I think on Wednesdays and Fridays were May devotions, so we would come to school, walk home, have supper, do the chores and then walk back to church for the devotion and walk back home.

... they had nothing to do so they were embroidering on everything, like eh? Tea-towels and any white blouses you had, they'd put something on it, eh? To- there'd s-- be something on it, like eh?

Speaker: Like you- you hear something and news travels so fast like- Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: Something- i-- everything always gets around. I-don't-know I think travelling, like I was thinking about going to a school in the States or doing an exchange program um, even- even a different province, you-know- Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: Just- just to get that sense of- Interviewer: A new feeling? Speaker: Yeah.

I was born in Ottawa and for the first few years ah we lived in the States 'cause my dad was finishing up medical school and then we moved back to Barrie's-Bay. I was, I think four when we moved back.

That was one of the reasons he wanted to move back to Barry's-Bay. 'Cause he was doing surgery down in- in um Ohio, and he could of stayed and continued but he didn't. He wanted to come back and come to B-- and even when he lived in the States, he would wrangle. Every year he would get up here for those two weeks in hunting season. He would drive up and so yeah. Um he really loved the outdoors, and that's sort of why we got into you-know, boating.

And um, more people have moved into the area, and more people have you-know bought up property and retired, and lo-- it's more the tourist ah is- tourist industry is much bigger than it was when I was young. I-mean people from the States had cottages and-things but it wasn't like it is now with people so mobile and they're you-know driving.

... needed workers, so these people were given a hundred acres of land that they had to clear and cut and plant and provide for themselves and so on so forth. So that's how it was settled. And if you can imagine arriving from- I guess some of them came through the States, most of them probably through Montreal, most people. The port in Montreal. And ah arrived here with not much more than a- a swede saw, an axe, crosscut saw, and maybe ah some matches. Okay, there you are. Go and provide. Which they did.

And I already had the camping bug because ah i-- in just my own immediate family we would go camping every summer with the children when they were small. We- we'd just travel out east, travel out west, travel down into the States and we always took a tent. And ah we were always on the move so it meant setting up a tent every night. And sometimes if we'd drive for a long period of time it'd be dark when we arrived at the camp ground.

Speaker: They'd say we're from the sticks. Interviewer: The sticks? Speaker: Yeah. The sticks means you're backward, you're back from the- Interviewer: Mm, yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker: From the bush.

So th-- how much ah land do you need to grow a carrot? Cucumbers? Not much right? Exactly. So there was enough dirt for stuff like that. But I just ah felt bad for some of them that inconceivable and ah, course ah the emails that they received in them days was probably not accurate, but the land they're getting for free right? They ah, they asked for a picture, but they wouldn't get it.

Speaker: Yeah we di-- didn't ever had duvets. We had, um, homemade wool blankets and that's what we had. And, ah, when we got sick there was no doctor. You had to, ah, suffer with- with whatever you had and, ah, very little Aspirin or-something-like-that. Them days everybody got an Aspirin but, um, you had to be pretty, pretty badly sick before you- you-know, medi-- medicine came.

Speaker: I'd make a hole in the- in the egg with a nail- Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: And then stir it in there and then drink the egg. Can you imagine? Interviewer: Raw egg? Speaker: Yes. Raw egg. (laughs) Oh yeah, a lot of people do- did that in them days, you-know? And, ah, I guess we probably watched somebody else doing it and that would be the reason we would do it.

Speaker: You went visiting a lot. That's- that's one thing that you did, ah, them days, you-know, you would visit. Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: I remember our neighbour would come around and she had a son and almost every Sunday she'd be there or we'd be at her place, you-know?

Speaker: I got that raccoon anyway. Speaker: Oh gosh. (laughs) Speaker 2: But the bear was there before. And we missed him. Speaker: Yeah. So we played a lot of horseshoes them days too. Interviewer: Mm-hm. Speaker: You-know, where- where now kids don't want- don't know- even know what the horseshoes is, you-know?

But we couldn't get no cigarettes off the old man so we would make our own. And we would use, ah, an ordinary piece of paper that we could find, you-know? Them days paper was even hard to get, eh? So we would, ah, (clears throat) usually catalogue it. I go and I think of it now, my god that must have been horrible. Like the Sears catalogue or Eaton's catalogue, you-know?

Interviewer: 'Cause we want to- we want to talk to the whole town, you know what I mean? Speaker: Oh yeah. Interviewer: Ah, but we can't talk to anybody in their twenties. There's just nobody here. Speaker: No, they're gone away. Interviewer: They've gone away. Speaker: Mm-hm.

Speaker: And then, ah, in September you had the threshing mill. That was the best life of us. Interviewer: Yeah? Speaker: Mommy made, ah, pies and cakes and- 'cause we all- like all these people came when we were threshing the- Interviewer: Oh okay. Speaker: The grain, eh?

So my father did advance and took that, you-know, went with that change and bought some equipment. One of his pieces, one of his timberjacks is at the Algonquin-Park. They have a logging museum there, so um, he has a piece of his equipment there, 'cause he was one of the guys that had the equipment first.

... Tim-Hortons ah um home-base, like where did it all start? Where's the- where's the birth place of- where's the birth place of ah I'll- I'll send you it via email too, ah yeah, it's in Hamilton. Tim-Hortons right? That's where Timmies started right? Okay do you where beavertails st-- got started? Do you-know where the birth place of Beavertails is?

Interviewer 1: Magical. Speaker: Yeah it was, it was. As a kid, you would feel it was magical. Except of course when the nuns were giving you the strap, which I never got by the way. (laughs) Interviewer 2: Oh. Did you ever see anyone? Speaker: But almost everybody else did, eh? Interviewer 2: You saw people get the strap? Speaker: Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. Interviewer 2: What did they do? Speaker: Well it was- it was a- we had one nun, ah, Sister-Kenneth- so they used to take a saint's name, so I-don't-know, Sister-S-- Si-- Sister- Saint-James of the cross, or Sister-Kenneth.