There was only one thing I regularly complained about in my letters home and that was the systematic confiscation of food parcels. Boys from Winnipeg enjoyed an advantage I came to resent. During the break after the Sunday evening service we attended at St. John’s Cathedral, they could pick up their next shipment of contraband from their parents and smuggle it into the school virtually unimpeded.
Because my home was in Medicine Hat I was totally dependent on the mail. Mr. Wiens used to employ two methods of seizure.
If the parcel was small and he wasn’t 100 percent sure it contained only the socks or underwear you said it did he would ask you to open it at lunch when the rest of the mail was being handed out. Otherwise, you would be informed there was a parcel for you in his office.
Either way, he had you. You were always given the benefit of the doubt and at least allowed to open it. But if it contained candy or goodies you were not allowed to squirrel it away.
I don’t think I minded being required to share the contents with my dormmates. What bothered me was that it seemed as though it was always me doing the sharing.
As a non-Winnipeg student, it seemed as if I was being doubly penalized. Not only did you not get to see your parents during the term but any tangible love and care that came your way, was either confiscated or you were required to share it.
My war against this injustice began fairly early in my first year. I went underground and, other than my mother, only a couple of co-conspirators knew about my efforts to beat the system.
At first, I didn’t do much more than bitterly pass on what happened in my letters home.
`I also received your parcel with the candy, and it went that night because Mr., Wiens made me give some to everybody in the junior section of the school which I am in,'
I wrote on October 14.
Two weeks later I again acknowledged receipt of a parcel, adding,
'but it was taken away to be shared, I suppose.'
In November I related how the parents of Bob (Woody) Milroy, who had arrived from Medicine Hat to enroll, had hand-delivered a parcel but it too had been intercepted. Disposal this time was a little different.
`I got you Christmas cards and the parcel Milroys brought but of course the apples were taken away but I managed to get away with the fudge, etc. I gave that out to the juniors one night and it went down well,'
said my December 2 letter.
After Christmas I was right back at it, taking most of the first page of my January 20 letter to harp about the fate of my parcels. On that occasion, I accidentally discovered the importance of the parcel’s arrival time in determining the kind of treatment it received.
'My parcel was given out last night [Saturday]. Since I didn't get it all handed out before the end of the meal I salvaged the chips and the Life-Saver book. I gave the chips to my dorm and am now rationing the Life-Savers through the week so they won't be gone in a day.'
Parcels given out on Saturday were not subjected to such strict surveillance and it was possible to keep some for yourself. I soon realized that having extra rations while snowshoeing was almost a matter of life and death, so this was an important discovery. Out of this observation grew a new strategy to win the food-parcel war.
About this time, I briefly flirted with the idea of giving up the fight altogether. In one letter I actually suggested to my mother that she stop sending parcels because it was becoming more and more obvious that Mr. Wiens did not like me getting them.
I quickly regained my senses. My next offensive involved timing the arrival of parcels to just before a weekend.
In my February 24 letter home, I was able to report my first real victory.
'The parcel arrived Friday night so Mr. Wiens let me have it for the snowshoe crew I'm on. Jan [my oldest sister] also sent me a cake that arrived Saturday night. I still have that.'
I also thanked my mother for the comics, something I informed her that surprisingly had been allowed. The big problem with the new strategy was it relied too much on me letting my mother know exactly which weekends I would be at the school and which ones I would be away.
As a B student, I was on weekends-off half the time, and usually, I was able to get invited to someone’s home. The number of free weekends was determined by how well you did in the cycle tests held every six weeks. An A student got five, a B, four, a C, three, and a D, two. During the first two years of the full-time school, leave started at noon Saturday and ended at 7:30 Sunday when you required to attend the evening service at the cathedral.
The next real success didn’t come until just before Easter when I was able to inform my mother that her delicious homemade Easter eggs were handed over to me just before leaving for the weekend. I clearly had my suspicions about when they had arrived.
`I got this week's parcel containing the Easter eggs, etc. I think it arrived earlier than Friday when I got it because I saw the same package in the office earlier.'
Early in my second year, I decided drastic action was called for. In my second letter home I related how I barely got a chance to look at a delicious box of candy before it was whisked away. Never again would I suffer that indignity, I vowed.
Sending parcels to the school made it too easy for outright confiscation. In a letter on September 29, I outlined my new system. I requested that she send all parcels to the family of one of my dorm mates whose Winnipeg home had become my home-away-from-home.
We were pretty much still strangers when Danny Raymes first invited me to his home one weekend early in my first year. His family – all eight of them – immediately welcomed me like an adopted son but I was not so quick to respond. The first weekend I remember being so shy I spent most of the time in their basement room.
The Raymes lived in a two-story wartime home in Wildwood, an innovative new subdivision where all the houses faced walkways and parkland, not streets. Lialla was a Saskatchewan farm girl who moved to the city to marry an air force pilot. Following the war, Dan went to work for Trans Canada Airways (Air Canada) and lived the seemingly never-at-home life of a commercial airline pilot. Lialla was left to hold down the fort.
The Raymes must have been surprised when I accepted their invitation to visit again on my next weekend off. From then on I became a regular visitor. (During the Easter holiday I was partially able to reciprocate by inviting Danny to my home.)
Those weekends I didn’t spend at the Raymes, Mrs. Raymes made sure I didn’t go without at least one good feed of goodies. Many a Sunday night after church the back seat of her baby-blue Buick convertible looked like a bakery. Dan and I would fill our faces for 15 minutes then make a dash for the school bus as it was about to leave.
Needless to say, she willingly agreed to be a go-between in my proposed smuggling operation. As my September 29 letter suggested in my second year I had even more reason.
`Next time you send something send it to the Raymes for I will tell you when I go there, and I could pick it up and take it to the school and then would only have to share it with my dorm. The reason is that there are so many boys in the school that what you send doesn't go around so no one gets the parcel except the Wiens and the Byfields most likely.'
I reported my first success soon after. As easy as I made it sound it was not done without some risk. There was often a roll call and inspection the minute we arrived back at the school. The new system required refinement.
Two weeks later I sent specific instructions as to size, and, incredibly, the contents – presumption being in no short supply when it came to a teenager dealing with his mother.
After specifying that she should send candy, chocolate bars, and fudge, I had the nerve to complain that the last two parcels were
`so large I had a hard time getting them in.'
If she had had enough of my master-servant dictates she never said so. I don’t think she ever liked sending them to the Raymes because invariably it arrived there for the wrong weekend and then Mrs. Raymes had to deliver to me.
Instead, she began sending me things that were allowed directly to the school. It was the year the Beatles took North America by storm. On several occasions, she sent me fan magazines and songbooks, perhaps in an effort to encourage my guitar playing. Comics and newspapers also began arriving.
As for food parcels, by late in the year they had pretty well stopped coming. The funny thing is I don’t think I really missed them. There was seldom a mention in my letters. The war I had once been so determined to win simply came to an end.
Richard de Candole has been working in British Columbia and Alberta as a reporter and editor for over 40 years. Toughest School in North America is about his five years as a student at St. John’s Cathedral Boys’ School in Selkirk, Manitoba from 1962 to 1968. Richard lives with his wife Wendy in Qualicum Beach, British Columbia.
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