TRANSCRIPT

We had a big wagon that was called a Democrat. It was a two seater and so the horses were harnessed up and off we went to church. I can't remember going to church on a rainy Sunday but
I can remember going when it was a nice morning and that was about our only social life. And of course we went to church but we didn't understand anything the Minister said . . . that and Sunday school . . . oh yes we always had our penny for Sunday school.

I went to school, yes I started school in the fall when I wasn't even five years old. My birthday was in October and my deaf sister came with me, and she learned to become a beautiful writer - she would copy things off the board. But then that first year in the winter months, Mom didn't send us to school, there was so much snow. So then in the spring we'd go back and I don't know how . . . I know I did four grades in two years. That was the way they, you know they had so many grades to teach they used to group them together, so I got my grades 1,2,3,4, in two years and then went on from there. And therefore, I was through school - yes I wrote my grade 11 when I was 15, 14 or 15, and was through school young. But at school there were no books. This travelling library came round and tended to include books for all the grades so there might be two or three that I could read at my level and I'd read them more than once. Books were so scarce and my Mother couldn't afford to buy us books. The Americans brought us some from the States, and I read those more than once too. So I would get my school work done and then I remember the teacher saying "I can't keep this girl busy!", because there wasn't much else for me to do once my lessons were through. Anyway we puttered along and at that time they taught grade 11 but then when my sisters came along they didn't have to teach more than grade 9 so they had to go somewhere else to school.

So then I stayed home with my mother because she was sickly from the time my youngest sister was born. But Mom saw I wasn't getting anywhere so I went to Tatamagouche and I did housework and I think I earned, I can't remember whether it was $6 or $8 a month. Isn't that something? And the woman I worked for was very good to me but she had bad health and I spent a lot of time looking after her little girl. But anyway I worked for my board then grade 12. The people I stayed with were very, very kind to me - I called them Pa and Nan. They were Swans and two of my teachers from grade 12 boarded with them. I just loved Pa - Nan was pretty strict; I had to go to church every Sunday and all this-but they were very good to me. When it came graduation all we did was go to the theatre and get our marks - there was nothing else. But anyway I didn't have a white dress, so Nan took a piece out of her Hope chest, or trunk or whatever, that she had kept and she gave it to me and I made my graduation dress. And I borrowed a pair of shoes and Mom and Dad were able to come up but of course they were late, Dad being on the farm and working on the lumber woods and everything else.

But anyway, from there I went to summer school, crash summer school for teachers because many of them, former teachers had left to go to work in the munitions plants where they could make more money. So anyway I went to this summer course and I think the government paid for it, in Truro. And so I taught five years in the country schools. But the first year I was lonesome, I went up near Oxford to teach, because see that was where I took my grade 12 and I got a job - I didn't like it and when I came home I said I was never going to go through another school door again! But the trustees in those days, they just had to go down on their knees to find a teacher, so I said I would go and try at Balfron, that's going up to The Falls, and I loved it up there. Because the Camerons, Billy Cameron's parents was where I boarded and they were so good to me and I just loved it. So then I stayed five years and between that I did waitress work every summer. I saved enough money to go to Normal College, and then from then I went to Stewiacke and then back toTatamagouche to teach. But I enjoyed teaching very much, I just love children.