261_Black_Evelyn-Lee.mp3

otter.ai

19.04.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Today is November 1 2012. And I'm talking with Evelyn Lee. I'm Arthur black. If there was ever an islander who deserved the title of pioneer, it's Evelyn Lee. Everyone. Your family has been on Saltspring, almost as long as we've been white settlers on Saltspring. Can you take us back to the beginning? I understand your family had Australian roots.

Unknown Speaker 0:18
My dad came from Australia. And even you worked in BC as a surveyor. before the First World War.

Unknown Speaker 0:26
Do you remember? Do you know that? What year he came here?

Unknown Speaker 0:28
I don't know. Sure. But about 1913 or 12 or something like Right, right. So before the first one, up in the north of BC, if you look at a map, you'll find his name on a lake Bennett, like, really? The lake with some one another man's name of the dirt. And it's a way up north of the Trans Canada Highway.

Unknown Speaker 0:49
So up around Rupert, I guess. Well, way north north of that. Yeah, north and east. For and that was before the First World War. So when did Evan Eleague get to Salzburg?

Unknown Speaker 1:00
I came to Saltspring in April of 1919.

Unknown Speaker 1:04
Just after the First World War. Did you came from where? Really? I

Unknown Speaker 1:09
didn't realize it was born there.

Unknown Speaker 1:12
And how old were you when you got to Saltspring 10 months? Don't suppose you remember landing? Oh, I

Unknown Speaker 1:20
shouldn't do because they they wouldn't let me go on the train or get off the boat or anything? Because I didn't have a smallpox vaccination. So at 10 months, I had to have it.

Unknown Speaker 1:31
Oh, that's and that was not a that was a painful thing in those days. It was.

Unknown Speaker 1:35
And when we got on the train now my arm is here. It's this big. Now.

Unknown Speaker 1:43
There's still a scar from it. Yeah, yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:48
My mother wanted some help to look after it. And the nurse said to her, we're here to look after the soldiers not their wives and families.

Unknown Speaker 1:58
Welcome to Canada. Yeah, exactly. You stayed anyway. Even if they were rude.

Unknown Speaker 2:03
My mom didn't have the money to go back or she would have gone right that she came out of London England.

Unknown Speaker 2:10
What what a changing from London, England, straight to Seoul three or did you live in other parts of Canada?

Unknown Speaker 2:16
No, he lives came to Salzburg. We came to Victoria first and we stayed with the man who my dad worked for as a surveyor. We stayed with him for till they came over here and discovered Saltspring we went to he went to the top of Dukes road where there was nothing or nobody.

Unknown Speaker 2:35
That's a long way out of town. Why would he choose a place so remote? Because I don't measure to be farmland what it is that time

Unknown Speaker 2:42
that time a hole in the bush?

Unknown Speaker 2:46
What would make him choose a place that far away from he wanted

Unknown Speaker 2:49
to get as far away from all the noise as he could? Everything that reminded him of the war he wanted to get away from

Unknown Speaker 2:56
the explosions and the bombs and guns and that sort of thing. So you served in the first world war

Unknown Speaker 3:03
you went overseas with a Canadian Scottish

Unknown Speaker 3:08
and what are your first memories of Salzburg?

Unknown Speaker 3:11
My first memories of Salzburg

Unknown Speaker 3:19
must have been a very different Saltspring when you when you were doing

Unknown Speaker 3:22
it no paved roads. No power. No telephones.

Unknown Speaker 3:28
So tell us about the place you lived on Dukes road. What was it? What was it a big house or?

Unknown Speaker 3:33
It was to two little rooms like this with all the boards nailed on and you could see out between every one of them. That would do good in the wintertime. While we didn't stay there in the wintertime we had to move out the Ganges and rendova was

Unknown Speaker 3:49
it was just too cold to trail. So did you find that land that need to be

Unknown Speaker 3:54
clear laughter Well, after a long time when West kids got big enough to help do the work?

Unknown Speaker 3:59
He did. He'd have to clear the land first before he could even do that. So 40 acres 40 acres. And he he'd have to log it and blow the stumps. And what did you have to do with Do you remember when you started working?

