Transcriptm by Usha Rautenbach

Using “Transcriptional Probability” a technical term for what the person was more likely to have been intending to write, or to say.

Oct 15. 1975, “sitting in Mum’s living room (Mum being Violet, née Lang), with the Lang Sisters, Daisy, Gertrude, and Frida, my three Great-Aunts, born in Lisgard” 1888, 1891, and 1895 ( as was brother Tom)
Memories of England not yet transcribed.

Schooling in UK by Governess (and Cheltenham College)
What can you remember about school?
We used to have it up in the schoolroom.
We had physical Ed first. We had to walk around for ages with books on out heads. Then we had to hop. I used to wear my hair in pigtails, and Frieda liked to see it hopping.
We were put in our ages in order, and we were asked questions, and if you didn’t know it, you
He was away at scool, bt he was there when we had started school.
There was a big eiderdown there
Miss was full of nerves.
And this used to happen orfen
And poor Miss Tenmakes
We would have dolls’ tea parties
and brothe Thomas was always a soldier come home from the war, and he would eat up
and tennis and cricket. I was our wicket keeper for our House, up at Cheltenham.
Lisgard and used to come to us, and a funny littel man, he was very nervy, but bery nive
I’ll ask Harold Lake about this.
Yom used to hit me over the head with his bow
We were sent up by train, and we had the heys to the house
and we used to lock up and take the next train back again.
It wasn’t finished off as you wanted, but for te summer
I remember the mangle being put in.
It’s two big rollers.
Frieda had a rag doll called Punchy.
She said “I had a dream last night.”
I alwats gad a terrific love of animals. much more than humans. We had a field across the road from Lisgard. it was raining one day, and Frida saw it and said to Mother,
“Could we bring him into the hall because it was raining. Frida “nd that horse was called Minnie.” animals were part of the family.
Baltha-shaz-ar the cat

11.50 Daisy Lang - I came to Canada first in 1910 with my father, when he decided to leave England, and come out and settle out here. I think in Looe there was so little, you see, there was no future. He had retired, and he was too young to retire, and he wanted to get into something else; and he saw the war coming, and Dr Houghto n had written to him from Salt Spring, he was our doctor at home, for a long time. He’d sung the praises of Salt Spring, and Father decided to try it, so he and I came out. He travelled all over Vancouver Island, he went everywhere, and decided on Fernwood Farm. We came across on the Prince George, and we came First Class. He was told that he’d meet up with more influential people travelling First Class, you see. So he and I came first, it was lovely, a lovely trip, I enjoyed it very much.

We arrived in Montreal, and came here by train, you see, (and then by boat to Sidney) and spent the first night in B.C. in Sidney hotel. It was the first time I’d seen Chinese people, and there were Chinese servants in the Sidney hotel, and of course I hasd a room to myself, and I was terrified! I didn’t like being by myeaelf! But we only spent one night there.

Then we came up on the Iroquois. She went down, soon after we got here, capsized, you know, off Sidney; I don’t know how many people were drowned. (pensive) But we came out from Victoria the Sidney by the old E&N, it was travelling then

That was the first trip. Father bought the farm on the first trip. It was called Booth Farm then, - he had bought it from Mr Lee who had bought it from the Booths, I think. He was in parliament, he was an MP.

14.30
I stayed on with the house, and Father went home before Christmas, you see, this was October. The they started packing up I suppose, and came out.

Tom Pengelly (?) and I got the Fernwood house more or less cleaned up, there’d been all sorts of alerations done there, you see. He and I never knew which day they were coming, you know? I stayed over at Joe Akermans over at the lake (St. Mary’s Lake), where the Doddses are. We used to walk over every day and clean up, you know, and then one afternoon we saw this crowd, coming up across the field, leading Togo, our dear old dog. - laughter - of course they’d arrived at Fernwood wharf.

“Now tell me, when your father got back to England, do you remember that, telling you the tales of Salt Spring?”
“Yes, I do. We asked him what it was like and he said, “Well, here you have everything neatly done off with hedges, but there it’s just one woods, and everything.”
“And what did you think about Canada, were you looking forward to coming?”
“Oh yes, something new. But poor Mother, dear, it was awfully hard on Mother, because she was in the Blanket Club and everything in Looe, you know, and did so much good work there, and to be put on Fernwood Farm, without a neighbour within miles, and the post office six miles away and she used to walk and get the mail.
“And you sold Fieldhead then?”
“Oh yes, that was gone.”

