1

Norva Landry reminisces on Bentley
1930 to present
Bentley, Alberta


Credits:
Bentley Museum Society
Norva Landry

2

Norva going for a ride
1900's - 1930's
Bentley, Alberta


Credits:
Bentley Museum Society
Norva Landry

3

Norva Landry sitting with the Red Hat Society who were having a museum tour.
2008
Bentley Museum, Bentley Alberta


Credits:
Bentley Museum Society
Bentley Red Hat Ladies Club

4

Members of Bentley Museum receiving Life Time Memberships
16 October 2007
Bentley Museum, Bentley Alberta


Credits:
Bentley Museum Society

5

Nora Landry ( Historian at the Bentley Museum).
2006
Bentley Museum, Bentley Alberta


Credits:
Bentley Museum Society

6

Norva Landry, Bentley Museum's historian with a few artifacts
2005
Bentley Museum, Bentley Alberta


Credits:
Bentley Museum Society

7

Norva Landry accepts Dick Damron's manuscript on behalf of the Bentley Museum
2005-Sep-3
Bentley, Alberta


Credits:
Bentley Museum Society

8

Doris Bargholz and Norva Landry hold walking tour plaque
Circa 1995
Bentley Museum, Bentley Alberta


Credits:
Bentley Museum Society

9

Norva’s Memories
I’ll start this off by telling you who I am and all that kind of thing. I was born here in 1923 and my name was Norva Hutton.
I was the daughter of Ray and Faye Hutton. Ray came here in 1905, I guess it was. They came from Wyoming. They had ranched down there. When they got here they were good old farmers.
My mother was a minister’s daughter so they lived all over Alberta in a dozen different places because minister’s only stayed about four years in a stop in those days. She was Faye Nicholson. My grandpa lived four miles north of here where the Turnbull’s now live and my dad lived a mile south of here. The Allan’s bought this place.
My dad, I maybe should mention came from Ontario and had gone to Wyoming and ranched there so that’s his background.
I guess I lead a pretty quiet life til’ I was nine years old or so. The highlight of my life was getting my bicycle. It cost five dollars. It was an old wreck I will admit now but I wouldn’t admit it when I was a kid because apparently I had words with the people who called it an old wreck. But when I got it the pedal was missing from the pedal arm. I immediately took it to Jim Hansen, our neighbour, and he welded it on. That cost a whole twenty-five cents. Then I thought it was absolutely beautiful. I know my mother chuckled over this because they called it an old wreck. She said if someone had called her an old wreck I wouldn’t have been upset but because it was my bicycle it was fighting words.
I started school along the way. Before school I used to walk into town for different things - five years old. Walk in to get a needle from Dr. Little our travelling doctor. I walked home by myself at five. If anyone offered me a ride I took it. In those days no one worried a bit. They all seemed to know I was Ray Hutton’s little girl.
Then I started school. I had a real good teacher, not for grade one but for grade two, three and four I think. She just had a real good way with kids Skocdopole was her name. They had a business around in this area. They were quite well known - but anyway she was a dandy teacher - real patient with us. I didn’t get in too much trouble with her. If she was gone I immediately got in trouble with any of the substitutes.
I wasn’t allowed to climb a tree or do anything that little ladies didn’t do. I can remember climbing a tree at school because, we were surrounded by trees in the schoolyard. I got kept in because that wasn’t a thing that little ladies did.
My language - I said "holy cow" once and I got into trouble for that because Grandfather wouldn’t like a little girl saying such terrible words. Now, they should hear them.
Anyway when I got a little bit older I had a route for my vegetable delivery. We always had a good garden. It was depression time so of course that garden meant a lot. I would deliver vegetables down to the lake - along the lake shore to the different cottages.
When I got older it was a paper route I had. Then I delivered over to the other beach. It made about a fifteen mile trip by the time the day was over because it was seven miles over there and then down to Brownlow’s Landing was an extra mile or so.
About that time I got rid of that bike, I had thirty dollars that my grandfather had put in the bank for me when he had sold a pig that he had labelled the proceeds were to go to me. Each one of us kids had got a pig donated along the way somewhere. So my bike I remember - brand spanking new - shiny, absolutely beautiful, and it cost thirty dollars, which would kinda throw anybody today.
Then I got the paper route - The Edmonton Journal I delivered. It was about a fifteen mile route by the time I got from the far end of Gull Lake, down to the west end of Brownlow’s Landing. I guess that kept me out of mischief that’s for sure. Of course, every summer, we were busy with a big garden and all.
But anyway the school went blissfully on I guess. I can’t think of much to tell you about the school years except that I loved sports. We got into the sports. We played with Rimbey and with Gull Lake, very rarely Gull Lake as there’s was quite a small school. We would go to Rimbey and occasionaly with Sylvan Lake we would get involved with them.

