83_Lee_Bennett_1930s.mp3

otter.ai

20.01.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Today is August 27 1990, and today I'm talking to John Bennett and his sister Evelyn Lee, at Mrs. Lee's house on the Folkert Ganges road. My name is Ruth Sandwell. Now why don't we start with you telling me how how your family first came to the island and why they first came?

Unknown Speaker 0:20
Well, our father came here in 1910 from Australia, and worked here for a while. Then he took a trip back home.

Unknown Speaker 0:31
He didn't know he was supposed to Prince Rupert Prince in between Prince Rupert Prince George Knapp, Salisbury. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 0:37
When he first came here, he took a trip back to Australia.

Unknown Speaker 0:39
Could I just ask what he was doing up there?

Unknown Speaker 0:43
He was serving? No, he had a job clearing the right away for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad to Rubert. I was 19 Can. Sorry

Unknown Speaker 0:54
to interrupt you there. Okay. So then he took a trip back to Australia, and came back again. And when the war broke out, he joined up and went overseas. And that was where he met our mother.

Unknown Speaker 1:08
Oh, really? Were

Unknown Speaker 1:10
down in Seaford or in that area of London. Oh, really? Yeah. So anyway, they were married, and I came along. And in 1919, April 1919, we came to Salzburg. How old were you then? 10 months.

Unknown Speaker 1:29
So do you know why they chose Salt Spring?

Unknown Speaker 1:32
Because some of these gems in the army had heard of Salt Spring and they all came here.

Unknown Speaker 1:38
Oh, really? Who else? Who else came?

Unknown Speaker 1:40
Mr. And Mrs. Goodrich? No, no, no, Ruth. Hi, Nikki. Well, it was her apparent. And there were others? Do I forgotten them? No, because they all passed away many years ago. So we lived in Ganges for a year.

Unknown Speaker 1:58
Did you live in a did they rent a house? Yes.

Unknown Speaker 2:03
They lived up on the old place on the summer, and quite often moved back to Ganges in the winter to the bad weather. Oh, really? Well, I had a horse in a wagon. We river with that?

Unknown Speaker 2:14
Yeah. They had a one room building up in a little tiny hole in the bush. Which is now a big subdivision houses all over

Unknown Speaker 2:26
the road. Oh, yeah. I'm still up there. I bought the place from an ed in 1946.

Unknown Speaker 2:32
So what we do, why would they go up to live up there quiet

Unknown Speaker 2:35
battles and so on in France and the war was quiet. guns firing and all bombed playing.

Unknown Speaker 2:44
Yeah, a lot of people suffered from that

Unknown Speaker 2:47
with quiet and that was way up off the road mile off the road.

Unknown Speaker 2:51
What did your What did you Dad do when he first came here?

Unknown Speaker 2:56
Are you started into clear the land around the building that was there and eventually grew alfalfa. And we had cows and pigs and a horse and chickens and sheep.

Unknown Speaker 3:09
How much land and he did you have up there? 42 acres

Unknown Speaker 3:12
30 acres 3030. Then he went the other 12 later.

Unknown Speaker 3:16
We ended up with 42 Anyway.

Unknown Speaker 3:19
So where are you going back and forth for a while and then you moved permanently up to the up to the place up there?

Unknown Speaker 3:25
Well, I was born in 1923. And I believe they lived in where herb Q slipped where? A rice paddy who's there now? I don't know. I don't know. Just a little bit in the way. So in 23 they were still there in the winter. Yeah, maybe 24 They moved up on the hill permanently.

Unknown Speaker 3:45
Did your dad build a house up there? Of sorts

Unknown Speaker 3:50
he added on to what was there?

Unknown Speaker 3:53
What was there was just a little cabin there.

Unknown Speaker 3:55
Right? We wanted an element my wife and six kids and myself lived in it until 62 and we built a big new house so to move out of the old one we couldn't patch the roof at least so much. No Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 4:11
So what what was the place? What was it like when you were so you were children living in the house up on Dukes road? Were you what was the house like?

Unknown Speaker 4:21
Yes, it just had big 1212 inch boards nailed on as close as they could get them like that. Yeah, all the way around it and you could see through every one of them to outside. Oh

Unknown Speaker 4:33
used to amaze people. When I used to come home from logging. I'd pull my cord boots off and take my socks off and just stick them against the wall and rough sawn lumber. Anything was picked to refs and people hadn't seen that before they do a lot of you'll get a laugh out of there. Yeah, grab your socks or stick them on the wall behind the stove.

Unknown Speaker 4:58
Put a patent on them. Split. So, how many children did your parents

Unknown Speaker 5:03
have? Four. And what were their names? Well, I'm the oldest. And there's Mary mullet. I'm doing Stephens and then John. And the baby. Yeah, I could tell that. She could tell. tz so you had

Unknown Speaker 5:25
would you say you had like a working farm up there. It sounds like it was where it was working.

Unknown Speaker 5:31
There was lots of rocks in it. And when we had we had when it was plowed, we had to take the rocks up and we had piles of rocks as big as this room and just about as high he would put the big ones around the outside and we had to throw all the others over the top into it.

Unknown Speaker 5:47
But a stone boat behind the horse going around the field. We had thrown a rock. I don't know what it's gonna go it is no I don't. Okay, it's too little runners you cut out of trees in the woods with crooked what? Yeah. And you cut them off and lay them down this way and then you nail crosspieces on them. Then you put four and a half these autonomous edge around with a chain in the middle to the horse and he pulled it around and loaded up with rocks and he pulled to the pile we throw the rocks off the sled again.

Unknown Speaker 6:11
Yeah, you just put them out off to an area you weren't going to use. Oh, there were

Unknown Speaker 6:15
piles all over the field.

Unknown Speaker 6:17
There still are. Quite often they'd find a great big rocket couldn't move and they build a pile around it. So land were dead anyway because they couldn't use it. The rock was too big to move. Right?

Unknown Speaker 6:29
I think there's only one pile left up there isn't there? Yeah, it's over below

Unknown Speaker 6:33
the old barn it's still there.

Unknown Speaker 6:37
Oh this one on the on this left hand side of the road going to your house.

Unknown Speaker 6:44
That's right petroI there's news there's two there's two Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 6:47
but the road gang the maintenance road maintenance crew took all the rest of the pile so it did do some fulfill in different places.

Unknown Speaker 6:54
So they your dad cleared the land and did he he had to cut down the trees and what did he do with the stumps?

Unknown Speaker 7:00
blew them dumping powder. What was is what is

Unknown Speaker 7:05
stomping powder. Just dynamite a milder

Unknown Speaker 7:09
version of it. Dynamite is for blowing rocks stomping powders for lifting stumps out of the ground dynamite do violent for stumps break them all up we're dumping powder we'll put a pressure underneath and lift

Unknown Speaker 7:23
so you would you put a little bit under the you dig under

Unknown Speaker 7:26
underneath some of the stuff you put a case of powder under you know answers that long and that wide and that high

Unknown Speaker 7:35
yeah some of those stumps are pretty big

Unknown Speaker 7:38
four and five the across

Unknown Speaker 7:41
the one that he never got to I did afterwards Oh yeah. I blew the stump afterwards and then had the bulldozer clear the land no clean all the stumps and burn them pile them up and burn them

Unknown Speaker 7:51
What did what did you do with the with the logs from the trees?

Unknown Speaker 7:56
Most of it was cut into wooden sold.

