73_Celia-Valentine-Reynolds.mp3

otter.ai

20.01.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:03
Today is July 31 1990, and today I'm talking to Val Reynolds at her home at 981 Fulford Ganges road. My name is Ruth Sandwell.

Unknown Speaker 0:15
Now, Mrs. Reynolds, you were born on salts for

Unknown Speaker 0:18
you know I was born in Grand Forks BC in the interior of BC towards the southern border. And I came to the coast first when I was 15 and a short trip down to Anacortes, where my grandmother spent five or six months there. And then we moved to ladieswear phone can keep your hand.

Unknown Speaker 0:42
What was your name before you were married?

Unknown Speaker 0:46
Griswald going downtown Chris.

Unknown Speaker 0:52
So you came up too late. Why did you go to Lady Smith?

Unknown Speaker 0:55
I haven't married sister there that have come down about a year before. She was married to one of the old time families over there.

Unknown Speaker 1:04
Oh, wait, what family was the Williams is?

Unknown Speaker 1:08
He was on the Compensation Board. When it was first started. He was chairman, the father of the sisters pocalypse he gone in his I think as a Labour member in the early government, the Labour Party and they took the position on the Compensation Board. We had it for

Unknown Speaker 1:33
years pay the interesting job.

Unknown Speaker 1:37
I hope it was it was a good paying job. And there was the salary at about $1,000 which was big money. That's right.

Unknown Speaker 1:46
That's right. So how did you get from Lady Smith to is to sell Spain,

Unknown Speaker 1:53
a family came looking for someone to take the place of a girl that was going on a month's holiday here. Kept Macintosh was the Conservative Member for the islands. And they had a girl working after the children. A sister in law came ladies with and came out to where we were living on a small farm to ask if we had someone that would take the job. So I came for a month's work.

Unknown Speaker 2:21
So had you gone to Lady Smith with your parents?

Unknown Speaker 2:24
Yes, I did.

Unknown Speaker 2:26
And then so you took the job?

Unknown Speaker 2:29
Yes for a month and why work two and a half months because the girl didn't come back that she didn't say the word she wasn't. But then she did come back and full profile for that. She was back from the job. About two half months later. She came back and then I went back home to lives with it came over and suddenly I perfect married.

Unknown Speaker 2:51
How did you meet your husband while he

Unknown Speaker 2:53
was dating your place where I was working?

Unknown Speaker 2:56
So you met him that when you came over to work for the two years,

Unknown Speaker 2:59
two months? I did. And what's his name? Like Reynolds? He was born on the island.

Unknown Speaker 3:08
When What did you do what year he was born?

Unknown Speaker 3:11
96. He died two years ago March. family had come in about 25 I think because he was born on the

Unknown Speaker 3:26
rally. Where did his family come from? Well, they came from Victoria

Unknown Speaker 3:29
here. His father was born in Victoria and his brother was born in Seattle. But they came up here before like born and he was born in a log cabin overlooking wants to like oh, it's no longer there. To persona what the Webster property of Western works your property

Unknown Speaker 3:51
right. So were when you were staying on the island at first, where exactly where are you staying?

Unknown Speaker 3:58
I was the captain Macintoshes a little over. They call it bouquet was over Lucky was too late. And then the rebels farm was just crossed from they had 160 acres there. Between there they were between the two lakes Western and still their land ran down to still lake on one side and didn't didn't quite Gordon was to Lake and a buttered on McIntosh property he had had that had been in the Reynolds family earlier there was our brother, Frank granese, who was my father in law, his mother and other brother had owned that piece of property opened up the Westlake Macintosh acquired. It had been rentals property when they came up. They kept the two places.

Unknown Speaker 4:52
A lot of land was

Unknown Speaker 4:55
bought a good plan to do that. A piece of the Reynolds just stayed with him went down the path tree of care we're not too far we've done quite a long ways.

Unknown Speaker 5:12
So you met your husband that

Unknown Speaker 5:15
over the farm because I used to go over this is running to whole wheat bread for the youngest boy for the lack of dosh. And then your supplies and sometimes was milk that was juicer, there was a case of going over to pick up things. I met him and then he used to bring wood to Mac and torches out it has been selling wood cutting and selling wood.

Unknown Speaker 5:40
It was a cutting it from their own property there.

Unknown Speaker 5:43
Partly part of it was cut up on the switchback on other people's property. And they paid 20 or whatever it was

Unknown Speaker 5:54
to Yeah, like stumpage or something like that. So what's the wages for firewood?

Unknown Speaker 6:02
Because most stove kitchen stoves were formed within that time. And they had fireplaces from heaters. Yeah, so there was a lot of quick years.

Unknown Speaker 6:12
When so when what year did you get married

Unknown Speaker 6:17
50 years ago to

Unknown Speaker 6:22
So you came over then to live on the island? Yes. Your family was still back and Lady Smith. So where did you first play when you first came as a as a maritime to small

Unknown Speaker 6:35
house. Favorite points, I'd avoid the lake. But there's no longer there is a combination house that had been added to it was just above what belongs to Bill Stewart place to stop around the corner. There was a spring there. There's still water being drawn from the spring and there's houses on either side that there's nothing,

Unknown Speaker 6:59
nothing for you. What kind of what was the house like,

Unknown Speaker 7:03
reduced to her house to be added to it? I started out I think it's a two room cabin. And then a bigger family had moved in and out to it was just an ordinary resaw everyday sort of thing.

Unknown Speaker 7:18
So you'd have a kitchen in the living room and and

Unknown Speaker 7:21
yes, bed routers, actually two bedrooms. Placement but I think they must have intended for a vacuum because they put the hole for the water the pipe separator refinished.

