14

Joyce Janes

Joyce Janes born in Cape Ray on December 14, 1942. Today at the age of sixty she is still living in her own home in Cape Ray.

Joyce's parents, Elizabeth and Walter Osmond, moved to Cape Ray when they got married. Her mother was born in Lapoile, one of Newfoundland's isolated communities on the Southwest coast. Walter was born in Port Aux Basques and worked with the Canadian National Railway for many years. While he was at work Elizabeth would stay at home to clean the house and look after the children which was expected of all women at the time. She kept the clothing clean by scrubbing each piece of clothing across a small rigged washboard with soap, in a large wooden washtub full of water. "With a big family in them times she had lots to do." Whenever water was needed for anything it was brought from a well or stream in buckets. "I don't remember much about it because I was only thirteen months old when she died," said Joyce about her mother. Joyce would also help out around the home. She would have to bring wood in for the stove at night and set the table at mealtime. Every weekend she would have to clean her room and wash her own dirty clothes. When the girls go up in the morning they had to fill the lamps, trim the wicks and clean the globes before they went to school.

As a child Joyce would play games such as pippy. "Pippy was a game where you had a short stick and a long stick. You would dig a hole in the ground, put the short stick across the hole and flick it with the long one." Skipping was also one of the things she would do to amuse herself. Joyce went to church only once a month when there was a service held in the Cape Ray church. The old church was not in the same place it is today, back then it was out near the lighthouse. She attended St. John The Evangelist School in Cape Ray until grade nine. Joyce remembers when she was in school they would go to Tom Tapp's General Store at recess time. One day on their way from the store Joyce and her friends saw an eel through the ice. So they all gathered around to see it and the ice cracked in under them. They had to go back to school cold and wet. Another one of her memories was the time she got caught smoking for the first time. Joyce, Bernice, and Alec all put their money together and got a pack of tobacco and cigarette papers. They went down behind the school to a camp they had built in the woods to have a smoke. Joyce got sick when she went back to school, the teacher thought it might have been caused by a flu or cold. When she arrived home that day she thought nobody knew about it, and she had gotten away with it. Then her sister got home and told on her for smoking that day. "I got a beating and remembered my first smoke."

During Christmas they didn't get big fancy gifts that children today strive for. In Joyce's childhood they didn't get much for Christmas but were thankful for whatever they got. When Joyce was a child for Christmas she would get a piece of ribbon or a pair of wool socks which she was very happy with. Mutton, which is sheep meat, was a very common food during Christmas time. Turkey was a very rare treat if you were able to get it, which in this case it was never ever seen. If they were lucky a wild bird would be killed for Christmas dinner. Occasionally moose meat was eaten if one was killed and brought home around that time. The most popular Christmas tradition during this time was mummering. Almost everyone on the Southwest coast went out mummering some time in their life. Mummering consisted of people dressing up in disguise so nobody knew who they were and going around from house to house dancing, eating cake, and if they were lucky getting some syrup to drink.

In Cape Ray at the time if someone got sick the nearest doctor was in Port aux Basques. Even to this day Cape Ray doesn't have it's own doctor and the people there still have to travel to Port aux Basques to see a doctor. If there was a problem that wasn't too serious they had home remedies to cure themselves. A cut would sometimes be treated with sap from a tree to stick it back together so it could heal. Joyce's grandmother made an ointment from ground ivy to put on cuts and burns. A tonic was made by boiling or steeping bark from a cherry tree.

There was a store in Cape Ray where they could buy groceries. A lot of fish was eaten at the time but it was mostly dry fish because it was the only means of preservation. Joyce raised cows, ducks, hens, and geese. She also grew her own vegetables. There were no modern machines, like tractors, everything was done manually. A horse and plow was used to till the ground. The places they couldn't get with the plow a hoe was used. In order to clear out the rocks they had to use a rake, a punch, or a shovel.

Joyce got married at the age of seventeen to her husband, Harold Janes. A minister from Port aux Basques married them because at the time there was no minister in Cape Ray. Even to this day there is no full time minister in Cape Ray church even though it is an Anglican Church. A minister still comes from Port aux Basques to hold services.

