Speaker: They'd say we're from the sticks. Interviewer: The sticks? Speaker: Yeah. The sticks means you're backward, you're back from the- Interviewer: Mm, yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker: From the bush.

Speaker: And my dad did what you call custom hatching of eggs for all kinds of other farmers because they didn't want to be bothered with the time or didn't have the building and the facilities with a brooder stove and the whole kit-and-caboodle, so- Interviewer: Okay. Speaker: And dad and mother r-- raised a lot of chickens. Everything from layers to meat birds that went to turkey fair day, to went to orders at the end of the year for Christmas, New-Years, what-have-you.

Speaker: I was- I was supposed to go last year but I just couldn't go with my son and daughter-in-law and leave the other kids behind. I mean I have to- if I'm going I gotta go the works. Interviewer: Yeah, you gotta go all the way.

Well that was a- it was a big controversy- I mean that was the age of ah, you-know, Pierre-Trudeau. You know it was a bilingual, bicultural politics and it was- that was s-- ah separatism, you-know, F-L-Q, the works. And it had manifested itself in every part of- of Engla--, predominately English-Canda. Ah and at the time, (inc) I remember the time ah how controversial it was and I remember, you-know, like when dynamite showed up in the mail-box how frightened my mother was and-

Interviewer: And do you remember getting sick with chickenpox or- Speaker: Yeah, measles and- I think I had the works (laughs). Interviewer: Were they- were they really bad in those days? Speaker: Um, well now-

Speaker: And it- we never got charged until I got to about maybe fourteen fifteen and then costs escalated. But this whole area was here was a swimming p-- Interviewer: Swimming area. Speaker: Swimming pool, yeah. This is the works- Interviewer: Oh. Speaker: Department down here. Now they've got it into- they- you-know, it- it's still used as-

Well, I took his job and we worked, I worked at the gas company for twenty-seven years, working on street lighting, house lighting, cooking. That's all, there was no electricity in them days, no even not for domestic use nor lighting.

They found it would be better for me not to take any chances then so I was pensioned off, old-age pensions, it was no unemployment insurance no nothing in them days. You just took what was offered and what you got for it, you got for it. However, I must say I put in twenty-five years, not in the gas company, but in the water-works.

Well, all I got was ten dollars a week. you remember ten dollars a week. Not a month, not a day, not an hour. Of-course everything was quite cheap then. You could go and get potatoes and everything almost, you could barter your own price in them days. But, the rent, you'd have to add that on or out you go.

They were different boats, hired for the occasion and they used to take us up to the twelve o'clock point. That used to be a great picnics ground in them days. They had an old steel merry-go-round and lots of old-fashioned amusements 'cause we had always been used to where we came from everything was modern. Electric merry-go-rounds, and lights.

But I was telling you the amusing part this was they didn't know what to shut the gas off, where they could smell it and of-course he had been done before and the basement was full of cowbells and not having flashlight in them days he showed me the way to go where the meter was and there was a big flash that's all I ever saw and I didn't see that man for a week afterward.

Well we went right through and we had the same trouble there. We didn't have no flashlights in them days. Well, I said, "I better not strike a match," well anyway he lit the match and we fell over and as he got under the other place the pockets up in between the rafters had got a lot of gas and I wonder we weren't both blinded ...

One Scots-fellow answered him in French, that's how they got up, when he got up close to him he just grabbed him and chucked him over. You-know a Scots them days spoke French and still you-know, them wealthier class in Scotland speak French. It seems to be a rule over there, girls used to go over to France for to spend six months learning French.

I don't know what the reason for because when a Scotsman get old enough he strikes out for somewhere else so he's got to figure out where he's going. Either Africa, and awful lot used to go to Africa, the British colonies and them days and India. But they used to get in the civil service in Africa you-see.

He had a cold storage and he made the money in the first war. When dies they said he was worth six-and-a-half million dollars, that was a lot in them days. He died in the nineteen-thirties when I went here, shortly before I went there. And his sons you-see, they were lawyers you-know, (inc) was a farmer. But they were very long-headed people.

Interviewer: And did you have to pay your room and board out of that? Speaker: You got a house and milk and things like that. A hundred was the highest it went at the (inc)'s and we had to pay income tax out of that too you-know. Them days you-see, income tax started very early now you get about sixty dollars a week.

We went to the McCarthy-Theatre in Belleville a lot and the Belle. They were the town main theatres in Belleville. They're shut now I think you-know. We used to always go down there and watch all them shows. There was good shows put on in Belleville theatre them days.

And then the older people started to go too and they began to like it. Charlie-Chaplin came on then. Oh and the older women went too and they were, the first thing you-know they were all going. It was cheap them days. You could get, kids could get in for six cents and the older people could get in for a dime you-know. Oh it was very reasonable them days, that was a-way back you-know in olden times.

Speaker 2: If people didn't have twenty cents they had a nickel and they could buy five cigarettes anyways. Most farmers of the day chewed tobacco and a lot of factory workers. Chewing tobacco was a big- Speaker: In them days Speaker 2: Like Napoleon. Used to buy that in five-pound wooden boxes. packed all in that, sealed up in wooden cases, five pounds to a package, all in plugs of-course. I think in those days it sold for ten cents a plug you-see. Interviewer: How long would a plug last

Yeah and- when I was working at G-E, so he was on the farm and I really and truly wished I had stayed at G-E instead of quitting my job and going- helping on the farm but anyway that's the way it was them days.