Doug and Millie Hay Interview
by Vi Kowalchuk
Kowalchuk:... were in the middle of saying that your . . .
Hay: The business in Perryvale was very good. He had no complaint with that, but
he didn't like being away from his home and his family. And so as soon as that
time on the agreement with Bannerman was up, he decided he would go into
business in Colinton, I think.
Kowalchuk: Oh, I see.
Hay: And so Mr. Jack said . . . he had moved his barn up to the townsite and had a
little store there and had a kind of a feeler and so he started a little store in Colinton.
It was in his building, you know. Then a grocery store in his building on the other
end.
Kowalchuk: Now when you say this building, you're talking about...
Hay: Mr. Jacks.
Kowalchuk: Mrs. Jacks, yes. And what year was that?
Hay: Well, I don't know. But anyway . . .
Kowalchuk: It was certainly after 1918, wasn't it?
Hay: Oh yes it was. It was after because red and white store was built in That's
when Dad built his own store in Colinton was in They had about a year, so that
would be '23. It was a kind of test for what it was going to be like. It was going to
be okay, so Dad sold the store. First of all he had his man, was supposed to be
going to buy it the man who had it, then he decided that he couldn't afford to buy it,
so Dad eventually sold it to Uncle Tom, Mr. Nezbit.

Kowalchuk: Oh yes.
Hay: Because he didn't have anything to do, and he run it quite successfully for
quite some time until his wife died.
Kowalchuk: Oh yes.
Hay: And after that, Uncle Tom couldn't manage it himself. But anyway this store
in Colinton, the red and white store, that was when it was taken over by Western
Grocers, you see. They supplied the stuff, that was when it was taken over by
Kowalchuk: The goods for the store.
Hay: But we owned the store and the stock and thefixturesand everything.
Kowalchuk: Oh, I see. Now the red and white store is the store that you people,
you and Millie, ran.
Hay: Yeah. So then I worked for Dad, you see, on a basis of forty dollars a month
when Ifirstgot out of school, and then when I . . . that was big wages, you know.
Kowalchuk: Oh sure. What year was that, you have to tell me what year.
Hay: W e l l . . .
Kowalchuk: When you were right out of school, you finished...
Hay: Ten, grade ten. Ifinishedin Athabasca, then I went to Vermillion.
Kowalchuk: To the agriculture school?
Hay: Mmhm.
Kowalchuk: Did you?

Hay: I put in three years there. See I was going to go to University so I took the
third year at Vermillion to give me second year university in agriculture.
Kowalchuk: Oh sure.
Hay: Because dad said, "Well if you want to be a farmer, you got to learn
something about being a farmer." So that's how I got to go to agricultural school.
Then the depression started there, you see. And . . .
Kowalchuk: This was the late twenties, early thirties . . .
Hay: '29, '30,1 was at Vermillion, and I come home from Vermillion, holy smoke,
that stupid little girl that used to start school...
Kowalchuk: She got pretty good looking.
Hay: Then I'd decided maybe I'd take her to the dance so we were having a dance
in Colinton.
Kowalchuk: That was yourfirstdate?
Hay: Yeah.
Hay: And you know, they called "lady's choice."
Kowalchuk: Oh yes, they used to have "lady's choice."
Hay: Oh boy, this isn't going to be so good. I'm not going to get a dance with her.
Her lady's choice, you know. She's supposed to come and ask.
Kowalchuk: There must have been, excuse me for interrupting, but there must
have been dances before the lady's choice.
Hay: Oh yeah.

Kowalchuk: Oh you had dances, I see.
Hay: So finally I tell her I'm going to have to look around, I finally found her.
Says, "Holy smokes," she says, "I thought you were a boy." She says, "I've been
looking all over for you and I couldn'tfindyou, so that's how well we knew each
other.
Kowalchuk: Oh for heaven sakes, eh. Isn't that something?
Hay: So we had a good dance for the last little bit.
Kowalchuk: But that was the start of the romance, eh? But we're going to back
because you were going to tell us yourfirstschool and some of your teachers,
something about school, and then we're going to get into Mrs. Hay's. Was the
school right in town, thefirstschool that you attended?
Hay: It was a one-room school.
Kowalchuk: Would it have been located where the old school when Gene and I
taught here?
Hay: Yeah.
Kowalchuk: That's where it was, on that same property.
Hay: Then when you were there, that was a four-room school, eh?
Kowalchuk: Yes, in fact, for awhile Mrs. Trollop taught in a little extra room.
Hay: But you see, I went with . . . teacher.
Kowalchuk: Who was yourfirstteacher?
Hay: First teacher was Mrs. Redfern, I remember that.

