Interview: Clifford Edward DugasInterviewer: Emily DugasFebruary 2004Question: What is your name?Answer: Clifford Edward DugasQuestion: When and wherre were you born?Answer: August 13, 1932, here in Bear River.Question: So there were nine (9) of you in the family?Answer: Yes.Question: What was your job when you were working?Answer: Utility man for Nova Scotia Power Company (NSPC) Question: Was the company always a Union?Answer: No.Question: No?Answer: It was supposed to be but it wasn't active.Question: What effect did it have on the company when it switched to working, on the working conditions when it switched to the Union?Answer: They just raised the wages a little more, and uhh, I think that it was better in a way and in a way it wasn't. Some ways it improved, other ways it did not! Answer: When you were dressing for the winter, what was the clothes like then compared to what it is now? Like as a child growing up, when you were going to school?Answer: Oh, we had to wear warm clothes in the winter and light clothes in the summer it depended on the temperatures. Spring and winter different temperatures.Question: Was there much more snow?Answer: Oh, it seemed like there was cause today we have snowplows who go open the roads and you can go where you wanna. Years ago if you was going alot of places you wanted snowshoes or you didn't go at all.Question: What was your first vehicle?Answer: Uh!Question: Can you remember?Answer: 1930 GMC half ton.Question: Do you have a relative price of how much that was?Answer: I don't remember what it was then Emily. It was old when I had it. I didn't get it till, what, 1950, I think. I only paid what $425.00 for itQuestion: Was it very safe, like, the safety precautions like they take now, today, was it...?Answer: Yeah, it was just as safe as trucks are today, other than you didn't have to have them expected every year. You had brakes and lights and you know all that. Horn, lights everyone kept them up too. You know if a light burned out you replaced it yourself. You didn't have someone to tell you to do it. You had a cracked windshield you had to go have it fixed yourself. There was know one come along and say "Get that fixed now". Question: How long have you lived in the area? Have you lived here all your life?Answer: All my life. Yup!Question: When you were longer in school, did you like to play sports or did you have a favourite sport you liked to watch?Answer: No, no I was never a sports fan! Question: Are there any funny things that happended at your school that you went to? Answer: Not that I can recall, no.Question: No? Where did you go to school?Answer: On the crossroads where Elizabeth Chisholm lives now.Question: What was a regular meal like on Sundays'?Answer: Hmmm!Question: What was a regular meal on Sunday like?Answer: Well, same as meals are today, roast beef, roast pork, chicken, never turkey,cause turkey wasn't the thing in those days. They was hard to raise around here cause people weren't geared up for them.Question: What influence did religion have on your life in your family?Answer: What influence? Question: Yeah! Like was there any influence that religion did have?Answer: I suppose they were all like now, somehow or another, somehow you got through it.Question: Getting back to your work, what did a typical day include?Answer: Oh my, that was a multitude of jobs. You had to do everything that was asked of you. You could be working on the power lines, pipe lines, plants, dams, roads, canals, river. Hard to say, wherever the boss wanted you, whatever he wanted you to do. Question: So it would differ from day to day?Answer: Oh yeah!Question: Was it very dangerous?Answer: Sometimes! Looking for downed power lines in the middle of the night wasn't nice.Question: What was the wage that you would make?Answer: Depends on what year! Cause they change, the wages would change. Not every year, but every four or five years, I don't know when I first went out to work I got seventy cents ($0.70) an hour.Question: Did your family approve of working and going out?Answer: What?Question: Did your family approve of going out and working?Answer: Oh yeah! Question: How old were you when you started?Answer: I believe I was..., I had my fifteenth birthday working in the woods, when I was the age that I was. That's when I, when I, just kept going from there.Question: What was your favourite subject in school?Answer: I don't recall.Question: What would be one of the earliest memories you can remember?Answer: Hmmm!Question: What would be one of the earliest memories you can remember?Answer: Oh my, (LAUGHTER) I don't have a clue, Emily!! (LAUGHTER) I wouldn't have a clue what it was. I imagine it would be back when I was seven, eight, ten years, going to the Cherry Carnival.Question: What would it used to be like?Answer: Hmmm.Question: What would the Cherry Carnival be like back then?AnsweR: Same as now, just about!Question: Would they be bigger?Answer: Yeah, I would say