Farm Living
November 5, 2009
The Western Producer
www.producer.com
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Section Editor: Karen Morrison
Phone: (306) 665-3585 Fax: 934-2401
e-mail:
karen.morrison@producer.com
That day in September 1939, when England declared war on Germany, our family sat glued to the radio in the kitchen. I was seven years old, and war had little meaning for me.
England seemed so far away, across that big expanse of blue on the map.
However, shortly after, Canada, as a member of the British Common-wealth, also declared war. I knew from the concern of the adults around me that this was serious.
When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, I was 13. Although no battles had been fought in Canada, the war years had changed our country. During those six years, Canada grew up – and so did I.
At first, it seemed unreal. We would not be involved, here in Portage la Prairie, in the middle of Manitoba, in the middle of Canada. By the thousands, prairie boys joined up, not only because it was their patriotic duty.
For many, there was the lure of something they had never had, due to the Depression – a job, money, travel, adventure. Many high school friends of my older sister were soon in uniform.
My dad, Hector Wishart, at 50 years old, was too old to join up. He was needed as a farmer to provide grain for food anyway. As well, he and my mom, Agnes, also became helpful in another way.
We lived in a big brick house a short distance north of Portage.
One day some men in uniform drove in to ask if my parents would open their home to American officers (and their wives) who had come to Canada, joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and been posted to the Macdonald Air Base, No. 3 Bombing and Gunnery School. Mom and Dad agreed.
Two young couples from the United States were our first paying guests. They were good-looking, friendly, and happy to have a place to live together. I loved the excitement they brought to our house.
For Mom, it meant a lot more work, although during the summer, she always had a hired girl to help. Since each couple or family just had a bedroom for their own space, they lived with us. Sometimes we had four families, and Mom cooked for as many as 16 people every day. To keep from getting bored, the women picked vegetables from the garden, set the table or washed dishes.
Mom was a good cook, baking bread and cinnamon buns, fluffy biscuits, pies and cakes. The farm provided fresh beef, pork and chicken. It was my job to gather the eggs every day. A few cows gave us milk and cream, some of which Mom churned into butter Some-times that was my job, too. The new members of our family enjoyed their country meals.
Gradually, we settled into a routine. Each wife cleaned her family’s room. They did their own laundry with our gas-powered washer and hung it on the outdoor lines to dry. Using irons heated on the wood stove in the kitchen, the women removed the creases from their cotton clothes. I often helped with that job, too.
Although electricity did not come to rural Manitoba until after the war, our house had a Delco plant with its own special batteries that provided us with lights but could not run appliances. It also powered the pressure pump so we had running water, although it seemed my sister and I did most of the running. Sometimes the motor on the pressure pump would quit, which meant going to the basement to pump the water by hand. In addition, we pumped the septic tank by an outdoor pump, every day, winter and summer.
Moms bathed their babies on the all-purpose kitchen table. My sister and I babysat these children, sometimes for days at a time, to give their parents a much-needed break. These children became like family members. Sixty-five years later, we still laugh as we recall some of their sayings and antics. When they left our home, we were sorry to see them go.
We eventually had boarders from Texas, California, New York and Oregon, most of them pilots. Later we hosted the Canadians, one of whom was the base doctor. I learned much about a broader world from our visitors. Some of these friends stayed in touch with Mom as long as she lived.
One of the women and our hired man, to my delight, taught me to play our piano. In summer, we sometimes played games or went for walks in the field or pasture.
If there were school-aged children, they attended East Prospect, a one-room rural school, with me. In summer, we walked the two miles. In winter, Dad drove us with a team of Hackney horses hitched to the cutter. This was a new experience for these city kids, but they, in turn, added interest to the classes at our small school.
Meal preparation became more of a challenge when rationing was introduced. Foods such as butter, sugar, tea, coffee and meat, needed for the troops, were in short supply for civilians. Women adapted recipes and exchanged ideas about baking without eggs and butter or using honey instead of sugar. Gas was also rationed to a few gallons per week.