Kowalchuk: Renford.
Hay: Redfern.
Hay: She come on the train from Edmonton and she had a son with her which was
quite a bit older, he must have been in his teens. But practically a man, and I never
remember anything about Mr. Redfern. Then I do remember about his daughter,
Joyce, because she was about my age. She started school the same time as I did, but
she'd been going to school before, but she started school in Colinton.
Kowalchuk: Oh, I see.
Hay: The funny thing about that was that all the boys that I run into were shy of
girls. They were scared of girls. But me, I loved all the girls, I liked the girls.
And . . . didn't do anything bad around the girl, you know, because they were good
people. I later found out that that wasn't always the same way. Mrs. Redfern, I was
bad at turning around and talking especially if there was a girl, so Mrs. Redfern laid
the law down to me: you can't do that in school. You don't talk. Oh, okay. Then
the next thing I knew, Joyce happened to sit right behind me, so I was asking her
something very important that I thought was important anyway, I don't know what
it was, but Mother Redfern caught me. See, I told you. If you want to talk to Joy,
go and sit with her. Oh boy, that's good. So I went and sat with Joy, and everybody
in school was giggling and laughing their heads off, and poor Joy was shy. I
thought it was... So Mrs. Redfern learned something then, not to give me a
punishment for sitting with a girl.
Kowalchuk: All right, how many years did Mrs. Redfern teach you?
Hay: One year.

Kowalchuk: One year, and after that?
Hay: She went to Atlanta.
Kowalchuk: Oh, she went to Atlanta, out in the country.
Hay: I don't know why but she drove past

over here, just the

other side of the cemetery there, and she went by every day with her horse and
buggy and Joy.
Kowalchuk: So they lived here and drove to Atlanta every day.
Hay: She drove to Atlanta.
Kowalchuk: Oh my. Why did she leave Colinton?
Hay: Now the next teacher I remember, I don't know if these are in order or not,
but the Minns.
Kowalchuk: Oh, related to the Minns in Athabasca.
Hay: No, she he was the Post Master, her grandfather was a Post Master.
Kowalchuk: Here in Colinton?
Hay: No, in Athabasca.
Kowalchuk: Oh, I see.
Hay: Wasn't that her father? That was her father, not her grandfather.
Hay: Oh, maybe, I wouldn't swear to that. Anyway, she was a nice . . .
Kowalchuk: This is going to take up quite a bit when . . .
Hay: She was a nice young teacher, wore real short skirts.

Kowalchuk: Oh really.
Hay: That'll show you the time of the year it was. Mother and aunt said, "Oh, she
can't be a teacher. She'd never wear skirts like that."
Kowalchuk: What kind of clothes did your mother wear at that time? Quite long,
then?
Hay: I don't remember when they wore them right down to their ankles, but mother
and aunt wore them just below the knee a ways.
Kowalchuk: Yes, so the teacher was quite brave then in wearing a short skirt.
Hay: Oh yes.
Kowalchuk: Well, what did the community people think of that?
Hay: I never asked. Anyway we got along good with this Miss Minns.
Kowalchuk: What was herfirstname, do you recall?
Hay: No.
Kowalchuk: All right, and she taught you for what, a year or two?
Hay: I would say a couple of years.
Kowalchuk: And then?
Hay: Oh we had a Miss

I don't know how to spell it either.

Kowalchuk: You don't.
Hay: But she was a good teacher, I guess. She didn't wear her skirt short. And she
was the one that got shot at when she was in Colinton school, you know.

Kowalchuk: I beg your pardon. What was all this now?
Hay: Well, we come to school one day, and there was two holes in the blackboard,
and the pieces of the blackboard was on the floor here where the bullets had come
through. So, of course, all the big boys, they knew all about that that somebody
shot through there and the bullet come in. So the teacher didn't take that Mrs.
very good and so she had to go out and see where these bullets
had come in, so then she began... And the boys were explaining to her, you know,
they were aiming at you. That's just about where your head is.
Kowalchuk: Were they joking or were they serious?
Hay: We all thought they were serious. And she called the police and the police
come. They looked at the holes and they looked at the pieces, and they decided
where they come from, come from Itchy's barn.
Kowalchuk: Itchy?
Hay: Yes. And these two boys that had been given most of the advice were the
Itchy boys.
Kowalchuk: How do you spell that name?
Hay: E-i-t-h-e-r
Kowalchuk: And you pronounce that...
Hay: Itchy. That's the way they always did.
Kowalchuk: Is that right? It's a French name. Was it a French name? You don't
know. But they were boys that went to school.

Hay: Anyway, they were adopted. There was Louie and Robert. And Louie was
the heavy one; Robert was the smart one. But he was quite clever at school, and
they were just ready to finish with school. I was just about grade five. And so the
policemen come up with the idea that these shots come from the loft of the... barn
which is just at the other side of the school property, and so they went over there
and they found something about guns or something, but there was nothing ever
done about that. But anyway, this Ms

says, "Well now, boys,

we know who's got it in for me." It's just awful good that these were a little bit too
high.
Kowalchuk: Oh my, and it was left at that. Well, my goodness. And after Ms.
, and who else did you have?
Hay: Well that teacher that... she pretty near married him, Delma Carrier. She
was a little French girl.
Kowalchuk: Carrier. Would that be C-a-r-r-i-e-r?
Hay: I-e-r, yeah. And the only thing about Ms. Carrier that I remember is she
couldn't do math. I was pretty good at doing math. I thought it was sure good
having a teacher that I could...
Kowalchuk: You had one over her, eh?
Hay: Oh well, we did a lot of rabbit calculation, you know.
Kowalchuk: Calculation, yes.
Hay: I could do rabbit count faster than she could, and one time, it was pretty near
the end of the term, everything was pretty wild around school, you know. Pretty
near exam time and pretty near holiday time, that was the main thing. So this Mr.
Bannerman had a daughter that was in the same class as I was, only she was way

