Mission Creek memories from the 1950s and ’60s
The Mission Creek Community, once the rural area at the crossroads of Benvoulin and KLO Roads, was home for me, my parents, grandparents and great grandfather.
It was anchored by Mission Creek School, Chamberlain's Garage and Mission Creek Store. It was roughly bordered by Mission Creek on the East, Gordon Road on the West and Byrns Road and Casorso Roads on the North and South respectively. This article will describe my memories (1950 to 1960) of Mission Creek School and future articles will deal with the rest of the community... its history and present day life.
The Mission Creek area contains both Father Pandosy Mission and the site of the first Lequime store and grist mill.
My story starts on the exact location of the grist mill, where my parents, Albert and Rose Rampone built their first house. The area consisted of several dairy farms, (McFarlane, Kirsch, Smalldon, Risso, Gabel, MacMillan, Dumbleton, Fisher, Rampone) and several mixed farming operations, (Greening, Culos, Daniel, Berrard, Allan, Munson, Shusaki, Russo, Staka, Lanfranco, Oishi, and Lowe).
There were also a few orchards, (Truant, Chamerberlain, Francescutti, Jantz, Rampone Brothers) and a smattering of houses that had families working in town, (McIver, Karen, dePhyffer, Holland Atkinson, Rankin). The area had lots of open pastures, hayfields, irrigation ditches and creek access spots for our playing pleasure.
As kids, our world focussed on our chores on the farm and the three room Mission Creek School. During the ’50s, there were two classes: Grade 1, 2, 3 (Miss Dorn) and Grade 4,5, 6, 7 (Mrs. Wolf, Mr. Janzen) and a larger classroom with a kitchen that was used as an activity and meeting room. This room was made into a Grade 4, 5 room in the ’60s.
Community events held each year were Christmas concerts, play days, parent-teacher dinners, plant swaps and penny auctions.
For our Christmas concerts, a stage was built at one end of the activity room. Each of the primary and intermediate classes would sing carols or play musical combs (blowing over a tissue covered comb). Santa Claus joined us at the end of each concert with a small bag of jelly beans and a Mandarin orange and he would give out the gifts that we had earlier drawn names for.
Our play days were fun days with three-legged, wheel barrow, and spoon and potato races, as well as the standard dashes, relay races, and broad and high jump.
Lunch was usually hot dogs, ice cream and lemonade, served from converted milk cans with spigots attached to them. It took us several weeks to prepare for this day since we needed to make the ribbons, line the fields, and make signs and score sheets as part of our school work.
Monthly parent-teacher dinners were offered. Our PTA prepared the food and then invited the community to eat. In the days before these dinners, mom and others would gather together dessert and dinner plates from several homes, including both my grandparents, and label them with adhesive tape so they could be returned to the correct house. One of my mother's specialties was a whipped dessert with fruit flavouring served on a crushed cookie base. It was colourful, could be made on large trays and could feed a lot of people.
Each spring, our parents would dig out some of their favourite plants and bring them to the school to swap or sell to the community. That way, everyone benefited from each other's specialty plants. Penny auctions were held in the winter months as a way of having fun, bidding on used or unusual items and raising some funds for the PTA.
Following traditions of rural schools in the past, on the first nice spring day, everyone brought their shears, buckets, shovels and rakes to school and we trimmed bushes, filled in holes and raked grass. At each break, we were outside, rain or snow, playing scrub, marbles, jacks, hopscotch, tag, red rover, what time is it, Mr. Wolf, or the politically incorrect cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers.
At each year end, we kept up the tradition of walking to Mission Creek for a picnic lunch. This was a fun thing to do as, for most of us, it was one of the few days we did not go home for lunch... we actually got to eat sandwiches... packed in an old lard bucket with a sock covered glass jar holding lemonade. Much time was also spent in the school fields on evenings and weekends playing scrub or soccer.
Winter was spent skating and playing hockey on any of several ponds in the area (Munson, McFarlane, Cox or Fish).
Don Rampone is the great grandson of Luigi and Melanie Rampone, a member of the Okanagan Historical Society, Kelowna and District Genealogical Society and the Kelowna Garden Club.
This article is part of a series, submitted by the Kelowna Branch, Okanagan Historical Society. Additional information would be welcome at P.O. Box 22105, Capri P.O., Kelowna, B.C., V1Y 9N9.