My father was a school teacher first of all. He had gone to sea for some years but he said that was a dog's life so, at the age of 17 or 18, he decided to further his education. He went to school up at East Point to Lyle MacDonald, and from there he proceeded to Prince of Wales College. I guess it wasn't called that then. The only means of transportation was by horse and coach. His father got him into Souris and he found the coach was full and he couldn't get in so his father said, "Come on back home". But my father said, "No, I started for Charlottetown and I'm going". So he took his meager possessions and started walking. He came out in the Spring with his teacher's license and taught school for a year or two, then he went back and got his second class teacher's license. He taught again and then he went back and got his first class teacher's license. Now he always taught in the schools around home, except he spent one year down in Cherry Valley and he made many lasting friendships there, especially with the Mutchs, which have kept up to the present generation.

He taught school for a number of years and then he decided he'd like to have a store. He bought a site at Red Point where Duncan Robertson had been the storekeeper before him. His aim was to have everything the farmers and fishermen, the housewife, and the blacksmith would need. He proceeded with that and every year he enlarged it some and so there was near everything there. In the 1890s he thought he'd like to go into politics. He represented the first district of Kings for a few years. He won an election and he lost an election then he came back to the store again. So I was born the daughter of a storekeeper.

The house I was born in was very cold you'd wake up in the morning with the sheets, where you breathed on them, all ftozen. We had three stoves I think. In the afternoon or evening we'd start a fire in the dining room or the parlour and warm the thing up. In the morning my father made a great big iron pot of porridge and how we loved the porridge with brown sugar and milk. In fact my brother and I would squabble over who would scrape the porridge pot.

For dinner in the winter, the diet was a bit drab but the staple was salt fish. Cured, dried fish and pork not the bacon you get now but lovely big pork. Also potatoes and, perhaps, turnips. Then when that failed, as long as it was frozen, you could have fresh meat. But when it thawed in the summer the meat had to be cured and pickled. How we disliked that meat! How we relished the thought of the fresh fish in the summer time when you had the fish and meat and vegetables with sour cream. We figured that was a meal fit for the gods.

Sometimes in later years people canned meat first in bottles and then later we had canning machines.

We all loved the bare feet in the summertime. In the winter in those days there was no slacks. We had to wade to school knee high in the snowdrifts a lot of the time with ankle length drawers and how we hated them. You had to be careful not to get a rough spot in the back so you folded them in. Over that was woolen stockings right up pretty high and of course our dress and winter coats sometimes your brother's that he had grown out of In the summertime we wore black stockings. The first pair of coloured stockings I remember having was when I went to college in 1924. We wore high laced boots.

Nothing was sent for in the catalogue very much then so my mother used to have a dressmaker, perhaps two or three days a week, come in. We'd sit in the store and show her the pattern in the catalogue that we wanted and she would make the dress. Mrs. Elmer Fraser did that for quite a few years before she was married. Later on, we went up to Mrs. Jim Bruce, Ray Bruce's mother, and she was a crippled lady in a rocking chair. We'd show her the pattern and take the goods up to her and she's make whatever we wanted. She made the coats too for us sometimes.

There wasn't too much time for amusement for we were kept busy working. One thing that we always did on Sunday evening there would be someone in from Sunday School - we'd sit around the piano. People were always supposed to be able to sing, at least they could make a noise. Very few people had skates. Skates were an old pair that would fit the boots, you had to clamp them on. You'd try to skate and the skates would fall off. The first pair of proper skates fastened on the boots was in 1925 at the school at Lakeville. That year there was skating on the lake.

Swimming - no bathing suits - we'd swim in old dresses. The boys and girls never swam together in those days because the boys swam nude. The Sunday School picnic was entertainment that we always had in some field that was suitable with a big swing and tables for the lunch. The ladies came with their baskets filled with good things. We had a wonderful time. There were house parties that were very popular.

You made your own entertainment. We played games like Cross Questions and Crooked Answers and Pass the Hanky and those things. And of course we always had a big lunch. In later years there was the lawn parties where you might have some lanterns to hang out. Once or twice we went up to East Point and played games by the light of the lighthouse. The keeper of the lighthouse, Angus MacIntyre, the father of Stewart MacIntyre, always invited us in to sing around the organ.

