Audio Recordings

[On this tape, Earl Bretzlaff, a male relative, speaks quite often, responding to the interviewer’s questions.  Earl is younger than Mr. John Bretzlaff but older than the interviewer.  Some of his comments have been transcribed here.] 

Part 1

Born February 5 [no year given]

Father:  Fred Bretzlaff, a farmer, born in Germany

Mother:  Mathilda Heike, born in Germany

Siblings in order of birth:  Maggie, Otto, Fred, Charlie, Helena, Louie, Maria, Louisa, John, Martha, Minnie, Gustave, Herman, Augusta, Olga, Tilly  

School

Mr. Bretzlaff:   “I had to walk from my place to Ladysmith.  That would be five miles.  I went to the German school.  The minister held the classes.  There were three—Mordhurst, Schrader and Klinsky.  Schrader was a long, tall fellow.  I went to school there around three years.”  

[No Part 2 in digital form]

Part 3

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Everyone worked at haying together.  We drew it in with the horses.”

Interviewer:  “Did you do any clearing of land?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Not in the old days, but once I grew up and got land, then I cleared it.”  

Interviewer:  “How did they do that?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “First they cut out the firewood, the logs and all, and then they took the stumps out and put it in piles and burned it.  It was a big job, a dirty job.”

“My father always had a big stock of cows, and twenty-eight sheep, a big stock of cattle, and lots of horses and lots of pigs.  Eleven horses.”

“My father was about sixty-eight when he died.  My mother lived over ninety. After my father died, she lived the last while with me.”  

Part 4

Interviewer:   “And could you tell me about some of the things you did, Uncle John, when you were playing with your brothers and sisters as a young lad?  Can you remember sliding or skating?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Oh, yes. There was a patch of ice, and we would skate right in the field.  There was a little mud patch the year round, right in the field there, and we used to go there. We had no skis, just on our feet.”

Interviewer:  “And when you were older, what did the young people do for an evening out together, for a social get-together?  Were there any box socials?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Yes, there were box socials.”

Other relative:  “I remember a long time ago in the summer there used to be dancin’.  And a lot of people in this community hardly ever went to a dance in Ladysmith.  And then after the dance hall was built everybody used to go to the dance hall.  It seemed funny that people from here never went to Ladysmith for dancin’.”

Interviewer:  “But it wasn’t very far away, just a little separateness each area felt they wanted.”

Other relative:  “Most of them had a horse and buggy.”

Interviewer:  “Distance meant more then than it does now.”

Mr.  Bretzlaff:  “Yes.”

Other relative:  “If you didn’t have a horse and buggy, you walked.”

Interviewer:  “Could you tell me, Uncle John, about the hunting and the fishing up here when you were a young man?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Oh yes, I done a lot of fishing.  And to tell you the truth, even with sixteen in the family we still couldn’t eat all the fish.  And you know them fifty-pound butter tubs?  We had to take the fish out and pack them in like herring.”

Interviewer:  “Did you ever salt them down for the winter?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “No.  We got fresh ones all the time.  Anytime we went down to the big spring.” 

Interviewer:  “You didn’t have to take any bait then?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Oh, yes, we had to put bait on.”

Interviewer:  “Was the hunting then pretty good, too?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Oh, yes.  Deer.  Lots of deer.  Red deer.  And one white one, white as snow.”  

Interviewer:  “That was a pretty rare thing to see.”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Yes, a real white one.”

Part 5

Interviewer:  “Did you have to kill much beef, or would you be able to get enough venison to tide you over pretty well?  If you killed a lot of deer, that would be a lot of your winter’s meat then.”

Mr. Bretzlaff:   “Oh, yeah, in that way I was lucky.  Big ones.  Solid.” 

Interviewer:  “And where did you keep them?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Oh, in the little house.  The little log house.”

Interviewer:  “And that was good and cool.” 

Other relative:  “And deer meat you didn’t have in the summer because there was no way of keeping it more than a couple of days.”

Interviewer:  “So you couldn’t keep it like you could keep beef?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “No, you couldn’t keep that either.  My dad had to can some, you know.  That was the only way to keep it.”

Interviewer:  “So you would just keep it in the winter.  What was the main staple then, Uncle John?  What was the main thing you would have for a meal?  Did you eat a lot of potatoes?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Yes, a lot of potatoes.  We had four pits.  They were filled with potatoes down in the cellar outside.  They were filled with potatoes and turnips.  And they stayed there through the winter.  And then in the spring after the snow we would put in a garden.  We would empty the pit, and all would be there.  We would feed them to the cattle.”

Interviewer:  “Did you ever eat any of them yourself?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Yes, now and again, but not too many.”

Interviewer:  “And did your mother can vegetables in the summer to use in the winter?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Yes, she did.”

Interviewer:  “And did she churn much?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Yes, every day.  Every day.”