Unknown Speaker 7:59
Did you cut it? Did Did your family cut it?

Unknown Speaker 8:03
Eventually he bought a winner Gregor saw and that was

Unknown Speaker 8:07
you know what are we McGregory right now? I've got two of them at home who want to come and see your take a picture? Yeah, what did they like a great big wooden frame that leans up against the log on their dog's pivot which are on your drive them into the log that holds the machine still. And there's an engine here a water tank for cooling and a gas tank beside it and a chain goes to a final drive behind and that has an arm on it. From which goes a pair of slide arms with a side hook to under the Pitman from the other side goes back and forth across the log into blocks and the first one that came up weighed 300 pounds one man horse them around all day and they got a real light one with 260 That's the one I have the 260 and he had a little tiny one 160 pound where you could pick that up and throw it in your bag and carried away

Unknown Speaker 9:05
maybe you could so what he'd cut it up into six games length and width what was it used for firewood firewood still

Unknown Speaker 9:18
there nearly everybody had stoves wood stoves then yeah yeah, no such thing as electricity either.

Unknown Speaker 9:26
No. Did you ever get electricity and in the house when you were growing up?

Unknown Speaker 9:31
I did. I bought a power plant. Disposal rough wires through each drill hole we had was like nothing else. Yeah. Because at night we go to bed. We got to shut the gas off and he just had time to get back and get to bed for the plant.

Unknown Speaker 9:47
When was that? How was that run on gasoline?

Unknown Speaker 9:49
I didn't get that 258 though. We had gasoline lamps and coil lamps up until then the coil fridge finally progress to a coil fridge

Unknown Speaker 10:00
How would that work? Heat?

Unknown Speaker 10:03
Heat? Yeah. Vaporize is sealed. And we call it Freon. And then when it cooled when it pardon me when it condensed, it cooled.

Unknown Speaker 10:16
Oh, I see. I've never heard of the, in the fridge. You know, I know people. Propane,

Unknown Speaker 10:22
propane in a camper

Unknown Speaker 10:23
trailer. Yeah, same principle. Same thing.

Unknown Speaker 10:28
But all the years we were growing up, we had none of that.

Unknown Speaker 10:31
What we had was on the north side of the house on one of the sliding windows, there was a mistake built onto the wall was screen sides to keep the delay load. Yeah. And that's where you put your milk in your cooler stuff

Unknown Speaker 10:43
that you needed to keep cool. How long would

Unknown Speaker 10:46
it keep in there? Not very long. to I guess it depends on the temperature. Yeah. What what did you say you had like acres like acreage where you grow? You spend should alfalfa? What would he do with the

Unknown Speaker 11:02
alfalfa? Or the horse in the cow?

Unknown Speaker 11:05
Yeah. Do you have what one cow?

Unknown Speaker 11:08
Usually? Yeah, see?

Unknown Speaker 11:10
What kind of cow Jersey jersey? JC Did you sell your cream? Did you use it? It was for your family? Yes. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 11:19
Later on, when my wife and I were we had four CCOs. Yeah. And we sold cream jQuery, which closed down later on? Yeah. Farming just went

Unknown Speaker 11:31
out. That's right. Did you have any? Anything that you did you thought you know, on the farm that you had when you were young? Was there anything that you sold for? For

Unknown Speaker 11:41
lamb? Oh, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 11:43
Strawberries for

Unknown Speaker 11:43
a while. Yeah. Yeah, pigs. Now again, you tell a pig and lambs. But I remember very, very clearly. When we lived in Ganges it was in the middle of 30 middle to late 30s. I remember raising a beautiful big baby it was 200 pounds when it was watered. We got $16 worth 200 pound pig eight cents a pound. Who did you sell it to? A local in Ganges assaulted into a barrel and he had pork for a salt pork for a year $16 with no refrigeration you see our hadn't come to Saltspring man had already been come to salt into 37

Unknown Speaker 12:27
Did you? I guess you did your mom do any preserving of the meat like did she do smoking?

Unknown Speaker 12:35
She didn't smoke much meat. She bottled at all? Yeah. So what would she bottle? venison?

Unknown Speaker 12:41
Yeah. Did you live a lot on the venison stirring? They

Unknown Speaker 12:45
used to invade our garden all the time. You couldn't keep them out of it?

Unknown Speaker 12:48
Yeah, yeah, same thing now.

Unknown Speaker 12:51
I raised my kids on venison. We had to. There was no money. It's the

Unknown Speaker 12:54
purest meat there is.

Unknown Speaker 12:56
Yeah. Can I just ask a lot of people I've heard that a lot. Was there any problem with people like Game Wardens or anything like that? Or Did nobody bother?

Unknown Speaker 13:06
I remember a time when the game warden came off the ferry at Fulford and somebody saw him and the moccasin telegraph took over every phone on Saltspring rang Game Wardens on the island. There was absolute silence from guns until we left again. The day he left the telephone rang again the game wardens gone everybody would go to replenish and and resupply.

Unknown Speaker 13:27
Yeah. So no, I've heard that time and again, you know, especially dwell during the 30s 40s and

Unknown Speaker 13:36
50s

Unknown Speaker 13:39
What kind of did you did your mum and dad have a garden? Oh yes, a big one. What did they grow

Unknown Speaker 13:46
raspberries and every vegetable you can think of and she used to bottle them all but the beans were something else the key used to salt the beans in five gallon Crocs and you'd have to take them out whatever you wanted for a meal you took it out and soaked it overnight in fresh water and you pour that off and soak some more to get the salt out so you can eat them with a good luck know

Unknown Speaker 14:14
that you're learning now the thing about beans was that bacillus botulinum escaped into them they're absolutely deadly poison but salted that didn't get in there. Oh really? She didn't can those beans were the worst thing they were beans are the worst thing there is to can in case it gets set by Phyllis by Joanna center called botulism. But it kills you. Yeah, look at me back.

Unknown Speaker 14:40
So what's it was it your your mom who mainly did the work in the garden?

Unknown Speaker 14:44
Oh, no. We got to do and so you guys had worked in it too.

Unknown Speaker 14:48
I hate gardening to this day. Do you have old garden? I hate it.

Unknown Speaker 14:53
I love it. This is the first year we've only had one garden every other year we had two The big ones.

Unknown Speaker 15:01
You grow vegetables still Yeah. Did you have any fruit trees?

Unknown Speaker 15:06
Up there? Yes. Not on our own places until until my dad planted them and grafted them. And then he had some of our own.

Unknown Speaker 15:16
When was that? 2021 days? Yeah. What kind of fruit? Cherries apples? Plums. What else?

Unknown Speaker 15:26
What about it? Did you?

Unknown Speaker 15:28
Did they ever, you know have enough to export or was that before?

Unknown Speaker 15:33
Yeah, we sold cherries. Where would you sell them? Local people. They come and pick their own way to mount Nicola pound or something like that. The last big crop we had up there was in the middle 40s or late 40s after my wife and I bought the place. We had the biggest crop of cherries have ever was and never came again. Oh really? No. They never grew a crop like they did that year.

