Looking Back: Games We Played. Traditional Games and Pastimes in Newfoundland and Labrador.

              Traditional Games and Pastimes
in Newfoundland and Labrador
Edited by Sharon King-Campbell
LOOKING BACK: GAMES
WE PLAYED
LOOKING BACK: GAMES
WE PLAYED
Traditional Games and Pastimes
in Newfoundland and Labrador
Edited by Sharon King-Campbell
Heritage Foundation of
Newfoundland and Labrador
2015
Games We Played
By Teresa Boland, February 2015
We’ll share our stories one and all
Of games we played when we were small.
We would run, skip, jump and sing:
We did just about everything!
Marg didn’t care if it rained or snow,
Out the door she would go.
Donna made mud holes in the ground
And threw her marbles all around.
When the weather was perfectly dry,
Hop Scotch or Ring around the Rosy we’d try.
Everyone heard Cathy call,
“Red Rover, Red Rover, send over Paul!”
Or Simon would tell you what to do:
Bend over backwards or buckle your shoe.
Sometimes the boys would go their own way
As Cowboys and Indians they would play,
And the girls, they played as well,
With dolly and carriage or Farmer in the Dell.
Berkley and the boys would all trade
On bubble gum cards on comic book days.
Little Martha would never sell,
But trade her paper dolls as well.
Teresa was happy and tired as she went on her way,
And it started all over the very next day.
Can Sandra and Donny come out to play?
At Dunlace Public School in the 1980s,
my friends and I would gather to play
games at recess. One of our favourites
went like this: “One, two, three, alairy,
four, five six, alairy, seven, eight, nine,
alairy, ten alairy, catch me!” We would
count out while bouncing a ball (the
bouncier the better!), and swoop our
leg in a circular motion over the ball
each time we said “alairy.” We went
through the alphabet, inserting a new
word and a new motion with our legs,
arms, or hands each time. After “alairy” came “a basket”—
arms stretched out in front of us, the ball had to bounce through
the “hoop.” C-a cradle, d- a doggie, e- an eggie, and on we
played.
We learned the rhyme and game from each other, not from
a book or a teacher, and certainly not from the internet! I
remember being taken aback when I learned that my mother
knew a variation of the same rhyme—how could that be?
Children’s rhymes and games are excellent examples of the
transmission of folklore—how traditional culture and knowledge
are learned, and passed along informally, by observation or
imitation. Many of the schoolyard games my peers and I played
in suburban Toronto in the 1980s were variations of games my
mother and her friends played downtown forty years earlier.
DR. JILLIAN GOULD (PHOTO BY PHONSE KING)
INTRODUCTION
GAMES WE PLAYED | 05
And today children continue to play variations of the same
games over time and across the country.
In February 2015, a group of Public Folklore graduate students
from Memorial University got together for a series of visits with
a group of senior volunteers at the MacMorran Community
Centre in St. John’s. Over three weeks, the group got to know
each other, shared many laughs, stories, songs, and games.
On the first day, the group sat in a circle and introduced
themselves: Terra Barrett, Sharna Brzycki, Andrea McGuire,
and Jacquey Ryan were the graduate students; Don Antle,
Sandra Antle, Cathy Baker, Teresa Boland, Marg Connolly,
Martha Oliver, Berk Reynolds, and Madonna Summers were
the senior volunteers. From the Heritage Foundation were
Dale Jarvis, Sharon King-Campbell, and Alanna Wicks to help
facilitate the discussion.
The large gymnasium was cold, and folks were somewhat
hesitant to begin chatting. It didn’t take long to break the
ice, however; especially with cups of tea, date squares, and
warm memories of childhood games and shenanigans. Stories
about sledding and paper dolls and stilt races had everyone
laughing and sharing. As Jacquey remarked: “I was there—
that was my childhood!” Over the next couple of weeks the
students conducted individual audio-recorded interviews,
(LEFT TO RIGHT) TERRA BARRETT, SHARNA BRZYCKI, ANDREA MCGUIRE, AND JACQUELINE RYAN. (PHOTOS BY PHONSE KING)
and the group continued to reminisce and play. Jacks, Pick-up
Sticks, Hopscotch, and holding hands in a circle to sing Little
Sally Saucer were some of the highlights. Our meetings even
inspired Teresa to write a lovely original poem, which you can
find at the front of this booklet. After interviews and play, the
chitchat continued, as we gathered around a table to enjoy
Marg’s delicious home cooking: soup, sandwiches, goulash,
and sweets, including her signature pina colada muffins.
This booklet presents portraits and interview excerpts from the
recording sessions with the senior volunteers. We hope the
games and stories described here will resonate with readers,
and that folks will be inspired to pick up a ball and to share
a game, a rhyme, or a childhood story or two with someone
you know—especially a young person, who might learn a new
game, or a variation of an old one, and might even share that
knowledge with some friends in the schoolyard. As for me, I
was amazed by Martha’s skilled and steady hand at jacks,
and I remembered how much I enjoyed the game when I was
young. Now I’m off to find my own set, so I can bring it home
and practice with my little daughter, and teach her how to
play.
