Speaker: These- these facilities are no longer and the- the sadness about small town Ontario is we don't have industry to support jobs. So the young people that are born and grow up here, leave the town. So that talent gets lost. Interviewer: Yeah, the town shrunk so much everybody said. Speaker: There was more people in this area in the ei-- eighteen-hundreds then there was today.

We could smoke but we used to then walk across the trestle of the ah train bridge underneath it where there was this four-inch ledge and it was about ah maybe forty-foot crossing but we were twenty-feet above the rocks. So we would hand-over-hand cross the bridge to the next abutment. I would never let my kids do some of the things that we did as a kid growing up in Beaverton.

Throw that up on the wagon and the guy on the wagon had to build the load now. And you took it into the barn and they had what they called a hay-fork. It was an iron affair that went- it was across the top was about a foot and a half and then it- two irons went down about three feet and then there was two rods went down to two little prongs that tipped up and down, and it activated them up or down with a lever ...

And they pull it up and over and that locked it. And then there was a- a hay fork rope that was fastened to a car at the- as they called it, it was a four-wheel metal affair with ah ran on a wooden- at the big barn ran on a wooden track 'bout four inches square. And it came to the middle and there was a stop-block there that tripped it and it- it tripped this pulley. And that pulley then would come down.

My people were not preten-- my mother was not a social climbing lady or my pa-- my father was very laid back and-so-on so it was a very quiet, quiet affair.

Speaker: Thursday, first of all, Thursday we got there and- and one of Lance's f-- cousins picked us up, and ah, we went to the hotel and then that night we had a red carpet affair, it was a gala, which I n-- and we walked the red carpet. I never thought I'd get to walk the red carpet (laughs). Interviewer: With your broken foot and your beautiful dress.

Uncle Phil went to Vancouver to manage his affairs there and ah, when uncle Pat died in nineteen-thirty-seven he had seven-hundred-thousand acres of land and (inc) cattle-

teeter-totters and ah we used to play um teeter-totters and ah we used to play um Andy-over-the-roof, throw the ball over the roof, Andy-over-the-roof, throw the ball over the roof.

Speaker: The pontoon scraped the ice when we were taking off, if we had been another six inches lower- Interviewer: Yeah. Speaker: We'd have been ass over tea kettle into the- (laughs) into the strait.

Interviewer: Yeah, I'd love to hear more about um your childhood in Beaverton like what were the summers like? Speaker: Oh the summers were awf-- awesome. I lived awfully out in the country but I was close to the beach. Interviewer: Oh that must have been nice. Speaker: And I had access to Lake-Simcoe.

Some of the people you're going to interview here were in that orchestra. Janet over there right now, she was in the same orchestra. We had an awfully good principal who really did organize things. So even if we never did continue with our instruments, we certainly were exposed to music.

Interviewer: Were you ever good enough to ah- to think about pursuing it? Speaker: No, no. None of us were that good on that team. Interviewer: No? Speaker: No, not really. We had an awfully good coach, he'd been a quarterback for the ah London-Mustangs. Yeah, three or four years quarterback and that was a top team, Mustangs used to beat- beat up on the- on the ah Varsity-Blues all the time.

Interviewer: And apparently everywhere had a puddle too (laughs). I wonder how far you could get going from puddle to puddle. Speaker: You- you- well you could probably try but your skates would be awfully dull when you got to wherever you were going. But I remember this ditch um just- just up there, up the road which is now free of water in the- in the winter was a- you could skate.

Ah, but in the summertime we always ate in the back kitchen and it didn't have a screen door on it.

Okay, and then- and then in the wintertime, Monday was generally wash day, dependant of course. Anyway if it's wash day, you put a fire on out in the back kitchen and you put the wash boiler on out there and then put four, five pails of water, whatever and heated out in- out in the back kitchen. And- and then ah, and your washing machine was inside and m-- and the l-- living part of the house and the ger-- the was generally room, room in there. Sometimes- sometimes not, you washed out in the back kitchen too.

I was allowed to used it at about fifteen or sixteen ah, never did end up using a baler because it belonged to the neighbour and he always- he always drove his own machinery and my uncle always drove his own machinery and equipment. Um, they shared equipment, farmed a farm, um, my uncle would take his tractor and rake over and ah, start at the neighbours and then the neighbour would come along and bale it. But the next day they'd be at my uncles place, he'd have his tractor and rake going and the neighbour would have his tractor and baler baling my uncle's because they were sharing back and forth.

In nineteen fifty-something and another guy was starting out like I was. We bought a baler between us and they were too big.

I was always- and then when I got older, I drove the tractor on the baler. Um, he would cut the hay but I would bale.

And then I'd come home and then I would drive the tractor on the baler and the hay would come through the baler and make small bales.

In the summertime, I'd drive the baler and bring in the hay and help out with chores and-