As I get older, it seems my memories of my early school days become more focussed. I also have a high school reunion coming up, and it has made me think of school days gone by. Not so much the structured class time, but the unstructured time, when left to our imagination and our own devices, often spent in the schoolyard planning and creating variations of universal games.
In class, things, of course, were different. The day started in a structured fashion. We began with the standard announcements, usually by a tone-deaf administrator, followed by the Lord’s Prayer and “God Save the Queen.” We sang with rote-like emotion as we faced a picture of the Queen that changed with the decades.
We got our vaccinations with total compliance. Received a copy of a red-bound Gideon Testament, including Psalms and Proverbs, in grade five. This was before the separation of church and state was properly thought through. Also in grade five, and more pivotal for me, we received our first ballpoint pen as we made the worldly transition from pencil to pen and entered the exciting experience of cursive writing. Over time, my pen eventually went dry; ironically, I still have that Testament.
The schoolyard at Prince Philip Public School in St. Catharines was a place of social excitement and kinetic energy—of pure joy. Yes, we all had one friend with leg braces worn due to polio, but it was part of life and acceptance at the time. We were outside for the games, the fun, the companionship, and the competition.
Each game seemed to have a season and a lesson. My personal favourite was marble season in the spring. We had many games of gambling, challenge, loss and gain. There were fortunes in marbles made and lost each day. Our school had a sheltered area for lining up after recess, where we set up our marble boards— small pieces of handheld plywood with personal art designs to lure in the hesitant customer. Each board had a row of holes along one edge, forming an arch of different sizes. The contestant would flick a marble with their index finger from a predetermined distance marked by a chalk line. Should the marble pass through one of the arches, that represented a win. The smaller the arch, the higher the level of difficulty and therefore the larger the reward. For example, if one got the tossed marble through the widest arch, the reward was to keep your original marble and score one more from the board owner, the dealer.
Marble season coincided with card season when a variety of activities transpired from simply trading cards, given the market conditions of the day, to gamesmanship, in a game called flippsies, for obvious reasons. Player one held a card against a wall, released it, and let gravity flip it to the ground. Player two did the same, but tried to land his card touching the first card. If this was accomplished, player two picked up and kept both cards. Play continued until this was accomplished. Sometimes a player walked away with a dozen cards.
The play-yard had the atmosphere of a medieval marketplace. Activity abounded. Shrill voices and laughter formed the surround sound of active play. Walking through the yard, one had to watch their step, being careful not to crowd out a pair at ground level playing Jacks. People gathered in circles and talked with animation and passion, telling stories and jokes, or relating the latest episode of Leave it to Beaver.
Each part of the yard—the tarmac and the field—was designated for different activities. Further out from the card and marble sharks were the hopscotch and skipping junkies. The skippers did double dutch with a double rope, often with rhymes relating somehow to kissing boys, as the skippers were always girls.
“…all she wants is a nice young man”
Barbara!
I’m telling your mother
For kissing Ronnie
In the parlour
How many kisses did you give him?
The rope then turns faster and faster, and the skipper counts until she is out. That number answers the romantic question of the day. There were also ball bouncers if wall space was available.
Out in the field and past the soccer posts, one found tag players and those throwing baseballs or footballs, along with the occasional random walkers. For the bold of spirit, there were teams playing Red Rover or British Bulldog, soon to be banned. Some recesses were lengthened for bike rodeos to practise and demonstrate daring and skill on bicycles. Teachers set up bike routes with obstacles to manoeuvre around for testing balance, speed, and stopping skills.
By summer, there were more team sports, including soccer, touch football and baseball, all organized by students. Teachers walked the beat and broke up the occasional disagreement, but generally, life was peaceful. In winter, there were snowball fights between teams, but that was strictly limited to territory beyond the soccer posts in the remotest part of the yard.
School in those elementary grades was invigorating. It was active and creative. There was also a highlight on Friday when our beloved custodian, Mr. Love, went up on the school roof and threw down all the balls that had accumulated there during the week. It was a time of revival and celebration before going home for the weekend. There were no school buses. We all walked or biked the distance, retrieving our bikes from the hundreds parked unlocked next to the school’s basketball courts.
Today, retired, I live near two elementary schools and enjoy the shouts and sounds of playing children who experience the same joy and enthusiasm of the outdoors and fresh air as we did in my childhood. I believe that red light/green light, freeze tag, dodgeball, and other imaginative games live on in the lore and legacy of today’s exuberant players. I hope technology has not suffocated these activities. ≈ Marty enjoys writing and reminiscing about past school days. He has just finished a novel set in Borneo dealing with Orangutan extinction, loss of Indigenous lifestyles, and depletion of the rainforests. He is also running for City Council in Waterloo and getting his 20,000 steps per day while campaigning. Otherwise, he is a retired principal living the quiet life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marty Rempel
Marty enjoys writing and reminiscing about past school days. He has just finished a novel set in Borneo dealing with Orangutan extinction, loss of Indigenous lifestyles, and depletion of the rainforests. He is also running for City Council in Waterloo and getting his 20,000 steps per day while campaigning. Otherwise, he is a retired principal living the quiet life.
This article is featured in Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Fall 2026 issue.
