to make up for it I was the loudest.


In grade one, I was still a baby, only five years old. How frustrating it was. They were phasing out the tunic, a heavy blackish-blue pleated wool jumper that would have a white blouse worn underneath. Traditional parents would put these tunics on their daughters every day before school, and it was so embarrassing to have to wear one. It was optional, and most girls were allowed to wear pleated plaid skirts or dresses from Eaton’s. Leotards had just come into style, mostly beige ones, so no girdles or garter belts were needed for the girls in elementary school.


I was a persistent kid. Somehow I persuaded my mom that I did not have to wear that tunic every day, only for assembly on Fridays. She relented and pulled out a corduroy skirt, red with little green, blue, and aqua squares all over it. It had no zipper, just a side button and two button-on, one-inch-wide suspenders of the same material. Very cute for a three year-old, I thought, but the suspenders would have to go. No. Yes. No. Yes. I won. I could wear my white blouse with the red corduroy skirt, and no suspenders.It was winter. I had on my beige leotards, my pink coat with matching pink hat trimmed with grey fake fur, brown shoe-in rubber boots with a side buckle and only three wartime houses to pass to reach the grade one entrance to my school, Shaughnessy Park Elementary. I may have been the baby, but I was finally going to fit in. I’d be at least as cool as Sharon who was more than a year older than me and had to walk three blocks to school.


I stood in line until the teacher came out and rang the bell. One by one she called the rooms and the dutiful pupils filed in: Kindergarten, Room 2, Room 3, and then us, Room 4. In the hallway, we took off our boots and lined them up. Then we hustled into Room 4 to the cork-door closets at the back of each row where we hung our coats. It was always push-and-shove back there because there were five rows of desks for a classroom of 36 kids. This was a populated baby-boom neighbourhood.


I wrangled my way out of the group of kids in my row of desks and headed to the front of the class where the short people got to sit, and where I could put on my patent leather shoes with the thin strap. Half-way to my desk, I realized that people were snickering and pointing at me. Suddenly, my new confidence foundered. I looked down and to my shock I saw no skirt, only my beige leotards. What could have happened? I turned back to the closet and rummaged among the scarves and mitts on the floor and saw it there. I managed to put it on and carry on with my day, but now, decades later, I still relive the horror and humiliation of that day. I cannot say whether I cried or whether the teacher helped me, only that I cursed those blasted corduroy button-on straps that I had refused to wear.


I survived that humiliation and many others but have never forgotten that skirt.


Decades later, my mother went on a vacation and asked me to house-sit her dog. She still lived in that house in Winnipeg, three doors away from Shaughnessy Park School. I had a month to dig around in that old house, that wartime house with no basement. One day, I opened the trap door to the crawl space where the natural gas furnace was suspended from the two-by-ten joists that supported the house. I took a flashlight with me and found some old mason jars, some dusty, Christmas decorations, long-lost tools, and gas meter reading cards. I also saw a piece of cloth. I crawled on my belly to grab the ribbon of cloth and could not believe my eyes.


It was one of the button-on straps from the same corduroy skirt that I had worn years before. Both red buttons were still attached. I grabbed it with glee for the memory that had never left me. I shook the dust off and checked its diameter. It fit me perfectly as a hair band.


I have it with me and look at it every day. It hangs on my desk lamp, right above my computer screen. It is a reminder to me that I have survived and can survive humiliation of the worst kind, and that I can rise to smile about it one fine day.



Mine is a tale about emerging into life, from growing up in a wartime house. To begin my tale I have had to remove my mom’s wedding ring. I cannot say for sure why I had been wearing it. True, it is mine now, but it certainly is not my style. I’d put it on about a month before beginning to write this account. Then, on the day before I began to write I decided to put on the diamond in the same style. It's funny that the rings would fit me perfectly. But the following morning they screamed to be removed.

“We don’t belong here! Can’t you see that concrete? Your memories are there, along the cement back lanes of Shaughnessy Heights, not here.”

Next week: The Commercial District

Thirty-Eight Poems

This memoir contains 38 poems written between 1987 and 2006.  Not all were written in the North End, but all have that north-end influence, because they were written by me.  Many of the scrapes on my soul come from there.


The poems are listed alphabetically, with the given year, and a link to the memoir episode that features the poem.

