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Denise's Christmas Letter

Always the good and the bad, or worrisome! (Hopefully. It could be all bad.) 2014 was that sort of year.

But today was one of those days when all is excused: our son Doug phoned to say that after five worrisome months, he has finally been diagnosed as cancer-free. Yeay!!! What a great Christmas present to all of us.

Our winter had been fairly uneventful. I would say that on my part the biggest and most uncomfortable part was the reluctant realization that old age is no longer creeping up; it’s overtaking us at a gallop! We spend great swaths of time just resting up from any and all endeavours.  Discussing exhaustion has become a common pastime. Plus discussing what seems to be our increasing forgetfulness…

May brought the abrupt passing away of Denise’s father at the ripe old age of 102, and June brought the news of the passing  away of our dear sister-in-law Irene, Dave’s wife.

But aren't we all used to life’s cycles being all over the map? In August we celebrated granddaughter Emilie’s wedding in Ottawa. Doug and Anne treated us all to an elegant affair, indeed!  Emilie was radiant. And husband Graham is a delight. Except for Jock, who can no longer travel, (and Denise’s dear sisters Pat and Leila) all the McKay family were there, even Great-Uncle Dave came from Vancouver Island.

Doug and Anne’s daughter Stephanie has had an amazing year; she’s had a breakthrough as a fashion illustrator: she’s become ”discovered”: chosen to be an  illustrator  at the Toronto Spring and Fall fashion weeks, followed by similar work for Holt Renfrew, Target and a contract with a NY fashion house. And their son Kevin continues working at Ontario Power Generation in the nuclear field.

Our daughter Pat and her husband Ernie are both looking at retirement: Ernie probably this winter, Pat maybe in 2 years.  Their son Greg is still composing music and performing on stage and in videos, and Amanda is back at school, aiming to become an accountant, plus she is engaged to be married next summer to Chris, a very likable fellow.

Daughter Judy and Rob’s lives were hectic most of the year: their move from Iowa to a home in Port Credit ( Mississauga) took huge amounts of their time, but now they are finally settled in. With their 3 dogs. And a cat. Both Mike and Shannon go to Iowa U so not much time seeing them! Judy has completed, now, a year at her job at McCarthey Tetrault, and Rob manages the house and finances and is taking courses in international economics starting in January.

Son Dave’s alter ego, Sketchy the Clown, ran for mayor of Toronto this past year. Strangely enough, he didn't get elected but Sketchy got heaps of publicity… leading for more calls for performing. And a happy Dave! He’s also doing new IT work -- more about that next year!

 Denise continues on with jewellery-making classes a couple of times a week. The PMR (polymyalgia rheumatica) and its resulting tiredness magically disappear when she’s chatting, beading, soldering and hammering. It’s a modern day version of a quilting bee.

Jock despite back problems and periods of atrial fibrillation, is still in love with the computer world. Blogs and videos and databases. For Christmas, he’s asked for Rosetta Stone. He would like to resume studying French.  He says: pour quoi-pas? Yes, why not?

 Merry Christmas and all the best for 2015 from the Burlington McKays.

Kenny

Gebbz Steelo - Motëm

GEBBZ STEELO TOQUES NOW EXIST IN VERY LIMITED EDITION.  IF YOU GET ONE OF THESE B4 THEY SELL OUT CONSIDER YRSELF VERY LUCKY

Good News!

Doug's operation was successful. No sign of malignant cells...

Denise wrote in her Xmas letter:

"Always the good and the bad, or worrisome! (Hopefully. It could be all bad.) 2014 was that sort of year.
But today was one of those days when all is excused: our son Doug phoned to say that after five worrisome months, he has finally been diagnosed as cancer-free. Yeay!!! What a great Christmas present to all of us."

Good bye consulting!

Bill retired on Friday December 12th from his 5.5-year stint at DND. He advised and guided the team responsible for the design and purchase of a high-tech reconnaissance vehicle.

His views apply to whites as well.

Post by Charles R. Patrick.

Artscape Board Member

From left: Judith McKay of McCarthy Tétrault, Artscape board member, Judy Matthews, Artscape board member, Avon MacFarlane of The Offord Group and Maureen Loweth, Artscape board member and Dean of the Centre for Business at George Brown College.

 

"Artscape is a not-for-profit urban development organization that makes space for creativity and transforms communities.

Our work involves clustering creative people together in real estate projects that serve the needs of the arts and cultural community and advance multiple public policy objectives, private development interests, community and neighbourhood aspirations and philanthropic missions."

