Editor's Note: Here's a nice, literary Christmas present for our readers. Ellen Gargus has written several slice-of-life / historical pieces for Lac La Biche POST readers over the years. Her daughter Zanra Gargus-Lind submitted the following story about Ellen as she turned 88 on December 23. It's a fun walk down memory lane and marks, what Zanra describes, as...
...The End of an Era
It was 1953 - a time when women couldn’t wear pants to work and a time when a pregnant woman had to leave her job when she started to show – really. And, it was a time when no woman in Lac La Biche had a driver’s license even though licenses were introduced in Alberta in 1929.
That was until my mother, Ellen Gargus, became the first lady in Lac La Biche to get a driver’s license and change those statistics. Her driving instructor was my father who was her boyfriend at the time. They would go to the farm in Venice where there was less traffic, and she would practice her skills on the narrow, rough gravel roads.
When Ellen decided she’d like to have a driver’s license, she walked over to the Treasury Branch where licenses were issued in those days and handed over one dollar. There was no Learner’s test in those days, not even a road test. She didn’t have to be of a particular age, didn’t need to demonstrate she could read a road sign or even have good eyesight. That’s how easy it was to get a license.
Requirements, regulations and employment standards have changed significantly over the years. Women have licenses, are wearing comfortable pants to work and remain employed while pregnant. Mom remembers the day they were told they could wear pants to work and the day they were told they could have something called a “coffee break”. The workplace has changed as much as our roads, highways and driving requirements.
December marked my mother’s 88th birthday. Knowing it is no longer safe for her to drive, she made a trip to the licensing registry to give up her driver’s license. This photo captures the end of an era, the moment when Carol St. Jean at the registry office officially accepted the license that served my mother well for 69 years.
Although mom returned the license, the licensing agency didn’t return her dollar.