DR. JILLIAN GOULD
Department of Folklore
Memorial University of Newfoundland
GAMES WE PLAYED | 07
In late 2014, I was approached by the Heritage Foundation
of Newfoundland and Labrador with a short contract to
coordinate a project called Hoist your Sails and Run. The job:
arrange for seniors to meet with young people to talk about,
and play, the games that they played as children. Essentially,
I was asked to organize fun. How could I say no?
The students of Dr. Jillian Gould’s Public Folklore class are the
authors of this booklet, and the content is collected from the
eight dedicated and generous seniors who joined us for a
chat and a meal at MacMorran Community Centre.
However, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the
contributions of those who read about the project and filled
HOIST YOUR
SAILS AND RUN
SHARON KING-CAMPBELL ON SLIDE BROUGHT IN BY BERKLEY REYNOLDS. (PHOTO BY BERKLEY REYNOLDS)
out a survey, and who were excited to talk about their favourite
games and pastimes. Their names are listed in the back of
this booklet, and their interviews, while not represented in this
booklet, informed my writing in blog and newsletter articles,
and are available at Memorial University’s Digital Archives
Initiative.
A few others deserve special mention: Jim Crockwell, Lacey
Churchill and the staff at MacMorran Community Centre,
who made the sessions run so smoothly; Marg Connolly,
who, in addition to sharing her marvellous stories, also fed us
delicious lunches; Phonse King of King’s Photography, who
came in to take portraits of our participants; Dr. Jillian Gould,
who integrated this project into her course; the students
of FOLK 6740 (Public Folklore); and Dale Jarvis, Intangible
Cultural Heritage Development Officer, who devised this
project in the first place.
SHARON KING-CAMPBELL
This project has been funded by the Government of
Canada’s New Horizons for Seniors Program.
GAMES WE PLAYED | 09
Here at the MacMorran Community
Centre, Don Antle refers to himself as
a “fixture.” Don grew up in West Side,
Corner Brook, moving to St. John’s
when he was twenty-eight. Don and
his wife Sandra are frequent visitors to
the centre.
Growing up in Corner Brook was a
lively, rich experience for Don, who
looks back with fond memories on his
childhood, playing hockey under the
streetlight or fishing up at Gull Pond.
Recalling the games he played as a child, Don divides them
into two categories, those played in the summer and those
played in the winter.
“Winters were bad, summers were good,” Don states, referring
to snowy winters and hot sunny summers, weather features
essential for a seasonal sports enthusiast.
Don’s favorite pastime was hockey, played on the street in
the wintertime and later in the new Humber Gardens arena.
A puck was always used in street hockey, as Don remembers
it; he never played the game with a ball.
Don was good at hockey, and even won a trophy one year.
He was confident with the puck and enjoyed every minute of
DON ANTLE
interviewed by Jacqueline Ryan
DON ANTLE (PHOTO BY PHONSE KING)
the game. In Don’s teenage years, he became a “rink rat”,
spending countless hours at the arena, grooming the ice for
the next skate or hockey game. Towards the latter part of his
arena career, Don remembers driving the Zamboni, a piece
of ice grooming equipment acquired around that time.
An injury to Don’s ankle ended his career as a hockey player.
Confident of his abilities in the game, but modest enough to
recognize, as he puts it, “I was never going to be a Gordie
Howe,” Don finally said goodbye to hockey when he was
twenty.
“I think [my favourite game] was the hockey. The hockey in
the winter and I think it was a bit of fishing and that in the
summer…. I can remember the hockey and the fishing.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“If you had a flat surface road up to the top of the hill… you
could play hockey there for all day and all night, because
there was no cars, or very, very, very few. We used to play
hockey on the road, and at the stadium. We used to play
hockey on the street, but then when we got the stadium… it
was more night time hockey, after supper, instead of going
over the stadium because the stadium probably had their
own regular hockey games on... So we’d play underneath the
light on the street. You went outside of your door, probably
from here in this building, down to the end of the driveway
[about 500 yards], was the furthest you went.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“There was always a crowd playing hockey. There was Harry
Burton, Bob [Don’s cousin and fishing partner] never played
much hockey, but Harry Burton, Derek Statton, Jimmy Roche,
lots of the guys. There was a family of guys, right, there was a
whack of them played hockey and they all lived around.”
GAMES WE PLAYED | 11
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“We had a whole big league set up. I started out there with
Bantam or Pee Wee, then you went on to Midget and there
was all kinds of teams… You were called something, I don’t
know, it wasn’t Bowater but it probably was some store or
some business sponsored this team, and by sponsoring them,
all they done was gave you a few jerseys with their name on it
or something with their name on it. But that was pretty much it
and you were just called that team, and you played then two
or three times a week, and you had to get there six o’clock
in the morning for getting the ice time. That was it back then,
right, and it might have cost sometimes; sometimes the league
would have to chip in. It was probably only twenty-five cents
a player to pay for the ice time…. Oh yes, it was organized, but
when you played outside, no, that wasn’t organized, that was
confusion. [Laughs.] That’s it, everything goes. We’d always
have two teams depending on who was around... You could
be on one team tonight, and the next night, be on another
team… But depending on how many was around, sometimes
you’d have eight or nine or ten people playing, and more
times you might only have four or five. [You] usually tried to get
(LEFT TO RIGHT) DON (LEFT) TELLS A STORY. SANDRA, ANDREA & SHARNA LOOK ON (PHOTO BY JILLIAN
GOULD); DON ANTLE CIRCA 1946-47 IN CORNER BROOK (PHOTO COURTESY OF DON ANTLE).
an even number, anyway, but sometimes if you had an odd
number, then: ‘all right, I’ll play for a while and then you can
come and take a turn,’ so everyone got to play, right?”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“I don’t think I can remember street hockey until I came
here to St. John’s. We never ever played hockey in the
summer... We always used a puck for winter, right? The snow
would be packed down that hard it was almost the same as
ice, it wasn’t ice but it was really heavy packed snow. We’d
make a couple of goal posts out of something… [Laughs.] It
was two big mounds of snow.”