 

 

Nous vous souhaitons un agréable séjour à Montpellier

Dear Brothers
The letter shown below gives the name of the family (Miquel) as well as phone and e-mails addresses just in case you need to reach me.
 I’m getting real exited about this trip...like a child at Christmas.
I’m sure you both can read the French, if not take to someone who can.
Love
Dave

03 December 2014
Cher David Mckay
Nous avons réservé l'hébergement suivant pour vous :
Hébergement : Famille d'accueil, chambre simple, demi-pension
Date d'arrivée : 04 Janvier 2015
Date de départ : 28 Février 2015
Détails de la famille : Famille MIQUEL
88 rue André Malraux
Rés. La Pompignane, bât 2
34000 Montpellier
Tel. : hors France : + 33 4 67 72 93 92 (en France : 04 67 72 93 92)
Mobile : hors France : + 33 6 13 97 60 57 (en France : 06 13 97 60 57)
E-mail: raymonde.miquel0613@orange.fr
Présentation de la famille :
Bonjour David
Nous, la famille Miquel, avons le plaisir de vous accueillir chez nous. Nous sommes :
Raymonde (né en 1952), travaille à mi-temps avec des personnes agées, mes passe-temps sont: cinema, lecture, marche,
échanges
Nous avons également d'autres enfants qui ne vivent plus sous notre toit:
Maryam (née en 1981) est monitrice auto-école.
Nadia (née en 1982) travaille dans une crèche.
Mehdi (né en 1986) travaille à la Sécurité Sociale.
Je vis dans un appartement très agréable à quelques minutes en bus du centre ville et j'adore recevoir des étudiants de toutes
les nationalités.
Voici le trajet à suivre pour vous rendre de notre domicile à l'Institut Linguistique Adenet:
Prendre le bus n°9 à l'arrêt André Malraux jusqu'à la place de l'Europe.
Puis prendre le tram 1 (bleu) à l'arrêt Place de l'Europe jusqu'à la Place de la Comédie.
Merci d'informer ILA ou notre famille directement au moins une semaine avant votre séjour pour les détails de votre arrivée,
pour que nous puissions faire connaissance et vous accompagner jusqu'à votre hébergement.
Nous sommes heureux de vous accueillir prochainement à Montpellier.
Famille Miquel
Nous, l'Institut Linguistique Adenet, sommes ravis de vous accueillir prochainement à Montpellier. Merci de retenir de venir à
8h00 au plus tard le premier jour de cours pour participer à la présentation de l'école.
Nous vous souhaitons un agréable séjour à Montpellier
INSTITUT LINGUISTIQUE ADENET

Chief Client Officer

The in-house whisperer 
Monday, 01 December 2014 

Judith McKay may have started a trend a year ago when she left DuPont as general counsel to return to a Bay Street law firm. Since then a number of in-house lawyers have returned to private practice in a variety of client development roles, but in McKay’s case she is McCarthy Tétrault LLP’s point person in what has become a battle ground for business.
Click: Newspaper Source

Care for a venison roast?

Ernie bags one!

Franklin, Pennsylvania

Motem's New and Improved Website

Click here

Happy Birthday Anne!

November 25

Happy Birthday Wendy!

November 20

Hi Family,

I have been remiss in sending this out. Amanda and Chris have set their wedding date for Saturday, October 3, 2015 at the Hamilton Art Gallery. So please save this date as you are all invited. There is a Sheridan right across the street from the venue if you are looking for accommodations (close enough to stumble from the wedding…no driving required) . Ernie and I will be holding a Sunday Brunch the following day at our house…but will send out more details as we get closer to the date.
Take care,

Love
Pat

Remembrance Day

Ella growing up

Janet wrote in Facebook:

Some days I think how the heck did she grow up so fast ?

Gregg wows again!

Happy Birthday James!

Memoir by Denise's Grandmother

Hello again, Aunt Denise,

The website which housed Lillie's journal, which I mentioned on the phone, is no longer active. I thought I had copied it into a document, but apparently I did not. However, I located a copy using the awesome Internet Archive Wayback Machine. It's such an amazing resource. They maintain an archive of inactive webpages. I have copied the journal below. This is Clarence's Mom's journal as transcribed by Daphne. I'm also enclosing two images from the cover.

Love,
Julie

A History About Our Family's Early Days In Saskatchewan (N.W. Territories) in 1878

By Lillie (Wilson) Mullaney  (Lillie Jackson) 1887-1986
With Forward and Postscript by Daphne Wilson

A History of My Father and Mother Samuel and Elizabeth Jackson's Coming to North West Territories in 1878

by Lillie (Wilson) Mullaney [Lillie Jackson]
Introduction By Daphne Wilson (Lillie's daughter-in-law)

    This account by Lillie Jackson of her memories about her early life in pioneer Saskatchewan happened like this:
    When she was in her eighties, she lived briefly with Earl and me. I suggested that to fill in her time, she should write down an account of her childhood, but I had no idea that she ever took my suggestion. Some years later, she gave me this story she "found in her bureau", handwritten on pencil-lined pieces of blank paper in tiny writing. (Her grandson, Bill Langlands, now has the original.)                  
    Her account ends abruptly. Obviously she set it aside with the intention of continuing it later. Then she put it away and forgot about it. What a pity!
    I have copied her story verbatim without editing, in order to preserve her manner of speaking and reflect her personality, as a small legacy to pass on. To her grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren, I say, "This is your Grandma Mullaney talking to you and telling you her story. It isn't exactly historically correct and shows the biased thinking of those times, but it was her life the way she remembered it."

