Jim McConnell's Autobiography 1877 - 1957Canadian pioneer farmer in Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia |
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15. pudding. However, I could not eat and felt as if I never could eat again. I came to realize how dangerous coal gas in a small building could be. Only the air circulating through the walls in the morning had revived me. After Christmas, I sold the oxen and equipment and bought a ticket for Ontario and left to visit with friends I had not seen since 1906. The time passed quickly, and when February arrived, I began to buy horses and farm equipment and prepared to take a car of "Settler's Effects" when I went West again. Another event happened while I was on this holiday, which, for lasting importance, overshadowed everything that so far had happened in all my thirty-three years of life. I had made the acquaintance of a young Ontario lady who was willing to become a partner with me and to share with me all the loneliness, solitude, and hardships of a pioneer's life. On March 8th, the car was loaded, and I left. Nine days later, in Rosetown, I began unloading the car and hauling everything to the homestead ten miles to the South. 1910 was an early Spring. The snow quickly disappeared and the ground dried up, but with the horses, it did not take long to work down the land and get the seed sown. About this time my older brother, Fred, had made up his mind to take a hand in this Western adventure. One day, quite unexpected, he came along to help me. I was certainly very glad of this! For about the middle of May, I had to leave everything and hasten back East to complete that bargain with that little dark-eyed girl who was now preparing herself to leave all her friends and take her chance with the man of her choice, as a pioneer on the bleak open unconquered prairie. After doing some visiting with the friends, we were married on May 24th, 1910, and early next morning left on the C.P. train for Rosetown, Saskatchewan. No cars had yet appeared in Rosetown, so an open carriage, drawn by two horses, carried my wife and me, with all trunks and baggage, to our home. My wife made a remark that evening which I have remembered all these years. As we entered the house, she turned to me and said "Oh, Jim, you have a floor in your house." This of course was the same as saying that the house was much better than she had expected. And now began a new era in our lives as well as for the whole country a round us. This could be known as our years of achievement. The machine age had arrived. Men looked about for some form of motive power to do the work instead of doing it by hand. On the farms, tractors began to take over the heavy work from the horses, and also the small machinery drawn by horses. It is true that the first tractors were very heavy and some of the frames were made of cast iron. The different parts were unequal to the strain put upon them, and they easily cracked and broke. Expensive repairs often had to be made and the farmers struggled with these big monsters and got their work done. Whole sections were broken up and prepared for crops. Some farmers used steam driven tractors, but water being scarce for steam, the gas and oil tractor was preferred, both for plowing and tractor work and for thrashing. Also in the summer of 1910, my brother Fred managed to get a quarter to homestead, and I also got a second quarter as a purchased homestead at $3.00 an acre. Good quarters were scarce now and hard to get, as the land was all taken. Some men died, and others abandoned their land. Such quarter sections were posted up a few days ahead before being thrown open for the first applicant. There was an open hall covered over at the front door at the Land Office. Numbers from 1 to 50 were placed along that hall. The applicants took their places under these numbers and waited for the day their land was to be open for filing.
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