Audio Recordings

Part 1

Discussion about an old violin by Joseph [Benarius?} that he got in a lumber camp.  Then he plays a bit of an old-time waltz.

Part 2

Old-time waltz continues.

Part 3

Intro to “Uncle Jim’s Tune.”

Part 4

“Uncle Jim’s Tune.”

Part 5

“Old Black Creek”.

Part 5b

End of “Old Black Creek.”

Part 6

Mr. Turcotte recounts his earliest memories about the church:

“There was this holiness movement, the Hornerites they used to call them.  It was back in the old school, back in Thorne, in Bill Connolly’s Corner they called it.  They used to have a service on Sunday. Mary Siemens was our teacher at that time.  We only had three months school in the year:  June, July and August.  I couldn’t go to school; I had to stay home and herd the cows…  I helped with the cows and the hay.  I was a big boy, and I was in the class with the small kids, in ABC class, and I didn’t like that, so I quit going…

Miss Siemens used to have Sunday school, and after Sunday school the big people, preachers, would take over.  There was a fellow named Jack Robinson used to live up here, with big earrings you could jump a dog through.  He was the first man to preach.  They were trying to convert all the Anglicans, and it’s pretty hard to convert them.  Anyhow, Robinson preached his sermon, and he was a bad man.  He chewed tobacco, he smoked and he drank whiskey, and he went to dances and all.  Miss Rawlins preached a nice little sermon… told us how to live and to behave ourselves and grow up to be young men and women.”

Part 7

“I can’t remember much of her service, but my mother said she was good…Anyway, Bill Rooney was supposed to be the head man of the whole church, and he kept himself for the last to tell the people how bad he was, and he was pretty bad all right enough.  Anyway, when he was done talking to the people and told them all the doing he had been in–drinking whiskey, chewing tobacco, smoking and gallivanting around–anyway, all the people would be getting to twist around in their seats, the hard school benches were getting pretty hard, and someone fell asleep already, when he got up he said he was just like a tree in the forest of the Lord.  He said, ‘The leaves are withered and fell to the ground, the branches are rotted and fell to the ground also, but thank the Lord the old stump’s still standing.’  My mother grabbed us by the hand and chased us out of the school.  The old fool didn’t know what he was talkin’ about.”

Part 8

“That was a true story.  I was right there, a young lad, and I remember it well.”

Part 9

“After the meeting he was going back to Riley’s where they were all good people, they were all converted…They were good neighbours, they were nice people, and they were just a little piece away from where we lived.  Bill was walking past just at dinner time…The summer kitchen was just across the road on the old Vandusky place.  Mother was just coming across with a big plate of fried pork and boiled potatoes…She just came out of the summer kitchen door to go to the house with it…The road went between the summer kitchen and the house there, the road people travelled on.  He said, ‘Mindy (her name was Amanda but everyone called her Mindy), you’ve got a wonderful looking dinner there.’  ‘Would you stay and have dinner with us, Mr. Rooney?’ said my mother,.  He said, ‘Well if you were a Christian I would.’  She wasn’t a Christian you see, she was an Anglican!  That’s all I’m going to say about that; that’s a church story.”

Part 10

“That time we had a big crowd going to the school back there.  There was a number of Emersons always in there that time.  Dick Hazard had five or six going to school.  Alec Hazard had four, Jim Baird had three or four going from Baird’s place to school.  Some of them had a moustache already.  Bill Havelin had five, and then there was Bill Yach’s.”

Part 11

Mr. Turcotte gives the first names of many of the children that went to school there.

“We were all on one bench, not seats.  The mosquitoes were bad in June, and we were all in bare feet, no boots.  A little pair of overalls your mother made; you couldn’t buy a pair in the store back then.  You’d be swatting off mosquitoes all day.  There was a little swamp there…  We used to drink milk a lot back then… That’s why I lived so long.  I drunk a lot of milk, maybe five or six cows already I guess.”

Part 12

“After dinner there’d be a big rush to the swamp because that’s where we kept our bottles.  Anyway, one of the girls fell into this hole, and she was an awful mess.  There was mud all over.  She was sitting there crying.  We pulled her out and pulled off the big leaves, and we wiped her as clean as we could, but we didn’t get her too good.  And we got this bottle of milk out of that cold swamp, and it tasted real good, and we gave it to her, and she was happy…  We was sitting in the one seat, and I was good in figures, and all in my seat would copy my arithmetic. Miss Siemens caught them…  They couldn’t even do subtraction.  One time I could work all the way through the arithmetic.”