Unknown Speaker 4:13
Pick up rocks?

Unknown Speaker 4:16
Pick up rocks. Just to clear the land. Where would you put where we what would you do with the rocks in your film?

Unknown Speaker 4:21
Yeah, well the funny thing when we had the rocks piled up there were as high as this ceiling and dig around as this room is all the big ones on the outside.

Unknown Speaker 4:37
Your kids were carrying those rocks. You kids wouldn't be able to carry those big rocks.

Unknown Speaker 4:42
Not really. But anyway, the government road maintenance crew came and got them all. What would they use it for? Well, on the way from Fulford to Ganges, there were three Big bridges. Really? No, no, no, you wouldn't bridges there. No, but they were you could look down 100 feet. Wow. One was at the end of the Cranberry Road, right?

Unknown Speaker 5:13
Oh, yeah, I know. There is. There's a creek bed there that goes Yeah, right. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 5:16
And then just up along where the Volvo Rosie is now, there was another bridge. It was called the London Bridge.

Unknown Speaker 5:25
The London Bridge long, long, longer. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 5:28
l o n g d o n. Right. But the other one was called the charmer bridge.

Unknown Speaker 5:35
Well, how do you get that name?

Unknown Speaker 5:36
I don't know. I don't know. And then way down by Blackburn's lake. There was another bridge and I'm not quite sure where it was. But I know it was right there somewhere.

Unknown Speaker 5:49
Yeah, there is it seems there's some boggy ground there so there's probably a stream it through. So did they take the rocks from your farm and use it to fill up the

Unknown Speaker 5:58
gullies filled a lot of those places in

Unknown Speaker 6:01
so you spread your influence around? What sort of things did you grow on your farm? What sort of crops

Unknown Speaker 6:08
raspberries, and strawberries and garden like you wouldn't believe we had carrots that grew that vigor around in the boat that long? Well, rows of them. We have yellow ones, orange ones for ourselves. And white ones for the cow and that's horse and what have you.

Unknown Speaker 6:30
Yeah. Did you have a lot of livestock on the farm?

Unknown Speaker 6:34
We had a cow. And we had a horse in later years. And we had sheep

Unknown Speaker 6:44
so did you sell food like meat? Did you sell mutton or or lamb or?

Unknown Speaker 6:49
I forget what he did? I think he sold the lambs alive.

Unknown Speaker 6:55
So could you make a living off a firm that could? No

Unknown Speaker 7:00
no, you we had to work darn hard for what we did get

Unknown Speaker 7:03
a butcher and all the whole family had to work at it to I guess Hey, the kids are kids. I heard that your brother Johnny said he never wanted to see another garden in his life. It was right he never wanted to see another garden in his life. Yeah, you didn't like it much

Unknown Speaker 7:19
All right, dad. Watch this like a hawk if we pull the carrot out. We had to hide it. So he didn't find it. Found that we got a lick and really

Unknown Speaker 7:29
Yeah. Oh boy. What about what about meat? What did you do for meat?

Unknown Speaker 7:35
Oh, the deer used to come right to the door was no problem to get me and we had a flock of 50 groups that used to sit all along our rocker really? When we left we left them all there. Dudley Seymour went there one day and shot the whole work

Unknown Speaker 7:53
already and you're almost there almost team

Unknown Speaker 7:57
oh there were you ever will over

Unknown Speaker 8:02
didn't even know there was a Willow Grove sitting there was a special

Unknown Speaker 8:06
little girl some blue growth of bluegrass

Unknown Speaker 8:08
that heard of you? Did you ever get tired of eating venison? You must have had a lot of

Unknown Speaker 8:12
it. We had no choice.

Unknown Speaker 8:16
You said you had no power. How would you keep the meat cool or cold? You had no refrigeration obvious

Unknown Speaker 8:22
underneath our house we had it open and we had a meat safe down there.

Unknown Speaker 8:27
A meat safe

Unknown Speaker 8:30
wire netting on the ends of it so the air can go back and forth through it

Unknown Speaker 8:36
flies couldn't keep the flies out of it. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like a pretty tough life. It was

Unknown Speaker 8:45
and we had to walk from there down through the bush a mile and then a mile from the end of the trail to this divided school every morning and we come back up up the hill again every night it's a big hill to if you've ever been up at you'd know what it was like it's just like this. Yeah. The top that was a barn because it had taken a road like this.