Joyce also spun her own wool. This was done by first shearing the sheep, and then washing and carding the wool came next, then it was put on the spinning wheel and spun to make yarn.

Harold worked with the Department of Transportation and Joyce worked at T. J. Hardy's fish plant for two years before she got married. While Harold was at work Joyce would stay home and do basically the same chores as her mother. She would wash clothing on a scrub board, carry water in buckets, look after the children, cook the meals, and clean the home. It was difficult doing all theses chores because there was no electricity and everything had to be done manually. There was an oil lamp to light up their homes. There was only one source of heat that came from a woodstove in the kitchen so there was no heat in the bedrooms. "The windows only hade one pain of glass. I tell you if it wasn't a pretty night I had to sweep the snow off the bed". The mornings were also very cold considering some mornings the kettle would be frozen to the top of the stove. Once a week the water was heated on the stove and a big metal pan was filled up so everyone could have a bath. Their toilet was an outhouse outside that was really cold in the winter. There was a chamber pot under the bed and a pail with a cover in the corner. Eventually she did get a Delco to run her wringer washer and a freezer. Electricity didn't make its way into the people of Cape Ray's lives until 1965. There were no telephones so their main form of communications was mail. The mail use to come up on the train to the post office, Thomas Tapp ran the post office. Telephones didn't come to Cape Ray until the eighties. The section foreman for the Canadian National Railway owned the only telephone in the community. The floors in their homes were not like it is today with tile or carpet. They were just plain wood that had to be scrubbed with a brush. There were only three bedrooms in the house. One was for the girls, one was for the boys, and one was for the parents. The beds were shared with so many people at the head of the bed and so many at the foot of the bed.

Another memory for Joyce was when she used to pick berries for a lady who would pay her with tobacco and cigarette papers. She was supposed to keep it quiet so nobody would find out. Then she gave the tobacco and papers to Joyce in front of her father. She never got her tobacco and papers and she got a severe scolding.

Joyce feels that life is much easier today that it was when she grew up. " They would starve to death because they can't even light a fire." It was harder because when her husband went to work she would have to be mom and dad. She did make her children do their share of the work to help out. They would have to bring in wood and coal; they would have to bring water too.

15

Joyce Janes
28 May 2003
Cape Ray, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

16

Joyce Janes holding a picture of herself as a young woman.

17

Kaye Gale/Margaret O'Quinn

Kaye Gale was born in the Codroy Valley on April 6, 1943. Her mother Margaret O'Quinn Wall was born in Nova Scotia on July 3, 1923. Both women currently reside in the Codroy Valley.

Margaret's first husband, Joseph O'Quinn was Kay's father. He worked with the Department of Highways and farmed as well. He kept animals as well as growing his own vegetables. He began work with the Department of Highways when Kaye was eight years old. "Before then he just lived off the land. He and mom and us children." Before he married Margaret, Joseph went overseas. This was during the war. Joseph continued to work at farming even as he worked with the Department of Highways.

Joseph passed away in 1991 and Margaret remarried to a man named Frank Wall. Frank was already retired from construction when he and Margaret met. Margaret and Joseph had nine children. "My mother had nine children in eight years. She never had time to heal or get strong so she was sick a lot." This was the way of most women of that time. "I'm sixty years old so I'm talking fifty to sixty years ago. Women raised families in very difficult circumstances."

Kaye had five brothers and three sisters. Her mother Margaret came from a family of nine children also although Margaret herself was adopted.

Margaret helped Joseph with everything in the house as well as outside. She helped with the crops, the planting, and the haymaking. "She always helped out Pop," says Kaye. There were a lot of things that had to be done to run a farm. With Joseph working another job, Margaret helped out as much as she could, with nine children to raise and a household to keep up. There were animals to care for and vegetables to plant and care for. The women of the household were often overwhelmed by work in those times and Kaye says it was pretty much the same for her even as she married and raised her children. "I had it a bit better, though I worked hard as a teacher, I still had to do everything at home. Though your husband may have helped you out more, my father was good to help my mother, he used to make bread."

