We arrived here in Castor sometime in late April, this was as far as the rail bed was completed, the frost was just coming out of the ground after a hard winter and the roads could not be traveled on, so we stayed a few days in a boarding hosue. Our home-stead was 60 miles east from here. Dad and brother Bob had been out here the following year and broke 40 acres and made aprangements to have a two room house built, it took the best part of two days to get to the place, had to stay over night in a half way house, ( sod house(, slept on hay on the floor, there was blankets strung up to make partisions, the house was a two room house with a place in the attic where you could stand upright in the middle, with a tine chimney. there was one half section of land, ( 320 acres), we had four oxen to work the land their names were Blacky, Darby, rowny, and Duke, dad planted wheat on the 40 acres that had been broke the year before and it was so dry and no rain that it did not come up and grew the next year and was a fair crop.The party that built the house only put one nail in each board and when the first wind came along the house went almost flat, had to jack it back in plumb. Had to haul our water aboute four miles, three barrels on a stone boat with a horse blanket over the top to keep the water from slopping out, this was my job each week and the water was not good, brakesh and warm. Two husky Finns came over and offered to dig a well for one dollar a foot if we furnished the meals well dad said he would agree if the would fill up the hole if they did not get water. They dug this well with spades and a hand made winch. When they god down below 30 feet i used to be able to get a bucket of good water now and then, when they got down to 40 feet they came to dad and asked for some money, dad told them they had not got water yet and refused to pay them. Well some time before this a man came to the house and said he was hungry, dad said come in and get something to eat, after he had eat he went down to the willow patch and got a forked stick and witched a well, he came to the house aboute three in the after noon and said we could get lots of water at aboute 40 feet. Mother said he just wanted more to eat, he put a rag on a stick where we should dig, he would not eat any more. So here was where the well was dug,it was the day to get water so I went down to the well and to my supprise there was 30 foot of water, of course dad was well pleased and said when them fellows come in the morning he would have some fun, When they got there dad said to them fill the hole and get off my place, They were very rejected and walked very slow down to the well and when they saw what had happened they came running back to the house and then dad said I am so well pleased that I don't know how to thank you.I only got 50 dollars and I am going to give it to you, come and have a meal with us any time. Now this was a new community and there was no school, dad gave the land for a school and mother named it Silverdale school.

Now some of my experiences-- dad was gone and Mother and I and Bobs two children were home alone, one night mother woke up up and said the indians were coming there was a loud noise and mother got a pitch-ford and the shot-gun and waited for the wrost, well! a large herd of catt le had stampeded so all was well. Another time dad had gone to Castor for harvest supplies as the grain was aboute ready to cut, in the middle of the night mother woke me and said some one is trying to get something off the harvester so you will have to go out and stop them, I took the revolver and went outside, it was dark and there was no flash-lites at that timeso I went in the general direction and instead of shooting in the air I shot in their direction, I shot two or three times and evidently hit someone quite bad. I think I beat the sound back to the house, of course they swore and ran, in the morning we went out to have alook, they had been trying to take the knott off the harvester and there was considerable blud everywhere, when they ran through the grain there was blud all over. Dad came home several days later and went over to the constables place and he sent two Royal Northwesr Police to investigate, they spent quite some time in the Russan community, they could not find anyone that had been wounded so they did not know what happened to the one I hit or rather shot, they said maby they had burried him. Previous to this experience we could not leave any tool out at night and afterwards nothing was taken. Another thing I remember, mother had a severe tooth ache and there was no dentist, we heard that a man not far away had been a dentist s we went over and he had quit the dentist business, he was breaking land with a team of oxen so dad went ot his house and got his dentist tools, with nothing to ease the pan he extracted three of mothers teeth. It took two or three years to get the school built so I went to Castor and stayed with my sister and went to school. I got a job delivering groceries on Saturdauys, a team of horses and a cutter, my sisters husband John Niccols operated a grain elevator and when the construction was completed there was a great quanity of scrap lumber so John said he would buy me a ww rifle if I cut up this crap wood, I did with a dull saw and hard woork and he bought me the 22rifle, it was a single shot Savage rifle and of course My price and joy. I shot a lot of quail and rabbits with this gun and became a fair shot.

