Actually this page is about more than family photos and stories ... the photos and stories capture the lifestyle of families living in Churchill in the early 1950s. Look at the photos carefully. Look closely at the details and you'll get a glimpse into their daily lives. The backgrounds in the photos often give a bit of the town of Churchill in that era and the furnishings that typified the homes of these young families. The stories give a rich picture of how they lived and of the challenges they faced.

This is me with Michael when he was about 3 months old. We did not have a flash camera so we had to go outside to take pictures to mail back to relatives in Victoria and Edmonton.

Having a baby under these conditions, I suppose, would depend on who the person having the baby is and whether it is the first child or one of many. In our case, Mike was our first. I was 20 years old and Jack was 22. I had never had much to do with babies and was definitely not experienced so I relied heavy on my Dr. Spock book on babies. This was my baby bible. (I still have that Dr. Spock book, but it is sure well used.)

Mike was born in October and winter was just getting a good start. It used to worry me that the hospital on the base was so far away. When the time came for me to go to the hospital, Red Hoffman came out to the house in the middle of the night, after Jack had gone over to the NHB Staff house to call him. It was a bumpy, rough ride, but we made it in plenty of time.

We did not have a choice of doctors and had to take whichever doctor was on duty at the time. The nurses were the military nurses who happened to be on duty at the time. I recall a young orderly who was on duty while I was in labour and he was scared stiff that I would have the baby while he was on duty. He begged me not too, in fact. Like I had a choice?

While I was in the hospital, after having the baby, an Eskimo woman came in to have her eleventh child. She had the baby in the room in the bed next to me. I had no idea she was having the baby until she told me that the baby was there under the covers. She had not made a sound.

After going home with the new baby I had to deal with the fact that we had no running water, indoor toilet, sink, bathtub, etc. I needed water to wash the baby and myself, soak cloth diapers, make formula, and do our own laundry, etc. The water came from melted snow or ice while we lived on "the hill." Jack was able to shower on the Navy Base.

I could only do laundry once a week so the soiled diapers had to be soaked in a diaper pail. We had a "honey bucket" type of toilet but this did not lend itself to rinsing soiled diapers. Snow had to be melted for the diaper pail to rinse the diapers before I could wash them. After they were all washed, rinsed, etc. (I did have a wringer washing machine), I had to melt some snow on the stove to boil the diapers (Dr. Spock said that they had to be boiled).

Boiling water and hanging wet laundry all over the inside of the house caused a lot of condensation to form on the inside walls. This would freeze on the cold walls in our bedroom and on all the windows. All of the windows were frosted over so we could not see anything outside. Jack Frost did some very creative art work on the windows - he is very creative.

I would have to dodge wet laundry as we lived in the house. In order to hang up the cloths on the lines that crisscrossed the living room I became quite good at balancing on the arms of the sofa and chairs to reach my cloths lines. We had a stove in the kitchen and a hot air heater in the living room to heat the place. I am amazed at times that we did not burn the place down because the stove pipes in the kitchen got red hot occasionally. We had a chimney fire once but it burned itself out. We were terrified.

Sometimes I would hang the diapers on a line outside where they would freeze solid. I would bring them into the house and thaw them out and hang them up to dry after I got the heavier laundry dried inside. In those days we did not have no-iron stuff so this laundry had to also be ironed, especially Jack's uniforms.

We had no fridge so I put things that needed to be kept cool under Mike's crib and anything that needed to be frozen was put out on the porch. Fortunately we had moved onto the base by the time summer came around and I did not have to worry about keeping things cool as we had fridges on the base.

Mike was kept in his crib that was well padded for warmth. When he was not in his crib or playing on the sofa with Jack he was being carried around by me because it was too cold to let him be on the floor. I had to wear fleece lined boots in the house to keep my feet warm.

Trips to the hospital for medical checkups for Mike and myself had to be taken through the native village, catching the bus in the townsite, a long trip to the base, a trip back on the bus to Churchill and a long walk back to the house on The Hill. Sometimes I would be fortunate and get a ride home with Jack on the navy vehicle, if I was lucky.

During the winter when Jack was at work on the base, I amused myself writing letters, doing what moms need to do, and listening to CBC Radio and singing with Don Messer and the Islanders, the Happy Gang, The Shadow, The Green Hornet and other Radio shows and some of the radio soaps of that time period and enjoying Mike.

Things definitely were better when we were moved onto the base. The move itself was an experience. One day while Mike and I were home alone I heard a terrible noise outside. Jack and two or three Navy guys came into the house. They told me that we were moving, right now. We were not packed. Laundry was drying all over the place. I was sent, with Mike, over to a neighbour and told that they would call me when it was time for me to get into the Bombardier to go out to the base. Jack and the guys packed our stuff onto a big sled which was parked over by the NHB Staff Building. When they were ready they called me and Mike and we got into the back of this strange vehicle and off we went to live on the base. We bounced over the snow with our stuff bouncing all over the sled and we ended up at J-91 on the base.