Clothes were often made at home and all laundry had to be washed on a washboard with sunlight soap. "This was the way it had to be done in my mother's day. I think I was eight years old when my mother got her first gasoline washer," says Kaye. "Sometimes all you had was homemade lye soap. This was made by taking all the fat out of the animals when you killed them in the fall. You would add Gillett's Lye in order to make soap."

"My mother used wood ashes if she couldn't afford lye," says Margaret.

"In my time, my mother didn't have to make soap. She always used Sunlight," says Kaye.

Berry picking was very common. "We gathered them, we brought them home and mom would boil them on the stove and put them in sterilized jars. That's how we had our jam for the winter," says Kaye. Margaret grew up pretty much the same way.

Margaret grew up in a two-story building and when she married she moved to a bungalow. Kaye says there weren't any warm houses when she was growing up. "They were cold, just heated with woodstoves. There were no bathrooms. We were fortunate enough to have an outside toilet but it was bitterly cold in the wintertime. We had slop pails and more than once they got spilled over," Kaye laughs at the memory. Kaye recalls the painted wood floors in her parent's house. "When I was about eight or nine, dad went to work and mom started putting canvas on the floors. The pattern worked off in a year. We always got new floors and a new oil cloth for the table at Christmas." There were no telephones or radios. "Now when I was a child there were phones but they were very primitive types of phones," says Kaye.

When Kaye was a child she attended church, and it was the same way for her mother. "We were Roman Catholic and it was very strict. My mother knows how strict it was. When she was married she had a baby every year and if she didn't she'd probably have been excommunicated," Kaye laughs at this. "There was no excuse for missing church. If you didn't have a ride you walked," Kaye says. There was a time when the Roman Catholic Church was very strict about birth control. Today more women are taking control. The Pope, even today, is strict on the issue. "Years ago it didn't matter if the woman was too sick to care for the children or if they couldn't afford to care for them or even put clothes on them. By the time I got married we were starting to think differently no matter what the church said." The change is even more obvious today when most families consist of two children. "It's easy to see the change in schools, just look at the numbers, they have decreased so much."

Kaye attended school in Loch Lomond for nine years in a small one-room school. In 1957/1958, it was the first year for the government to give bursaries. They gave you five hundred dollars if you finished your grade nine so that you could go do a year in St. Michael's boarding school in St. George's. "I went there, got my grade eleven with the Sisters of Mercy. Then I went to university when I was sixteen. That was a lot of education then. I then was able to get a teaching position. I began teaching when I was seventeen." Margaret went to a school that was two and a half mile walk from Loch Lomond, in St. Andrew's. She only got as far as grade seven and in the winter she couldn't even go at all. "There was no such thing as snow clearing," Margaret says. There is a twenty-year gap between Margaret and her daughter Kaye. Education wasn't considered important to Margaret's generation. It was considered very important to Kaye's. This is a testament to the changing views of the time.

As a child, Kaye says she mostly played outdoors. "We played ball and games. We went sliding and skating." Margaret is very different. "I read a lot. I did crosswords and puzzles."

Kaye says that the older people were very patient back then. They would teach the children how to play cards, "That's how you passed time usually . . . my grandmother taught me to play cribbage."

Kaye remembers her parents getting all their groceries at the local store and often paying when they got the money or if they didn't have money they would pay with crafts in the fall. "I remember my grandmother would sell eggs and butter that she would make and she bought a lot of groceries that way. She used to make pants and jackets for men and she used to knit a lot of underwear, socks, sweaters and mitts," Margaret says. When Kaye was married she lived next to a store and that is where she got her groceries.

There was a priest in the area as far as both Kaye and Margaret can recall. "Before there was a priest, one would come here from St. George's. There was no doctor until about 1948, when Dr. O'Brien came from Ireland. There was a nurse stationed there before that. If you got really sick, you had to go by rail to Stephenville Crossing." Kaye recalls a time when her brother, who was only two at the time, got very sick with appendicitis and their father had to walk with him for two and one half miles to get him to the train. The mail service was always available and that was by train as well.

