Salt Spring Island Archives
| Accession Number | |||
| Date | 2010 | ||
| Media | digital recording | Audio | mp3 √ |
| duration | 46 |
370_Sue-Mouat_Life-in-BC-in-1930s_2010.mp3
otter.ai
12.02.2024
no
Outline
Speaker 1 0:00
Okay, so this is working. So I read in a little bio that you lived in BC in the 30s. I grew up British Columbia. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 0:14
When did you move to the end of UG?
Speaker 2 0:19
Oh, after I was married, my husband was a cross cultural education teacher. He was teaching in Baker Lake 400 miles north of Churchill.
Speaker 1 0:34
What was it like living in BC during the 30s it like did you get? Did you finally get hit hard by the depression or
Speaker 2 0:42
everybody was hit hard by the depression. But we were luckier because my dad always had a job. But nobody had much money. I mean, I don't think I'd ever been to a restaurant. Till I was finished my nursing training during the war. We didn't have that kind of like nobody ever went out for coffee. Occasionally, if you were really lucky, somebody buy an ice cream cone
Speaker 2 1:18
because everybody was poor, we lived in a schmuck. That was just the way it was.
Speaker 1 1:27
So you're pretty much brought up during the 30s?
Speaker 2 1:31
Yeah, I was 719 30. So I can remember really thing suddenly that my mother say I remember laughing about some woman who always wore the same hat church, my mother turning of meetings. The only one she has ever say anything. And the mean, or somebody that wore the same dress. That's the only dress she has her children go hungry. She goes hungry for her children, which we certainly never do. Because we always had a cow. So we had lots of milk, butter. We always had chickens. But nearly everybody didn't have to have any land. You just put the car open the road. And then one of the kids had to go to after school recording for the Milken. Now I was really lucky.
Speaker 1 2:34
Yeah. Well, what did your dad do? He was
Unknown Speaker 2:37
a bookkeeper for a big mining venture in Cumberland. We live down
Speaker 1 2:51
so that's close to around here in this general area. Comox Valley. Okay. So, you on living on a farm? Kind of?
Speaker 2 3:03
No, no, we just have, oh, maybe half an acre. That's a you just put the towel around. You know, we all like both my parents were really good gardener. So we always have you know tarah. If you garden, had lots of raspberries and strawberries. It's really well, yeah, peaches. Mother castle. No married women had jobs. If you got married, you lost your job. Mostly because there weren't enough jobs to go around. So if a husband had a job in a way, I mean, if you got married, if you're a school teacher, that was somebody else got your job, because you your husband had a job. And always in those days, paid more women anyway.
Speaker 1 4:17
You did see a lot of people that had to go through a lot of depression and got hit hard.
Speaker 2 4:22
We would see a lot of young men coming through from the prairies. Not as many I don't think, as maybe on mainland mainland BC, because these ones could afford them or they get over to Vancouver Island but they would come to the door looking for a meal. So my mother would sort of say, okay, chop some wood for half an hour. She would always expect them to do something for us. They didn't feel they were begging. Once the crops went on the prairies, a lot of young men came in doing the work and they all join paycheck every month.
Speaker 1 5:12
So and you were saying that you took nurses training during the war?
Speaker 2 5:16
Yeah, it went in 1940 to 45. So, all three years of the war have stood
Speaker 1 5:27
for you here in this area, Victoria. I'm going into nursing. Where UBCO from Kelowna. Oh, yeah. I'm gonna go see the school this weekend. So great.
Unknown Speaker 5:40
Well, I really, I can't say I enjoy. As we were still working 12 hour shifts?
Unknown Speaker 5:52
I'm sure it's a lot different now. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2 5:55
I don't think it's nearly as good I think training in a hospital. Much, much more hands on, and training in college. And I think now they're bringing students back in. Hospitals more. It didn't get the afternoon and evenings that we got when there was almost no staff around to ask. And you had to make a lot of decisions. During the war, in your last year, you were in charge you probably have Florida look after a couple of weekends of your training, you would be in charge of the whole hospital. And it's pretty terrifying to know that every admission every death every birth, you're advised about it. But when you came to a little hospital like Saltspring, like I did, you're used to making decisions on your own wasn't always on days when there was even a pharmacist or a doctor. There was nobody likes you.