GAMES WE PLAYED | 13
Sandra Antle was born in St. John’s
on April 24, 1955. Her mother worked
as a dietician, while her father was
employed as an oil burner mechanic.
Sandra grew up in a bungalow built
by her father on Wexford Street, just
behind Stockwood’s Convenience
on Freshwater Road. She was the
eldest of six siblings, who were
all “steps and stairs in age.” As a
result, Sandra got an early start in
babysitting. Growing up, Sandra had
a fondness for skipping, colouring, and designing outfits for
paper dolls. She gamely joined her family for their camping
expeditions, though she generally preferred indoor activities.
Sandra’s family moved to Oxen Pond Road when she was 14.
In her teenage years, Sandra cultivated her personal style.
She and her friends took to fashioning their own velvet choker
necklaces with hand-sewn peace signs. She laughs, saying,
“That would be like the cat’s meow. If you had a peace sign
on you and a Maxi coat, you were the gear.”
Sandra has previously worked as a counsellor in a group
home. Over the years, she’s raised two children and continued
babysitting her loved ones, remarking,
“I’ve done a lot of taking care of people.”
SANDRA FERN ANTLE interviewed by Andrea McGuire
SANDRA ANTLE (PHOTO BY PHONSE KING)
She and her husband Don recently celebrated their
30th wedding anniversary, and have been a part of the
MacMorran Community Centre for over twenty years. These
days, Sandra enjoys singing, reading, and spending time with
her grandchildren. She always likes to show her grandchildren
the games and songs of her childhood.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ETHEL BENSON AND CHILDREN (LEFT TO RIGHT) OLGA PIPPY, CAROL CLANCY, SANDRA ANTLE. PICNICING IN MAY 1958.
(PHOTO COURTESY OF SANDRA ANTLE)
GAMES WE PLAYED | 15
AM: Did you play house?
SA: Oh yes, and school. I loved to be schoolteacher, because
I was the oldest. So I would give them math, or spelling, and
they never wanted to play. [Laughs.] I think I was a stern
teacher. But I used to sit around the table, and you know, play
school with my siblings. Now that’s silly.
AM: So you just made them do math problems?
SA: Oh yeah. ‘If I’m miserable, you’re miserable.’
AM: So what were they getting out of that?
SA: Misery. [Laughter.] They’d play for awhile, but then they’d
get bored, like ‘No, we don’t want to do this.’
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“We used to go on hikes, or go berry picking. We used to
get away from the door, because if you stayed by the door
you probably got chores. So we used to just take a snack and
hoof it. We’d go somewhere that wasn’t near the house.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“We played a little bit of spotlight. We always went camping
in the summer, and we used to have the sparklers. We’d be
running around the campsites, and then all of a sudden the
sparkler would go out and we’d scream ‘Aaaah!’ It was dark,
you were trying to get back home. Mom heard us, and we
weren’t too far, but it was so black, I remember, in the country.
I wasn’t used to that, we grew up in the city.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“We used to have the big paper dolls that would have hair
and everything. I guess it was wool. And clothes would come
with it, and we’d also have the smaller ones, and we would take
things out of the Sears catalogue and fashion it into clothes,
and lay it against the doll.
We would make our own, we
were designers. There were
some odd clothes, because
a model poses differently
than a stiff paper doll. And
sometimes we’d even get
paper and draw the clothes,
and colour it in.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“I remember playing a
lot of skipping, and a lot of
games with a ball. We used
to call it an Indian rubber
ball, but I believe they call it
a high bouncer now. And it
was kind of big, like maybe a small softball. And we’d play
singing games with that, and especially skipping, we did
a lot of skipping.... We used to sing stuff like ‘Three, six, nine,
the goose drank wine, the monkey chewed tobacco on the
street car line. The line broke, the monkey choked, and they
all went to heaven in a little rowboat.’ Mostly nursery rhyme
type things, and silly things.... It was all about the rhyme, I think.
I think we made it up as we went along sometimes.”
SANDRA BENSON AT AGE 5. AS A CHILD, SANDRA ACCEPTED
HER MOTHER’S BROWN PAPER BAG CURLS BEAUTY
TREATMENTS WITH A CERTAIN DEGREE OF RELUCTANCE.
(PHOTO BY GARLAND’S PHOTOS, ST. JOHN’S)
GAMES WE PLAYED | 17
Cathy Baker has been coming to
the MacMorran Centre for ten years.
Having grown up in the heart of St.
