Freedom to Play: We Made Our Own Fun

CHILDHOOD GAMES IN THE YUKON IN THE 1930S

even as somebody else was shouting “The mot is dead.” I tried in vain to discover the origin of the word “mot,” and I don’t even know if I’m spelling it correctly. It is, of course, the small round hole, dug first with the heel and then smoothed out with the fingers, toward which the small clay marbles are thrown or rolled, and its life or death status makes a great deal of difference to the game, for if the mot is dead the marbles that roll into it are worthless for points, while if it lives it can add greatly to the score. Later on the drab little clay marbles were replaced by dazzling glass alleys, which were still being used the last time I checked out a game. We also liked to get hold of little shiny metal ball bearings. We called them ballbearions, and like the more exotic glass ones, they were always in great demand. If you managed to win some at a mot game or at “Chip, chip, how many” your partner would often decide that you really hadn’t been playing for keeps. CHILDHOOD GAMES IN THE YUKON IN THE 1930S Hugh was eight and Jim was four when the McCullum family left Dawson City for the “outside.” Hugh recalls: As a child in the Yukon in the 1930s it seems we were much the same as other kids of that period. There wasn’t much money, especially on a missionary’s salary, and what toys we got usually came via relatives in B.C. and Ontario. I seem to recall Christmas being a time when these items arrived, some of them repaired castoffs from cousins from somewhat wealthier families. Nonetheless, they were exciting to us. What they were I don’t remember well, but they included small wagons and trucks, definitely no guns or weapons of any kind. There was no television, and only the occasional static-filled shortwave radio which Dad listened to intently. One recollection still vivid some 60 years later is hearing Adolph Hitler (in German , I presume) ranting and raving and my Father saying some134 Freedom to Play thing like “that man will bring us all to war.” A year later he was in the army so it must have been Christmas 1938. Of course the King’s (George VI) address was an absolute must, more important I think, to my mother than midnight mass. Normally, in the winter, we played games at home with friends because of the Yukon’s legendary cold. Chinese checkers seemed a regular and then Monopoly as we got a bit older. Cards were not allowed on Sundays (the favored game being “fish”) and not much of anything else after Sunday School (where I learned my first, but not last, swear word) and two church services. In more clement weather we played the usual kids’ games: hopscotch, skipping, kick-the-can, tag, some rudimentary form of street hockey, and football, I guess. A favorite winter pastime was sliding down the banks of the slough behind our house on toboggans and sleighs. I recall well making myself a snow model of the inside of a car using tin cans as the dashboard, a stick for the gearshift, and something [else] for the steering wheel, and spending a lot of time pretending to be a truck driver. I don’t recall many games in the organized sense. Getting dressed to go to school in the winter was a chore, and the very short hours of daylight meant we were home a lot once school was out. I remember seeming to get endless little sets of watercolor paints with a brush or two in a tin case (which I was terrible at) and crayoning colouring books, all of which came from “outside” (i.e. the south!). We were encouraged to read a lot. All of the Thornton W. Burgess animal books are still vivid memories , and I think reading, both for pleasure and escape, have lasted for my lifetime. We had a house dog called Tippy (a black cocker spaniel) whom I adored and who was killed by some stray huskies while I was away visiting another missionary family at an Indian (Aboriginal to be politically correct) village called Moosehide, a few miles from Dawson City. My favorite pastime there was, with the other kids, chasing rats with sticks around old abandoned houses and piles of wood. I liked being included as an equal with...