Speaker: I’m mo-- I live up here at this end of town now. Well sure enough, she's right across the street from me again (laughs). Interviewer: Oh my God, wow! Speaker: I thought, "Holy shoot, what are you doing, following me? Or am I following you?" (Laughs). Interviewer: (Laughs) Speaker: Yeah, so she had boughten a house up here and it's a really, really nice community where we are. It's nice and quiet and people are great, yeah.

Before you were ready to butcher them, you on-- you- you knew roughly when you were going to do it right? So he'd corn them too. And they were- you wouldn't even believe the difference between a chicken that you grow and a boughten one. I had people come clean from Toronto up here. They buy fifteen to twenty of them chickens off me. And they'd beg you for next year for another one.

Yeah on the railway tracks. And you'd have to- you could walk across the things and Rena and I would say to Karol "No we're not going to do it, we're not going to do it." Yes we do- we did.

So we could go on Friday's and we could spend this money on whatever we wanted that our teacher had boughten for the class- Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: And we got this money from doing like, well on tests I think, like um- and maybe on how we participated with each other, working together- Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: I d-- I'm not sure but we got this money-

But, I mean, my- my sister would cook and then we'd have all these great yummy things and we- we'd be playing and maybe we- tie-dyeing something or boutiquing or-whatever but we never- I never felt like the little girl that my sister didn't want around. You-know, my sister was always good to me. We got along really well. There were certain rules in the house.

We had a lot of concerts and ah box socials and dances and ah they were just a joy to be with, yeah.

I said to Dad, "Do you think if I-" well, Melanie wanted to know if I'd bring a box and go to the box social. I said, "Is it alright dad if I could go up-" 'Course Dad stayed overnight to help Dale do what he had to do, so (laughs) yes, I got going up, so we made a box and-that.

Speaker: And they had box-socials. Interviewer: Yeah, and what was the kind of socials? Box- Speaker: Box-socials. Interviewer: Oh yes, I hear of the box-socials.

I used to hull the lumber to Toronto when I drove a truck. Well to start with, you'd load the lumber on the ro-- railroad car eh? And the boxcar but then when they got these big trucks the trucks got to be more economical than the railroads.

Put it in the house in the wintertime. And ah that was our boxcar. And they had w-- things that went into them (inc) boards that went up to the side of it and we had to get up there and get in the boxcar and this kind-of crazy stuff.

And they cord-wood was through to Haliburton and then in Haliburton there, he had an endless chain going out of the buc-- going out of the lake and that wet cord would do to come up and then you'd pile- pile it in the boxcar.

Speaker: Well we'd put- I- he'd be- we'd put it on a boxcar. Interviewer: Oh yeah? Speaker: We had a railway. The I-B-and-O.

I was carrying gyprocks same as a man by the time I was twelve-years-old. Unloading boxcars, so hot you couldn't hardly breathe, you'd put about two or three planks out, about two-feet from the roof and be sweating buckets. You'd have to come to the door and get real air 'cause it was so hot and so thin in the- in the boxcar, you get a couple breaths of air and back in you go and get a few more planks so you got a whole opened big enough that you could breathe proper.

Speaker: After we been there for a while and ah we had a- a choice I guess ah to walk or ride on a box- in a boxcar. So (laughs) we said we'd sooner go in a boxcar. Interviwer: Mm-hm. Speaker: And some ones that didn't like that idea ah too well knew that a lot of the Allied planes, the Americans especially, they were f-- flew Mustangs, which were long range fire planes. Interviewer: Okay. Speaker: And they were in- they were in strifing all the trains that they saw. Interviewer: Oh. Oh yeah. Speaker: Yeah, so you're taking a chance but the Germans, they don't like to be strifed anymore than we did so they h-- they had ah P-O-W's painted in big white letters on the side of the boxcars.

Cause I remember when daddy used to cull pulp- pulp and he put it in a boxcar so he had a train coming to it.

And that's- and then- it would- it'd come up a chute, and then my brother and I were in the boxcar, and we would pile the- pile the lumber in the boxcar. And we used to put thirty-six-thousand feet of lumber in that boxcar. Started from the bottom, and build a platform, and- <3> Mm-hm. <013> And, ah, that would take- phew, about a- a day, to pile a- one boxcar. <3> Really? <013> Yeah, they had railway tracks all the way down to- the- all the way down to the lakeshore down there. And, ah, they had one boxcar after another boxcar.

Well when Lewis helped down there when- when the first- yeah, they used um- they would drill a hole in the ah maple tree. Now, they didn't have the electric drills, they had a hand drill. Yeah brace-and-bit. And a spile would be tapped in and then a- a pale hung on it. And they went around with um a hor-- a big drums on a horse was on a- sleigh behind the horse-

Interviewer: Do you remember making maple syrup? Speaker: Oh I remember that very well because it- and it was quite a task. We tapped something like three-hundred trees which was huge for the times because my dad and a hired man tapped all those trees by hand with a brace-and-bit and you put the spile in- Interviewer: Did you help them? Speaker: What- what my brother and I were d-- I have a brother th-- had a brother that was a- a year and a half younger, we would ah, drive the team of horses.

Interviewer: Oh yeah. By the way, what do you call these things? Speaker: Pair of braces. Interviewer: Oh. You don't see those very much now. Speaker: I like a brace. Always did.

Interviewer: Yeah. Are- are they hard to get now? Speaker: I haven't bought I-don't-know-when. I, ah- James-Pinkman, ah, used to give me a, ah- sometimes a good pair of braces. They don't bother putting them on in the- in the casket, eh? Take them off just at the end of the road, for to get the rest of the things