16.15 The Trip Across: Father, and Mother, and May, and Violet, and Frida, and Ada the Cook, and Togo the dog.
“And do you remember the trip across?”
You bet your life I do! I remember going down and ordering breakfast, because we were off the coast of Ireland that first morning. I was never there when the waiter arrived with my breakfast, and I never reached the dining saloon again! (sick, I gather) We were on the Prince Edward from Avonmouth in Bristol, June 1911. We arrived in Montreal on Coronation Day, George V. I’d been so ghastly sick the whole way over.and we got on the train that night. So poor Tom didn’t have a chance of getting settled: I was train sick all the way across Canada as well! And I lost seven pounds between England and Salt Spring.

17.15
Frida: I remember I wasn’t very keen about it, because I was at Cheltenham, and I didn’t want to leave, but they didn’t want to leave me alone in England, so I came too, which was alright, it was fun, you know. I was just under 16, I hadn’t finished my education you see, really.
May did come over with us, because Edward had been recalled to India, on his honeymoon, pretty well. He was on leave. May didn’t stay very long. And she hated it, she thought Canada was the most uncivilised place. Oh, I thought it was fun, it was different, and oh it was just big, and, oh, I liked it.

18/00 “What did you think of Fernwood when you first saw it?”
Very different of course. But we liked it, it was all so free. Daisy had charge of the chickens, and we used to go out with her and help collect the eggs.
“Was this new to you?”
Oh! I should say!

We brought Ada with us. Father and Mother and May and Violet and Frida, and Ada the cook, and Togo the dog. Tom was here, because he had been to Australia, and he was here, with Tom McGilly. :I just worked out why Fther bought the farm, because that was a funny thing for him to do. But Tom was sent to Australia to learn farming, you see.’
Poor Ada was very unhappy because she was the eldest of 13 in this little fishing village, and to betranded out there with no-one to talk to, it was very trying for her.
and we used to take it turns going for walks with her in the afternoon - “to console her?” - she was as bored as we were. She wouldn’t sit with us in the evening.

19.30 And what did you do about schooling when you came here?
Oh, we’d finished! I was 18, Frida hadn’t finished (ME she was under 16), but she did well enough anyway. “Did you do well enough anyway?”
“Oh sure” - laughter all round - “I got my RN, which was all I wanted. At Vancouver General.” She didn’t stay very long on Salt Spring when she first came. “I made munitions at Point Ellis Bridge in the First War. Then that stopped, and Gertrude and I went out to Kelowna, and I got my apple-packing certificate, and I made up apple boxes when it was wet, and then I packed apples when it was fine, and then I went in for marker gardening, and then I got flu in 1918 and I nearly died. And I should’ve died - I got the only special nurse in Kelowna. And then I was so thin that I came back, and after six months, I put on some weight at home at Fernwood, and I went into training, at the Vancouver General. Three years training, and then I went up to Kelowena, and tehen down to California, and then after four years I met Charles, and we married, and went to Shanghai.

“Gertrude, what did you do?”
Well, I went up to Kelowna with Frida, and we worked in a tomato cannery, and it wasn’t much fun. We got about 60 cents a bucket for peeling, and they had huge 7 lb buckets with the line all around, and you had to peel tomatoes into this, and it had to be up to the rim, the overseer came and clipped it so that was something for you at the end of the day you see. And then unfortuneately I got tomato poisoning, and I ended up in the hospital. And the doctor said “It’s your own fault - it’s like racehorses doing carthorse work.” So I said “Well, that’s nice! We thought we were doing our bit!”
I stayed the winter up in Kelowna, and that was a bit drastic too, I wasn’t well the whole time, so I had to come back to the coast again, it was the only way I was well. Then I did stenography, in Victorua, and I’ve lived there ever since.