taller than I was. I don't think she was any older, but she was a lot taller. She was
named Kathleen. And she's still alive in B.C.
Kowalchuk: Is she?
Hay: And she was a very proper girl and she never got into any kind of trouble, so
all of the other kids were climbing in and out the windows. The windows were all
open; it was a lovely day. The inspector takes a notion to come in. So here I was at
school, so he looks around and he sees this tall girl there, and he grabs the bell off
the teacher's desk, and he shoves it in her hand,' 'Call school to order."
Kowalchuk: He thought she was the teacher, oh for goodness sakes.
Hay: And so, Kathleen went out and rung the bell and the kids just come a
swarming in and jumped through the window. They see him and they go back, and
they come through the door. Everything quietened down as soon as they saw he
was there.
Kowalchuk: Now who was the inspector, by the way?
Hay:

No this was that guy that... And so the teacher, her and

Emmit must have had a heavy date that night or day or something, because she
come to school and school was already called, and the inspector was there, so you
could imagine what she felt like when she walked in there. So I don't know what
LaBlore said to her. They talked for quite a while.
Kowalchuk: They must have talked for a while, yes. Oh sorry.
Hay: Then he said something about taking up math. I guess he knew that that was
her lead subject. So she tried to struggle with this math for a while. Then he says,
' 'Let's see how the

count." So we had one guy who was really a

smart alex, that guy, that Bourassa girl, boy, Roger, he could just and so she was

giving him this set and he was, and she knew that he was good, you know, and so
she called him first and he stood up, and she would read off a bunch of numbers,
and he would tell her just as soon as he gotfinishedwith them what it was. "You
think you're pretty smart, don't you?" he said to this guy. He says, " I ' l l give you
some numbers, see how you get along with them." So he started giving numbers
and he kept along good with him. So that didn't suit

very good,

and I guess Ms. Carrier she was tickled to death in getting out of that situation, so
anyway, that... I don't know how it ended up, but anyway . . .
Kowalchuk: She wasn't fired though.
Hay: No, no.
Kowalchuk: In those days everybody had to really watch their P's and Q's. Now
do you remember any other teachers? How far did you got to school here? Grade
Eight?
Hay: Grade eight.
Kowalchuk: Grade eight, and then?
Hay: I took grade nine in Athabasca and high school in Athabasca.
Kowalchuk: Nine, ten . . .
Hay: And no, I come back to Colinton. Well, when I left Colinton, it was a Ms.
Grey, wasn't it? Huh? It wasn't Ms. Grey, eh? Well, I had a Ms. Grey for a
teacher and I think it was that year, but anyway, then I went to Athabasca.
Kowalchuk: Now how did you get there? Did you board with someone?
Hay: Yeah, I boarded at the rectory.

Kowalchuk: At the uh . . .
Hay: Mr. Wade was the minister.
Kowalchuk: Oh I see, with the minister. The hostel... no wasn't operating then.
Hay: The hostel wasn't built yet. And so . . . Finnley was my teacher there. He was
the best teacher I had anywhere.
Kowalchuk: Oh Finnley, I wonder if that's the Finnley that came, he was in
Calgary later, my Dad bought a farm from Mr. Finnley.
Hay: Oh?
Kowalchuk: That was his name, Finnley, and he was a teacher. I wonder if that
isn't the same person.
Hay: Anyway, he taught in the big brick school, and we had, there was four boys,
Faulkner...
Kowalchuk: Frank Faulkner, Jr.
Hay: And myself, and two more, Cole, and one of the Evans's I think.
Kowalchuk: In Grade Nine.
Hay: The rest were all girls.
Kowalchuk: Is that right. How big a class then?
Hay: Oh, I can't remember that, but there was a room full of, oh must have been
about thirty kids all together, and he had nine, ten, and eleven.
Kowalchuk: Oh, I see.

Hay: And these other girls, you know, they were grown up women as far as I was
concerned. And the only one that, this Kathleen Bannerman, she was there, and I
really was amused at that because she was a very very slow eater, picky eater, you
know, and took her so long, and then she had to chew 25 times, so he put up with
her coming late after lunch for a long time, and he said, "Ms. Bannerman,'' he
says, "I would suggest that you bring your lunch to school some time." She said,
"No, I can't do that." So he says, "Okay, try and be here on time." So next day
she come in late, next day she come in late. Next time, oh she was good and late.
We were half way through thefirstclass and he says,' 'Ms. Bannerman, next time
you come into this class late," he says, "you'll drop the subject." She was never
late again.
Kowalchuk: Oh is that right?
Hay: He had some trouble with these other girls in ten and eleven. They were older
girls, you know, young women. And so he he was an old army man himself and he
took them down in the basement, and he really give them some drill.
Kowalchuk: Oh, he didn't strap them?
Hay: Oh no, he just drilled them. And that would have been all right if that would
have been us boys that got it, but this was these high pollutant ladies and so, I'd
heard him tell them lots of times, you know, he says,' 'If you want to be treated as
ladies, I'll treat you as ladies, but you have to act like ladies. Otherwise, I'll treat
you as kids.'' And so I guess he got tired of telling them that, so he took them down
in his basement and he drilled. Of course, there was a big fuss about that, and they
went home; you know, they complained about all that dust making them so sick.