Unknown Speaker 9:10
Yeah. And did you go to the divide schools for reads one to eight or your whole family did a lot of kids what are your memories of that school? What was that like?

Unknown Speaker 9:22
Oh, we used to play softball? Yeah, we had a flagpole. And every morning we put the flag at the bottom of the flagpole. Right close was a well where we used to dip or water

Unknown Speaker 9:38
sounds pretty good. Yeah. He missed those days.

Unknown Speaker 9:46
Oh, I don't, I don't know. They were better days than what we've got now.

Unknown Speaker 9:53
Even without refrigeration, water and hydro. Paula.

Unknown Speaker 9:59
My mother used Can everything we had to eat? He can the venison again, though the vegetables. five gallon crocs full of jam. Wow.

Unknown Speaker 10:10
So I also understand that you did you did your when you're a little bit older you were you're one of the famous apple pie ladies What did you get involved with the apple pies?

Unknown Speaker 10:20
When do I? Yeah. In about 1969 I think we started out on the school grounds.

Unknown Speaker 10:28
This is for the Fall fair. Yeah, that's where

Unknown Speaker 10:30
the fear was. They had buildings all along the roadside where they put their animals and then everything else was out in the hot sun.

Unknown Speaker 10:39
And did were you there for the first the the apple pie. You were there for this thing? Yeah. That's the most popular thing at the fair still. I think

Unknown Speaker 10:48
we'll come from Ontario.

Unknown Speaker 10:51
Well, the worst thing about the five thing is is lying gets so long you can't get anywhere else in the property. You folks did an incredible job. Those pies are so good.

Unknown Speaker 11:00
That people come from California. A better year.

Unknown Speaker 11:04
My mouth is watering right now. I gotta wait a whole year before I can do. Yeah. What kind of pies did you make? Do you remember?

Unknown Speaker 11:11
I used to make everything. This year? I just made a dozen pumpkin pies.

Unknown Speaker 11:17
Wait a minute. You made them for the for the Fall Fair this year? You're 94 years old.

Unknown Speaker 11:23
And you make pies.

Unknown Speaker 11:26
Yeah, I've been made pies every year so far.

Unknown Speaker 11:31
That that's amazing. That's just incredible. You were you involved for the Fall fair from from the time you're a young girl.

Unknown Speaker 11:41
Yes, I can remember when my dad and mom took us down there. And it charged 25 cents each to get in. And my mum and dad said you kids going free and we're going home. They'll see them going down the road and we just didn't walk them didn't know what to do.

Unknown Speaker 12:00
They'll be there. What was it like during the depression on Saltspring? Was it was it? Did you did you feel hard done by?

Unknown Speaker 12:08
Not really? We had

Unknown Speaker 12:11
you were pretty self sufficient anyway. Yeah. It's one of one of the good things about not not having power is you don't care when it goes out.

Unknown Speaker 12:21
Yeah. Where were you when all this was going on?

Unknown Speaker 12:25
I wasn't I wasn't even dreamed of yet. 1939 No, I wasn't I was not even here yet. So 30s I was also going to ask you that there's something called the guild of sunshine. Can you tell us about that? Guild of sunshine.

Unknown Speaker 12:45
My mother was a member of it. And I think I was for a little while. But it soon went to pieces everybody passed away. And what was the idea behind

Unknown Speaker 12:58
it? Because I've never heard of the Golden sunshine. What was it? Like the women's auxiliary or something like that? Yeah. So you did good works for the neighborhood's

Unknown Speaker 13:09
helping people out if they needed that kind of thing.

Unknown Speaker 13:14
Was it a big factor on the island was or was it a pretty pretty well known group?