Unknown Speaker 7:37
So there was no bathroom in the house. No.

Unknown Speaker 7:39
So I guess you'd have there was no running water.

Unknown Speaker 7:42
Really? Would you get your water from the spring? Had you dug a hole for the spring? Or was it just a

Unknown Speaker 7:47
spring was already there established? You could clean it out. You could put a pipe down in the water would pull it up about four feet and really get through that much for good water. It was good for one. You could take 100 buckets out of it for water. Or it could be that there still be more water.

Unknown Speaker 8:05
Oh, wonderful. Did you have a garden?

Unknown Speaker 8:08
Yes, we did. Not the first two, three years especially. We lived there for four years that we were down to a place to leave the point. Further down, left there for years. You look back to the the first one.

Unknown Speaker 8:26
So did you have any children?

Unknown Speaker 8:28
I had a I had four children. But I had the first son. I was married in July and he was born here. Halfway there. Just about in December.

Unknown Speaker 8:40
So you were still living in the first house? Yes. What was his name?

Unknown Speaker 8:45
Harvey rolling here on the island. flipline. Perfect door

Unknown Speaker 8:49
Daffy. Why don't you tell me that the names of the rest of your children.

Unknown Speaker 8:55
Sheila and Frank David.

Unknown Speaker 8:58
When was Sheila born?

Unknown Speaker 9:00
She was born with a thong was four years after her knee was born in 33. And she was born about three and a half years later on the 20th of August. Then there's a big gap just 12 and a half years between Sheila and Frank and I could learn to report quite a lot later. How

Unknown Speaker 9:28
how many years were there between the last two

Unknown Speaker 9:32
to two years and nine months? Oh yeah. There's almost 20 years between the first and the last

Unknown Speaker 9:39
boy Miss kept you busy for for many years, I

Unknown Speaker 9:42
guess. Will the older children help with younger children make quite a difference.

Unknown Speaker 9:48
That's good. When you when you first had your first child when you were living in the house, where there are many other families around there.

Unknown Speaker 9:58
There were quite a few When they came here all scattered to what it is now. There were stewards live just below us. Don't leave your point where there was a rental property. There were quite a few fellas actually weren't really that isolated.

Unknown Speaker 10:17
Yeah. So did you I have a young family right now my own and I always wonder about how people managed you know with the well life must have been harder just been the fact of having no plumbing

Unknown Speaker 10:32
have the family did we didn't have electricity. We didn't have phones brought over some phones, but not too many over and my mother in law is going to have to fall now keep on a mile away.

Unknown Speaker 10:45
So you'd go down there to make a phone call now.

Unknown Speaker 10:47
The phone was on my husband knew that he had enormous damage and remarried he didn't want to have a full loop because his sister live in like dorm or cool family. So I stayed there for quite a while and eventually recovered the rental. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 11:02
when did you get electricity? Do you remember is that when you first lived in

Unknown Speaker 11:04
terms of electricity rehearsing John moved up to principle daughter brought to the article

Unknown Speaker 11:11
off really? So what would you what would you light with

Unknown Speaker 11:15
correlate and go home and gas leaks? Countless women of color but usually color where would you get the coal oil at stores general stores. Mr. Patterson has dark be reappointed that time. Right. Point. Right and then the courts and restore it for for the Patterson district for for two years to come back with gratuity raise guess. How are you forgetting to forward?

Unknown Speaker 11:45
I guess that will be a long way for you to come up to

Unknown Speaker 11:49
you at the time we were married. So it's important that so let's Yeah, the summer we were married though they were logging with horses. The Glion came down the point we were still using horses to yard logs to haul them wherever they take them. They used to take them to the to the ocean Ganges and were taken in there.

Unknown Speaker 12:16
But they build them up there and then take them away. And that was the same they would get a timber lease for the

Unknown Speaker 12:25
purpose more mostly on private property at that time that you got timber frames committee had gone by the timber. I see. Right? It was different than just

Unknown Speaker 12:37
right. So getting back

Unknown Speaker 12:39
to when you first had your your first two children. How would you did was there? Did you get help from neighbors? You know, did you have a lot to do with your neighbors in those days? I

Unknown Speaker 12:52
don't remember calling on me very much because the running family was a big family. And you more or less went to them for help. They help one another. And they were grammarians was very good at childcare and looking after sick people and things like that.

Unknown Speaker 13:09
Oh, that's good. So you had that? And they didn't live too far away?

Unknown Speaker 13:13
No, but we're on the way from where we work. Was there a road there? Oh, yes. That was a wagon road. Car. There were cars. Like quite a few.

Unknown Speaker 13:24
Did you have a car? I guess

Unknown Speaker 13:25
going into truck? I don't have a car.

Unknown Speaker 13:28
So your husband drove the truck then? Did he do local deliveries and things?

Unknown Speaker 13:34
What did your husband truck on his check?

Unknown Speaker 13:37
Well, last summer when I first came here, they were still shipping apples to us to do trucking for people to put that down on them and having fun. They were shipping apples. And he used a lot of the apples up to the open just very used to take them across

Unknown Speaker 13:54
that go to Vancouver

Unknown Speaker 13:57
who came in about three times a week.

Unknown Speaker 14:00
What are the kinds of Did you take any other kinds of fruit?

Unknown Speaker 14:04
I don't think they did very much. Oh, well. I think they had chips, strawberries, that one place. We lit them up for point there was a big strawberry patch there. I know the first year we were there. It was the year that my daughter was born. We pick well over a ton of the strawberries off. But we weren't chipping them. We were just selling them locally in New Zealand and sharing them with the family.