Unknown Speaker 7:09
That's quite different than today.
Speaker 2 7:12
But it did prepare you really well for small hospitals lightly.
Speaker 1 7:19
So is it your choice to go into nursing? Or did you kind of feel it was something you were
Speaker 2 7:27
for $40 You got in because that paid for your uniforms? And then you were looked after for three years? So my parents were really pleased my son was my older sister and I
Unknown Speaker 7:42
see all your sisters Where did you have any brothers?
Unknown Speaker 7:47
Brother but you went overseas
Speaker 1 7:53
so you were how old were you? When the worst? You would have been? 39 I was
Unknown Speaker 8:01
1616
Speaker 1 8:04
So with people you'd grown up with did you have to see them get shipped overseas? Like it's your brother? Kids the every
Speaker 2 8:13
just about everybody? My time in high school. They usually nearly always joined up a
Speaker 2 8:27
lot of them join the Air Force. Wanted to see the rest of Canada just like a lot of the boys big Naval Station at Comox. And they were nearly all prairie boys and one see the sea
Speaker 1 8:47
so did you have you met your husband before the war?
Speaker 2 8:50
My sister had met him but I haven't met him at a hospital with the Jubilee team. So he came up to me at leading into when I was working here because he thought it was my sister.
Speaker 1 9:10
So I read that he was he was a prisoner of war in three, so
Unknown Speaker 9:22
if you see the website now that's been a website.
Speaker 1 9:29
Was it the Canada letters? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, so some of the pictures and the letters and the telegrams and everything.
Speaker 2 9:41
Actually, if you go on the Archives website, I'm pretty sure the program is on there. I read his mother's letters. He read his own letters. My husband read his father's letters, John Crompton, who was also in the Air Force. He read all the telegrams. And my husband had no memory of taking all the letters out of prison camp when they are liberated. They were liberated by the Russians but they were kind of Russian for pretty well, they were so unbalanced. They decided to walk to the
Unknown Speaker 10:35
American lions and France, which they did. Just the Russians would just go into a fine house. Guns going off and then they'd come out with anything that was in the house maybe. So he decided these men were that scared.
Speaker 1 10:59
And he was in the camp for three years or two years. What did he say about it was it it was scary, I guess to be there the whole time.
Unknown Speaker 11:27
The best friend he ever had in his life, or the other fellows that were in prison camp with him
Unknown Speaker 11:34
at all. Some of them had been wanting to do and never shut down.
Speaker 2 11:41
Some of them landed in the sea rescue. They were all pretty traumatized when we got there. So your friendships radically? Five as much closer brothers really? Incredibly,
Speaker 1 12:04
and he was shut down over Belgium. Okay, was he with who would see was he with a bunch of people when the planes got shut down? Or was he kind of I
Unknown Speaker 12:18
think was on a fighter plane. So he was alone? Yeah. Okay. It was a daytime raid. Germans so it's Paris and the local peoples in general tonight. They put you in jail locally, but they didn't put him in jail ROFL. Rights again. He didn't have a chance as well. It also been wounded. So
Speaker 1 12:55
so that was the same camp that all that the movie was based on. Right. The Great Escape was it?
Speaker 2 13:01
He didn't think much of it. Well, it was an American. No. I don't think any of them watching. Didn't really do, right. No, not at all. And most of the Germans guards that they had were older. Officers from the First World War
Speaker 2 13:32
they were really, really lucky. They could have been a Japanese guy. Japanese didn't believe in the Geneva Convention. The Germans did. And of course the German prisoners. A lot of them came to Canada and what did they do as soon as war was over? All migrated to Canada. A lot of Germans came into Alberta after really good Canadian citizens
Speaker 2 14:09
you don't think Sarah was talking? He's been terrific computer. He's in a wheelchair. You often see him around here probably seen well, he's witnessed anything everyone knows our website
Speaker 1 14:38
it's pretty advanced. So everyone can put like their bags and stuff and kind of a safety check.
