And I can remember the one oh- the one kid, he was a bit of a devil. Still is (laughs). ... I-mean he's out west now but ah we had a school reunion um last year and ah he was down ah I don't think he's changed that much and he's about seventy-six now or seventy-seven ...

... I remember them saying something about that my grandfather had had a brother out west out in- in ah ports of the prairies so when we were coming home ah from the west one trip we s-- camped at ports of the prairies so I went and looked it up on the phonebook and found two that their name was Walt and found them ...

And, now I s-- I think "Oh, how I wish I could talk to him now," you-know? Yeah. 'Cause he was all over the country working, Toronto and out west. ... He'd done carpenter work and then he and his mother run a- a hotel. Interviewer: Do you remember the name of the place out west? ... Now, how did he get- get out west? That's interesting.

So, then in the fall they had something called like a harvest excursion, and they had that going for quite a few years and there'd be- and again there was a real shortage of labour then too out west for the farms. And then the government would pay your way out, and you needed ten dollars to get back.

So his dad was a member of parliament, for- for out west, and a riding out west.

Interviewer: So then how did you end up as a farmer then, remember that story? You were saying you didn't want to be a farmer. Speaker: Oh well, yeah well I went out west that fall of nineteen-forty-five on the harvest excursion. And I- and for this day I don't know why. But I saw some different ways of doing things out there and ah- well I should tell you one funny story.

Actually my um- our second son went to school at Laurentian and then he was working for Neilson-Cadbury in the summer. And he went to an interview in Toronto and this lady persuaded him look for more- more opportunity out west that he should go out west.

She set out- she set at their wedding said "I went to Toronto and persuaded this nice young man to come out west and then- then I introduced him to my daughter and now he's my son-in-law (laughs)." ... So that was kind of cute.

still- he still in- working in sales so he has sales meetings in Toronto once in a while so when he has those meetings, he'll maybe fly in if his meetings start Monday, he'll fly in Saturday. Interviewer 2: Yeah. Speaker 37: Have Saturday and Sunday for a visit with everybody and back out west. So, it's nice to go out- I like- I go out every summer and have a visit. They have two children, so it's nice to go and see them and see his wife and-everybody and- Interviewer 2: (inc) Speaker 37: Yes, yeah yeah. Last year I flew in on moving day

... but farming kind of wasn't the thing that he really liked to do so he drove cattle and so on and so then he- and ah, then one day he was in Winnipeg, and ah, he met another fellow there who was William-McKenzie, who built the railroads out west and down east and all over. ... And cross Canada.

And Willy says, "Well, I'm glad to see you Pat and Pat says, "What are you doing here, Willy?" And Willy says, "Well, I'm d-- I'm going to build a railroad out west." And Willy says- or Pat says, "Well, that's a good idea, you-know, we really need the railroad and so on. It would be better to get around than the way we're doing it now."

So we went down east as a matter of fact and he got meat for the- the men down there. And he got paid for it of course and then he started out west and he ah, started ah, cutting up meat and g-- giving it to the workers and then ah, he got as far as Calgary and um, he really liked Calgary. And then he- a fair bit of money accumulated, at that time he started buying land.

... it was a huge big room and they put different families at all the tables so that you kind of, you-know, because- ... Ah, because some of them live out west and we- Lance knows all of f-- his first cousins but then their families i-- it's- and my family, our families don't- you-know, like it's- there was a lot of- what, two-hundred-and-eighty-four, that's a lot of people. (Laughs)

And uncle Jim was- got pneumonia or something going out west, they used to- the men used to go out west to do the f-- to the harvest and uncle Johnny was out there out west one time doing the harvesting; he got pneumonia and they sent him back, him back in a train too. And ah, he's buried in the Stone-Church-Cemetery in Beaverton.

He had farmed all his life. He'd spent some years out west farming in his younger years and ah, my mother she had ah, worked in Toronto for a number of years as a domestic help until they were married and then ah, as I say they moved to Beaverton at that point.

We're thinking of actually trying to get everybody together again. There's a lot that live out west now though, so- ... That would be a big undertaking to get everybody together again.

Yeah, we got married in eighty-two, went back out West, and then in eighty-three we got married.

And at that point we decided, then, we would move out West. Yup, we just- we said let's- let's move out West. So we did. My husband was refrigeration mechanic. There was a very large demand for his type of work there, and so we moved. He was able to get a job almost immediately.

... we ah took two weeks off every summer and we went travelling, 'cause my parents had done that as well. My dad got a trailer and then after that he got ah like a bigger camper, and we went to the east coast a number of times and out west.

Yeah, when I first got married we were out west and the economy tanked out there and I couldn't get a teaching job, and it was just- I was away from family and I had had my first child ...