Speaker: But they closed down though before- ... And they made it into a motel. ... And there was nice big restaurant. And ah, but then that burnt down. And they're building ah, D-V-A buildings there now. Interviewer 2: What's D-V-A? Speaker: Um, for the ah, soldiers. You-know- Interviewer: Oh oh. ... Oh ah, Veteran's-Affairs. Speaker: Mm-hm. Veteran's-Affairs, yeah.

Speaker: And I know the government's building that new, ah- I-guess ah, what's it- not the foreign-affairs building- Interviewer: Oh D-V-A? Speaker: D-V-A, sorry I forgot the name, D-V-A. So they're investing another contract, ah, another building I-guess too in Kirkland-Lake. But there's lots of people, ah, that- they are always going to be working in forestry, in natural-resources besides mining.

Speaker: Ah anyways, so they- they have a sawmill now and um yeah. So mining, sawmill, that's about hm where most of the jobs are, or D-V-A. I swear, if you're not in mining, you work at D-V-A. Interviewer 3: What's D-V-A? Speaker: It's a Department-of-Veterans-Affairs. Interviewer 3: Oh. Speaker: Or wait I think it's called V-A-C now, Veterans-Affairs-Canada for like the war and-stuff.

Now also, there was ah an easement almost directly across the street from my mom and dad's which was a strip of land that nobody owned and we would use that to go down and go swimming, but ah there was no real beach there and you couldn't go there with your friends so you were better off going to the beach and meeting everybody.

And ah the- the water lines were- the big water lines were under his basement floor, you-see? So we had a- a easement, what they call a easement that was granted way way back before the war- before this guy even owned it.

Ah, at the time they got the easement for the highway, they took that strip.

Speaker: The only damage we did was the- the "edgie wedgie" creates a little bump on the top- Interviewer: What do you mean? Speaker: So the "edgie wedgie" just a little, ah, piece of rubber that clamps down the tip of the skis, and so when they're learning they- it keeps their skis together.

We had no income, nothing and so it was very scary for a few months until all of a sudden like a pile of money came in from you-know my freelance work and the E-I backdated from like you-know three months and so- and in between that I 'd done freelance work and I 'd done um lots of work on me because I 'm a constant- I found out I had A-D-D when I was twenty-three and it 's something

Speaker: No ah- I worked at Tim-Hortons. ... And then I did an internship at Veteran's-Affairs. ... And then I- I was on E-I for eight months (laughs).

... I was almost eighty-five hours of my percentage for my hours to school but I hadn't got called away to school yet and there was some other little drama that happened and ah basically I was let go from there and I had applied for E-I but I was like- I'm not type of guy to just sit back and- you-know-what-I-mean, especially when I have kids, I had so much motivation and so much fire inside and ah-

And then I found a job at Heath-and-Sherwood on the hill here making almost less than I would if I was on E-I but it- it's still I was working, you-know, and ah I was basically waiting to get on at the mine for (inc) school and they stopped that and added to ah (inc) and then get on for cattle. It's basically ah the best that's ever happened ...

Oh, you can't claim that. "Well why not?" Well as soon as you- as soon as I claim it, right? On the other side of the coin, you've got workman's compensation and E-I and-all-this-shit that goes with it (laughs) right? God pity the kid get hurt and what-not but thank God nothing ever happened.

Speaker: (Laughs) These two lads mated up and they ah- there was a clock. An eight-day clock sitting right close to the telephone and when she took the receiver off, you'd hear the clock going, "Tick, tick, tick, tick." Interviewer: (Laughs) Speaker: You knew she was on the line. And they said (coughs)- one lad asked the other, "You got any butter?" He said, "Yes." "Give Missus-so-and-so a pound and tell her to grease her arse and get off the line." [1:00:09.2] (Laughs) Interviewer: (Laughs) Did she put the phone down? Speaker: (Laughs) I don't know, I wasn't involved at the time. Speaker 2: (Laughs) Interviewer: Now what in- what is an eight-day clock, Wesley? Speaker: One of those up there. Speaker 2: You wind it once a week but that one's not- Speaker: You wind it on-- once every eight days. Interviewer: Okay. Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: Put a key in it, wind- Interviewer: Wind it up.

Well, we had a eight-day clock, one that you wound up.

Yeah. I finish-- I graduated high-school just barely. Thank God the ah, the teacher's went on strike. Um, 'cause then we didn 't have to write our exams one year, or something happened where I- don-'t-know, I- that 's how I graduated. I-mean, I just barely eked by. But I, I started smo-- smoking pot like when I was sixteen and it kind-- kind-of became a habit.

So they- they were from- all of them were quite familiar with how to use land that had nothing. Sheep- ah, not the Wilks family but a lot of the settlers and- you can see that couldn't eke a living out of some of the- the, ah, rocky areas and-such. Um, so it was kind of hard times up by Lanark. Now, on the other hand the Corr family were fairly wealthy farmer bunch and they were hard, hard workers.

It was another little machine, not nearly as big as the tractor, but he went from farm to farm and they cut the corn – they didn’t cut the corn, the corn was cut in the fields and then people it in on the wagons and it was put onto this machine and it chopped it up into ensilage.

Well that's where the ensilage went from the corn and then we had what we called a storage bin next to that and well, how big would it be squared off maybe like so and filled with sand and that's where you put the carrots in the winter and you hung the cabbages.

Cause some of the commodities, eh if price of lamb goes down, well the beef will carry you through or-whatever. If you get disaster strikes if you got all pigs and y-- price of pigs goes down you're getting euchred.

People now go to the tar sands or-whatever, you-know they go somewhere to work, this is the old of my grandfather's generation. They'd go to the west and work on the- tha-- the wheat harvest. They call it going on the excursion trains. They go out there and they'd work for the summer. And ah, so that's somewhere in the west, we don't know where.