Berry picking - it was not only a necessity but it was a pleasure. It's a day off - or an afternoon. We'd sometimes drive up to East Point to pick the wild strawberries. They were part of the diet too, that added variety. Of course they were preserved and eaten wild just as they were. Every fall we'd go by team and express wagon and drive down to the sand hills. That's before the channel was put in. We'd spend the afternoon picking cranberries. They were our winter staple. And picking mayflowers -how we loved to do that! We used to go to what we called Alex MacLean's swamp just below Roddie Kidson's to pick the wild flowers. They were so beautiful those first flowers in the Spring.

The store then was very different. Everything had to be weighed out by hand. The customer would come and perhaps she'd want two pounds of sugar and you'd weigh that and bring it up to the counter. Perhaps she'd want five pounds of oats and you'd bring that up to the counter Everything was in barrels -brown sugar, white sugar, rolled oats, corn meal -all in barrels. Molasses too came in a big puncheon. Vinegar came in bulk - everything came in bulk. They brought their dish to be filled and you had to take them down to the oil house and there we'd fill usually a gallon - molasses, vinegar, turpentine, oil - everything there. Sometimes in the wintertime we'd try to get some molasses ahead so when the traveling was bad we'd have it.

One time this fellow came to the store to buy molasses and he had what you call a creamer. That was a tall, slender covered dish into which you set your milk and the cream would come to the top of it and the skimmed milk at the bottom. That's before the time of the separators. He brought one that would hold three gallons for the winter. On the way home he slipped and a lot of the molasses went out in his boots and the snow. Another time a lady purchased a gallon of molasses and she had a glass bottle and came out the doorstep and fell and the glass came out of the bottom of the bottle and went all over the doorstep.

Shoplifting was prevalent. It's not only a thing of recent years. Up in the shop loft there were knot holes in the floor and we'd be peeking down sometimes and see what was going on. We saw this man come in with his pocket of nails. Another time a woman was giving a list to the clerk, and her little granddaughter spoke up and she said, "Gran, what about the onions in your pocket?" Needless to say, the woman made no comment but I think, now, how poor people were. I can see a justification, for it was very, very difficult for anyone to get anything extra.

Anyway the years went by and my father died in 1921 and my mother and brothers had the responsibility for the store. I had the idea of going to college. I had to write the entrance exams in Souris. That was two days of work. My mother drove me in the horse and wagon to board down there for the night. We had to wait until the first of August to find the results if we passed or not. If you didn't pass you could go back to school and some dropped out and didn't go any farther. Anyway, I passed and went to Prince otWales College. Prince of Wales then was very different from what it is now. The boys had one staircase and the girls had another. The boys walked on one side of the corridor and the girls on the other. Dr. Robertson was very strict. Bessie Robertson came in with me and the first thing we had to do was look for a boarding house. In the Guardian at that time there were all the different advertisements of people who ran boarding houses. We decided on one. Mother bought me a purse, a raincoat, and an umbrella. That was my wardrobe for that year. The boys sat on one side of the classroom and the girls on the other. At Halloween time we all went out together and went to the homes of the professors. They usually had to come out and make a speech - that's the male professors. Saturday night the churches used to give a party for us. We had a wonderful time. I remember they played one game "tupper". I thought it was too much like dancing so I didn't participate. Sunday night then there was very often a sing-song at the YMCA. So Sunday was a full day in there. We went to Students Christian Movement in the morning, Sunday School, Morning Service, church at night and we went to the Y afterwards. And so, instead of being a day of rest, it was a pretty tiring day but an enjoyable one. Now at the boarding house they always retired early and I went to bed late. They banked the stove at bedtime so I used to put a brick down on it and put it in a bag with two or three linings and keep it warm until I was ready to go to bed. I was scared of my life - I'd never slept alone before. There was a street light outside and that gave me company.

After graduation, came my first school at Lakeville. I got $35 a month and there was what they called a supplement the district made up; it was $75 for the year My board was between $2.75 and $3.00 a week so you cleared about $22 a week and that was pretty wonderful. At the Lakeville school the Women's Institute, which was very active in supplies for the school, built a platform underneath the blackboard because the blackboard was too high for the teacher to reach. There was an infestation of mice so the mice found that a great place to hide and I was terrified of mice. One time one of them peeked out when I was writing on the board. I think I grabbed my skirts and made for the first desk and sat up on that. At that time all you had was a teacher's guide so you had to make up all your own programs. You'd have to stay after school and fill the blackboard for the next morning. There was a box stove there and there was a mouse looking out of the grate at me. I was terrified and had to keep two boys with me until I got the board work done. I wouldn't stay in the school alone.