After Kaye married Hubert Gale in 1963, she continued working as a teacher for thirty years. After that she became the coordinator with the Community Employment Corporation. After that she became a bus driver. Kaye and Hubert had two children. Kaye had mostly electric appliances when she was married so she feels it wasn't as hard for her as it was for her mother.

Food then was pretty much the same as it is today. "We ate a lot of porridge and dough balls, we ate a lot of things that mom made from scratch," Kaye says. Kaye recalls when her father would kill a pig and he would hang it on a tree outside to keep it frozen. The family also grew a lot of carrots, cabbage, turnips and potatoes. Margaret says in her day, they ate pretty much the same way. "Kaye's father traded potatoes with people in Ramea and Fortune Bay for herring and turbot." It wasn't until later years that there was a fish plant in the Valley. Margaret says that in her time everyone depended on horses for farm work and farming was the main way of life in the Valley.

Margaret says her family wasn't affected by the Depression. "The only thing I recall about that is when I heard about people working for a dollar a day," says Margaret. She says she remembers the war but the only way she was affected by it was when some things, such as sugar and tea were rationed.

Home remedies were very common in Margaret's day. Poultices were a popular remedy for cuts and sores. "This was when you boiled milk on the stove, put a bit of soda into it, put it on a cloth and wrap it around the sore," says Margaret. "I also remember my grandfather going into the woods and cutting the bark off cherry trees, steeping it out and drinking it. That would be good for colds." Margaret also says that birch rind was good for burns and cuts.

Christmas for Margaret was very simple. She says she didn't get very much, she got a little toy. Usually she got an apple and pack of gum. Kaye recalls only seeing fruit at Christmas. "We never got oranges or grapes and juice too. That was pretty much unheard of," says Kaye. She also says that all the kids got one toy each. Mummering was common and both women say they had lots of fun doing that.

When asked what other experiences were memorable for them, Kaye says for her it was the time in 1978 when the bridge got washed out. For Margaret it was the earthquake in 1929. "It was just like a loud noise, I was having supper and I thought it was a car coming towards the house. The cars at that time made a loud noise. It struck the house and the dishes shook."

When asked about the differences between then and now, Kaye has this to say. "There is a lot more stress on women today. They have the workforce and the children and everything that comes with that. You have kids today and you have to worry about liquor and drugs. There is a lot more emotional stress," says Kaye.

There are many visible changes in the Valley. The biggest one for Kaye is the severe loss of farming in the Valley. "The Valley is in its dying stages, much like the rest of rural Newfoundland."

18

Margaret Bachman

Margaret Bachman was born in Montreal on March 6, 1941. Marg's mother, Patricia Wolfe, had two children, both girls.

Marg's father, who passed away twenty-eight years ago, worked in construction and therefore Marg spend a lot of time moving around as a child. By the time she got to grade eight Marg had attended twenty-seven different schools in eight provinces. "I have gone to so many schools. Six-room schools and one-room schools. I even went to a school in B.C. [British Columbia] where a plane would drop our lessons." Marg says that she got a different sort of education because you would just finish a grade and then went to the next school or province. She also recalls that there was always a separation of the genders. There would be a cloakroom for the girls and one for the boys and they would enter the school room through separate doors.

Marg says that chores were the same back then as they are today except that there wasn't as much to work with. Marg's mother, Patricia sewed a lot. Marg remembers being very proud to wear her dresses with embroidery on them. Marg doesn't remember her mother doing a lot of baking because they usually lived places where she could buy bread from a bakery. Store bought cookies were a rare but beloved treat in Marg's childhood. She also recalls one time when her father's construction crew was made up of mostly Chinese men; they would eat a lot of Chinese food.

They did live in some places over the years that didn't have toilet or running water. They would use scrubboards to wash their clothes. Depending on where Marg lived there was sometimes a doctor available to them and sometimes not. When there wasn't her mother would use home remedies such as mustard plasters on the chest for a cold and a tonic of sulfur and molasses, which they drank in the spring to clean the blood.

