15_Stevens.mp3

otter.ai

18.01.2023

yes, 11.03.2024

Molly Akerman

Andrew Stevens 0:00
I was born in 1901.

Bruce Mitchell 0:04
1901. What was the date?

AS 0:07
16th of September 1901. That's a year from three months ago.

BM 0:10
Right? Okay. Now, and your father, your father came from?

AS 0:14
My father was born on the island of PSC, and a greek, alpha rule alpha. And in 1855, I think that was about the time of the Crimean War. He was born then, and when he was about 14, I guess, he asked his father, who owned three sailing ships that traded in amongst the Greek islands. My grandpa and his father would take his ships up into into the Black Sea to Vladivostok, not Vladivostok, no to where the Crimean War was fought in. And load up was grain, that's what Greece needed was grain, because they couldn't grow too much of it on the islands and not so much on the land on the mainland. And they would come back to the island and, and supply all the islands with what they could, of course, the islands kept it in windmills, and away up on top of the mountain where the where they got the most wind. And another reason for that was to keep it away from the pirates, because they couldn't take it away without them knowing about it. There were a lot of pirates that did that kind of thing. Well, that was when my dad was about 14, he made one trip up into a desert, where he met his grandfather, not his grandfather, his godfather. You see in Greece, a Godfather is a pretty important man in every family, you know. They think quite a lot of The Godfather, because he is a part of the part of the family.

AS 2:00
And the god father asked him what he was going to do. And he said, well, he'd asked his father, if he would take him on this one trip, before he sent him back to school again. This was in the holidays. But at that time father at that time, steam was coming into prominence. And at that time, his father wanted him to go back to school and have prepared himself for engineering with steam. Because they thought that the sealing was going to run out when they got everybody in steam. But my dad said that he gave him some books and told him to go back to school and to be a good boy and go to church and things like that. Godfather was supposed to tell him. Well, he never went back there again. But anyway, he asked his father if he could make another voyage with him with one of these ships. And his father wasn't too fussy about it. But his mother interceded for him and told him if he could go on one of the ships that his uncle was on, my grandfather's brother. My grandfather brother was captain on one of the three ships, which my grandfather owned. So his mother [indiscernible] with his father and said that it would be alright to get him on one more trip. So they made another trip, they made a trip to somewhere in Africa, or Alexandria, somewhere there.

AS 3:59
And he had been done once before or after, Sierra Leone, wherever that is on the other coast somewhere. But anyway, this one, this was a trip into Alexandria, I think it was and from there, they were going to Marcelles.He was the young man of about 15 or 16, just a boy. So his father finally gave into his mother and said the boy could go on one more trip. But they had an accident on that trip, before they got back to Marcelles they had an accident. So the tied the ship up in Marcelles and waited for the insurance adjuster to come and examine the damage. And while he was there, they left the young boy on on a sailing ship alone, well no there was one more man on board just to cook the meals I think. Anyway left him there with this this other man and my dad's job was to feed a bunch of monkeys that they had brought back from Africa, bunch of little monkey that they intended to take to Marcelles and sell to the rich ladies there as pets. And they did that quite often, all the ships traveling there did that, you know. So he took these monkeys. And he had to ask this man for money to buy fruit for the monkey, buy grapes for the monkey, give it to them and the monkey would eat all the grapes.

AS 5:47
And when his captain came back, his uncle. The monkey would make a lot of racket in his cage where he was, my dad said he would show the stems of his grapes that he was supposed to give to the monkey and that's all he had. My dad ate most of the grapes and gave the rest of them to the monkeys. The monkeys told on him. He got an awful beating, his dad was a very hard man to live with. He's very mean, he was beaten terribly so many times that when they got to Marcelles they were there waiting for the insurance adjuster to come from Athens. And see [indiscernible]...he finally came, no before he came, my dad noticed an English ship making ready to, the sailors were all up in the yard arms unfolding the sail, making ready to go, to leave. And the tugboat was hanging around waiting to take them out into deep water to let them go. So that was in the late afternoon, and he figured the boat was going to leave early the next morning. So he watched his chance, and he went down into the chin locker where the anchor chain goes down, the space down there to hold all the chains. So he got down in there amongst all those rusty chains and he hid. And he heard while he was there, he heard his uncle come aboard, his uncle came back from where he was.

AS 7:35
He came back and he was calling to him. Somebody had told him that the boy had been seen on this other ship or on the dock where they were making the ship ready to sail. And he had an idea that the boy was on the ship. Then he was calling, he got permission to go on board and was calling at the top of his voice told him to come out that, that he wouldn't beat him anymore and made him all kinds of promises. My dad just didn't believe him. You know, he says he’ll only give him another licking if he came out. So he stayed there until daylight in the morning, I think, he could feel the movement of the boat, the towboat was pulling them out. The men were all up on the rig and hollering to each other, setting the sails, getting the sails ready to set, and the boat pulled out and he ended up in England.

BM 8:22
What year would that be approximately?

AS 8:26
Well, when dad was about 15 or 16 years old and he'd be now way up in the end of his 90s getting close to 100 now I guess. So anyway, he ended up in England and from England he got onto an English coaster. And for two years he sailed on the English coaster up into [indiscernible], up into Norway and into Germany. And it was shipwrecked again another time in the Kiel Canal I think it was, is that a river? German boat was coming down the river and they were going in and they had a collision. And that wasn't very bad, they got over that all right. But he went back he went back to England and he was he was there for a while, he was there all together two years and most of the time he was on some English coaster, you know sailing into different ports on the continent. But he never got back to Greece. He had got back to Marcelle’s once I think after that but only for one trip and he ever gotten back to Greece. And then from then he got onto a Norwegian ship. And I don't know what year that would be, that would be just shortly after, maybe a year or so afterwards. I think he'd spent about a year in Greece between getting onto Norwegian ship.

