And that's wagon. It's up in the shed and that cutter is up there. Interviewer: That cutter is beautiful.

'Cause I remember going to church with a horse and cutter and the buffalo were all going to- heated brick at our feet.

And they lived way out in the middle of the country too, so she had to, when she finished her high-schooling, she had a horse and a cutter to take her into Ottawa to go to s-- Interviewer: To Teacher's-College. Speaker: T-- t-- to Teacher's-College.

But the- the woman that owns the house on- in a cutter, and horse and cutter.

Speaker: But I come home in the horse and the cutter up Bennett's-Lake. Into the- onto the eleventh-line not far from home down below.

Saturday night we'd come to Maberly with horse-and-cutter. Four or five of us in the cutter. Be there for eight-o'clock, skate 'til nine or half past and go down to the Orange-Hall and dance 'til midnight. Get in the cutter all w-- s-- sweaty and wet.

Many a time our road wasn't ah open to- for a week even the mail driver with the horse-and-cutter were up on the embankment, that's where you were until they- took about a week to open the roads.

Yeah, it was, ah- oh, I remember one time, it was after they had, ah, switched the schools around and, um, my older brother- it was in the wintertime and he got the horse and cutter out. We had a cutter and he had a horse and he took the cutter and my younger sister and we went to school in the horse and cutter. And it was just something for fun, it was just- yeah, it was- it was really neat.

Speaker: Well I- I- I left Beaverton before- if you're looking for history, um, you want to interview very many people who went to church in a horse and cutter. Interviewer: What's that? Speaker: You don't know what a cutter is? Interviewer: No I don't know what a cutter is. Speaker: A cutter is ah, a winter conveyance, that ah, horse pulls. Got runners on it. Interviewer: Oh like a sleigh. Speaker: Yeah, like- like sleigh. O-- only it's got a- a seat for two people and ah, as I mentioned my- my mother ah in ah, church, you didn't miss church and ah, we would ah- we would often be snowed in-

Interviewer: He'd make house calls, would he? Speaker: Yeah. Horse and cutter in the wintertime. Interviewer: Really? Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Interviewer: Isn't that- Speaker: You'd meet him out at the road because our road- we were back far met off the other road and you'd have to- you'd met there with the sleighs or-something, bring him in and take him back out and then way he go. Interviewer: Wow. Speaker: Of course if you had the horse cutter it was okay but sometimes it's- Interviewer: Yes. Yeah. Speaker: We he had the car in later years.

Interviewer: So people would come to his house to pick up the mail? Speaker: He delivered it with the horse and cutter, or the horse and buggy.

Because that was of course a way to bring fishing to town so he would take a horse and a cutter out to the- out to the fish rounds and bring the fish back into town by the groceries, take them back out of the fisherman because at times the fisherman would- would stay out on Lake-Simcoe for a month.

Speaker: Many- many weeks in the wintertime a car never was on the road at all. Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: S-- s-- sleighs and cutters.

And later on in the depression, when I was old enough to be aware and remember these things he hired two men for a dollar a day and they would back to our place with a horse and cutter and in the wintertime, and um they worked down in the bush cutting cedar posts with a swede-saw.

Mm-hm but I mean again, we used to have work horses, we used to have the old cutters where we'd harness them up and sleigh ride in the winter with them.

And most of the time he was so tired that he'd fall asleep in about two minutes, and he said he would just get in the- the cutter and he'd fall asleep and wake up just outside the door, the horse'd take him right home.

Speaker: She works for the city of London in the finance department of a set of group homes. Interviewer: Mm-hm, mm-hm. Speaker: She's dab w-- (laughs) dab at numbers. She's very good with numbers. She gets that from her father, not me.

Speaker: I- I came across- I don't know where I put it. I came across my dance card when I wrote about it in here at the school dances. Interviewer: What's a dance card. Tell us abut that. What- what is that? Speaker: Oh you had a dance card. These dances that- in the high-school- Interviewer: Yeah yeah. Speaker: And ah- and there w-- I don't know where I put that thing. There were twelve dances. Yeah, I think there was twelve or sixteen different ones. They were numbered and- and if you wanted to dance with me, then you put your name-

Well, we got loads of logs from as far away as Millbridge down here. Because I would saw anytime (…) anytime of the year, and they’d bring it in right in the middle of summer. The old water wheels were old-fashioned but I got along with them for four or five years, and in nineteen-twenty-seven I put in a new type of water wheels. They gave dandy power and were easy on water.

And then I had a- a line stretched across uh to represent the- the different uh um tracks th-- through the snow and the sleigh would go on and then I said, I went to all my grade eight classes and I said "I want somebody that can draw me a life-size horse" and uh Don-Smythe at that time said "I think I can do one that would be acceptable." I said "you're the man". So he drew the horse and he did, it was a dandy horse.