Jim McConnell's Autobiography 1877 - 1957Canadian pioneer farmer in Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia |
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20. A few days after we had settled in our little cabin, I went to work for a Mr. C. Geggie, falling Hemlock trees and making logs for his sawmill. My sawing partner was John McLaren, a Scotsman, and from him, I had my first lessons on getting the trees down and making logs. The snow fell and became deeper, and I had to take a lantern every morning at seven and walk over to work before daylight and home again after dark. My wife always put a lamp in the window to guide me through the bush to the cabin, for, as yet, there were no roads or paths. The dark wintry days passed and spring came -- our first spring in British Columbia. I first made a trip to Rosetown, called a sale and sold all the machinery, horses and cattle and farm equipment - - taking only a team of horses and some cows and household effects back with me to Terrace. We began clearing and burning the brush on our 20-acre farm and getting the strawberries, raspberries, and currant bushes started. Two years later, I can remember us all throwing our hats in the air, as we piled the last bunch of roots and brush on the fire and watched them burn. Our 20 acres was now all cleared, and we had a good patch of strawberries and a larg e patch of raspberries growing. There was always work to be done with the team for the neighbors during the summer. And in the winters, I worked in the bush for $3.50 for an eight or nine hour day. Our four children attended the Terrace School, and they were all eager to help with all the work at home in their spare time and on Saturdays. We built a large barn and hayshed for the horses and cows and continued to extend the hen house to keep more hens, expecting that the returns from the farm would keep us without the need of working out. In 1925 I went to Rosetown in harvest time. Fred was now completely recovered from the TB, and he was at Rosetown too. We managed to make a sale of our land -- the whole five quarters -- to the Mennonites. This was on a fifteen-year agreement, on a crop payment basis. We also had to buy them complete farming equipment to start them off. Fred and his wife came and made their home at Rosetown in order to look after our part of the agreement. For the first four years in British Columbia we had lived in the little log cabin which had been built nearly 20 years before. The roof and floor were made of cedar shakes. Now the time had come to build a house. The winter was mild, and we dug out the basement, brought lumber home, and had it ready by spring. I had a carpenter do all the special work and prepare the doors and windows, but all the other work was done by our own willing workers at home. As the summer advanced, we completed the floors, walls, roof and chimney, and then it came time to move in. About this time, our supply of eggs and dressed chicken increased beyond the local supply, and we started shipping milk, eggs and dressed chicken to Prince Rupert. On this outside market, we had to meet competition from the south where feed was cheap and shipping rates much lower. We trapnested our hens and raised our flocks from the best selected hens and continued to ship our produce to Prince Rupert -- even when the marg in of profit was fast disappearing. Now, the time was hastening on to the year 1929 when the great Depression came and paralyzed business in the United States, Canada and the world over. Men seemed to lose the incentive to trade or carry on business, because there was no demand and markets failed. Wag es went down, and there were thousands unemployed. During 1929 and 1930, the Depression was slowly making living conditions worse, and by 1931, very few working people at Terrace had steady employment. It appeared that only some large public works program, like road building or bridge building, would provide the work needed to keep men with large families from real want.
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