TRANSCRIPT

A.B. ANDERSON
After the gold rush in 1849 in California, well, they were building, they wanted to build an overland telegraph line and across up through British Columbia and across the Bering Straits, so they advertised for men, and he and 4 or 5 others from Sutton went by currier to New York, sailing boat to Nicaragua, walked across the isthmus, sailed a boat to San Francisco and the crew and all the passengers were arrested and held in jail over night because they thought they were pirates. The next day they were let out and they went on to Victoria where his uncle lived. Well just after he got there, the Atlantic cable was laid and of course this telegraph line, they couldn't afford to build it then; they didn't need it. I was out there, through that country when I was travelling all through there, I struggled on the prairies from one place to another for 14 years, the trees that size with a wire right through the centre, but one place there was a great pile of wire, I saw the place, and there was a stream about the length of this room, a very bad stream that the Indians couldn't cross, so they tried to build a suspension bridge. They gathered up all of this wire and strung it across and made a suspension bridge, and of course ponies were much more valuable than squaws, so they picked out the 30 of the fattest squaws in the tribe and put them on the bridge and left them there overnight to see whether the bridge was safe. And they got through all night so the next day they took their ponies over.

INTERVIEWER:
This was your father that went, was he a single man when he went?

A.B. ANDERSON:
Yeah, he was 18, and he went out there, and he got up to, of course when the telegraph line petered out, he went up to the gold fields at Cariboo and Quesnel and up through there and he did a little pleasure mining, I don't know whether he got any gold or not. Anyway I don't know how he got back, but eventually he got back.

INTERVIEWER
And then he married Susannah.

A.B. ANDERSON
Yes.

INTERVIEWER
Had he lived here for a good portion of his life?

A.B. ANDERSON
He was born at the mouth of the Nipigon River at a place called Nipiq.

INTERVIEWER
And when did he come to Sutton?

A.B. ANDERSON
He must have come… let's see, he went to St. John's College school in Winnipeg - he must have come down here, I suppose when he was about 20.

INTERVIEWER:
And Susannah Bourchier would have been a very eligible, attractive young woman, wouldn't she?

A.B. ANDERSON
I have pictures of her, she certainly…

INTERVIEWER
Certainly a good catch for a young man?

A.B. ANDERSON
Yes.

INTERVIEWER
This is nothing personal, but did she inherit much from her father? Did her father leave much of an estate?

A.B. ANDERSON
No, on account of, partly, as I said, after the war between the North and the South, and our market was cut off by, practically all the, or 90 per cent of the merchants went broke, it was um, so they didn't have any money to leave.

INTERVIEWER:
They would eventually, they would have….

A.B. ANDERSON
My father went to Winnipeg, and they lived there for a while, then they went to Winnipeg and lived there for a year, that was the boom days in Winnipeg and he made a lot of money there.

INTERVIEWER
What did he make it on?

A.B. ANDERSON
Real estate. Of course things went back and, the um, he had one note he showed me - no, a cheque for $50,000 but uh. And then he went into politics and he ran against - he was the first man to run against Sir William Mulock he was only beaten by a hundred votes.

INTERVIEWER:
That's shocking. What were the issue of the day? Do you remember what was the issue?

A.B. ANDERSON:
No. And after being defeated he was appointed - the first World's Fair was held in San Francisco, and he was appointed to take charge of the World's Fair, Canadian Exhibit at San Francisco, that was in 1893.

INTERVIEWER:
What was your father's training?

A.B. ANDERSON:
Just school at Fort Garry, St. John's, St. John's College.

INTERVIEWER:
And that was a military training, was it?

A.B. ANDERSON:
No.

INTERVIEWER:
General?

A.B. ANDERSON:
General training. Grandfather Roderick Mackenzie lived there, and he had several of these, several boys there living with him. His wife was an Indian princess.