Poetry included in The Wartime House in Shaughnessy Heights

Poem Title and ...............Year Written -- Episode Linked

And So....................................... 2000   -- The Boys

Away Away ............................. 1999   -- Racism

Chasing Teenage...................... 1998   -- The Boys

Doom ........................................ 1999   -- Racism

Embark Sara............................ 2000   -- Racism

Find Your Place ....................... 2000   -- The Brightest of Lights

Humility Prayer ........................ 2002   -- Racism

In my dreams............................. 1999   -- Chudley to Buller

Just a Little Bad......................... 2001   -- Chudley to Buller

Just Melt ................................... 2003   -- The Boys

Just Sing .................................... 1997   -- Musical Influences

No Guilt....................................... 2000   -- Racism

Nurture the Spark .................... 2000   -- Chudley to Buller

Oh Dear the Time...................... 1999   -- The Commercial District

Pretense ..................................... 2000   -- The Commercial District

Product of the Hood ................. 2009   -- The Commercial District

Racing Through ......................... 1999   -- The Commercial District

Revelation................................... 2001  -- Hopscotch

See Saw Teeter Totter.............. 2005   -- The Steps

Self Absorption .......................... 2006 -- The Girls

Send Joy ...................................... 1999 -- Front Room TV

Sex Without................................. 1987 -- The Boys

Shut up ........................................ 2003 -- Front Room TV

Stripping Dignity......................... 1998 -- The Boys

Take it Full Face ......................... 2003 -- The Boys

That Secret Voice ....................... 2000 -- The Commercial District

The Impossibility ....................... 2000 -- The Boys

The Joining Game....................... 2001 -- Crossing the Tracks

The Otherworld ......................... 2000 -- The Steps

The Manly Thrill......................... 2001 -- Hopscotch

The Misty Night ......................... 2002 -- The Red Corduroy Skirt 

Tightrope ..................................... 2001 -- Racism

Time for a Happy Poem ............ 2000 -- Transportation

Treatment................................... 2000 -- Chudley to Buller

Where the Wind Belongs ........... 1993 -- The Commercial District

Who I Am .................................... 2001 -- Racism

Win the Day................................. 2005 -- The Steps

You've Changed........................... 2000 -- The VLA

Elsewhere, inside my blog....
there are four sections:

• This memoir with the poems is a section of its own.  
• I have posted some stories are under my name, Nancy Ellen McLennan. 
• I have a few other poems in my Mouthe the Poems blog, including a Meta-poetry Series which features poems about poems 8-/  
• Finally, sometimes I like to show my world and its wonder in my Slicery of Life.  

It is my pleasure to share my writing.  

21 Episodes - The List

The Wartime House in Shaughnessy Heights is a piece of creative non-fiction, a memoir from the 1960's through the eyes of a little girl living in the corner of a small neighbourhood in North End Winnipeg.

It was written in 2009 and is dotted with poetry. In total, the memoir includes twenty-one episodic chapters, that loosely trace time through the decade and into the early 1970's. These episodes will be published here, one at a time.

The first episode will be posted in May, 2010 and you will find a fresh episode every week until the end of September. Some episodes are very short. Some do not have poems. I intend to include a few photos, maps and diagrams along the way.

Please read the Preface for further background on The Wartime House in Shaughnessy Heights.

Preface

The Wartime House in Shaughnessy Heights:
I wrote this memoir with poetry in 2009. It takes place in Shaughnessy Heights, a small neighborhood within North End Winnipeg. I have decided to publish it here, as a serial. The memoir is a series of episodes. They are all descriptions of memories that I had never shared. The memoir contains characters and locations, within the neighborhood as seen through my eyes and my memories from early child hood until I left Shaughnessy Heights. Everything is true; as true as I remember it. Of course, others from Shaughnessy Heights might remember things differently, but this is one young girl's version of that period, mostly the 1960's.

The poems were written before the memoir, but much later than the episodes they accompany, took place. To choose the poetry included in this piece, I reviewed each episode for the affect generated by the memory. Then I mined my database of poems and selected poems with similar affect, written by the woman, to accompany the memory, as told by the girl. So time is juxtaposed and sometimes the context may not seem clear. But if you can hardly imagine how the girl felt in her childhood situation, while you read an adjacent poem, that feeling might become more apparent.
The Wartime House in Shaughnessy Heights is a story of resilience.
I intend to publish this memoir weekly, in sequence, one episode at a time, right here.
I reserve copyright to this publication. Please use with permission only. You may reach me here.
I hope you enjoy it.
Nancy-Ellen McLennan