As an adult and looking back on this incident I can certainly understand how my mother must have felt. What kind of child is this who sees something before it is actually here.

The next incident was when I was five years and eight months old. My dearest cousin Shirley had come with my aunty Alma (her mother of course) to spend the summer months with our family as they had done for several years in a row. We were only four months apart in our ages. Shirley was to turn six in September while I would turn six on the 31st of December. What a wonderful fun filled summer it was. Then came the dreaded day when Shirley would have to return home by train to Prince Albert with the promise to return for Christmas holidays. I felt fine about all of it until Shirley and aunty Alma got into a taxi which would take them to the train station. My mother and I were standing on our front porch waving good-bye when Shirley pressed her smiling face up against the taxi window. Like a knife to my heart I realized that I would never see her again and so I started to scream to my mother don’t let her go cause I will never see her again. My mother scolded me and told me to stop acting like a baby and go to my room. Of course you will see her again when Christmas holidays arrive. I continued to cry and insist that I would not see her again. Finally in desperation as the taxi drove away my mother smacked by bottom and sent me to my room where I lay on my bed and sobbed for hours.

Well, while on route by train to Prince Albert, Shirley became quite ill. By the time they arrived home and got her to a hospital, she died of black diphtheria and double pneumonia. The morning she died which was somewhere in the neighbourhood of five a.m. my sisters Alice and Lorna, my brother Roland who was seventeen months older than me, and myself all shared one very large bedroom which had what would later be referred to as a picture window. We were all awakened by a loud banging noise on said window. Alice jumped up and ran to get our mom and dad. The moment my mother entered the room she raised the blind on the window and a very large black bird was flying into the window. It would hit the window, retreat and then return to hit the window once again. I can still see and hear my mother as she raised her hands to her face and cried oh my God someone has just died. Within a few hours a telegram arrived announcing Shirleys death. I remember thinking to myself, I tried to tell you not to let her go home. Why didn’t you listen to me. They brought the body back to Winnipeg in a sealed cedar lined coffin. Due to the nature of the illness that claimed her life, the coffin had to be sealed.

The funeral was heartbreaking. In those days parents took all their children to every family funeral and so there I stood amidst my brothers, sisters, and cousins as we watched my aunty Alma throw herself across the coffin as they were lowering and screaming my baby, my baby. I think my heart broke that day into a million pieces. A cousin of ours whose name was Delores was the only one of us children not crying. My oldest sister Alice asked her why aren’t you crying Delores. She replied very matter of fact like why should I cry I will see her shortly. Delores died three weeks later of encephalitis.

Then you asked me what it was like in my home when I was just a young girl. How did grandma and grandpa heat our home?, you asked. We had two different types of stoves in our home. My dad put one of the stoves up in the living room in the winter. It was called a Booker furnace. It was your typical pot-bellied little furnace that had the pipes going up through the ceiling, and into one of the upstairs bedrooms and then out through the chimney. At night, my Dad would stoke the furnace until it was unbelievably hot in the house, then my Mother would say to us, "Sneak upstairs and open the bathroom window." So one of us would open the window, and five minutes later, my Dad would yell, "Who opened the bathroom window?", and we'd all say, "Nobody, it wasn't me, Dad!" Then the stove would burn out in the middle of the night, and when it was -30 outside, the house would begin to cool down within an hour, to a very cold temperature. We had many blankets to keep us warm during those nights.

By the time my Dad woke at 6:00 am, he'd start the fire again in the Booker furnace, and one in the kitchen stove. My younger sister, Carol, and I, wore navy blue bloomers and black stockings to school with our tunics and white blouses. When it was really cold at night, we tried to sneak the bloomers and stockings on before bed so that when we woke up in the morning, we wouldn't have to step on a freezing cold floor. But before we'd get to sleep, my Mom would check on us first; she'd toss the covers back, check our feet and see the stockings sticking our from our pajama bottoms, and order us to, "Get those off immediately, you cannot sleep in your bloomers." We would respond, "But we don't like stepping on the cold floor with our bare feet in the morning", and she'd say, "You're not babies, stop crying and just do it", and sometimes she'd give us a story about her growing up on the farm, and how much harder it was then, and how much easier life was now.

In the kitchen was a large stove with a warming oven at the top. The stove itself had several rounds on the top which one could open to place the wood in. These were located to the left side of the stove. On the extreme right side of the stove was a reservoir which my parents would keep filled with water. This water would then become hot whenever the stove was lit and you had a good fire burning. There was the oven in the centre of the stove. It had a thermometer on the front and my mother would regulate the heat whenever she was baking bread, cookies, cakes, pies, or cooking meat such as a roast, chicken, turkey, etc. Looking back, it amazes me how she managed to keep the fire in the stove at the right temperature, so as not to overcook or over bake anything.

We didn't have a hot water tap in our home so we were always grateful to have the hot water in the reservoir for washing ourselves before bedtime and then again in the morning. We did not have the luxury of a bathtub or shower. We had to bathe in a huge galvanized tub which my dad would place in the downstairs bedroom which was located just off the kitchen. My father would fill a large copper double boiler on the top of the stove. I am not too sure just how many gallons of water it held, but it was enough to fill the tub in the bedroom where we could bathe in privacy. You were always happy if it was your turn to be first in the tub. Being that we were a large family, one tub full of water had to do for three of us, one after another. We took turns being first. Then my father had the job of emptying the tub and then refilling it again with more hot water for the next set of children.

This was a common practice among those of us who were considered the poor in the community. However, although we were truly poor as far as dollars and cents go, were very rich in so many other areas. My mother kept her six children spotless, our home was always immaculately clean, and because she was so gifted, she sewed most of our clothes. I lie in bed even now and sometimes can almost hear her treadle sewing machine working into the late hours of the night. When we awoke in the morning, there would be a new coat for one of us that mom had made from an old coat someone had given her. She would get these coats, take a razor blade and invite one of us to hold the coat at one end while she carefully ripped the seams open with her trusty razor blade. Then she would take a piece of white chalk, have us stand in front of her while she measured and marked just where she knew she would have to cut and sew. Voila! A masterpiece awaited one of us by morning. My mother was a real genius. We were truly blessed.

I will also post any geneaological documentation made available to me by members of either side of my family.