John’s, Cathy thinks back on the
games she played in childhood,
laughing as she remembers playing
alleys in her back garden with a
friend, and being warned by her
mother not to go fighting over the
marbles. Cathy recalls,
“My friend used to come over, Sheila, she’d knock. ‘Have a
game of alleys?’ … My mom would be in the window. ‘Now
no fighting now, no fighting over those alleys.’ I said, ‘No Mom,
we won’t be fighting.’ And I say no, but we did a lot of fighting
when we were younger, when we were seven, eight or nine,
whatever, but it was fun.”
Throughout my interview with Cathy, there was much laughter
and countless references to the fun she and her friends had
playing games when she was growing up. Besides alleys,
Cathy remembers skipping as one of her favourite pastimes,
and she would often take her skipping rope to school so she
and her friends could skip during recess. I asked Cathy if she
ever played alleys at school but she replied,
“We wouldn’t play in school. We wouldn’t dig any holes at the
school grounds. [Laughs.]”
CATHY BAKER
interviewed by Jacqueline Ryan
CATHY BAKER (PHOTO BY JACQUELINE RYAN)
Cathy remembers the fun she had skipping.
“We used to skip and sing songs while we were skipping,
skipping and singing, so time is just flying”.
One of these skipping songs goes:
Lou, Lou, Skip to my Lou
Lou, Lou Skip to my Lou
Lou, Lou Skip to my Lou
Skip to my Lou my darling.
Just recently, Cathy taught her neighbour’s daughter how
to skip, jumping in herself at times, and commenting that,
although she felt a little uncomfortable being observed by
local bystanders, “it was fun!”
“My favorite game[s] I liked [were] skipping and alleys, two of
my favorite games.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“We played French Skipping*, sometimes. I would take my
rope to school and we would play at school, and then [at]
lunchtime… I’d just go home and get something quick, it’d be
ready so I’d go home and eat it fast, go back and we’d have
more skipping, me and my friends. We used to play it on the
concrete, not on the road, just in our driveway or something
like that.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“French skipping. …We just played with a long rope and it
was two people, one on each end, and then we just turn the
ropes, one hand going then the other hand going. The other
person would just jump in and go back and forth. First playing
it I was nervous, I used to wait a little bit. I used to think the
rope was going to hit me in the face as I was jumping and
I wouldn’t do it at first. But eventually I did do it and then I
GAMES WE PLAYED | 19
enjoyed playing it from then on.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“I had two friends… Daphne and Denise… the three of us
played a lot of skipping together. Sometimes there was more
than three. A few of them would stand up watching, and then
they might get a chance to play. [Laughs.] We might let them
play.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“A couple of months ago my neighbour wanted to play.
Well, actually, I babysit her every now and then. And she
wanted to play skipping… We didn’t French Skip... First I was
learning her how to skip, and she just used to flick the rope up
over her head… but she didn’t use her feet to jump up. She
just used to let the rope fall down. She wouldn’t do the French
Skipping; she just wanted to skip by herself…. I said, “You have
to jump. When it gets down to the bottom you jump…” So
then, she finally got into it… and she was contented as can be
and now she knows how to skip.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“A couple of months ago I did skipping. [Laughs.] Oh, I felt
embarrassed because I’m older now, but, I mean, it was fun. It
was fun. I had to try it. It was fun and actually it was the French
skipping. I had to try it, the little one and another one holding
on to the rope.”
*The game that Cathy describes is a jump rope game where the rope
is held on either end by a turner and one or more players skip in the
middle. This differs from another game, also called “French Skipping,”
which involves performing a variety of jumps and turns over an elastic
cord held at ankle height, then knee height and so on upward.
Teresa Dorothy Boland was born in
her home in St. John’s on January
13, 1947. The first few years of her
childhood were spent on Prince Street
until the family moved to Southside
Road when she was about five years
old. Teresa has wonderful memories
about growing up and playing with
the children in her neighbourhood.
She was the third youngest child in
a family with seven girls and one
boy. Teresa’s father died when she
was two, and she describes how hardworking her mother
was and how she managed to keep the family together.
Teresa has memories of playing on the railroad track and
going swimming in the woods behind her home on Southside
Road. As a child she would slide down the main street in the
winter and would use cardboard or canvas to slide down hills
in the summer. Teresa remembers games such as Stiffy Staffy,
Little Sally Saucer, Farmer in the Dell, and many more. She
also recalls playing with paper dolls and using homemade
wooden stilts. Teresa’s family moved to Topsail when she was
fourteen and she lived there until she married her husband,
Jim. The two have been married for fifty years and live in St.
John’s, where they raised their five children. Teresa describes
herself as a quiet child who enjoyed reading and writing,
TERESA BOLAND
interviewed by Terra Barrett
TERESA BOLAND (PHOTO BY PHONSE KING)
GAMES WE PLAYED | 21
activities she still enjoys today. She is currently writing a book
about the Ocean Ranger disaster, and volunteers with the
MacMorran Community Centre.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“We used to use stilts all the time. We used to have stilt
races or stilt fights. They were made with a long piece of two
by four… and then you’d put another block down lower
and you’d stand on it. You would probably be two or three
feet from the ground. So you’d be standing on these, and
you’d be holding on to the stilts, and you’d be walking, you
know. We used to race down Southside Road on them, and
we used to have the stilt fights.
