I really can’t say that I remember anything of my first two or three years of life, only what I have been told by my family. Having been born at the old “Niagara Cottage Hospital” in Niagara-on-the-Lake some years ago, I am stamped as a Niagarian.
Dad farmed fifty acres, about five miles out of town and about two miles from the village of Virgil. This had been my Grandfather and Grandmother’s property; they were descended from United Empire Loyalists.
I have many pleasant memories of growing up on the farm with my sisters and brother and Mom and Dad. It was a time of learning and growing and caring. There was always lots of work to be done but there were fun times too.
When I was in High School, and had been working in the summer, picking fruit and berries, it was always fun to wheel out to Virgil and buy a couple of quarts of ice cream and invite about a dozen or so “kids” to come over for strawberries and ice-cream. Mom and Dad were always as much fun, and enjoyed themselves as much as we did.
Hide and go-seek was a game that never seemed to lose its attraction. When it was a necessity to find your own entertainment, you enjoyed it. Many a game of hide-and-go-seek was played in our yard, around the house, and I even caught my brother trying to hide under the large rhubarb leaves in the garden.
Lots of times, the neighbours’ children were present and, one evening in the summer, on a beautiful moonlight night, we played hide-and-go-seek out in a hay field, spreading my mother’s white apron over a haycock for home base.
When the original cabin had been built on the property, it had been insulated with a heavy
Clay, inserted between the laths in the walls. This had been dug out of the ground some distance behind the barn, and had left a good-sized hole that filled with water from the rains, so that in the winter, we had a ready-made skating rink. Quite often, I’d try my luck at learning to skate, wearing skates that were much too large; my feet were covered with three pairs of socks, to help fill the boots.
The pond in the spring was a delightful attraction for me; it was a world all of its own. There were toads’ and frogs’ eggs stretched out over the green plants in the bottom, or in large clumps, floating just below the surface. In the centre of the pond, bulrushes were a convenient resting place for red-winged blackbirds.
I usually made a daily visit during this special time to see how things were, and to discover whether any polliwogs had yet hatched; and I was always pleasantly surprised to see large turtles sunning themselves on the flat rocks at the edge of the pond. Baby turtles to me were really very special. Of course there were dragonflies and water striders, and all of those insects indigenous to ponds and marshes.