BM 10:05
So he'd be about 17 then?

AS 10:07
Yeah, 17. Yeah, I guess so. And that ship, that Norwegian ship went into South America, Rio de Janeiro, for coffee. And while he was there, he contracted the yellow fever and was hospitalized. And the ship sailed home without him. Then he found out that, that his Pharaoh was guaranteed from any seaport in the world, you know, most important ones anyhow and he would get back to...and any ship would take him back that was going. But, there was nobody going from South America to Greece. So anyway, he stayed there, he got back on the...no, the Norwegian ship that went home came back again and picked him up the next time. Now, I'm not sure that it was the same Norwegian ship, but it was another Norwegian ship that brought him back to to Norway. And from there, he was back to England again. And I just lost track of what he did there now, but he did nothing to sail until...he didn't move anymore until he ended up here. Now that would be about 18, about 18. My older sister was born in 1885. So that's when he comes into my memory again.

BM 11:38
He would have sailed from England to Vancouver?

AS 11:41
No. He only made one trip. He made two trips to Nanaimo, from England first for coal, and one trip was 90 days from the time they left England to they docked at Nanaimo.

BM 11:54
Buying coal from the Dunsmuirs I guess.

AS 11:58
Yeah, so he made two trips for coal back to England. I don't know where the coal port...[indiscernible].

BM 12:08
To South Hampton? Newcastle.

AS 12:17
Newcastle, yeah. But, the ship that he came here on, that's the only ship that he remembered the name of. He had forgotten the name of his father's three ships, one of those “The Angelica” which was the name of his mother. The other one called “The Three Brothers” because there were three boys in the [indiscernible]. But he didn't remember that until a long time afterwards, you know, up until the time before he died the only ship that he was really sure of was the one called the “Struan” out of Glasgow. That is the one he came to Nanaimo with, no, he made one trip to Quebec first, must have been to the St. Lawrence first, then two trips into Nanaimo. The ship was called the Struan. And on that ship he had lost his, he left behind, when he jumped ship in Vancouver, he and another fellow jumped ship because they figured this was a new country, it looked pretty good to them and they're both young [indiscernible] people. They thought we better stay here for a while, there will be ships sailing from here all the time. We can go back anytime we want.

BM 13:35
And can you remember the year his age then? When he hit Vancouver?

AS 13:40
No I don't, except that, no. See, I'll tell you how he happened to get to Salt Spring first. From Vancouver, there was no Vancouver then, there was a place called Hastings and there only was was a sawmill there. When they jumped ship, they swam ashore. They hired, they had a couple of silver dollars each to buy and they went to stable and asked if they could borrow a wagon or something to go somewhere to see the country, you know, and this man said well yeah, give us $1 apiece and you're gonna have two horses. So they gave them saddled up two horses and gave them to these to ship jumpers. And they asked the man where to go, and he said where do you want to go? And he said, well, we don't know we’re new here. They told him that they jumped ship, no, they told him that they were on the ship. The ship was loading longer yet and Vancouver, Hastings forever it was. They took these two horses, saddled horses and they didn't know anything about horses because my dad never seen a horse, they didn't have any on the islands, all he had there was donkeys and goats.

AS 15:08
Then they got on these horses and they were going already, the man had given them the directions of the road and told them to go New Westminister. As they got to New Westminister, no before they got to n=New Westminster, they got scared. They didn't know what they were going to do if they begin to meet other horses and other wagons. Big big wagons, loaded wagons or freight, you know, coming into Vancouver, and they didn't know what was going to happen if their horses got out of hand, you know, and they didn't know what the rules of the road were and anything else. So they just talked it over between the two of them, and they said let's get off the horses and walk the rest of the way. So they did, they got off horses, and then they turned them around and give them a slap and the horses started to go back to the way they came from. We don't know whether they ever got back or not because they got I guess they would just think that they did. But anyway, that was that was the end of that. And they went walking. Then they walked and walked and walked and walked. And they got the New Westminster. And they went into a saloon there, got a bottle of beer or something. And they came out with these things in their hand. And a couple of Indians got a hold of them and they wanted to buy these bottles off of them, and they didn't know that they weren't supposed to sell liquor. So they didn't know, and they started to run.

AS 16:34
They started to run away, and the Indian start following them. No it was Gin they had, they had a bottle of gin. Never. That's what the Indians want. Saw them coming out of the saloon with a bottle of Gin. So they started to run and the Indians were chasing them. And all they wanted to do was get to them, and I think they give them a couple of dollars for each bottle, you know, and that was the end of that. But anyway, they didn't find out for a long time after that it was illegal to give Indians a drink. Well, from there, they ended up in Coquitlam, somewhere up in Coquitlam, they went through Westminster and ended up in Coquitlam and they found a place where they were cutting cedar shingle bolts for a shingle mill. So they got a job there. Well, they didn't get a job. They told them where to cut it, told them what part of the bunch of cedar they would take. So they cut shingle bolts all winter, and got a big pile of them piled up but never sold them. And then nobody was coming along to buy them or to pay them for them. So they thought they better get out of there. So that's how he got into the fishing business.

