BEAR'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

INTRO

    This is the life and times of `Bear'.  It is copyrighted `04/06/20.  (Happy Father's Day)

This book is dedicated to my parents, whom I never understood, not that I ever wanted to and is left in legacy to all my relatives and offspring who may wish to know something about me. 

    In this day and age everyone seems to be worried that they didn't understand their parents or that their parents didn't understand them.  When we were children we never worried about such things, and I don't think we should. 

    Parents and children need not understand each other.  It is not necessary for them to be friends.  They are of two totally different generations and have totally different views on the world. 

    It is only necessary that parents teach children right from wrong and that children learn to obey and respect their parents and their elders.

* * * * * * * *

    After many attempts, over the years, I have finally compiled, what I believe, is an accurate account of my life.  The quickest way to skim through this is to follow my LIFE LINE. Just click on the highlighted words to go to a short description or story.  In many cases there are appropriate photos.

FATHER

  `58 July 
Dad with a Muskellunge that he caught in Ont.
 He told everyone that I caught it, because he didn't have a fishing license, and I wasn’t old enough to need one.

    Father was born on a farm  in Ontario, Canada. After completing grade eight, he left home and joined the R. C. M. P. [(Royal Canadian Mounted Police) (My father called them Raw Carrots & Mashed Potatoes.)]

    The Musical Ride is a troop of `Mounties' who travel from town to town, entertaining people by doing equestrian drills. One of the maneuvers is called the `Dome Formation'.

    In this drill all the horses form a ring and turn towards the center, the riders hold their lances up, pointing to the center to form a dome.

    My mother had a newspaper clipping, of this dome formation, with a list of the names of the riders.  The article went on to say that the original of this picture was used by the engraver when designing the fifty dollar bill that was used as Canadian currency for many years.

    Out of circulation now, but at one time, I was able to hold up a fifty dollar bill and show people a picture of my father.

    I do have a framed photograph of my father in the musical ride, posed in front of a building in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada's capital city.  The picture, in black & white, is over 2 feet long as it show all the horsemen side by side.  The picture is dated 1933.

    After touring the US and England with `the ride' my father was stationed in the arctic, serving on Ellesmere and Victoria islands. Here father made friends with the Eskimos and they made him gifts of: clothing; mukluks; mitts; parka; dog whips; etc., brightly coloured with beads and quills. They also gave him a second set, undecorated, for working. I donated some to the Vancouver Maritime Museum, but, unfortunately, someone stole most of them.

    In the North, father met a man who was prospecting and my father left the force to join him.  They spent several years in the arctic, panning for gold, prospecting, and fur trapping.

    In 1939, at the beginning of  Canada's involvement in the European theatre of the Second World War, my father received two letters. One, from the army, asking him to enlist, and another from the R. C. M. P. asking him to re-enlist.

    Trading a rifle for an airplane ticket, at the airport in Yellowknife, N. W. T. (North West Territories) Father flew to Edmonton, Alberta.  At the airport, in Edmonton, he learned  that the offices of the R. C. M. P. were closer than the office of the army so he re-enlisted in `The Force‘.

    Learning that, while in `The North‘, dad had taken a correspondence course in steam engineering, the Force, assigned father to work in the boiler room.

    The home of the R. C. M. P. in Edmonton , or The Barracks, as it was referred to, was a massive stone and brick edifice, not too far from downtown.

    One of my earliest memories was the Christmas galas that were held in the huge auditorium in the barracks.  There would be a huge Christmas tree and a Santa would sit beside it, call out each child's name and present him with a Xmas gift.

Dad's brother

   
At the CPR station where he worked in Ont.

    My father's other brother also worked for the CPR, in Ont.

MOTHER

   
Xmas morning.

    Mother was born in  London England. Within six months of her birth she moved to a farm near, Hazenmore, in Southern Saskatchewan, Canada.  At age thirteen, the eldest, girl, of several children, she had to quit school and raise her siblings when they lost their mother.  My grandmother died, giving birth to twins, who also died. Four years later, they lost their father.

    I grew up with no grandparents on either side of the family.

    My mother left the farm, moving to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and, later, Edmonton, Alberta, where she worked in the MacDonald Hotel, part of the CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) chain.

    I remember my mother taking me downtown on the street cars, large busses with metal wheels that rode on railway tracks down the middle of the street.  I was too small to reach the bottom step and my mother or the conductor, would lift me.

    When alighting from the street car one had to check very carefully for cars going between the street car and the curb.

