May 12, 1937 actually. While Bill Nevard worked at home planting the crop , some of his family made the trip to town for the day of celebration of the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Some excerpts from letters give quite a good account of the day's events. This one written by Joy Nevard....
Donald, Uncle Arthur and I walked to Senft's. When we arrived quite a few people were there. Edith Seip, Miss Dodd, Mrs. Newton, Tom and Irene. We waited for a while til Mr. Dan Seip came with the truck with some of the other children in it. We all got in the truck and went off singing and yelling. When we arrived in town we got out and wandered around buying and looking at things.
At ten minutes to one we all went to the town hall. There were 8 schools there including Lipton, Hayward, Jeshurun, Shawlands, Headlands, Balrobie, Heavylands and Freelands. Then all went up in twos and we had medals pinned on our coats. After that Mr. Fisher gave a speech. We all marched to the school grounds where there were some trees stuck in holes in the ground and piles of dirt on each side and as each pair came up we went one on each side of the hole and threw a handful of dirt in. After that we marched to the sports ground. We had races. Donald won one race and got fifteen cents. I raced but I did not win.
Then there were ball games. When the games were over we went to the town hall for supper. We went out and had some fun. Then Mr. Dan Seip, Uncle Arthur and Miss Dodd came to the truck. They stood talking for a while. Then Miss Dodd came and told us we could stay to the picture show. We got home about 11 o'clock.
Your loving cousin, Joy
P.S. Kenny Fisher took pictures of us while we were having our badges put on and we were standing in line.
Now some from Roy's letter....
I guess you heard the coronation celebrations over the radio eh? Well Bud and I rode down to Lipton on Snap and Fly on coronation day and Uncle Arthur and Joy and Donald went with the rest of the children in Dan Seip's truck.
We watched the different school groups all assembled in front of the school. Then we went over to the station and watched the children march to the sports grounds. We went over to the sports grounds and watched the procession circling around. We saw Sidney Ford and he was with us for quite a long time. He was asking us about you too.
We went to the Chink's cafe and bought chocolate, ginger beer, peppermints, gum, etc.
After a while we went to the sports grounds again and watched Headlands playing softball against Heavylands. Heavylands won. Balrobie played against Hayward and Balrobie won. Sandy Goff was pretty good.
We went to Calver's and got tickets for the picture show. Then we had lunch at the chink's. We had supper at the town hall. At half past seven the picture show started and lasted for two hours. When we came out we saw them shooting off fireworks in Walwyn's back yard. We came home a few minutes later.
Your loving cousin Roy
Main street of Lipton as seen from the top of a grain elevator in the 1930s
Things were a bit different then.
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