AS 17:53
He got, he met a cannery man, I don't know which cannery that was, I don't think it was Ewans Cannery, it was another cannery further up New Westminster. And they talked these two Greeks into going fishing. And they got the net man that shows them how to handle a net, where to put it out and where to drift with it. To put it out when the tide was slack, when it wasn't too strong. Well, at that time of the year, I think it was in the fall it was no strong tide. Lead part of the summer anyhow. And the first night they got quite a few of these wonderful Sockeyes. They took them to the cannery, next night they were gonna go out again and they didn't know anything about the tides or anything else, all my dad said that they knew was that the tide went out for six hours and then came back in for six hours. And he told up to his partner, he said no matter where we drift to, the tide will take us back again. But he didn't know that the Fraser river was stronger going out, and they ended up in Steveson the next morning. And they didn't know where they were, they thought they were in Victoria. There were a bunch of sailing ships there, you know, loading salmon or something. And canned salmon you see. They thought they were in Victoria, so they didn't know where they were. They got talking to somebody there, they went ashore at this cannery, and they told him what had happened, they has set the net out in New Westminster and drifted all night. And figured that the next morning, they'd be back again because it figured the tide went out for six hours, they'd come back in six hours, they'd be back in Westminster again. But it didn't work.

AS 19:41
So anyway, they were told to just to stay in their boat and the tug boat would be coming down looking for them, thats what happened. They always had a tug boat to pick up the spare fisherman in the morning. So they found they found a tug boat coming down the river, they stopped him over and he came in and saw the boat, because all the boats then were painted different. You know, some of them were green with a red stripe down the middle or something like that. Every country had their own colors, and they were on the boat and you could tell what cannery they were from. Well, they got back to New Westminster. And the next night again, they got in trouble again. They stuck their net and tore it all to pieces, manager gave them a new net and told them to go again. And they finally got on to it, you know, and they did quite well. So one day they figured this is all right. There's a wonderful red salmon, you know, I've never seen anything like it. And they would keep it up. So the other guy, his partner, he got a boat on his own and my dad got one of his own. My dad picked up another boat motor because in those days fishing in a sailboat with no engine, engines didn't come till about 1909, I think, before they allowed engines in the Fraser. And he picked up another boat [indiscernible] and they both kept it up for the rest of the season.

As 21:04
My dad made for money to take home with him. Oh, well. I'm getting ahead of my time, he had no home yet. No, after that, before that deal with the cannery he went to the sawmill to look for work. You see, after they cut the cord wood they got back to Vancouver and the ship had gone. The ship had gone, and they were glad with that. They saw this sawmill was a lot of people working there. So they went into ask for a job the two of them. And when they got in there, they went and asked around is there any chance to get a job? And they said go on into the office and see, there might be, they’re getting a lot of people here, some come and see us for an hour or two and didn't like it and then go away. So he went in there and he asked the bookkeeper or whatever was in the office there if they were in town for a job. And he said, well maybe, he said who sent you in? He says, I don't know, a man out there was a little schooner. He said, oh the Greek? Oh he was a Greek?. He didn't know what to say. So he went back out there and he started talking Greek to him right away, you know. Oh, he got along fine with them and he asked him to get a job. But they said oh, go back there [indiscernible], you’ll find out. But anyway, he asked him what's it like here in this country?

AS 22:38
What's it like out here? You get enough to eat here? Oh, he says there isn't much flour, but there's lots of sawdust, maybe we can use that to make our bread with. He was just a kind of a joker. And this man was a Greek who had, I don't remember him afterwards, he might...well, I'll tell you a little bit. So he said where do you live? And he said, Well, I live on one of these Gulf Islands. And he says, what's he doing there? He says, nothing, that's where I live. He says, Can I go back with you to look around this? He said sure. He wanted a man on the boat because he was alone. He had come over there with some pigs and sheep and stuff like that. So he went back with him to his home.

BM 23:29
He left his partner back in...

AS 23:30
Left his partner back there, don't know what happened to him. He never met him anymore, he didn't know what happened to him. There was a lot of people who come the same way as he did, the left the same way to. There was no permanent, we couldn'...t well there were amongst the Europeans, you know. The only people that canneries had to depend on for catching a fish were Indians, and the Japanese, well the Japanese didn't come for a long time afterwards, a long, long time afterwards. Indians were the only ones, and they weren't very trustworthy. They weren't very good for fishermen and they never...they didn't fish like a white man did, he knows the white man. He uses his head and he figured out the tides and you know, he found out that the best time to put his net out in the water was at Low Water slack, when the tide changed from low to high. All that time coming in was when the fish came in. It didn't take him long to get on, he became a real good fisherman. Well, he fished for many different canneries over the years. And then he never did anything else. Well he went back with this Greek to Saltspring island. He lived down there and Beaver point just where I was born.

BM 24:40
What was his name?

AS 24:42
His name was King, but his real name was [indiscernible]. And he was born in Turkey. Really in Turkey in Asia Minor, you know, which is not too far away from the island my dad, although my dad was in the [indiscernible] and the island that he was born and raised on.

BM 25:01
That island was what again?

AS 25:06
Sarah. And so he went back there and he found out that this man here had a homestead, he's taken up a homestead from the government free, they give it to him, he only had to work it. And he had 32 acres. I think 32, well he had 40 acres. These were all 40 acres, or 160, or 80, or something...

BM 25:35
Right, parts and sections divided up.

AS 25:38
But he had let some of it go to somebody else. And he had 32 acres of the homestead left. And he was working that, he was clearing up a field and cutting down trees, and never making much money because he wasn't doing any logging then, and it wasn't too long time afterwards when the loggers come in and working.

BM 25:59
What year would that be that your dad came to Saltspring? Do you remember?

AS 26:00
No, I can't remember. I was just trying to see if I could maybe guess that from the age of my sister. She would be, she was born about 1885. That would be five or ‘85, ‘90...15 years. To 1900. I was born in 1901. She was about well...

BM 26:27
Well, she'd be 16 then, when you were born?

AS 26:30
Yeah. She was about 15 because she got her teaching certificate when she was only 16. But she wasn't allowed to teach. She had to stay home for two years yet, because they wouldn't give a 16 year old girl a teachers job. She had the certificate but the school boards wouldn't take her.