Did you not play hooky from school one time?

Oh yes, but I was in high school by then probably. Prior to that things used to happen that would have a kind of humorous quirk. My brother and the neighbour boy, Ted Butcher, were sent to exchange roosters - just to get new blood into the flocks. So our rooster was carried in a gunny sack over to Butcher’s and then Butchers were sending one back to us. We had a game warden. Sometimes he was a bit of a problem but he was a good man I presume. Anyway, the boys were carrying this rooster in a gunny sack along the lake road and it was when fishing season was not open and the game warden came and stopped and asked to see in the bag, so they took off running with this bag. He got out and immediately chased them through the woods. He would almost catch up to them so they would slow down until he got close and then take off again. Finally they gave up and let him look in the bag. He was kind of upset to see just this plain old rooster. When they got home they were telling my mother about it. My mother would bawl them out and then she’d giggle a bit then she would bawl them out some more because you didn’t do that to an old man. Anyway they enjoyed it.
I can’t think of too many more stories. The one I remember was the one about one of our business men in town that had a business here and used to enjoy imbibing a little bit and of course, they didn’t have a chance to imbibe in Bentley because there was no liquor store or source for the juice. Anyway he would go to Lacombe on his day off now and then and have a few and then he’d catch the bus home. He went to get on the bus. He had disappeared for a few minutes between the buildings while waiting for the bus, then when he came out and went to get on the bus realized his zipper was down so he tried to cover this movement with the move of stepping up. He caught the coat of the lady ahead of him in his zipper and it was stuck tight enough. he bus driver had to take his jackknife out and cut a hole in the ladies coat so he could get his zipper out. Of course this tickled us immensely. We thought it was hilarious.
In our sports - we sure enjoyed the sports. Between the school sports and church groups and so on we met with Rimbey for a dozen different things.
Before school finished, the teacher was always lecturing us, our teacher by the way was Dick Damron, father of Dickie Damron. He was a dandy man. He kept lecturing us that we had some of the finest things in the world around us, and we were quite ignorant of them, and none of us had ever been to them. For instance Banff was well known and Jasper was well known and not one of us had ever been there. Of course half the reason was the depression.
Anyway one time they were having the largest horse sale in the world in Lacombe. Scotland had had the previous one. Anyway Phyllis Wright (Phyllis Garries at that time) and I decided we would go, so we hitchhiked in with our parents blessing and went to it. Hitchhiked home and got a ride with a truck, the back of the truck, and instead of letting us off where he should have, he stopped right in front of Damron’s house,(the principal’s house) and let us out. The next day we met the discussion about where we had been and why we played hooky. When we told Mr. Damron we had our parent’s permission he eased off, but he asked us every question, I think we answered 90% of the questions that day. He’d pinpoint us. Fortunately we got by pretty good. He had to ease off on us. I don’t know what else at school I could be telling you.

What about the Edmonton grads?

Along the way- my brother was still around in those days, he was older than I so he left years before I did.He and I would hitchhike to Edmonton and go to see the Grads. The Grads were a world wide basketball team, girls and women. They were rated tops anywhere. They travelled in Europe and everywhere. So we would go up and watch their game and hitchhiked back that was the one money costing thing that we did.
We were pretty close on money. All our sewing was done at home. My mother sewed everything. Everything came out of the garden, so we had a very cheap economical time through the depression. I’m sure it never touched us. My dad was the one that had to do any worrying and we went blithely on our way. It couldn’t have mattered less to me what kind of clothes I had. If I had bib overalls it was all right. I didn’t bemoan the fact that I didn’t have a fancy little dress. I can’t think what else I should be telling.

Did you work at any businesses?

