TRANSCRIPTCD - Connie Duncan, interviewee (with her daughter, Aileen Duncan [AD] present) / LR - Lyn Royce, interviewer
LR: How about, you mentioned ice, and the guy making ice. Now was that out in Burford, or the farm? Or that was here...
CD: No that was right here on, uh, Fred Street [in Hamilton]. Don Busby had this here ice, and he made ice, and he delivered around to...
LR: Okay. So iceboxes instead of fridges...
CD: Oh yeah! We didn't... Fridge?! Pbbbb! Iceboxes.
LR: Iceboxes. Okay. When you had to get rid of your chickens and your animals, did you still, did you have a vegetable garden fer... behind?
CD: Oh yeah, we had a vegetable garden.
LR: You had a garden. And did you, any things you remember specifically about that garden that...
CD: Well...
LR: ...what was in it; and...
CD: We used to have potatoes, carrots, parsnips, tomatoes...
LR: Okay.
CD: What else? And then we had rhubarb.
LR: Okay
CD: We had an awful lot of rhubarb. Next door had, well, we call them flags.
LR: Flags?
CD: Youse call them irises.
LR: Ah! Okay.
CD: So, Whites, next door, had abundance of them. And we had abundance of rhubarb. So we switched.
LR: Switched... okay; okay... But, but, irises - flags - they're flowers they were not, they're not food, are they?
CD: Oh, no, no, no.
LR: Okay! [laughs] I was just thinkin', never heard of anybody eating those!
CD: No, no, no, no. Rhubarb...
LR: But a good swap.
CD: Because the rhubarb, they wanted rhubarb. So if they wanted rhubarb, they come over and we got it. So finally this year, the 1 year, we exchanged some plants, so they had some rhubarb and we had some iris! [laughs]
LR: Alright! And then they took over...
CD: Yeah.
LR: Very good. What, um, eh... I'm just thinking about the rhubarb, because I grew up with a grandmother and mother who were rhubarb, rhubarb fanatics - we didn't have much of a garden but we had lots of rhubarb - um, and they would pack it and freeze it, but you had an icebox so you wouldn't be able to put it in a freezer. Did you do that kind of...
CD: Canned down.
LR: Okay.
CD: We did an awful lot of canning. Uh, downstairs, in the basement, was a long pantry...
LR: Okay...
CD: ...oh...it was about as wide as that there slate board, long.
LR: Okay.
CD: And there was shelves on it.
LR: Okay.
CD: And there was all fruit, vegetables that my parents did down. Underneath, we had dirt and in them was potatoes, carrots, parsnips...
LR: Okay...
CD: ...beets; the stuff like that.
LR: Okay. So what was doing the canning, what was 'canning down' like?
CD: Good. [laughs]
LR: Yeah? Nice results... [laughs] I know...
CD: No, we didn't do too much, help around...
LR: Okay.
CD: ...with that. All we had to do was just to get the stuff in.
LR: Okay.
CD: Like we'd go out and...
LR: Yeah...
CD: ...and get strawberries; uh, work on the farm out there and um, uh, #2 Highway by the uh, just by, just past Selkirk; we used to go out there every year and pick strawberries. So we would take our wages in strawberries, bring them home and my mother and grandmother, did them down.
LR: 'Did them down;' okay... It's becoming a lost art isn't it?
CD: mmm, Oh! I've done it all these years; I think... [to Aileen Duncan] Last year was it?
AD: Last 2 years you haven't done it.
CD: Last 2 years I haven't canned.
LR: Yeah; it's, it's a bit of a, it's becoming a bit of a lost art, I think... What other, how else... Okay, so you got some fruit by, you know, wages for picking in exchange for, for strawberries. How did you get other things, like bread and meat and, and those kinds of...
CD: My, my parents made the bread.
LR: Okay.
CD: And the meat, well, then we got on um... James Street... tryin' to think of the name of the store. And then there was the fish market down farther; every Friday we had to have fish.
LR: Fish... okay, okay...
CD: It was tough.
LR: Tough but good seems to be what most people say.
CD: Oh yeah. Yeah...
LR: It was not easy but everybody had fun.
CD: Yes. I don't know; we were more happier, I think, in those days than what the people are now.
LR: Unhunh; yeah...
CD: I don't know; because everything we did, we sort of did as a, playing with it...
LR: Okay.
CD: ...as if it was a game. But now...
LR: And I think a lot of doing things together, too; as opposed to more independent activities now.
CD: Yeah. |
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