Interview With Vi Overholt in the Sawdy District

Notes - Vi Overholt was adopted by Harry and Mabel Overholt in 1923. The Overholt's ran the post office in the Sawdy District, east of Athabasca. Vi recalls attending Youngville School as a child, which was a half mile walk away. She also remembers playing with children on Saturdays when parents came to the post office to pick up their mail. Vi married the Overholt's nephew, Walter Overholt. Mrs. Overhalt recalls swimming in the Athabasca River as a teenager, and attending dances and Christmas concerts at the Sawdy Hall, which was opened in 1923. Before the hall, people hosted community functions in their homes. Children played games such as fox and goose as well as baseball, with the older ones helping to teach the younger ones. Class sizes could be quite large, with 36 being the smallest, a direct result of the large family sizes living close by. Diet consisted mainly of meat in the winter, mostly moose and deer, sometimes pork. Meat was frozen in winter, or canned or pickled in brine in the spring. Sandwiches were taken to school, sometimes fruit. Food was carried in a lard pail, and was often frozen by the time the children arrived at school. Milk and cream from cows was used as money to buy groceries. Harvest was a community event, many neighbours would come to assist with the threshing. Women would provide food and neighbours would provide machinery and labour. Mrs. Overholt was reunited with her birth mother, sister and brother in the 1930s. She learned that her mother had been paying board for her to stay at The Salvation Army, and that she had been taken without her mother's consent (11 pages)