Unknown Speaker 14:28
So did you were you working for someone else to pick those strawberries? Or was it your own patch?

Unknown Speaker 14:34
We looked after to pick the

Unknown Speaker 14:39
good did you

Unknown Speaker 14:43
at that time when you had young children? Did you work at all outside? Did you work for money at all outside the home?

Unknown Speaker 14:52
No. There were very few jobs too many. You had to look after children anyway. And when Jill was born, we were there to vote for him. miles from the Reynolds place. And it was too far and I had pleurisy and pneumonia and things a lot when they respond. So I didn't work away from home. I had Percy two months before she was born. And I set for two weeks to the up to the rocking chair because I could be lying down. And then I started about a week after I came home from the hospital strawberries during the week. Then I restart before I even know they were right before she was born. That's right, because I picked berries. I restart stooping going up the hill was on slope. You buy new land beyond my knees by evening as the city's fighting along between the road because you'll get too tight.

Unknown Speaker 15:44
Oh my goodness. So that's right after you had to be beforehand.

Unknown Speaker 15:51
To handle first aid people close the door. We found there was plenty to do with it away from home. And when we were down there we had come from we had chickens. So I built cars and the tabs and the chickens. What kind of cows did you keep? Mostly jersey, we had some homework. But we started a preferred teacher's account.

Unknown Speaker 16:17
And so what did you did you sell the cream, which will create

Unknown Speaker 16:20
the query when we saw the Patterson store,

Unknown Speaker 16:25
how much would you sell those for

Unknown Speaker 16:27
16 or 18 cents. And you got your butterfat brought in? For 1216 18 cents for better. But then, you know, put a dent in court. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 16:44
So when you sold how would you go about selling the cream to the creamery?

Unknown Speaker 16:51
Track the collected twice a week? You shipped it in cans?

Unknown Speaker 16:55
So you had this big milk?

Unknown Speaker 16:56
Yeah. Well, we didn't have that. five gallon Clinton was the one who had you separated your cream milk? Was the separator. Get the mail?

Unknown Speaker 17:08
Oh, yeah. What was the separator? Like? What do you

Unknown Speaker 17:12
have your own ball set to probably just the sheer new part down below, there's a handle that you turn, you get going with the speed, then you turn it on. And there's I spoke to bring to cream up above for the actual nut cream rise? And of course, we have. So your cream is separated.

Unknown Speaker 17:34
So that it would be the cream that you'd leave for the creamery to come and take? Yeah, and would you just drink the milk yourself?

Unknown Speaker 17:42
Or if we used to raise pigs to make them of course, if you raise calves, they could call. You give them the whole note the first round, then they gradually cut them down. We got out on pasture. They picked them out of the skin.

Unknown Speaker 18:00
So when you were so you were four years in in your house, and then you moved away for four years. And that's when I guess that's when it was just too hard. You were too far away from the rest of the family.

Unknown Speaker 18:12
Well, when we started racing down there, too, and got more independent as you got used to being having children to do them on your own.

Unknown Speaker 18:23
That's right here. And so then you moved you move back to

Unknown Speaker 18:28
your way movers. We've been in the papers, I just

Unknown Speaker 18:32
sold that house and bought it back or did you had to just

Unknown Speaker 18:35
oh, wait, we're just renting the first time. Okay. In fact, we were going to rent the place to be required, but it didn't work out. But it didn't work out. So when was that? And we looked out for a while and then we moved over to a place on the wrong place. There was a second house there when she was quite small and moved out there and there for years. And then that house burned down. Do we cover fire in the night from the roof? Is parks on the roof and it was a spur stormy night windy and rainy and blowing like and I think we could walk up on the roof was a blazer.

Unknown Speaker 19:20
Oh my goodness. So what we had the two children then

Unknown Speaker 19:23
yes, they were 13 and 16 when

Unknown Speaker 19:25
that happened really so they were

Unknown Speaker 19:29
or we got out we managed to save a few things. We didn't have a church and then we stayed at the curse of the wrong place for the summer but then in the fall but done smooth dark. We were back to the original data node. And then eventually we built all the rooms place. Wait but it was never really finished reframe the house and we finished it or not pulled into it. But it was never really finished and after my daughter was going working, she decided she wanted to buy a place. So she bought the place. It's about a mile and a half, two miles down the road. And we were there. on that tour we were for over 20 years. Came up here about eight years ago. Oh, yeah, we had property down there. We had about six acres beside my daughter's place, which we never built. But we had two lots. till last year, I sold the last lot my daughter.

Unknown Speaker 20:37
Oh that's good.

Unknown Speaker 20:42
So it's a lovely place here. Very quiet. Now, I wanted to ask you a little bit more about when your children were when your children were young. And I just wanted to ask you can you do you think you could tell me what, what a day in your life would be like? Then like, say when your children when you had your two young children and you were living in the house, and you had some animals maybe and maybe a little bit of a garden? What would it be like when you when you would get up in the morning?

Unknown Speaker 21:19
Well, there was nothing special about it. You got up at the job, to school, for school to get your practice and their lunches. You saw them off to school, although Harvey was the only one going on we live down protest school, which Scott it was the proponent? They weren't. They both went to that to grade eight. To

Unknown Speaker 21:42
a few. Do you remember any of their teachers at the school?