BM 26:49
So she wasn't born yet. Of course your father had married yet.

AS 26:53
I don't know. I'd have to look in the old Bible to see when she was born. You know, I could do that. She died in 1970. Well, I lost my oldest brother and my brother next to me. And my oldest sister. All in one year, 1974 or 1973, I can't remember now.

BM 27:15
So, your father came here before 1885?

AS 27:19
Yeah, yeah. Before 1885 but oh they had one child first. They had one, but the first child died in infancy.

BM 27:29
But he wasn't even married yet when he came to Saltspring?

AS 27:32
No. Well, he married this Greek step child.

BM 27:37
He married King’s step child?

AS 27:41
And it broke up afterwards, I won't go into that. I don't remember a mother in my house. No, no, I remember her coming to see me and my younger brother periodically, she would come to see us but my dad would not allow her in the house again.

BM 28:01
So he came over and he was quite impressed with what Mr. King was doing on his homestead, I guess, with a free land and that. Your father was quite impressed?

AS 28:09
He had worked a few years then and got some money and then King wanted some money to build a house. My dad loaned him. My dad loaned him some money.

BM 28:23
You loaned him some money?

AS 28:24
So he was kind of stuck there, you know, because he wanted that money back [indiscernible]... long, long time getting it back, if he ever did get back, I don't think he did. So he stayed there then. And he gave my dad a piece of land, four acres to pay for the debt. That's what happened. And my dad stayed there and then we started coming along. Every two years one of us would come along, five boys and two girls.

BM 28:56
Your father then met the King girl on Saltspring? And they got they got married?

AS 29:05
Yeah. So that's how we got started here. Okay, so my dad, he didn't do anything else but fish he just did fish. He didn't farm, he didn't log. He did work as fireman on a tow boat, the old [indiscernible] in Vancouver. Still floating, I think, well she was a few years ago. And he worked on the auger for when my older sister was going to normal school, he had to have some money coming in all the time keeping her in town. So she finally got her teacher's certificate and she got a job up in Penticton, and in [indiscernible], and in another place called...can’t think of it right now but anyway, I'll tell you a little bit more about that afterwards.

BM 29:57
You had two brothers and a sister?

AS 30:00
I had five of boys and two sisters. The youngest one is still on the island here with us. She's married. She moved back to Salt Spring with her husband and he died. She's got her son in law and her grandchildren down here at Solimar. They bought Solimar here a few years ago. They’re doing all right. The son in law is a fisherman, fishes on the West Coast and all over the whole coast. He's a dragger right now.

BM 30:35
So King gave your father some land but your father didn't work the land? He fished.

AS 30:45
Yes he did. He took the land, 4 acres and took long strips from the top, from the boundary of Kings place on the north on a narrow strip, 132 feet wide and 1320 feet long. Right down to the salt water. So he planted apple trees. That's all he did. He planted these apple trees. Well, he went away fishing and he left the old Indian woman to to plant the trees for him and they were all planted in any old way, it's still that way. So he had good apples, he had Kings and [indiscernible] and Baldwins. I sold those apples from the time I was 15 years old, I had a solid New Westminster farmers market. I did well with them there. And I've been doing that now, right up until these last few years. Before I got sick. I was picking up a couple of $1,000 a year on apples, all these old orchards. And hides, I went into sheep hides and beef hides, and I was doing alright until I got sick when I got sick, somebody else stepped in took my business away from me.

BM 32:01
Well. You got your...when did you start with your sheep?

AS 32:05
Oh, no, no, well, no, we had that...that four acres. Okay, I can't tell you the name now, I'd have to go look up my books to see when we bought....my dad when...there's another man who got in trouble here, murdered somebody. And he was a friend of my dad's you know, but they got into a drinking party and there was something went wrong and this fellow killed this man. I tell you what happened, this man was a no good son of a gun, monkeying around with this man's wife. The fella that did the shooting. And he killed him. Well, all of his family their best just to have this man hung, but it didn't work out like that. Because while this man was in the penitentiary in New Westminster, there used to be they would let out a bunch of convicts with one man or two men guarding them, you know, [indiscernible] loaded rifle. And they were working somewhere on the on the north shore of the Fraser River when they noticed a man in trouble out in the river. This boats had capsized, and he was hanging on to the bottom of this rowboat. And this man that had gotten in trouble over the shooting deal had noticed these people out in the water and he also noticed the rowboat piled up on the beach. So he asked the guard to let him go and save this man that is having trouble out in the river. So they watched him and told him go ahead and launched the boat went out there, got the man aboard, took him ashore, let him off and went back to work again. So that kind of helped him, saved him from the noose.

AS 34:05
I don't know if they were hanging him then at that first thing. I don't think they would have hung him if they'd known the full story. I heard this man when he came out of the penitentiary...well I'll tell you before he got to the penitentiary, my dad had loaned him $700. Because he wanted to build a house. My dad had saved up some money at that time, this was quite a long time after, theres a space between what I’ve been talking about here. So this man owed my father several $100 I think it was. And when he came out of the pen, he was released out of the pen in about 19... I think that we can get that pretty close, about 1912. Just before the war. And he came down and my dad gave him a [indiscernible] on all these islands where we had our camp, and a net, to fish to fish with. And I'm thinking about this $700, that the man came out with only $5 in his pocket and he wanted to get that money back again. So there was a dance coming off on Salt Spring island, that my two older brothers got a letter from somebody to come down for this dance, [indiscernible] it was time for us to go down to get a load of apples off the orchard anyhow. So my younger brother and I came with these two older brothers and they went to the dance. They went to the dance, and this man that had done the shooting, went with them.