Kowalchuk: So all the Colinton kids really had to board with people in Athabasca.
Hay: Oh, the only two Colinton people that I know of that were there was Kathleen
and I.
Kowalchuk: Oh, I see. The others were from Athabasca.
Hay: Anyway, I don't know how he didn't get fired, but there was a lot of stink
around Athabasca about that for quite a long time.
Kowalchuk: I was going to ask you if you remember some of the subjects you took
when you were in Colinton, and then what would you have taken besides math,
reading, writing?
Hay: Arithmetic.
Kowalchuk: Arithmetic, yes.
Hay: See, when you went to grade nine then you got geometry and algebra.
Kowalchuk: Okay, that's right.
Hay: And ancient history.
Kowalchuk: Did you? English?
Hay: Oh yes, that was when we had to take some kind of a language, so I knew I
didn't like French. I don't know how I knew that but I . . . so the only other option
was to take Latin, so I took Latin.
Kowalchuk: Who taught you Latin?
Hay: Oh Finnley did.
Kowalchuk: Oh, he did. Did he teach you all the subjects?

Hay: All the subjects. But he started out, you know, I thought this was just because
I'd never gone to a big school before, so all we did was sit in our desks, and he'd
write a whole bunch of stuff on the board, and you'd, you'd have a notebook and
you'd write it down. It didn't make any sense to me at all. Then he'd rub that off
and write down another one. When everybody got that down, he'd rub it off. So,
and you had to number these pages, you know, what they were leading up to, eh,
and so then he went, afterwards I found out that when he was taking up, say history,
for instance, he would go all through that, and he'd say, Underline this, underline
this, underline this.
Kowalchuk: Oh sure, the important points.
Hay: And never saw if you did it or not. That was just what he told you to do, and
so if you didn't do it, it was too bad because afterwards you found out that he told
us then, "When you've gone through a book, that's the end of that class, and when
you're studying for an exam, if you read these lines that you've underlined, you'll
pass the exam for sure." And I wondered why we hadn't done that a long time ago.
Kowalchuk: So Mr. Finnley didn't teach you all of those grades, nine, ten, eleven,
all three of those?
Hay: Yeah.
Kowalchuk: He did. Did he? There was no other teacher in Athabasca then?
Hay: Oh, well, there was no other teacher in that room. There was two other
rooms.
Kowalchuk: Were there? I see, you don't remember the other two teachers?

Hay: They were upstairs and we had nothing to do with them.
Kowalchuk: Nothing to do at all.
Hay: But the one I do remember was Delancey, Art Delancey's grandfather.
Kowalchuk: Oh.
Hay:
Kowalchuk: Is that right? He was a teacher.
Hay: No, he was a janitor.
Kowalchuk: Oh, a janitor. Oh, I see.
Hay: And he used to go around, he wore gators, you know, and he kept law and
order at recess time, had a little switch about this long and go around slapping his
gators all the time, you know, and if you were doing something you shouldn't have,
picking theflowersor something . . .
Kowalchuk: He might give you a switch.
Hay: Yeah, he'd smack you.
Kowalchuk: Now you don't mention grade twelve. Was there no twelve in
Athabasca?
Hay: No.
Kowalchuk: No, so that's as far as you went. Grade eleven, and then you went off
to Vermillion.
Hay: Yeah, but I didn't have, you see, I was sick a lot of the time. Nobody knew
what then was wrong with me, but every time I went back to school, school was
either closed for some infectious disease, mumps or something like that, you know,
and so I missed a heck of a lot of school. So at the end of grade nine, the
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department gave me a pass, 'cause from the recommendations of Finnley, on six
subjects, but they wouldn't give me one on algebra because that was one that most
people had failed on.
Kowalchuk: Yeah. Did you have to write final exams? Students had to write final
exams in those days, didn't they? Did they come from the department? Sure.
Hay: And they said the reason that was because that was really my best subject was
algebra, you know, and the teacher said, he said, "Well if you want to dispute that,
it's okay with me." He said, "I put you in as a good algebra student, but" he says,
" i f I were you, I wouldn't dispute it because they gave you a lot of passes."
Kowalchuk: Okay, we're going to just stop here for a minute. We've gone a little
farther than I had wanted to, but that's okay because we wanted to get Mrs. Hay,
Millie, here, while we were talking about the school in Colinton.
Kowalchuk: Sure, if you want to. That's okay, I think we can hear, you've got a
voice, Mrs. Hay, so I think we probably can hear you all right because you might
want to interject something, too, I don't know. But we do want to get started with
your family because you did uh your family was here, too. First of all, you just give
us your full name.
Hay: It's Mildred Hay.
Kowalchuk: Mildred Hay. Now your maiden name was . . .
Hay: Taupash.
Kowalchuk: Taipash. All right, tell me about your mother and dad. Give me your
father's name.