Interviewer:  “And whose job was that?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “My mother’s and the girls’.”

Part 6

Interviewer:  “Did you do much travelling as a young lad?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “No, not too much.  Well, I had to go to school once and awhile.  But I done a lot of travelling before I got that stroke.  I had more time; I had nothing else to do.”

“But from our place, that bush from there through to Herman Schraders’s, I knew every tree. I liked that.  I used to walk out on the crust in the spring.  I walked miles and miles.  I liked that.  I had nothing else to do.”

Interviewer:  “When you’re a young lad, you don’t feel it you know.”

Part 7

Interviewer:  “Do you remember any other particular chores around the house or anything your mother and the girls would be doing?  They’d do their own sewing.”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Yes.  They’d mind the young’uns.”

Interviewer:  “And they’d help take care of the babies…”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Yes, take care of the babies and help.  And they’d be making all the clothes that they’d wear.  You couldn’t buy no clothes so they all had to be made all by hand.”

Interviewer:  “If anybody got sick and you needed a doctor, who would you see?  Was there any particular doctor that would come up?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Oh, we’d have Dr. Klock to come up.”

Interviewer:  “Is there any doctor you remember?  There was a Dr. Lyon, a Dr. Klock.”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “And McDowell.  They would come up.  At that time they had to come up with the horses; there were no cars.”

Interviewer:   “When you were a little boy did you often go in with your mother or father into Ladysmith?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Yes, now and again.” 

Interviewer:  “Did they get down to Shawville much, do you remember?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Not when I was real young.  We went just now and again.  And then we had to go to Masham with a load of wheat and a load of rye to get it ground into flour.”

Interviewer:  “Would that be an overnight trip, or would you make it all in one day?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “In one day.  We got up early.  And we got home when it was gettin’ dark.”

Interviewer:  “You’d be pretty tired after a day like that.”

Other relative:  “That was one that been there before the Wanlesses built one?  It was one of the earlier mills, eh?  You mentioned Grandpa went to Masham with the wheat.  And then after you used to go to the one Wanlesses and Elliott built?”

Mr.  Bretzlaff:  “Yes, we went there many times.”

Interviewer:  “Did you work much in the lumber camps?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Oh, yes, quite a few years.  I was up at Masham for two years unloading.  I worked cutting logs and unloading, driving horses.”  [He also mentions two other camps where he worked.]

Interviewer:  “And what were you doing in the first lumber camps? Were you driving then, too?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “No, then I was cuttin’ logs right away.  Then I had to go up with a top-loader.”  

Interviewer:  “And what would a top-loader do?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Well, they had to roll the logs up and set them up on the load and place them all.  You had to watch yourself, your legs, and you had to have good balance.  And the load had to be balanced.”

Interviewer:  “When would you go up to the camps?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Early in the fall, as soon as the grain was off the fields.”

Interviewer:  “And when would you be coming home?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “When the snow was gone.”

Interviewer:  “Did you ever get home much in between times to see your family?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “No, you couldn’t come down.” 

Interviewer:  “So you were up there for the winter, and that was it.”

Part 8

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “There was lots to eat.  A good cook.  I never got bad food in the camp.”

Interviewer:  “What were the companies you worked for?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “First for Shannon.”

Interviewer:  “Are there any particular stories you remember, things that happened in the camps which were funny or interesting?” 

[The following section is difficult to make out.  Mr. Bretzlaff discusses using the horses to draw sleighs with loads of logs over the ice, and sometimes when they hit bad ice the horses would break through and fall into the water.  They had to hold the horses heads up, and the horses would paddle until they could pull them out.  The drivers had to quickly pull out the draw-bolts connecting the horses to the sleigh if the load started to sink.  They had to pull the sleighs out, too, using a long chain. These mishaps could take place any time during the winter or spring wherever there was thin ice.]

Part 9

Interviewer:  “Do you remember anything else about the camps, any particular teasing the men would get or tricks that would be played on men in the camps?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “Yes, Joe Ebert used to steal our socks.  And we’d get to play cards in the evenings.  But during the week the last while the foreman wouldn’t allow it.  We had to go to bed at nine o’clock.  But Saturday we could play all night and Sunday all day, but then at nine o’clock the lights went out.”

Interviewer:  “But did you do anything else besides play cards?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “No, not much.  Step dances and stuff like that.”

Interviewer:  “What is the biggest difference between life today and life when you were a young man?”

Mr. Bretzlaff:  “We done a lot of walking.  From our place to get some chewin’ tobacco, to go get little things at the store sometimes.  We were used to it.  It was good for boys.  In that time people was stronger.  Now they are weaker.  Tell’em to take out some grain; now they couldn’t do it.  I’m tellin’ the truth.  We were used to it.” 

 

Transcription by Sue Lisk