they was. They was done with horses instead of cars and trucks, and stuff. floats were all pulled with horses when I was a kid. Question: When grampie was farming what kind of things would he produce? What kind of things would he plant?Answer: All kinds of vegetables Question: All the common ones that you wouldAnswer: Yeah, nothing uhh, nothing like, you know there's alot of things you can't grow. There's alot of stuff you can buy in the stroes now that you couldn't grow here. Question: Did you have many animals when you were younger?Answer: No, we used to keep a cow, and an ox, or a cow and a horse. I guess years ago before my time they kept horses. When I was a small boy but I can't remember anything [...inaudible...]Question: Are there any like, uh, stories you can tell me or anything that really...?Answer: I can tell you lots of stories but you wouldn't find them interesting in.Question: Go right ahead!Answer: No, you wouldn't be interested.Question: Yes.Answer: Cause they are not interesting.Question: It doesn't matter?Answer: Well, it just the working ones that all.Question: Yeah.Answer: When I was, it was just a working life, that's all. It was a working life. We went to work in the morning and came home and worked some more. We went into town and that was about it. I took a trip to Toronto. [...inaudible...]Question: What did you do in Toronto?Answer: I was just up there visiting my sister.Question: Would that be Sharon?Answer: Yes, I went to Saulte St. Marie to see Irene too.Question: When you were in school, like, was it a one room school house?Answer: YesQuestion: What was the discipline like then?Answer: What?Question: What was the discipline like?Answer: Strict! We all done!Question: Could be, unless there is anything else you would like to tell me? Well like any thing that happened in your life that you can remember? Answer: Well, I don't know what to say, nothing else to say.Question: Well what you think isn't important may be important to me.Answer: [...inaudible...]Question: Well, your experiences, anything you liked to do when you weren't working?Answer: I can't do a lot of things but I might make a few handles for picks, shovels , axes, hammers and stuff. Fix some shelves. Sleigh bells, made a few of them! They didn't turn out so much. (LAUGHTER)Question: Something about when you were younger at the school when the teacher at rescess went sledding?Answer: Oh yeah! Sometimes, not very often she with the younger kids, she'd get on the toboggan or something and go down across the field. The teachers then, they had quite a few kids. Hard time to get to school lots of times. I've seen the snow deep like it is out there now (holds up his hand to show me how high the snow was) like there were no snowplows. Transportation was the thing for us, it was almost like you were landlocked, you couldn't go know where, you know, or get went where someones team went or you didn't go at all. Then they got truck plows, they used to throw alot of snow off [...inaudible...] if they could get through with the truck and when the drifts were bad they shoveled them by hand. You over over in front of Aunt Tress's house. See where that old Lilac bush is [yeah] they used to have to shovel to get through there and even the teams couldn't get through there. There was a lot more land cleard than there is now. Alot more trees down there then when I was kid. All these fields and the stuff like that, I let it grow up cause I had no use for it. Cost too much to keep it upfor nothing. Because, well I don't know what it cost to produce at least a 100 bales of hay to cut. ...you couldn't use a tractor. You never heard tell of a car around here, in my time, without at least a hundred thousand miles on it, you know, the old,, old automobiles were better jobs. Cornwallis was the thing that built us in this area. See it was all, it was all woods, around here. Digby was just fish, Bear River was [...inaudible...]. The only thing in Bear River for work that I can remember was the Lincoln Pulp Company. They cut pulp wood and hauled it to Maine. There was two mills here in Bear River, one for sawing lumber and one for sawing staves, barrell stavesfor nail kegs. They cut lumber for somebody building a house, timber, people would but it all on a piece of paper and take it to the mill and give it to the boss and he'd tell you so many pieces of 2x4, so many sticks of 2x5, 2x8, or 2x10 or whatever for floor joist and all that, he'd saw the whole thing for you! He always sawed as a rule, he'd saw an order like, say he'd saw an order for a house you, you'd just him what size house you want. He would saw you one stick more of everything. See they don't do that now! If you took an order, say to the Home Hardware, they would take your order and they'd look at your plans, look at the size of your home and they would figure out how many pieces you need of everything and probably all the pieces of lumber you would need. LAUGHTER from Emily!