We learned much about the military, thanks to these new friends. We became familiar with the types of planes, such as the sturdy Lysander, which pulled a drogue (a long tube-like target) at which a student gunner in another plane, the sleek Fairey Battle, shot. They also dropped practice bombs on targets in Lake Manitoba or the marsh.
There are probably still pieces of metal and shells on the bottom of the lake. One of our pilots had his own small plane that he sometimes landed in our field right beside the house.
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Portage gave visitors memorable experiences too. One pilot had been saying repeatedly that he really wanted to see a Manitoba blizzard while he was here. He got his wish. It was a real old-fashioned three-dayer. When it ended, we were, under-standably, low on groceries, but the highway was blocked and no snowplow was likely to come soon.
Dad and the pilot, Bob, hitched the team to the cutter and started out the lane. However, we had a caragana hedge that held the snow. The lane was piled waist-deep. One horse became stuck and just gave up. Dad and Bob had to dig her out. By the time they were finished, both were sweaty and exhausted, but Bob had a story about Manitoba blizzards he likely told his grand-children years later.
Small contributions
Everyone became involved in the war effort in any way they could. We saved tin foil from cigarettes, gum, candy and chocolate bar wrappers to be made into ammunition. Some collected milkweed seeds to make Mae Wests, as they were nicknamed, inflatable vests worn by pilots and seamen as flotation devices.
Most people bought war savings bonds and certificates. We youngsters saved our pennies and nickels. For a quarter, we could buy a war savings stamp. Each stamp was stuck in its place in a small collection book. When the book was full, we exchanged it at the post office for a war savings certificate. At the end of the war, I bought a used piano with mine.
Adults found ways to raise money for the Salvation Army, whose work among the military personnel became well-known.
Many groups packed parcels for “our boys over there,” comforts of home which were much-needed, such as home baking, soap, warm clothes and blankets, chocolate bars, gum, candy and cigarettes. Sometimes we wrapped these parcels in cotton sugar bags to ensure that they reached their destination in good condition. Women, and some children, wrote encouraging letters–and they knit.
We followed the news broadcasts closely and were sobered when we heard our parents discussing the fact that neighbours or relatives had received that dreaded telegram telling them that their loved one was reported killed or missing in action or was a prisoner of war. Most of them were so young.
A prisoner of war camp, estab-lished just across the road from us to provide labourers for the sugar beet fields, brought the war closer to home. One German folk song, to this day, makes me hear again those men singing it in the evenings as I sat on our porch steps, listening. These men were well-fed and humanely treated. We could only hope our POWs were treated the same. How little radio newscasts really told us.
These prisoners were trusted, so were allowed to leave the camp for a short time in the evening. One fellow used to come over to help Dad. He was polite, kind and helpful. His English was good enough that we communicated quite well. He showed us pictures of his wife and children. He, too, wanted the war to be over so he could go home.
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learned that many of these men were not the enemy, but ordinary folk like us, caught up in a war not of their choice. He almost wore out his welcome when he brought some sugar beets, which he planned to cook to make sugar. The smell in the house was nauseating and my mom abruptly ended the sugar-production process.
During the war, too, thousands of children came by boat from England to be safe from bombs and the destruction of their homes. A few spent the war years in the Portage area. They attended local schools and became part of the community. When the war ended, they were sent back to their families, but many of their homes had been destroyed. They no longer belonged. Some had grown to love Canada. Many returned as adults to become Canadian citizens.
I remember the day when our classroom door burst open. There stood the chair of the school board, usually a dour Englishman, beaming at us.
“The war’s over,” he announced. “You can all go home for the rest of the day.”
We grabbed our tin lunch pails and ran.
The world changed so much between 1939 and 1945. Canada came of age. So did we. Our contributions, like our discomforts, had been small, but, in our way, we felt that we had helped those brave men and women achieve that victory.