22.30 Daisy Cartwright, née Lang about getting married to Basil Cartwright
“Alright Daisy, now it’s your turn.”
What am I ging to say? “Well, you got married here...”
Yes, well, Basil was doing carpentry work, and pruning the orchard, and doing all sorts, we saw lots of him, you see. They lived a few miles beyond us, and we used to go out there in the evnings sometimes, for cards and things and I quite liked him, and we used to go for walks together, down to the wharf, and you know... “It happened!” It happened. And then we went to live in our dear little cottage at Fruitvale, it was called Barnacle Bungalow, it was a tiny little place. Peter was born when we were down there. Of course I went to the hospital for that, the old Lady Minto. Doctor Alan Beech came to fetch me, and the spring of his car had gone, and it was propped up with a bit of wood or something, and I had a terrible bumpy ride round. And Peter was born that night! - much laughter 23.38

“Tell me something about the parties you had here. You had quite the dances didn’t you?”
Marvelous parties, with the gramophone.
“What about the party your parents gave, when you first came?”
Daisy: The fancy dress party in the ballroom, It was wonderful. We asked everybody, you know. It was a jolly evening. “Granny was a jester, wasn’t she?” Yes, she was, and I was an old fashioned lady with a long dress, called an Empire style, and, oh I don’t know.
Gertrude: I was an Indian, and we had a friend looking at a photograph of us all taken together, and when she came to me, she said “Who is that so dark and ugly.” - laughter. “But it was a great evening.”
Frida: I went as a Dutch girl - because I had done Dutch dancing at college. I had all the clogs and everything.

Daisy: Also there were heaps of nice English boys here as chore-boys, and they used to flock to Fernwood on the Sunday afternoon, and we had the wildest games. We had a dreadful game called Blow the Feather, do you remember that? “Blow Ping-Pong.” Yes, there was that, but this was a little feather, and we used to blow it across the table, you know, see who could - and people were roaring with laughing, hardly able to blow, “spitting I suppose”, and then we’d have a big tea which all these men would enjoy tremendously, and gradually as it got really late in the evening they would drift off. But it seemed to me every Sunday we had someone. You’d never know who was coming, we had a big table, there was always lots of food.

25/22 “And who were some of the men, that you remember?”
There was Mr. Calthrop, “He wasn’t so hot,” No. he wasn’t so hot. And there was Mrs. Des Crofton’s husband’s Corbett, and there was Cecil Springford and his brother Eric Springford, and Percy Lowther, who played the piano very nicely. And I can’t remember who else there was, and they were so entertaining and nice. It was fun.
“And do you remember the Sunday afternoon teas?”
Gertrude: Oh sure. We used to have two chairs each side of the dining room table and we used to tie the pig-pong ball up on a string, so we never got up - laughter - Oh, we had wild games of ping pong, really. Oh, yes, lovely. 26.15
And we played Progressive. You dropped the bat after you’d done your shot, and run round to the next one, and we used to start off with about six players, and then when it got down to two it got really exciting. You lost so many lives you were done, you see.

26. Tell me, did your father farm the farm at the time?
Never! Father never farmed, he had it rented.
We had a very good man running the place, Joe Akerman, and he stayed on for a quite a time time, until the cows were sold I suppose. And sister Violet took up milking, ‘cos she was the only one who would. And she went up there for a while one evening to help Joe with the milking, and Joe watched her for a little while, and he said “Gee, but you’re slow.” - laughter - Well, she’d never done any, how could she do it?
Plodding One, possibly inventing, by the response of others...:
And later I started milking, but before that Tom and Violet were the only two who could help. After dances, which had gone on all night - Daisy: three o’clock? - yes, about six o’clock in the morning, I used to put on my gumboots, I didn’t take my evening dress off, I’d hitch that up, and I went down to get the cows up, and when I’d got the cows in the barn, I could go to bed, whereas these poor souls had to do the milking. No, not Daisy, she never milked. Daisy: “No, I didn’t.”
“Did you do the milking?”
No, I did the pigs - I loved the pigs. We had Boyse and Ruth. They were Tamworths. And then I used to do the chickens.

28.00 “Were they hard times on the farm? Or was it always a good time?”
Oh a good time. Oh yes. Oh yes.
8 pounds of butter a week we got, send your cream in you see, and you’d get your butter back. We had the best butter ever.
Up at the Creamery, Mr. Drake, he was the butter maker. He was good. 28.00
When the Queen came to Victoria they used to send up here for butter.
“He won an award for his butter, didn’t he?” Oh, yes.