Unknown Speaker 13:19
Just the Ganges people

Unknown Speaker 13:23
just didn't know. So it's very hard for people nowadays like me to try and wrap my head around what you what you took for granted like I if I want to go to Fulford, I just hopped in the car and I'm there in 10 minutes and you didn't have that option. Did you know he had to walk? Yeah. Or take a Get out? You're lucky to get a ride on a horse and wagon I guess. How often would you get into guarantees when you know during the summer when your dukes

Unknown Speaker 13:49
during the summer maybe once a month? We used to get our groceries to come from Woodward's in Vancouver on the CPR boat already. And I forget how my dad got them home. Whether he took the horse and wagon donor

Unknown Speaker 14:04
Yeah. Why would you not buy them from bullets? They were open. Expensive. It was cheaper to buy from Vancouver. Well

Unknown Speaker 14:15
you could get sugar in 100 pound sacks, flour and 50 pound sacks. Butter dollar pound

Unknown Speaker 14:25
Well, that sounds pretty high you can call her pound sounds pretty high.

Unknown Speaker 14:31
You know the price of it is now?

Unknown Speaker 14:35
Yeah, I just thought it'd be a lot cheaper there but

Unknown Speaker 14:37
I guess $5 A pound

Unknown Speaker 14:42
what would you do? What would your family do for entertainment? How did you how did you amuse yourselves? Did you play musical instruments?

Unknown Speaker 14:49
My dad played the violin. Really? Every time he started to play it I went to bed

Unknown Speaker 14:59
wasn't your favorite and everybody. Anybody else musical in the family? No, no, just a dead. What kind of music? Did he play? jigs and reels or was it for classical music? Or to tell you the honest truth? I

Unknown Speaker 15:11
forgotten.

Unknown Speaker 15:12
It was good enough to send you to bed anyway. So you mentioned you played softball at school. Did you? Would you kids get out for the on the weekend on the Friday night or on the RV? Did you have to work all of that? That's cool. Yeah, well, whenever like whenever Would you ever would you get play at lunchtime? Yeah. And the weekends you were

Unknown Speaker 15:35
we were at home work lots

Unknown Speaker 15:36
to do. What was your least favorite job in the firm? What what did you hate at home? Yeah, what do you hate to do?

Unknown Speaker 15:50
Oh, we used to do them at all.

Unknown Speaker 15:51
Yeah, Johnny. It was gardening. He said he didn't

Unknown Speaker 15:55
ever had to do a lot of being the youngest.

Unknown Speaker 15:58
Oh, he got off of it. It was wherever you in the hierarchy, read the oldest. So you got you got to be mom and dad as well as mum and dad is to look after the other one. What's your fondest memories of Saltspring back in back in your day? What do you remember that you wish you could you could see today?

Unknown Speaker 16:24
Well, I guess he had he had to walk a long way to go to work for $2 a day. Where did he work on the

Unknown Speaker 16:30
road? And he had to walk to work work all day and then walk home. How far would he walked in here and the idea

Unknown Speaker 16:37
upon Dukes road down to this room. Down through the bush.

Unknown Speaker 16:43
Wow. That's a good walk. And then he had to put in a full day's work.

Unknown Speaker 16:48
Eight hours

Unknown Speaker 16:51
what did you do? What sort of jobs did you hold? When you're growing up?

Unknown Speaker 16:56
Housework?

Unknown Speaker 16:57
Yeah. On the island there Did I did I went to Vancouver. That must have been good eye opener for you to go to Vancouver. It was pretty. That was bright lights. Big City wasn't it? Yeah. Did you like Vancouver? Not really. No. You miss Saltzman What did you do in Vancouver?

Unknown Speaker 17:20
I forget what I did. My sister run over there. She worked at Safeway for a while

Unknown Speaker 17:28
right. You helped did was it your brother you help to I don't know you did some work. You were you were like like loading trucks and stuff like that. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 17:39
I got married in 1939. And in 1942, I had a son. And my husband decided that he didn't want a Sunday wanted to daughter. So he found a young woman with her girl, baby girl. class with her. So I came back to Salzburg. So

Unknown Speaker 18:00
you were left on your own with your son. So you brought your son back to South Korea

Unknown Speaker 18:05
came back to South Korea and then I went swamping on John's turf.

Unknown Speaker 18:09
Swapping that's the difficulty. Did you like that is like that word. I

Unknown Speaker 18:14
didn't find it. I got to see people and get fresh air. Yeah. And then work in the evenings and on weekends. In the garden. Boy.