“My first job was with my uncle Jack.  I picked potatoes in my bare feet for twenty-five cents a day.  In my bare feet and cold enough to drop, so I’d run up and down the row to warm my feet, and get cold, and I’d take off again to warm them up again.  For twenty-five cents a day.”

Part 13

Mr. Turcotte lived in Ladysmith all his life.  When he was young there were more businesses in Ladysmith than today.

“There were two blacksmiths, two men in each shop, and the hammers would be ringing from seven in the morning ’til nine o’clock at night.  We had a wood carpenter and wagon maker, John Dale.  He used to make wagons and expresses and buggies, repair wheels and stuff like that.  He had no tools, only a hand saw and plane and a broad axe, and that’s all he had to work with.  We had a tinsmith, George [Wainman], and he used to make dishes and rigs for the people to put in their milk.  There were no separators in the country, and you’d get the cream off the top of these dishes…and cream cans to put in the springs.  The cold water would make the cream come to the top of the milk in the bottle.  You opened the spout, opened the little valve on the bottom, and around the skim milk, there was a glass in it, you see, and when you seen the cream coming, you just went until the cream was out of the bottom of the glass and shut it off quick and kept a little milk in it.  You didn’t want to lose any of that cream.  Cream was our living–-it was butter.  Butter was only about eleven cents a pound at the time, but everyone made butter and had cows of their own, and shipped it all away in thirty or fifty pound tubs…I went to Ottawa once with a load of butter…  I was only twelve years old when I took a team of horses to Ottawa.  I went with my dad.  He had one team, and I had the other, and I had sixteen pigs in my load.”

Part 14

“They were fine Arabian horses; they were good to travel.  We left about four in the evening, and then we were in Ottawa around half past six in the morning.  We stayed at Bishop House down on the market…  We got our meals there for twenty-five cents a meal.  Our stable was free, but we had to furnish our own feed.  After we had our breakfast, Dad went out on the street to see if he could find anybody could tell him where to put his load…  He had a load of turkeys and geese and butter.  Finally the fellow was there…  Everyone had their own stand, but the fellow had to tell you where.  I got my load of pigs out and took the horses back to the stable to eat, and then went back to see if I could sell some pigs.  They weighed from one-hundred ten to ninety pounds.  Pork was five cents a pound that time.  Every pig was weighed, and the price was on a tag.  It was a cold morning, boy, was it ever cold, and I wasn’t dressed that well…  I had a pair of old beef-skin moccasins, and they were wet, and my feet nearly froze.  There was a Jew had a store there, and he had a pot-bellied stove, and there was three or four coals in the bottom, and it was cold; it would freeze you alive…  You could sit on that stove, and it still wouldn’t warm you up.  I never liked them pot-bellied stoves since…  Everyone I see I could break it up…  They don’t heat anything.”

Part 15

“I didn’t sell anything in the morning, but around two o’clock I seen a fellow coming down from Rideau street with a brown corduroy coat and fur collar.  He come over, and he looked at the prices and picked off a couple each over one hundred pounds.  He set them down on the street and gave me the money.  He took one pig under each arm and went off home.  That load of pigs was gone in half an hour…  I guess he phoned to people and told them about the cheap pork.  It was nice, too, well-butchered and everything.  There’s a woman came along and bought the last pig I had.  I had to deliver it to Harvey street because she couldn’t carry it.  I told her I didn’t know how to get there, so she said she would go with me. When the horses saw the train on the railroad track, they took off faster than the train was going.  I got this woman home with her pig, but the horses was so scared I couldn’t let them go, so she had to roll the pig over the snow into the house…  I couldn’t find my way back, so I let the horses go like my dad said, and they found the way back.  Dad told me to go on home, but he’d have to stay overnight to sell his load. It was Christmas Eve, and I wanted to hang up my stocking, so I went…  I got home, but it was late.”

 

Credit:  Summary by Chris Seifried, with additions by Sue Lisk