* * * * *

Lillie's Story

(Part One)

    My father was born in Bytown. (which is Ottawa now.) His father owned the farm Ottawa is on, at that time and the house my father was born in was almost where the Paraliment buildings stand today. After he sold out he moved to Welland, where he worked on the canal and for the railroad and in the brick factory. He was always ball headed and when we asked him how it happened, he said, in the brick factory, they always had to wear a cap, and it was so hot on their heads, they were all ball headed, lost all their hair.
   My mother was born in Galashields, Scotland. Her people the Sandersons owned the Sanderson cotton mills. They are still called that name.
   Sam Jackson, my father and Elizabeth Sanderson were married in 1869. They lived in Welland, and Merritton, and had 7 children before leaving for the North West. The first 3, two boys and a girl died, very young, but the other 2 were healthy, and they came with them.
   The railroad was only as far as Portage then. It is called Portage la Prairie now, and they came in canoes to Winnipeg, there was a Hudson's Bay store there and a couple of small houses. My uncle drew pictures of them with pen and ink. We had them for years after.
    They bought oxen and carts, and a cow which was in calf, to have milk for the children on the way. A flint shot gun, a rifle, flour, grain and a small grinder to grind wheat for poridge, 2 iron pots, and an iron tea kettle, 2 iron frying pans, a tent. And groceries they would need and could carry. That was in 1878.
    They forded rivers and creeks and drove around lakes. They said, one lake they came to, was real salty, they couldn't use the water. But most lakes and streams were good. It took them 6 weeks to find the place they really liked, and that was on the banks of the Carrot River. The Indians called the place Kinistino.
    They also brought with them a broad ax and 2 other axes (most people don't know what a broad ax is, but it is a very wide bladed axe to hew the sides of logs.) They also had an auger and brace and bit and saw.
    They build a house of logs. They had no nails to use, so all the logs were fastened together with pegs. There were large herds of buffalo there then, and when they killed one for meat, the Indians taught my mother how to tan the skins, and they made hinges for the windows and doors and fasteners for them, out of the leather. The timber wolves and coyotes used to come and eat them at night. My father was away one night and a big timber wolf was howling outside the window. It was bright moonlight so my mother got up and opened the window a little bit, and shot him. (this was before I was born but she told us about it) She was a perfect shot with a gun, could bring down a crow on the wing easy, or any bird.
   They had to thatch the roofs of the houses, so they done it with grass, and they never leaked. They also made plaster with mud and lime to plaster the chinks in between the logs. They had a lime kiln and made their own lime, and the plaster they made, you couldn't break with a hammer.
   My father and mother and family were the first white people to come to Carrot River. The next spring, my father got a team of horses from the Indians, and they had made a wagon of the cart and a flat platform of hewn logs on it and he went back to Winnipeg for more supplies. By this time the railroad was there. When he returned he had 7 more men with him. Later they went back and brought out some more, and my mother's father and 3 sisters and 3 brothers came out. One of my mother's brothers was killed when he was unloading a shot gun. In those days you put the powder in, then a piece of paper, and packed it down with a ram rod. Then you put the shot in and done the same. It was always the rule to unload a gun when you came in from hunting, so he was pulling the charge out, when he pushed the ram rod in too hard to get a hold on the charge. It set the powder off and shot him under the chin. You loaded the flint guns the same way and then when the cap guns came, you loaded them the same way.
    Everything that was used, they made. The harness, and wagons wippletrees and tongues. And the doubletrees and reaches. Most people know what these are.
    Everything that was killed, the greace or oil was saved to oil the harness and to make soap. They leached the wood ashes and made lye to make the soap. We also used the greace for light.  You put it in something and put a piece of string or cloth in it and it burned like a candle. All they had in their house for a long time was a fire place to cook on and to heat the house.
    We used to boil the horses feet when they died, or cow's feet, and get a very fine oile. We called it neat foot oil, which was used for finer leather, like reins or bridles, and shoes for all of us.
    My mother was a very good Dr. The Indians showed and learned her all the herbs and berries and roots that were good for medicine, and the Indians all loved her. She was good to every one.
    My sister Alice was the first white child born there on June 10th, 1880. She lived there all her life except for a couple of years in Prince Albert. She died age 85 - 1965.
    My brother Jack was born next. April 11th, 1882. My mother said it was so cold she couldn't stay in the bed for him to be born, so she spread quilts in front of the fireplace, and he was born there on the floor. He lived in Birch Hills a small village 20 miles from Kinistino after he was married. For a few years he had a butcher shop and a boarding house. Then moved to a farm in Gowanbrae, which was the name of the school district 5 miles west of Kinistino. He lived and farmed there until he died in 1963.
    My brother Frank was born next. 1884. He lived in Birch Hills district after he got married and farmed there until he died on Mar. 23rd, 1949.
    Frank was the baby when the North West Rebellion broke out, or the Riel Rebellion as they call it now. This was 1885. There were 7 white families there then. They built a fort about 4 miles from my father's farm to the south. It was made with logs and all the white families moved into it. But the fighting never reached that far North. My Uncle Tom Sanderson was taken prisoner in the fight, he was a scout and dispach rider, so he got captured by the Indians. He was my mother's brother.
    None of the Whites, in the fort, had any trouble with the Indians where they lived, as they were always kind to the Indians, and all got along well together. There were many tribes of Indians there. They called the settlement where the Indians lived Fort a La Corn. My father was out scouting one day, and an Indian came to the gate they did not know. He wanted something to eat. My mother was in charge, while my father was away, so she let him sit inside the wall and went to make him something to eat. In the meantime my older brothers had taken some dishwater out in a bowl, and when my mother got out there, she took it away from him and he said no, good, good. She told him to eat what she brought him and she threw the dishwater away. They all got punished for that deed, but the boys said he wasn't one of our Indians. The men had built a bridge over the Carrot River, at this place where they built the Fort. Of course a few years before, but they built the fort there on the east bank of the river. There was no trees or anything and they could see all of the fort stockade for miles around. The North West Mounted Police helped in the Rebellion.
    Riel was a good man. It took the Metis Indians in the South a long time to talk him into it, and they lied to him, telling him the Indians from the North would join in, and they would wipe the White's out. But the Indians from the North didn't fight at all. Where we lived there were large tribes of Indians , and we all got along together fine. And so did all the people who came in there and settled after the war was over. There were always new people coming in and settling, from Scotland, Ireland and England. And many from Ontario and the East.