After that I taught at each school district. From there I went to North Lake. Each school district varied a little bit. North Lake was a great place for parties. All kinds of people would come in the wintertime with horse and sleighs from Kingsboro, South Lake and North Lake to have a party - there were games of course and a big lunch and, last, a sing-song around the piano. Between those, I thought I'd like to go to camp so I went to the CGIT Camp down by Waterside. I had never been to camp before but it was very organized - there were sports, there was a music teacher and there was bible study. There I met the Cook girls from Murray River - a friendship that lasted many years.

The next summer at Waterside, a farmer dumped a load of straw in the field. We had home-made ticks - you'd go out and fill your ticks with straw - that's what we slept on. One day there was a competition to see who could decorate their camp the most. We decided we'd make ours like a graveyard. We put our suitcases at the end and draped them with the white sheets and we got the prize.

The next year I thought I'd like more time to myself so I decided to go down to Murray River where the Cooks lived. So I took a roll and tent and my mother and I went down and we set up there in a beautiful wooded area. The Cook girls came and stayed with me at night putting a tent alongside mine and my mother stayed in the daytime. Almost everything that we ate we had to take with us. There was no refrigeration and I guess we had a camp stove. We had a very nice week there - we enjoyed it - there was plenty time to read, walk or whatever you liked to do.

When I taught school at East Royalty that was something different. The Women's Institute was very active there and every Institute meeting the men would go with them and usually there'd be a little dance at the end of the meeting. After that I decided to go to the Prince of Wales second year and then I got my first class teacher's license. I was entitled to a pay of $45 a month plus a supplement of $200 a year. I went up to Bedeque where I had 45 pupils and that again was different. There were very active young people there and we were engaged in debating. From there I went to Acadia and took the two year diploma course. That was kind of enjoyable too. There used to be dances. At that time the theologians were not allowed to dance in Acadia so there had to be something else for them. One night my roommate and I decided to go to a party unescorted which was probably unwise. So we dressed in our long evening dresses and sauntered off. Everything went great until it came time to go home. In the meantime my roommate got an escort and I didn't have any so I'll never forget that long walk from the gymnasium with a long dress on and surrounded by couples all around me. It wasn't very pleasant.

In the summer between Acadia, I went to Pictou Lodge - an Acadian national summer resort with log cabins. It was a beautiful spot right in the Northumberland Strait. We were required there to go out and gather wild flowers every day until the cultivated flowers came on. We also were required to get water lilies for our finger bowls. There is a freshwater lagoon there and canoes. We used to go up and canoe to gather these water lilies for our finger bowls. Mostly there was all college students from Dalhousie, Acadia, and MacDonald. Afterwards one of them, Dr. Earl Hills was the superintendent of the Sanatorium. We used to go out in the canoe at night and have a beautiful time singing. Our favorite song was Drifting and Dreaming.

When the two years was up there was nothing available in home economics training so I went back to teach. I had a lot of kids at school that year. We organized a young people's society which thrived. I remember, one night a month, we had to spend on literature - some nights it would be Robert Burns some Shakespeare.

After about a year there was an opening at Victoria General Hospital in Halifax to study diets - an internship for a dietician for six months. - so I went there. A friend had a boat and we used to go sailing on the north west arm. When I came back with my certificate for that I wanted to see what was available in dietetics. There was a job at the old ladies home in Charlottetown. A privately run institution for about ten or twelve. The pay, if I remember, was $50 a month and if you proved satisfactory it went to $75. We worked from six or seven in the morning to nine or ten at night and you had one afternoon off. I did that for three months and thought this is not for me. I did get a job at the regional sanatorium, first as a cook for two weeks and then as a dietician. The pay, I believe, was $100. a month which was something wonderful for me. I went back to teaching in Kingsboro in 1934 and 1935.