AS 35:44
And when they got to the dance, all along the wall...I don't know if you've been ever been to a country dance, all the women sat all the way along the wall, and the men would go and pick one for a partner. And he took this fellow around to introduce him to these people not knowing that this man's wife that he had killed was in the dancehall. And firstly while they were taking this man around, think one of my brothers were taking him around, they got him right face to face with this widow of the man. So she got up, she turned her back on them and walked away. So after the dance, this, George Williams was the mans name. He said, he told my dad “I don't think I can live on Salt Spring anymore”. He told him what had happened. He says I didn't recognize her when I walked in, he said but that's what's happened. And see I don't think I can live there again. Now how about for the money I owe you, how about I deed you my 160 acres on Salt Spring island. So it’s right up here, my brother and I have it now. My dad left it to us when he died.

BM 36:59
You have 160 acres up here?

AS 37:02
We have 160 acres, it's not here. It's down in beaver point. Not by the water, no.

BM 37:10
No, by Brian and Ed Watt.

AS 37:13
Yeah, well thats the part we bought...Peter and I, my brother and I have kept on fishing all of our lives. You know, finally, you kindly came at the time that we realized that there weren't enough rivers in BC, on the BC coast, running into the saltwater, into the Pacific Ocean, to produce enough fish for the amount of fishermen that wanted to make a living at it. So we we decided it was time to get out of it. As my dad had left us this 160 acres and we had saved some money, we had bought a sailboat of our own. And we were fishing for, we had work every year with the BC packers for years. I don't know how many years now. And we had saved some money. So we had came back to the farm, the little place we had, we had a house built on them, at least my dad had a house. We were still living in there. I had got married, I had gotten married and had a wife, which I lost with cancer some years ago now. 10 years, I guess. And anyway, we came back and we found out that these 2...1...2...3...this big McLennan ranch of 700 acres. He had Mr. McLennan, he didn’t [indiscernible] so thats the property. They had two brothers that were left that piece of the McLennan farm, you see, well, they sold 160 acres to Ruckle, thats half the park now. And there was the rest of it left, owned by two brothers. And we couldn't do business with the two of them. We bought the 40 acres from one of them, and of course it bordered on our 160, it was a long distance away, but it boarded on it.

AS 39:24
Then we bought the other brother out, we bought the first one out for the 40 acres for $3,500. And the second one, we gave him $2,000 for 160 acres. And we added that to the 140, we ended up with 500 acres of land anyhow on Salt Spring. And then we went into sheep and we figured well, might as well take it easy now, it's not gonna be as hard as what we've done all our lives, but maybe we can’t do the work that we've done all our life now, we gotta start thinking of something easier. So we went into sheep, we went into beef first and we got twenty head of Hereford cattle, and we went into them first and we made a few dollars on them. And then we figured out that we might as well do one or the other, sheep and cattle didn't mix together.

BM 40:15
What year was that, Andrew? When you and your brother went into business?

AS 40:20
I would have to go to....are you coming up again? Sometime? [indiscernible]. There's a lot of things. You know, I've lost my memory since I’ve been in the hospital. My people came, even my foster daughter, which was my wife’s when she married me, she was looking after a nice little family in England. And they moved this man out to BC to take charge of the Esquimalt. And he had these three little children. Well, his wife got cancer and she eventually died. And when she died, we'd had the little girl, she was four years old when she came to us and my wife was looking after her. And when Mrs. Hart died. The girl came to us. She didn't stay with us. But she went to boarding school and then holiday time she came back to us. She was just like our own daughter. So, she still comes to see me, and she's been in four times to see me when I was in the hospital and I don't remember her. I don't remember her coming in. Lots of people have come to see me when I was really bad, I was just about on the way out, I don't know how I come to get over that. I told the doctor not very long, a couple times, I must have had a couple of pretty good doctors to to get me out of what I remember how I was.

BM 41:47
I guess you just decided it wasn't time yet.

AS 41:51
Well it’s nice of you to say that because I think you made a pretty good stuff.

BM 41:53
I think so. So you and your brother started out with Herfords?

AS 41:57
Yeah, we started out with Herfords and then we went into sheep. And then we sold the boat. We sold our sail boat. Sold our sail boat which we had bought for $5,000, when the bottom had dropped out of the fishing and we got it for $5,000, and we kept it for four years and then we sold for $7500. Then we went and bought a little boat which we had when it was new, the owner that owned it out was in Port Alberni. We got the same little boat. We liked it, but she was no seaboat at all, we took it out to [indiscernible]. Anyhow, we kept it until we sold at about 1940. I guess sometime in the early 40s. And we went farming sheep [indiscernible] in Ernest.

BM 42:44
So you started sheep branch in 40s?

AS 42:47
Yeah. Something like that. And thats it I guess.

BM 42:54
And here you are now and where is your family now you've got...? Peter is your brother.

AS 43:01
I’ve got Peter. He and I own the 500 acres that we had. Well, we sold so much of it now that we haven't got too much of it left, maybe 150 acres. Which I will and Peter will leave to his son Dimitri and I leave my share to Dimitri

BM 43:21
Dimitri’s at the farm now, Dimitri is Peters son.

AS 43:23
He’s at the farm and he’s done very well this year. He's butchered all the sheep himself.

BM 43:30
I hear that you, wasn't it you that sold some sheepskins to the Russians or something like that. To the Portuguese.

