So we were all just kind of chirping the other team.

He started chirping small town boys saying he was like a city boy and this stuff.

Chirping. Which most parents are saying, you-know "Go to school, go to school, go to school, go to school!" And she's telling me that, you-know I'm crazy.

Speaker: You-know, she didn't like that, but my dad didn't adopt th-- my brothers or sisters legally-Interviewer: Mm-hm. peaker: Because he didn't want to take the name away because the heritage is very important to him. Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: The Rockwell name was a good name, so you-know we're called the Rock-- Rockwell-Mastersen clan-Interviewer: (Laughs)Speaker: Basically.

Speaker: But ah, you-know, our family goes back a long ways to Ireland. Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: Northern-Ireland, Belfast area, ah, County-Antram and my aunt Hannelore, ah who's w-- well off, she went back in the sixties and seventies with another great-aunt and ah, they looked at the family tree and they researched Ireland from top to bottom and found our clan and went back back, back, back and then all of a sudden it stopped. There was, you-know, no more headstones. You-know, it was- sev-- s-- seventeen-something, seventeen-forty-something or-like-that.

Interviewer: She's pretty wise-Speaker: Oh yeah, she's- she is. It would just- I-don't-know, it would be neat- it would be neat for my kids to have aunts an uncles. Interviewer: Mm-hm. Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: Yeah-Interviewer: And cousins. Interviewer: True, cousins and-all-that, yeah- Speaker: Yeah, I hope they all have like lots of kids-Interviewer: Mm. Speaker: So that there's that whole big clan of cousins and yeah (laughs)- Interviewer: (Laughs)Interviewer: Aw, clan. Speaker: Yeah (laughs).

Speaker: Said "You're Irish. That a fact," he said. She said, "Do you really want to find who you are?" He said, "I got nothing to lose. Five days later, she called him up and she said, "I got news for you. You're the Kensington clan from the United-States. Interviewer: Oh. Speaker: "And your mother was a Kensington and she had you as a first born and you've got three sisters and a brother that are all full brother and sister. (Coughs) "Your mother's still living and if you'd have called us a little earlier, you'd have been able to meet your father, he died in the last year."

Put me in front- and my wife tells the story that she went out in the cloakroom and cried and cried and cried 'cause she got moved.

And I clouted him in his ah earphone and told him, I said, "The flap lock."

You-know, just such a little piece around. But anyway, so I had a commode that Verna and her family had given me one Christmas and ah, they said, "Oh it was awful to give you for Christmas." But it couldn't have been a better gift because I've used it so much since, you-know?

A big barrel behind our cook-stove. Every night we had to fill that up (laughs).

Interviewer: Did you ever hear about how things went on in the camps? Speaker: (sighs) Yeah, they had the bunkhouses and the cookhouse, they always have a cookhouse and it had bunkhouse and they'd hire a cook and maybe a cookee and they would be up at six in the morning and out on the road in the bush at seven, take their lunch with them, come back at six and have supper after six. Same thing in the saw mills in the summer time.

... then we came to the railway place, it was built up a little bit. And the other side of that was the sandy beach. Trees right to the water. And we used to cut some of the trees down on water, make a spot where it was sandy. Have our picnics. Corn roast, corn- weiner roast down there as kids.

... there was- you-know, other family, kind-of extended family that would come too and we'd have a whole crew and we'd pick potatoes and we'd have a corn-roast and-all-that afterwards.

Um, well it's kind of funny. People tell you that- that, "Oh you know, you'll know when you meet to--" I thought that was a whole crock of shit. I'd met lots of people in university and you-know there's lots of girls at Western, but um, what- I-don't-know, it just, everything clicked, right?

Speaker: Well remember I had a family. I had a young family, I had my own kids so we would do things as a family. Ah we- our family's always been big on games. We've always liked games um Monopoly, Crokinole, Checkers, things-like-that. So we played a lot and ah my kids were just like any other kids.

...he's been a crotchety old fellow ah, from Britain. He- he immigrated from ah from Britain. And ah, his account of it this week in the paper- or his recollection was a couple of contractors were having a dispute over work being done at a house.

Cause I have all these luxuries like let's face it, even the fact that we're sort-of sitting here and hanging out, talking about this, like you guys are going to university next year. I'm sort-of like have it pretty cushy like living with my parents until I basically pay off the rest of my student loan.

Oh w-- there was ah- oh when we were kids, we used to take the horse and cutter and go way up in the bush some- out- Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: The side roads.

So- and I remember I had to um- like usually the girl was there, but for some reason she wasn't there one wintery and I had to walk home by myself in the snow and it was snowing quite hard. This man came along came with horse and cutter and said um, "I'm going to give you a road- a ride home" and of course I've been well taught by my parents, you did not talk to strangers, you never rode with str-- strangers or-anything. So I said, "No, I can't." He said, "Oh it's too stormy, you'll get lost in the storm" and I said, "No I have to walk." So he said ah, "Oh that's a shame, I know both your parents well and they wouldn't mind." I said, "Yes, that's not what they tell me." So at-last he persuaded me that I didn't have to get in the cutter, but I could stand on the runners, you-know, of the cutter-