[n 1935, my longtime sweetheart Stewart MacGregor and I decided to get married. He'd been through Agricultural College and took his two year diploma. I wasn't the typical farmer's wife - wasn't used to this, the cows and pigs, hens and sheep. I think, sometimes, [ was kind of a failure as a farmer's wife. But anyway, I had just one cow at home so I knew that much. When we started in, it was 1935 and in 1937 he got on as a potato inspector and that provided some extra income. But, my goodness he was busy. He'd perhaps have to inspect - there were no plowed roads then - from one station to another and all the way to St. Peters, St. Charles, and St. Margaret's. He'd perhaps go down to the train in the morning and come back on the train at night and he had a message that he was supposed to go out to Elmira to inspect there. Sometimes he would go up with the horse and sleigh, sometimes by horseback and he went by car when there were car roads.

As the babies came along, the washing increased. For washing, at that time, you had to pump your water, put it on the stove and heat it, set up two tubs on chairs in the kitchen and wash on the washboard. But gradually we got a washing machine that was operated by hand and he used to help me turn that. In 1947 we decided to put in a bathroom. There was no electricity and the gasoline engine was installed in the cellar so we got a gasoline washing machine. Often it would be balky - it wouldn't go.

At the beginning of our marriage we set up the family altar . That meant that every morning we got on our knees and we prayed. That followed through for many, many years. Now as the children came, their life wasn't very much different than what ours was. They all had to milk cows, they all had to make hay, pick potatoes by hand and they drove the horses. They all had to learn to do those things. We the early days they generally settled close to a spring, because it's a big job to dig a well to get water. They lived by the sea for fish. The early people would have starved to death only for the Natives. When they came the Natives showed them how to live and how to make use of the herbs and such. All this medicine today is taken from herbs that's in the ground, and we don't know how to use it, but the Natives did know and they used it. I remember my mother very often would go into the woods to a tree and she'd make some kind of drink for a cold or a sore throat or something like that. And often times she'd use those and the people had to live by it. I can't help but think of all the differences in my lifetime. My heavens, where we lived on the farm we just had a horse, a few head of cattle and some sheep. The people have worked there and they value the work. They worked as long as they could work and things have changed so much. A lot of the old people were very superstitious people. They believed in these ghosts and spooks. A lot of those things, I can't say if they are true or not, but I know when I was a youngster the neighbors would gather in our place and sit down in the evening and tell ghost stories. A lot of those stories were made up and a lot of them weren't true.

When I was a youngster, I had my different jobs I had to do. I'd have to get in the wood for the next day and even in the summertime we still had to use wood to cook. I had to do that and then we had the animals to feed and take care of. Young people today don't know one thing about it. I've seen a lot of change in my time. When you tell young people they just can't believe that we just lived away from any communications.

My father died when I was just a child. I was fourteen I guess, and I had the one sister and she was older than me, and she was away, so I worked the bit of land we had. We just had a very small piece of land. We grew what we needed to live on. We had the cattle and pigs and sheep and we grew grain. I lived through the dirty thirties. In a way we didn't suffer the depression because we had all of this stuff and grew our own vegetables. We had no money anyway. I think the people in the cities were hit hardest. I was close by the shore then and I'd walk to the Harbour, as we called it, and get fish for a few cents and we lived on that.

I never fished myself. We had a good community life there because, first off, in our school days we had our own group of youngsters. We had a time playing ball which was a very popular game. That was before the days of hockey. Hockey was unheard of, at least to me anyway. We used to have get-togethers and have foot races. There'd be older people too and we'd always get prizes. It was a great game for the young people to get the leaves of the trees in the fall of different colors and press them and put them in their books. I seen people that got some kind of a scribbler and get those leaves and press them out with different colors and fill the book with different leaves. And we'd all show what we made. We made such things as axe handles and handles for different tools. We made chairs and stools. We'd have kind of an exhibition and get them together and show them off. We had house parties - just about every house had music of some type and also people could play that music. There'd be violins and accordions and mouth organs, an old time organ or a pipe organ. We'd go in and the houses had no such things as rugs on the floors. We'd go in with old shoes on and the floors were not that fancy. We used to hold dances there at night and we'd go in and carry on and there was no such thing as liquor as we know it today. The most we could have there was a cup of tea or a cup of milk.

Copyright
Waldron H. Leard