On October 31st, 1952 our family moved into a brand-new house in Briar Hill.
The house had been built by Glenco Construction and the contractor arranged to have the yard’s sidewalks poured, but it was Dad’s personal responsibility to have the adjoining boulevard sidewalk cemented and to landscape the property himself. Dad also took it upon himself to circulate a petition to collect signatures of area residents who wished to have the city plant trees along the boulevards of each block. The request was granted and Briar Hill got its trees.
Briar Hill community was brand-new when we moved into our house. Because the district did not yet have a school, I walked with neighboring children to attend my grade five and six classes at Capital Hill School. While I was a student at Capital Hill, I served as a school patrol. It was our responsibility to patrol the Trans-Canada Highway (at 16th Ave. and 19th St.) so that the students coming and going from Briar Hill district could get safely to Capital Hill School and back home again. Our instructions as patrols were to wait until the road seemed clear of traffic, walk to the centre of the street and raise our patrol signs to warn any subsequent traffic of the presence of school children. One day, a friend of mine, Marjorie Laing, stepped out as we’d been told to do and raised her sign to let the children cross the two-lane highway. Suddenly, a car approached and sped right past her. The incident left her feeling badly shaken and scared all of us who witnessed it! Briar Hill School was constructed during that time and opened in the fall of 1954. But by that time, quite a number of the new families of the area had children who needed to attend a junior high school. The closest junior high school was Queen Elizabeth School located on 5th Ave in Hillhurst and accessed by the hill’s residents via the very steep 19th St. hill, a long walk from our home. So, although Briar Hill School had been built to be the district’s elementary school, a grade seven and then a grade eight class were added to accommodate us junior high students for the two years. My teachers there were Mr. Archie Wilcox (the school’s principal and an area resident), Mr. Bill Brooks (another Briar Hill resident), and Mr. Patterson. Of course, Briar Hill Elementary School had not been built with facilities for the instruction of home economics or shop (industrial arts) classes and so, every Friday afternoon, we junior high students had to make the long trek down to Queen Elizabeth School to take those courses there. It was a long cold walk in winter, a dusty road home the rest of the year, and always a fatiguing climb back home when school was done. Mr. John Collins, (who became a long time resident of Briar Hill community) served as shop teacher at Queen Elizabeth High School.
By the time I was ready for grade nine, Branton Junior High School had been built north of 16th Ave and it opened its doors to us in 1956. It served as our community junior high. Both I, and later my sister Kathleen, attended Branton. But by the mid 1960’s Queen Elizabeth School was able to offer its students a new junior-senior high stream called the matriculation program with honors, or commonly referred to as the MPH. My youngest sister, Colleen, chose to attend this program for her junior high years. I had gone on to Crescent Heights High School but Kathleen and Colleen were later able to go to the much closer and newer William Aberhart High School.
Briar Hill Elementary remained the district’s only school. Our mother, Dorothy Shackleton joined the teaching staff there in 1959 when the school was under the principalship of William Matheson. Some of the other teachers who served on staff during her four years there were: Lillian Thompson, Kay Nevra, Peggy Glendenning, Violet Evans, Edna Inkster, Mary Bell, Jerry Fowler, Ann Roman, Joan Marshall and Dave Ballard.
Our father, Ernest Shackleton, was a junior high teacher, though, and spent many of his Calgary teaching years serving first as vice-principal of Rideau Park Junior High School. Although he taught school out of the district, he and mum shared community concerns and activities with their colleagues that resided within the district.
Memories of growing up in Briar Hill community bring back names and faces of good friends and neighbors such as the Jim Colvin family, the John Collins family, the Evans family, the Jack Martin family, the MacKenzie family, the Copot family, the Rickards, the Bakers … some with whom we still remain connected after all these years. Briar Hill was a good place in which to grow up.
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