“And then (Ada) left. Did your mother sort of take over the cooking?”
Daisy: Oh, we took turns. Gertrude and I worked together and we were the clean ones. “Thank you.” Violet and Frida worked together, and they were the dirty ones. - laughter - You see, we were gone for a week at a time. Gertrude and I, we washed the floor, we left the place really clean and nice. And these two, Violet and Frida, would say, oh the floor isn’t really dirty this week, we’ll just leave it. But the crwoning point was, I thought, I always remember this, we had a dresser with hooks to it, which we used to hang cups and jugs and things on, and we came across a jug up there, half full of sour milk.
“Frida, tell me about your experience with cooking.”
Oh I couldn’t cook, I did the cleaning.
“What about this jug, was that your work?”
Frida: Oh, yes, I think so. - laughter - Oh, I don’t think Violet and I killed ourselves with work.
“You had to cook the meaks too?”
Oh, yes. Ada had left, you see, she was married.
“And who taught you?”
Oh, we picked up what we could. We picked up from each other, I suppose.
“You would use Mrs. Beaton, would you? The cookbook?”
Oh no, it was too extravangant.
I remember one Sinday luncheon, with Father and Mother and Gertrude and myself. We had a little pantry thing that was shut off from the rest of the house. And Mother put her spoon in, and she got out a rat. The rat had drowned in the thing (water barrel?) And Gertruse and I said “Oh, we couldn’t.”
And Father said “Oh, you’re getting so fussy.” - laughter -

Dull One:
When they came, Fernwood was pretty nice, and then gradually ot got too much for them, and there were just weeds everywhere. And Basil said to Fred one day, he said, because they had tacked up on the tree ‘James’ Guaranteed Seeds’, and Basil said to him, “Fred, you’ve got a wrong letter here, it should be ‘James’ Guaranteed Weeds.’” Do you remember that?
No. I don’t remember that. Oh I remember that as well as anything.
That wouldn’t have gone down very well.
No.
Well, we all remember different things.

31.22 And how they talked. The old man was like a parrot. They’d never stop talking.
Fred would start at the barn with you, and he’d reach the other side of the gate, and he was still talking.

31.40 Mr Bullock’s dances.
Well, the first one we went to, it was snowy, and Tom drove us with a team, in the sleigh. And it was a real thrill. To go to a dance, in a sleigh.
At the house at Bullock’s Lake, he lived there alone, with a housekeeper, and the boys, who came from the orphanage.
Well, Willy was Mrs. Palmer’s son. Willy Palmer.
(The Story, the gloves and the earrings. e had an entre idea of how they should look, the high heels, and the corsets. He was very particular.)
He never liked us, we were too countryfied I suppose.
We were good enough for farm hands.
Absolutely

Daisy: One time he gace a dinner party, and Mrs Turner and her children were invited, and they had peas for dinner. Mrs. Turner had said to Peter, he was only a lad, you know, “You mustn’t laugh, at anything Mr. Bullock does.” And Mr. Bullock spilt peas in his beard, and he went like this, with his fork, and Peter couldn’t hold himself.

34.34 “How did the Trading Company come about?”
It was Walter Norton who served Father. *The Story of That Little Incident)
That decided my father that we should have something in competition.
And so he, and Mr Bullock put in one share, and Mr. Frank Scott, and Mr. Will Scott, and Mr Scovell, and Geoff Scott, and Mr Smith, they all put in, and father, and they started up a Trading Store. They built it. About 1912.
Doug Harris was the manager.
We used to go and ask Mr Harris if the beef was tender, and his stock phrase was “As tender as a woman’s heart.”
(Much laughter about the lard - he used to wipe his hands down his trousers.)