Hay: My dad's name was John Taupash, and my mother was Barbara.
Kowalchuk: Barbara—what was her maiden name?
Hay: Milukchuk, or something, Milukchuk, it was a big name.
Kowalchuk: Now you were born here in Canada, of course.
Hay: Yes.
Kowalchuk: Where did your parents come from?
Hay: From Austria.
Kowalchuk: Austria. And when did they come to Canada?
Hay: Uh, gee, I can't help that, I don't know.
Hay: Well, they must have come in the late 1800s.
Kowalchuk: I see.
Hay: They come to Canada from the States, you know.
Kowalchuk: Oh, they went to the States first.
Hay: They came to the States, my dad and mother were married in the States.
Kowalchuk: Oh, they didn't know each other back home.
Hay: No.
Kowalchuk: They met and married in the States. Do you know what made your
Dad come to the States?
Hay: The Russians took over the part of Austria where they lived and so they
immigrated from there, and my mother's older brother had immigrated and he
wrote back and said life was so much better in the States, and she was only fourteen
when she came.

Kowalchuk: Oh, I see. What part of the States did they live in?
Hay: Is there a place called Chimokin.
Kowalchuk: Can you give me the state? Was it eastern, along the eastern seabord.
Hay: I really don't know.
Kowalchuk: When did they leave the States and come to Canada then?
Hay: Uh it would be, my dad minded Frank, he was there before 1902.
Kowalchuk: In the States.
Hay: In Canada, in Frank, Alberta.
Kowalchuk: Yes, all right, the family moved then, your mother and dad moved to
Frank, Alberta in the early 1900s, you say about 1902.
Hay: Yeah, well he had already been, you see, he got his mining certificate in 1889.
Hay: That was in the States.
Hay: And then he came from the States to Canada, and I'm not sure if Frank was
thefirstplace he came to, but I think it was, and he was a mine boss, and my mother
ran a boarding house for the miners.
Kowalchuk: Oh, for the miners, interesting. So she'd cook for them and they
actually lived with them.
Hay: No, they didn't live with them, but she just boarded them.
Kowalchuk: She boarded them. I see, how many would she have boarded at a
time?

Hay: Sixteen.
Kowalchuk: Oh my goodness. She had to cook for sixteen men.
Hay: Yeah, and she had...
Kowalchuk: I was going to say, now there were five in your family . . .
Hay: At that time.
Kowalchuk: Oh. Were you born then while they were in Frank?
Hay: No.
Kowalchuk: I see.
Hay: And from Frank, he went to Kenmore, to a mine in Kenmore, and that's why
he wasn't at Frank when the slide came. And they had only been gone two or three
months.
Kowalchuk: Oh for heaven sakes.
Hay: And from Kenmore, they took a homestead at Bulf, Alberta.
Kowalchuk: Oh yes.
Hay: And couldn't make a living on the homestead, so they went to Ferny, B.C.,
and he took up, I don't know if it was a homestead or if he bought land, he was
clearing the land and one of the big trees fell on him and crushed his leg.
Kowalchuk: Ohh.
Hay: That's why he limped like that.
Hay: Yeah, he had one leg was a lot shorter than the other.

Kowalchuk: Oh. Now your dad was Sam. No, that was your brother.
Hay: That was my brother.
Kowalchuk: That's right, that was your brother. Okay, so where did Samfitin,
like was he one of the older ones?
Hay: Yes, and then from Fernie, they came to Colinton.
Kowalchuk: I see, so finally they got to Colinton. And is this where you were
born?
Hay: Yes, I was born on the farm.
Kowalchuk: On the farm. What year were you born Mrs. Hay?
Hay: 1914.
Kowalchuk: 1914. Now were other children born here in Colinton besides you?
Hay: Yeah, my two brothers, Ben and Ted.
Kowalchuk: Oh, I remember Ted. I don't remember Ben. Where is he now?
Hay: He died a year ago in January.
Kowalchuk: Did he? Oh, for goodness sake.
Hay: Ended up there were fourteen of us.
Kowalchuk: Fourteen of you children. What a big family.
Hay: And before they came to, well while Dad was getting a homestead in
Colinton, they lived in Edmonton, and I had twin brothers.
Kowalchuk: Did you?

Hay: Not, and they died of typhoid fever in Edmonton. And then when we came up
here to the homestead, of course, I wasn't here then, they lived in a tent in winter.
Kowalchuk: Oh my goodness. With all those children.
Hay: Yeah, there were three less. The others weren't born yet. And then in the
spring, they built a house on the farm.
Kowalchuk: So where was the farm. How far out?
Hay: Gingalos, where Gingalo lives.
Kowalchuk: Oh, I see.
Hay: That's my Dad's homestead.
Kowalchuk: Oh, I didn't know that.
Hay: Yeah, yeah, that was my dad's.
Kowalchuk: So you weren't really that far out of town.
Hay: No.
Hay: That was the best farm.
Kowalchuk: Yes.
Hay: And I don't remember, like my oldest sister, Alice, was away and married
before I was born, and you know, there wasn't much travelling in those days, so
when she did come to visit, she made a perfect stranger.
Kowalchuk: My goodness, I guess she would be.
Hay: And then I can just remember my second oldest sister, I can remember my
mother making her wedding dress, but I don't remember anything about the
wedding. But I remember, it was brought back to me very vividly, last Tuesday

