The Beginning...

H.A.E.B.

I was born on September 23, 1922 in the farmhouse on the correction line between Milden and Harris in Saskatchewan. Since Milden was unincorporated at that time, my birth certificate shows the legal description of the land (section 3, township 31, range 11, west of the third meridian) and the name is Hilda Eileen Angala Bursaw!

I was unaware of this until 1940 when I needed my birth certificate to register for my federal civil service job at Canadian naval headquarters in Ottawa.I had always been called Angela Doreen and believed that I was born in September 1923. This was a little deception of my mother's. She was greatly embarrassed to have two babies, less than two years apart, my older sister, Bulah, was born on Feb. 22,1921. My younger sister, Edith Myrtle Tena (known as Betty) was born on July 10, 1925.

Our parents were Charles Bursaw Jr. Born at Blue Earth, Minnesota, USA on June 31,1875, and Hattie Way, born at Otter Lake, Quebec on March 15, 1884. They had met at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota in 1916. My mother was there to have a large goiter removed from her neck and my dad had accompanied a blind friend there for eye surgery.

They were married in July 1917 in Saskatoon, Sask. and went to live in the house I was born in. The house is still standing and lived in (presently owned by my sister Betty). This house, and many others in Saskatchewan, was known as an "Eaton House". My dad had ordered the plans and materials from Eaton's catalogue and had built the house himself. It had a full, poured cement basement, with a coal furnace and a sunken cistern for rainwater. The main floor had a parlor, dining room, kitchen and hallway with a staircase leading to the second floor. There was also an open verandah on the front (south) and a summer kitchen at the back (north). On the second floor there were three bedrooms, and an unfinished bathroom. The peaked roof held an attic reached by a ladder on top of a trunk. This was my favorite spot, reading old books and with correspondence stored there.The house was ten miles from the towns of Milden (south), Harris (north), Zealandia (west) and Ardeth was twelve miles east. Our nearest neighbors were over a mile away and the school was nearly three miles away.

My father owned seventeen sections of land. A section is 640 acres, one-mile square. He rented out some of it, but worked the farms, close enough to be easily accessible, he, with horses in the early days, and later with power machinery. He owned about thirty horses and was an expert at breaking the young animals to harness and machinery. He was also a well driller and had put down most of the deep wells in our area. He had never gone to school but taught himself to read and write. He had a natural ability for math and could calculate any problem in his head faster than we could do it on paper.

Hattie Way

My mother grew up by the Picanock River north of Otter Lake in Quebec. Her father, James Way AKA Jim, born Mar. 15, 1847, was of English decent and grew up in the Wakefield area of Quebec. (His father, Fredrick way, is buried in the cemetery there). He volunteered to fight for the confederate army in the American Civil War in the 1860's. After losing all his belongings and identity during a bout of yellow fever, he was mistakenly put in a confederate prison as a POW he was eventually able to persuade the army that he was "one of them" and was released. He went back to Canada and many years later the US government recovered his rifle and sword and pistol and returned them to him. The rifle was stolen from my mother, Betty Fairweather has the pistol and Dean Melsness has the sword. Jim Way returned to Canada and married Isabella Smith in the town of Wrightville P.Q., theirs was the first protestant marriage in that town. The Wrightville-Hull area is now known as Gatineau.

The Ways had thirteen children, ten girls & three boys, eight girls survived, my mother, Hattie, was the second youngest. She was born on March 15, 1883 on her father’s birthday. She inherited his gift of healing animals and some human ailments with no medical training, she said she "just knew" what to do when a cow swallowed her cud or a horse bloated from eating wheat.

My grandfather was a strong believer in reincarnation. His oldest son, Columbia, had died of diphtheria at the age of thirteen and grandpa was convinced that he would be able to contact him. He tried for years but never did.

The Way family operated a "stopping place" by the beautiful Picanock River, it was a huge wooden house with several bedrooms, a bar room, kitchen, dining hall and lounge area. The original building burned down but a replica still stands on the site. It was, and still is, an isolated area with wonderful hunting & fishing. Many notable men from the Ottawa area came regularly to hunt, my mother mentioned E.B.Eddy, the Spanish consulate Michado, who sometimes brought his family (I was named for his daughter Angela). Others brought their hunting dogs and left them for grandpa to train. My mother and her sisters were all good shots with a rifle or shotgun and often took their turn at guiding the hunters. The girls were also excellent cooks, my Aunt’s Isobel, Elizabeth & Margaret all went to New York where they were head cooks in very rich homes for many years.

I visited Aunt Margaret there one time; she had her own suite and two kitchen maids. The families’ everyday dishes were Wedgewood and the formal set gold edged Spode with a setting for sixty. Before and during the early part of World War One, my mother worked in Ottawa, cooking in some of the embassy homes there. She was at ease cooking meals for twenty or thirty guests several times a week. Of course only the best and most expensive food was used. She was well known for her excellent meals by threshing crews after she married but I don't think many people in Milden were aware of her background. She had no wish to be "close" to people in Milden. She said they were "stuck up" but I'm sure that's what most folks thought she was. I was amazed, when in my teens, to learn that many Milden people thought my mother was a nurse from Rochester, Minnesota. She never denied it.

Charles Bursaw Jr.

My, dad, Charles Bursaw Jr., Spoke the French language quite well and often acted as an interpreter for the French settlement in the sand hills north of the us border. His father has immigrated to Minnesota from New Brunswick where his first wife died, leaving seven children. They were catholic and because my grandfather refused to turn his farm over to the church to pay for prayers for her, the whole family was excommunicated.

My dad came as a pioneer to the NorthWest Territories (now Saskatchewan) in 1904 and claimed a homestead. He built a sod shack, and attained some oxen and other livestock. The nearest town was Outlook, over 25 miles away. In the next few years, his father, two brothers, Oliver and Isaac, and sisters, Bella Peterson and Della Demers also settled in the area. I do not remember any of these relatives. They all died or moved away before I was born.

My dad always thought of himself as an American, temporarily living in Canada, in order to make enough money to move back to the states. He made money and lost it in the depression of the 1930's but died in 1936 at age 61.

Growing up on the praires

My childhood was not particularly happy. I was the middle child - with a bossy older sister and a 'delicate' younger one. My mother made no secret of the fact that I was an unwanted burden to her, born at the wrong time and the wrong sex. I always thought it was my fault.

