Eleanor Deckert
The dad
“Valentine’s Day was also daddy’s birthday,” Clara Jennie Ritcey recalls. “Mom always made a lovely white cake shaped like a heart and iced it with red icing! The first pieces were served in the afternoon when my folks had their afternoon coffee. Then we always had the rest for dessert. Dad was always so pleased – and embarrassed with the fuss – so it was a special treat all around! I grew up in a different era. Although we were isolated, we knew the meaning of Valentine’s Day.”
The mother
Rosalie Doucette remembers, “My mom often made brown sugar fudge and cut it into heart shaped pieces for dad and each of us children. It always tasted better because it was heart-shaped.”
Appreciation for her mother sounds in Dorothy Schulte’s voice as she describes, “During war time sugar 
was rationed. I think we got one cup per month. Having sugar cookies for Valentine’s Day was a very rare treat. Mother had to save up to make enough cookies and icing for the school children.”
In other families the mother bought red paper, doilies, paste, scissors or pinking shears and taught her children to make heart-shaped cards at home. White paper and red crayons or coloured pencils were another possibility when resources were limited.
Thinking back to her childhood in Hemp Creek Valley in Upper Clearwater during the early 1960s, Ellen Helset Ferguson explains, “Preparations for Valentine’s Day would have begun the previous week. My mother would have bought my brother Jim and I a book of Valentine cards to cut out and write names on.
“I expect she got them from the Clearwater General Store. My family did not generally go to Kamloops during the winter. Goodness! Even going down to Clearwater in the winter was a major endeavour!
“The early cards were paper and had to be cut out,” Ellen continues. “The later books were card-stock and were the kind we could punch out. My mother taught us that it was considered good manners to give a card to each person in the school, but there was still a certain amount of careful consideration as to which card would be appropriate for each one.
“Various mothers brought treats for our party. My mother’s speciality was heart-shaped sugar cookies, decorated with flowers and petals in coloured icing and each child’s name written in icing on their cookie.”
The teacher
Traditional annual social events in the one-room, one-teacher rural schools were made possible by the volunteer help from parents and the older students. The school party would feature games such as musical chairs, a sing-along, passing out and enjoying the Valentine cards and, of course, the treats.
In the Upper Clearwater schoolhouse in Grades 1 to 8, there were usually around 20 children.
Ellen Helset Ferguson remembers her first teachers: (1960-61) Mrs. E. Cook, (1961-62) Miss. A. Neufeld, (1962-63) Mrs. L. Park, (1963-64) Mrs. E. Money. Beginning in September 1964 a school bus took the students to Clearwater.
“On special occasions,” Ellen remembers “the teacher would make a suitable colouring page for each of the students in the younger grades. This was a very labour-intensive task.
“First, the teacher had to trace over all of the lines in the picture with a dark purple pencil that had a very soft lead. Then the ‘jelly pad’ would be taken from the storage cupboard, the covering of oil-cloth removed, and the jelly evenly dampened with a little water. The master copy was then carefully laid on the jelly, smoothed out, and then equally carefully peeled off.
“Copies were made by pressing plain paper on the jelly-pad, to accept the transfer from the purple pencil of the original. After a picture had been made for each child in the class, the jelly pad would be washed clean, covered with the oil-cloth and put away until the next copying task.”
The students
“When I was young,” Anne Freeston describes, “on Valentine’s Day the teacher used to put a large, decorated ‘mail-box’ on her desk. We each brought Valentines for our friends. We had cupcakes. One of the older students had to go to the creek for water as we had no running water. We were so happy to receive a Valentine. One book was enough for myself and my three siblings to share with the 28 students. It was fun. I remember we sang Pack up your troubles.”
Ellen Helset Ferguson shares details of the festivities. “We did look forward to this very special occasion every year. When it was time for our Valentine’s party the teacher would make lemonade (or perhaps Kool Aid, which we called “Freshie”) in the big stone crock that normally held water. There was a dispenser that held little cone-shaped paper cups.”
The sweethearts
A significant day for many sweethearts, Clara Jennie Ritcey shares her Valentine’s Day story.
“One year my newlywed husband was away in the bush doing a wildlife study. We lived in the park headquarters building at the start of the Wells Gray Park on the Park Road. Ralph was away doing research in an area called Bull Meadow. When he came home he brought me a Valentine. It was a poem he had composed and written on a piece of birch bark!”
The wedding
Fran McNabb* wrote a letter to the editor of a weekly newspaper in the late 1960s which reads in part, “I am a widow raising five children. It would be nice to get something in the mail besides ads and bills, so if 
someone would care to write a nice newsy letter – welcome!”
Her letter caught the eye of Archie McRae in Saskatchewan. His wife recently deceased, he was also raising four children at home and one in an institution for disabled children.
Through letters, visits and soul-searching they realized, “... the relationship must surely have been engineered by a Power greater than us.”
“The whole community seemed seething with excitement. Parties, food and clothing ... the whole celebration ... was organized and carried out by friends. We were married on Valentine’s Day in the evening, 1967.”
*quotes from Fran McRae’s book “A Heap O’ Lovin’” Used with permission.