Another thing I remember, my neice locked me in the out-door toilet and these out-door toilets were very smelly, a man came around each week and put a new can in the back of the toilet and they used clorinated lime to keep the odor down. the weather was hot and I had to stay there for several hours. My neice had a riding horse and my brother-in-law told me to saddle it up for her as she had a date for a horse back trip, sister had gone to a Church meeting and I locked my neice in her bedroom and went for a ride myself, left her there all the afternoon, when sister got home she told her what I had done. but I am sorry now that I did such a thing. Another thing I have always been sorry I dod was--there was a Chinese restaurant and they offered me ten cents a dozzen for empty pop bottles, another kid and I went out to the nuisance ground where they dumped the cans from the out-door toilets, it was winter and everything was frozen so we had to thaw the cans out to get the empty pop bottles, we got eight dozzen and when we brought them to the restaurant he said lots of bottle, ao he would give us five cents a dozzen. the other kid said that was better than nothing,I told him I would give him the forty crnts if he would help me get even with the Chinees restaurant owner, he agreed so we went over at night and set all these bottles up on the dooryway and then I threw a bottle thorugh the front window, he came out and took a very bad fall, I told me brother in law what had happened and when the Chinaman told John what had happened he told him he should not have did what he did. The following year the Chinaman sold out and he gave candy to all the kids except me. Another thing that I remember was when they truck gas at Castor I saw it when the well came in, the band came down at night and tryed to play but gas which they had lit made such anoise you could not hear them. it lit up the sky so the folks sixty miles away could see the light. I used to hunting and the coal that had burned years ago had left many canyons aboute sixty feet ddep, well one day three of us boys got lost in one of these canyons and it got dark and on the way out there suddenly appeared a light which some of the boys thought was a ghost, but we found that the light was caused by a rotten loc, (fungus light), at this time dad told me to come home as the school house was completed and a school teacher was hired, it was a one room school house and all eight grades were taught, we had a victory garden as this was aboute the time of the song Tipperary, world war one and the Kaiser. I believe it was aboute this time that we saw Halleys commet. The year before we left the homestead I made a big mistake which turned out for the good, dad was sick and asked me if I could plant the wheat and of course I was anxious to do, I asked him how much to plant to the acre and he said one bushel and a peck, which I did and when I had the field aboute completed I told dad that I needed more seed and he said you must have some to sell and then he asked me how much I had planted per acre, I told him a bushel and a peck and he said I guess it ws his fault as the drill planted a bushel and a peck when you set it at one bushel. It ws a wet spring and when it came up it was so thick it looked like a lawn. dad said we won't get anything but later we had a long cold period and when the wheat got aboute three feet highand had devolped where it was in the dough, we had a hard frost, out crop was not hurt and we got aboute forty some bushels to the acre and number one quality. It was the talk of the country, people could not believe why we had such a crop, the rest of land Ihad planted with the right ammount of seed was a total loss. dad never had to do any more farming as we left Alberts the following spring and moved to Washington. As this was during war time dad got a good price for the crop. It ws aboute the first of April. One more comment aboute the well, there was aboute thirty feet of water and it always stayed there - my nephew was up there in 1980 and all that there was left on the place was the well. We had a neighbor named Robinson who was a game warden and when I dis any shooting he would come a running trying to catch me for shootin out of season, he had an old horse and buggy which had never been greased and you could hear it coming and I would get out of sight, he said some day I am going to catch you and one day hee came down the hill with a new model T ford and there I was with ducks dog and gun. he took me almost to town and said this aught to teach you and let me walk home, aboute eight miles. We had a crop failure in 1911 and Bob my brother had gone to work where there was a crop in order that we might have something to eat and when he left he told dad if anything happened to Mina hia daughter who was very sick to take her to Castor and he would meet dad there, well Mina died and the neighbors came in and made a casket and dad started for Castor with the body, with a waggon and a team of horses. Well the morning that Mina died Bob got up up and started to get dressed and a friend of the family said what is the matter and Bob said Mins just died and Billy said you had a night horse and Bob said no it is true, there was no telephone or we had not had time to write, this I never could understand. After dad left with the body it started to snow and blizzered and when he dod not get home for seveal weeks we thought he had perished like many others. As there had been no doctor there was no death certificate so sad had quite a time with the law. These were pioneer times and hard to realize what had happened.

