TRANSCRIPT

RB - Ruth Bell, interviewee; AS - Ada Summers, interviewee / LR - Lyn Royce, interviewer

RB: ...you had to have at least 2.

LR: Okay! Very good... Tell, tell me about going to Sunday School.

RB: Well, when I 1st started goin' to Sunday School, I always can remember, this, my godmother, her name was Ruth too, I think my mother named me after her...

LR: Right.

RB: 'Cause, like my mother was real young and...

LR: Okay...

RB: ...I think this lady was a little bit older, 'cause my mother was born I think 1905 and I was born in 1919...

LR: Okay, so...

RB: So, that was young.

LR: Yeah, that's very young...

RB: Mhmm. And, uh, I can still always remember her comin', takin' me to the Baptist Sunday School [Zion Baptist Church, when on Geneva Street in St Catharines], 'n was up there, and then she would hold my hand and bring me to the Sunday School down here [Salem Chapel].

LR: Okay. Now was she, was she a black woman, too?

RB: Oh yeah.

LR: Okay.

RB: And I think her name was Ruth too, so she was, I think she was my godmother.

LR: Right. What was, what was it like: were the Sunday Schools the same? In the 2 churches?

RB: Oh, not like they are now. No...

LR: Okay. What...

RB: Because there was more, there was more young people...

LR: Okay.

RB: ...so they would have more than, you know, they wouldn't have them like we've got it all together, they would be like the small ones the kinder... well, be like the kindergarten; and then the older ones...

LR: Right...

RB: ...a little bit older, like that...

AS: They had different, different classes, yeah

LR: Different classes.

AS: Younger; medium, the intermediate; and the seniors. Yeah...

LR: Yeah, we had somebody who...

AS: And we all did that back and forth, growing up here.

LR: Okay.

AS: Both churches and then...

LR: Both churches.

AS: ...up to the other 1 for church service, here for Sunday School, back up there... Yeah, it was constant, yeah...

LR: Back over there.

AS: That was our Sunday.

RB: Oh yeah...

AS: We'd go home for dinner and then...

RB: Start here again...

AS: ...come back to church again.

RB: That's right too, from there... Oh I don't know if we went to church that much, 'cause my Dad was very strict.

LR: Okay.

RB: If you, like if there were older people in the room talking, you couldn't be there...

AS: Children weren't to be there.

LR: So the children didn't go to, go to church service, they went to Sunday School instead?

RB: I think I did...

AS: A lot of us did, but maybe hers didn't.

RB: I don't remember goin'... I remember goin' to church when, when I got little bit older, 'cause I was married young, too.

LR: Right; right; yeah...

AS: Yeah, back then, the children were taught to be seen and not heard.

RB: Right. Right. And you know what?

AS: And you did not get in adult conversation.

RB: And you know what, and if you did you got , just like you did, you got the [demonstrates 'the eye' ]...

AS: 1 look was all it took.

LR: 'The eye' again; we're gettin' a lot of demonstrations of that 'eye' - I'm gonna be very familiar with it!

RB: [indecipherable]... You had to be quiet, or leave the room, uwgh...