Unknown Speaker 21:45
Oh, yes. There was one of the teachers was down at record the other day. He's Mrs. Don Frazier. She used to be March 4. She was one of the ones when she was nine she was teaching and there was another one Muriel that very pray for ages. I can't think what your last name was written although there were just a series of teachers men and women both quite a very large teachers.

Unknown Speaker 22:20
Did I know that I've heard that the women teachers used to come to the island and then they quickly be snapped up.

Unknown Speaker 22:26
Seems like in the early days that did happen a lot. A lot of McGann's used to happen the divide they have a school up there that was meant sustained and we're loving the game and married because this was Florence Hepburn was the one that came to teach Mary here and this is George Westie with electrician tubers Ruby. She taught again to us. I can't remember all the name but I can remember the last couple studying pickiness teachers. I don't remember it's brilliant. The men marry men teachers again,

Unknown Speaker 23:03
did they tend to stay longer teach for longer or?

Unknown Speaker 23:06
Well, very few that I've taught a long time before I came Mr. Buck was one of them the beaver point and he evidently did teach quite a few years with my sister in law on my husband and they all went to Mr. Monk, and he has a daughter what's her name? Deputy Why are grouped up to carry Baptist wife they live down fairly close to rankles. They I will not think would be a good source of information nearly days. Because your father was one of the earliest teachers out there. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 23:42
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 23:43
Well, that's that's very useful. So how hard would did your children have to walk to get to be required school

Unknown Speaker 23:51
for both three miles most the time? How long would I first retell requests for people to start to just denticle craft craft road downhill across the road. But both the time was around three miles to three miles each way.

Unknown Speaker 24:06
So how long would that take them? What time would you have to pack them off?

Unknown Speaker 24:10
Well, you figured out at least an hour. But sometimes they made it a lot quicker depending on what they were doing sometimes that you allowed an hour and during the war for the they put people on daylights double daylight saving time they were leaving in the dark and coming home in the dark last winter. It was really like Did they go on roads? Do they walk towards it? Well, they were lucky enough to get around and a few of them had like

Unknown Speaker 24:43
Did they just use to go off like by themselves or their group of kids that used to go there.

Unknown Speaker 24:47
Generally somebody would come along with what's going on. They generally by the time they got to school there'd be several of them. Although they haven't walked in selves, but generally they tend to typically Walk together. I used to bake lot of bread in those days. And generally when they were on their way home, the cinnamon rolls would be freshly out of the oven. They'd all come in. And I have one nephew that used to come in and he'd say, Oh boy made bread later on down the road with the first two.

Unknown Speaker 25:21
What are the kinds of things did you did you do a lot of preserving and

Unknown Speaker 25:25
yes, we did. I picked a lot of blackberries and I picked on my sister did fruit to us. But the wild blackberries do not pick these big ones grow while they're too small loads. And we used to get them on all logging places that had been burned over a couple of years after they were logged and burned. The blackberries would come and you could take them in milk buckets and we just can use to make use of them and blah blah. We used to have lots of pies jelly things. But we still require a lot of candy.

Unknown Speaker 26:05
What else did you get from some things that you grew in your garden to? Oh, yes.

Unknown Speaker 26:09
And that got so we can be used to pay sick corn, tomatoes, all those things? And if you've got extra meat you bottle the meat to

Unknown Speaker 26:20
now how would you do that? Well, I we used

Unknown Speaker 26:23
to cut it in service do size pieces or slices. Brown it, pack it into jars and just add salt, sealant and then processes turbo four hours of cold hot water bath. Yeah. Because they didn't have pressure cookers and things. I still use a

Unknown Speaker 26:42
hot water bath. Yeah, but yeah.

Unknown Speaker 26:45
And often if you had pork or and your somebody's got a deer or venison you combine the two tandem because the pork is inclined to be tighter sometimes the balancing was Lee or sometimes you combine Dennis and a quarter beef. And it's very good. Because you could all protect your vegan sandwiches you can make it into stews you could grind it mixture but by it was handy. It didn't have to wait. Defrost. Yeah, so what

Unknown Speaker 27:17
did you eat a lot of venison.

Unknown Speaker 27:20
We had a fair amount I guess the first few years but after that we knew too much. There was quite a lot of you show up and even when I first came here legal we were most people were I don't they said there were a lot of people to jump around.

Unknown Speaker 27:42
Oh yeah, there was a season and did you need a license? So?

Unknown Speaker 27:46
Oh yes. The alternative license Yeah. Sometimes farmers could get permission to shoot extra deer if they were destroying their crops but we ever had. I knew of people it did. Yeah. Because they can do a lot of damage.

Unknown Speaker 28:02
That's right. Did you have a lot of trouble with them with the things you just grew in the garden?

Unknown Speaker 28:07
Oh yes. And you weak put the dog out put into so far where you think would protect something held by the second night to deal with Dr. Tao for that dog you'd rather you'd be on leash because you're not supposed to chase deer and they would know and the smallest opening they could find you. We went I went to the farmers market a few years ago I used to sell whatever extra that smoked things I had a craft and we'd spend about three months taking down a whole mishmash of fences we had around the various going and make your one big stocky and over six feet high. That was the freest we were deer and all the years I've been also came the nearest harvesting what to put in

Unknown Speaker 28:58
idea of what what was it made of what kind of

Unknown Speaker 29:01
separate everything but we made sure which drug and barbed wire or wire apply. And when I finally ran out of it, I just stood toss pieces of limbs, walk them into the wire fence so that they were up about security and that would be about 12 years ago and our sticks are still there keeping cheapo. So how much

Unknown Speaker 29:25
it How much did you have as a garden when

Unknown Speaker 29:28
you put it all on the garden I

Unknown Speaker 29:30
put start with an early garden up and other than I had one in the middle down towards flat and pulling the flat. I had a lot of garden. I grew a lot of garden. Some of the model carrots, beets, lettuce, all that type of thing.