At one time I worked for Mr. Blish just while they would go on trips. He had a daughter who helped. Anyway they would go on a trip and I would go in. I was only sixteen.He took a gamble on a sixteen year old, but it was really good and I enjoyed working there very much. It was just a case of noting it all, nobody or very few paid for their groceries at the time. The one time I can remember chuckling. We had an Indian chap who came in. He looked at this box of stuff sitting on the counter and asked, "What’s that?"
Mr Blish said, "Hominy".
The Indian said, "No, I don’t want any. What is it?" It was a box of hominy which was grits you might call it.
Mr. Blish’s store - my mother kinda would have loved to have gone elsewhere sometimes - but he had seen us through the depression. Dad as a matter of fact had been in the store one day when one of the salesman hounded him for money and Mr. Blish said "No I can’t pay you. I’m sorry I can’t pay you until I get paid by somebody." So when Mom wanted to go to fancier places Dad said no, he had helped us through the depression and he had because I can remember we got our groceries every Saturday night and whether we had money or not there was always a bag of jelly beans tucked in with the groceries, which was the highlight of the day. Mother objected to a few of the habits of Mr. Blish. One thing, my Mom could not stand cats, and he had a great big, friendly cat, which probably was good because a store in those days you probably needed a good mouser. But anyway, the cat would sit up on the big round bulk cheese and this bothered Mom. It was wax covered, so I don’t know why she had such a fit. And worse yet was peanuts. For years we didn’t get peanuts because they came in a barrel and the cat sat in the barrel ,and my mother always wondered what kind of surprises she’d find in among the peanuts when she got a pound or two of them.

Maybe you’d like to tell us a little about your years in the services?

First I should say about graduating maybe. Our teacher had joined up and that left us with a teacher that was not qualified. He was real nice and they got him in as an emergency ,but he was certainly not qualified to be teaching grade twelve. And he could only teach so many credits, so I had to take a whole extra year to graduate. When I graduated I joined-up in the air force. I really enjoyed that. It was the first time in my life I had enough sports to suit me. The girls that I would play basketball with could hardly believe I had never played in a gym before. We had played everything outside including basketball. It was no great problem except for volleyball. I can still remember trying to play volleyball against Rimbey when there was a gale wind. It was kind of hilarious for both of us- both teams.
When I joined up I got in with a research group which was really nice. We were called research with the National Research. They were attached to us. It was interesting because you would look out the window and here would be one of the men with a badminton racket knocking a badminton birdie in the air and standing staring at it and you would wonder just what he was being paid officer’s wages for and then you would realize finally he was checking the wind and so on and they were flying drogues out. It was a big canvas thing that was dragged behind an airplane and it was training for the airplanes for shooting. They also had that kind of thing. Sometimes it was for bomb cameras. It was interesting and of course a lot of it was sort of secret work, but it was fun and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Did you ever collect magpie eggs or gopher tails?

Goodness yes, that was depression time and I think I was the best tree climber in the country. We would get our eggs and trot into town. It was Mr.Hopkins that was there most of the time, and we would get our two cents. The legs were five cents, but I didn’t get legs because I didn’t shoot but I sure could collect eggs. Thinking of my mother she was an invalid. She had a bad heart all her life. But she had a little A frame just outside the door practically, with a hen in it. She could hear a ruckus one night. She got up and took the rifle and I don’t know if she had ever shot a rifle before, but she aimed it in and pulled the trigger. She killed the skunk and didn’t hurt the chicken at all. Such things as that kept life interesting.
The high school part - I loved it, I have such good memories of it. As I say, the only two boys that graduated when I did were conscientious objectors, because all the others had joined up previously to that. My brother,, he was in ahead of me and so were three of my boy cousins. So of course I used to hear all of what I was to do and what I wasn’t to do.
And my bosses when I got in, I was very fortunate in them. My immediate boss of our unit was General McNaughton’s son and he was a good guy and the boys quite worshipped him. He was firm but good. He sure didn’t let anybody away with anything, but he didn’t let anyone bother you either. The head of the whole unit, the head of the district, our little corner of the hanger was McLean. He was Angus McLean. He was Minister of Fisheries for quite a few years after he got out. He had been downed in Europe and had been rescued, by I believe mainly Hollanders that had worked him to the edge of the danger zone and got him flights out. He had survived . He had a real history though. His story was real interesting.

Thank you Norva for your interesting talk on early days in Bentley and your life in the services.

Now, I will think of a dozen things I should have said.