Lillie's Story 

(Part Two)

    I was born march 6, 1887, after the war was over. Soon after that, my father decided to move 8 miles farther West to another farm. Here he had 320 acres. He built a log house on this place, 3 big rooms. We still had thatched roofs on, but they never leaked, and we had a board floor and windows with glass. A big long table and a cook stove. There was a long bench at each side of the table out of a log and a piece of log under each end. It was about 4 inches thick. A chair at each end for father and mother and a rocking chair.

    I remember all these when I was 3 years old because I got an awful whipping that night.  my father had been away and just came home to supper. He had me on his knee and was saying what a nice little girl I was, and my mother said, You wouldn't say that if you knew what she did today, so he asked her what I did, and she said, She wet her pantys. My father got up and took the willow down from over the door and I got a good whipping. But my mother didn't expect me to get that awful whipping , so she never told him anything on me again. I can still see that room, all the family sitting around the table and mother dishing up the food at the stove and us in the rocking chair, and then the whipping. And I always thought, I would never get mad and whip my children like that, and I never did.
    My brother Harry was born in this house. 1892. He went to Detroit, Michigan and married in 1936 until his wife passed away in 44 and then moved back to Grand Forks, B.C. He died in Aug. 1966. My sister Grace was born May 12, 1894. She moved to B.C. in 1934 and is still living in Grand Forks. Out of 15 of a family, there are 3 of us left. My oldest brother Sam, born in Merritton, Ont. Sept. 11, 1875, and myself, born Mar 6, 1887 and Grace.
    We were a very happy family, we were raised to believe in God, and said our prayers every night. We never worked on Sunday, only to do what was really nessasary. There was no church or school in the country at all, and no minister. There were a lot of Orangemen and they built a hall, 3 miles east of our place. When I was 6 we got our first teacher, an elderly man. Everybody's children old and young went to school. Except the mothers and the fathers. And a minister used to come through on horseback, and he didn't get paid, he used to work for his meals wherever he stayed. They held meetings in the houses in the evenings, and everyone near enough would come, then go on to the next place. I used to love those meetings. Sometimes the children could pick the hymns and I always wanted the Lily of the Valley. It was a beautiful hymn to me. They only came once a year for a long time.
    When our people first came, the Indians learned them how to make pemican. It was the meat chopped up fine and put to dry some, then put in leather bags and hung up where the wolves and animals couldn't get at it. This way it kept a long time. There were buffalo, elk, moose and deer. And ducks and geese and wild turkeys in summer and prairie chicken and partridges, so there was lots of that kind of food. Also lots of wild berries. Gooseberries, black currants, Saskatoons. Blueberries, high and low bush cranberries. Raspberries, strawberries and choke cherries. And lots of hazelnuts
    The Indians learned my mother the kind of herbs that were good for medicine, as for a long time the closest Dr. was Winnipeg, then later Prince Albert 65 miles away. Choke Cherry bark was boiled and used for stomack trouble and sinicak roots were dug out of the ground and used for physic and other things. And sasaperella and many more that I have forgotten. Also after we got sheep and had wool, they showed us what to use for dyes and they sure never faded. My father made a large spinning wheel and we spun all our yarn we used. We also made moccasins out of deer skin and coats too and hats of fur.
    The pemican bags were made of tanned buffalo hides. There were lots of rabbits there and every body made rabbit robes and wore rabbit skins inside their moccasins to keep their feet warm, and in their mitts too. You could sleep on the snow on a real cold night, with a double rabbit skin robe under, and one on top, and never freeze. The thread they used was made from the sinue, along the backs of buffalo or cattle. The Indians called it Wick Wack, so we always called it that. It was about 3 inches wide and about 3/4 of an inch thick in the centres. When any was cooked in the meat, we children chewed it for gum. We also chewed the sap from the pine trees for gum. Only one kind though made good gum. It always kept our teeth as white as snow.
    I remember one night, it was real cold winter. We had a black cat, and this night it went crazy, and got in the bed and tore my brother Frank's face badly. He was screaming and my father and brother Fred got up and got a stove wood stick and chased it around and round the house in their Shirt Tails. It went under the beds and in the beds and they were hitting at it whenever they could. At last they got it and they thought it was dead so they opened the door and threw it up onto the thatch roof and everybody got back to bed again. In the morning when they went out, it was gone. We didn't see it for 3 or 4 days and then it came in with its head swelled up and my mother Doctored it up and it was all right again.
    My brother always had a scar on his lip from that fight. Then one day he was out shooting at geese and got his mouth too close to the tricker and when it went off it hit him on the lip and he came home bleeding and it was on the same scar so it made it more visible.