September, when I was born, was busy harvest time on the farm and I was often forgotten as a young baby. As a result I developed rickets and except for an accurate diagnosis by Dr. George, a pioneer in medicine, I would have died. In fact, my mother took a picture of me, as they did back then when they thought death was near. The doctor said that I was starving to death and said to feed me thick cream and eggs. Anyhow it worked.

Apparently I was a very pretty baby. My cousins suggested that I be sponsored in a 'beautiful baby contest' however my mother found their plan wouldn't let it happen. Another time my mother sent a picture of me in overalls to my Aunt Bell in the east and a friend of hers saw this and thought it should be on a magazine or a calendar. My Aunt Bell sent my mother a letter asking for permission for the use of the picture and she was so angry at the suggestion that she didn't speak to her for years.

When I was about 9 years old, I became quite lamb as a result of my hip joint being misalign and the ball falling out of the socket at intervals. I was put on daily doses of cod liver oil and malt (to this day I can't stand the smell or taste of beer). I wasn't allowed to run or play active games for a year. Of course Bulah and I and occasionally, Betty, were needed to do chores such as carrying wheat and feed to the livestock and caring for the chickens, turkeys and geese, cleaning the stables, planting potatoes, picking potato bugs, pulling thistle from the fields, to name a few. But we had fun too. Building snow tunnels in the huge hard drifts, riding the horses bare back through the miles of pastures and coulees.

In 1924, my dad and several other Americans who had pioneered and prospered in the Milden area decided to sell their land, buildings and machinery and livestock to a colony of Mennonite immigrants. The agreement seemed to be that the Mennonites would work the land and make yearly payment until they owned it. Our land went to families named Schellenberg, Penner and Krause. All had large families, 6-10 children. There were sociable, clever, religious and nice people. But they were not farmers. Within three years the land was idle, the livestock eaten or driven to death, the houses in ruins with nails driven into plaster walls and hard wood floors, varnished doors and windows painted red. The gardens were sown to sunflowers and horseradish (the roots of which are still there) and of course no money was made or paid to the owners. My dads long planned return to Minnesota was delayed because my mother was pregnant with Betty and was not well. They bought a large elaborate house on 7th Avenue in Saskatoon.

I remember fireplaces in the bedrooms, a nursery and a nurse for Bulah and me and I suppose to take care of my mother. Betty was born at home - a sickly baby with intolerance to milk. It was decided that she would do better on a farm with fresh cow’s milk, so we moved back to my grandfather Bursaw's house, one mile east of our home farm that was occupied by the Schellenberg family. We lived there for three or four years while my dad tried to savage the ruined farms after the Mennonite families left them. We had acquired a little three-room house in Milden and moved there for the winter of 1928.

Bulah and I started school together in grade one. Several months behind the other kids who had started school in September. It was not a happy time but we both passed into grade two in June. We were always in the same grade until high school. I finished grade twelve before Bulah. Our school days were split between country and town schools. In the spring and fall we went to Winton High School, about two and one half miles south of our home farm which we had finally moved into. When the roads were blocked with snow, we would move furniture and all, into Milden and go to school there until spring planting time and then back into the country school for the remainder of the term.

This was in the Dirty 30's, the Great Depression. The times of endless dust storms and grasshoppers, Russian thistle and wheat at 25 cents a bushel. By 1933 we couldn't afford to move to town and stayed on the farm trying to keep a few cattle alive and a team of my dad's beloved horses; a white mare named Lady and a dapple grey called Sadie and we also had a mean old white mare called Toots. We drove to school in a two wheeled cart, pulled by Toots, if she felt like it. Sometimes we had to push the cart and her along.

Our frequent trips to town took a full day. Breaking roads for most of the ten miles in minus 30 degree weather. I usually went with my Dad. In a sleigh, we would haul in a load of wheat and bring home a load of lump coal plus mail and groceries for all the neighbours whose home we would be passing along the way. I often had frozen toes and fingers from these trips.

Our house was pretty cold too. We had no electricity or running water. We melted snow and had an outdoor toilet. In the evenings we sat around the dining room table with an aladdin lamp in the middle. We did homework, carded wool, played cards and listened to Amos and Andy on our Atwater Kent radio, if the batteries were not run down.

The Christmas Concert at the country schools was an important community event. The teacher practiced the children for weeks in drills, choruses, skits, and recitations. Every child was in several numbers and talent had little to do with it. Costumes had to be made from cheese clothe and tinsel and other creative items. Sometimes we had to go from a black face using lamp soot, smeared on with vaseline, to a fairy or an angel in the next number. On that great night, all the families arrived in cotters and sleighs. Benches had been put up and a makeshift stage at the front with bed sheets strung on a wire from a curtain. There was always a wonderful decorated tree and of course Santa Clause came after the concert. All the mothers had brought sandwiches or a cake and a copper wash boiler had sat on the stove boiling coffee. Everyone ate and visited then got into open sleighs and faced a long cold ride home, sometimes in a blizzard.

There were dances at the school too. Every one came and brought lunch. There was no admission charge but they usually ‘passed a hat’ for donations for the musicians. All family members came to the dance. Young children were put to sleep on the piles of coats on the floor. The young people danced and the older folks visited. The dances were foxtrots, waltzes, polkas and a couple of square dances. I remember when I was only about nine or ten, I was swung off the floor constantly and became so dizzy that I staggered across the floor. Everyone thought it was funny but I was dreadfully embarrassed afterwards and always hid. When square dances were called I never danced another until I came to Ontario when I was sixteen.

In the summer would meet at different farms and play softball then have a bonfire and sing song or a dance if the house had space for it. Few people had cars that they could afford gas for, so we went about on horseback, in wagons or on foot. These social events were not frequent, only when seeding and summer fallowing was done and before harvest. Everyone knew how to play softball and when we were in our early teens our team (Milden High) would go to sports days in neighboring towns, and others would come to Milden Day. These sports days were usually the last week of June and early July. We would often write a department exam in the morning and then we’d pile into the open box of a grain truck and go twenty miles or more to play ball until dark, then go to the dance that night. Then came the long cold ride home, often arriving at daybreak. My dad did not allow ‘sleeping in’ for his hired help or his daughters he said, "if you can go all night you can go all day". We were never excused from chores.