Unknown Speaker 16:00
What kind of cherry trees did you have

Unknown Speaker 16:01
beings from Lambert's Rylands. Tartarian star carians. Vande Lambert, yeah, Ted Lambert five difference between

Unknown Speaker 16:13
what about apples? Do you know what kind of apples

Unknown Speaker 16:17
doesn't gentleman the Old Orchard down below us? Yeah, but we had grand schemes. There were two or three treated grandmothers Dean's in the orchard down below the old Mr. Dukes. We've got who do throat is named after. And he thought he had bought a place where you're on where you didn't know where the corner posts were. So we cleared up a couple of acres, planted trees all over it that were doing beautifully built himself a little log Jack. And one day the owner of the land came along and said thank you for building me a house from planting an orchard no get out. He was over the line. Order the next place he had to go. And that was the orchard we used. Those guys were long gone. Of course, when Michael came there and the fellow that owned the property that time told my dad he could use the orchard as he liked. And so we got all the apples.

Unknown Speaker 17:10
Do you remember what kinds there were? I know they were tremendous variety on the island. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 17:14
it was blend them Orange was wealthy with the Gravenstein kings. Keswick Coughlin's Starks Baldwin wild winds, crab apples, golden russet, green rosette bellflower, yes.

Unknown Speaker 17:38
That was another early kind of an apple up there on the fence.

Unknown Speaker 17:40
Oh, I'm not sure that wasn't a seedling. We call it the early harvest who the first one to ripen.

Unknown Speaker 17:46
Oh, yeah, but I don't mean that one. I mean, those two trees that were right over where Brian and Margie are. One was on the fence and one was just down from the fence. They had a nice round read F Well, there's one of the same trees and Uncle Bob's orchard.

Unknown Speaker 18:00
I remember that when you mean Selena Pippins. No, it was one of those.

Unknown Speaker 18:06
Two of those one anyway, in snow apple. We called it

Unknown Speaker 18:09
Yeah, because the snow broke the tree down in October one year. Oh, I didn't have a name. So we called it the Snow app.

Unknown Speaker 18:16
But they grew great big apples like this beautiful kept all winter.

Unknown Speaker 18:22
Now Did Did you or did you support? Did your? Did the family support itself with farming or did you need to do weather?

Unknown Speaker 18:29
Like my dad worked out too. He worked on the government road me worked in tie Mills, sawmills. They were on the road. He was a father. He knew what a rock crusher corner is Sky Valley Road that big. Excavation back into the rock face here. That was the old rock crusher. And they used to drill holes in that by hand guide sit and hold a drill. And a guy had to swipe it all day with a sledgehammer. And my dad would load the powder hook into them and blow them that it was put into a crusher. What was the crusher like big machine enjoys getting together and made little rocks out of big ones. And that was a foundation for the road on Salisbury. But I think the government changed and the next government wouldn't use what the first government had put in there to use and it was just repair. But that excavation with the old rock crusher between cushion Lake Road and sky Valley Road. That was where the rock crusher was

Unknown Speaker 19:25
a little trees now. Unless you stopped and looked

Unknown Speaker 19:30
when we were kids, it wasn't a little tree in there. And they've all grown in bear rock since then it can we treat who grow again.

Unknown Speaker 19:40
Well, we'll talk about that. So your mom kept you kept chickens too. Did you sell the eggs or did you just use them?

Unknown Speaker 19:50
When we were kids, we used them. Later on. They had converted one of the old barns into a chicken house on my mother and sister. You raised chickens and sold eggs,

Unknown Speaker 20:02
wherever they sell them to store to mines, and the trading,

Unknown Speaker 20:07
ship them to Victoria. They had a grading and candling weapon right there. They were graded and candle before they left.

Unknown Speaker 20:19
The store was a general store at that time they kept groceries and everything.

Unknown Speaker 20:24
And they also did this sort of brokering or whatever it's called their people would sell their produce to mow it and then mow its would ship it if, if, if that's what they wanted to do or just sell it in their store. I guess that's

Unknown Speaker 20:36
quite different, isn't it? Oh, yes. And if you've had a nice vehicle or a beef or a pig or whatever, you send them to the store and they haven't sold over the counter. They can't do that today. They're not expected

Unknown Speaker 20:48
to get groceries back for it.

Unknown Speaker 20:52
Or credit or pay your bill. Many a farm on Saltspring was taken over by Molex because a bill got so big that the farmer couldn't pay the bill. And so the farm was taken over against the bill. Or don't forget that farms are worth nothing. You know, you buy a 40 acre farm or $500 not incredible. When you got to say oh in the store 1500 bucks. And the store would say no, you can't pay so what are we going to do about it? So they take the farm and wipe the bill out. So what were the people do work from home what was the lot of people that worked in Molex had gone broke, and had to go to work for

Unknown Speaker 21:38
mode. So they'd go to work and they wouldn't run the farm for moments. They just want to work in the store. And the moments but what hold on to the property or sell it or

Unknown Speaker 21:47
hang on to it. They hung on to a lot of it.

Unknown Speaker 21:53
What when you were so when you were children? Oh, I just want to ask you one more thing about just sort of about the household that you had them when you were when you were kids? How did your mom would cook kind of big wood stove and she

Unknown Speaker 22:09
she made bread and pies and everything. She had to have everything make everything we used to get our big orders from Woodward's in Vancouver once a month. What would you get? 100 Tom Cech a sugar and 100 pound sack of flour. And I don't know how many pounds of butter would come in a big 10 pound pail of Rogers golden syrup. Oh, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 22:30
And also the pancakes in the morning.

Unknown Speaker 22:34
And all that sort of thing.

Unknown Speaker 22:35
Why did you not find that stuff? At all? It's

Unknown Speaker 22:37
wood wood for cheaper.

Unknown Speaker 22:41
Even after all the shipping and how would it come in? CPR?

Unknown Speaker 22:47
If you're a boat?

Unknown Speaker 22:48
With? Would it come into Ganges or be appointed times

Unknown Speaker 22:51
a week?

Unknown Speaker 22:52
give any guarantees? So go and pick up your order. And

Unknown Speaker 22:56
yeah, they put it in the freight shed on the wharf? You know, the word Ganges, oh, this stuff come off the board and go into their big piles and piles. And you go down there and pick out what was yours and take it home.

Unknown Speaker 23:08
So when you have to pay for it before you picked it up, is that how you'd send the money and then they ship the stuff gender

Unknown Speaker 23:13
money order. You go to the post office and get a money order. Send the order with the money order. And would we have everything already ordered?

Unknown Speaker 23:23
Did you buy anything else besides food through them? I guess money must have been pretty tight.

Unknown Speaker 23:28
money was tight. It was tight.

Unknown Speaker 23:30
What did you do about clothing? My mother made a lot

Unknown Speaker 23:33
of it from other stuff.

Unknown Speaker 23:34
sacks and sugar sacks and things like

Unknown Speaker 23:38
that. So you didn't buy it. You wouldn't have bought your clothing.

Unknown Speaker 23:41
Usually mostly all secondhand stuff. Yeah. Which people would just give facet on to one or the other. When your kids grew out of it, you pass it on to somebody else. And when they grew out of it, they pass it to the next one. The last one

Unknown Speaker 23:55
to where it had the most badges

Unknown Speaker 23:59
not allowed. We were never allowed to run around with a hole in our clothes like they do today. They think that's smart, but I think it's disgusting.

Unknown Speaker 24:06
Our clothes were always patched. My mother had a sewing machine. And she kept all her clothes patched.

Unknown Speaker 24:14
She used to have to wash everything in a washed up and she had to carry the water to the house. He did on top of the stove and then pack it to the washed up, scrub all the clothes on the scrubbing board and then rinse the same way and then hang it out on a clothesline to dry.

