My knowledge of Rivers is largely hearsay. I remember falling down stairs and riding in a Model T Ford car. Also, I vaguely remember the inside of the church and darting down the aisle to my father in the pulpit. My mother was agile and caught me short of my destination, removing me from the church for a spanking. I guess that’s why I remember the inside of the church. On a train trip to Brandon, my mother warned me not to throw her purse out the open window. Possibly misunderstanding her warning, I threw her purse out the open window. In the general confusion that followed, I must have escaped a spanking, because I do not remember the inside of the train. The CNR was apprised of the loss, and a track-repair crew found the purse and returned it to its rightful owner.

I’ve been told of the 1918 influenza epidemic and of my father’s heroic efforts to take food, medicine, comfort, and condolence to those affected by it. And I’ve been told that word of his ministry was carried by trainmen to Transcona, the recently established headquarters of the CNR for western Canada. He accepted a call to Knox Presbyterian Church in that town in the fall of 1919.

I had Grades 1 to 5 in Transcona Central School, a two-minute run from home. In the Grade 2 classroom (taught by Mr. Honor), the back seats were taken by large boys, or even young men who could speak little English. These were Galicians and Ruthenians who lived on the east side of town, an area not yet provided with sewer and water, and their fathers worked as labourers for the CNR. I now know that Galicia and Ruthenia were regions of Ukraine and that these families were part of the post-World War I Ukrainian immigration, but I never heard the word Ukrainian ever mentioned.

World War I was still a recent event, amputees were a common sight, war widows were still being comforted, and children were eager to hear stories of the conflict. One veteran described to me how he had captured eighty German prisoners but, when I repeated the story to my father and he asked the hero’s name, I was told not to believe everything I heard. In any event, Remembrance Day (11 November) was a major occasion in the school year and was commemorated by a special ceremony. Miss Barton asked me to read “He was a Private of the Buffs,” a patriotic poem of the Henry Newbolt variety. It may have been set in the Boxer Uprising of 1900, not the noblest of British actions in the defence of freedom.

When I was in Grade 4, with Miss Barton, the strap was not used; instead, those who misbehaved (usually boys) were required to stand with their arms outstretched. This punishment was a joke for the first few minutes but soon became no fun at all. It was in Grade 5 with Miss Moir that I was finally given the strap, finally admitted to the select circle of those who had no fear. Actually, I did have fear, because I had often seen the punishment inflicted, and the recipients were obviously in pain, but the prestige to be gained far outweighed the prospect of discomfort. After all, pain is transitory, but pride is forever: I could now swagger with the other “strappees” and claim that it hadn’t hurt. Miss Moir was particularly generous in the use of the strap and obligingly made it a public event to be enjoyed by the entire class. It was especially enjoyable when Alfie Mair was the victim. As a result of many such experiences, he had developed the knack of withdrawing his hand just before it was struck, with the result thatMiss Moir would hit herself on the thigh. Each encounter between the two – and they were numerous – became a duel, with Miss Moir determined not to let Alfie pull his hand away from her grip and Alfie, to her frustration, often managing to do so.

It was about this time that I learned to smoke. My father had stopped smoking so as not to give me a bad example, but his pipes and tobacco could be seen on a rafter in the basement. One spring, my friend Murray Matheson and I decided to try our luck. Taking the apparatus to the nearby prairie, we had scarcely begun to enjoy the vice when, in our excitement, we set the dry grass on fire. When stomping failed to extinguish the flame, we had visions of the dreaded prairie fire and rushed to the nearest house that had a telephone. When the mistress of the house answered our frantic knocking, we panted that a man had dropped a match and would she please telephone the Fire Department. With a stern look she asked, “Are you sure it was a man?” Desperate with guilt and fear, we ran home, where I began to feel unwell from the tobacco smoke – very unwell as it turned out – and I crawled under the porch to convalesce. Minutes later, when I was more than half in love with easeful death, the fire chief approached our front door; now more than ever seemed it rich to die. As it happened, the fire chief was consulting my father on some other matter, the prairie fire did not materialize, and I did not expire – but the episode put me off smoking.

