Ruby Swartz is originally from Yellowknife, but has had connections to the Jasper Place area since childhood. Here is her story.
My parents were Stan and Jennie Overland. Mom came to Canada with her whole family from Belfast, North Ireland in 1926. My dad came a couple years later with a group of young people from Seljord, Norway. I was born in 1941 in Yellowknife, NWT. We moved south in 1945. During that time I had come to Edmonton at least six times by plane with my mom. She was very good at keeping up my baby book and would have all the pilots sign. Two I remember were Wop May and Grant McConachie.
When we moved from Yellowknife in 1945, we visited friends that had also lived in Yellowknife, Doris and Tom Torvakson. Tom had been injured in the Negus mine, when a coal chisel had fallen from an upper level, hitting as he was bent over. It hit him in the spine and he was paralyzed for life. They lived about a block or so south of Stony Plain Road on 149 or 150 Street. The neighbours to the south were [members of the Zelensky family]. Jerry Forbes, a CFRN announcer, also lived down the same street. Tom was a very creative person and built his own wheelchair and a series of ropes and ramps so he could maneuver himself from the house to his workshop. They had a fantastic garden of both vegetables and flowers. I still have a yellow rose from her. It is a pale yellow, single petaled bush rose.
We lived at Seba Beach so when we came to town that was our headquarters. That is where I went to school with my brother Bill. Bill finished his schooling at JP Comp. I married in 1960 and moved to the city. My husband’s parents came from Germany.
My dad didn’t like to drive in the city so we would leave our vehicle at [Doris and Tom’s] house and walk over the bridge to the turnabout and catch the city bus.
Years later, when mom and dad sold out, they lived for a time in the apartment above the Jasper Place Theatre and then beside the pool hall behind the old hotel. The noise was too much so they moved to another apartment in the back of the JP Hotel. To get to the bathroom you had to go into the hallway next to the pool hall. The drive-in theatre was south on 156th Street about 87-86th Avenue in the ‘50s. I can remember as a teenager traveling through the mud to the drive-in theatre.
This was temporary as dad was looking to purchase a home. In 1961 they purchased a three- bedroom home with an unfinished full basement at 9222 156 Street. Dad built a suite in the basement and in 1962 we moved in with them till we moved to my husband’s family farm in 1965. Mom had a friend from out of the city that had a child enrolled in Winnifred Stewart School and they needed a place for him to live.
Over the years mom and dad cared for over a dozen children from the school; the most was five at one time. They came from all over Alberta. A school bus picked them up and returned them every school day. My parents were very caring people. One day while visiting a friend at the Misericordia Hospital they met a lady from Winnipeg who had to stay at a hotel while her son was in care. She was lonesome as she knew no one here. Mom and Dad invited her to come home with them. Dad would drive her to the hospital every morning and pick her up when she was ready. She stayed with them [for] over two weeks and several times later as her son needed reconstructive surgery. This was the beginning of a new venture for them. During this time dad was busy building his garage, the wall grafting an apple tree gardening. Mom and Dad were members of Trinity United Church. We watched the building of the Meadowlark Mall and we loved it.
My dad had been a prospector in his early days, he worked for Falconbridge staking claims for gold in the north. He retired in 1963 he had brought home some core samples that didn’t make the grade. During the winter he set them in concrete forms that he put on 2ft by 4ft. slabs of concrete and in the spring he built up the front yard that had sloped to the service drive. That wall is still there but has been painted. These rocks are from the Conto Lake area where the diamond mines are today. He had told us in 1960 that he had found diamonds (no one believed him).
This post is part of the Jasper Place Community History Project’s Community Profile series. These are stories about current and former community members presented mostly in their own words. We have not fact-checked these stories. As a result, there may be some discrepancies concerning dates, locations, spellings of names, and other details.
The series is curated by Paula E. Kirman and Colette Lebeuf.