Unknown Speaker 14:58
Somebody must be after them. Ask
Unknown Speaker 15:09
what year did you meet your husband 46 on your Did you live on Saltspring for well I had come to work at the hospital I had come to do oh a holiday very sure that nurses here so anyway they asked me if I'd stay so I get it didn't help much because I got married that was when the hospital was up the hill
Speaker 1 15:46
okay and so then you you guys moved into et
Unknown Speaker 15:53
No Not right away back in the Air Force for a while but he got his teaching certificate before the war never let my children left the school in Manitoba
Unknown Speaker 16:33
When did you find
Unknown Speaker 16:49
out what do you have to write actually?
Speaker 1 16:58
I think we're just kind of getting just stories of what it is like to live I guess during the depression and then just what it was like living during wartime and
Unknown Speaker 17:17
nobody had much gas I mean nobody had more than one car no one worked really hard those days Monday was really good to take all the
Unknown Speaker 17:47
you ever read anything by
Unknown Speaker 17:59
writers
Unknown Speaker 18:23
I'm trying to see like
Unknown Speaker 18:32
Canadian writer they should be reading Bernie I'm in Africa with her husband. It's gone. Things go my way. Then you remember
Speaker 1 19:05
so you already told me you started nursing? Or did you? Where did you see?
Speaker 2 19:16
We had to give our ration books and everybody was rushing. Sugar was bread. Butter was rationed. Then other things like gasoline and alcohol. It was just our food rations. were taken by the hospital. And the only sugar we were getting was little down Sunday morning for breakfast. Matron came just toward the end of the war. A lot of visitors are complaining you all look very tired. So we're going to give you a vitamin Kill every day that because we're giving a vitamin pill, you can have your jam on Sunday. And that was the only sleep we ever got a whole week
Unknown Speaker 20:13
well that's the way it was no chocolate bar is nothing like that. Sometimes somebody come up from the states patient with chocolate
Speaker 1 20:32
do you ever kind of look at a grocery store and think back of when it was like to have to rations, and now you can just get whatever you want.
Speaker 2 20:40
I know it was really the British war brides that came out. It just couldn't believe it when they came in stores. Because there have been nothing in the English stores. Neighbor, so much worse off than we were. Because so much of the shipping was bombed. And so much of the shipping that was coming from North America was the war anyway, it wasn't so much for the civilians. Most of them told me like they would get an orange on Christmas Day. Big excitement, some oranges have come in Spain. Of course, we didn't get anything in California then. The only oranges we used to get when I was a kid, really, until the war was little wooden boxes from Japan that would come over on the opposite Japan the big CPR ship. And that would just be the week before Christmas. Box oranges from Japan. We never got in California. There was no trucking.
Speaker 1 21:55
That really made you kind of realize that you were pretty lucky to be Oh,
Speaker 2 22:00
we are all the adults that kept pointing out how lucky we were. And we were lucky.
Speaker 2 22:10
Just about everybody anywhere else in the world. Yeah, we still are.
Unknown Speaker 22:16
Did you ever consider doing like the kind of rent thing or?
Speaker 2 22:19
Yes, that we were all my whole class was pretty well going to go into the Navy. When we graduated in September at 45. We were quite sad the war was over. So we didn't get to be officers after.
Speaker 1 22:42
So how long do you think it took for everyone to really kind of I don't want to say get over the war. But
Speaker 2 22:49
just well, it didn't take long. Although it was several years before cars are really available, because they hadn't been making cars during the war. On money, they were making tanks and aircraft and whatnot. And you had to put your name down to get a car after the war. And especially all these young veterans coming back probably three or four years before you can get a car. And if you're lucky about a second hand like that they're better built. They lasted longer.
Speaker 1 23:36
What was it like being at home and then hearing about everything that was going on? People you knew loved ones and everything was oh, it was pretty hard. And it was very hard and training because quite often
Speaker 2 23:51
one of the girls in the class, your brother would be killed on a boyfriend
Speaker 2 24:03
we were all you know you had you had a really amazing support system around and all these other girls you're seeing me. So that was neat. And for some people, it'll be much harder for a lot of the mothers, particularly the ones who are isolated on the farm or something wouldn't have the kind of support we got.