Unknown Speaker 18:28
It did a lot of hard work in your life. Yeah, we had to work alright. You got you were taught cooking by your mom, I guess. taught you how to cook. Did you teach how to make those apple pie?

Unknown Speaker 18:40
Yeah, there wasn't much You didn't teach us how to do. I still can things today.

Unknown Speaker 18:47
Do you really? Yeah. I heard somebody say something about bottling and canning and bottling. What's Badaling?

Unknown Speaker 18:55
Well you have quart sailors or plants. And you buy the lids? It doesn't have

Unknown Speaker 19:00
that? Oh, yeah. So it's yes, of course. Yes. I know what that is. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 19:03
And then depending on what you're cooking, you can chop cut meat up into, you know, some squares like that. Pack the bottles with it and put some salt in it. And that'll keep the lid on us after it's been scalded. Boil it for four hours.

Unknown Speaker 19:25
It's not gonna taste great. I don't think by the time we get to eat it already.

Unknown Speaker 19:29
We got used to that. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 19:31
yeah. Well, you have to put up all your food for the winter when you're in without refrigeration. So be a lot of canning and bottling gonna.

Unknown Speaker 19:40
Well, when I moved from the little house down by the church, up to the, to the place on Lee's hill, where I was for 42 years. I had 800 quarts of canned stuff to take with me.

Unknown Speaker 19:55
800 quarts. Yeah, gosh, you had a unit general store there for that. Just hit the road store. So as Lee's Hill named after you, your family

Unknown Speaker 20:05
named after my husband's grandparents, really

Unknown Speaker 20:09
it's the most most famous Hill on Saltspring

Unknown Speaker 20:13
that's not its proper name I don't think No but they call it leaves Hill everybody knows where it leaves

Unknown Speaker 20:18
everybody knows release everybody's going off the road on the snow in the winter snowstorm oh yeah it's a tricky one so your was your dad's got a lake named after him in northern BC you've got a hill named after you down here on Saltspring

Unknown Speaker 20:36
after my husband's family has been saved

Unknown Speaker 20:40
Do you remember when you got power at at the house electricity

Unknown Speaker 20:46
power up there for not until my brother got up there again got married and lived up there and that was in the later 40s

Unknown Speaker 20:58
Wow So you all that all that time with electricity

Unknown Speaker 21:02
well they had to bring it all up Dukes road just before the main road so didn't get the main priority.

Unknown Speaker 21:10
So you'd be living with coil lamps and wood stove. What else do you have any other kind of any? Any other kind of heat

Unknown Speaker 21:16
or wood heater and a wood stove? And you know one of these boilers it's on the side of a wood stove.

Unknown Speaker 21:25
Water Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 21:26
that's how we got our water for dishes and a bath and everything. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 21:33
That's your hot water supply. What are you doing? You were you weren't you were there in the summertime. So the hot date still hit? If you want to hot water. I guess you had to fire up the stove.

Unknown Speaker 21:43
Yeah. What about water? You were you mentioned that well, did you ever get piped in water? Yeah, you did? Yeah, cold water. So you must love

Unknown Speaker 21:57
the top end of the garden. I guess the garden itself was over two acres.

Unknown Speaker 22:03
Holy smokes. That's a huge garden. That's what your kids were working on all the time.

Unknown Speaker 22:09
And my dad dug a ditch or we dug a ditch all the way down the garden to another little well and then it was taken from there to the house. I can remember when when it froze real hard It froze up right under the under the roadway. Oh yeah. The frost went down far enough that it froze the water pipe and he had to dig that up

Unknown Speaker 22:36
but there was no

Unknown Speaker 22:37
paper burning paper on it

Unknown Speaker 22:41
it doesn't happen very often on Saltspring course up in Dukes road Europe full of higher tourists.

Unknown Speaker 22:47
Yeah, we were 150 feet above sea level

Unknown Speaker 22:50
different weather system up there.

Unknown Speaker 22:53
But you know the weather was different than really we got a lot more snow than than we do now. Really cool. Yeah. Three feet was nothing.

Unknown Speaker 23:04
Holy smokes that sounds like interior.