AS 43:42
They go to Portugal, the hides.I prepare them first for shipment, and the tannery does the shipping but he was very, very, very satisfied with what I do. He said they'd never had an animal skin come in like that, he wanted me to tell them how I did it, and I said no, I don't want to tell you. And he said why not? I said well, maybe you got some young fella, son or nephew or something like that, and they’ll want to get into it. And I says I wont tell you, you’ll have to find out for yourself. Anyway, nobody here sells sheepskins. They sell them all. I was buying most of them, you know, getting them for nothing most of the time. Just to get them from digging a hole and burying them. That first load I took over there, we took over 500 in one trip. We unloaded the truck and the man, the checker that looks after them when I brought them in says “are they all like that?” And I said every bloomin one of them. I said why? He said well, I've never seen them come in like that. I said, well, no, you didn't because they don't, they just take them off the sheep and throw some salt on them and send them into you.

BM 44:52
When did you do this? When was this? What year was that when you did the 500?

AS 44:56
Four years ago. Yeah, I've been doing pretty good with them now. All the hides and I got a lot of cow hides given to me, and i started buying them after I've been making money on them.

DM 45:10
How many sheep do you have now? How many does Dimitri?

AS 45:14
Had about 200 up until a couple of years ago, we've been cutting down now. This year Dimitri is cutting them down, way down and he said the only gonna keep about 26 ewes now and that'll make about 40 or 50 lambs.

BM 45:27
So I guess you went to the little red schoolhouse when you were a boy?

AS 45:31
I went to that little red schoolhouse down on Beaver point.

BM 45:34
And then who was your teacher?

Unknown Speaker 45:35
Oh, teacher was an Oxford man by the name of Keryl...KERYL Simon. And I think his son, he started a boys school in Victoria called St. Michaels. And the son is still running the St. Michael's school. I never saw that boy, I never saw that boy until we were on our way north fishing one year and we stopped into have to[indiscernible] to wait for the tide to go through to carry on with the trip we had to make. And this man came walking along the floats where we were tied up with two bottles of beer in his hand. He says have you got any ice on board. And I said no, we don't have nay ice on board. He said don’t you keep your fish on board. I said no, as fast as we catch them there’s a packer who follows us around and it's loaded with ice. They take them and they might keep them one day or two and then into the cannery. I said we don't carry any ice we just catch the fish. So I said come on in, I'll cool your beer for you. So he came on and sat down on railing side of the deck, and talked for a while. I took a long piece of string that I had there and tied one bottle on to each one of them, and a handful of leds that we always have on board for the lead line. And put that along with a bottle of beer and all the lowered it down all the length of string. It went way down 20, 30 feet into the water. I said let's just sit down and talk for a while your beer will be cold when it comes up. So I said where do you come from?

AS 47:24
He said well, a long ways from here. I said well, it can't be too far away, Vancouver? Victoria? He Victoria, he said, but he said I lived on Saltspring island for a while. I said oh, that's interesting. I said what did you do there, he said, well, my father was teaching school. I said was his name Keryl Simon? He says yeah. I got a picture of you in my old dictionary at home. My next brother to me, which we called Benny, his middle name was Dimitri, but we call him Benny. He says, Yes, I remember him. And he says, he's got us two kids in a tub, in a wash tub in a snowbank. And I said yeah. He said he was giving us a ride. He's got that picture at home too. I got another surprise here, a little while ago I went up to Greenwoods, you know, the hospital here. And there's a lot of old pictures on the walls. Well, there's lots of old pictures. The old... it's very interesting.

AS 48:33
And there was one picture there. I looked at that thing. An old log house. And there was a woman standing in the doorway, there was a baby in her arm. I said I bet you that’s the Peavine place and that's where a friend of mine lives now down by Ruckle. He fixed that old house up and he's living there. He's a bachelor. He's living there. And this was a picture of mine that Mr. Simons had taken with my brother and dragging these two little kids in the snow in a washtub.

BM 49:05
So there's just you and Peter left now?

AS 49:08
Well, there’s Peter and I, the only two boys left, then one sister. She’s down Solimar, they bought Solimar a couple years ago.

BM 49:19
Solimar is?

AS 49:23
Solimar was...they had a bunch of cabins there that they rented out before they bought it, they still have the cabins on it. But they don't do that business anymore. They just keep the place because it's a good place for a fisherman to live. A nice place, you should come down and see it sometimes. My nephew, my niece's husband is a fisherman and he fishes all over the coast the same as we did when we were fishing salmon but in the wintertime he is....oh! Dinnertime?Well, we’ll only be a few minutes...wintertime he drags for bottom fish. He does quite well you know, I think very well. He paid $20,000 income tax one year. We never made money like that but we managed to come out of it all right.

BM 50:20
Well you certainly have and you've still got a beautiful farm down in the valley there... [chatter]

BM 50:38
Do you go back to your farm now?

AS 50:41
I could go back but now when I want to see it...I'll tell you that my brother and my sister in law didn't think I was gonna make it and they rented my house. And I can't kick them out now winter coming on. You know, I could go back home now. I'd have to go home and cook my own meals, and cut my own wood and thats going to be for wintertime. I think i’ll stay here through the winter anyhoo.

BM 51:04
But it'd be nice to go down for visits

Unknown Speaker 51:10
I go down quite often. They get me down for Sunday dinner and Christmas dinner and New years dinner. Then I go down there and fill up on Turkey once in a while. I don't like the food in his hospital.

BM 51:17
No, no, it's not like home cooked.

BM 51:22
I guess. How do you feel Salt Springs treated you over these 80 years? How has Saltspring Island treated you?

AS 51:31
Its changed. Now we, people like myself who are born on the island are the strangers on the island now. We don't know anybody. No. I used to think it's time for us to look for another island. I don't know.

BM 51:50
Did you go to did you go to the Pioneer reunion out at Cusheon Lake. Were you at the Pioneer reunion? Like you were there?

AS 51:56
Oh yeah. I saw people I hadn't seen for four years, I guess. Is that right? We've kind of lost track, you know, since, well, since my wife died, you know? I don't do, well, I did go there. I belong to square dance club. And I kept that all up until I got sick. I even tried it afterwards. But I dont think i’ll make it again.