These years, the thirties, were depression years. We had no money, very few clothes, never anything new and most of our food was produced at home. Milk, butter, eggs, meat and ground wheat for flour. Garden vegetables kept alive with thrice used water. Sugar was a luxury and our staple dessert was rhubarb and saskatoon berries if we could find them. We were never hungry but many people were. There was ‘relief’ available, but my father and mother would never accept it. A mortgage was unacceptable too so much of our land was traded off to the municipality to pay taxes on the farms nearest our home.

Many neighbors lost everything to mortgage companies and taxes and they would pack their family and few belongings in an open wagon, tie a cow behind and head to northern Saskatchewan to Carret River, Meadow Lake or the Peace River. They knew nothing about cutting trees or hunting but they learned and most survived.

My dad said "the land will come back" and it did. In 1938 we had rain and a crop but he had died of a massive stroke in October 1937 at age 61.

My mother at age 52, left with three teenage girls, two and a half sections of land, rented to different tenants, a huge team of horses, a cow and an insurance policy which paid forty dollars per month during her lifetime. She had only a few years of schooling and no concept of math. But she was a clever, resourceful, and often ruthless woman. She was also restless and after dad’s death, we moved many times. The first winter to winnipeg where her sister Emma Stewart lived, then back to Milden in the Spring. The next winter was to Saskatoon and Milden in the spring and the next winter was Saskatoon again. Of course this meant constant changing of schools for us.

In 1939 mom decided to end her feuds with her sister, Margaret, Bell and Lizzie Way. They owned a cottage on the Ottawa River at Sand Bay, near Shawnille, P.Q. Mom bought a new 1939 Dodge and we drove to Ontario, going by Minnesota to visit my dad’s brother and sister on the way. Bulah and I did most of the driving. Mom could drive but she tended to be more interested in the scenery than keeping the car on the road. Anyone who sent a request and $5.00 to Regina could get a driver’s license. Lessons and tests were unheard of.

Ontario had big trees, rivers and lakes, brick houses, fruit tress and fresh fish. All were wonderful new experiences for us and we spent a wonderful summer. Mom had many kissin’ cousins and we were always going somewhere with local teenagers. Then, just when we were ready to go home to Milden in September, World War Two broke out and everything changed. There was no Trans-Canada Highway so we had to travel through the USA to get home, and they now demanded passports and visas. We had no idea what they were or how to get them. My ever so resourceful mother and we girls drove to Ottawa and right up to the senate on Parliament Hill. She asked for Senator Walter Aseltine, a close friend of my dads. He had a law office in Rosetown, Saskatchewan and had always handled legal affairs for us. He pulled a few strings and got us clearance through the States and we headed home. But we had had a glimpse of the a different kind of life and when one of mom’s nieces suggested that Bulah and I should apply to write the next civil service exam for a government job, we were convinced.

We wrote the exam in Saskatoon around Christmas time, although we were still taking Grade Twelve at Milden High School. One day early in May 1940, I got a telegram. In Milden there was and still is, one main street. The CP Station was at the south end and the high school at the north end with most businesses and a few houses in between. Our house was near the school. So by the time the telegram was delivered to me, it had been shown to all the businesses on our side of the street. I was a very exciting event in Milden. No one had ever been offered a federal government job in Ottawa before. I was requested to report to Naval HDQ in two weeks time. That took some arranging. Mom decided that she and I would go by train and she would help me find a room to live in. I had never been away from my family before.

I started to work in an office with one other girl and fifteen men. The girl, Idunn Bergstinson, was 25 years old. An Icelander from Avonlea, Saskatchewan, we decided to share a room in a rooming house. It had a hot plate, a shelf in a communal icebox down the hall and a bathroom shared by ten people. It was our only source of water for baths, dishes, cooking and laundry. But despite this we thought the set up was great. Our rent was twenty-five dollars a month. Our salary was fifty dollars per month. We worked nine to five, Monday to Friday and nine to one in the afternoon on Saturday. Stores closed at five thirty and all day Sunday so we didn’t have much free time.

Idunn and I got along quite well in spite of our cultural and age differences (I was eighteen). She only liked boiled, Scandinavian food and I couldn’t stand it. She refused to eat fried food and we had burner grill. We managed until November when we got a ten-dollar raise and Idunn decided to move to a boarding house. So I was alone for the first time in my life. I loved it. But the full twenty-five dollars a month rent was pretty steep. I had a steady boyfriend, Lloyd Chapman, the son of one of my mom’s cousins. He was a bueler in the army band and his unit changed the guard on Parliament Hill every night. I would usually meet him afterwards and we would walk around Ottawa or go dancing. Every Sunday I was invited to dinner at the Chapman house. Fred was a CNR man and Tillie ruled him and all her children with an iron hand, deciding their lives for them. I liked Lloyd but couldn’t imagine always doing what Tillie said. We dated occasionally then he was sent overseas.

Bulah had finally got a call to come to work in Ottawa in November, so mom decided to leave Milden (she always hated it) and move the family to Ottawa. They arrived just before Christmas. I had managed to get a couple of rooms in a house owned by a woman in my office. Wartime Ottawa was a housing nightmare as every inch of space was taken by service men and civil servants. Mom eventually found an upstairs suite for us in lower town across the street from the basilica. A bugle bad practiced at five in the morning and bells rang for mass every hour. I had been promoted so was earning a good wage and living at home, paying mom rent. It was easier than living on my own.

. Living with old Chrissie, the owner of the house where we had rooms, was far from pleasant, we shared her kitchen and she had a smelly old Spaniel named Curly that she was
always feeding at the table from our food. Mom eventually found an upstairs suite for us in Lower Town across the street from the Basilica (Ottawa’s largest Catholic church.) A bugle band practiced at five in the morning and bells rang for mass every hour so it was hardly restful.

I had been promoted so was earning a good wage and living at home, paying Mom rent. It was easier than living on my own. The landlady, a Madam Lavoilette, was a nosey old busybody who wanted to know everyone that Betty & I went out with and what time we got home. She would be peeking around her door when we came into the shared vestibule. And usually had some critical remarks to make us feel uncomfortable. She also retained a key to our apt.
And felt free to come in whenever she pleased ---my mother had a few words with her about that-- and was constantly looking for another place for us to live.