Speaker 2 24:40
And then, of course we had an act of service board at the end of the war. Just before I finished in September 14 We started getting the prisoners from the Japanese camps and they put up these great big huge military Every chance of the Jubilee. And I've always meant to research and I should do that. I don't know how many hundreds we had. And they weren't. Part of our patient was ever military, nurses and doctors there, those men or so. And most of them were English and Scottish. And they stopped them in Victoria. So they could try and get their health up because they all had dysentery as some of my TV. Quite a few of them found out their wife had been remarried because she had never heard it again. They hadn't heard for six years, what has happened to these men, because they were taking prisoners in Hong Kong or Singapore. That was very, very upsetting. We'd have a dance, but you couldn't get a smile. And these fellas they were just broken. Me hadn't had been literally starved, just enough to keep alive since the war started. That was very, very upsetting
Unknown Speaker 26:28
to see people that well, it was
Speaker 2 26:32
seeing boys that were the same age as you and they were just old men. Terribly. They were so sick, they were across a lot of malaria as well. Because of literally the starvation that they'd had
Speaker 2 27:02
or how they made out when they got back to England, not many of them, but breeds are hardly any. I don't know if any couple on assaults
Unknown Speaker 27:20
that we heard
Speaker 2 27:27
know, I really didn't know anything, what sort of material you were interested in.
Speaker 1 27:36
I just, I just like hearing about this. I don't know some thing about the 40s.
Unknown Speaker 27:43
Well used to always save a little bit of paper or cigarette packets that all
Unknown Speaker 28:00
recycle everything.
Speaker 2 28:04
If you open the letter, you always open it very carefully. As you eat something over the front. Is it again, almost every company that had been doing peacetime work. They were doing more time. So you reused
Speaker 1 28:32
Hello. So over here besides we get a lot of the kind of propaganda posters that pointed the finger the No,
Speaker 2 28:45
I think that was much more the First World War. I think people were way more aware of the Second World War that I know young people. Some of them were diabetic, and they might look fine. But he was sort of thinking that like boy feathers and that sort of thing. Which happened in the First World War. Somebody didn't have a uniform on a young man get a white feather. But in the second world war, I think they were much more aware that you could look fine but you weren't had TB as a child or as they say diabeetus or something. But there was a lot of war work in Victoria. When I went in training. After six months, we got $5 A month. Let us break it's as if you broke in the monitor that some of the girls quit right away and went down to the dock yard because they could get 50 cents an hour, which was really big money. So they went down to because they were building ships in Detroit
Speaker 1 30:09
is there any kind of the hatred and racism toward the Japanese and the Italians?
Speaker 2 30:19
The Germans had a really bad time in the First World War, but they didn't in the Second World War, I think people realize a lot of very hurtful things have been done. Whereas the Japanese were
Unknown Speaker 30:37
a dog, you're gone to New Denver or Alberta. There were a lot of Japanese in my class at school.
Speaker 2 30:48
I guess as soon as the Americans came into the war, they were all evacuated, are not evacuated. resettled, I think is what they call the new Denver or into Alberta where they worked on the sugarbeet
Speaker 2 31:12
know they you know, there wasn't any racism in school at all. Not that I remember but as I say by the time I was 18 the Japanese students at all gone were a few Chinese not many. They weren't they all worked in the mind to when the war started a lot of the Japanese men that work was my dad asked him if he would look after their guns for him while they went over to Raleigh when they were moved. So we had this whole arsenal of guns or ammo and they were all good hunters because you know if you're a good hunter, you got a gear at roots you live pretty well. You could fish you could grow beyond vegetable. Anyway, we had all these guns and then after the war they came back and got all their guns and they gave my dad a very nice octagonal 22 Which one of my sons now I used to help my dad clean the guns once a year
Speaker 2 32:40
we never thought anything about it. They were nice man.
Unknown Speaker 32:52
So I guess we've been all over the map
Speaker 1 32:56
is there anything else that you'd like to say? Just I think I'll be turning this into some sort of papers just as well I
Speaker 2 33:08
just trying to get her that author's name is in a little town like Vancouver Island. Except that we have the big Navy base komak. Didn't change life that much made sure the rationing was the same everywhere. Like in Victoria, places like that. You would certainly there were a whole lot of jobs. In the shipyards. Vancouver they were shipyards. We always carried our gas masks. You couldn't go to work without your Basma. I mean there was always the fear the Japanese invasion and we had to build all the bathrooms every night at work for you and off duty. And all blackouts had to go up every night. Blackouts at home. So no light could show. So there's
Speaker 1 34:14
a big kind of like fear attack.
