My parents were from Nova Scotia, of Scottish ancestors. They came to Canmore in the early 1920’s. My dad, Frank Rennie, was the office manager of Canmore Mines Ltd. We lived in a small house near the Horseshoe. We had no basement. We were flooded out in the late 1930’s. The creek behind our house and the Bow River overflowed. We had to move to higher grounds. We stayed at our neighbours, Annie and Ada Wright’s, who lived in a two storey house. We had a lot of cleaning up to do after the water retreated. We were flooded out twice – once in the spring and once in the winter.
We lived down from the skating rink so spent a lot of time there skating and watching the hockey games. We got our skates on in a room with a pot-bellied stove. We also skated on the river down to the mine.
We had no fridge, but had a hole in the ground with lid to keep our meat and milk cold.
We swam in the back wash of the Bow River.
Population in the 1930’s was about 800. It was a close knit community. We knew everybody. We had a phone, but most didn’t and neighbours would come over to use ours or go to the phone exchange where Irene Callender worked.
In the 1940’s, we rode our bikes to Banff. We took our lunch and bathing suits and had great time. We also rented horses at $1.50 a day and rode them down to Deadman’s Flats, now fully developed with motels, restaurants, etc.
Every Saturday night we’d go to the dances in Banff. My sister, Lenora, had a driver’s license so we piled in the car. The boys were on one side and the girls on the other. It was a fun night with a live band. Vic Lewis, Emilio Casale and Louis Trono were in the band.
We went to the movies at the “Opera House”. They had them Wednesday night and Saturday afternoon and evening. We paid fifteen cents and didn’t miss one movie. Bill Ramsey ran the theatre. Horace Reynolds ran the projector.
The mine built my dad and mother a big house in 1945 which had a basement. I worked at the hospital, as secretary to Dr. Blair Fulton. The ten bed hospital was on top of the store hill which was behind the Rundle Mt. Trading Co. We just had one doctor at the time, and then he went in with the Banff doctors.
My mother, Grace Rennie, was secretary of the Red Cross during the war and knit lots of socks for the servicemen. My dad would invite servicemen to come to our place for the Christmas holidays. We met a lot of great guys, some from England, New Zealand and Australia who were training in Claresholm. We still keep in contact with one from Australia.
In 1949, I was married to Stanley Sawchuk. We built a house, which still stands, now remodelled, on the east side of the Bow Bridge. We had two sons and two daughters, all born in Canmore, except one. Our kids had good schooling in the small school. There were so many activities. There was fishing and hiking in the summer. They loved to pick wild flowers up behind Lawrence Grassi’s house which is now built up with new homes. We all hiked up to Twin (Grassi) Lakes. There was swimming up at the Cave & Basin in Banff. They took swimming lessons there. In the winter there was skating and hockey and tobogganing. Their dad made them a skating rink in the backyard. When the ice was gone, they would play road hockey.
My parents, Grace and Frank Rennie, built a house on the river bank next to ours in the 1950’s.
They moved to Forestburg in 1969. My dad, Frank Rennie, died in 1974 and mother, Grace Rennie, died in 1981.
Our older kids worked every summer, Grant with CPR, Blair and Beverly worked in restaurants.
We moved to Camrose in 1969.
In Canmore Seniors at the Summit, ed. Canmore Seniors Association, 2000, p. 252-253.