This apt. was in a poor part of town, not far from the Byward Market but I often walked home from my office on Cartier Sq. at three o’clock in the morning ( we were required to work late whenever there was a crisis) and never worried about my safety. Of course I was often surrounded by service men who had spent the evening “on the town” but when I said that I was heading home from a long day’s work they never bothered me. This was true of all of the girls who had to be on the streets late at night. They didn’t get “picked up” unless they wanted to be.




Wartime Ottawa was fun because there were so many service men constantly passing through the city or spending leave there and there was a constant round of dances at the Red Triangle or other service centers and the girls from the HDQ. offices were often asked to act as hostesses. We never lacked for dates if we wanted them.

My mother (always a risk taker) found a house that she wanted to buy and convert into a rooming house. It cost $4.500.00. We didn’t have that kind of money but she bought it anyway knowing that it would soon pay for itself.
This house was a three story, solid brick with a full basement hewn out of rock. It had a living room with french doors to a dining room , a butler’s pantry and a large kitchen with front and back stairs leading to the second floor, which had three bedrooms and a den, a bath and basin room and a separate toilet. Another staircase led to the third floor, which was divided, into two very large rooms with crawl space under the hip roof of the house. It was in very poor condition, having been owned by an elderly woman and her Down’s Syndrome son. Mom had it cleaned and painted from top to bottom and bought an assortment of beds and dressers to furnish all the upstairs rooms which
she promptly advertised and filled with service men, The house was less than a block from Lansdowne Park, the present Ottawa football stadium but at that time it served as an Army base and many of the men preferred to “live out” She also took in other service men that were spending weekend leaves in Ottawa. Betty & I sometimes had to sleep on the kitchen floor when our rooms were rented out. Bulah had started her nurses training at the Ottawa Civic Hospital by then and she lived in residence. Mom made a good amount of money from her enterprise and was soon able to pay off the loan on the house and get some nice furniture for the downstairs rooms. Betty & I always had to pay rent even tho’ we would prepare breakfast for the boarders before we went to work, and usually spent Saturday afternoons moving beds and bedding about to create more sleeping space.

It was exciting and nice to live in a “good” part of town. We were not accepted well by our neighbors, strangely, because we were Protestants and they were all Catholic. They had a “Gentlemen’s Agreement” to never sell any of their houses to a Protestant, of course we didn’t know this and were puzzled by their attitude. It didn’t bother us much because they were a snobby bunch and we made our own friends elsewhere. Ottawa still harbors this “Them & Us” prejudice in the older sections.

We made many good friends through our boarding house years and many young men called my mother whenever they happened to be in Ottawa even after the war

. Betty and I were popular and often double-dated, we went on sleigh rides, canoeing, swimming at the Chateau Laurier, bowling and dancing and we also went to church most Sundays. We were nominally United Church adherents but enjoyed going to all the different denominations, and there were many odd cults like the Holy Rollers who called people to the alter to be “saved” then locked the doors until enough money had been donated .

The war was frightening with ever more causalities and in my workplace the reports of sunken ships to deal with.
Idunn had joined the Wrens and wanted me to join with her, I did not want to be in the service, but felt that I should be doing more than paper work and blood donations for the war effort, I decided to take a nursing course at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal and eventually go overseas as a Nursing Sister. I put in my application in the summer of 1944. – then that August everything changed – I met Del and knew that I was not going overseas when he had just got back from four years in Britain, Egypt and India.
We met in a very unusual way the day he arrived in Canada from overseas. It was the Aug. Civic Day holiday and the first time in months I didn’t have to work on a holiday. Mom , Betty & I were going to the Aunt’s cottage at Sand Bay for the weekend. We were just about to leave when Betty got a phone call from one of her boy friends from Milden, Norman Austman, he had just arrived from overseas and was in Ottawa for only one day before going home on leave. Betty did not hesitate to cancel our plans and said that she would come out to Rockliffe (the Airforce station) to pick him up, the only problem was that since she couldn’t drive her sister would have to come along, he said that he would get one of his buddies to come as a blind date for me. Needless to say I was furious, my weekend was ruined and I did not ever go on blind dates. Mom said I would have to make the best of it and go along. Meanwhile Norman had induced Del to go with us, he was equally furious because he was going home that night and didn’t want to spend the day with strange people (he was very shy in those days) We drove around Ottawa for a while then back to our house for supper, afterwards Betty & I went downtown to the railway station to see Norm & Del off, their train left about 11 PM. Del & I were speaking to each other but not impressed with the ruined day. We had gone to a nearby restaurant and had banana splits while we waited for the train. ( Del & I used to go out for a banana split every August to celebrate the day we met.) While we were in the restaurant Del pulled a roll of
money out of his uniform jacket pocket and put it on the table, he said it was $1100.00 back pay that was owing him by the RCAF because he had been attached to the RAF in India and was paid their lower rate. I was appalled that he would display that kind of money in a Lower Town café. I told him to put it away and to be careful . He never had any money- sense and didn’t care about savings.

Because so many Prairie boys had joined the armed forces there was an acute shortage of farm labor and the Federal Govt. started a program where anyone who would take holidays to go West to work on a farm could get a return ticket from Ottawa for $10.00. Mom, Betty & I went a couple of times and we had planned to go again in September/44. The trains were old “Homesteader” cars that had been used for the immigrants that came to Canada
after WW1. They had cane seats and a stove in the end for heat and/or cooking. We didn’t mind that they were so crowded that we often had to stand or sit on the arm of someone’s seat and when the train stopped everyone would
rush off to buy whatever we could find to eat. Of course there were first class cars and dining cars on the trains but we were not allowed in them. We were pretty tired and disheveled when the five-day trip was over, but always happy to see the Prairies again.

That year while we were in Milden I was surprised to get a letter from Del, he knew where I was because Norm Austman lived there. Del suggested that he would arrange to go back to Ottawa on the same CNR train that I was going on so that we could travel together. I was horrified, I knew he would be travelling first class and I had a $10.00 ticket, I promptly wrote back to him that I had to go CPR and on a different date. Then I had to go about changing my ticket and arranging to leave from Regina instead of Saskatoon. I went back alone and when I reached Ottawa at 5 AM ,exhausted and grimey from the trip who was at the station to meet me but Del. I was not pleased to see him there before I had a chance to get cleaned up.

