The 30s, for me, were very different from the twenties. I would graduate from High School and be faced with decisions. Getting a job was top on the list.
The country was in a depression and jobs of any kind were scarce. My sister (Fanny) finished her nurses training and couldn't find work in a hospital. She came home and was kept busy but few people could afford to pay $1.00 a day.
In 1933, I was fortunate to get a job at Usk, BC, for the Percy Skinners. The pay was $10 a month plus room and board. It was a good place to work as they had a light plant, running water and a bathroom. Also a gas washer and hand operated mangle for pressing the sheets and table cloths.
Not too long after I moved to Usk a snow slide came down west of Usk. It covered the CN railroad track and went almost across the Skeena River. The CN had to bring in a rotary plow to clear the track. We all had to go down to have a look.
Both Terrace and Usk had baseball teams and they would get together on sports days. The 24th of May was the Usk day for the baseball tournament and July 1st it was held in Terrace. Both towns had good players.
1936 was the year of the big flood that caused so much damage in both Usk and Terrace. In Usk, the river came up so fast that the water couldn't get through Kitselas Canyon fast enough and it backed up. The people in Usk were used to high water in the spring and weren't too worried at first but by late afternoon they realized this high water was extreme and decided to start moving out of their homes.
Jimmy O'Brien had a 1928 flat deck truck and he hauled the furniture and it was put on the CN loading platform beside the track, but the water kept rising and by midnight everything had to be moved to the school grounds, which was on a bench above the town. By morning the platform and several small houses had floated down the river; also several others floated off their foundations. After the water went down there was debris everywhere. A forestry pump was brought in to hose the river silt out of the homes. They were also very fortunate that the summer was hot so the homes could dry out. (the flood was in late May)
A temporary hospital was set up in the United Church manse in Terrace as there was no way of getting out of Terrace except by small river boats. The manse was formerly owned by Clair Giggy's parents.
After the flood the CN hired men to help with the clean up and they were paid 25 cents an hour.
And so ends the typed sheets I found. I sure wish I'd found these when mother was alive as I'd have liked to ask her why she wrote so little about the 1930s. She met father in Usk and they married September 9, 1936. Their first child, Danny, was born September 19, 1938. There were a lot of changes in her life that decade and she didn't write about them. I also wish I knew when she wrote all of this........perhaps that would have shed light on the scarcity of anything about her life with father.
Father left mother in September, 1972 and she was very bitter about it for quite a few years. Perhaps she wrote this during those years.........
Cheerio,
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