Figure 1.--This little French-Canadian boy wers beret with a winter coat and rubber boots. We are not yet sure what the coat style was called. The photograph was taken in Montreal during winter 1950.

We are not sure yet what the proper English term is for this coat. They might be called jckets because the are mid-length. We are not sure hiw common it was in Canada. We see similar coats worn in America. It was a common style forcschool-age biys in Ameriuca. We have one image of a Canadian boy wearing it so we know it was made in child sizes. Our Canadian archive, however, is not large enough to know how popular it was. A French reader writes us, "The winner coat worn by the little French-Canadian boy in the beret section was also worn in France during the 1950s. Interestingly we called it, a 'canadienne' (Canadian). I'm not sure what the Canadians called it. For us it was a adult man's coat. We children during the 50s wore other styles during the winter. Perhaps the most common was a 'manteau'. Both boys and girls wore them from about 6 years of age into our teens. Younger children might wear a 'manteau baby ', again both boys abd girls from about 2 to 8 years of age. Another popular style was a duffle coat (pronounced Doo-fell côt ) wich was much in fashion during the 50s. Boys from about 10 years of age wore a caban as did adult men."

Created: 9:46 PM 6/2/2012
Last updated: 9:46 PM 6/2/2012