Unknown Speaker 24:30
Where did she get to you? Did you have a spring there? Or there was

Unknown Speaker 24:34
no goodwill? Lots of water. dug well yeah. And there

Unknown Speaker 24:38
was was there a pump in the house at all during your childhood or

Unknown Speaker 24:42
you took a bucket rope on it and send it down the well and picked up a bucket of water.

Unknown Speaker 24:47
What year was it we got water piped into the house

Unknown Speaker 24:51
about 1928 29 So we're there

Unknown Speaker 24:54
something like that just plain plates came from the well water down the hill. up into the house into the sink.

Unknown Speaker 25:02
And it wasn't a hot water tank put in until 1444.

Unknown Speaker 25:07
Did you have a hot hot water bed on the stove? You don't know sometimes.

Unknown Speaker 25:12
What you mean no water heater, I don't know our stove didn't have that reservoir. They

Unknown Speaker 25:16
called it reservoir. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 25:18
we didn't have that. We always had a cattle set in there and you had to keep the cattle, you had to remember to fill the cattle every so often that which D mode and go dry and then you get smolder, right, we were able to avoid or to gain and emptied and start again. So every time you went by the stove, you you felt the cattle kind of getting empty when putting more water in it and put it back in the stove.

Unknown Speaker 25:40
So it must have been pretty hot in the summer to have that. Would she keep the stove going all the time?

Unknown Speaker 25:46
How to cook breakfast Lincoln ever? Yeah. But

Unknown Speaker 25:48
during that in between time she learned out?

Unknown Speaker 25:51
Yeah. Did you or did your parents do? I mean, I guess they must have been pretty busy most of the time. But did they find time to do you know anything? Like in the community? Did they belong to it? Did your dad for example belong to the farmers Institute? Or who? About your mom? Did she have anything to do with the

Unknown Speaker 26:17
you know, the you belong to an organization called The Guild of sunshine? But that wasn't until latter years. I remember her walking again before 1934 to go to the meetings.

Unknown Speaker 26:29
What would the Do you know what she did for the for the girls?

Unknown Speaker 26:33
It was an organization you know about the Women's Institute and fulfilled while the guild of sunshine was much like that? They did good for people who needed it.

Unknown Speaker 26:44
And they helped the hospital do some what they need.

Unknown Speaker 26:47
Do you know what they would do? Like specifically what they would do? Would they make clothing or provide food? Have you any idea what they did? Specifically?

Unknown Speaker 26:57
Well to raise the money to do the things they did they put on sales and teas and all that sort of thing? Oh, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 27:04
People would donate to the sale for the money you got on sale was handed right over again to someone who needed it.

Unknown Speaker 27:13
And would they like find families who were in need in some way and help them out?

Unknown Speaker 27:17
There were a lot of them and

Unknown Speaker 27:21
how, how did families manage through the Depression

Unknown Speaker 27:27
leapt off her garden and venison in the garden.

Unknown Speaker 27:31
Do you know anybody who went like seriously hungry? And the

Unknown Speaker 27:37
nobody went hungry? No, I don't really hungry. You eat some of the darndest things. But you didn't go hungry. I mean some of the things that people ate, you had to put in the garbage today like sheep heads, your butcher sheep and you're selling meat to the store which paid for two pairs of boots for the winter. And you were left with the heart on the liver and the tongue and the head and manage the night we sat down at supper to half of a sheep's head which had been skinned out the nose cut off the eye and the ear taken out and it was put in a big pot and boiled up with the rice and carried it was in carrots and onion and all the rest of it. And you know if good people would wouldn't even look at it today. But it was good fish heads.

Unknown Speaker 28:25
I love a fish at boiled. It's amazing the amount of fish that people waste today.

Unknown Speaker 28:32
Yes, same with all the foods you know, people just don't want to they don't want to have them.

Unknown Speaker 28:37
The other thing that you have to do too is in the wintertime when the tide was loaded take coil and turn and walk from a fondue throat down to say Venice Beach and the clams and bring home all the clam to get back on their back in a burlap bag. And we'd have clams for days afterwards. But it doesn't cost anything all you do is walk and get it

Unknown Speaker 28:58
Yeah. What about fishing? Did you guys go go fishing at all when you were younger? Did you?

Unknown Speaker 29:04
Well we were a little older now when we started going fishing at the lake

Unknown Speaker 29:10
did you go did you have a boat?

Unknown Speaker 29:12
No. Pick up the short little poll you had an abortion your tie line to it and a barber and a hook. Can you dig some worm? Do you have vision? We didn't have a real witch been cast 150 feet or more out until a we just had the end of the line. We had died to the fall. We caught fish.

Unknown Speaker 29:29
Yeah, we used to go to black brains lake from the divide school. And we all remember catching quite a few trout one day when we went there.

Unknown Speaker 29:39
Did you Did you always go to the divide school.

Unknown Speaker 29:42
We went to high school grade one to grade eight. High School.

Unknown Speaker 29:47
Do you remember any of the teachers that you had there? Tell me. I have the money to tell me the names of your teachers that you can remember.

Unknown Speaker 29:56
One was Mabel Harris.

Unknown Speaker 29:58
That's when I started with it. 1930 January of 30 I started school

Unknown Speaker 30:03
one was Amy vi one was Marian Miller. Another one was married Bertie

Unknown Speaker 30:17
was that there was a miss grow up and there was Korea wasn't there before them.

Unknown Speaker 30:21
I don't know whether they thought it was at the divide school or not. I know they taught at the cranberry school.

Unknown Speaker 30:28
Then it was Florence grove. She's now Mrs. Hepburn. She lives in Brinkley

Unknown Speaker 30:33
and Mary Purdy, she know Mary England.

Unknown Speaker 30:38
Yes. Then when Florence group blue Grove went to the position to the high school, there was a miss Metcalf came and we miss Metcalf left Miss open came. And then Miss Alden went down to the high school. And I don't remember who went to Dubai school after that. But the consolidated school was opened in April of 1940. I was there for one month at the end. Yeah, yeah. And from there last but there were nine schools on the island. Was Isabella point beaver point. Were going yeah, what we started getting there was Isabella point school to be refined that Fulford School, which is now GA and K Catlins. House. Oh, really? Yeah. And in the Burgoyne Valley School which is across from a little white church next door and mountains. There was a divide School, which was on Blackburn road.

Unknown Speaker 31:41
Is that still there at all?

Unknown Speaker 31:43
It's gone. There's a host there with a fence around it. There was a cranberry school up above Szczepanik where right road turns off. It was a two room gangee school that would have been one two room school. Then it was a one at Central. And the one of the north end.

Unknown Speaker 31:57
Where was the wedding? Ganges? The Catholic Church. Oh, great. Yeah, that was the school

Unknown Speaker 32:03
to go to two rooms go Wonderful. Great. One to four, and five to eight. That was different. And then there was a chicken house at the man Hall which was a high school.

Unknown Speaker 32:14
It's not there now.

Unknown Speaker 32:18
When you go in off Rainbow Road to go up to the school and a big fruit tree there with a round it. I used to lead my bicycle against that and just walk into the school. Yeah, it was a chicken house that we used in the fairgrounds and all the walls were still whitewashed

Unknown Speaker 32:36
What did you did you did you enjoy school?

Unknown Speaker 32:41
I wouldn't say that.