Mom and Betty were still in Milden so I was living alone in our house, all of the usual boarders were on leave or had been transferred. The house was heated by a huge furnace that burned lignite, a soft fine coal. It was tended by Tom a furnace man who tended all the furnaces on our street, he refused to start the fire until October 1st. regardless of how cold the weather was, and on April 1st. it was extinguished. We had to put up with that because no one else knew how to operate the furnace.
Del and some of his Airforce friends would come to my office to meet me after work and then come to the house. I’d had no time to shop so the only food I could give them was graham wafers and cheese (Del hated both) On my birthday Bulah decided to have a surprise party for me, she invited some of the nurses and got Del to bring some Airforce pals. It was a half-holiday Saturday for me and Del took me bowling in the afternoon so that Bulah could prepare for the party, He was supposed to pick up a cake Bulah had ordered but forgot until after the bakeshop closed . So again we had wafers and cheese. We had a small wind-up gramaphone and a couple of Ink Spot records for music. The girls had to be in residence so they left in time for curfew but the fellows found that they had missed the last bus to Rockliffe (their base) so they had to stay at our house that night. I don’t think the neighbors realized that my mother wasn’t at home or that these were not regular boarders but I wasn’t happy about it.

After Mom and Betty came home, and Norm Austman was back in Ottawa, he and Betty and Del and I went out constantly, WE often wished to be alone but seldom were.
In October Del proposed, we were both very sure that we were meant for each other and the short time since we met did not matter. My mother was not very pleased when I told her and she insisted that Del must ask her permission to marry me. He did, but said it was the most difficult thing he’d ever done. He bought me a beautiful ring with three diamonds and we planned to be married the next spring.
Just before Christmas Del was transferred to Regina, Sask. To be discharged from the Airforce. He was hired at a vocational training school to teach Morse code to ex-servicemen who wanted to be railway stationmasters. He found a two-room suite in the upstairs of a house for us to live in.
I was busy getting clothes and linens etc. ready, everything was in short supply because of the war and I could not find a wedding dress or material to make one. My mother hired a dressmaker to make over her wedding dress for me
I was much taller than my mother so it required a lot of alteration, I also had lingerie made because it to was in short supply.
One incident that nearly changed our lives happened in March, the weather had been very humid and warm and there was a leak in the furnace pipe that led to the adjoining bedrooms that Betty and I had. At about three A.M. The doorbell ringing awakened me. I got up and sort of floated down stairs to answer it, there was a taxi driver there saying that he had a call to pick someone up at that address. I called to Betty and asked her if she knew who
wanted a taxi and she came down stairs feeling light headed as I did, then we both fell down on the floor, overcome by carbon monoxide. The poor taxi driver was frantic and started shouting for help which woke my mother, she was not affected by the gas but was terrified when she saw us lying on the floor and a strange man in the house. I was perfectly conscious and aware of everything that was happening but I couldn’t move or speak. Then an even stranger thing happened,- a young airman came running up to the house and said he knew he was needed. He was leaving for overseas and had called the taxi to pick him up but had given our address instead of his own , the house he had lived in all his life. He helped get Betty and me into bed and told Mom that he had been afraid to go overseas, but after the miracle of saving our lives he no longer was. Unfortunately he was killed flying a bomber over Germany

.Betty and I were about a week recovering from the effects of the gas, the doctor said the taxi was only minutes from death had we not awakened us. I still get a headache whenever I smell gasoline or kerosene fumes.

Del came to Ottawa in April and we were married in Mom’s house on April Fourteenth l945. Senator Aseltine gave me away and Betty (my sister) and Roy (Melsness) were our attendants. It was a hot sunny day, unusual for Ottawa. After the ceremony and lunch we flew to Toronto on one of the first Trans-Canada flights. Del knew the pilot so we spent most of the trip in the cockpit. We had a room at the Royal York Hotel and were met there by three couples, Airforce friends of Del’s. they had “decorated” our room to such an extent that it took the maid hours to redo it.
We spent a week in Toronto, went to Niagara Falls, danced to Mart Kenny , saw the Happy Gang and many other attractions.

We went back to Ottawa by train, spent a few days there then the took the train to Hinchliffe, Del’s home. We had a compartment on the train, a far cry from the way I usually traveled. It took five days to get to Hinchliffe and when we got there it was dark with a lot of snow on the ground Ludwig (Del’s brother) met us with a horse and cutter and we went the six miles to the farm where Del’s parents lived. I was very apprehensive about meeting my in-laws because Del had told me very little about them. When I asked him if he had any brothers and sisters he said “some” I didn’t learn until later that he had eight brothers and two sisters.

The Melsness farm was six miles from Hinchliffe, which consisted of a railway station and a general store owned by Del’s brother, Noel. The district town was Preeceville, about ten miles from the farm . The farm house, built by Del’s dad was a large wooden structure with a huge kitchen and a pantry joined by a dining room off of which there was his parent’s bedroom and a small parlor used when the minister or guests came, it was furnished much like our farm house had been with mohair overstuffed chairs and a couch, a piano, china cabinet and lace curtains on the windows. The front door led out unto an open verandah, which led to the front lawn and croquet diamond. When visitors came they always entered through the kitchen door, as they did at our farm.

Upstairs the house had three bedrooms, one very large where all the boys had slept, the girls had the other and the third was a “guest” room, which was constantly in use because there were always people staying there. They never knew or cared how many would be sitting down to a meal or sleeping in the house for a night or a week.
Del’s mother was a wise and wonderful woman, she spoke with a broad Norwegian accent and made me feel welcome, his father was very like Del became, humorous, easy going, talented in many things but with no ambition to do anything that would interfere with his enjoyment of life. He was well educated, formerly a teacher, a good carpenter, a mathematical whiz who had done the book keeping for the municipality, the school and the church. He was a superb rifleman and kept the family in wild meat until his sons were old enough to hunt. He farmed a three-quarter section of land that bordered on the Assiniboine River and also a lovely little lake that was well stocked with fish. There were cattle for milking and beef, pigs, chickens for eggs and eating and a team of horses. There was also a tennis court, the only one in the area, lots of trees for firewood and of course a garden for produce.