You’d try to kick [your opponent]
off with your stick, and… if you
lost your balance or went off
your stilts you’d lose the game.
It was a rough game to play.
You wouldn’t think it though, you
know. We didn’t think it at the
time. Now you’d have to have a
helmet on to do that. We never
wore a helmet…. I don’t even
think there was any such thing as
helmets back then.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Little Sally Saucer, sitting in
the water, rise up Sally and wipe
away your tears, turn to the East
side, turn to the West side, turn to
the very side that you love best.
So anyway, Little Sally Saucer
closed her eyes and she wasn’t
allowed to look until you’d say TERESA WILLIAMS IN 1955. (PHOTO COURTESY OF
TERESA BOLAND)
‘rise up Sally and wipe away your tears’… It was a ‘ring around
the roses’ game, right? Everybody would hold hands and the
person who stayed in the middle was Little Sally Saucer. When
they said ‘turn to the very one that you love best,’ whoever
Sally… touched… that person was Little Sally Saucer then.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Mostly in the wintertime if you were inside you would play
with your cutouts. Cutouts were paper dolls. The doll used to
be made of cardboard. There were… different kinds of dolls
TERESA WILLIAMS IN 1959. (PHOTO COURTESY OF TERESA BOLAND)
GAMES WE PLAYED | 23
and you’d dress them up. We used to have catalogues,
Eaton’s and Sears, and we used to cut out the beds and then
that would be the dolls’ furniture. We traded a lot of dolls. If
other girls in the neighbourhood had a doll that you liked, ‘You
give me one and I’ll give you two for a trade.’”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“I rode my bike. I used to have to ride back and forth to
school. It was a couple of miles we had to go… but we had
to come home to lunch so a bike was pretty good. I used
to just make it back and forth with time to eat my lunch and
run back again. Sometimes we used to walk in the road and
jump across Waterford Bridge River. It’s a wonder we weren’t
drowned.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“We didn’t really play with boys unless you were sliding and
everybody slid together. We used to slide down Southside
Road. There used to be a hill on the top and all the kids with
their slides slid down Southside Road. And then there used
to be a big meadow and a hill somewhere along the way.
I’m not sure where it was to, but we used to slide down there
on cardboard or canvas in the summertime. Yeah, that was
really fun.”
Marg Connolly was born in St. John’s
on May 10, 1935. She grew up on
Hunt’s Lane with one brother, one
sister, and thirty-five cousins who lived
in the surrounding neighbourhood.
All of her free time was spent
with her siblings and cousins, and
together they would explore the
woods nearby, play marbles (to see
how many one could win in a day),
or play Marg’s favourite childhood
game, Hide and Go Seek. Marg has
fond memories of Sunday afternoons spent with her family.
On sunny days they would ride her father’s horse and wagon
to Kent’s Pond for leisurely picnics. Marg raised eight children
of her own and has resided on Hunt’s Lane for the past
seventy-seven years.
Today Marg spends much of her time serving others at the
MacMorran Community Centre in St. John’s. Here she attends
all of the seniors’ programs and is one of the longest-standing
volunteers. She cooks for programming and events held at the
centre, volunteers at the food bank, has acted as a member
of the board of directors, and is still an active member of
various committees. When she is not volunteering, she runs her
own catering business in St. John’s.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
MARGARET
(MARG) CONNOLLY
interviewed by Sharna Brzycki
MARG CONNOLLY (PHOTO BY PHONSE KING)
GAMES WE PLAYED | 25
“The boys and girls played together at that time too, right?
We all played together… till we got a certain age and then,
you know, the boys got more independent. They’d go play
Cowboys and Indians, and we did a lot of swimming. We all
walked down together and we all came home together. So it
was good, good days.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“We went skiing. We made our own skis. Out of barrel, what
would they call them? Stakes? You know where a barrel is
rounded… we used to tie our feet in them. And we slid on
old trays, pieces of metal, cardboard boxes, anything that
could move… [We’d go] right behind our house, right there
on Hunt’s Lane. [There are] two or three hills, there are houses
on them now, but… we went all the time. There was one there
we used to call Blueberry Hill, we all used to go up there, and
that’s where our mother used to send us to pick berries and
we’d come down and she’d make blueberry jam with the
doughboys.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ENJOYING A LUNCH OF MARG’S CHICKEN SOUP. (PHOTO BY JILLIAN GOULD)
“I broke my arm when I was skating... There was a little pond,
we’d call it Beaver Pond, it’s not there anymore now. And my
mother, she said… ‘I’m warning you not to go down there.’
Of course I went down and broke my arm. And I had my leg
broke for a whole summer another time. I had my little cousin
on my knees swinging her and the swing broke… That was
June, July August... I didn’t go back to school until November.