That evening we got a baby sitter and went to a Hard Times Dance at the Navy Base. When we got home from the dance we had to put our bed together so we could get some sleep before trying to sort out our stuff in the morning.

It was difficult but I never really thought of it as a burden. It was just what you had to do so you did it. It was a very interesting life up there. When we left to go back to Victoria, I remember looking down out of the plane window at the airport and Churchill below. I seemed to know that some day we would be back there. Sure enough, approximately two years later, we were posted back there again, but this time we had enough points to live on the base.

I hope that helps to give you an idea of what it was like up there in that house on The Hill. I am sure that a lot of women who had babies up there can relate to this story. The people who lived in that house before we did had quite a lot of kids. I can't begin to imagine how that woman, also a Navy wife, ever managed, but she did.

In 1959 when it was time for me to go to the hospital to have our third child, Jacqueline, we were much closer to the hospital. One telephone call and I was on the way to the hospital which was just down the road. When she was born the maternity ward in the hospital was closed due to some kind of staff infection. The whole ward was closed and not in use. As was the case when Mike was born, we were taken care of by whomever the doctor was on duty at the time.

This meant that within a few hours of delivering our babies we were put into a military ambulance and taken back home. I remember being carried into our PMQ on a stretcher and being taken upstairs to the bedroom and deposited there. The accompanying military nurse handed Jacqueline to Jack and told him what the formula for her bottles was to be. Then she left Jack standing there with his new daughter and Mike and Duncan looking on. (Duncan was born in Victoria during the time we were living there.)

The nurse said that she would come to our home once a day for a few days to see if the baby and I were OK and probably help bath the baby, etc. By the time that the nurse got there in the late morning hours I had already bathed and fed Jacqueline and needed very little help. This was not my first child. I was an expert by then!

If a woman had difficulties giving birth she was flown out elsewhere to have her baby, but I am not sure where. Fortunately, that did not happen to me.

This picture was taken behind the Hudson's Bay Company store looking out toward the road that went to the base. This is Jack and me with Michael (in the dark suit) and Lauri Lawson, a child we were looking after while her mom was in the hospital.

          

On the left is a photo of one of the famous 1/2 trees. We were only allowed to put up a live tree on Christmas Eve and then we had to take it down Christmas Night, for fire safety. Because it was only half a tree we had to weigh it down with sand bags behind it and on the tree stand. This was in one of the PMQs that we lived in.

The photo on the right is of my husband Jack and our son Mike when we lived out on the hill.

I think Churchill's 1/2 trees grew like that because of something to do with the weather and the wind. A half Christmas tree is just one of those 1/2 trees cut down and made into a Christmas Tree. Pictures of the famous Churchill 1/2 trees are on a few Internet sites.

What was Christmas like? That would depend on what was traditional for an individual family. Our first Christmas was out on " the hill." In our case, as best I can remember, we had a tree (1/2 tree). Mike would have only been about two months old on our first Christmas in Churchill. Neither Jack nor I can really remember what we did for Christmas that year, but I suspect we probably went over to visit our neighbours, Jim and Audrey Williams and their daughter, Sherry. They also lived out on "the hill." Jim was a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy.

We had to order any gifts through the catalogues, either Sears or Eaton's. This usually involved sending in an order, receiving it and possibly having to send it back because they had made unacceptable substitute for what we had ordered. The stores had most anything else that we might need. There were also parcels from grandparents in both Victoria and Edmonton.

I believe we went to a dance of some kind at the Navy base for New Year's Eve. Audrey Williams was very good at baby sitting Mike for us.

The following Christmas we were living on the Base in a PMQ. Everything was much the same except I was able to cook a nice Christmas dinner and Jack invited some of the single fellows from the Navy base to help us eat it. We also invited a couple from town who were celebrating their first Christmas in Churchill with their two very young daughters. Since we lived on the base now it was also easier to get to the R. C. Chapel to attend Christmas Day Mass. The priest at the R. C. Chapel on the military base was Rev. Fr. Lord when we were there. He was an Oblate Father, I believe.

We really did not suffer very much when it came to Christmas or Easter or other celebrations. I have already told you about King and the Bing Crosby's music (see King's page for that Christmas story).

By the way, the TV in the living room photo above couldn't receive anything as there was nothing to receive.

Jim and Audrey William and their daughter, Sherry, also lived out on "the hill." Jim was a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy.

Anyone who lived in PMQ will recognize the door and entrance hall to the PMQ with the stairs going upstairs. All of PMQ, at least the ones in "J" area, were exactly the same. The door opened out into a corridor where there were doors to three other PMQ the same as this one.

