Interviewer: Yeah, something about your house being like a bathhouse or-something. Speaker: No. Within- in the street here, this- this p-- this street or what I call Slab-Town, there was the quarantine house. Interviewer: Okay. Interviewer 2: (inc)

Speaker: Say if you- if you think about it today, um, but- say if a guy got mumps, or something that was contagious, in a mining camp, what were you going to do with them? You-know, you had to keep them away from- you couldn't leave them in a say, ah, a bunkhouse- Interviewer: Mm. Speaker: Where there's the men who worked a-- in the mine and-stuff, eh? So they had what they called a quarantine house. I don't know exactly where it was, but I read about it and it was here in this- this place they called Slab-Town and if somebody was quarantined like if- I don't know if- you- you just don't have that experience of quarantine-

Speaker: ... were quarantined and polio was contagious and they took a li-- ah, th-- a casket in the house and- and put a child in the casket, took him to the grave yard and buried him. It was a t-- it was terrible, terrible thing eh? That's what I meant by quarantine house, that what I was telling Rob, eh? Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: And ah, and I can remember w-- at that time there was a lot of mumps, eh? It's contagious too, eh? So when you had been diagnosed 'cause when you- you look- you started to look like a chipmunk, eh?

And we had ours- ours- well it's true, and ah he had a Quebec heater heating the store wasn't um furnace or-anything in those days. It was- everything more-or-less was heated by stoves or coal oil, or it was Quebec heater. And they used to sit around listen to the hockey game.

Speaker: Well, the house was so cold that we used to wrap ourselves in- in, ah, a blanket around th-- the Quebec heater. Interviewer: Wow. Speaker: And the Quebec heater, we used to l-- load wood in from the top and ah, it used to go full blast and, ah and ah, the hea-- and if- if you dropped the blanket or if you let the fire go out in the Quebec heater then it got real cold in the house.

There was the- we had what they called a Quebec heater, they were supposed to be really good stoves. They were- they stood up high but they were round.

Mother used to- ah, fix up, or be patching up quilts, she called, putting a quilt together, certain pattern. She'd work late at night, sewing by hand. And ah then they'd have their quilting-bee, and that was a kind of a little get-together.

Speaker: No I-guess I didn't quilt this one. ... Interviewer: Somebody else quilted it? Interviewer 2: Yeah. She did all the embroidery and put it together. Speaker: And y-- you had to ha-- we had a quilting-bee on it.

Interviewer: What- how did the quilting-bee work? Speaker: Well when we had quilting-bees, there used to be about three on each side. Like- and they t-- then they'd roll, and then go along, and roll another row, and then another row, until we come to the middle, and then i-- it was finished.

And all these women knitted sweaters and knitted scarves and knitted socks and- just constant click, click, click, click, you guess-- oh yeah, and, ah, blankets, ah, they- they always had, ah quilting bee, but I don't think they sent quilts to the army, but you couldn't buy a blanket, so I guess it was just for local use, I-don't-know. And then you see, everything was rationed, eh? Gasoline, all-that-stuff.

Speaker 2: Quilts. Interviewer 1: Yeah. Speaker: That was another thing. They had ah- ladies had quilting bees every winter. Interviewer: Yeah. Okay. And- and you were talking about going into the store to buy things. Now folks I think made a lot of their own clothes. Speaker: Yes.

And also, in the- in the winter-time, well she didn't relax all that much. Because I remember they also had what they call quilting bees. In the wintertime, that's all the women- they all get together, and they would quilt. Ev-- you-know, in the wintertime. And it'd take up the- the dining room- t-- the dining room was all- you-know, the frame for the quilt was put on there, and they would quilt, and quilt, and quilt, and quilt.

But they keep their tradition and that 's good. And when- what annoys me is the people who come here and want to change things. Now, we invited them to the- come to this country. Well don 't start trying to get your riots and things going you- know. 'Cause there are professional riot- rabble-rousers.

Four days later, I was like, "I was supposed to do something. What was it?" and it took me a while to rack my brain. And she 's really nice. And she was making an exception to talk to me.

Well, I- I can tell you some things that I- I was trying to rack my brain on things that I could really remember about it- being a- a kid over there and ah- the one was the- and I must have been very very small but when the circus used to come to town...

Yeah cars. Oh yeah. Mm-mm. My brother had a car. And um, started to school when I was seven 'cause they thought I was- no I think it was eight because they decided I was too little to go alone. And then we (inc) the radial that ran from Toronto to the other side of Brampton, stop went through our property so they walked me up to the station. I got on the radial and then got off at the school.

Yes, ah, the s-- ah, ah, quite a few- if you go into- up into Darling, today you'll get farms where there's no rail fences hardly at all. They're all built with just stone dykes. (laughs)

Interviewer: You said rail fences. Did- would you use that name for any fence that's made out of- of wood? Speaker: Ah, well, out of wood, yes, or- that was, ah, that was- they used rail- rail fences or a log fence before we ever got wire. Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: Yeah. Interviewer 1: Um- Speaker: Ah, generally cedar. Cedar rail.

Interviewer: What's the difference between a rail fence and a log fence? Speaker: Well, the- the log is the- is just the- the whole tree put down and they just took and put them up, ah- it took, ah, three logs to make a- a row, one on top of the other and- Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: Crosses between them.

Speaker: Some of those logs, you-know, were, ah- were maybe twenty feet long for a panel- Interviewer: Uh-huh. Speaker: Type-of-thing. Interviewer: Are they the ones they put in a zig-zag? Speaker: No. No, those- Interviewer: That's- Speaker: That was rail. Rail fences that- that- Interviewer: Even when it was in a zig-zag shape? Speaker: Yes, that was all rails. Interviewer: I see.