Them days there was no one to take you to the hospital. You
had to wait until someone came home to mind the other
kids so you could go… They rigged up an old couch that I
could sit on, you know, and watch them play...I had to watch
everyone. I did do a lot of reading and playing with dolls.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Up there in Hunt’s Lane where I grew up there’s a small
river… and we used to dam it off in the night time and when
we’d get up in the morning there would be a little pond. We
all swam in it. And the old man that owned the land used to
take the dam out of it and we used to get so mad, and we
would do it again! As fast as he tore it down we’d build it up
again.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“This [area] was one big garden we played in and my kids
played in it, and this is where they spent their time. Running
around playing Hide and Seek and whatever they were
doing... I lived in Hunt’s Lane and this was included in Hunt’s
Lane. This part here, all of it, was all trees, and there was a
great big meadow. And there was all kinds of berries and
everything here so we all played here. Today everything’s too
close together, the houses are too close together, there’s no
open space anymore. Barely do you see a house with a great
big lawn or anything anymore.”
GAMES WE PLAYED | 27
Martha Oliver was born in St. John’s
on June 24, 1961. She has lived in
St. John’s all her life, and grew up
in a house built by her grandfather
on Thorburn Road. In those days,
Thorburn Road was a rural, forested
area, and Martha spent much of her
time playing outdoors with her sister,
two brothers, and neighbourhood
friends. Together, they played
spotlight, hide and seek, and softball.
They also built “bough houses” in the
woods, picked berries, celebrated Bonfire Night, and went
swimming where Sunshine Camp is today. Martha moved
out of her parents’ house at the age of 24, and raised her
daughters Nicole and Ashley. Ashley is disabled, and Martha
is her primary caregiver. Martha has been involved with the
MacMorran Community Centre for the past ten years. She is
an avid reader, and has collected just about all of the Nancy
Drew books. However, she’s still searching high and low for
the last book to complete her collection- an elusive edition
of The Nancy Drew Cookbook. Martha also enjoys spending
time with her four year old grandson, Hunter.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Now we used to make a little shed. There was a place where
I lived, it was called England’s Field, it was all woods, and we
MARTHA OLIVER
interviewed by Andrea McGuire
MARTHA OLIVER (PHOTO BY PHONSE KING)
used to build a little house,
a bough house there. And
you could pick blueberries
there.... Probably four or five
of us put together the bough
house. We put whatever old
wood we could find, we’d
probably make a couple of
little benches to sit in there…
and probably take a few
dishes, old ones that Mom
wasn’t using, and we’d bring
that out, then we’d spend a
lot of time out there. We just
used a hammer and any old
nails. That’s all it was ever built
of. Rusty old nails, wherever we can pick them. And nobody
had paved driveways. And our driveway was quite long, so
you’d go up and down the driveway to see what nails you
could find, and that’s what we used. And got hold of Dad’s
hammer. We just played in there... And we’d go in there and
sit down and talk, usually. And a scattered time we’d pretend
we were cooking something, pretend food. And we did that
in the summer time, too.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Starting in the spring, Easter time, you couldn’t wait to get
your marbles and your alleys – well, they’re called alleys – your
skipping rope, and your jacks, that was the three things at
our school. You see, one group was probably playing alleys,
and the other was probably playing skipping, and probably
another group playing jacks. So that was the three things at
our school.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
MARTHA OLIVER IN GRADE 3, CIRCA 1969. (PHOTO
COURTESY OF MARTHA OLIVER)
GAMES WE PLAYED | 29
“We played a lot of hide and seek. My neighbour had a
big meadow, but they didn’t mow their lawn, because back
then, their grass was used for the cattle they had. So we used
to always hide in it. We weren’t supposed to, but we did a
lot of times. They said we were trampling down their hay, it
was harder to cut. And they didn’t cut it with a lawnmower,
the man had a big long- it was a called a scythe, I think. And
that’s how he used to cut it down. So I remember that.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Now my friend’s father used to have Bonfire Night at his
house. He lived across the street. And they had, it was called
the Sandpit, and that’s where we went picking blueberries
and that, and then over the Sandpit there was… a path that
leads up to Kelsey Drive where Walmart is today.... And we
used to leave from her house to walk all the way to Kelsey.
ST. THERESA’S GRADE 5 CLASS, 1974-75 WITH MISS SIMON. MARTHA OLIVER
IS TOP ROW, 5TH FROM LEFT. (PHOTO COURTESY OF MARTHA OLIVER)
And you could pick berries along the way. We also went
sliding there. And her father used to have the bonfire up there,
probably one year he’d have it, and another year Dad would
have it, and we’d just split it.... And we’d gather up old wood
and tires, and that was a big thing back then, we always had
a bonfire.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
MO: It was mainly sliding in the winter. Sliding was the main
thing.
AM: What did you slide on?
MO: Crazy carpets, car parts, car bonnets.... Down the road
from where we lived, at one of our neighbours, there were
three or four old cars. They’d probably throw them in the
woods, and they had to take their car bonnets off. And we
used to use their car bonnets. And if you were really lucky, you
got a wooden toboggan. But most people back then, it was
crazy carpets and car bonnets.
AM: Was it heavy to carry?
MO: Oh very, very heavy. But it was really worth it, you know.
It was better than a regular slide. Because I think it had more
speed.
AM: Was it very dangerous?
MO: Very, very. You could seriously get hurt if you banged in to
somebody else or anything. But no, I’d never known anyone
to get hurt. Nobody really ever got hurt.
GAMES WE PLAYED | 31
James Berkley Reynolds was born
in Salmon Cove on August 14, 1950.