The North Prairie area had not been affected by the drought and depression of the thirties that I had lived through and the Melsness family were much better off than most of their neighbors because relatives in Minnesota had left them a legacy thus all of the family except Walter and Floyd were sent to Outlook College for their high school education.
I found it hard to imagine a family with nine sons having such a small farm when my father had amassed seventeen sections of land and had to rely on hired help to farm it but the life style was so different, Del’s family always had time for a game of tennis or croquet, a day of fishing or hunting or a musical evening with relatives and neighbors. They were strict Lutherans and their little country church was built on land donated by the family. I found this religion very narrow and restrictive, to them anyone who wasn’t a Lutheran was an atheist or worse still a Catholic.

While Del paid lip service to the church he wasn’t especially religious and when we lived in Regina I tried to get him to go to the Lutheran church, I was willing to go for his sake, he refused, so I started going to the United church
and he came with me, we remained United Church members for the rest of our lives, but we did take Don & Dean to North Prairie to be baptized to please his parents and give them a chance to “show-off” these grandsons the only twins in the family. We always attended the Lutheran church when we were with his family.

Del’s mother had been a beautiful girl but after eleven children she had become work-worn and suffered silently of ailments that no one was aware of. All of her family took her for granted and did not seem to know or care what her
life was really like. We all called her “ Ma”. She had a very dominating mother, Grandma Braum, who named all of Ma’s children except Russell. They all had to go to her house on a neighboring farm before they could go on to the country school, she rearranged their scarves etc. and checked their lunch boxes. Ma told me that she resented her mother’s interference but couldn’t escape it. When I told Del and his sisters and brothers this, they were amazed, they never thought that their grandmother’s bossieness was unusual, or that their mother minded it.

I was considered an outsider in the very close knit community, they were all very nice and generous to me but they thought of me as a “city girl” who, as one of the cousins told me, “couldn’t boil water without burning it”
They were surprised that I liked to cook and when we visited the farm I often made things like cream puffs or fancy cookies because there was lots of milk, cream and eggs which I had not been used to in Ottawa due to food rationing. I wasn’t too keen on some of my sisters-in-law either, especially when Myrtle made a point of telling me how lucky I was to marry a Melsness. I told her that Del was very lucky to marry a Bursaw. Dora, always a trouble maker, told Ma that I drank and smoked, which I didn’t, when Ma mentioned it to me I told her that if I did I would have done it openly. Del & Erv, both heavy smokers used to sneak down to the barn to smoke but pretended that they didn’t . Of course their mother could smell it on their clothes but no one ever admitted it to her.

After spending a week at the farm and attending numerous house parties and dinners at neighbors and relatives we took the train to Regina to start our new life there.
Del had rented two rooms – the upstairs of a small semi-bungalow. There was a rangette (a two burner stove with a small oven that could only be used if the top burners were not turned on) we could have either a top of the stove meal or an oven meal but not both at the same time.
The front room had a small table and four chairs and a folding , sagging couch. The bedroom had a double bed and a dresser. Both rooms had sloping ceilings so there wasn’t space for anything else. The bathroom was on that floor but was shared with the owner’s family. I was constantly reminded that it was my duty to clean the bathroom even tho’ there were three of them using it and only two of us.

Our landlords were Orthodox Jews who owned a second hand furniture store, they had a little boy about nine years old. I have never felt prejudiced against anyone because of race or religion but this woman was the most hypocritical ,mean and miserable person that I have ever met. She was constantly trying to force me to buy my groceries at the “poor” Jewish stores to help them out while she herself shopped at Safeway . she ransacked all of
our belongings and sometimes used my purses etc. She was rude to people who came to see us and sometimes refused to let them in the house.
The little boy was a thin unhappy child forever left alone while his parents were at their store he attended Jewish classes and hated it, and at the public school his mother demanded that he be the “best” in the grade to “show up those stupid gentiles!”, he often came home crying and told me how awful school was for him. He was often sick and when his mother finally took him to a doctor she was told that he was suffering from malnutrition and needed good food like bacon and eggs instead of the kosher food they ate. She told me this and asked if I would cook bacon and eggs for him. I asked her why she didn’t do it and her excuse was that it would be a sin for her but if I did it then sin would be mine which didn’t matter! I refused, not wanting to be involved in their strange and strained family life.
In spite of all this Del and I were very happy in our little place, married women did not work in those days so I found the days long when Del was at work I didn’t know anyone in Regina. However several of the Melsness family came to the city at different times so we had company occasionally.

By late August I discovered that I was pregnant and we started looking for a more suitable place to live, affordable housing was scarce because with the war ending hundreds of ex-service men were flocking to the cities to find work or training.
Mrs. Fages (our landlady) guessed that I was pregnant and although she admitted that it against the law to evict anyone for that reason, she informed us that she would not allow a carriage or crib in the house, and no baby laundry could be done in her washing machine.

As Fall approached and the weather got colder we learned that the house was only heated when the family was at home which was late in the evening Del spent most of the day at work but I suffered from the cold and by October I couldn’t stand it any more so I applied for and got a job at The Robert Simpson’s catalogue center where all mail order merchandise was packaged and sent out to homes throughout the Prairie Provinces.
My job was to make cash refunds for the items that could not be supplied , I enjoyed it and liked the people I worked with. Then one day I was called to the staff nurses office – I had no idea why – but when I got there she started to swear about some dammed old busybodies and told me that a couple of “old maids” who worked in the same office as I did, had complained that they found it embarrassing to work with a woman in “my condition” even though I was wearing my regular clothes and did not “show” at all. I was terribly upset and resigned the nurse and my boss begged me not to but I couldn’t go back there again.

We were now desperate to find a new place to live as the weather was very cold. We heard that the Govt. was winterizing some summer cottages at Regina Beach, some forty miles North of Regina, and starting a bus service for
ex-service men and their families, we applied and were accepted. On Armistice Day 1945 one of Del’s pupils drove us there to see what to expect. It was a tiny shabby cottage with three rooms and a screened veranda an outside toilet, & water to be carried from the town pump six blocks away there was nothing in it some repairs were started but we were told that it would be finished and partly furnished by the end of the month .We bought a bed and a fold out couch to be delivered the day we moved.- of course they weren’t – and the night we got there after an hour’s bus trip we found the place still unfinished with a Quebec heater in the living room and a cook stove in the kitchen there was an old door hinged to the wall that made a table when propped up and two broken chairs We had no place to sleep so had to rummage around the yard until we found an old mattress frozen to the ground, we dug it up and slept on it that night

Our bed and .couch arrived the next day and we fixed our little place up with curtains, pictures and ornaments that I had in my trunk. There were no cupboards so all I had for a workspace was an old chest of drawers, I kept the dishes in one drawer and foodstuff in the others. We had a big garbage can, which Del would haul up to the pump to
get us drinking water, we melted snow in a gasoline drum that stood by the stove, we put hooks on the walls to hang our clothes because there were no closets.
We were so happy to be alone in our own place that we could heat as we wanted it and a real stove to cook on.
Del had to get up very early to catch the bus at 7 A.M. for a cold, hour long ride to Regina, he didn’t get home until 7 P.M. so was never there in daylight except on weekends.