BM 52:16
Gordon Ruckle, an old school chum of yours?

AS 52:21
Great friend of mine. Went to school with him. I was in school when he went to school for the first day. I remember that.

BM 52:26
Is that right? Your father's I guess would have helped each other out on different projects. I suppose.

AS 52:30
Oh yeah. Let me tell you a little bit about Greece now. A few years ago, 1936. This is what? BM 52:43 1982.

AS 52:45
1976. I had made up my mind. I had made up my mind about four years ago. I had never learned Greek language. You see, I had never learned the language at all. My dad tried to teach me but you know, a dad is no good of a teacher. And then he had too of an good education to start on me because I didn't have enough English education to take it up from where he could start in you know. So I said I'm going to go...well when I was about, when I was still going to school, we moved from Salt Spring Island in 1910. And we didn't come back till 1916. And in the intervening years, we just used to come back in to Salt Spring to pick the apples off the old orchard and take them up to the Fraser River, and for me to sell them up there you see I used to get a stall in the market like I told you and I got rid of them. And we sold them one weekend just along the different camps in the Fraser River, all the [indiscernible] camps were together and they were great after apples, they were crazy about apples. And the Italian camps would be all down at the bottom. But they didn't they were very good customers. But here and there they were good camps of fishermen that were all together, you know, Finlanders or Norwegians. I got rid of but most of them to Japanese. I sold almost every Apple, if I had sold every Apple I wouldn't have had any left.

BM 54:17
Yes, right. Yeah.

AS 54:19
They were good customers for fruit. Well, and we came back in 1910. And in those times, my godfather who was also a greek. When I was Christened and St. Andrews Cathedral in Victoria, he stood up, my godfather, and he hung a $5 gold piece around my neck, which I still have. And here British Columbia. He thought an awful lot of me. They're old fashioned that way. He thought that he had a responsibility to me just because he was my godfather. But I know...my dad had asked me, he said you can take him if he will go but I don't think he will go. And my dad asked me did you want to go back with your godfather? And I said no what will I do back there? Because I didn't know much about...I knew it was a pretty poor country where he had come from, you know, I'll go back there and I'll have to go and climb on the mountain with a donkey or something like that to get firewood. No, I said, I don't think it'll be too good for me. I don't mind it here. I was through school then, through grammar school. But I didn't go with him. But I had made my mind up, that someday I was gonna go. And if I ever got enough money to make the trip, I would go, Well, I never had a holiday in my life. I took one trip up to Banff because I had my brother when he came back from the war. When he came back from the war, he got a good job is a lifesaver in the Hot Springs. And I went up there and spent the winter carnival time there with him in his boarding house. And my sister was alive then. So I went up there for that, was the only holiday I had but I'd made up my mind that I would go to Greece. And in 1976 I said well, I've got a few dollars now I think I'll buy tickets. So Gordon Ruckle’s son was selling, working for some travel agency. He came up, sold me a ticket.

BM 56:31
Still is working there isn’t he?

AS 56:33
No, he doesn't. Living in Victoria. He's got a good job. And he bought himself a condominium. I think he got money coming in all the time. Doing pretty good. So I went to Greece. I went to, I didn't know, I'd never been on an airplane except a little thing flying to Vancouver a couple of times. [Indiscernible] every time I went her. And I went over to Swartz Bay, and Gordon Ruckle’s son came out to me to give me the ticket. And my sister said, I wish I was going with him. And he said I can get you on that plane that he's going to take tomorrow morning. He said you've got to talk her into going, I didn't want to go over there with my sister. No, there was too much responsibility looking after myself. So I went to see my oldest sister first, she was still living in Edmonton. And I went her place, stayed with them for two days, three days I stayed there. And then I flew from there to Montreal. And from Montreal. I went that next night after I’d been there one day, that night, after some time like 11 o'clock at night, I guess, pitch black night. There I was, 35,000 feet up in the air, and nothing to see out the window. You know, every time I travel, whether a train, or a car, I like looking around, you know, see where I'm going. I couldn't see nothing but blackness over outside, you know, just before daylight in the morning, I think we've passed over [indiscernible] island. And I saw a piece of lake cutting circles in the sky down there.

AS 58:33
I guess there was a lakehouse on the [indiscernible]. At daylight when the sun came up, I could see Gibraltar and then I saw, which I've only seen in pictures before, I knew where it was and when I saw the Mediterranean and we landed in Rome. And we were there a couple of hours refueling, and when we left Montreal they were all French, these girls on the plane. We got to Italy and it changed them all to Italian. No yes, it was Italian. And then went on to Greece. And and then from Greece. I stayed there 18 days in Athens which I should never have done. It cut down my time on the island. I wanted to go back to the island my father was born on and flew from Athens over to [indiscernible], the island of [indiscernible]. And from there, a small little boat the next day, we went down to Sarah. And believe me, when I saw that thing I thought here is the place where my dad told me about when he told me about him. And his boy friend, another boy his age that used to go swimming on this beach and he used to describe it to me, a yellow sand beach like a semicircle. And I saw that thing before we had passed it, and I said theres the beach that my dad told me about. Out in the middle of that Bay, way out in the middle there was a reef. When the wind blew, its breakers came in broke on that reef, you know, and some of the big boys would swim out there and stand on the reef so that the waves rushed past them.