when I went to the General Hospital, and they have this big statue at the front, when
I was about four years old, I think I was about four years old, and my sister was
going to have herfirstbaby, and mother was going down to be with her, and she had
taken me with her. We got to Edmonton, Mom didn't have any money for a room
and she couldn't catch a train, couldn't make connections in trains, so she went to
the General Hospital to the Mother Superior there, and she gave us a room for the
night in the General Hospital.
Kowalchuk: Imagine that.
Hay: And then we caught the train to go to Edson the next morning.
Kowalchuk: For heaven's sakes. Quite the thing in those days. People just didn't
have the money, did they?
Hay: There just wasn't any there, and when I was going to start school, my mother
made me two dresses out of white grain bags.
Kowalchuk: Yes, the grain . . .
Hay: The heavy white grain bags.
Kowalchuk: Now the grain, you're talking about wheat or something that you'd
take forflouror what are you saying when you say ' 'grain"?
Hay: Well, no, they used to sack your grain and sell it by the sack at one time, and
they were heavy white bags.
Kowalchuk: White, were they?
Hay: Yeah, and they had a blue and a red stripe down the side, and mother made
me one dress and dyed it navy blue, and the other one she dyed red. I didn't mind
the navy blue one so bad because that stripes didn't show. But the red one, the
stripes showed through, so I didn't like to wear it. Now those were my good
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dresses. I took those off when I came home from school.
Kowalchuk: Of course, of course.
Hay: So when my sister went to work in Athabasca, she bought a piece of plaid
material, and mother put a plaid piece down the side of that dress so that didn't
show any more so I didn't mind wearing it.
Kowalchuk: My goodness. So you started school, here, in Colinton.
Hay: Yeah, we walked two and a half miles.
Kowalchuk: I was going to say, you'd have to walk.
Hay: Yeah, we walked two and a half miles.
Hay: Oh, there was no other way.
Kowalchuk: No other way in those days, no, winter or summer.
Hay: We missed a lot of school in the winter time. And when I was going to start
school, Arch Deaconlittle brought me a red coat and a bonnet to match.
Kowalchuk: Oh for goodness sake.
Hay: And the coat was a little small, the sleeves were short, but my mother knitted
a piece to extend it. And thefirstnew coat I had was I bought for my wedding.
Kowalchuk: Really.
Hay: That was thefirstnew coat I had. I always wore my sister's.
Kowalchuk: Now you were, were you still at school then in Colinton when Millie
came?

Kowalchuk: Oh, for the two and a half miles?
Hay: Yeah, we had to get right back. And we had to be very careful about our
clothes.
Kowalchuk: Of course.
Hay: And the Gight kids would come splashing through the mud, and boy we used
to get into trouble for that.
Kowalchuk: Well did you speak the language, did you speak English when you
went to school?
Hay: Yes.
Kowalchuk: You were able to speak it.
Hay: Yes, my Dad always went by the assumption that we were Canadians now,
and that English was the language, and that's what we were to speak. Mom and
Dad spoke Ukrainian, and I could speak until my mother died.
Kowalchuk: Oh.
Hay: But we weren't forced to speak it or anything, but we tried. We kept it up
until our folks died.
Kowalchuk: Right, I think it helped, too, the fact that your mother was fourteen
when she came to the States.
Hay: Yes.
Kowalchuk: You know, I mean naturally she learned the language, and so the kids
didn't have the problem with the language that maybe other families would have.

Hay: I think all of them, whenever they but none of them got much of an education,
I think I got the most education.
Hay: You see, Sam, well Mike, there was no schools around here when M i k e . . .
Kowalchuk: No there weren't any schools.
Hay: Maybe two months in the winter time when there was school. Like my sister,
she got grade five. I think Sam had grade four.
Kowalchuk: And yet Sam was a very successful business man.
Hay: Yes.
Hay: But he didn't have any education.
Hay: My sister with the gradefiveeducation and very bad eyes got to be a nurse's
aid and nursed in Athabasca.
Kowalchuk: Did she? When would she have nursed there?
Hay: Oh, in the 20s.
Kowalchuk: Of course, the old hospital.
Hay: Yeah, in the twenties. And her shift was from 7:00 in the morning until 7:00
at night, and they got $65 a month.
Kowalchuk: I see.
Hay: Dr. Myers was the doctor.
Kowalchuk: Oh yes, well when you talked a while back, now we were going back
to 1912 or 1913,' 12 would have been thefirstfirein Athabasca, and you said Mrs.
was working as a nurse there.

Hay: Yes, yes, she was a registered nurse.
Kowalchuk: A registered nurse there. Now what was her maiden name.
Hay: Carrey.
Kowalchuk: Carrey.
Hay: C-a-r-r-e-y.
Kowalchuk: E-y, mhm. You said Frank Falkoner Sr. was the mayor the town then.
Hay: Yeah.
Kowalchuk: All right, and you . . .
Hay: I'm only guessing that; she told me that some official come up and told her
not to worry about the fire.
Hay: Mr. Hutchings.
Hay: Well, he was the secretary of the hospital board.
Kowalchuk: And he told her not to worry.
Hay: Thefirewouldn't come that far.
Kowalchuk: That far, because it was up entirely on the hill, of course. Okay.
Hay: Renneson's store was down . . .
Hay: Yeah, but the hospital was up on the hill.
Hay: Yeah, the hospital was up on the hill.
Kowalchuk: So you went to school in Colinton from grades one to eight yourself.
Hay: I got grade eleven in Colinton.