When Marg was a child she would do things like play hide-and-seek, go fishing, play ball and hockey. Marg says that there were more connections to the church back then. Children were involved in choirs and church groups. For chores she would only have to make her bed and wash dishes. "I got off easy with chores."

On Christmas Day Marg's family would have a dinner of turkey, dressing, and gravy. Marg says that pork pies were the custom in Quebec. One thing that they would see a lot more of at Christmas was candy. Marg remembers having ribbon candy and that would also be the only time they would get pop. "We weren't rich, we weren't poor," Marg says. At Christmas time they would get their stocking filled but they everyone didn't buy gifts for everyone in the family the way that we do now. "There was no such thing as running to the tree and opening presents." They would have to sit and wait for her father to pass them out and open them one at a time then. "We'd never get it done if he [dad] was alive today."

As a teenager Marg would go to movies with her sister. She recalls her little sister being amazed at the first moving picture they saw. "You remembered them all. You saw so few of them."

Although Marg was born too late to truly be affected by the Depression she remembers hearing her parents talk about it. She feels that the aftermath of the Depression was felt for twenty to twenty-five years after it happened.

Marg doesn't recall a lot about the Second World War itself but she does recall having an aunt and an uncle that served in the forces. "They would visit and I was confused as to why they were in uniform. We didn't know as kids what war was. It wasn't like today where you watch it on T.V. so you know what's happening. It was happening on the other side of the world. It was days and weeks before someone knew what was going on. Months and months before you would hear from somebody." Marg's maternal grandparents were veterans of the First World War but they didn't like to talk about it. Marg says that her grandfather had scars on his neck but she never knew until she was grown that they were from being bitten by rats while he was in the trenches.

Marg recalls her grandmother supporting the war effort by knitting socks, shooter mitts, scarves and she would also donate blood. Shooter mitts are mitts that have a separate index finger, a thumb and one big "finger" for the remaining three digits. Marg still has the pin that her grandmother received for donating blood one hundred times to the Red Cross. She also recalls how her grandmother became very upset when she found out that the things she had been donating were being sold to the soldiers by the Red Cross where as the Salvation Army was just giving them the supplies.

Marg first moved to Newfoundland in 1957 when she was just sixteen. She moved from Quebec to New Chelsea, Newfoundland which had a population of one hundred. One experience that she remembers well was berry picking. "I loved picking berries and I went to the store and got this clean white bucket. No one wanted my berries. It was a slop bucket and I didn't know the difference," Marg chuckles. Another of the differences in food that Marg noticed when moving to Newfoundland was the abundance of seafood. "Lobster was a treat," she recalls of her life on the mainland. Once she moved to New Chelsea she remembers having lobster all the time during lobster season to the point of becoming sick of it. One of the changes that she's noticed over the years is the selection of food and how people's tastes have changed. Back when she first moved here people grew the same basic vegetables like potatoes, carrots, turnip and cabbage. Now people grow all sorts of things including broccoli and zucchini. There's also been a great difference in what things once cost to buy. Marg recalls how she was once able to buy sixteen cans of milk or five loaves of bread for one dollar. "You can't get that now."

When Marg moved to Newfoundland back in the 1950s she says that there were not many cars and there was very little pavement here. She says that when she attended the Memorial University of Newfoundland there was a certain segregation of students. There were "Townies", people from St. John's and area, "Baymen" people who were from smaller bay towns, and there were the people from away, not from the province. Marg found it was much easier to fit in with the "Baymen" than the "Townies". They were all more or less, outsiders to the Townies.

One of the things that Marg noticed about people from rural Newfoundland is how brave they were. A lot of them would just get on a train and go to Toronto, Ontario, with no money, no job and no place to stay. They got off the train and it was a totally different world. They would just find jobs and places to stay!

Marg came to Port aux Basques thirty-two years ago. By the time she moved to Port aux Basques Marg was already married to Albert Bachman. Marg and Albert had two children; a son that is now living in Saint John, New Brunswick and a daughter now living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Albert has been deceased for ten years.

