This is our end of the two family house that was our first residence in 1954 when we arrived in Churchill and lived on "The Hill." That's a young me, 20 years old, standing in the doorway. There was no indoor plumbing, no sink or bath, no fridge. It was heated by a coal stove. Water was delivered by a truck and stored in oil drums. Our side of the house had been the coal bin to the rest of the house. It seemed like I could never get that coal dust cleaned up. We shared the house with the Thompsons who lived in the other half.

When we lived out on "the Hill" the whole area was considered a bird sanctuary and occasionally people would make trips out there to bird watch.

This is the Thompson's half of the house above, occupied by Doug and Betty Thompson and their son Danny. Doug was a Navy cook. When they first rented the house all that was sticking out of the snow was the chimney. Jack and Doug dug out the house and cleaned it up. Doug and Betty's part of the house was a little bigger and they had a child so they used the bigger part. It seemed to work out pretty well until we were able to move to our second residence shown below. That's Jack, my husband, standing in front of our kitchen window.

That's my husband standing in the front door.

This is a side view of our second residence on "the hill." I think that's me behind the snow drift. Sometimes our load of ice blocks that we had to melt to get water would become covered with snow like this so we had to dig down to get them out. That's the kitchen window. It was usually frosted over and we couldn't see outside. Jack Frost used to paint some beautiful scenes on those windows.

This photo, taken in the early 1950s in the Churchill townsite, is the tar paper shack that Bev and Ray Morrison and their two girls lived in. Ray says this house was originally on the site of the old military camp of Fort Churchill before the new base was built. Some of the old tar paper shacks there were put on skids and moved into the townsite of Churchill where they were put up on blocks. Some were two family dwelling and some were single family homes. Quite a few of the military families lived in these houses before they had an opportunity to move to the PMQs on the new military base.

I drew a circle and arrow on this map of present day Churchill to show where "The Hill" was. The map is courtesy of the Tundra Inn in Churchill.