Unknown Speaker 32:43
No, know we had to walk all the way there and back, have fun and go home and go to work. Piling rocks and cutting wood casing sheet with bare feet. Oh, the garden. And then after supper, we'd have to sit down and do our homework by color lamps.

Unknown Speaker 33:04
What did you What sort of things did you learn in school? Everything

Unknown Speaker 33:09
reading, writing and arithmetic. And we learned a forgotten that today.

Unknown Speaker 33:14
They don't know what reading writing arithmetic is today. You ask your kid what? 6% of 40 years and they can't tell you

Unknown Speaker 33:21
that they get out the calculator. That's right. Correct. So did you feel that you the teachers were good? Was there a lot of variety in the teachers? There was? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 33:34
yeah. But most of them were quite good. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 33:38
What would they did they have any problems with discipline in the schools? I guess a lot of them were the young

Unknown Speaker 33:44
they were problem but but it was a really it was great note. What would they do?

Unknown Speaker 33:51
Or use the strap?

Unknown Speaker 33:52
Oh, yeah. With the teachers use the strap. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 33:55
we all had account again. And it was another teacher who never used to strap it was that Florence Hepburn? Florence Grove currents have come he didn't have to. How did she How did she look intimidated the kids? Really? Oh if you just furious and she'd come up to her he was a teacher before he gave me this crap. You'd say thank you and go back and say no.

Unknown Speaker 34:27
Do you think they had Do you think that those teachers had a hard time with your kids?

Unknown Speaker 34:32
No, I think there were lots of places and lots of kids that were a lot worse than we were.

Unknown Speaker 34:39
But then the scrap got out of hand. We got our teacher Ganges who scrap little grade one kids who love to hear little kids scream and terror. And that's one of the reasons this crap was taken over the schools. It was viewed

Unknown Speaker 34:56
as Deaf Right. Which Which did you ever is

Unknown Speaker 35:00
a better not to make named. Alright, you don't have to serve him but there was a principal of a school that did not consolidate a school cadres who did abuse the scrap privilege that he had. Yeah. And as I say he loved to hear it as a great one children scream and terror.

Unknown Speaker 35:17
So did the parents you know, say anything?

Unknown Speaker 35:21
Yes, I tried to get him fired in a job but it's pretty hard to do. He was grabbed big high school kids. One big fella he got there. All right, Jack, let's get it over with. So Jack and strap him for a while. And finally the guy would catch this grab, throw it in the corner. Say okay, Jack. That's enough of that for today. And go and sit down

Unknown Speaker 35:47
what did you What did you use to do when you weren't working with? How about how would you spend your Saturdays when you were children?

Unknown Speaker 35:56
Saturdays we usually waited the garden.

Unknown Speaker 36:00
We didn't have much free time.

Unknown Speaker 36:02
Sundays now and again, we leave home go for a walk up to Maxwell's peak. We knew that retreat on the way to Max was peeking back. Would you take a picnic? Not really. No, no. And again, in the summertime the old horse where we hitched up the wagon and we leave up on the hill and go to the zoo Vyas Oh, really? I come home when it was pitch black. The whole family would

Unknown Speaker 36:23
go Yeah, we used to go to Burgoyne to come to bird going

Unknown Speaker 36:27
on again. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 36:28
there was a lovely little beach down there and a lot of people used to meet down there and we'd all have one big picnic together. It was lovely.

Unknown Speaker 36:35
But don't forget there were no cars in early no there were all cars and wagons first and buggies lots of them they were my Ford came to the audit in 1919 there were only what seven cars on the island and in the 30s we knew every car on the air we be here going by we know whose it was by the sound today you don't know what car your neighbors got you they change your mind to change their socks

Unknown Speaker 36:58
there was no paved roads and the highway as it is today wasn't there it used to go up the old divide road and down round the other way. So this amount by Blackburn lane

Unknown Speaker 37:11
so this road just wasn't there. Was there a trail to follow the line of that road? Yes part of it was further out

Unknown Speaker 37:19
further out went up go run by Cushing Lake corner and through sky Valley run to the 100 Hills it turned left before you know we're Lutens gallery is it for you get Blackburn road there's a road turns off the left between the opener that arc that's the old Ganges Fulford road and went up through there up over the old divide and came out the end of the Cranberry Road. That was the main Ganges Fulford road. But it was deep and narrow.

Unknown Speaker 37:46
And it was just what was on the surface of the road was crushed

Unknown Speaker 37:50
gravel, crushed rock from your rock crusher.

Unknown Speaker 37:56
Did you go down to the south end very much from doing sir.

Unknown Speaker 38:02
No guarantee for their headquarters that are mailing everything they're in a boat coming to Ganges. We've heard a new word Fulford was when we were kids.

Unknown Speaker 38:11
Yeah. Did you ever go down to remember ever going down this

Unknown Speaker 38:14
on the 24th of May used to have the celebration, Donna Fulford but more or less what the only time we went.

Unknown Speaker 38:22
Would you go off Island at all? As kids,

Unknown Speaker 38:26
I went once.

Unknown Speaker 38:27
Really Where did you go to Victoria?

Unknown Speaker 38:30
The ferry service started Swartz Bay Pulford. In 1930. You'll say Peck

Unknown Speaker 38:38
two trips a day one across them back in the morning and one across them back at night. There weren't any other fairies or any other boats going around.

Unknown Speaker 38:48
They when they really upgraded to service they went over and back and over and back in the morning. Got back about noon at Google again about two o'clock 230 or back and over and back when I got back in at six o'clock and tighter for the night. That was it. Yeah. I know. I used to make two trips a day to Victoria hauling lumber and ties from the sawmill here. I was in the trucking business and I'd get up in the morning and off, catch the 815 ferry over to Ogden point, unload. Come back in at noon. Go to the mill put on 96 More railroad ties off to town again and back at night. Then go and load up again for the next morning.

Unknown Speaker 39:28
What you wind up being in the 40s in the 40s so the timeouts were still around in the 40s they did they stopped for a while in the 30s

Unknown Speaker 39:37
There weren't many here in the 30s the odd 136 I believe James just had a mill up rate road and throw away get the contract and haul a railroad ties in there to Ganges and are stacked up across from Moors against the rock wall the grace point to erode the Tiber stack there are huge piles and they send the barge in and they be hand packed. The barge with no lift drops was no forklift. With those types, your five by 10 and eight foot six long. And some of them were all a good school good man good lift. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 40:14
They so you used to take them in the truck to down to the south end and down to

Unknown Speaker 40:20
used to go to Victoria with Victoria in the 40s were crooks gotten better, you see? And the distribution point was right out the dark when it shipped them overseas.

Unknown Speaker 40:30
Oh, really? This was in Victoria.

Unknown Speaker 40:33
from Victoria. They ship them overseas. Who did you sell the ties to?

Unknown Speaker 40:37
I don't know. All I did was hold them.

Unknown Speaker 40:39
Yeah. And then they'd get distributed and salted. And

Unknown Speaker 40:42
there were a number of brokers in Victoria and the local title operator would sell them to the brokers and the broker would sell them overseas. Yeah. They had contracts with England and China and all over the world.

Unknown Speaker 40:55
Can we go back a little bit you were telling me about when you were 11 years old, and the work that you used to do? Tell me again?