Kowalchuk: Oh, just a minute, some things have changed since the time you were
there. I want to hear about that.
Hay: Our little school burned down.
Kowalchuk: When was that?
Hay:
Kowalchuk: That was a one-room school.
Hay: One-room school, no, it must have been a two-room school by then.
Hay: By then, it could have been.
Hay: I wouldn't... no it was a one-room school.
Hay: Yeah, I think so.
Hay: And then we went to school... It must have been a two-room school by then,
because we went to school in the United Church, and some went to school in the
Community Hall.
Kowalchuk: After the fire.
Hay: After thefire,yeah.
Hay: And some went up here.
Hay: Yeah, to the old lob church.
Kowalchuk: There was an old lob church back here?
Hay: It's still there.
Kowalchuk: It's still there, which faith, Anglican?

Hay: Yeah, that's why it's on our land.
Kowalchuk: Oh, your parents were Anglican, of course.
Hay: Well, I told you mother was Presebetarian and Dad never said what he was,
then there was only one thing, so he had to be, if you were going to be religious at
all, you hd to be that, and so it was Anglican, you see. They had that thing at
Wabasca; it was Roman Catholic and Anglican.
Kowalchuk: Yes, okay, so when thatfirstschool burned down, you went to all
these different places, and they built a new school again on that same site.
Hay: Yeah. That was when it turned into four rooms.
Kowalchuk: And then thereafter they had up to grade eleven.
Hay: Yes.
Kowalchuk: I'm surprised, that surprises me. What year did you were you taking
grade eleven then. If you were born in 1914, you must have been about sixteen or
seventeen, so that would have been about 1930,30,31, somewhere in there. And
once you finished grade eleven, did you go to Athabasca?
Hay: No, there was too much work to do at home.
Kowalchuk: That's the thing, wasn't it?
Hay: Yeah, I had a hard time in grade eleven because I had to get up no later than
6:00 in the morning because my mother and I made 25 pies before I went to school
in the morning besides the cleaning up, you know, sweeping up and being ready
for...

Kowalchuk: Why would you make 25 pies?
Hay: We were in the hotel. My folks were in the hotel.
Kowalchuk: Oh, tell us about this. I was shocked when I heard 25 pies. I thought
you must be cooking for someone. Tell us about that. So your dad was originally
started on the farm, but now...
Hay: When the boys all left home, just the three younger ones of us at home, Dad
sold the farm and we were all ready to move to the city. He got accommodation in
the city and everything, so he came to Colinton to say his goodbyes one afternoon.
He got drunk in the beer parlour and he bought the hotel.
Kowalchuk: Oh my.
Hay: So he come home, and he said to Mom, "Well, we're not going to Edmonton.
We're going to run the hotel in Colinton."
Kowalchuk: Well, what did your mother think of that?
Hay: Well, quite a shock. But anyway I, we come down to this hotel, and you
never saw such a mess in your life.
Kowalchuk: Now when you say mess, what do you mean by mess?
Hay: Well, it was a rough place. It was all finished inside with this blue building
paper. Do you remember? Well anyway, it was a heavy paper that was used for
insulation more or less, but this was blue, and they had that on all the walls, and it
was full of bed bugs and the kitchen was fool of cockroaches.
Kowalchuk: Who ran the hotel originally? Who did he buy it from?

Hay: From a fellow by the name of Reed, and upstairs there was a big double room
that they used as living quarters. And Mrs. Reed chewed tobacco, and she sat about
here, and her spitoon was over in the corner.
Kowalchuk: Now, you're saying Mrs. Reed.
Hay: Yes, and she could hit that spitoon quite a few feet away and it splattered all
up the wall.
Kowalchuk: Oh, for heaven's sakes. But that...
Hay: You know, you didn't know that a lot of women chewed tobacco.
Kowalchuk: No, that's why I'm so surprised.
Hay: And so they had the cafe part rented to a lady by the name of Mrs. Bourassa, a
French lady, and as soon as we moved in, she decided that's enough, and she
moved out. So, here we moved in in the afternoon. We had to have meals for that
evening, and to start in this mess. So anyway somehow we got the people fed; there
were quite a few people boarding at the hotel because we had two elevator men,
and we had three or four people from the garage and there were three people on the
section, you know, for the CN, and they all ate at the hotel, so we had to make
supper for them and we started from scratch. And anyway we got that over and so
the next day we started the clean-up business. Well, my two brothers were made
responsible to look after all the lamps—the rooms upstairs were lit with coal oil
lamps, the downstairs was lit by gas lights—so the boys did the gas lamps and filled
the others with coal oil, and I washed all the lamp chimneys and got them ready for
the next night.