    Once my mother and I took an animal to see a veterinarian.  Afterwards we got into a small car, I think it was  a Hillman.  My mother was pulling away from the curb when a car came from the opposite  side of the street and hit us. I hit the windshield.  I remember the vet taking us back inside his office.  I remember I was bleeding but I am not sure if I got stitches. If I did they would be the first of many to come.

    Another day, my mother took me shopping.  I don't remember what I did but I do recall my mother taking my pants down, in a store, and spanking my bare bottom.  It must have been something bad as my mother never spanked me, she would normally tell father what I had done and leave the punishment to him.

    On another outing my mother took me with her when she went to visit a Chiropractor.  I remember hearing the bones snap when the doctor twisted her.

    At a later date, while walking down the street, I saw the chiropractor approaching.  Recalling the `crack'  from when he had set my mother‘s back, I ran up to the doctor, kicked him in the shin, stating, "You hurt my mother".

Mom's brother

(Photo `60 May) 
Harry Clarke on Baby Doll  at his farm North West of Elnora, Alta.

His wife

   (Photo `60 May) 
Brenda and their two children; Graydon and Wendy

SISTER

   
Edmonton, Alta.

    Sis was born in Edmonton, Alta.

ME

   
My first fish. I believe this was at Alberta Beach,
just West of Edmonton, Alta.

Beam, Me, Myself, & I)

    I never had a nick name. The name Bear was only my pseudonym for my website. My stage name and my nom de plume for my writing was Lee A. Wood.

    The name `Bear'  came about when I was in China.  I bought a parka and on the shoulder was a small bear. My nephews called me Da Shon, Big Bear.  I changed the name of my website from `Lee's Page' to `Bear's Page'.

    I was born in the district of Highlands in the province of Alberta, in the Dominion of Canada, in the year 1946, during the month of July, on the fourth day.  Though most don‘t realize, or understand why, all of America celebrates my birthday.

    In the highlands there is a street that is only one block long and ends on the cliff overlooking the North Saskatchewan River. I only remember one of the houses on that street, though I lived in most of them, as my father would; build them, move into them, and sell the one we had just moved out of.

    I remember little of the one house other than it had a long set of stairs to a room upstairs where my God Father lived.  I remember going up to visit him and falling down the stairs.  I also remember that Uncle A. used to park his big tractor trailer across the street. This may be why I grew up to be a truck driver.

    When I was 4 years old my father bought a piece of land at the end of  the Mill Creek Valley. 

    Here, I met the first crush, of the many I would have, on the opposite sex. 

    I have a good sense of direction and seldom get confused, let alone lost.

    I don't recall how old I was, but one day, I went to visit my father.  I didn't know if he was at the barracks  or out in a patrol car, I have a photo of him sitting in a PC talking on an old style telephone hand set, but I arrived at ` The Barracks' and, for some reason, couldn't get in. so I slid down the coal chute and crawled over the pile of coal, to appear, in my father's office, black, from head to toe.

    Father wasn't shoveling coal into the boiler, nor was he in the cell block.

    The prisoners thought it was great fun to tear the heels off their shoes and stuff the heels down the toilets before they went to the bathroom.  It would befall upon my father to have to unplug, and clean, the toilets.

    I wandered the prison area and up the stairs and down the halls, on every floor, peering into the offices. 

    Amazingly, no one stopped me and eventually I returned to the basement to find father sitting at his desk.

    When I was six we moved to the top of the hill on the South Side of the River. I then attended King Edward School. A few months later we moved to another house which was closer to the school and only a half a block from the outdoor skating rink.

    In `55 my father left, after 35 years, the RCMP, found employment with the Department of Agriculture and traveled about the province talking to farmers.

    When I was nine we moved to the province of British Columbia, to a little town called Sicamous. There dad bought a house on the beach of Mara  Lake, about a mile and a half from town.

    My sister and I were very disappointed when my father sold the house and moved us back to Edmonton.
    After we moved back to Edmonton my father worked for the Provincial Liquor Control Board.   

    For half a year we lived just North of Jasper Ave.  10228 123 St.  Our house has since been demolish and replaced by an apartment building.

    For the other half of that year we lived in a house about two blocks West of the boundary between Edmonton and Beverly.  Since then
Beverly became part of the city of Edmonton.

    Then my father switched employers and we moved again. This time, to a little town in the Southern part of Alberta, about sixty miles East of Calgary, and a mile South of the Trans Canada Highway, called Gleichen.

    Population, 200 Caucasian, smack dab in the middle of the largest Indian reserve in the world, 26,000, Blackfeet Indians.

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