In 1925, the Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian Churches came together to form the United Church of Canada, the largest Protestant Church in the country. The new church brought together three distinctive religious cultures: the Presbyterians, who stressed doctrine, the Methodists, who stressed deeds, and the Congregationalists (who were not numerous), who stressed congregational autonomy. To overstate slightly: the Methodists didn’t care what you believed as long as your behaviour passed muster; the Presbyterians didn’t care how you behaved as long as your creed was in order. For example, many Presbyterians saw virtue in whisky, but all Methodists viewed it as anathema.

There were also social differences. The Presbyterians came from the Established Church of Scotland, while the Methodists had been rejected by the Established Church of England. Although it was never said in public, the Presbyterians thought that they were a cut above the Methodists.

Discussions of Church union had begun prior to World War I, but only the Congregationalists had taken action: they had agreed to enter into union whenever the opportunity presented itself. Thus, when the other two were discussing the matter further, they both knew that theCongregationalists could be counted upon. The decision in the Methodist Church lay with its central governing body: indeed, some congregations were unaware that union was being contemplated. ReidVipond, sometime minister of Westminster United Church in Winnipeg, told me that his boyhood minister, in southwestern Ontario, made the surprise announcement one Sunday, “By the way, from now on, this will be called the ‘Elgin United Church,’ instead of the ‘Elgin Methodist Church.’”

Things were quite different with the Presbyterians: each church had to decide for itself. Thus, in the year 1924 and the spring of 1925, the Presbyterian Record carried lists showing how different congregations had voted. My father, who had preached to 200 of these congregations, and my grandfather Edmison read and discussed these lists with intense interest, and the arrival of a new Record was an occasion to drop everything else.

Most, if not all, Presbyterian Churches in western Canada voted for union but, in eastern Canada, although the majority concurred, it was far from unanimous. Many major congregations, as well as numerous smaller ones, remained Presbyterian or, as they were called, Continuing Presbyterian. (Leonard Brockington, eloquent radio personality and former rector of Queen’s University, when once called upon to thank a clergyman who had spoken too long, said, “I now know what is meant by ‘Continuing Presbyterian.’”)

My father and grandfather were in favour of union and were in suspense as to how the Transcona congregation would vote. The decision was made at a Sunday evening service, and I am told that I ran to my father with the cry, “What was the score?” The score was forty to two for union, which compensated in part for the negative vote at my father’s home church in Hespeler, which my Duckworth grandparents still attended. The members of the Transcona Methodist Church were told that they had a new name and, in due course, the two congregations merged. In the meantime, my father had preached for a call to St. James, a suburb of Winnipeg.

I was sent to Britannia Public School, a quarter of a mile north on Hampton Street, and was placed in the Grade 6 class of Miss Campain, an agreeable woman who read us a continued story every Friday afternoon. One of the stories was Nellie McLung’s Sowing Seeds in Danny which we all found amusing.

Much more important than school, however, were the soccer games that the principal, Clarence Moore, had organized. All the boys in Grades 6, 7, and 8 were divided into teams that played one another in a regular schedule. One game was completed each day, during the morning recess (fifteen minutes), the last third of the lunch hour (thirty minutes) and the afternoon recess (fifteen minutes). Each day’s results were recorded as we trooped in from the afternoon recess. I could hardly wait to finish my lunch in order to return to the fray, and I gradually developed some skill in handling the football. My father, who had played Association Football (as he called it) in college, was only too happy to provide my own football, which we used for games in the back lane. Eventually, I played left wing for St. James Midgets in a city league sponsored by the Canadian Legion. To be in the midget category, one had to weigh less than 112 pounds, and, prior to the official weigh-in at the Winnipeg Tribune building, boys were known to have taken castor oil in a desperate attempt to make the weight. I always found myself playing with older, and usually better, players. One, Groves by name, was at least three years older, but he was small for his age and very fleet of foot. We were selected to perform prior to a game between the Winnipeg Selects (“All Stars”) and a touring professional team from Kilmarnock, Scotland. Groves ran like a deer, dribbling almost the length of the field and astonishing the sports writers, who hailed him as a football prodigy: but we knew why he was so much better than the rest of us.

Prior to Christmas 1926, Mr. Moore decided to promote six students from each of the two Grade 6 classes to Grade 7.1 was the last to be chosen from Miss Campain’s class and so star...