Agnes Balfour

On April 25th we left Mount Forest with many trunks and boxes. We also had a cat, which we carried in a basket on the train. We left Mount Forest, Ontario on Thursday morning and went to Listowel, where we had to change trains, then down to Windsor and crossed on a ferry (the whole train) to Detroit, on to Chicago, St. Paul and Minneapolis, up through Emerson, Manitoba, where we had to go through customs. On Sunday morning we arrived in Winnipeg, where a friend of mother's met us. He was a very kindly man and took such good care of us. No trains left Winnipeg on Sunday and streetcars were horse drawn. We had to stay there until Monday morning when we started off again and got to Regina on Tuesday (a city of mud and a great spot for kids.!). I must tell you who was in our gang: Mother (Mrs. William Balfour) with Will, Agnes and Sheff: Mrs. John Martin (aunt Jennie) with three children - John Annie and Jean, who was just three weeks old; Aunt Jennies sister, Mary Wilson, who went to Calgary to a job in a hospital.

Then in the fall of 1884, our house was built – the old house you have the picture of. The shack was not on it for a couple of years. There were two bedrooms in the west end and the rest was living-dining room and kitchen all in one. The first winter we had a bin in one corner with that years crop of wheat (maybe 100 bushels). That wheat was a big part of our food that winter – we had wheat supper most nights. We had a good cellar but no vegetables to put in it that year. The house was fairly warm when there was a good fire and we had lots of wood. The big cookstove stood just about the middle of the house.

I have seen dishes frozen to the table at breakfast time and quite often we had to thaw the bread. The stove had a wide damper which jutted out about halfway down the front with a door opening across the front, and that was where we made our toast. To make our toast we got a good mass of coals in the stove, opened that door and stood the slices up with forks. No electric toaster could make it better.!

We did not have a cow the first winter and Uncle Alex used to set pailsful of milk outside to freeze solid and then we carried them home, wrapped in paper. I must tell you we had very little meat but we shot lots of rabbits and all liked the meat. We had a few prairie chickens as well.

We didn't have any horses until 1889 but we had a white Indian pony that you see in those pictures, called "Ghosty". In 1888 Jim went east and worked in Uncle Tom's mill all winter and in the spring Margaret and Chris Scott came back with him. Jim brought our first horses with him, "Kate and Nell".

Each spring for many years we had a supply of oatmeal from the mill. We also got sacksfull of dried apples and several other things in the way of food, to help us along. Jim and Margaret brought a good supply that year.