Unknown Speaker 41:04
Well, there used to be contracts led by the creamery. For wood it had a steam boiler. And the creamery was run by steam, which is a bakery in Ganges today. And my dad quite often took the contract for 50 cords of wood for a year, that all had to be delivered by a certain date. So he would cut the wood and we'd help split it and violet. And then we loaded in a truck we'd hire a crowd guy with a truck to haul up to the creamery. We go the hydraulic hoist and the wooded all scattered in the ground and tropical back for another load. And I was always with my dad piling into Creamery my three sisters, and the truck driver would load the traffic in at home. But now and again, my dad would go back with a truck and I would be left to pile a full load of wood while the truck was away. I was 11 years old.

Unknown Speaker 41:55
Would you get paid for that work? I beg your pardon? Would you get paid

Unknown Speaker 41:59
your pay? What's up? We had breakfast dinner and supper in a bed.

Unknown Speaker 42:04
Did you while you lived it at home? Did you work for wages after you finished school

Unknown Speaker 42:10
wages? There was no such thing. There was no such thing you had a home delivery. There was no money.

Unknown Speaker 42:17
So did you went What year did you finish school?

Unknown Speaker 42:24
I left with an 1840

Unknown Speaker 42:27
What about you Evelyn wind. When did you finish school?

Unknown Speaker 42:30
When I was out of school before that I think about 1935

Unknown Speaker 42:35
Did you stay at home and work at home or what did you do?

Unknown Speaker 42:40
I went out and did housework for $25 a month in my room and board. They're called domestics

Unknown Speaker 42:45
knows dates.

Unknown Speaker 42:46
Yeah. Where did you stay? Was it on the island or did you go to the one place

Unknown Speaker 42:50
I stayed with on the island and then I went to Vancouver

Unknown Speaker 42:55
and you'd live with with the family live in Yeah. What about your sisters? What did they do?

Unknown Speaker 43:02
Much the same thing.

Unknown Speaker 43:04
They went to Vancouver to

Unknown Speaker 43:05
Yeah, yeah. June didn't she stayed here and worked with the mullet. boardinghouse Oh, we what was she doing there? Cooking and general maid service? Yeah. waitressing? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 43:21
He went to Vancouver. He worked in restaurants in Vancouver.

Unknown Speaker 43:26
When did you How long did you stay in Vancouver?

Unknown Speaker 43:29
Oh, I was over there from 1938 to about 1943 4435 It was 45 and I came back to Saltspring.

Unknown Speaker 43:46
And then what did you do?

Unknown Speaker 43:48
I went to work with him on his truck for a while. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 43:53
what did you do? Exactly?

Unknown Speaker 43:54
We haul hay and we haul good cattle for everything.

Unknown Speaker 44:00
So in that time then after you left school at some point you bought your own truck did you?

Unknown Speaker 44:05
Well okay now when I left school in 1940 I went to work in the woods with a crosscut saw falling and bucking timber all day. And my dad bought a Greg saw and I worked with him in the woods for a year we did nothing but cut split and pile wood for a year. Then I left and I went to work in North Vancouver and a sawmill. What did you do there? I was picking the stock in the last mellower slabs came from the slasher going by me on our chain and I had to pick out the good slabs and throw them on another chain which made Intels last you know remember he was put laughs on the side of a house and plaster. Oh yeah. Well, I think the stock in the last meal and some of those slabs were all I can barely lift. And at that time I could lift 300 pounds with no trouble. And then I went to diesel school. put myself through diesel school. Vancouver. Yeah. And when I was 18 years old I went it was I was second engineer in the shadow oil tanker on the coast. So then from there, I went to Imperial oil and from there to the army. And when I came home from the army and Rhode Island home with me, and we've been on Saltspring ever since.

Unknown Speaker 45:11
So you after the war, then you you bought a truck.

Unknown Speaker 45:15
I worked for a guy for a year I drove crap for a year for another funnel that I bought my own. And I had it for years and finally sold and went back driving for somebody else who has no money and owning a truck. I drove logging trucks for 12 years.

Unknown Speaker 45:29
Was that your own truck or ugly? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 45:33
Yeah, I bought my own truck on the road as a logging truck and 49 I bought a trailer and building subframe and all for it. I hauled loads with it till 52 And then I sold it. I went driving another truck for another fella.

Unknown Speaker 45:47
Can you tell me about when you first started? So when you you first had your own truck and you were hauling everything

Unknown Speaker 45:54
lives in general Holly and Evelyn, you were

Unknown Speaker 45:57
helping? Would you drive the truck?

Unknown Speaker 46:00
No, I didn't drive it.

Unknown Speaker 46:01
What would you do?

Unknown Speaker 46:05
I was the helper.

Unknown Speaker 46:06
So you, you'd be lifting stuff too and organizing. And

Unknown Speaker 46:13
it no those days it didn't have hay bales. They had loose, it was all loose, you had a pitchfork. And you picked up the hay and you throw it up on the truck and the guy up on top of the truck spread around made a big load. Then he went to the barn and forked it off by hand. On the hottest day in the summer, you were in the hotter side of the barn. Working this hay off the truck, the guy inside was working it back dust in the dust and trapping it. In all winter, the farmer would take it out again and feed it to the animals.

Unknown Speaker 46:44
Yeah, you see these huge old barns here, don't you before they had the baling, you know, just to

Unknown Speaker 46:49
build by hand. So before the days of Crux I used horses and wagons to haul hay and it was all with a gang with pitchforks. Real modern ones, they had a hay fork, which was a retract contraction up in the peak of the roof and a traveling track on it. And a fork would come down or you drive it into the haloed and twisted soil a little tongs came across in the bottom and it would pick up a great lot of it up to the peak of the roof and it would travel in that just where you want it you pull a trip on all the hay and fall out of the bottom.

Unknown Speaker 47:24
Could it pick up a whole wagon full of pedal?

Unknown Speaker 47:26
Oh no, it took about four left to take away and load up. You'd start at the back corner. And it'll take about a quarter of it off that you take the front. It was because of work would go then you do it again. And then the last bit of course you throw in with pitch work. And you're not why did they do it to be unhitched the horses from the wagon. Hmm onto the cable. Then the horses would drag the hay up off the load and into the barn. And you got to return will be pulled back by hand. The fork would travel back outside the barn I would trip and come down.

Unknown Speaker 48:04
Well, good invention.

Unknown Speaker 48:05
Yeah, it was Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 48:08
So when did you start? You were when you were first logging here on the island. Then you were first working with your dad and then you

Unknown Speaker 48:17
making 40 I started pulling across gifts. I've still got it. Oh really. So that's springboards and the old falling axe and the sharpening kit for the thought or

Unknown Speaker 48:26
where else did you do logging on the island?

Unknown Speaker 48:29
Well, pretty well all around the mountain. I worked a lot on Musgraves but then became chainsaws and I work with chainsaws. Here's

Unknown Speaker 48:41
your What What job would you do you do the following.

Unknown Speaker 48:45
I was mostly bucking.

Unknown Speaker 48:47
Can you tell me what biking is

Unknown Speaker 48:49
the fall or come along and fall the trees down? Then we want to the next one. The bucker comes along and he measures and cut into lengths

Unknown Speaker 48:58
for the sawmills. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 49:00
well for the logging truck to the yard and putting the logging truck then they're taken to the bay and dumped into water. Then they're boomed and the booms then taken away to the sawmill.

Unknown Speaker 49:09
Yeah. Did you do Did you work on any others that you did? Mostly the the backing?

Unknown Speaker 49:14
I was mostly the bucker Yeah. And truck driver. I drove cropping a lot today.

