I was born in Nova Scotia, Canada in 1918., June 16., near the end of World War I. We lived on a farm of 70 acres, and had 200 chickens, 7 cows, 5 horses and some pigs. My people sold the eggs & milk, hay & wheat. In the winter time, my father worked for the government keeping the roads cleared. He used his own team of horses. There was a lot of snow there and the roads were dirt roads. My mother was born in Prince Edward Island, just across the strait, about 40 miles or less, and my father was born in Nova Scotia, in fact I was born in the same house. I had an older brother Donald, he is dead now, and then after me, my mother had twins, Elsie & Ernie. After three years she also had Irvin. Each summer my father would go west to work with the harvest of the prairie wheat fields. Seeing those flowing yellow fields of wheat gave him the idea of getting rich which he never made. He sold our stock & we moved to the prairies. There my mother could not take it, our closest neighbor was five miles away and the doctor 20 miles away. With 5 children this was unthinkable for her, and she called for a decision to move further west to the Kooteneys where some Nova Scotian people were. This we did in 1926. We lived in Rossland, high elevation, cold long winters, after two years we moved down to Trail. This is where my brother Norman was born in 1928.

In 1929 with the great depression, it was very difficult for my parents. We lived in a smelter city and the fumes from the smoke stacks of the smelter, like sulphur, killed all vegetation. However in the early thirties they (the smelter) used the smoke & residue to build a fertilizer plant. We then moved to a suburb in about 1932 where my youngest sister was born. Our family was of 7 children, a lot to feed. We grew up somehow, I walked 2 miles to school each day, the younger ones went to local school. It was bad in the depression but we survived. My mother was a good manager, no frills, no spending money, no nice clothes. We played ball, we made our own swimming pool in the creek, we went ice skating, we played cards, that was our life. I remember getting a radio in about 1935, it was a two piece affair & also a washing machine, it had about 4 plungers that went up and down & around. How far we have come.
I married when 21 to your grandfather in 1939, the war had just started. In 1947 the marriage failed and later I married Alexander MacDicken & we had two girls, Diane & Kathleen. They are teachers & have children. Here I am now 81 years old and still enjoy life. I am interested in things, I live alone in Vancouver.