There were many of these groups of buildings joined together. Sometimes the hallways were referred to as tunnels. Each block of four PMQ was divided by a fire door. It was the duty of each family in these blocks to take a turn washing, waxing and polishing the hall floor on Sunday evenings. A bucket and mop were provided for this purpose. Every Monday morning the little group of officers would come through and inspect each hallway. They knew who was responsible for cleaning it (cleaning the floors, dusting windowsills, etc.) and they would stick a grade mark on our door telling us (and the rest of the dwellers) how they figured we made out with the cleaning up. They had very high standards to meet. The people on the end of these rows had it doubly hard because the outside doors would be opened constantly and wet snow would be tracked in on our nice clean hall floors. Once in awhile the army would also send out inspectors to actually come into the PMQ to inspect them, too. We quite often had to let them come in and spray for silverfish infestations.

In this photo Mike is playing with is first hockey stick. We were temporarily in this PMQ for six months as we did not have one of our own yet. The couple who had this one sublet it to us as they had been sent south for six months.

The interesting thing about this situation was that when we did get our own PMQ it was right next door to this one. But, as it was on the other corner of the building, everything in it was the opposite to this one. In this one we washed dishes from left to right; in our new one it was right to left. In this one we turned left to go up stairs; in the new one we turned right. This nearly drove me crazy for awhile.

It was into this situation that our third child, Jacquie, was born. When we moved into our own PMQ it was the Canadian July 1st and the American July 4th holidays. The businesses were closed. Our furniture had been shipped up from Victoria and was at the train station in Churchill. The military furniture that was being used by the people who were moving out of our new PMQ was left there for us to use. Then a military mix-up saw us have some military furniture delivered for us. While we were trying to find room for all this furniture, a big military truck pulled up to the back door with our furniture and belongings in it. Someone had pulled some strings and got our furniture and things out of storage from the train station without us knowing about it.

I had just come home from the hospital with a new baby a few days prior to that and we found it to be very stressful. We were sent home only hours after having our babies at the time so there was not much time to get used to having a new baby before we had to make this move next door. We laugh about it now, but it was not funny at the time. It was like living in a warehouse with three little kids and everything was backward to what we were used to!!!! I also had to make sure that the PMQ we were vacating was all cleaned and the way we found it when we moved in there temporarily.

This picture was taken on the base the second time we were posted there. Mike is now Chief Petty Officer Second Class M. H. Jacob, CFB Borden, Borden, Ontario. Jacquie is now Dr. Jacqueline P. Jacob, Assistant Professor at University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Duncan is now an Area Manager for Task Tools in Prince George, British Columbia.

This is a photo showing the back entrance to our PMQ and that's Mike and me. I found it easier to pull him around in a box on a sled, instead of trying to use the buggy (baby carriage). We did have runners that could be put on over the wheels of the buggy to push the buggy on snow, but I preferred this way. This box and sled were also used for shopping for groceries at the commissary.

This is a picture of part of the kitchen of our PMQ on the base. As you can see we had lots of cupboards, a fridge and a laundry room. The laundry room had two laundry tubs and room for our washing machine with cloths lines overhead. We even had hot and cold running water, which, after living on "the hill," was much appreciated. That's Mike with another dog we had for awhile, until huskies were banned from the base. By the time we were posted to CFB Fort Churchill a second time we had a cloths dryer. That was a luxury.

This is a photo of Jack with Duncan, Jacquie (in buggy) and Mike walking down the road in front of the PMQs on the base in the winter. In the background one can see Hudson Bay frozen over. The rocks with snow on them and between them could be a dangerous place to walk because one could go down through the snow.

Duncan, the child on the left, gave us a bad scare in the spring when the snow was thawing and leaving big puddles of water between those rocks. Sometimes the ponds of water would have snow on top of them and could not always be seen. One evening Duncan disappeared. He was in his under pants and a tee shirt. I am not even sure if he had anything on his feet. He just disappeared. We had a lot of people out looking for him and I was really trying hard to keep calm and not worry about whether he had gone to explore and fallen into one of those ponds. The Military Police were looking for him and we were about to call out the whole Army to look for him.

One of our neighbours got an idea and quietly, without saying anything to anyone, decided to take a walk down to the area of the camp near the Commissary where some ball games were being played. Sure enough, she found him there in his underwear and tee shirt watching the ball game. He had never done that before and it was quite a distance from our PMQ. Needless to say, we were all very relieved to find that he had not fallen into one of those ponds.

Another time, I was walking along this road by myself on the way home from doing some shopping at the Commissary. I had a big bag of meat with me. $25.00 bought quite a lot more meat then than it does now. I wondered why there were no people around and why there was a helicopter flying overhead and there were Army folks down on the beach that I could see as I looked down over the embankment. I had no idea that there had been a polar bear alert on the radio, which I did not hear because I was not at home at the time of the announcement. Evidently, there was a polar bear down on the rocks and I did not know it was there. I have always been glad that the bear did not know that I was there with all that fresh meat.

Sometimes folks would store frozen meat and bread in the windows between the window and the storm screen. I used to do that, too. We had to stop doing that because it seemed to attract polar bears in to the camp.