Here is another incident, Bob lived in a sod house with a straw roof and when it rained the roof leaked, I was living with Bob and helping him with his farm. Close by Bobs farm was a hot spring which never froze over, so Bob took some mud from the spring and it dried very hard and Bob said this will make a good roof, so we spent several hours hauling mud from the spring, we put it on the straw roof and thought we had something, well it rained and the rain melted the mud and we had two feet of mud all over the house. It was some time that the Titanic went down, a great disaster. Around Caster there was lots of soft coal and while digging a well a man was digging a well by hand and when he went down in the morning he was gassed and Bob married the widdow, she and her former husband had operated a store and of course had lots of ammunition, Edith gave me all the twelve guage shot-gun shells, ( eight casesnot eight boxes) everything from number six shot to buck shot and I shot every one. Edith had two daughters from her former marriage, (Evelyn and Lilliam) Bob moved out to his place and built a new house and I did the cookimg when they were building the house. Had to melt snow for water and I made a mistake in not being carefull not to get snow with rabbit things, had to throw it out the tea was terrible, ha ha. I was helping Bob with his harvest and he said go and get some ducks, there was lots of ducks so I had no trouble in getting several mallards, Bob said we will have duck for dinner, two or three days later I broke my shoe-string and asked Edith if she had any string, and she said behing the stove is some string, well the ducks were all there with their necks stretched all that was the way the English cooked game, sometime before this we haad duck for dinner and it tasted good, now I don't know, ha ha. Aboute this time I was helping Bob with his harvest, it looked like a storm so Bob said let us put the horses in the barn and go in the house, Bob was laying on the floor before the stove and Edith was frying eggs on the stove when lightening struck the house and Edith yelled and dumped the eggs on bob, no one was seriously hurt. Just a few words about Edith's cooking ducks, this was the way the English cooked wild game, let them get ripe. It was around this time that there was an earthquake that shook the American continet. It shur shook things up. A stranger drove up to our house and said here you are the world is comming to an end take everything, waggon, horses furniture wife and two children, dad said if the world is comming to an end I will not need these things so he drove on. I can remember when we were leaving the home-stead, it was8nt so bad, it was the spring of 1916 that we left for Bellingham, Washington. We took the train at Loyalist. Here is a few things we had heard aboute the new country, rained most of the time but you nrver got wet, very large trees and lots of lum ermills. This was beror oil was the fuel to heat the home. We had no electric appliances just kerosene lights and no flash lights. No telephones just word to mouth. This was new area in my life and I looked forward to it with great expectation. I had trap line, and just the week berore we left for Washington there was a blizzard and so my traps are still there. I caught aboute three hundred musk rats that season, got 15 cents per pelt, big money now days. When I graduated from grade school I had to go to the nearest town to take my examinations, stayed there several days, the first night I had a room on the second story at the hotel, there was a rope tied to a ring in the floor and I laid awake all night waiting for the fire alarm to ring, this was the way to get out in case of fire. Bob and his family stayed in his place and came to Washington later. Bob and Edith had one child, Lyle hatley who now lives in Mt. Bernon Washington. Another incident when the railroad was being built the superintendant used to come to our place for a home cooked dinner quite often, this railroad was built by horse scrapper and had labor, well1 there was lots of discarded railroad tyees and when they were ready to leave the camp they had to burn these tyees, the superintendant told us to be hand and after they had left get there and put the fire out and take the tyees. The camp was aboute two miles from our place and we worked all night hauling tyees and people wanted to know where we got such good wood. I saw my first picture show in Castor, it was called DonQuito and the lions. Sister had a man named Tennant boarding at their place and one morning sister said go up and tell Mr Tennant that breakfast was ready, I went up and he wa shaving himself and he had cut himself quite bad and was completely out of his mind we fiund that hed several of these attackes before.We used to go to church on Sunday evenings at the Prespertanian Church as the Methodist did not have evening service, this particular night they had Communion service and I had never been to a Communion service before and when they brought the cup I drank it all, not so good, ha ha.---Another thing I will always remember is the Northern lights, very beautiful, you could hear the waves as they went over and it got very cold at times, the wrost I saw was 68 below zero. And of course the vicious hail storms. We used to rob the early wild duck nests and get our eggs that way.they were small but very tasty. We never killed any wild game except to eat. The family went on a picnic where we could pick wild berries and when we were out picking berries Archie was left at the waggon and he tiped the water jug over and we had no water to drink and we got very thirsty.we were aboute 15 miles from home and that took quite a long time to cover with a team of horses and a waggon.

