I was born in Little Harbour in 1905. My grandmother talked a lot of Gaelic so she must have came from the other side, but I'm not sure. I don't know whether my grandfather had any brothers or sisters. My mother had two sisters and two brothers who lived in the States. They are all dead.

I went to school at Little Harbour. I can name all the teachers that I went to, but the best teacher was Mary Cooney. George Mullally came up, took her away, and married her. She was a lovely teacher and I learned more from her. The teacher at Little Harbour at that time - we didn't get along - he was rough, cross. They put up a fence all around and a gate. There were bigger fellows. They broke the gate. I was standing by, and he asked me, "Who broke the gate?" "I don't know". I couldn't tell it was them. I knew who broke it but couldn't say it. So, he caught me by the feet and he cracked my head on the floor. I was only a little fellow then. I was right next to the window; the window was open. After he went back up to his desk, I jumped out the window and went home. I wouldn't go back to that school for no one. They'd have to kill me first. We had to leave there and go to Greenvale. Leo Campbell was the teacher out in Greenvale. We had to walk the same distance out to Greenvale and went to school there for a couple of years.

My father was in the meat business - it's all he ever done - he was a butcher and a peddler. We did a little farmin' in Little Harbour of course, but not much. My grandfather was bedridden - my grandmother couldn't look after him right - so my mother and father had to move back up to Little Harbour to look after him. When the First World War broke out and Frank Ching - there were a lot of Ching boys, they have a farm - wanted to buy our place at Little Harbour, so we bought this place over here and we moved to Souris. I was ten years old.

I spent my fourteenth birthday in Saskatchewan on the Harvest Excursion harvesting - stooking grain. I wanted to go the year before but I didn't have the money. But the next year there was a lot of snow and I got a shovel and I went up to shovel snow on the railroad. The first check I got from the railroad I put in the bank. The next fall was the Harvest Excursion. You don't hear about it now. There was trains and every car was full of people going out. A lot went from Souris. We got in at twelve o'clock at night and everything was closed down - a little small little town. The station master says, "I'll leave the door open. You can lay on the floor in there." We'd use our suitcase for a pillow and stay there. The next morning there was kind of a get-together, advertising binders, and tractors. We went down, there was half a dozen of us went down, but you had to buy a ticket to get in. I had the money but I couldn't spend it that way. So we stood there by the fence.

After a while I went over to the fellow selling the tickets and I said, "Do you know anybody'd like to hire help?" "Harry Robertson, that fellow with red hair in there," he said."He's looking for to hire somebody." So I says, "1 can't go in, I have no tickets." "Go on and walk in," So I went in and asked him. He looks at me and says, "How old are ya?" I says, "Eighteen": And he swallowed it, me being 14. I told a lie and I got caught in the end, too. But he says, "Yes, where's your suitcase?" I said, "1 left in in the station." So he says, perhaps in an hours time, he'd be going home. "You be around and I'll pick you up and we'll go up and get your suitcase. " He was only married a short time. He had a new house built. I lived in the house with them. There was just him and his wife, Frances. His father lived in the next section and his wife's father lived in that section on the other side. They were the nicest people I ever met in my life.

What I done was stookin'. Binders were going around and I was following around and making stooks. The binders were drawn by horses then. There was an odd tractor. The family I went in with had a tractor. When they'd be thrashin', they'd use the tractor, but they cut grain with the horses. Lots of horses - there were 12 or 13 horses at the Robertson's.

I went back the next year after that. The train came in late at night too. The next morning a bunch walked down to a Chinese restaurant and we went in to get a bite to eat. There was a young fellow across who said, "Is there a young fellow here by the name of Johnny Grant?" Rooney was next to me and he said, "There he is." He said, "You're wanted on the telephone." So I went over and it was Harry Robertson's wife and she says, " Are you there?" I said, "I'm here -I'm holding the telephone." She says, "Stay right where you are, we'll be in there in 20 minutes. " They lived three miles out and they come in after me. I went back with them - a lovely couple. I used to help her to milk the cows, feed the chickens and turn the separator for her. I was there for three months until everything was all over.

At home, I'd buy a horse to cut wood to keep my parents warm. We have a wood farm. And I done the butchering for my father. I killed all the cross bulls in the county. Then when I'd get a good bit of wood home, perhaps there would come a big storm, and the section foreman would send down after me to shovel snow. They'd give me the key to the switches and I'd have to go down and clean out all the switches, right down to the wharf. I'd shovel snow for 25 cents an hour. There was no overtime - just straight through. At 12:00 at night we'd still be working for 25 cents an hour. But anyway it was good work.

As a kid we threw snowballs at people, skated, but never played hockey - but I was good at playing hookey. We took a shovel and went down to the sea ice to shovel it off. Them were the days though, I had a lot of work to do, the stable to clean, milk the cows, - we always kept two cows - cut wood, get kindlings - it was up to me to do it. Later we went to dances. I tried step dancing but I had a sore foot.

After I grew up I went lobster fishing at Rock Barra. It was rum running days right off East Point and every house you'd go into, they'd ask: "You want a drink of rum?" We used to come home Saturday evenings, walk from Rock Barra and come in on the train and Florence, my wife, lived up here. She come down to talk - she knew my mother - if there was a dance that night. There would be moving pictures every Saturday night. I had taken her to the pictures, anyway. In fact, she asked me. I didn't coax her. It cost 11 cents to go to the pictures that included tax of one cent. I'd be 20, I suppose. The old Irish Hall is the same building used today. There were some weeks I didn't have the 11 cents and my father, perhaps, wouldn't give it to me. He was short of money too. My mother would, perhaps, have a few cents in her purse, those great big coppers, you know.

One evening I was passing by and Florence hollered out to me. "Have you got a cigarette?" There was a store over there and I says, "I'll be with you in a few minutes." I came in and I got a pack of cigarettes and I came back over where she lived and give her the pack. And I went down home with a pack of clothes for my mother to wash. After a while she came down, that would be a Saturday evening, and there were pictures that evening. So I asked her if she'd like to go to the pictures. We went and I took her home after and kissed her good-bye. The next time, it was the week after, I came home again. We got going together - going to dances together. I don't know how it happened. It was probably the cigarettes that started it.

I was the butcher for my father. The fellow running the Cox Hotel, had foxes up at Elmira. He used to have to buy a little fox food. When I'd be butchering, I would save him the tripe. Perhaps he'd pay me 15 cents or something like that. When the train would come in he'd take us up to Elmira. There was another fellow in Fortune, Johnston, that kept a lot of foxes too. There was a priest over in Rollo Bay also, years ago.