Marg has seen many changes to the Southwest coast of Newfoundland. She went to university back in 1964. Back then if you didn't have ten to twelve job offers when you were finished school you were considered pathetic according to Marg. Her first job was with the Department of National Defense in Goose Bay and she was paid five thousand a year. Teachers would get paid every month then instead of every two weeks as they do now. She's had various jobs throughout her life and is currently a Youth Employment Counselor with the Community Information Resource Centre in Port aux Basques. The fish plant used to employ seven hundred people, now there are a lot less employed and it is only seasonal work. Marg remembers when downtown Port aux Basques used to be vibrant, "There was no mall. Everything was downtown, now it's basically dead."

Marg says that the roles of women have changed a lot but not enough. "I'm one of those people who thinks it hasn't changed enough. Women are accepting things that they shouldn't." Marg recalls an experience that she had trying to get paid the same minimum wage as a man was getting at the time. "When I was in university I wanted to get paid what men got paid for minimum wage. Women got seventy-five cents and men got a dollar. I wanted to go back to school and there was no loans, so I had to scrape by. I heard of this company in Northern Ontario so I bought a heavy equipment operator license on Young Street in Toronto." She went to work at that company and got paid two dollars and twenty-three cents an hour and she stayed in a bunkhouse with eleven men. "They called me pansy," Marg chuckles.

Marg says that if she could change anything she wouldn't change anything about her past because everywhere she lived in Newfoundland the experiences were positive. She would however, like to stop the changes that have occurred in the culture. Newfoundlanders are known for their hospitality and friendliness but Marg says they are no longer as hospitable as they once were. "Years ago if you're car broke down a Newfie would help you. Now we're catching up with the rest of the country." She says that she hates the cities now a days. People don't seem to understand why she continued to stay in Newfoundland because she no longer has any family ties here since her husband passed away and her children have moved away. "They don't realize the benefits of a small town. Your kids can go out and play and you don't have to worry about them." Living in Newfoundland is different in many ways than living else where in Canada.

19

Mary Downey, date of birth: 1942
5 June 2003
Codroy Valley, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

20

Mary Downey

Mary Downey was born in 1942, on Charles Street, in Port aux Basques, Newfoundland. Her father, Abe Mullins, worked at the Canadian National Railway, though Mary doesn't really remember what he did there. Mary's mother, Mary Savory, cleaned the stations at the CN, did housework, as well as cared for Mary and her eleven siblings. However, when Mary was still very young her mother left the family, and Mary went to live with her extended family in Codroy, Newfoundland.

As a child, Mary says she attended school in Tompkins, Doyle's, St. Andrew's and South Branch. She did manage to finish grade ten, which was a lot of education for a young girl back then. Mary remembers not liking her teachers; she said you got three smacks with the strap in the mornings before you went in, just in case you did something bad. Usually after finishing grade ten, young girls went to St. George's to finish grade eleven, then do the basic education program. They could then go on to teach. Mary tells us you had to be Catholic to attend. There were other places you could go to, but only if your parents could afford to send you. So, at the age of thirteen, Mary began to travel in the summers. "I went all over the United States and Canada...I went to Arizona. Tennessee, Boston and all these places. Every year I went further."

For fun and entertainment as a child, Mary says there was a lot to do in the winter, but not much in the summers. "In the winters, we could skate and slide, but in the summers, you had a lot of work to do...there was always fences to be put up and stuff like that." Mary says there were dances every weekend. The local boys would play accordions and fiddles, as well as the guitar. "The young and the old got together, everyone was mixed up...also, once a year the community held a garden party and there was always live music...as well as alcohol." Mary says people made their own beer (home brew), and made their own moonshine, and there was always plenty around. The legal drinking age was twenty-one, but has since been lowered to nineteen in Newfoundland.

There were no RCMP officers, but there were Rangers. "There was one stationed in St. Andrew's, and boy, was he stupid. You could steal the hat right off his head and he wouldn't catch you." Mary also remembers when you could leave your doors unlocked at all times, and not worry about being robbed.