AS 1:00:30
But the big boys would never let the little younger ones go out there, if they had, they were told by the parents that the young ones, to watch out that they never went swimming in deep water. And it all came back to me and all from the stories he told me about it. And it was the most rewarding thing I'd ever done. Just to go back there, because the people that I met that were cousins, some of them weren't born yet when my dad left, you know, they were growing up and old men now. They were second and third cousins of mine, you know? And I made myself known to them. And they thought it was incredible that a person my age after two generations would come back to find the place where his grandfather was born. And oh, gosh, they did everything for me. And I had to have a meal in everybody's house, they just accepted me as if I belonged, I don't know why, but I thought perhaps they might be a little distant with me.

BM 1:01:37
Pretty friendly people. And I guess they remembered your father and your grandfather.

AS 1:01:44
They knew of him. But there were two women, two women that had been to Victoria to visit some of the people in Victoria that they were related to. And they knew of him because these people from [indiscernible] they call them. And it reeks with history that island, you know. That [indiscernible] is the man that did more for the Greek nation, they were 500 years under Turkey. You know, and this man Canneris was just a fisherman, a ship owner like my grandfather. And he, when it looked as if the people we're going to rebuild in 1820-1815, something like that. It started on the mainland somewhere, but then finally spread out amongst the island. And this man organized all the islands so that when the time came for them to fight to get their independence, they had stores as ammunition of cannon balls and cannon guns hidden away in places. So he had prepared the islands for the time when they were going to be set free. [chatter]

AS 1:03:32
They got me there on the table. And they all gathered around the, wrapped theirs chairs around there. And I was talking to this man trying to answer the questions that he was given me in Greek. And, you know, in my broken Greek, I got it across to him, and then he would relay it to these other people. And the one man said to one of the fellas there, you should ask him if it was true, that there are as many salmon, by this time I told him that I had been a fisherman in the Fraser River and lots of them had heard of it. Some of the people had gone from there, not very many, but a few of them had gone from there and fished in the Fraser River, and they’d heard about it. He said ask him if there are as many salmon in the Fraser River as they told us, that we believed that there is or was. I said, well, perhaps not. No, I said, But let me ask you your question in this way. When I went to school, we had a book on hygiene, on the human body. And there was one chapter in there, about the bloodstream on the human body. And that we think that Blood is red because we see that the Blood is red, but it's not red, it's only red because there's so many red corpuscles in the blood that makes it look red to us. And that's just the way the salmon in the Fraser river was. And this fella said, the River doesn't look red does it because of the red salmon? I said, No. But I said that's how I'm trying to tell you how many fish there are in the river. Because this book told us that the bloodstream, there were so many red corpuscles in the bloodstream, that we think it's red, because we see the red corpuscles.

AS 1:05:28
But there are more red corpuscles in the bloodstream of a human being than there are salmon in the Fraser. So I can tell you that was quite a lot efficient. So he relayed it to them, you know, and they thought I must have a good memory of my schoolbooks or something, you know, but anyway they appreciated what I had said. And so after a long time after that, my nephew, before I had left Greece to come back home, my nephew, who had a good ticket for the first day at St. John's [indiscernible], he’s a first aid man. He met the Greek ship in New Westminster with a captain on it that came from Sarah. He was always looking for Captains from Sarah, and he found a few of them. Because most of them that had the chance to get away became captains, you know, on the ocean today. So I found out about this and when I came back, and he told me, he phoned me one night and said, the captain of the Greek ship is in New Westminster loading lumber, and he will be in Nanaimo day after tomorrow. And after that, he will be in Port Alberni for two days, then he will be back to Nanaimo. And then he'll be leaving for Greece. He says, you want to see him, you better get over there. So I thought that's a pretty good idea. So I went to see this man, you know, and I met him. I went, the ship was in and I went and I had to go way along the dock to get up on the ship. And the fella came with me, the sealer of the ship, and he couldn't talk English, he came up to there. And I told him, I want to see the first officer so he took me, told me to go up the ladder.

AS 1:07:29
He took me up the ladder, went into a saloon in the wheelhouse and sat me down. He said, wait here, he said, I'll get the captain or the first officer. So I sat there for a long time, I was looking out over the wheelhouse, you know, towards the bow. Big expensive lumber, towers and millions of feet on it, you know, loaded right down with lumber. I thought, geez, how much lumber you got on here? And he didn't know, you know, but I found out after there was about three and quarter million or something like that feet of lumber, terrible big thing. Well, it was one of those big, big ones, you know. So finally, there were two men coming along the top of the lumber pile. And I said to this fella [indiscernible], I said those two people speak English?. And he says yes, he says nay, nay is yes in Greek. So when he finally came in and course and I told him who I was, and that he had met my first aid man who was my nephew. He was quite excited. So I began talking to him, you know, I talked to him and he talks perfect English. I didn't have to go into my broken Greek to him. But anyway, finally he said, I told him I'd been in Greece. Yes, he said, I know. I said, oh did he tell you? Oh, yes, he told me, but he says I know anyhow. That one day when I was in there, i told you about how I was sitting there and all these people that gathered around my table that I was sitting at and they all come in and brought their chairs over because they wanted to hear this translation from the fellow that I was telling the stories to, answering the question that they were putting at me. So this fella said, oh, I remembered noticing that there was one man standing up, and there was an empty chair across the room.

AS 1:09:47
On the other side of the cafe. Finally this man got up, he went over there and he got the empty chair and he came over and joined the crowd there. So after I'd gotten talking to him for a while aboard the ship, he said, I'm gonna take you to dinner. I said, why? Oh, he said, we've got a new cook here. He says he's a Greek and he cooks good, but he says, not what you would like he said, I'll take you out to dinner and we’ll come back afterwards and we'll talk. So he took me to a restaurant, and we had dinner [indiscernible], and we walked back afterward to the ship. And we went back in there, and that's when he gave me this book. That's when he gave me that book there.

BM1:10:36
That was nice of him. Well look I hope you haven't missed your lunch.