Lillie's Story

 (Part Three)

    We had a milk house built of logs and covered from the bottom over the top with 2 feet of sods and it never leaked. That year we had a grand crop of peas and they were put on top of the milk house so the animals and chickens couldn't get them. You see we had no way of canning in those days. My nephew was there, and my mother sent him and I with a blanket to get some peas, you put the blanket on the snow and threw the pea vines down on it, then flailed it to get the peas out. Well, we threw them down and I jumped down on top of them, and he threw the fork down, and it stuck right in the top of my head. He ran for my mother and she got it out and cut a lot of hair off. But he didn't get whipped for it as my father wasn't there and he really didn't mean to do it. We were only 7 years old I guess.
    You only got mail all those years once in a while when a rider would come through. By this time there were a lot more families there.
       
    My father decided to build a big new log house in 1892 and we were going 3 miles to school to the Orange Hall still. By this time he was working for the government overseeing the building of bridges as there were only prairie roads and you forded the streams and drove around the lakes. They had built a log ferry over the north branch of the Saskatchewan River and it was run by pulley service . It was called Adams' ferry because he run it sometimes if the farmers were in Prince Albert with loads of animals, selling. It would freeze up and the ferry couldn't run and they would have to take a little stuff at a time across on a sled, then a horse at a time and so on till they were over the river, as their families would be home worrying about them. And that ferry ran for quite a few years after the C.N.Railway came through in 1905.
    We had the house about half finished when my sister's house burned down. Their farm corner was right across from our farm corner. They were about half a mile by road. My sister Mary Jane Hamilton had come up to our place with her baby son Milton, to have his tongue cut loose as he was tongue- tied, (his tongue was grown on the bottom of his lip). My mother got the razor ready and they were by the window, looking down to her place and I looked out and screamed Your house is on fire. They looked out and Mary Jane laid the baby on the floor and they ran down through the field, nothing but their dresses, no coats, and it was winter and 5 feet of snow. Sam my brother was working down there cutting wood. He heard the girls scream and got there and they were all outside. They had been playing Missus and had lit the lamp and set it back up on the shelf, by the paper on the wall, and it had taken fire. The 3 oldest ran out in the snow in their bare feet. Then the oldest one Mary, ran back in with her skirt over her head and got the other little one. She had carried her on a pillow. My brother scattered the feathers for them to stand on in the snow. And he raced up home up the stairs, got some blankets and the horses and sleigh and was down there before my mother and Mary Jane.
    They all came to our place and stayed. We didn't have the new house quite all finished, so had lots of room with the old house. I was the only one that had a real doll. My aunt in Prince Albert had sent it to me with my Dad. The girls were trying to get me to let them take it to bed with them, we were all sleeping on the floor, but I wouldn't let them. Anyway, when I went to sleep, they got it, and in the morning it was all broken, so I don't think I ever forgave them for that. But we were always good friends. I was their aunt and the same age as Mary the oldest girl. I guess we were about 8 then. They built a new house then about a mile west of our place. By this time there were a lot more people in the country and they decided to have a school districk where we lived, so called it Gowanbrae. After that we only had half a mile to walk to school.
     I remember one very exciting thing that happened when we were going to the Orange Hall  3 miles away. The teacher got sick, and so one girl called Elsie Plant was the oldest, so she was the teacher that day. (She was going with my brother Sam at the time). She said to me, Lillie, you take the pointer (which was a long thin stick) and you teach the small children. So I did, and when they wouldn't behave, I gave them a crack with it like the teacher did. They cried, and Elsie decided to whip me. I ran all around the school desks, and her after me, and all the children laughing. Then I got down on the floor and crawled under a whole row of desks and ran out the door and hollared I am going home. But what made her so mad, all the time I am running in the school, I kept saying, If you hit me, I'll tell Sam on you. Well she sent Stewart Lowery and my brother Frank after me to bring me back, so the only way I would go back was if I could sit between them in their seat, so Elsie couldn't whip me. And next day the teacher was back and we were good friends again.
    Our new school was quite the thing. We could go home for dinner at noontime, just a few minutes and back again. All my older sisters were married by now and I had to milk the cows and feed calves. And we had a big milk house and lots of pans to wash each day. I was 16 when we got our first seperator and it seemed like heaven not to have all that washing up to do.  I finished school when I was 15 and was ready to go to Regina to get my 3rd class teaching certificate, but my father decided I should stay home and work. My father didn't believe men should milk cows, that was a woman's job, so I always done it. Sometimes 8 cows, but most of the time 15 to milk.
       