I have a lot to remember here in Alberta, our neighbor, Mike Sobchinski came over and asked us if we wanted anything in town as he was going, Mother said I could go with him, he had a waggon and a team of horses, the waggon did not have a plank floor, just round poles, Mother sent a case of eggs with me, when we got on the way Mike threw the reins to each side and gave the horses the whip, they started to run and as the road was very rough I was in a bad way, most of the eggs were broken and when the horses go tire they stoped, of course there was no traffic to meet. Another thing aboute the Russians, when they went berry picking they cut the berry bushes down and picked the berries when they got hme. One thing I did like aboute the way the Russians made and baked bread, the loaves were large and round and baked in outdoor oven made of clay.After two or three years there was a heard law put into effect and Bob had the compound at his place, well one night aboute two am our dog came to the house and started to whine, dad said something is wrong, our neighbor mike Sobschinski had a heard of aboute fifty cattle and he had the habbit of cutting our fence and letting his cattle in our grain which was about six inches high, shure enough it had happened so dad and I spent the rest of the night getting the heard to Bobs compoind, we hust got them in to the compound and Mike came up and said he was sorry. Bob told him the fine was a dollar per head, he said he did not have that kind of money so he went home and got it but while he got back Bob had fed them and that was fifty cents a head more so he had to go back and get more, that was the end of this trouble. His cattle had a good feed but out grain shure suffered for it.Ome dollar per head was the lawful fine for this misdimener. We had five horses, Barney, Sam, Dock and George and my saddle horse Billy.In the fall when the wild geese were migrating we had to scare them off as there was so manny that it would hurt the crop.I used to get a job spike-pitching in the fall during threshing time, loading the waggons in the field and unloading into the separator. som times we could not start to thresh untill ten oclock and when we got started we would eat dinner and then aboute five oclock we would have a linch and continue untill we got too tired, then we had a signal and all the spike-pitchers would throw two bundles of grain backwards and that would throw the belt off the machine and the separator operator would cus us and we were never dissapointed and never failed to do it.

Another incident that happened was my brotherinlaw John Nichols came to visit us and he had a car, (Maxwell), he asked the store if they had any oil and they said yes so he ordered two quarts to be put in the car, well1 the oil they had was boiled linseed oil, John had to take the car all apart in order to get it to run. There used to be many prairie wolves, one year I was cutting hay on a school section aboute five miles from home and all day long they were following me so when it came time to go home I got scared and unhitched the team from the machine and rode bare-back home. we heard many tales aboute what the wolves had done. If you took a gun with you they were not there.Let us go back to the Maxwell car, It did not have battery, had to crank it, there was a bosch magneto to start it and the one light was from a gas tank carried on the running board of the car.this chemical was called carbide, mixed with water.I believe it was November 11th 1911 that Mina died.One day I was mowing hay with a team of horses and amow and a grouse flew up and I went back to see if I had harmed the nest, the nest was ok but the grouse had lost her feet. I felt sorry so I kept going back and hoped I would get a shot at her and end her misery. Well1 late that fall I went back and a fird flew up and I shot it, it was the same bird and her feet had healed and she seemed to be all OK but I felt better.Another thing I missed was the crocases after a prairie fire the whole landscape was covered with blossoms and the perfume was wonderful. While Bob was away from home one day the children started a smudge in teh barn and the building burned down, horses chickens and wequipment. We had an acquaintence named Mayfield who came over one day and asked mother if we liked honey, she said yes and he said give me womthing to bring you some and mother gave him a quart jar and he laughed at hem he went and took the old churn and brought it back hald filled with honey.One day Edith and her two daughters came down on the way to Loyalist, they had an open buggy, the girls were all dressed up in white and dad said let me change horses with you and take our horse who was white and did not like to walk in anything black, it had rained the day before and a little stream of black water about four fee wide had to be corssed. Charlie stopped and would not go into the water so Edith hit him with the whip, he jumped and Edith and the two girls and the eggs were all dumped into the black water, Charlie waited for them on the other side, Ha Ha...

One other incident that happened with this privey, ours was a two can afair. One hot summer day I was setting in there and my neice came and locked the door from the outside, well I spent a very sad day there in the bad oder. When my brotherinlaw came home he had a good laugh about it. Well a little later later Florence was going for a horse back ride and I was instructed to saddle th horse for her, my sister went to a ladies aid afair and I locked Florence in her room up stairs and took a ride my self, she put up a big noise and finally cryed herself to sleep, when her father came home she told him what had happend, he was going to give me a thrashing but sister said no you don't you laughed when Lloyd was shut in the privey so now I thing things are even let us leave them that way. It was while I was living in Castor that a gass well came in and us kids were down wind from the well got covered with mud and water, the band came down to celebrate but the loud hiss drowned it out, when they lit the gass the light could be seen from our farm sixty miles away. The elevator which my brother in law operated had one of them old heavy gasoline motor which had a heavy shaft direct to the elevator, children used to play on that shaft. The shaft was aboute th feet from the ground, one day a child got his close caught and could not get loose, he was all beat to pieces. One day my niece (Florence) and I went on an exploration trip and come accrost an old house that was deserted, we went in and came home with a lot of articles including a bed pan, when we got home sister said where did you get this stuf. we told her and she said that it was a nuisance house. A place where people went when they had a contagious diseass, we were in trouble and had to take everything back. Another incident the Methodist church did not have evening services so we went to the Presperterian church and my first night there thet had communion service, they had the old fashioned way just touch your lips to the cup. We when it got to I drank all the wine in the cup, much to my sisters digust and worry.

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