... so there'd be ten or twelve of us sit down every- every meal and we had no hydro, no water in the house, and we ate by coal-oil lamps. Coal-oil lamps on the wall around the table and um, that's just the way it was. No telephone.

They raised ten children. ... There was no hydro, there was no wood in the area when we moved up to that place, there was no good wood at all. It was terrible. Cold. Oh God it was cold up there.

... my dad loved ice-cream. And ah- 'course we always had our own whipped-cream and-everything and mum would try making ice-cream sometimes but that was- that was a big job. There's- seemed to be anyways (laughs). But so when- when the hydro come in well then that was a big thing, eh? To have a refrigerator or freezer. That was- that was wonderful.

Like by this time, we had electricity eh? ... I think back in the sixties sometime, they got the milk and they- and the hydro.

There was all- all our friends and bank people that I worked with and-stuff. And there was- there was- we had no water and there was no road in there. At least- no hydro I meant to say. And ah- oh it was another wingding party.

... and we have solar-panels. My uncles in the- my uncle works for Gravity-S-- well he like runs it for the Canadian- ... Part, Gravity-Sun-Power and it's like solar-panels and the energy you make for hydro, you sell to hydro and they give you like a bill like not a bill, but a check every month for the hydro you make.

But like I don't want to think like marriage and kids and where I'm going to live. I rather just live out of my truck for like ten years. ... D-- yeah, think of it. Won't have to pay for like rent, hydro. You could have like a D-V-D player in your truck. You could still watch T-V.

Ah well, the base is on to provide relief for hard-working families. That's what the basis of the policy is is called changebook. Um, the big thing for up here is to get rid of the provincial portion of the H-S-T off home heating, and hydro. Ah, unplug the mandatory smart meters 'cause what happens, you-know, with the mandatory smart meters, they want you to shower before seven A-M and do your laundry after nine P-M to get the benefits of it.

Um, like I said, getting the home- the H-S-T with the provincial portion off home heating, and hydro - obviously, in the north our winters are a lot longer than they are down south, so we'll obviously save a lot more money with that. That's one of the- the major things within the platform.

Ah, what else? Like there's- yeah, you'd have to ask me specifics, if you wanted more- like that's the main thing is the H-S-T off the home heating and hydro.

... they're actually becoming more blue and you'll see within their colours, they actually added blue as one of their main colours in their new platform. They- you won't know that but they want to do the same thing, H-S-T off the home heating and hydro but they want to do that in four years. So after four years, meaning not in the first- this first term but the second term, ah, kind-of interesting, right? They're not going to do it within this election, they're- they want to do it for the next election.

Interviewer: And are similar churches in the area (inc)- Speaker: Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Our minister used to go to two town churches and the one just closed in April. No, I mean there's- when you've only got half-a-dozen people there, ten, you can't- hydro, um everything's very expensive so you can't ah- can't do it.

... but on a nice big piece of property, these people won the lottery. ... You-know, they came from their postage stamp in Cobalt and wound up with a- you-know, a seventy-five or hundred-by-hundred piece of land in North-Cobalt with water and sewer and heat and hydro and all-that-fun-stuff.

And I almost got electrocuted twice 'cause the bosses brother had- was losing his memory and when he told us the hydro was off, twice it wasn't off and we could have been electrocuted.

And ah- so I seen a lot of that and I could go into any job and help prevent those kind of accidents because you know how- how it happens and- and what causes them, eh? Same with- same with saying you're going to turn the hydro off and you forget to do it. You can't fool with somebody like that. It's- it's deadly. So I got twenty-five near accidents. Twenty-five close calls and- and a lot of them could have been avoided.

And my- there was no mothers'-allowance, there was nothing to help young women who was in the same situation. So she went back to the farm where there was no hydro, no heat except wood stove. ... After being in town where there was hydro, running water out of a tap. Back to the da-- the wells and lighting coal-lamps and ha-- taking care of a little baby.

And ah, but a lot of people are not having traditional funerals anymore and it's a lot of overhead for the people that own it. ... You-know taxes and heat and hydro and-everything-else- ... So they're downsizing. The only thing is I don't know what they're going to do to- to ah, with that building there.

The trees were producing the food. The water was producing the food. They were probably far better off that the- the poor people here who had to pay for heat and hydro, all those things. They didn't actually need it there.

Well I kind-of think the biggest change would be the hydro coming into effect. Doing things that- you could do something with the hydro. We didn't have hydro, I- it was quite a thing when it come.

You could get this in electric, and you could get something else, and- it- didn't have to have the old lamps that you had to clean up all the time (laughs). Just swi-- ... Put the switch on, and- (laughs) yeah. No, that was a great thing, that p-- hydro.