There was a doctor in the area, but if he wasn't available, there was a part-time nurse. "You just made sure you didn't get sick." There were homemade remedies back then, and Mary remembers one in particular very well, it was for a sore throat. "They would whack the molasses and the liniment down your throat, and it didn't taste very good." Also, another ritual of the time was to burn sulpher in your house for nine days after someone died. This prevented the spirit of the deceased from coming back to haunt you.

There was no electricity or running water, so Mary says they used woodstoves, and they had to bring the water in buckets from a nearby brook. Laundry had to be done by hand, with washtub and sunlight soap. Mary says they also used kerosene lamps for lighting, until electricity came through about forty years ago. She says the first car didn't come through until the highway did, which was about the same time as electricity and telephones. This was all about thirty-five to forty years ago.

Mary says she did attend church, but she did her best to escape it when she could. She does remember that the Catholics weren't allowed to associate with the Anglicans. "The kids didn't care, as soon as their parents backs were turned, they were together again."

Mary's daily chores included whatever had to be done. The family kept their own animals. They had cows, sheep, ducks, geese and pigs. So they always had their own meat. They also grew their own vegetables. " We had potatoes, carrots, turnips and cabbage...it was always that way...we were self sufficient, but then when the highway came in, you could send for all that stuff." Meats were kept fresh by cutting out big blocks of ice, putting them together to form an icehouse, and covering it in sawdust.

Mary made most of her clothing. She would buy cheap material because she says, "It only got messed up after one day anyways." Mary says her house at the time was smaller and more compact but it was easier to keep warm. "Now you got a house to show not to live in." Mary feels that people today are a lot more materialistic.

Christmas time was different back then. It wasn't about how much you spent on things; it was about family and being close. "You might get some fruit, or something, not like they get today...now if they don't get a thousand dollars worth of stuff, its not Christmas." Mary says she sees a lot of changes between now and then.

At the age of twenty, Mary married a young man who she says was "Just an alcoholic." She went on to marry a second time to another man, who she says was a "Part-time carpenter, and a part-time alcoholic." Mary had six children, Mildred, Ada, Annie, Aidan, Gus, and Mick. She tells us that all of her children were born at home, by a neighbor. "It was a hell of a lot better than going to Port aux Basques hospital."

When asked about the changes between now and then, Mary says she sees a lot. "There's no convenience because now you got to have money, you got to have this and you got to have that. People who didn't see a dollar, year in and year out was better off then, than they are now. They didn't have any bills and they had lots to eat. They had bigger families." She says the community was a lot closer then, if someone had a misfortune or if something happened all the people would pitch in and help. "Everything got done...now, nobody doesn't help nobody...one time you could depend on your neighbors but now you can't. There wasn't so much greed and jealousy. Everybody had what they had and if you didn't have something, you could trade and barter...everybody would make sure you had your wood too, the men would go from house to house, they called it a chopping spree."

21

Nina Button

Nina Button was born Port aux Basques on May 2, 1943, to Harold and Rebecca Sheaves. Harold was originally from Port aux Basques but Rebecca was originally from Cape La Hune. "She moved up here in her younger days" says Nina. Nina was one of eight children. She had six brothers and one sister.

While Harold worked Rebecca did housework and raised the children. Harold did part time work on what they then called "the lines", working on the poles and in his late years got a job with Canadian National Marine.

Rebecca did not work because she had such a large family. Nina can remember her mother washing clothes on the scrubboard and hanging it out to dry in the winter time. When it was brought in it would be "stiff as a poker." Nina also remembers coming in "frozen to death" in the winter time and putting her feet in the oven of the woodstove to get them warm again.

As a family they sometimes attended Anglican Church where there was a minister in residence. Nina can remember the current St. James Church being there when she was a child.

Nina went to St. James Elementary until grade seven. They had a very big class according to Nina, of about thirty. At one time they were split into two classes. Schooling was not really considered important. Nina had to come out of school to help her mother. She often had to give her parents all of her money for food but she didn't mind.