Unknown Speaker 49:20
Who did you work for?

Unknown Speaker 49:21
Brent Hollings. Laurie Holly's father.

Unknown Speaker 49:24
Yeah, I talked to Kathy hauling. Yeah, okay.

Unknown Speaker 49:28
Well, her father in law, I worked for him for years. I drove his truck.

Unknown Speaker 49:32
Did he get leases on the on the logs? Or did he own the land? Or how did that work? Quite

Unknown Speaker 49:37
a bit of it. He owned the land. But in those days, it was different. You go to somebody who had a big practice timber on their property and say, Can I buy your timber? And if the guy was inclined to sell it, so yes, what did you give me? So you'd go and look the place over and see how hard it was to get out or how easy what's going on and you'd name a price per 1000 board feet and If the guy agreed to it, you signed the paper sometimes you just shook hands with no nothing signed. And when the lugs wouldn't the water and sold the owner got the first money. Sometimes of course, there were those who didn't pay the guy that owned the timber.

Unknown Speaker 50:17
And what would happen then?

Unknown Speaker 50:19
They wouldn't be very good friend. That happened lots of times

Unknown Speaker 50:28
where would the where were the long sold?

Unknown Speaker 50:30
Where they go? Yeah. Well, today there's a one log dump on Saltspring Island down here. We're going I can take you around the island and show you what it was over 50 Log dumped in operation at one time in the 40s it was over 40 outfits logging on Salisbury. And there was huge logging slack is everywhere. The little postage stamp sized things on the phone today are nothing

Unknown Speaker 50:56
I've seen photographs you know that you know where it looks very different than it does today with the whole areas locked up

Unknown Speaker 51:04
right and it's all grew back up Duke road Garner road I worked up there for 16 months on one claim we clear cut pretty well 240 acres on today you can't tell where the donkey rod where the donkey was sitting where as far as trees where it's all grown up thick and tall. In fact one lot up there has been logged again three four years ago I need to priests out to feed through that have grown since 1955. Isn't that

Unknown Speaker 51:31
amazing? Yeah. So the island became there was there must have been a big increase right in the in the logging once once the depression was over. And after the

Unknown Speaker 51:41
war after the war logging heyday can hit a whole island with a buzz. Every Bay on the island was pulled off clicking the cove down there that is beach. That whole bay was full of lug booms that came on for switchbacks up here on Stewart road. Oh really? Sure. All that luggage has gone on and it's dirt road. This last while is in among the stumps of the 1940s 50s lugging around like one person talked to me one day about the pristine beauty of arnelle Park. And I said Well, what did you see at our national park? Well, all the beautiful trees and did you look under the trees and see all the stumps from my late 40s and early 50s? Well know what you better go back and have another look at playful decision bears. Antoine in the early 50s All that can be grown up since

Unknown Speaker 52:33
we're there solid Mills on the island. What What kind of operations were they?

Unknown Speaker 52:39
Small ones? Lachlan were two and three man. Some were six eight men. And some of the Logan contractors supplied the mill with love. They never put a low in the water. There's going to the mill. Oh really there was never shipped off Island and the lumber was hauled off Island Lumber. And the slab wood was cut into scope length. And usually the sawmills had a slab wood truck and they delivered all their slab wood to the customers on the hour, there was nothing wasted and so on us burners, all the sawdust was put into a hopper and it was either bagged and take the customers or taken in bulk and shoveled into their bin or what sawdust burners on their stoves. So really, they have a big Hopper on the side of a stove. It's filled with sawdust, special grease on the bottom, and it burned the sawdust and you open the draft up and you can make the top of your stove red hot. Here's what's

Unknown Speaker 53:34
interesting, was it mostly? Were there a lot of people who didn't live on the island who weren't permanent residents who came to work in the in in logging and samosa was a pretty well local

Unknown Speaker 53:45
a lot of us locals were quite few came from off Island to really where would they come from? Vancouver Island. Some of your commute every day from from Maple Bay over to Musgrave landing when they were working upon Musgraves and they'd have their crummy Don Musgrave landing dock. They come over maple Bay jump into crummy up to the woods turn over dumping logs and Musgrave landing me to that place was full of logs all the time. The whole top of Musgraves was logged really

Unknown Speaker 54:16
must have been quite a job getting the logs out of some of the areas.

Unknown Speaker 54:21
bulldozers and donkeys. Oh yeah. I hope behind cat

Unknown Speaker 54:27
I guess you would never you probably missed the era of the horse logging.

Unknown Speaker 54:32
Oh, no. I had a team of horses. What did you I didn't do very much with them. I had them for a couple of years.

Unknown Speaker 54:40
What were they much? What would you use some fun? Were they better than then? Then tractors and things or were they just easier to get into some places or were they just cheaper?

Unknown Speaker 54:52
Well, you could afford them. You could afford them. A bulldozer cost 1000s and 1000s of dollars you pick up a team of horses for 100 bucks. And then of course, you could blow your garden with them too if you had a plough. Yeah. And things like that.

Unknown Speaker 55:05
Yeah. Did people use but people still using horses for farming to

Unknown Speaker 55:11
the last horse on Saltspring it was Turtle Beach. And he only had a dairy farm where Brinkworth yesterday, and finally, a weekend and he sold his team of horses and got a tractor.

Unknown Speaker 55:25
What year was that?

Unknown Speaker 55:30
That would be in the late 60s.

Unknown Speaker 55:33
Oh really? So that later on,

Unknown Speaker 55:35
he had a big beautiful team of dappled grays.

Unknown Speaker 55:38
What about in the logging? When did you last see horses used for logging?

Unknown Speaker 55:43
In the 50s? I had my team 1949 51 Somewhere there. So when I quit love it I had a scooter

Unknown Speaker 55:59
How did that work? How did the skaters work?

Unknown Speaker 56:03
You know what a skater is? A huge, we rubber wheel things that hinge in the middle with a blade in front and a winch and an arch in the back. Oh yeah. I have my own. I used to fall on Buck my own timber.

Unknown Speaker 56:15
Would you get it off your own land? Or would you get it from timber?

Unknown Speaker 56:20
And then I hooked by myself every time I would that have to jump off this Gator? Well, the main line I would hook the logs on jump back up on a skater winch them and take them to the landing. Get off and Auckland. And then I'd hire a truck to haul for milk. And that was from what 79 until 81. And then I had to give it up.

Unknown Speaker 56:45
Yeah. So So you you got married and you lived up on it on the sea bought the property from your dad and you lived up there.

Unknown Speaker 56:54
We live in Ganges for a short time. And we moved up on the hill and bought the place my dad. My mother stayed there with us for years.

Unknown Speaker 57:02
And you did you fix up the house at all before a lot before you built yourself in a new house.

Unknown Speaker 57:08
You didn't pick up the old one or go. Yeah. And we had to build new ones to the old one.

Unknown Speaker 57:17
And you had six kids? What are their names?

Unknown Speaker 57:22
Barbara Faye is the oldest one. She was 45 in June. And there's normal Lynn Atlin and Randy, Randall Wayne. And there's Phyllis gene. And Gloria Carol and Marla Diane.

Unknown Speaker 57:40
This big family.

Unknown Speaker 57:44
I have 13 grandchildren and four great grandchildren. Oh,

Unknown Speaker 57:47
do you? Oh, yeah. Did you have any children?