    By now I was allowed to go to dances with my two brothers Jack and Frank. Both older than me but we always palled together and had wonderful times together. I had lots of boyfriends but never allowed to go with any of them. However at the dances I would never miss a dance and could pick and choose who I would have for a supper partner. I had lots of mariage proposals but could pick and choose. My father decided I should go with a boy George Paynter. My brother Frank had started to go with his sister and he had came to our house with them, the only thing was, he stuttered some, however, my father's word was law. So one night I got in the sleigh with my brother Jack and a cousin to go to a dance at my aunt's place. George and Frank my brother, and Mary, Georges sister, were in the cutter. My father came out and made me get out and get in with George and Frank and Mary. Well, they didn't intend going home after the dance, they were staying at my Aunts till Sunday. Father had always said, You go home with who you go with, so I stayed with them. Sunday we went home, all went in the house, and father started on me. I said, I just done what you told me, always come home with who you go with, so he didn't say any more, but was careful after that who he made me go with.
    It was nothing to drive 20 miles to a dance, as we always had good driving horses, besides the work horses. Men used to come through with herds of horses and sell them. Lots of them were brought in from the states, below where Medicine Hat is now. And then sold. We didn't pay very much for them, but it was all profit to the men who brought them in as they didn't pay anything for them.
    I remember when there was the 7 year drought, no water anywhere and no rain hardly at any time. They used to save the water they washed the dishes in for us children to wash our feet in at night as we always went bare footed in the summer, as we only had one pair of shoes a year when we were young. We went bare footed to school, everyone did in those days. On the farms, no one seemed much better off than the other.
    (This is where Lillie's story abruptly ends.)

Postcript note from Daphne Wilson:
 
   In 1906 Lillie Jackson married Alvin Wilson who had come from Ontario with his father and brother to run a general store in Kinistino. Lillie used to tell how all the local men gathered at the farmhouse where she and Alvin spent their wedding night to give them the customary "chivaree" and how they stayed underneath their upstairs window banging pots and pans and whooping it up for half the night.

   They lived for a while over the store, where Lillie remembered Alvin, who was a carpenter, did a sideline business making coffins. One story she told was of a baby being laid out in the store overnight in a tiny coffin on top of her treadle sewing machine. The business failed and they went back to farming on part the Jackson homestead.

   Babies arrived regularly. Florence, John, Clarence, Susie, and Jay (who"was
blue" and lived two days). During the birth of her sixth baby, Lillie found herself alone on the farm with her husband and Florence in the hospital in Prince Albert with typhoid fever from their contaminated well. Neighbors reluctantly helped with some of the chores and the milking but they were afraid to come into the house and only one midwife would come for the birth. Lillie gratefully named the baby after the midwife's husband Stanley Smith, so he became Stanley Smith Wilson.

