My Father was a fisherman and he fished just about everything - cod, hake, haddock, and mackerel. He was also a great woodsman. My father killed fourteen bears as well as numerous foxes, muskrats, otters, and other creatures. He skinned them and he sold the hides, especially the foxes.

He would lay the pelts out on the kitchen floor and he'd send word down to a fellow in Souris that he had the hides ready. Caleb would come up, he'd have a little candy for us, and we thought that was wonderful. Caleb would buy them all. Perhaps Father would get, for the best coloured ones, six or seven dollars. And that was big money then. If he caught a silver gray fox, he'd get twice the money.

We always had a cow and a pig for our winter's meat. And when they were killed, my father would sell the hide, and he would take what he called the offal, the insides of one of the animals, and he would heave it up on his shoulder and he made for the woods. He'd put the offal at the bottom of a tree and climb way up on a high tree with a gun and wait for the bear to come.

Everything was quiet and Mother was home with all the little children waiting for him to get out of the woods in the dark of the night. But he sat in the tree waiting for the bear to come to eat this offal and then he was going to fire at him and kill him. So when he was up in the tree, sitting there alone in the dark, didn't he hear the bear chewing the offal at the bottom of the tree. It was very dark but he fired and the bear made one awful howl and took off through the woods. But instead of staying out of the way, the bear came back and laid down again at the foot of the tree. Father was still up in the tree and he couldn't get down because it was so dark he might land on top of the wounded bear. He fired again, and the bear made the same rounds and came back and lay down in the same place again.