Thank you for those photos Jim.

verne solonas, January 31st, 2011, Administrator, lejac.blogspot.com

Residential school days....

Verne a few more pictures of Lejac days have turned up.Jim Photos courtesy of Jim Callanan, edited by Verne Solonas

The one that got away...

Every year, usually in the spring, we would burn the grass around the buildings next to the school. One year a bunch of us lit fires around the Scout Hall, next to the Old Rink. The boys use the Scout Hall to put on their skates in the winter time or to change into their hockey gear before games. We lit this fire except somehow it got away on us. So, bunch of us boys including our supervisor, and then the Priest were all out and fighting for our lives trying to get out the fire which was getting too close to a great big fuel tank next to the Scout Hall! This was after dark, we finally got the fire under control and I remember the Priest ‘having a word’ with our supervisor. I guess he wasn’t too pleased we near burned the whole place down. Photo courtesy of Jim Callanan, posted by Verne Solonas

Carl Chingee...

Carl Chingee was a boy in our dorm. We were all in Intermediates back then in the mid-1960s. He was also in my class. And everybody around the whole school had a bit of a chuckle because I guess one night when everybody was asleep Carl Chingee ended up in Miss Blair’s bedroom on the girls’ side. Our teacher said Miss Blair woke up when she heard her bedroom door open, and there was Carl standing in the doorway. That was also when he woke up! Turned out he was sleep-walking, ending up all the way down on the girls’ side.

Peewees....

We were all in Peewees....in 1968. Me, Morris, Lester, Kenny, Victor, Barry and George Alexander. One day Mr. Kenny came to us and asked us if we wanted to play for Fraser Lake that coming weekend. Mr. Kenny was our Intermediate dorm Supervisor. He explained that Mr. Simpson, the coach for the Fraser Lake Peewees, asked if we could play for them in an upcoming game. We weren’t exactly sure. Kenny, Barry and us. We never ever played for anybody else before except Lejac. But some of us said we’ll try it....maybe. So that weekend Mr. Simpson came and got us and we played for Fraser Lake against a team called Nadina. Or course we beat the pants off them.

It was an early morning game at their rink at Fraser Lake. After the game, we all went to Mr. Simpson’s house for lunch. And Mrs. Simpson fed us soup and sandwiches for lunch. Mrs. Simpson was really nice.

After that a whole bunch of us from Lejac started joining the Fraser Lake teams just so we could get away from the school. Especially when we had ‘away games’. That’s when we went on road trips, like to Burns Lake, Fort St. James or even Vanderhoof. That way we got to be away from the school the whole day. Even Burns Lake came and got some of us to play for them. But that was a long way away to travel for a game (Burns Lake is 40 miles away from Lejac). That was Immaculatta at Burns Lake.

By 1970-71, most of the older boys from Lejac only played for the Fraser Lake teams. Especially after they built their brand new arena and all their dressing rooms were all inside and nice and warm.

Lejac and Fraser Lake, like most northern communities, only had outdoor rinks in the 1960s which required they make their own ice.

At Lejac, once the snow fell in the late fall or early winter, all the boys and girls would go out to the rink and trample the snow. Everyone would line up side by side across the entire rink from the boards of one side of the rink to the other, and you would have one line of kids work their way down the length of the rink trampling all the snow. Followed by another line of kids until the entire rink area had been trampled. Then that would all be flooded.

Most years none of us could wait for our ice and so the whole school would go up to the pond next to the dump, across the highway from our school. The pond always had excellent ice. Some Saturdays all the boys and girls and their supervisors would be out there the whole day in the late fall.

In 1963 there was only one rink at Lejac. Later, maybe in 1964, they built another rink which we used to call ‘the big rink’. Whenever we had hockey games, we always played at the big rink while the smaller rink was more for public skating and sometimes broomball. We also had a fairly large skate shack at the new rink where we changed into our skates. During the winter months, the rinks were a very active place as many students and staff preferred the outdoors and skating especially in the evenings after supper. There were also families who lived at Lejac or just up the road, like the Leslies who used to come out skating. Or Trevor Bowen, Mrs. Bowen’s son.

Then they built a curling rink next to the big rink around 1965 and everyone at the school all took up curling. They even used to have bonspiels with teams from Fraser Lake. I used to hate having to clean off the curling rink because it was such a big long building. But if you did, once we were done us Intermediate boys used to take turns jumping off the roof into the deep snow below. That was our reward for shovelling all that snow off the roof. Photo courtesy of Jim Callanan, edited by Verne Solonas

Sailing....

We all watched Mr. Kenny working on his sailboat. He started with a big block of wood, and used an axe to cut it down some, then a chisel to smooth it off here and there. This was all at the Scout Hall, in the summer time. He spent a lot of time designing the sails. The sail boat he built was about a foot long and with the sails at least a foot high as well. Mr. Kenny is from Newfoundland.

After he finished the sailboat, he brought it down to the dock and we all watched him launch it. It was a windy day with a lot of big waves on the lake. He let it go and it immediately took off heading toward the shore bobbing up and down amidst all the waves. After some time it finally made it to shore then got stuck in amongst the trees there and so one of the boys had to go over there and we all watched from the dock as he used a long stick to poke it loose. It came back outwards and towards where we were standing, then watched as it sailed right by us on the dock. We stood there....on the dock....and watched....until finally after some time it disappeared somewhere on the lake. That was in June. Photo by Jim Callanan, edited by Verne Solonas

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