Hay: They had to be all pumped up then.
Kowalchuk: Yes, as gas lamps.
Hay: And therangewas a huge wooden coal. Your refrigerator took blocks of ice.
Hay: They had to hire a man to put up ice.
Kowalchuk: Yes, I was thinking so.
Hay: We made a log ice house and had, they put a layer of ice and a layer of
sawdust to protect the ice.
Kowalchuk: And where would you get the ice from?
Hay: From the river.
Kowalchuk: From the Athabasca?
Hay: And so we learned to, I was only ten or eleven, and someone had to learn and
cook, and you learned to wait a table, and you did all those things.
Kowalchuk: I suppose you did a lot of work after school, then.
Hay: Before school and after school and at noon. Sometimes you got your lunch
and sometimes you didn't.
Kowalchuk: You were too busy waiting tables.
Hay: Waiting on tables. When we werefirstmarried, and thefirsttime I cooked
rice for us, I had rice enough for...
Kowalchuk: Because you're used to cooking in large volumes, right? Goodness
sakes. So after youfinishedgrade eleven, you still had the hotel.

Hay: Yeah, and I worked with Mom and Dad.
Kowalchuk: When did they sell the hotel?
Hay: '59,60.
Kowalchuk: That late.
Hay: Yeah, at least that late.
Hay: After I was married, I had to go down every day at noon to help Mom because
the bus to Lac La Biche went through Colinton, and one day it stopped for dinner,
and the next day it stopped at 4:00 going back.
Kowalchuk: So you often had passengers then to look after.
Hay: Yeah, they all stopped for dinner.
Kowalchuk: Sure. Did you have people living upstairs in the hotel as well?
Hay: Oh yes. The rooms were full all the time.
Kowalchuk: And that's the hotel now that's there.
Hay: And we had enormous business there, and every Sunday our dining room was
booked with people from Athabasca.
Kowalchuk: Really?
Hay: I'm not kidding.
Kowalchuk: And what were . . .
Hay: For fried chicken.
Kowalchuk: Is that right?

Hay: They raised their own chickens.
Hay: We raised our own chickens.
Kowalchuk: Did you?
Hay: Yeah, Saturday night we'd butcherfifteen,twenty, thirty chickens, and had a
specialty on Sunday, and you worked all day Sunday.
Hay: Lots of people.
Kowalchuk: Well, that works good. Must have spread the word to get a good
meal.
Hay: The train crew, you know, would stop at Colinton for a meal.
Hay: And do you know what we charged for a meal? That's a three course meal,
35 cents.
Kowalchuk: Now what year would that have been? When you were still at school?
Hay: Yeah, 29,30.
Hay: And that included soup, and your meat, and two vegetables, and a dessert.
Kowalchuk: Oh my. Where did you buy all your groceries? Did you have to order
from far away? Did you get all your supplies here?
Hay: We got all our supplies in Colinton.
Kowalchuk: Because at that time they would have had how many grocery stores,
just the one, or two.
Hay: Three, and Flynns, and Kate and Fellie, and the Red and White store.

Kowalchuk: Were you operating the Red and White store by then when these
people were . . .
Hay: Yeah.
Kowalchuk: Well that hotel must have been opened in operating skill when Gene
and I and the kids were here.
Hay: Yeah, it was.
Kowalchuk: You see, but I had so little to do with the hotel, because we were here
in 58,57,58.
Hay: Sure, that's why I asked when we were talking there if you taught in that
four-room school in Colinton, or was it only a two-room?
Kowalchuk: It was a four-room.
Hay: Yes, because it was four rooms before I left.
Kowalchuk: Yeah, it was a four-room.
Hay: So that would be Reed Roxper...
Kowalchuk: No, I don't know that name at all. Mr. Lascoski, was here then.
Hay: Oh, Mr. Lascoski yeah and they lived up in that building that Whitley built
there for his garage, Lascoski lived up there.
Hay: Where did you and Gene live?
Kowalchuk: Well, we lived for a while in a little house next to the Lascoski lived
over here just across from the bank, was there a Nova Scotia, now what bank was
that on the corner? Imperial, was it? Oh sure, Imperial, and then right on the
corner there was the big house, the two-story house, Lascoski's lived in that and
there was a little house next to it, to the north of it on the corner there. Who's, I

don't know whose house that was. Gene would remember. It was just a little
two-room house because we only had Barry then, you see, then Cheryl was born
while we were in Colinton, and eventually Darlene, but then we moved into
Dixen's house later on. Okay, so you don't remember when your folks sold that
hotel finally?
Hay: About 57 or 58, somewhere in there.
Hay: Oh, I'd say they were closer to sixty, wouldn't you?
Hay: No.
Kowalchuk: Did your brother Sam have the garage then certainly while you were
running the hotel.
Hay: Yes he did.
Kowalchuk: He sold vehicles didn't he?
Hay: Lots of them.
Kowalchuk: Lots of them, yes. What kind of

was a big

name, and I remember that.
Hay: He was known all over the country.
Hay: General Motors.
Kowalchuk: General Motors. He was in competition with Charley Fix in
Athabasca.
Hay: Mr. Hunter wanted that General Motors franchise so bad and they wouldn't
split that for Colinton. When Sam had had it, they couldn't very well take it away
from him. Hunter made Sam a deal to go and work for him so that he could have
the franchise, you see.

Kowalchuk: Is that right? So Sam worked for Hunter before he ever started his . . .
Hay: No, no, after.
Kowalchuk: I see.
Hay: When he was just aboutfinishedhe worked for . . .
Kowalchuk: Oh I see, is that right?
Hay: Well he was crippled.
Kowalchuk: All right, so now you're in grade eight, and you were still at
school...

(Tape 2, Side A ends here)