Unknown Speaker 23:08
I can remember when we were big enough to go to school my dad if it if it snowed very deep. He'd hook the horse up to a piece of a log and drag it down the trail

Unknown Speaker 23:20
to make weight make it make a password make a path for us to go to school. So you wouldn't get the day off like nowadays it just set up the

Unknown Speaker 23:29
schools close the bus can't run.

Unknown Speaker 23:32
You didn't hear that song too much.

Unknown Speaker 23:37
Today your wood freezes and gets icy they don't run

Unknown Speaker 23:41
That's right. Yeah. They sure wouldn't get a horse pulling the log to to clear the path that's for sure. Wouldn't have to

Unknown Speaker 23:54
so that's how we used to go to school

Unknown Speaker 24:04
got a couple of questions. What was your dad's name? What was your dad's name?

Unknown Speaker 24:11
John Edward Bennett.

Unknown Speaker 24:15
And did you have any you had one son in record? That did you ever the other kids they don't. Later on? I did. Yeah. What their names?

Unknown Speaker 24:28
Georgie Georgie Bassett was the first one that didn't go ahead and Coover. And then I married Ronnie Lee. And he had two kids a boy and a girl.

Unknown Speaker 24:43
What are their names?

Unknown Speaker 24:45
Melbourne, Melbourne and Lois Melbourne. You are an

Unknown Speaker 24:56
English Don't ya? So are they still on Saltspring What did they stay in? Saltspring?

Unknown Speaker 25:00
No Melbourne the path that they've got Melbourne and Luis both got polio when you're just just before Christmas. And Melbourne didn't make it. But Lola's did she says she just stayed in the hospital longer. And she got over. Alright. But she still has one leg. So much shorter than the other one.

Unknown Speaker 25:22
What year would that have been? When they got polio?

Unknown Speaker 25:27
We got married in 47. And then those kids were born in 35 and 38. My son was born in 42. Then we got together and got married, had our other had our family. I have two daughters. Rhonda is now Mrs. Pharaoh and Saskatchewan. And Elizabeth, she lives on Saltspring. And that was in 1940 48. Rhonda was born and 53 Elizabeth was born. And in 1960, I have a stillborn son.

Unknown Speaker 26:23
And that in 1958. We moved up the hill to the Ross young property. All right.

Unknown Speaker 26:29
Where is that? No. Elisa on Lucilia.

Unknown Speaker 26:33
There I've lived there for 42 years.

Unknown Speaker 26:40
Is that did you have a little house? It's still here this this sort of story house and the site? Was that? Is that the property?

Unknown Speaker 26:45
Yeah, yeah. But there's a big house is a big place they are now which is their winery. Okay, that's you go through the very back of the property and put a rope put the road in a different place to

Unknown Speaker 27:00
see.

Unknown Speaker 27:04
Because they asked me what I would do with the place if I had to do over again. I said, Well, for starters, I take that road out and put the road up along the fence. Oh, he said, That's a smart idea. So that's what he did. Why did the first thing you got to do is deer fence the whole place otherwise, you might as well forget it. Yeah. Because we had deer every every every day.

Unknown Speaker 27:35
So they took your advice? Yes.

Unknown Speaker 27:38
Yeah, they took all the trees out that were on the property and except the two big ones and the oak trees on the left you take them out, right. And the first tree that was up there. Oh, must have been bigger round in this table.

Unknown Speaker 27:58
They took that out or they took the

Unknown Speaker 28:03
but we had a thicket and that's where the sheep use this day in the near when there was when it was bad weather or anything. We were gonna go out one Sunday afternoon. And it was still on the ground. And I said to Ron, before we go, I'm going up the back and make sure that the sheep are a whole okay. Oh, I went up the back and it was lambs. Everyone

Unknown Speaker 28:29
decided to land that

Unknown Speaker 28:33
boy so that was the end of going out. We had to get the ball in the barn.

Unknown Speaker 28:38
Somebody told me that that cheap pick the worst possible weather to hit to go lame. And did you ever worry about cougars? Did you have a problem with cougars?