Unknown Speaker 29:45
Did you sell everything fresh? So there's

Unknown Speaker 29:49
no sometimes I take a bit of home day Who was Julie I just told her that she was like just in touch with water. Fourth of all up in a day before Okay, Put them in bunches. So flowers for whatever there was there was extra time I enjoyed going to market because you saw Pete people, you know from so many different places, right?

Unknown Speaker 30:12
That'd be the Ganges market who?

Unknown Speaker 30:15
Yes, I went three years. Then my husband got to couldn't drive. And I had

Unknown Speaker 30:22
to give that

Unknown Speaker 30:25
when

Unknown Speaker 30:27
people talk a lot about the 1930s and the depression in the 1930s, here on the island,

Unknown Speaker 30:34
it was It wasn't just on the island.

Unknown Speaker 30:39
How do people?

Unknown Speaker 31:12
Were there a lot of people on unreleased.

Unknown Speaker 31:15
I think they probably word whenever we're on and we were on briefly, wicker years ago on Sheila's place for about three months. That's the only time we had to fall back on it. But while you just went to the store, and you asked him what something was, and he just said, No, I didn't really want it. You know, you're just cut, you're caught that didn't work you had and you didn't grow as much guidance as you could. And that must have been a big help. And when we didn't when we were Belkin cars ourselves. Back up? What do you do, we could get skid mount from my father in law's place. And we used to have chickens can be good. And if people offered you extra vegetables, your food, you may do something. You took them in Canva were dried them or did something to make use of them. And it's probably how you can manage if you have to. Yeah, and I had come from a family that we were a big family and we didn't always have a lot so I was quite used to making over sewing, redoing things. Make things do

Unknown Speaker 32:27
digit, we're used to things like gardening and raising animals and things like that. We have

Unknown Speaker 32:32
done a bit of it. So not very much before. It was just the last couple of years I guess before very good. We weren't a small farmer. So I'm glad to Smith. We had a cow we raised a veal every year we raised a couple of gigs with chickens. And we did grow the garden but that was our son tried to that we were just helpers and quite often we disappear and then find a second the lives of the bacteria because they recorded your pictures to your royal and and things and they were so good. And that's the best way to read to the jury to help yourself. I don't think I'd like to try now.

Unknown Speaker 33:18
Did you have fruit trees when when you lived?

Unknown Speaker 33:21
There? There were just fruit trees, apples to apples and cherries. And there were lots of black for reason. The team for it, right? We had to concord grapes. Oh really? I had concord grapes down at Children's Place. They were just beginning to bear my brother in law had given me some slips. But then we left down there I 65 pounds of grapes often. They do well if they have a chance, you know? I guess you have to give them some protection. And when they're pretty hard you they seem to be anyway.

Unknown Speaker 33:58
That's very good.

Unknown Speaker 33:59
I couldn't tell anybody how to garden because I found out just by trial and error. And I found out a lot of the books you get on gardening aren't all together reliable. That's right, this brokerage house class, they'll tell you that the only Christmas gap is that we're blue in houses Christmas cactus and every cactus I've ever owned, trimmed away time and they're not always beautiful, but they do. So you noticed some of the things in boxer so

Unknown Speaker 34:33
that's right. Well, it's always best to go by your own experience, isn't it? Trying anyway? That's right. So what did your husband work right through the 37?

Unknown Speaker 34:43
Yes, he was working work. He did a lot of law calling at that time and he did howling for people general balling. Sometimes you

Unknown Speaker 34:53
have a lot of work from those time mills.

Unknown Speaker 34:56
We're here to offer the time knows how hold some of the ties and generally have a team of horses in the early years too,

Unknown Speaker 35:05
as well as this truck.

Unknown Speaker 35:10
They used to horses. He had his dad to horse sometimes the year. They did quite a bit of hauling in the woods with horses at that time is getting the playmakers good rolled with long sleeves like that. And they still take the blocks down everywhere. Support they were taking out enough blocks to justify it. They makes good roads to help make it easier.

Unknown Speaker 35:37
Was there any particular part of the island where they had did most blogging?

Unknown Speaker 35:42
Not that I remember, they've liked so much of it. And I can remember Jim Nkrumah who was one of the old timers 30 odd years ago saying that they had told him 70 years ago, when you join the salt pool lobbying was going to be done on salt, bring the timing resolved, there'd be no more. And at 35 or 40 years ago, seven years before that it was done. That's why I can't get as excited as these people about the login. I have seen it before it did. So anytime. And when they talked about Mac blow selling on trees on that through the switchbacks called The Verge and stuff. My husband home out there 50 years ago, I was all along when an RV was small. Yeah. I mean, there's some of the practices need to be changed. But they can contrast it with information and go.