36.30 Tennis Courts
It was a terrible thing too. It was a grass one, as slow as anything.
Dunner (Dunlop)
The Fred Abbotts were members
Mrs Halley, she was fat, and heavy, and she had the school

The Story about the Bacon. She thought nothing of it.
And she had a lovely cat, Peter Pan, he was stolen by the Inidans. And that beastly dog Jack.
The Indians from Kuper used to bring salmon and things like that in exchange for cherries, which they used to take off in their greasy hats. That’s all they wanted, a hatful, for the salmon. - - - We used to pick 300 lbs of cherries off our trees, in our picnic basket, and we used to go up in the Valerie, to Ladysmith, and directly they saw us coming (to Kuper), Dull One it was like rats from a hole, Indians would appear from everywhere, and they’d just bring their hats, and you’d put cherries into their hats, and they all went home. We used to take loads of cherries up to Ladysmith, and we’d arrive toes up ,and generally take a scow as well, and we’d tow a load of coal home (for the Valerie I think, because she was a coal burner when she first came out). 40.00 We used to deal with Simon Lizer, the one grocer up on Ladysmith, and we used to turn in cherries and get groceries in exchange, and have a picnic on the way. Oh we used to love our days going up there, a real picnic.

40.20 Indians
Fast One hated it
Gertrude and I were alone on Acres Farm, and Mother’d gone in Victoria, and the Indians came for this usual bartering business, and they both put a seat on the lawn, and they were fat and dirty and horrible. We hated it! - laughter.

40.40 Mixed Hockey Matches
Far too many each side.
The things epeople used to use for hcokey sticks.
Mrs Oxenham as goal keeper, the ball disappeared into the hem of her very long skirt.

41.45
Des Crofton used to wear his mother’s laced up high boots, up to here. Funny little legs he had, he was rather scrawny. Oh, most people played in boots, in those days. He hadn’t got any boots of his own, they were so poor. Oh they were --- We used to call him Snoozy, because he wouldn’t get out of bed to go to school.

Doris Mitchell, had no idea of the game whatsoever, but was determined to be in it, would help the ball along in whichever direction the ball was going.

Mr Speed was dreadfully rough.
(He was not allowed to play again because he hurt a woman)

44.25 Basil matches in Duncan, home very late, Collecting eggs, saw an egg that wasn’t there - a hole in the wall, moon shining through.

29 before the end Little Jack Horner in nonsense
Frida Nursey rhymes in Chinese.
The fingers in dutch

47. Waterworks 1914-15?
Father rolled the car into the lake, turned over. He got lost up in the Cranberry in the fog, up in the mountains.

Frida Fast-Talker, zoom zoom dismissive, cross.
Shanghai in 1928, everything peaceful until 1932, war with the Japanese, very dangerous. Life is cheap out there. Everybody was shooting everybody. You were lucky if you escaped with your life, but most people did. “But it wasn’t very pleasant”
Husband working inTexas Oil over there, an American company, for 13 years. He died in 1939, I had Denge, I came home, I stayed with Gertrude for 6 months, to put on some weight, cos she was so thin. I had no meny, because the Chinese had it all. So I went back to Vancouver, and I worked. I worked there for 7 years. Got tired of working, tired of everything else, and of everybody, and the whole works, So I went to Australia for 18 months, I worked there, the most ungodly country, and I hated it, but it was fun. I came back, I worked for another 10 years, then I superannuated.

51.
Oh, the serbvants were lovely. You hide everything from the servants. Funny story.
“Missy, I look all your hidey holes, I no can find.”
1. chauffeur
2. washrama
3. coolie
4. ritchie
5. Number One Boy

Basil Cartwright, came out from England in about 1905, to his brothers who were farming here, Ted and Arthur. He always boasted that he just arrived with a cricket bat, a soccer ball, and 50 cents. He was a bit in the way of being a poet, and certainly a gardener. The garden was his first love.

54.45 The war years here.
55 Mr Keefer leased the farm from Father
I learned to milk. I used to milk 8 coa night and morning.
I didn’t know before that animals were dotty. But they definitleyare.
We had one cow, Lulie, she was an absolute ass.
She always wander off by herslef,. You’d get all th cows, but she was always off in that far corner by herself.
Mr Keefer used to think we were men. He worked us hard.
We used to knit a sock a day, for the war. And Indian sweaters.
(Lovely story of the Wilson children down the road)

1.00 dancing partners
Dancing cards, programme, with pencislattached. Can I be your supper psrtner.
The Price boys, and Willy Plamer, couldn’t dance, we looked the other way. It was horrid of us.

1.01.00 taking the contractor to court for non-performance, cos no furniture.
The Valerie came over on the Blue Funnel Line.

(Me: destitute gentry - Rev’s daughter)