Berk grew up and went to school
in Salmon Cove. He went on to
Memorial University of Newfoundland
and Labrador, and then worked
in several areas of the province
including Bonavista, Harbour Grace,
and St. John’s. Berk grew up in a
large, blended family, and was the
youngest of twelve children. There
were also lots of children in the area
and, as Berkley said, there was always someone around to
have a fight with.
The community of Salmon Cove had a strong influence on
Berk, and many local spots stand out in his memory. This
includes Salmon Cove Ridge, where you could see fifty
people sliding under the moon on a clear winter night,
as well as Salmon Cove Sands, where swimming and
summer activities took place. Berkley described activities
for each season, such as hockey, skipping, softball, and
daddywalkers (stilts). Resourcefulness and creativity also
feature prominently in Berk’s memory. From cutting alders
for sling shots or hockey sticks to using frozen cow bladders
for pucks and carving his own spin tops, Berk remembers
creating his own fun as a child.
JAMES BERKLEY
(BERK) REYNOLDS
interviewed by Terra Barrett
BERK WITH SLIDE (PHOTO BY SHARON KING-CAMPBELL)
Today, Berk is retired and lives in St. John’s, although he
retains a home in Salmon Cove. He has an avid interest in
history and maintains a Facebook page dedicated to fond
memories of Salmon Cove.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ON SLIDING: “Whatever you could get. It went from
cardboard to canvas to slides that had the metal rungs on
[them]. And then the biggest one though was the Spancat,
which was smaller than the horse slide but bigger than an
individual one. The Spancat… could take four people… and
you would have a board along the edge… and the person
in the back… would steer her…. We would go to the top of
the ridge up behind Aunt Jules’ and we would end up sliding
down on the Spancat…. And of course you didn’t have to
worry about where you landed, well, as long as it wasn’t into
a fence, and we did that too! But we could go as far as we
wanted because there was no traffic… And especially on a
FROM LEFT, NORMAN, MILDRED, SUSIE, MINNIE, RHODA (ROSE) AND THOMAS REYNOLDS, IN FRONT OF
THEIR HOUSE CIRCA 1925. (PHOTO COURTESY OF BERKLEY REYNOLDS)
GAMES WE PLAYED | 33
clear winter’s night full moon there would be probably fifty
people up sliding.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ON HOCKEY: “I’m afraid to tell you what we used as pucks.
A bladder from a cow, a cow’s bladder. I think I told you
the butcher lived across the road, the guy that had the truck.
Well now, he also had animals since he was a butcher and
we used to get the bladder… and let it freeze. And after a
while we got old hockey sticks, but we did start out using just
alders.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Button to button is a game. You put a button in your hand
and you go around to different people, and they would
have their hands folded too, and you would drop the button
in somebody’s hand and then you’d have to guess who had
the button. So if there were five people around… you went
around to everybody but you stopped at some point and
just opened your hand and they caught the button so then
you had to guess who got the button.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ON TIDDLY: “First of all, you have to decide who is going to
play first. That’s all a big deal. So you would get your Tiddly
stick and you’d go hand over hand until you couldn’t hold
[it] So, if you’re the last person on top you had to hold on to
the stick, but you had to put it over your head three times in
order to be up first. So if you dropped it then the other team
went first. Important rule.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“When spring came… outside school there would be
skipping and throwing the ball back and forth. There wasn’t
a lot of formalized ball
games. There was
just make up games
whoever was there.
And then, of course, I
remember we’d break
all the ice… That first
sign of spring, you’d
be out jumping on the
ice trying to get a little
sliver of ice that was
left in the potholes
and whatever. So you
would still be sliding on
that, because there’d
be little bogs around.
Then there would be Hopscotch and Kick the Stone* and
some of those regular type games.”
*Hopscotch and Kick the Stone are both games that involve
hopping through a course drawn on the ground. See Madonna
Summers’ interview (next page) for a description of Hopscotch.
BERK REYNOLDS IN SALMON COVE CIRCA 1954. (PHOTO COURTESY OF
BERKLEY REYNOLDS)
GAMES WE PLAYED | 35
Madonna Summers was born on
January 21, 1949 and was raised
in St. John’s on Ridge Road. Her
father worked for the city council
as a pipe layer and her mother
worked in in-house services. She
grew up with two sisters and
three brothers and has fond
memories of playing with her
siblings and the other children
in the neighbourhood. Some of
her favourite childhood activities
were skating, swimming, playing
jacks, skipping, sliding, walking with friends, berry picking,
and hula-hooping. She is a lover of animals and enjoys the
abundance of wild life that can be seen in Newfoundland.
She has had many pet cats, and a pet rat named Gigi.