Unknown Speaker 36:38
That's right. People have shown me quite a few photographs of the island. And you know, there's a lot of a lot of clear cut. A lot of places look very different because there are no no trees and a lot of

Unknown Speaker 36:49
those placements are clear cut have been clear cut before, but you try to convince anybody that not all of them, mind you. But most of the Virgin staff has been gone for a long walk. And then it's surprising how fast it grows. The trees out here we're small when we put this driver eight years ago and Harvey has taken the trees down since the retreat between the two places that God forbid is done you but it takes it down to

Unknown Speaker 37:22
what happened at through if he was working, mostly doing doing that like with his truck and logging during the 30s What

Unknown Speaker 37:30
about with the 40s Do you see

Unknown Speaker 37:33
he afterwards switched over to forbert got farm machinery and did corrective work. And right up to as long as he was able to work. He was doing customer more than he was longing to do. He went logging with Hardy when Harvey was old enough Nicholas Wildcat when Harvey was was early 20s And then my husband turned that cow over to her and he would want to in customer what would he do? Contain raking bale hay thrush scream plow, so he had all that equipment himself. Yes, he had quite a lot of equipment gradually coil had been trained tractors, the threshing machine

Unknown Speaker 38:23
so he'd go around to other

Unknown Speaker 38:26
guys to please show.

Unknown Speaker 38:28
Did he do a lot of work on his parents place.

Unknown Speaker 38:31
He did quite a lot of group there. We put the other crops in quite a bit towards the last. The last quality father was living his father got a job on the government servation There's chips. So we did both the firm in place. Then Gavin took it over a second son. Remember brother avoids he decided he was going to buy the place and he took over the plate from his mother after his dad died.

Unknown Speaker 39:01
Why would you work on the farm too.

Unknown Speaker 39:03
I often help before they enter the fields around home I often call up the Help Center. She used

Unknown Speaker 39:11
to do that by hand.

Unknown Speaker 39:15
My father in law showed me how to to put the tops on the clock so they would spring the rain how to build. Take a big flat piece of plywood to bring it up over and being around conical top so that the rain would run off it instead of penetrating. I used to do that quite a bit. I helped. I helped work recruits and I grew a lot of garden and I did a lot of damage. And then years ago we just got out of it and every two three years we went down and picked potatoes recklessly. Potato picker family with

Unknown Speaker 39:56
potatoes. So would you get paid for that would you be given a

Unknown Speaker 39:58
reduced rate records. But what you did on Comey, you just did. That's right. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 40:06
So when the when the war came in the 40s Did that make a big difference to to your family?

Unknown Speaker 40:12
Not really. No, because the children were too small to be affected much by my health and I'd love to take it anyway. He was ruptured. When I first met him. I had had quite a bit of trouble officially usually married, and you got to get over the rest of it. But I don't think he would have been accepted in the army anyway. So life didn't really change for us as much as a lot of people.

Unknown Speaker 40:40
That's right. Did you have a lot of I guess you must have had a lot of friends who had

Unknown Speaker 40:46
husbands and brothers

Unknown Speaker 40:49
had three brothers. Either there fortunately an army one was in America one one regional air force, one which engineer thing the infantry he or she wounded on. But he survived. It All. Modeled ended up in Scotland for some of the Bahria. Jack was an American one. They kept giving him deferments because he was a construction working, it's something that the kids that are vital, didn't even take anymore deferments. And he was working on some of that experiment stuff. Don't stop. Thanks. Don, don't move. During the war, she was over three or four. During the war. My brother older than I am was the one that spent the most time overseas.

Unknown Speaker 41:50
Did you have? Did you have friends and neighbors? Who were I guess affected more than you?

Unknown Speaker 41:54
Yes. There were long with young fellows. And a lot of them were the, the husbands were they were quite long people.

Unknown Speaker 42:03
How did they manage?

Unknown Speaker 42:05
I don't really know. Because genuinely, you were so busy doing your own thing.

Unknown Speaker 42:12
It's hard to keep track, keep track.

Unknown Speaker 42:16
And another handicap I had was that I was deaf. And for a long time, I didn't have a unique so that even if you're really crowded with a lot you didn't get. I found out when I was 17. And my hearing was going now I went to take an exam and when I walked the spot just for the juniors demographer exam, and they gave him a spelling and they said, if you don't get in the Word, raise your hand. And an Englishman gave us the test. Then he'd say a word and I'd write it down. Somebody put their hand up and he'd say another word, please. It sounded like another word. And if that happened two or four times you weren't sure which word he said. So that's when I first realized that my hearing was going and my mother had gone there. Eventually I found out I had that same sort of a thing evidently the small bones escapes and the years cemented place. And they don't vibrate. But I have through a series of hearing it's it's helped a lot through the years. Yeah, I had operations I had two operations on my radio one on the left and I've been hearing for about three years to three years and then I had to go in for special chest X rays and put pressure on my ears and I had to go back to here but I found that there were a lot of things you didn't get because believe in now in a crowd you don't hear it's very hard to follow one or two conversations as we like being behind the stone wall and a lot of research trying to figure out what was being said

Unknown Speaker 44:00
that must have been difficult. It takes that I get

Unknown Speaker 44:03
used to but if I had to choose between seeing and hearing I still have to draw here as long as I can see things think it's going blind be very hard to cope with

Unknown Speaker 44:22
Did you belong when you were well throughout your life you're on the island Have you did you belong to any organizations you know like the

Unknown Speaker 44:30
institute briefly, but it was one of my second family. We're quite small. And I found it very awkward very hard to get home and look after him to find chores and be there for them.

Unknown Speaker 44:44
Yeah, how often would you would you meet

Unknown Speaker 44:46
I think you're pretty good every two weeks if

Unknown Speaker 44:48
I remember right, was that down at Beaver point Hall was it

Unknown Speaker 44:51
No, it was a full for trauma threw her around the different members. Homes really? Oh, I tried leaving and

Unknown Speaker 45:06
they were something that might attract more people because that's been one of the drawbacks with it does have problems keeping the membership but as people get older grew up they don't seem to get it and yet it's been going for oh, yeah, it's been on the golf reaches.