Unknown Speaker 28:49
We had one come through our place once. And Rodney was going to work and he saw this thing. This animal laying down in the field stretched out. And he got out of the car and McDonald looked at it and he said it's got a broken neck. Cougar had been there. But it was still alive. So he brought it up to the garage. Killed it. And I had to clean it and skin it and everything else when he went to work.

Unknown Speaker 29:24
Oh, there's a deer. That was a deer that the Cougar killed right? No, I'm one

Unknown Speaker 29:28
of the Lambs or one of the lads. Well, boy ready to butcher

Unknown Speaker 29:33
holy smoke. So I guess a cougar used to hear from him again. He didn't show up again. The Cougar not

Unknown Speaker 29:40
there anyway. No. But I think to get a good one used to take care of most of

Unknown Speaker 29:46
them. That's my understanding. didn't last too long.

Unknown Speaker 29:51
We had a wolf there wants to really furnace took care of that. Wolf.

Unknown Speaker 29:57
I didn't realize there were been wolves and Saltspring for me ages

Unknown Speaker 30:01
a wolf and a wolf dog had come over there together crossbreed. In a way, I think the wolf dog was shocked because it was a female. And then he Billy furnace finally got the wolf Do you remember walking up the road to go and see it?

Unknown Speaker 30:27
Doing but But what year that would be? Do you remember about what year that would be?

Unknown Speaker 30:34
Probably around 1950 Somewhere around there

Unknown Speaker 30:39
yeah never had any trouble with bears I guess.

Unknown Speaker 30:46
No. One day my mom was going to Ganges before the bridges were filled in. And she was walking back up the hill over this bridge. You could hear a noise underneath the bridge. She looked over there and there was a black bear going up. So she just kept on going. Good idea. We've had several Bear Bear tears since then.

Unknown Speaker 31:10
Yeah, there they are here but from time to time. Well exciting years that you lived on Saltspring Goya long experience. How do you feel about the changes that you see now like Saltspring today?

Unknown Speaker 31:28
It could be a lot worse than what it is. It's bad enough here but it's could be a lot worse. A year years and years ago, a man was shot at Beaver point. And then I don't think do I don't think probably ever been another one since. But we got drugs on the island. You couldn't live in the school.

Unknown Speaker 31:53
They're everywhere

Unknown Speaker 32:02
some good stories. Yeah. Is there anything else you wanted to ask?

Unknown Speaker 32:09
Your husband Ronnie, he had garage, gas station,

Unknown Speaker 32:16
Shell gas station at Fulford to start with.

Unknown Speaker 32:19
They really had

Unknown Speaker 32:22
so he went to work there every day or

Unknown Speaker 32:25
every day except Saturday and Sunday. But most of the time he was there on Saturday doing if he got called out on Sunday. Well he When

Unknown Speaker 32:33
did he do car repairs to there just just Yeah, so it was a real garage.

Unknown Speaker 32:41
I can remember being down there one day and the man that used to run the gas pumps. He has been out in his little boat fishing and got his trouser leg caught up in the bull that was on the driveshaft Oh yeah. Of course took all the flesh off his leg of everything. Well his used to see his wife all the time because I was expecting Elizabeth at that time. And she said, When do you go and when do you go to have that baby? I said well, I can't have the baby into your husband comes back to work. I went he came back to work on Monday and I had her on Tuesday

Unknown Speaker 33:40
so where did you do your shopping?

Unknown Speaker 33:44
Where you were in Ganges? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 33:45
So which stores do you remember the businesses that were there in the audience? Or

Unknown Speaker 33:51
was the only Oh was in the trading company?

Unknown Speaker 33:54
Right So did they both have similar things did you go to when for some things and the other for other things?

Unknown Speaker 34:06
We did most of our shopping malls. They had a general store but the trading company restrict the grocery store

Unknown Speaker 34:24
Did you have a boat?

Unknown Speaker 34:26
Not in those days. We didn't

Unknown Speaker 34:31
he stayed on Saltspring you didn't go around to the other islands much.

Unknown Speaker 34:37
Some of the islands I've never been on yet. Me to

Unknown Speaker 34:43
shame on you

Unknown Speaker 34:53
lots of good stories. Yeah, thank you very much for telling us. Great