Growing up she had running water but no toilets; they had "slop pails' and "face and hand pans" for bathing. Laundry was done in a washtub. Their source of light came from kerosene lamps. Nina remembers her father lighting the lamps before it got dark in the evenings. One of the conveniences that Nina saw growing up was the telephone; they had crank telephones.

Chores were shared between Nina and her sister. Her sister did the upstairs cleaning while Nina did the downstairs and they took turns cleaning the dishes. On their days off they would have to do their chores but when the work was done they were allowed to go. Their home was furnished with things that were given and passed down from her grandfather to her father. When not doing chores they made their own fun by playing ball, riding bike, making snowmen in the winter and throwing snow balls and they went to the show, or movie as we'd call it today, for twenty cents. Other than that there wasn't too much to do, not like there is today.

Christmas as in most homes was a special time for Nina. They would usually get things like mitts, socks, panties, apples, oranges and a few candies. "We thought we had the world," says Nina. The foods that they ate during Christmas included turkey or chicken. You wouldn't see turkey at any other time of the year not even in stores. They would participate in traditions like mummering that was really fun. It was much different back then according to Nina, "Today you don't know who you're letting in."

Easter was also a special time for Nina. They wouldn't really get gifts for Easter then but they might get a few Easter eggs. The main thing that she remembers from Easter is that her father would go down to the store and buy a couple dozen eggs, cook them and see how many the children could eat. It was a competition to see which child could eat the most. The winner would probably get a dime.

Nina doesn't think that it was a hard life growing up. "I can't say we had a hard life," she says. "There's lots of times when didn't have very much. Probably had a bottle of peanut butter and mom made homemade bread that day and we'd have to do with that for supper, but we were happy youngsters. We had happiness, we got by." Nina says. "My parents loved us, we were happy."

Nina was lucky enough to have a hospital in town when she was growing up and Dr. LeGrow was always there when someone was sick or got hurt. There was also a post office when she was a child but it was in Grand Bay in someone's home at the time.

Even though Dr. LeGrow was always there, Nina remembers some of the home remedies that were used. For a sore throat you would apply Vicks vapour rub and then put a wool sock around your throat and go to bed. Also for a sore throat you could drink Buckley's Mixture. Molasses and vinegar were mixed together and ingested for a cough. "A lot of it worked better than some of the stuff you get today in prescription," said Nina. "But not all of it."

When Nina was twenty-one she was married to Richard Button by Reverend Leigh. Reverend Leigh wasn't from Port aux Basques but he was stationed there at the time. Richard and Nina had two boys that were both born by doctors in the hospital, one in Port aux Basques hospital and one in Corner Brook hospital, because Nina had to have caesarean sections. Richard worked in the ticket office at Canadian National Railway. They bought their groceries with cash at Shoprite, which is also where Nina worked. Shoprite was the only grocery store there then. In later years they opened up a Foodland.

One of the changes that Nina saw was the coming of the railway, which brought thirteen hundred jobs. There are probably thirty or forty men working there now, which cuts a lot of money out of the town. The railway is, of course, no longer a part of Newfoundland.

Raising a family was not too bad for Nina because she had a serving girl to help her. Nina also had the help of her mother-in-law; "My husbands' mother was well at the time and she lived with me in the winter time so she used to help with some of the work." Though she had serving girls Nina did have daily chores of her own such cooking meals, and she worked a lot. "I would clean when I was home," says Nina, "My husband was a wonderful cook." If he got off work before her he would start dinner or have it ready by the time Nina got home and he also used to bake things. One of the ways that Nina helped her husband while he was at work was to work herself. "When I worked I helped to pay some of the bills, things like that. It was help working."

Food back then was not like today. They had stewed meat and corned beef hash. "Children never even know what you're talking about today when you tell them you had such a thing for supper," said Nina.

Nina wouldn't change a thing about her growing up. The only thing that she would change about her life is how young her husband was when he passed away. Richard was only forty-nine when he died. "But those things you can't have." she says.

Life was much harder for women growing up back then; they didn't know the difference though because they couldn't miss what they didn't have. Life today is a lot different. Roles of women have changed now. Going to work wasn't heard of when Nina's mother was young, now it is so common for women to work.