Today, Madonna still spends much of her time with friends
and family. She is a photographer and enjoys documenting
the moments she gets to spend with her loved ones. Her
favorite pastime is taking walks in the woods and collecting
old bottles and artifacts that she stumbles upon along the
way. Some of the treasures she has found range from Pyrex
baby bottles to chamber pots.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
MADONNA SUMMERS
interviewed by Sharna Brzycki
MADONNA SUMMERS (PHOTO BY PHONSE KING)
ON HOPSCOTCH: “Well, you get in somebody’s driveway...
and get a stick or whatever and mark out squares, with the
big squares at the bottom, then when you go up farther about
half a foot you have two smaller squares and then another
big square and then two small ones. Then you get … we used
to use a rock, a flat rock. So you get the rock and you put it
down to the bottom, and we each have a turn so you put up
one foot and kick the rock and wherever it goes, the farther
you kick it the better for yourself and the next person does the
same thing and whoever gets up to the top, they kick it into
the smaller square.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“In the evening when we got out of school, a couple of us
would get together, about ten or fifteen of us, and we’d go up
the road… there’s a little hill going down back to someone’s
house, and we used to go down there on bits of old canvas
sliding. [Laughs.]... Or on old bonnets of the cars. You wouldn’t
believe that, get on two or three of us and knock us down on
the hill all out…. And sometimes, the road would be a bit like
GAMES WE PLAYED | 37
ice. And we’d end up right down by Long Pond, that’s a nice
ways away. We’d go down the road all out and turn down
Higgins Line… and we’d end up right down there, on the slide.
And we’d come back, we’d do it again.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“We used to have to go to the store then, at that time, right
down there by Long Pond… We’d take the slide down, myself
and my sister, and we had a big bottle with us, each, and our
slide, and we’d have to get a gallon of oil for the lamps... I’d
get home then, and there were two or three lamps, took the
shades off, the glass shades off, wash them and dry them, put
them back on, put the oil in the lamp, cut the wick, and light it.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Sometimes the girls would go off to themselves. Got out
to a movie or something. [There] was the old Nickel Theatre
downtown, I think it was Duckworth Street, someplace down
around that area. 25 cents to get in and see a movie... If we
didn’t go with Mom we used to go in a group.”
(LEFT TO RIGHT) OLD JAVEX BOTTLES, BROUGHT IN BY MADONNA
SUMMERS (PHOTO BY PHONSE KING); A SMALL SAMPLING OF THE
MANY BOTTLES MADONNA HAS FOUND ON HER NATURE WALKS
(PHOTO BY SHARNA BRZYCKI); AN OLD PITCHER MADONNA
FOUND ON ONE OF HER WALKS (PHOTO BY SHARNA BRZYCKI).
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“I find a lot up in the woods… I used to go out for a walk by
myself and I always used to take a bag with me because you
never know what you’ll find. You’ll probably be walking by on
the trail and you’ll see that half of the bottle is stuck out of the
grass over in the woods. You go in and get it... Yes, I love it.
Down by my mom’s house, when she lived there… I found a
few bottles. You see, because years ago... they burned their
garbage and all that in a big old drum and then their bottles
and stuff like that stay on their property. At that time there was
no garbage pickup, and you know you throw away all your
tin cans and bottles up in the back for years, and now it’s all
grown over. But I got a lot of stuff up in the woods. I’ve got a
great big box of them. Even now if I’m anywhere going for a
walk or anything I’m always looking to see if there’s anything
I come across. I’ve got a baby bottle. Yeah and I got two old
pee pots. [Laughs.] I found them up in the woods too... and
I’ve got a jug, the jug is made out of the same stuff.”
GAMES WE PLAYED | 39
(LEFT TO RIGHT) ANDREA PLAYS HOPSCOTCH, WHILE TERRA, TERESA AND SANDRA LOOK ON, FEBRUARY 10, 2015; BERK, SHARON, MARTHA, CATHY
AND JACQUEY; DON, SANDRA, ANDREA, SHARNA AND MARG; MADONNA, TERESA AND TERRA: TERESA AND SANDRA PLAY STIFFY STAFFY; TERESA,
MADONNA, SANDRA AND DON (FIRST PHOTO BY PHONSE KING, REMAINDER BY JILLIAN GOULD).
Thank you
Emily Blackmore, Graham Blair, Nancy Brace, Lacey Churchill,
Sonya Clarke-Casey, Marg Connolly, Jim Crockwell, Ann Daniel,
Vida Edwards, Winston Fiander, Susan Furneaux, Dr. Jillian Gould,
Dale Jarvis, Rochelle Kavanagh, Phonse King, Peter Laracy, Paula
Roberts, and Anna Swanson.
About the Heritage Foundation
of Newfoundland and Labrador
The Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador is a non-profit
organization which was established in 1984 to stimulate an
understanding of and an appreciation for the architectural heritage
of the province. The Foundation, an invaluable source of information
for historic restoration, supports and contributes to the preservation
and restoration of buildings of architectural or historical significance.
The Heritage Foundation also has an educational role and undertakes
or sponsors events, publications and other projects designed to
promote the value of our built heritage.
The Heritage Foundation is also involved in work designed to safeguard
and sustain the intangible cultural heritage of Newfoundland and
Labrador for present and future generations everywhere, as a vital
part of the identities of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, and
as a valuable collection of unique knowledge and customs. This is
achieved through policies that celebrate, record, disseminate, and
promote our living heritage.
2015
Heritage Foundation of
Newfoundland and Labrador
1 Springdale Street
St. John's, NL Canada
www.ichblog.ca
www.mun.ca/ich
Layout and design by Graham Blair
www.grahamblairdesigns.com
Memorial University of Newfoundland
Department of Folklore
www.mun.ca/folklore
This project has been funded by the Government of Canada’s
New Horizons for Seniors Program.
ISBN 978-0-9937456-2-1