   Living conditions were very primitive. In the early years they didn't even have an outhouse. Everybody kept a chamber pot under the bed. During the day the men "went out behind the barn" and the women and kids did the same except during "the below zero". Women were always the ones who emptied the chamber pots out on the manure pile, no matter who used them. "It wasn't men's work," Lillie explained. Once a week on bath night a washtub was filled with water heated from pots on the stove. Father bathed first and then Mother. Along the way warm water was added in small quantities until all the kids had their bath. Hair was washed as little as possible. And you must never go outside until your hair got dry or "you'd be sure to ketch your death of cold"
.
   The depression and the drought came to Saskatchewan and Lillie and Alvin gave up and moved to Nelson BC, a green and beautiful little town on Kootenay Lake. Depression times were tough there too and Alvin worked at his carpenter trade and anything else he could get. They had two more sons, Jim and Earl. And when Earl was two years old, Alvin died. Of what, nobody agreed. The doctor thought it was a heart attack and Lillie was sure it was stomach cancer "because of all the nails he kept in his mouth when he was hammering".

  So  Lillie "went on relief" and went out "doing housework" on the side. ("Don't tell the Relief Lady if she comes round!") By this time her oldest divorced daughter, Florence, had two boys scarcely younger than Earl. Nobody knew exactly what happened but when the four little boys were left playing alone, the house caught fire. The boys escaped but the house burned to the ground.
   Somehow they survived. They rented another house. Lillie took in boarders. She sent thirteen-year-old Clarence to live back on the farm with his aunt so they could keep his relief money. ("Don't tell the Relief Lady he isn't here, do you hear me!") and the oldest son, John,  went to work and gave his paycheck to Mother.

   Then when Earl was nine, Lillie married one of the boarders, Bob Mullaney, thirteen years her junior, and moved to Trail. She rented a huge house (unbelievably with only two bathrooms) for her family and thirty Trail Smelter shift-worker boarders, with prairie relatives and hired girls and her youngest boys to help cook, clean and do all the dishes..

   With the coming of WW2, Lillie's life changed dramatically. Bob joined the Canadian Army Auxilliary Corps and went all over Canada showing movies to the troups. Lillie left Trail and followed him to Newfoundland, Ontario and Vancouver. After the war, they moved to what used to be small-farm country in Coquitlam near Vancouver and raised pigs until Bob retired to Burnaby with a heart condition. And then Bob Mullaney died. So Lillie took in a couple of boarders again until she was nearly seventy.

   Lillie spent her last eight years in a nursing home. Almost blind and with her memory gone, at age 98 she broke her arm dancing a jig, and later fell out of bed and had stitches in a gash over her eye. And each time she quickly recovered. She was a pretty old lady. She kept a ramrod  straight back and had perfect hearing until she gave up and died just short of her 100th birthday.
   Her life was not really remarkable. But she lived it fully through a century of history, from her birth on a farm in Kinistino, Saskatchewan in 1887, to a nursing home in Langley BC in1986.
   Lillie Jackson came from the tough breed of rugged survivors who came to this country looking for a better life. She truly deserves a place among the many "Founding Mothers" of our multicultural Canadian Pioneer Heritage.
                                                                                  ~Daphne Wilson

Mike Takes the Big One

1st Place

Richard Calkins Annual Mock Trial Invitational 

Mike Wins Again!

1st Place in Mock Trail debate.

WashU Mock Trial 2014 Champions

Hosted by Washington University in St. Louis Washington, D.C.

The WashU Mock Trial Team competes in tournaments year-round, beginning with invitationals in the fall which lead up to the national tournament in the spring.

Toronto mayoral fringe candidates debate

Click here to view video interview :

Don't vote for this clown

Toronto Sun-Oct 15, 2014

TORONTO - Many clowns run for mayor of Toronto — some even win — but very few are the real deal.

Then there’s Sketchy the Clown.

“Mike, you’re killing me,” Sketchy writes. “You’ve used me as a punch line in four columns. Time for one of my own.”

Sketchy has a point, and I don’t just mean his head.

On a whim, I tossed him into my Sexiest Candidate poll a while back — and, mysteriously, he finished second, just 600 votes behind Nikki Benz, the porn star.

So technically, since Nikki’s bid died for lack of current Ontario ID, Sketchy the Clown is the sexiest mayoral candidate. He topped even Karen Stintz and dominatrix Mizz Barbie Bitch.

I meet him at the Imperial, a timeworn pub off Dundas Square Wednesday morning. Vacuum cleaners hum as my neighbourhood’s early rising drunks wander in.

Frankly, Sketchy is no Bubbles or Clarabell or Ronald McDonald. Sketchy is a “dirty” clown, a local vaudeville staple.

“A lot of risque stuff, burlesque, drug references, swearing,” he growls.

Not for kiddies, but perfect for City Hall. By day, he’s a mild-mannered IT exec named Dave McKay, 51, which will appear on the ballot. Hell, he wouldn’t be our first mayor with a split personality.

“A man hath no better thing under the sun,” says a sign on the Imperial’s wall, “than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry — Ecclisiastes 8:15”

Amen.

