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This oral history is from an interview conducted by the Oral History cluster of the Landscapes of Injustice project.
go get the perchand I just net it and bring it in and have it for supper.
Well do what we canand
it’s gonna be tough but you can’t complain.Because when we’re in
Well the snow was starting to come in,so they gave us tarp paper to nail on the outside. So we had to nail up tar paper on the outside to keep the snow from coming in. And what we have here is, right on the corner here? Was a pump. That was our water supply.
We’ll go toAnd I’ve been inWinnipeg , so.
Oui.And this person stands up and replies back. And then she’ll be talking away and then all of a sudden she says
Ouiand this girl stands up. So after the class is over I asked the guys
What was that?And they said,
That was French.
Well if you want when we move out, we can move in there.So we moved into 50 Curtis Street. And that wasn’t much of a house either.
When you go to the outhouse you have to take an ax
Everybody come and line up and come in for a shot,so. And usually in the camp what happened too was somebody had the measles,
What are you still teaching?But he was a very good friend. And his brother, his brother Bill Heshka, he just passed away two years ago. He was in—he worked for Air Canada, and when he worked in Air Canada that was building here on Donald Street, I think. You know it, Air Canada? And when they relocated the Head Office to
What do we do with this thing?Can’t bite it, you have to soak it. But as time progressed in
Go up that tree and pick your own cherries.With us as kids we’d go up the cherry tree and we’d eat just as much as we pick,
How much?And it’d be 10 cents or whatever.
Why don’t you go to university?He said he can get me a bursary. Wow.
Well I can’t because we’re in such a dump in Higgins there.I had to go to work, so. When I finished high school, I went to work. I went to work at the Western Flyer Coach Company, the bus company, and that was not a very good place to work. You know in those days—that’s why I got a hearing aid. Notice the hearing aid? Well when I worked the bus company, so much noise, you never had ear protection, you never had any kind of masks or anything like that. I used to get nose bleeds. And then one time there was a bus come, an older bus come, because when they were building buses there, brand new, but occasionally they’d get an old bus in, to renovate? And one particular time they said,
Here’s a bus, get in there.They gave me some cleaning fluid.
Get in the bus,they got chewing gum on the floor and everything else. So here I’m scraping chewing gum, I’ve got this cleaning fluid, and then somehow somebody closed the door on me. Now I’m in all this fumes. And I come out of there and I’m like a zombie. So I said this job is no good for me. And then naturally you’re helping riveters with all that rat-tat-tat, because you’re just a Joe Boy there. So after a couple of years I quit.
Well nobody needs an apprentice,so I’d sit there in the office but then I don’t get paid. So I said,
That’s no good.So I quit that job.
There’s an oil can in thereso I get the oil can. Naturally in the winter time, the oil doesn’t flow. So I said
What do I do?Says,
Stick your finger in there, get the grease, put it a little.
Go get me some cloth from the storage and bring it in,and then after he said,
Sweep up the floor,you sweep up the floor.
There’s an advertisement in the paper saying thatThat was back in 1953. And he says,MTS is hiring people.
They’re hiringand he’s going in for an interview. He says,
Why don’t you come in for an interview?I said
Ok.So I went with Ben, and initially I said,
Well heck, that’s a government job, I don’t think I’ll get it.But he say,
No, come on,he says,
If they don’t like you or want you just get rejected, so what?You know. But I said,
Well I dunno if I’ll have a chance there,so. You got nothing to lose. So I went with Ben, and that’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I got in with Ben and then what happened was once we got in with the
We got down payment.So that’s when we got the house.
yes sir,
no sir,you know very little English anyways. My mother never learn English whatsoever. But he can speak to her and she says—shake her head, or.
Is that yours?
No, my sister.
We’re starting a curling league.I worked at St. Johns Exchange, which is on Burrows? That telephone building there? And the fella says,
Ah, why don’t you try curling?I said,
I haven’t curled in my life.Oh he says,
Why don’t you come out curling.That’s when I started curling, with the