Unknown Speaker 45:22
That's right. Did you did do you remember what

Unknown Speaker 45:25
year it was that you were involved in it?

Unknown Speaker 45:29
Up or jump or eight years ago? I read for about three or four years something like that. One that I don't remember. Exactly.

Unknown Speaker 45:38
I'm wondering I

Unknown Speaker 45:40
just am asking. Because during I know that during the war, the diff the women's institutes in British Columbia did a lot of work. A lot of things like preserving and canning it was anything like that going on at Saltspring to remember

Unknown Speaker 45:53
I could say that because I wasn't gonna do that. I have a sister Monique and Martin and happy joyful juicier Milan she's been gone up the mirror Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 46:06
Any other do you

Unknown Speaker 46:09
go in for very much I didn't have a chance to get up to remember things. And because of our lack of hearing I didn't do a good go to a lot of deals.

Unknown Speaker 46:19
What's hard if you're a sound like you were so busy

Unknown Speaker 46:25
busy you were happy as relatively generally you heard your family around you and it made a big difference

Unknown Speaker 46:34
it's a whole lot harder to put in time now. You think what's the use to get an extra hour early the day is greater

Unknown Speaker 46:43
it's a big change isn't it filming?

Unknown Speaker 46:45
I have crafts and I do a lot of things but even that process I do a lot of breathing and I can try to make myself do more walking I still put things in the hall after last year that was good there was a gap where I didn't make

Unknown Speaker 47:07
it Oh it says that they didn't crochet these yeah oh I've seen this lovely so where did when you had your your you know you had your children and kind of two batches Where Where were you living again when you when you had the you know after the 12 years between your your second

Unknown Speaker 47:40
i and Harvey had been preparing for the shoot was nearby was Western Lake and I'm tracking them to report my dogs but they ended up in the hospital it was the old hospital

Unknown Speaker 47:54
Oh yeah. Oh four I belong to a crap

Unknown Speaker 48:03
across and this is one of the things in solution for resale. I don't bring them they gladly while I'm trying to bring them together as a roadmap. Oh yeah. Finish them off one thing you can't slide

Unknown Speaker 48:31
with the LED strips of cloth all those things I used to put them in the hall I had things the last two years have enough me to cheer

Unknown Speaker 48:45
Yeah Did you when your children were small because you didn't find time to do crowded ladders so we did you did you make most of their clothes so yes,

Unknown Speaker 48:53
I did and I did a lot of knitting crocheting

Unknown Speaker 48:59
Where would you get your your would you use wool from

Unknown Speaker 49:02
polios band to generate more

Unknown Speaker 49:06
would you you wouldn't buy it I know the records have been selling well but I

Unknown Speaker 49:09
don't know I've never done very much with the whole respond except for get some of that up and I have done that I had a big wreck. So last summer. So square with Motley homespun wall with the Florida sign on. I only have one rock on the place I took a big break in me up to my person's place basic, simple, but three by four inches that I've made a couple of years ago I had made the roll all the other three big grants. Fred kept telling me he'd like a quilt but I can't see myself tearing down the quilt. I used to make borked our wool quilt that I've never done the kind where you do them all in design. I have a friend that leads with a desktop. It's beautiful ragdoll by hand beautiful thing. So I persuaded him, maybe he'd better have arrived. He wanted to run with a power saw on tools and things. He loves cars. So some way with the grid power saw an axe, and a wedge, and gloves, an ear muffs took it up to me, he was delighted.

Unknown Speaker 50:30
Now, I know something I wanted to ask you about. This is just about your family when you know when your family was small. I had a couple more questions to ask you. One of them. Did you? Did you always just live except when you you know, a couple of times you went and lived with your husband's family? And then with your sister? Did you ever do anything like have borders or anything like that?

Unknown Speaker 50:55
We had, we never took in borders. But my husband had a partner that helped to cut wood. And he stayed with us. I guess the first couple of years married. And from time to time I'd have a young brother in law or somebody stay

Unknown Speaker 51:12
with they come in work and help around the house help

Unknown Speaker 51:14
around the place. And then they'd go to school work. Or if they were helping cut, would they come down? Sometimes they were just there for lunch. They come in at lunch and have lunch with us. But we never really had borders. So they

Unknown Speaker 51:29
didn't pay room and board or anything. It was just an exchange kind

Unknown Speaker 51:32
of can only ever have borders.

Unknown Speaker 51:35
And I also want to ask you when you were you know, when your family was young, and I know that was sort of two different times. What did you used to do for recreation? You know, what did you used to do for fun. So back in the 30s and 40s.

Unknown Speaker 51:48
We went on picnics to the beach. And when my older children were small, we often would just take a lunch and climb up the hill and go somewhere or we take lunch and go bury sometimes go fishing. I stood by the lakes from March on to nearly fall was taking my older children fishing because they couldn't go by themselves the way the lakes are. And there were a lot of things knocking back. We weren't all fun, but they took up a lot of time and you did. And we used to go swimming quite a lot. Because I had to I taught them to swim. I've gotten so many leaves to go to the lake sometimes to the saltwater. Sometimes we go to full freedom to have lunch down on the cheap. Go to Jack what they call Jackson's beaches. It's not that not to crash for free, but they got by the other man named Captain Drummond to be Jackson's beach. House was there and was owned by Jackson. Oh, they lived there for a long time. As far as I know, Mr. Drummer never own that piece. It's bad for her Grumman park now. And it certainly didn't know me at all anyway. But it don't matter. It's drunk now. But I still find myself calling the Jetsons

Unknown Speaker 53:05
Would you hold family call? Would your husband go to another world He

