CHAPTER 3

Back Home

Our train did not go through Spy Hill so we left the train at Tantallon and hired a team, spring wagon, and driver to take us to Spy Hill, arriving home in late August. We moved back to the farm as soon as the Leitches left, harvest being over. I remember the delight of an eight year old when I found my doll and cradle and other things where they had been packed away.

That winter my mother taught me reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic from books borrowed from the school. Then as soon as roads cleared in the spring, my father drove me to school where I went into the second grade at the age of nine; this was to the old one-room school out in the country east of Spy Hill. Beatrice Miller was the teacher. During this summer, Roy Clark (Charlie's younger brother) worked on the farm for my dad, then went into the Canadian Army and died in England during the 1918 flu epidemic.

I finished the second grade in June 1916 and in August, still in the one-room country school, began third grade. That fall a cyclone struck over a wide area while we were in school. The building was not damaged, just shifted a few inches on the foundation. I remember the teacher lining us up on the west side of the room from which the wind was coming so if the building blew over, we would be on top of the desks and not under them. Not long after that the desks were secured to the floor. A few houses received damage but many barns were damaged or completely destroyed. Our barn a large stock and hay barn, went down. It had just been built and when the storm struck, Daddy was in the hay mow trying to put in place the big hay doors. He was. not injured and, after the wind died down, he stepped from the floor of the loft to the ground. Parts of this floor had to be cut away to free farm animals trapped underneath. The barn was rebuilt shortly after.

When cold and deep snow made travel difficult, I stayed home from school and mother helped me with third grade books brought from the school. Back to school again in the spring of 1917, to finish the third grade, but this time to a new two-room school built on the eastern edge of Spy Hill. It had a full basement for furnace, play room, and indoor chemical toilets (for winter use only). This spring I walked to school, three miles, sometimes thru the fields and sometimes down the west road to join Annie Perrin, who often drove one horse with cart, and would ride with her. After the usual six-week vacation, I repeated this same routine. I was now in fourth grade, the highest class in the junior room. late that fall the farm was rented, live stock and machinery sold and we moved to Spy Hill where a house and lot had been purchased on the eastern side of town. There, Daddy set up a shoe and harness repair shop in a room attached to the front of the house. This year Mrs. Wishart was the teacher of the junior room. The fall of 1918, I went into fifth grade and into the senior room.

This was the winter of the great epidemic of Spanish influenza. Schools and all public meetings were closed. People went to stores to get supplies and to the post office for mail and quickly returned home. Many whole families were stricken at one time. Mr. McFarland, our next-door neighbor, went from home to home bringing food and medicine and giving what aid he could. The town doctor had so many calls he could not make all the rounds. Several in the community died and were buried with private services. A few caskets of former residents came in by train and were buried unopened with a brief family service. We escaped with no serious illness.

Armistice Day was an exciting time. November 11th 1918 will long be remembered as the close of a long four-year conflict. The Canadian army had joined England at the very beginning of the war.

Shortly after the Armistice, Wilford Clarke (Charlie and Roy's brother) came home, having served in France. Charlie and sister Lena came in from the farm and we went with them to meet the late night train and bring him to our house where he called his parents. Telephones were very new in our part of Canada then. Wilford never fully recovered from the effects of poison gas used by the German army in France and after years of ill health and the death of his wife Millie, of cancer, he committed suicide.

It was also during this year that a piano was bought and I started music lessons which continued off and on for the next four years with frequent interruptions. Teachers were not always available. I finished the sixth grade in the spring of 1920 and the following year, covered the work of the seventh and eighth grades and passed the provincial examination in June 1921. That summer, Daddy sold the house and shop to a Mr. Dodd and we moved our things into two granaries close to the Methodist Church on the west side of town while a new house was being built on a four acre plot nearby.

After we moved into the new home, the granaries were sold to a farmer and moved away. All thru my school days at Spy Hill, my closest chums were my two cousins Esther and Dora Carter, Uncle Fred's girls, one a little younger and one just a little older than I. The family also included Frank, Charlie, and Elmer and after we left Canada, Rae and Ross were born.

Soon after we moved to Spy Hill, an ice-skating rink was built in town and many happy hours were spent there in the afternoons and evenings, learning to skate or watching the games of curling and hockey.

During all my time in Canada, my parents and some of the relatives who belonged to the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints kept in touch with the church by means of the scriptures, the Saints Herald and Ensign, Autumn Leaves and Sunday school quarterlies sent by mail from headquarters in Independence, Missouri. Because there were so few members and so widely scattered, we did not have a branch or church building but occasionally a missionary would come and spend a week or so visiting the members and hold services. It was during this summer of 1921 that Elder D'Arcy came and held preaching services in the Bavelaw school house some miles east of us. The Carters, their neighbors, the Allen Vances' and Allen's mother attended and took me with them. The Smiths, Richardsons and Sparlings, members of the Bavelaw community, and some others were in attendance. I was much impressed by the preaching and the plan of the gospel as he presented it. After school, I would stop at "Grandma" Vances home on my way home and ask questions and discuss the church. Before Brother D'Arcy left, I was baptized in the lake on our farm and confirmed as a member of the church on August 14, 1921. It was later that summer that George and John Sparling rode their bicycles from beyond Bavelaw to see Esther and me but one trip that far was apparently too much and they did not return.

Our local school taught grades nine and ten and I continued on at school until mid-term of grade ten. In the late fall of that year (1922), we sold the house in Spy Hill and prepared to leave Spy Hill. With the shoe shop already sold and the farm mortgaged, since it was not paying off, it was necessary to make a decision to either return to the farm or find other means of livelihood. My father was then sixty-one years old and Mother's health was never good. After her marriage, she had managed to care for her home. By this time, I was able to do a lot of the heavier laundry and cleaning. Of course, at that time in that part of Canada, there was no electricity. Heating was with wood or coal and there was no water except for what was pumped from a well by hand or melted snow in winter. Hoping for better health in milder climate, we chose to move to Puyallup, Washington, where we had visited eight years earlier.