Interview #12

Name: George Sutton

Sex: Male

Age: 84

Place and date of birth: Head of Bay d'Espoir, August 27, 1914

Education: Left school at age 12

Religion: Anglican

Occupation: Logger/Hydro

Number of children: n/a

Phone: 889-4030

Place of interview: Milltown (Greenwood Manor)

Date of interview: January 26, 1999

Interviewers: Crystal Hoskins and Carla Collier

George Sutton was born in Head of Bay d'Espoir on August 27^th, 1914. He moved to Milltown at a very early age and still lives there today.

George recalled his childhood as happy but times were hard as well. His family never had a lot of money and they lived mainly off vegetables that they grew themselves and a few animals that they owned. His family owned an ox, sheep, and hens. George remembered that his father killed five sheep every winter to feed his family. Another childhood memory of George's was going into the woods with his father to cut logs. George said, "I was barely old enough to hold an axe."

At the age of twelve, George left school to go to work with his father in the woods cutting and hauling logs. George and his father would leave home in the summer and not return until November. George remembered one particular time he went in the woods. He and three other men had to cut a mast stick (used on boats) eighty feet long and eight inches on the top.

George and his father would rhine the bark from trees to do the bottoms of schooners. They would rhine 1000 stripes in one summer. George would use a "shimmy" to peel the bark off of the trees. A shimmy is a wooden device similar to the shape of a spoon. After they had the rhines cut, they would lay them on top of each other, press them together, and leave them there for two days and two nights. After the press was finished, they would let them dry for two sunny days.

George recollected that when the coastal boats would come to Bay d'Espoir, people bought supplies for the winter. This usually occurred in November. They would try to make the supplies last until the boat returned in April. People would meet the boat outside of Roti Point in the wintertime. Sometimes they had to wait for days on the ice if the coastal boat was late.

In 1966, George started working for Hydro. He worked there for thirteen years until he retired in 1979 at the age of sixty-five.