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“A Railway Kid: Stories of a Prairie Childhood in the Great Depression” National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data Paul, Esther, 1932- Copyright © by Borealis Press Ltd., 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007. About the Book
This book is about a girl growing up in Minnedosa – a small railway town in Manitoba, in the era of steam trains. It was originally written for the authoŕs grandsons, to tell them about life in a very different time: the 1930's, an era far removed from todaýs fast-paced technological world. Esther says, "The old way of life is long gone and I felt it would be a pity to be forgotten; not that it was better, but simply a road traveled to where we are now.
Price per copy $18.95 Shipping and handling $4.80 per copy Each additional copy $2.00 per copy To order autographed copy: send cheque or money order to E.Paul P.O. Box 13694 Kanata ON K2K 1X6 Enquiries: esther@estherpaul.ca or order through Borealis Press www.Borealispress.com (Listed by Title) |
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Excerpts from the Book Across the road from our house, the huge field of dry prairie grass beckoned. One hot, dry, windy August day I pulled out tufts of grass, mounded them up, struck amatch on a rock, and held it to the little pile. The wind blew it out. Tried again. Same thing. Ahh. Must shield the flame with my body. Success! The grass caught and quickly burned a black fire circle. Too quickly, the circle widened alarmingly. I tried to stamp it out but it spread to room size, then house size. I had not known, until then, the power of the wind. Frightened, I backed away, turned tail, and ran. Watching the fire from behind our caragana hedge I saw the flames head towards the CPR snow fences and the section men’s houses farther east. Such consequences I had not imagined. Railway snow fences in those days were permanent fixtures, seven feet high and made of rough-cut lumber, flat on one side and rough on the other – not the cute red roll-ups we have today along our highways and byways. Six or seven section men came running from the railway and began to smother the flames with wet gunny sacks. Who would win? Men or fire? The section men were victorious. My Grampa, named Thomas Donlon, stowed away at age 12 on a boat bound for Canada in 1869, so the family story goes. Without a goodbye to his mother or family he left poverty behind in Ballymakeegan, County Longford, Ireland. Tales of a better life in the new world beckoned. Upon his arrival he sought employment wherever he could find it – in lumber mills and logging camps in eastern Canada. He later found work building the new Canadian railways: the Great Northern and then the Canadian Pacific, where he later became a car foreman in Manitoba. When he was about 20 my grandfather returned briefly to Ireland, perhaps a little homesick, and to reassure his mother that he was all right. He had saved up enough money for his passage. He simply walked in the door of his childhood home without any forewarning. I can picture his homecoming: after a quick rap on the door, he would open it without waiting for an answer and step into the dark interior of the small thatched cottage on the hill. He would see his mother bent over a peat fire, perhaps stirring a pot of stew simmering there. She would swing around, spoon in hand, squinting at the tall stranger in the dim light as he spoke. “Hello, Mother,” he would say in his deep manly voice, a shy smile upon his face. She would stare hard, with head cocked quizzically, then give a small yelp as she recognized the grown version of her son Thomas. What a reunion! In the thirties, appliances made their appearance in our house one by one. We already had a radio, which was powered by vacuum tubes. That gothic-shaped wooden wonder, about a foot tall, provided the whole family with a window on the wider world. My contemporaries will remember Amos and Andy, Lux Radio Theatre, Fibber McGee and Molly. Many evenings we gathered around the radio, drinking in every word, and laughing uproariously at the punch lines. I especially loved Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen. Charlie was a dummy and Edgar was the |
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McCarthy and Edgar Bergen. Charlie was a dummy and Edgar was the ventriloquist. I still remember the jingle that extolled the virtues of Jell-O between the programs. A lilting little tune with rising notes trilled “J-E-L-L-O.” A wringer washer was the first appliance we acquired. What a help that must have been to my mother! Even I didn’t mind helping with the wringing of the laundry as it went from washer to the rinse tubs – at least until the novelty wore off. Even more exciting than the advent of the washing machine was the day Dad and Grampa installed our brand-new white enamelled electric range in the kitchen. First, they banged down the black, soot-filled pipes that connected the kitchen stove to the main furnace pipes rising from the basement up to the chimney. Soot everywhere! Even their faces were black! Then they hauled the heavy black claw-footed cast-iron monster of a wood-burner stove outside. In its place they put the new range; “Gurney,” I believe, was the name printed in blue enamel letters on its front. They plugged it into a new wall-plug which an electrician had installed from the main wiring somewhere in the basement. That’s all they had to do! Then we could turn one of the dials on the front of the stove to heat one of the four burners on the top. Or we could turn all the dials to heat all four burners at the same time! It boiled water even faster than the wood stove had. I must admit I felt a pang, though, when I realized that my favourite dreaming spot on the rocker beside that soothing heat-giving stove had now disappeared. The side of the electric stove was cold!
One school event I will never forget. In the summer of 1939 our grade two class stood impatiently fidgeting on the Brandon CPR station platform awaiting the arrival of the Royal Train bearing Canada’s King and Queen. A huge crowd surrounded us. I was dressed in my Brownie uniform, newly starched and ironed, with my dark brown tie perfectly knotted and my tan floppy-brimmed hat shading my face from the burning sun. This was a fairy tale come true. We had seen pictures of the Royal Wedding and Coronation, with gilded coaches drawn by handsomely liveried horses amid adoring crowds, the King and Queen sitting under a canopy wearing their jewelled crowns. The handsome newly crowned King George VI, and Queen Elizabeth, his pretty young wife (later to be affectionately called the “Queen Mum”), were due to arrive for a short stop on their cross-Canada tour – their first since their coronation. We had been driven to Brandon, some 30 miles south of Minnedosa, in a fleet of cars, to see their Royal Highnesses. We had been well drilled beforehand on where we were to stand and told we could cheer the train as it pulled into and out of the station...
...The King was hatless and wore a dark suit, while the Queen had a white stole draped over a mid-calf-length dress. Her dark hair was cut short and styled close to her head. They looked, disappointingly, like my Mom and Dad – not at all glamorous... |
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