Freedom to Play: We Made Our Own Fun

BOYS’ FARMING CLUB

GOING TO MAKE A PLAYHOUSE Maple Leaf Club, Family Herald and Weekly Star June 9, 1915 Margaret Muskett OLD MOTHER GOOSE Peerless P.O., Carlstadt, Alta. Dear Maple Leaves: Last winter my brothers and my sister and I tunnelled under a big snow drift in our yard. First we made three tunnels , then we joined them and made a nice big room. We went on digging till it was about 20 feet long and 10 feet wide. We had nearly finished it when it started to thaw. We also dug a hole that we are going to make into a playhouse this summer. We made it once before, but a cow walked on the roof and broke it in. It did not hurt the cow, luckily, but it spoilt the roof. We did not have school last winter, so my sister and I did lessons at home. I have three brothers and one sister, two are Maple Leaves. I also know of two other Leaves near here, although we are ten miles from the nearest town. Three years ago the nearest town was forty miles away. I am in sixth grade. I am twelve years old. BOYS’ FARMING CLUB Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs, Grain Growers’ Guide March 29, 1916 Reggie Meeks (14) Mannville, Alta. (Third Prize Letter) Two years ago the boys in my district started a Boys’ Farming club. Each boy was to get an acre from his father and he was to grow a garden and experiment with other things. We were to build a chicken coop and raise some chickens on the acre of land. Playing Is Playing When Shared 81 We each had a calf and little pig to raise and we could do any other thing we wanted to. One warm Saturday morning we met by a little bluff to choose our secretary, manager and other officers. We made certain rules that we were to follow. We decided to have a concert to raise money to start our club. On the third of January our concert came off and we earned eighty dollars after we had paid expenses. There were only ten in our club, so we had enough to buy seeds and a little pig for each one, and we had thirty dollars left to give away on prizes when we had our little fair. The farmers supplied us with calves and chickens. Each year we are getting more people to join our club. FROM SMALL TOWN TO BIG CITY As Ann Thrasher Rogers discovered, there were differences in the games played in remote settlements and those played in big cities. Until I was eight years old I lived in Snowshoe, a small settlement which grew up around my father’s sawmill on the Fraser River, between McBride and Prince George. There were never more than twenty children attending the one room school, and although we often played with those in our own age group there were some games such as Kick the Can and Anti-I-Over which went better if the whole school participated. The former game was hide and seek with “home free” person being required to kick the can at home base. As I remember the latter game required players on either side of the school equally divided; someone threw the ball over the roof, shouted “anti” etc., and the one catching the ball dashed to the other side, to tag someone , thereby collecting another team member. The game continued until one side was eliminated. I played hopscotch by the hour with two or three girls my age. We drew the squares on the packed mud of the road outside one girl’s home. It was not level but that just made the game more challenging. We redrew the squares so often that they 82 Freedom to Play ...