In spite of the hardships and constant struggle to keep warm during a bitter Saskatchewan winter we were happy and felt that we were more fortunate than many of our neighbors,. Many of whom were English war brides who had grown up in cities and had no idea how to cope without running water and city sidewalks. They had small children and with no experience in caring for a baby with limited hot water and frozen lines of laundry many of them tended to hang wet diapers (this was before Pampers) to dry without washing them. The poor babies suffered from terrible diaper rash and of course cried a lot. To add to the situation quite a few of these girl’s mothers-in-law frankly disapproved of them and made no secret of it. The husbands often drank and gambled using any excuse to get away from their messy smelly houses. Some of us, who had been born on the Prairies tried to teach these girls how to cope but it was a thankless job, they would prefer that we baby-sit so they could get their hair done or a manicure. They were desperately unhappy and many of the marriages broke up.

I spent my days making baby clothes, trying to make good meals in spite of food rationing, and taking long walks along the railway track, the only place where the snow was not several feet deep. I had not seen a doctor since Early November so in Mid December I went to Regina on the bus with Del and saw my GP. When I walked into his office he took one look at me and said , “You are either going to have twins or you’re going to the hospital today”, I had no
idea how I should have looked at that time. The Dr. ordered an X ray and told me to come back that afternoon. Neither he nor I were aware that X rays were dangerous to developing babies, (Dean couldn’t believe that I had he and Don exposed to radiation before they were born) . When I went back to the Dr’s office he shouted “Mrs. Melsness, you have a set of twins there” in front of a room full of patients, I was so embarrassed, then when I got on the bus to go home Del wanted to know why I had to go back to the Dr. I wanted to tell him at home but he insisted and when I told him it was twins he wanted to stand up and shout it to all the men on the bus ! I didn’t know this until later, but the men who commuted on the bus had a pool going as to what combination the babies would be. They donated the winnings to us for baby blankets.

The Dr. had said that we would have to move into Regina by Feb. 1st. although I wasn’t due until April he felt that the babies would be premature.
Finding an affordable place to stay was a huge problem until a wonderful couple named Vincent, who were Salvation Army members and friends of our nearest neighbors , said that we could stay with them for a very modest sum. We closed up our cottage and moved to Regina. The Vincents had a little saltbox of a house, two rooms and a half bath upstairs and two rooms downstairs. We had their daughter’s room and she slept on the living room sofa.
Since there was no bathtub, Saturday night baths were taken in the kitchen in a tin washtub. Of course I couldn’t get into any kind of a tub at that time so had to be content with sponge baths.

All the Vincents went to work through the day as did Del so I prepared the meals and baked cookies if there was an extra ration of sugar. Del was happy to escape the long cold bus trips from Regina Beach and I enjoyed walking on pavement again.
These people were true Christians who took their religion very seriously. At least once a week one of them would bring some tramp or alcoholic that they had found on the street, home for supper and they’d get him cleaned up and find clothes for him. They could barely make ends meet on the salaries they made but their door was always open to the needy.

We stayed there through the month of February and the doctor was concerned about my ability to deliver the babies if they got much bigger, due to the pelvic malformation I had caused by rickets. He told me to drink an eight oz. bottle of castor oil hoping that it would start contractions, it didn’t, but I spent a miserable couple of days. Then when I was feeling better Del and I decided to go to a movie, it was “The Snakepit” and watching it did what the castor oil had failed to do, I felt pains so we went to the Regina General Hospital and was admitted at three A.M. Feb. 28. Don was born at 9:14 P.M. and Dean at 9:30 P.M. the nurses dressed Del in a gown and mask and brought him into the delivery room, strictly a no no in those days, We both saw both of the babies before they were washed and noticed the open cuts on the top of their heads . When I asked what it was the nurses said nothing unusual. We didn’t find out the real cause until nearly four years later
Unknown to us, the maternity ward was under quarantine, there had been several babies die there that month due to infection. They closed the ward to all visitors but did little else to improve conditions. I had never been in a hospital before so didn’t know what to expect, some of the other patients in the ward complained but were ignored. I was quite weak and my skin was irritated by whatever the sheets had been washed in , I begged the nurses for something to ease the itch but never got it. Finally I snatched a pair of men’s flannel pajamas from the laundry cart and wore them , nobody even noticed, or cared.
Since Del couldn’t come to see me, we had to communicate by letters. I was desperately worried about Dean, I had never seen him since the night he was born. Don was brought to me every day but when I asked them for Dean they said he was fine but was kept in the preemie nursery. I was not allowed out of bed for eleven days and was convinced that Dean had died and they wouldn’t tell us. I begged Del to get us out of there before we all died, he was worried too but couldn’t do anything since my doctor had gone to Vancouver and no other doctor was assigned to my care. The head nurse made all decisions in the ward.

On March 11th. the nurse brought the two babies to me and told me to get dressed that I had been discharged and Del was waiting with a taxi to take us home. I had not been allowed out of bed for the entire time that I was hospitalized so getting up and carrying two babies was quite an effort. I was so happy to see both of the little boys and to know that we were getting out of there that I didn’t care how weak I felt.

Home was back to Winnipeg Cottage at Regina Beach which we hadn’t seen for over a month. Del had asked Alice, his older sister, a nurse, to come to stay with us to help care for the babies.