Unknown Speaker 57:52
Oh, sure. I was married in 39. And I had a son and 42 January 42 and brought him back to Salt Spring when I left over there. And then I moved down to Beaufort married Ronnie. And my son was killed truck accident on the road. And he had two children, a boy and a girl and the boy died from polio just at Christmas time. And we had two daughters, who both live. One lives in Saskatchewan now one lives in 100 Mile House. And his daughter lives in 100 Mile House too. And then we had a stillborn son. So we've had our share of grief and we've had our share of fun. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 58:44
Where did you Where did you first live after you after you got married in Vancouver?

Unknown Speaker 58:50
And then were 39 to 45.

Unknown Speaker 58:53
And then where did you leave when when you came back to South screen? Where did you

Unknown Speaker 58:57
went back up on the hill with my mom and my brother and sisters? Or my brother anyway? With no sisters left up there then I guess

Unknown Speaker 59:10
what would you say about the biggest difference now on the island between when you were kids growing up and the way that

Unknown Speaker 59:17
you go? To many people I don't mind who comes to Saltspring island, but I do wish they would become part of the island instead of trying to change everything that their way of thinking when they get here. Like what for example? Well just take a look around they hate logging. They hate hunting. They don't like this. They want reloading the one paying roads and sidewalks and three theories.

Unknown Speaker 59:45
Now it's trips nearly every hour. And they still want more. That's not enough. They're not satisfied with it.

Unknown Speaker 59:54
People from the city come to the country. They want to become concrete people they don't have a clue how to go loaded. That's right. That's the truth. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:02
When the CPR boat used to come into Ganges it was the event of the week. And everybody on the island pretty well used to dress up and then in their white shirts and their collars and ties and everything everybody would go to see the boat come in.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:16
On Monday that came from Vancouver, through the islands to Ganges. Then it went from there to Victoria. It stayed overnight in Victoria. It came from Victoria on Tuesday through to Pender Island, up to Ganges over to Maine back to Galliano back to Vancouver. Then on Thursday, it came from Vancouver round you went back Saturday at the same thing. And that was your week gone by?

Unknown Speaker 1:00:42
Yeah. I guess people do you know, people just didn't do they didn't go off the island. So much

Unknown Speaker 1:00:49
nothing to go for. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 1:00:51
they had no money to go with anyway. Yeah, I can remember the time my sister and I went to Victoria. We this is another couple of people who came to, to Victoria to live when we when they all came from England after the first war. And they came over to stay with us for a weekend once and they took Mary and I back with them. And we were given $1 Each to spend. So I don't know who paid our fare to Victoria. Maybe they did. But anyway, we didn't know how to spend money. So between the two of us, we spent 25 cents and we brought my mother back a little cut glass bowl. And I think she had that till she died 25 cents.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:35
I think yeah. The what I've heard from people about life on the island is that people used to just like they used to live here. And they used to have an island way of life. And they

Unknown Speaker 1:01:47
they made do to me do with what they had.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:50
We had nothing. We had no toys, we used to use a rubber gumboot wrapped up in a blanket for a doll. And one time, some menus. We used to work in the time Mills came to our place. And they saw what we were playing with. And they were absolutely horrified. So they they went to Victoria again. And they came back with some dolls for us real nice, beautiful dolls. And we just thought that was so wonderful. And then our neighbors got burned out. What can we do for these kids? They had four of them. Well, I'll give them my doll. So we gave them the dolls. And the next time we went down there and looked around all our lovely dolls are laying out in the orchard all gone to pieces with the rain and everything. Just broke our hearts

Unknown Speaker 1:02:47
but those were the

Unknown Speaker 1:02:49
dollar and a half. Yeah, but I got into it in the 40s

Unknown Speaker 1:02:54
How did you get into it?

Unknown Speaker 1:02:56
Neighbors I was always handy with a knife you know, that are near and Skinner, deer and rabbits and all the rest of it. I get into killing beef and pigs. Later on, I get into killing sheep. And I used to kill an average of over 250 300 lambs and a summer for the farmer that go to their place and kill them.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:20
So you just go people would call you and they just say we have some

Unknown Speaker 1:03:27
pigs to say we'll take them to the hot water barrel and iron light the fire under it and get the hot water and you have to pig ready and put the hot water in the barrel and it's called even scraping and cleaning and washing down and that was their pig all nicely hung up and dead. Yeah, then they need to take it to the butcher shop and have it cut up and made into bacon or they put it in the barrel themselves or smoke it themselves their smokehouse. Yeah. And the beef was the same. I never cut meat. All I did was slider. Yeah, that was 35 years. And

Unknown Speaker 1:03:58
who else did you say? Jimmy would did quite

Unknown Speaker 1:04:01
a lot of it. He was like Bob Woods dark woods Give me his father was a butcher for mortar store years ago and they had their own farm. And they took live animals from the farmer. They think of their own slaughterhouse Bob would would kill it and then take it to the butcher shop but more than eight selling meat on the 100 here. Oh yeah, but that's pretty well stop now because the government is so finicky about meat inspection. If anything ever happened, if somebody got sick on a piece of meat that wasn't inspected, then they come down on people like a ton of bricks. You know it's to somebody. Yeah, even though that person who cooked it may have kept it until it was boiled and cried to eat it and got sick. But it's for not being inspected. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:43
And can you just tell me again what you told me about after you were sick in in 1960 and, and then you went to work for

Unknown Speaker 1:04:52
yourself a sawmill and it's got the sawmill mill and my own time I go to work a couple hours a day and I go home I'll be tired. And then I'm going to wait for BC Ferries and the sawmill became a hobby.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:05
What did you do at BC Ferries?

Unknown Speaker 1:05:06
Well, I was a deckhand to start with, and then I was waiting who made schooling up I made a ticket and I was an officer from then on.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:13
And what ferry Did you work on?

Unknown Speaker 1:05:15
The Fulford ferry the long harbour ferry that was dubious. I started as I say, as a deckhand. I was counting on all of them. And then when I got to be my mates ticket, I was secondary that long harbor for the whole summer of 1970 When our job came up a Fulford which I got, I was made at Fulford for about nine years I went back to long harbor a second make up there was put up I just arthritis, they said he couldn't climb stairs anymore. So they put me out in the engine.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:45
And did you do do you have you done logging since since that time to

Unknown Speaker 1:05:48
where I logged from the end of 78 until the middle of 81 when it was put off the ferries. When I could work in the fairies anymore, I couldn't log anymore. And I had to give up the mushroom business too. So I became a gentleman of leisure.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:05
Now you have a poem that you want to read.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:07
Well this is a little poem written by Robert Swanson. The book is dated 1943 and it compares an old logger to an old locomotive that used to haul the logs out of the woods on the flatcars and then it was pushed aside. The name of the poem is goodbye old timer. There she rests among the fireweed silent now this puffing toiler alders grow between her axles twine their grandkid round reboiler rubbed and gone her whistles looted, doubled and tarnished is her pal. Click she speak this locomotive. All the stories she might tell. Stories drange of booming savor tales of railroad men departed boomers huggers and their firemen how they groomed her air she started how they step their old time handbrakes crushed their limbs with Lincoln pin heavy grades and no dispatching how she snorted and wheeled the main time wings on a new horizons leave behind it many changes. monuments have gone by eras, thus its landmark time arranges logging trucks now scour the valley time has given them their lease. You and I are now discarded. Rust old timer Rust in Peace. I thought that was very appropriate to an old logger who's you know, can't do it anymore and you've discarded