Agnes Martin Smith

But, to get back to the Balfours, mother began her adventures in 1884. 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.

We were quite a gang to get off the train with all our bags and luggage.! Uncle Jack Martin met us with a team of horses and a wagon. He was expecting only Aunt Jennie and the children, as Jack had not received the letter saying mother was coming and she was not supposed to go west until late summer. Anyway Uncle Jack loaded trunks and boxes on the wagon and put women and kids on top and we started our long trip. Poor horses, with such a load.! It took us seven hours to make the trip and you can imagine that it was a tired gang which arrived at Uncle Jack's about suppertime.

We kids had walked a good part of the way as there were too many of us to stick onto the pile of trunks in the wagon. It was a bare and bleak prairie we traveled across – just dead grass with a few wild flowers and we could see a shack here and there in the distance. It was a lonely scene. I was nine years of age and old enough to feel the loneliness. The next few years were lonely ones for me. There was no school for three years and I never saw a girl of my own age for three years. But still, there was something very appealing in the expanse of land and it became a wonderful part of the world.

But to tell of our arrival on the 30th of April (Sheff's seventh birthday). Aunt Maggie had quite a birthday party on her hands.! I do not remember where we all slept that night but I do remember the surprise Jack got when he came over to Uncle Alex' (there were no phones then). Jack lived with Jack Ramsay about a mile away and I can remember going over to their shack the next day and that they had tin cups and plates to eat out of. As Jack had not even begun to build a house, we were distributed among the uncles that summer.

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.

But I'm ahead of myself, Jean (aunty Jean) had come out in 1887 and she was very lonely and unhappy for some time. She was 18 and had left all of her friends to come out to the wild west. However, by and by she learned to ride and made many a trip in Ghosty. There were few buckboards or buggies in those days but Charlie Sherrif had an old buckboard which he brought back from the Reil Rebellion and Jean used to ride over there and hitch Ghosty to the buckboard (there were no shafts - just a tongue) and Jean went to Pense, about 12 miles away. It took all day to do the shopping. How times have changed – jump in the car and be there and back in a few hours.!

So the years went by. We all grew up and had many good times and many hard ones. Mother was kept quite busy taking care of the sick. More babies were arriving and mother brought many of them into the world. She went many miles in all directions to tend the sick. I want to say here that I cannot remember her having a baby or mother die. God was with her at those times. She had many hard trips but was always ready to go. Until 1989 the closest doctor was in Regina.

Our first house was built of rough logs and did not look very nice on the inside. As soon as we could afford it (there was no place to work during the first few years, as no one had any money until the crops grew) we lined the inside with grey building paper which looked nicer and warmer. Later we did it with wallpaper and we were quite swell.!! We did the ceilings with cotton – we got 5 cent cotton and sewed strips together to make a piece the size of the room and then we tacked it to the top edges of the wall and it was really nice. When it was dirty we took it down and washed it and put it up again. It was quite a job, but we did many things to make our places like home.

We had no furniture so Jack Ramsay built our first beds (he was a carpenter) with lumber – quite nice heads and foots with strips along the sides and slats across. We had no mattresses so we made ticks of cotton and filled them with straw and they made quite good mattresses. We were quite lucky as mother had two nice feather ticks which we put on top of the straw ones. They were really quite nice and so warm in the winter.

Jack Ramsay built us a table too, but we had no chairs, or maybe a couple, so we had a bench at the back and a block of wood at each end. I cannot remember what we had for the front but everyone liked our blocks of wood.

The first winter we had very little meat except a few rabbits and a few prairie chickens. We cooked the rabbit in many ways and all were nice meals. After the first year we all grew gardens and, from then on, fared very well with lots of potatoes and vegetables. We had a good cellar and never had to eat frozen vegetables. I am forgetting to tell you, but after the first year we had chickens too and could have a chicken any time and all enjoyed that.

I had been going to school and had my 3rd Class Certificate when I was 14. I had intended to be a teacher but after the other girls married mother was not able to carry on all the farm work, so I gave up school and stayed home to do the work. Then I married W.M. Smith on April 17th, 1895 and went to live in the valley on 20. Then in 1903 we decided to rent the farm and move to town We bought land in the east end of town south of the road, including the little cottage which was Baird's for so long from Mr. Cornell, who had the lumber yard and later went to California.

We owned land in the east end of town and had it surveyed into lots. In a few years it was all built up. Mr. Daykin had the land on the north side of the road. Will worked in teaming for the first couple of years. He help build the Anglican Church and also gave them the lot. He hauled stones and gravel for Balfour's Store and did lots of jobs to help build the town. He got the Massey Harris Agency in the fall of 1904 and had it until 1914 when he went back to the farm, I, with the family which had grown to six, stayed in town for the boys to go to school. Then we all went back to the farm in 1920, where we stayed until 1937 when we were starved off it by wind, dust, russian thistle and grasshoppers. We moved to Vancouver on April 30th 1938.