It was a bright cold day in March when we set out in the taxi, which of course had no heater (they were not common in pre-war cars) I had a fur coat and I held the babies under it to keep them warm. We had forty miles to go through
The Que’apelle Valley. The taxi driver decided to take a shortcut through a grain field, which, he said, would save time, there was no road and the field had about a foot of snow on it. A prairie blizzard had come up suddenly and visibility was almost nil – then, the car stopped and would not start again – Del and the driver got out and pushed and worked to get the motor started in the bitter cold. I did my best to keep the babies warm but they were getting hungry and I had no way to heat the cold formula the hospital had sent along. After what seemed like hours they finally got the car started and we were on our way again, it was quite dark by now and we were all cold and exhausted when we finally got home. How happy I was to see Alice and find the house warm with a hot meal ready.
We had no telephone at the cottage and of course no cell phones or any other way to contact her so she didn’t know whether something had happened to us or even if we had left Regina.

Alice stayed with us for about two weeks and while she was there Del’s mother came to see the babies, the only twins the Melsness family ever had. She had never traveled away from her home alone in her whole life so it was quite an adventure for her and she was so proud of those grandchildren, she couldn’t wait to get back to a Ladies Aid
meeting to boast about them. It was an experience for Alice too, not that she hadn’t traveled, but to see how desperate the people at Regina Beach were for medical help, every time that Alice went to the store or post office some women would surround her and ask her to look at them or their children who had a variety of illnesses, burns, rashes, open sores and other more serious troubles.
Alice was a nurse, but had been trained in the old belief that nurses were only handmaidens to the doctors and were never to give an opinion or advice to anyone unless the doctor had ordered it. Of course there were no doctors nearer than Regina and nothing to treat the people with, had she felt competent to do so. She would come home in tears, so upset to know that she couldn’t help these people.

Life resumed at our cottage, Del was back to commuting and I did my best to keep the fire going and the babies fed and warm. We had them in clothes baskets on a trunk in our bedroom, they were so tiny that they looked lost in the basket but they were thriving and slept well altho’ they had to be fed every three hours for the first while then every four hours, we did not get much sleep because we both had to get up to feed them. It was would be so cold in the night that water would freeze in a glass by our bed. When we fed the babies we would light the kitchen range to heat their bottles and if they had wakened, they would be wet and cold so I would put them in bread pans and set them in the oven as the stove gradually warmed. Of course I kept the oven door open and watched them very carefully to be sure that they were safe, it may sound foolish but there was no alternative, we had no electric heat or any other kind except the wood and coal stove.
In order to not disturb the babies while they were sleeping, Del and I moved our bed out on to a screened verandah .It was mighty cold crawling into bed and getting up in the morning, there was often snow piled on our bed, but we stayed healthy and the babies thrived.
Diapers were a big chore because I had to wash them by hand after melting snow for water, then, I hung them outside on the line to freeze and brought them in to hang on lines around the stoves to dry – then they always had to be folded – It was a welcome day when we finally got an electric washing machine (they were very scarce in the days after the war) Our dear Mrs. Vincent, who worked in Eaton’s store in Regina had bullied the appliance manager into selling one to us even tho’ he had a long waiting list for them.

We had an early and hot Spring that year, a welcome change after the cold but it was very dry and dusty and I had a hard time keeping the babies clean, when I picked them up their little shapes were outlined with dust on the sheet.
Water was scarce because it hadn’t rained and the well water that we drank was too hard to wash with.
My mother decided to come to visit us that spring . I was happy to see her and to show her the first grandchildren, she was not very impressed with them or our house and told us so but she was generous and had brought lovely clothes for the boys and bought us some much needed kitchen equipment.

The town named our babies The Regina Beach Twins because they were the only twins that had ever been born there . A social afternoon for the older ladies who lived at the Beach was to call on me to see “those adorable babies”. I felt that I needed to serve them tea and sit down to visit, but I wished they wouldn’t come so often because I had so much to do in the few hours between baby feedings, it took a long time to feed and change both of them when I had to do it by myself. Sometimes I was tempted to had the ladies a basket of diapers and ask them to fold them. But I didn’t and they never offered any help.

One frightening thing that happened that spring was a prairie fire. The grass and trees were so dry that once started, a fire raced uncontrolled through the area. I had noticed a lot of smoke in the air but did not think that the fire was close, we did not have any near neighbors and there were trees between the cottages so I didn’t see anyone around.
Later in the afternoon the storekeeper came to the door and asked if we were alright, he told me that they thought the fire was going to burn down all the cottages so they had taken all the women and children down to the lake to be near the water if the fire came close. They had forgotten about me and the babies and it wasn’t until everyone else were there that they remembered us but were afraid to come back to get us in case the fire was already there. Something had stopped the fire before it got to our cottage, there was a lot of damage but no one was hurt and I was blissfully unaware that we were ever in danger

In July Erv.,Edna & Joe Melsness drove from Minneapolis to Regina Beach to take us to North Prairie for Grandpa Melsness’ birthday on July 6th. All the family gathered there every year and celebrated with watermelon, homemade ice cream and angel food cake. That year we had Don & Dean baptized, in was supposed to be in the North Prairie Church but due to a heavy rainstorm it was held at the farm. Alice and Walter were the godparents.

When we got back to the Beach we found that our landlord, Muir Barber, who owned most of the cottages rented to veterans, was trying to raise our rent to summer rates, more than double what we had been paying, for a still unfinished shack.

We decided to move, and found another cottage,”Kismet”, it was larger and better built and quite well furnished but it was a full mile from the town area and the bus stop. We took it anyhow and moved our few belongings in and felt that we were well off. The cottage was surrounded by trees and quite close to the lake but there were no neighbors closer than a half-mile down the road. We had an oil heater and a wood cook stove but no telephone and we had to walk a mile to the store so we didn’t go often, there was a spring well near by where we got our water.
As winter approached we became more isolated, of course Del was still bussing to town everyday so I had all the chores to do including carrying oil from a tank under the house for the heater and shoveling a path to the outhouse which was a good distance away .

1947-48 was a very severe winter, a lot of snow and low temperatures. Sometimes the bus could not get through and Del would have to stay in Regina, of course I had no way of knowing if he was there or stuck on the road somewhere, but he came home when he could, sometimes taking a train to Govan , a town across the lake, and walking across the frozen lake in the middle of the night. I had learned that the previous tenant in our cabin had been the town prostitute and was told not to be surprised if some of her customers came pounding on my door. I kept a butcher knife jammed in the door frame and was prepared to use it if I had to. When Del would come half-frozen I could never be sure if I should open the door.

















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