I’m surprised Sketchy the Clown is still in this mayoral marathon. He got into it, on April Fools’ Day, to protest City Hall stealing words like “clown” and “circus.”

“‘Politician’ is slur enough for those guys,” he tells me.

“It’s NOT a circus. There’s no bearded ladies...”

Well, actually, I can think of a couple...

“...no aerial acts...”

Okay, but plenty of juggling, illusion, and manure.

...”and it’s boring.”

I hear you, Sketchy.

The “circus” mostly left town when Rob Ford got sick, yet Sketchy the Clown soldiers on in the mayoral race. In fact, he’s stepping it up.

He hands me a fridge magnet, featuring his fearsome mug. I wonder where he got the idea for fridge magnets.

Soon, 100 $5-lawn signs will pop up bearing his slogan, “The problem is broken.”

Catchy, Sketchy. In fact the clown rivals Doug Ford — What’s the story, Mr. Tory? — for snappy lines.

“Don’t vote for me!” he proclaims to startled electors on a barnstorm through Dundas Square. (See the video at torontosun.com/sketchy)

Don’t vote for you?

“Why would you? I’m a joke. I’m a CLOWN! But do your research on the big candidates and go vote. It’s your way of making a difference in the world.”

Aha! A noble, civic-minded clown.

“I’m aiming to NOT win. And so far, the polls say it’s going real well.”

That may change Thursday night and the first and only fringe debate, at 8 p.m. at the Monarch Tavern in Little Italy. Mizz Barbie Bitch and a puppet named “Duck for Mayor” will be among the debaters.

“A dominatrix, a clown, a comic and a duck walk into a bar...” is how Sketchy describes it. I assume he’ll win, since he organized the debate, picked the moderators and it’s in his home bar.

No Doug, Olivia or John. What a relief.

Sketchy says he’s leaning toward Tory, but could change his mind before Oct. 27. It’s a clown’s prerogative.

He and the Fords got off on the wrong foot. Sketchy was hired as a Rob Ford impersonator on a comic bus tour of Ford Nation. Mom Ford frowned on some clown staggering about her neighbourhood mocking her son, and the cops were called.

Any advice for Doug: “He comes across like a small-town hockey coach. ‘C’mon boys, get in there, give it 110%.’ He’s charismatic, he’s got the Ford name, but maybe take it down a notch.”

Tory?

“Maybe if he did a Vladimir Putin thing. Took off his shirt and dove into Lake Ontario and came up with a carp between his teeth. Something that makes you go, this guy’s not so wishy-washy.”

Olivia? “She’s good one-on-one. She needs to get to everyone one-on-one.”

I don’t think she can. There’s 2.8 million of us and so little time.

Anyway, the way Olivia’s going, Sketchy the Clown might catch her.

Happy Birthday Dave!

October 14

Thanksgiving Turkey Shoot?

Kevin emailed:

We (family) visited Graham and Emilie's property for lunch on the weekend and got a lesson in skeet shooting.  

Wedding Photos

Happy Birthday Stephanie!

Oct 5

Bradley Mitchell

Burlington Post

Bradley L.B. MITCHELL
MITCHELL, Bradley L.B. Of Atlanta, Georgia and formerly of Oakville, Ontario, Canada, passed away on September 26, 2014, at the age of 51. Cherished husband of Karen (née McPherson) for twenty-eight years. Much loved father to Jeff and Jason, son to Rick and Barbara Mitchell, brother to Jacqueline (Per) Matthews, and uncle to Dylan and Kyle. Brad was born in Vancouver, B.C., moving to Ontario as a child. He received his B.A. from the University of Western Ontario and his M.B.A. from McMaster University. He was also a Chartered Accountant. Brad started his accounting and consulting career with Price Waterhouse. From there he joined Canadian healthcare logistics company Livingston, Inc. After UPS acquired Livingston in 2000, Brad rose to the position of President, UPS Supply Chain Solutions Canada before making the move to Atlanta and becoming President of UPS Global Logistics and Distribution. Brad was a highly respected leader who possessed the ability to motivate and elevate his colleagues through encouragement and respect. He served as a mentor to many people, in both his work and personal lives. Brad valued the importance of family above all else, never letting them doubt that they were his highest priority. He will be deeply missed by all those whose lives he touched. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Emory Winship Cancer Institute or the Canadian Cancer Society. The family will receive friends on Wednesday, October 1, 2014 at one o'clock with a memorial service at two o'clock at H.M. Patterson and Son, Arlington Chapel, 173 Allen Rd. NE, Sandy Springs, GA 30328 (404) 851-9900.

Portrait Photography

Greg took this photo...

Click to enlarge.

Happy Birthday Denise!

Pat and Ernie Trip

They visited Berlin,  Munich, Prague ....

Vitava river.

Prague Castle in the background.