Unknown Speaker 34:19
Oh, yes.
Speaker 2 34:27
Actually, I do have quite an interesting book. Written fairly recently, but about the the Japanese were very, were really skillful. I mean, they still are with their cars in their camp, and they had built submarines carried a plane on top of the submarine, with its wings folded back. It was a British invention that the British could never stop this Little housing over the plane from leaking. But the Japanese figured out a way to do it. And certainly they had bombed yesterday. And I just read an article to about the
Speaker 2 35:25
Japanese who densities, parachutes that carried a bomb, and they would come up in the stratosphere. Actually, I can, I could give you a copy of that. But the theory was, if the wind would carry them over here, they can start forest fires in California, more in California and Oregon in places, and some children found one in Oregon and were killed. This bomb there's actually there's a man I know, that lives in Brink worthy. And he was with the Air Force up the coast. And he had to help carry out one of these parachutes came down because it came down in one piece. And you know what, the Japanese parasol is made sort of waxed paper Well, that's what these parachutes were made parachuting. Yeah, so that they were way way above the atmosphere. But they knew that wouldn't hurt us over the Pacific and they knew they would come once but this one did come down all intact and he said cheering this was like 30 feet long. That was all rolled up like a great weapon suggesting sauce and she said he would be an interesting person to talk to. They have to carry out of the woods and as he said climbing over dead falls really hard.
Unknown Speaker 37:06
Do you know his name?
Unknown Speaker 37:08
His name is Billy Lorenzo the William bunny his wife was in the Air Force they were up the coast very nice couple you probably will turn down for you if you want
Speaker 2 37:43
to you I'm not quite sure how you spell because I think maybe not sorry, but Lawrence or something like that. And they live in four letters
Unknown Speaker 38:53
if you will, they're on the phone
Speaker 2 39:25
remember we had our French teacher, Mr. Who said he joined up and then I have this book of all deaths BRCA I guess during the war. That was about 25 Most of our teachers were 20 Seems so much it was killed.
Speaker 2 40:00
I know I could have bought you lots of stuff but I didn't know what you wanted Margaret Lawrence is the name of the author and she would have been born
Speaker 2 40:25
she wrote a lot of books about well no not about the board because that was you know when you're 1617 When I was a student nurse, you go into the office and the list is for 130 nurses tonight for a dance at Pat Bay officers wanted 60 nurses at the naval base at a spline we all thought we got it made except we were too tired to go to work from seven o'clock that morning. And we had to be in at 10 o'clock well.
Speaker 2 41:39
We've done all over the map. Oh, this is great. Anyway, I really think Louis and Bunny would be great. But no, I don't know whether they would come down here I think you'd probably have to go see them at a couple of fractures but they just really they were in a service on this coast monitoring one he was in the Marine Division not sure what money actually did it in there for us maybe office we're
Unknown Speaker 42:20
never used women that much in the fourth in the forces until the Second World War. And sisters in the First World War, but not the hundreds of women took over a lot of the office jobs in the Second World War.
Unknown Speaker 42:45
A lot of my friends one of them's here she was I think she was a major. She was head of a hospital. A nursing supervisor in England. I don't She's pretty well written that. Actually the nurses here did a program I think the TV program sometime few years ago a
Speaker 2 43:26
friend of mine she was a nursing sister on a train going back and forth across Canada. She would pick up the patients of Halifax when they got off the ship and then she would be on the train all the way across Canada as they dropped off patients. She got so used to walking by their feet like this because the train was always like this. She really really damaged your feet she says that
Unknown Speaker 44:04
she saw some really sad things people have badly badly walked
Unknown Speaker 44:31
we're working on
Unknown Speaker 44:33
the connecting generation same industry
Speaker 2 44:40
growing up during the war well actually, when you were young was kind of fun.
Unknown Speaker 44:53
Well, we were in Victoria there were all kinds of servicemen properly 100 Men For that way we're too tired to go anywhere because we work so hard
Unknown Speaker 45:18
this is great well
Speaker 2 45:19
live really helps us out much better now I have another friend and she's
Speaker 2 45:36
became an epileptic because he was very close nearby when a bomb went off in England she had so much brain damage later epileptic but she's so she's been on medication ever since she was a little girl exit was bombed which we never had anything get ghastly like that
