We moved to Terrace from Rossland, BC, in 1927 and rented a small house just east of where the Skeena Hotel sits today. (not sure when she wrote this) There is a beer and wine store there now. I read somewhere that my Dad arrived with his accordion, but actually, he arrived with his wife and three daughters.
My Dad bought 10 acres fronting on Kenney Street and had a two story house built. We moved into it in the summer of 1920. It was just a shell then but Dad worked on it during the long summer evenings. Several things went down between the walls (newspapers, sawdust) before the upstairs was boarded in.
Forty years later, Chuck Magnus, a local electrician, pulled a book out of the wall when he was putting an electrical outlet in the dining room.
Our house was heated with a wood heater in the front room and a small range in the kitchen. It wasn't too cold downstairs but it sure was cold upstairs. Dad eventually put a vent in the ceiling over the heater, which let some heat up to the second story.
For the first few years we burned mill ends from George Little's mill. Mother ordered 10 wagon loads in the spring and my sisters and I had to pile it in the shed. It was a huge pile and we sniveled and whined, but we didn't get any sympathy from Mother.
There wasn't any electricity or running water so laundry was done by hand, the water being carried in and out. A galvanized tub, copper boiler, scrub board and sometimes a plunger, were mostly what people used.
Ironing was done with Sad Irons heated on top of the stove. We put a cake pan over them to keep the heat in.
For light we used coal oil lamps. We had an Aladdin lamp in the front room and small lamps with reflectors in the kitchen. Filling them and trimming the wicks was a daily job.
We didn't have a proper basement but there was a large hole under the house where we kept vegetables and canning. We also kept a crock of eggs that were in waterglass solution. Mother bought 20 dozen in the spring when they were 15 cents a dozen.
I remember Mother bought a crate of plums and I was helping her remove the stones and I decided I'd like to have two or three to eat. We always wore bloomers with elastic at the knee and I thought that would be a good place to stash them. To do this I dropped one and when I bent down to pick it up I took one down and slipped it under the elastic. Once the plums were stoned I went outside and ate mine. (oh, my, can't you just see mother telling this story....she'd be chuckling)
Wild raspberries were plentiful in the early days and we only had to go up Lanfear's Hill to get all we wanted. I didn't like picking berries but mother insisted that I go along. One day I got into a great patch and I picked quite a few, but when Mother came back to check on me, I'd eaten most of them. I was sent home and never taken berry picking again.
Because of a lack of transportation, the lakes in the area weren't available to most of us. The pond that we swam in was behind Curley Bailey's (next to where Canadian Tire is today) and I believe it was called Colthurst's Pond. I always thought it was part of a gully and that some boys trenched the water from Howe Creek to fill it in. I've since heard different stories on how it came to be there. I do know it wasn't stagnant. We spent many happy hours down there and, in later years, other young people used it. I think we all learned to swim or dog paddle and the braver ones learned to dive. By the end of the day it was a mud hole.
The saying 'you don't miss what you've never had' held true in the 20s. We made our own pleasure and the kids I went with enjoyed CGIT (Canadian Girls In Training - it was through the United Church, I believe), choir, basketball, softball, skating in the Horseshoe area, sleigh riding down Moore's Hill (Miles' Hill) and swimming. There were also dance classes in the GWVA (Great War Veterans' Association) where young and old learned to dance. My Dad taught the dances and played for them on the accordion he came to Terrace with in 1917.
Before the depression, the two Glass girls (Helen and?), Adeline Thomas (married Lee Llewellyn) and my sister and I earned pocket money in the summer picking strawberries at Remo. Mr. Hubert, Mr. Carr and Mr. Jopp had large fields of strawberries and we were paid 75 cents to pick a crate of berries, which was good money at that time. The last summer we picked, the depression was really being felt and the growers were only paid $1.35 per crate so they went out of the berry business.
Although Remo was a small community, the people got together and had dances. A gramophone supplied the music. The record called 'Snow Dear' was a favourite of some of the men. Their strawberry social was also enjoyed by all who came.
The 1920s ended with the start of the depression and the 1930s ended with the start of World War II, but the pioneer spirit was strong in the community and we never gave up.
It was great growing up in the 20s, even meeting the evening train was fun.
(that's all Mother wrote about the 20s)
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