Just a Small Town Girl

Funny to think both the Nameless Man and I were born in,and went to Grade One together ,in this tiny little town. Our mothers worked at the hospital together and had coffee together on their day off but we didn't really get to know each other until I was 18. After our unforgettable Grade One experience, his family moved to the big city of Saskatoon, Sask..

Fortunately, they soon returned to our beautiful province and settled in Calgary where our paths crossed many years later.

My family remained behind, in Cardston until I was 12. It was a great place to grow up, even if you weren`t a Mormon. In those days, it was the site of the only Mormon temple in Canada so the town was predominately LDS. No booze sold within a 40 mile radius. At least, not legally. This was an inconvenience for my family members, but being of resourceful, pioneer stock, they had long since adapted to their environment.

It was fun growing up in a small town where you knew almost everyone. I was always thrilled on cold winter days when Don Remington (who was my great grandpa`s neighbour once we moved into town) would come to the school with a horse drawn wagon and take kids from his side of town home from school. He also had a stagecoach parked outside his home and we were welcome to play in it or the genuine Indian teepee whenever we wanted.

The temple was built on a hill so you could see it from almost everywhere in town. At night, when it was all lit up, along with the male members of my family, it was quite a spectacle. Actually, only my step-father had an alcohol problem, 3 of my grandfathers were social drinkers and the other one was a practicing Mormon. But you could depend the annual spectacle of my step-father getting roaring drunk and knocking over the Christmas tree as much as you could depend on the temple to stay up there on the hill.

Still, family turmoils aside, all in all I thought it was the greatest town on earth and when we moved to the foothills south of Calgary when I was in Grade 7, I thought my heart would surely break. That summer I relocated myself to the Okanagan to live with my dad. Then my heart and spirit mended quite nicely.