Unknown Speaker 53:08
didn't go to very many picnics. He always claimed he was too busy and too much work to do. But the rest of the family would go Solana and anniversaries and things after my son married, he married fairly young and they would go take their children return for the beach, have a picnic supper. You sort of made your own good times. And then I would have pointed that time they used to have or were dances or game dances and leaves deaf card party found. Sometimes in Halloween parties, your Christmas party, always there were Christmas concerts in North years. Where would they be in different schools or the halls for the different schools. Sometimes you've got a half a dozen of them, one after the other. And they'd be the cartoons and then a dance, separate dance. Usually even in the OP reports. The first year I came here to work, they had a contract out there was a dance. School. They put on some good contracts. And then after the they had the first time they started putting the contracts on the hall. But there was a series of fires in the halls were destroyed by fire and both have to be replaced. And nobody knew with a ticket and let's be honest, nobody ever knew any more about it. What really did happen. So they were rebuilt. Yes. I think that seems to me the perfect one that burned toys through the years. The first one and that would be the point where it wasn't very many years afterwards built in the brain and then they built another one down close to the school. They built that about 53 years ago. There were a lot more than that because it was before she was born who have watched them domain after the crash two years across the school center

Unknown Speaker 55:09
who rebuilt that?

Unknown Speaker 55:11
Well, Alfred buckle does a lot of it. Leon King did a lot. It was mostly they prevent people in the labor agnostic volunteer labor and some of them put in hours for being thrown down and dirty. Alfred Rocco lives where the ruckle family lives down. He was an older brother. I think he was actually a half brother, but he was homeless. And he did a lot of the same issue on the floor. The young king, fear elapsed. It's funny. There was a lot of volunteer labor, that sports technology laborers, right, I know they've up anybody.

Unknown Speaker 55:50
What about the word? Do you know where to remember where that came from?

Unknown Speaker 55:54
Well, a lot of it came from down at Cushing called there'd been a big mill down there. And how was it done that before I came to the island, they were gradually dismantled. And that's where they got a lot of the lumber that went into. It was hauled up to Chico.

Unknown Speaker 56:09
So a Christian Caldwell wasn't really going while you were know.

Unknown Speaker 56:13
Before I came to the island, it was closed down quite a while before I came. But my husband had worked there to talk about it. What did he do that burden?

Unknown Speaker 56:22
What did your husband do?

Unknown Speaker 56:24
Just worked in the mill? I don't know exactly what he did do. As before my time. Yeah. The last few years is his mind got more clouded, he would remember things that happened long before I knew him. I heard more in the last year or two before he died. And I had heard about it early days, all years. And I knew because the things that had happened in the past are so much good visit you can present

Unknown Speaker 56:52
sometimes happens

Unknown Speaker 56:54
quite often. Well, that's good.

Unknown Speaker 57:00
Yes, you found out things you.

Unknown Speaker 57:04
I think the problem trying to get things that happen on Saltspring. It's finding people that are old enough to really know that minds are still clear enough to remember.

Unknown Speaker 57:13
That's exactly the problem. Some of the people there's my sister in law, Medicare,

Unknown Speaker 57:17
she's in Greenwich now achieved had the most marvelous for him now who her me is really bad. She can't remember things. And she used to be right up on dates and everything. She could tell you all sorts of things. I don't know how Chester Ruggles would be he's got a lot of the old pictures in the family. Things that happened way back when. But what whether he should be remember, he's about 65.

Unknown Speaker 57:48
Yeah, but you're right. That's always the

Unknown Speaker 57:52
that's always the problem.

Unknown Speaker 57:54
A lot of the things we hear we hear from the children, you know, who are a parent,

Unknown Speaker 57:59
that's why it's a good idea to get a lot of different stories, because everybody remembers things differently. And I find that a lot of the things they put in the paper historical things that have happened since I came here. They're not really, as I remember them. A lot of them are different. So I think it must be the same

Unknown Speaker 58:21
thing. So I think everybody has a little different, different perspective. But sometimes people just remember things that don't happen.

Unknown Speaker 58:29
don't happen to them. They think that it has that, that it hasn't.

Unknown Speaker 58:33
I know my husband laughed while hallucinations. He would tell you things that never were never did happen. And he just sounded so real. Everybody thought that it was true. He told me what to cost. Don't Don't don't leave a point on looking or stoning Western Lake and his alcohol, you can go I've done most of the work on it. And it was just greater detail. It never did happen. And it was such a

Unknown Speaker 59:02
no wonder if he was thinking of something else.

Unknown Speaker 59:05
I don't know. But the last year so he did love that. He put it had two strokes, heart attacks. To diabeetus was a bit of everything. Did you

Unknown Speaker 59:20
have anything else you wanted to tell me about life on the island or anything that you think would be?

Unknown Speaker 59:26
I can't think of anything offhand. Because to me, I was often on the outside looking in, things happen. I got to be a fairly keen observer. But there's a lot of things I wasn't personally involved in. Before but on your

Unknown Speaker 59:46
career. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 59:48
I guess. Do you think because you came here like from off Island? Did that

Unknown Speaker 59:54
the first few years I always tend to feel that you would have to be here at least for two years before you be considered a lot. Yeah, I finally made that. But even so not hearing anything makes such a difference. There you observe things, you take it along things. And you but you have to depend on seeing for a lot of the knowledge you give things. You don't have the words to back them up.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:24
Yeah. Well

Unknown Speaker 1:00:28
thank you very much. Very,

Unknown Speaker 1:00:30
very much good.