Ernie's Story

A biography of  Ernie

Ernie’s birth certificate says that he was born in Spruce Lake, Saskatchewan.  He was born in a log house on a cold spring day in April, 1928. 

“When I was born, Dad had gone away for one week to work.  My oldest sister was 7 and I had two other sisters, 5 and 3 years old.  Mother became terribly sick with ‘Milk Fever’, so she wasn’t able to keep breast feeding me. They didn’t know what to do with me so they made a ‘sugar tit’ from cloth.  They put sugar and water in it and kept me alive for a whole week.  My sister put ropes over the rafters of the cabin, to lift my Mom up to turn her.  I don’t know how she did it at only 7 yrs. old.  She also had to pull water up out of the well, which must have been 70 feet deep, and I don’t know how she ever did that either.  We had no electricity there only oil lamps.  The cabin was heated by a wood stove.  My sister has a lot of memories of this.  We keep in touch and are close.”   When Ernie’s Dad came back at the end of the week, he got things organized.

When asked if he likes sugar now, Ernie replied, “No, I never eat sugar.  It is something I never use at any time.”

Sadly, only a few years later, Ernie’s father was killed.

“My Dad, Mom’s uncle, and a cousin were riding horse-back in the bush and Dad was ahead of the others when this guy shot him right off the horse.  Dad had been looking for logs to build a house.  My Dad was not very old, maybe he was 33 yrs. old.”

This very tragic event was devastating for Ernie’s family.  “My Mom’s brothers and my Grandpa lived about 50 miles this side of Lloydminster on a farm, so we lived there awhile.  I remember when I was around 5 years old, Grandpa used to wake me up early in the morning, around 5:00 a.m., and take me out riding.  Even though I was so young, he put me on a horse by myself and we would ride around.  About a year after that, Grandpa died.  Mom got a quarter section of her own, further out.  We lived at that farm until my Mom remarried and then moved to the other farm where I stayed until I was 16 years old.  On our farm we had cattle, horses, pigs, chickens, and a garden.  Sometimes I hunted deer, but not too often. We had to do a lot of work looking after all the cattle and horses.  I now had a younger brother too but he was too young to work the farm.  We had to work like slaves.  A lot of people don’t know this but in them days there was no such thing as power in any of them places.  We had to go to the Saskatchewan River which was five miles away, to cut blocks of ice, pull them out, and put them in the ice house.  The ice house was a log cabin; inside they put sawdust over the ice to keep it from melting.  All this was done using horses to haul the ice.  It was hard work.”

Ernie went to school at the Bute St. Pierre Catholic School which was five miles from his home.  He walked in the summertime, but in the winter he was pulled on toboggan by a horse.  “I didn’t go to school very long because I started working at 16.  My younger brother started working at 14.  We had to work, as life was hard on my Mom.  Like I said, we worked like slaves so I left in 1944 to find work that would pay.  1944 was a bumper crop year!  We thrashed for 23 days without stop, pitching sheaves into racks and hauling them to the thrashing machine.  That was the summer to make money.  We started at 4:00 a.m. and worked until10:00 p.m. at night.  We prayed for rain so we would get a rest, but it never rained.  Young people now don’t know what work really is.” 

Both of Ernie’s parents were part native.  His Mom came from St. Paul, Alberta, and his Dad was born in Green Lake or Meadow Lake in Northern Saskatchewan.  Ernie doesn’t know how they met each other. 

“I didn’t teach my own children the Cree ways because I didn’t learn much of it myself. After Dad died Mom kind of lost interest.  It’s amazing, but I used to talk in Cree and French but I can’t remember anything now.  In school we had to speak French because that area was all French speaking.  My Mom spoke Cree to me when I was a little boy but after she remarried she had to speak English because my step dad was English speaking.  I wish I could understand more French and Cree now.”

Ernie reflected on his life in Saskatchewan.  “When we were older, we used to go to the town church and the Bennett Farm House to dance every weekend.  It was nice there.  I didn’t like dancing much, but I liked the music”. 

“I used to break horses when I was younger.  I got $10.00 to break a horse.  That was a lot of money in those days.”(1940’s) When asked if he was a good rider, he humbly confessed, “I used to be a good rider.” 

“Once, I was working for this rancher and he gave me a team of horses that had been driven only once all summer.  His son helped me hook the team up but I saw that the reigns were not that good and told him about it, but the rancher insisted they were fine.  His son and I went off and the horses ran away.  I started pulling up on the reins but they broke.  The horses went through the fence with the wagon, and then the horses ran away. I fell over backwards (out of the wagon) and landed on a rock.  Next thing I knew I was in the hospital and had been in a coma for a few days.  I was in the hospital for a week.  I got measles while I was in the hospital.  They didn’t want me in there with measles and sent me home.  My Mom and sister looked after me at their place until I got better.  It was in the fall and I was 18.”

During his years on the farms, Ernie had some close calls.  He remembered when he and his cousins were in a sleigh box that was being pulled by a team of horses when a logging truck hit them broadside at an intersection.  The horses were not harmed.  Another time, he got hit by a pick up truck when he was on his horse.  “It knocked the horse for a loop.  The horse wasn’t hurt and neither was I but it scared us plenty.”

“I started to farm with my sister and brother-in-law in 1948, I think.  We bought a new tractor.  In 1950, I decided that I had had enough of farming and in the fall, took the train to Vancouver, where my brother was.”

Ernie worked at the Westminster Peat Plant in Delta in 1945 or 1946 and said that it was very hard work.  “I could have purchased ten acres of property in the Kennedy area, for $500.00, but I didn’t want to stay so I went back to Saskatchewan for awhile where my family was”. 

“When I came back to Vancouver, I got a job at a farm in Ladner, which was just a one horse town then.”  One day, the owner of the farm and Ernie went into New Westminster by car, and from there Ernie took the tram into Vancouver.  (They don’t have those tracks (tram) anymore, Ernie says.  They pulled them up but he thinks they should have left them there.)  Ernie went to the employment office and spoke to the Personnel Manager, a man whom Ernie got to know quite well.  He sent Ernie to Port Melon, near Gibsons, to a pulp mill there. He told Ernie, “If you go to Port Melon, you should stay there, or I’ll get heck for sending you there because you are part native and they don’t want natives to work there.” 

“The boat got there in the afternoon so I went to the office.  When they told me I was on Graveyard Shift, I was pretty surprised because I had never heard of Graveyard Shift before.  They had to explain to me what it was.  I worked for only a few days and wanted to quit.  I phoned my friend, the Personnel Manager and he talked me into staying.  I stayed and worked there for 3 ½ years.  It wasn’t hard work but the night shift almost killed me because I couldn’t sleep in the daytime.  The bunkhouse was right beside construction work.  B.C. Bridge and Dredging was working hard because Canadian Forest Products had just bought that place out.  That swing shift is hard on the body.  There was no entertainment there, not much to do, and not even a road at that time, so you could only get there by boat or fly in.  A road was put in just before I left.”

Ernie told us about his love for cars.  Ernie has an amazing memory and could remember all of his vehicles.  “My first car was a 1928 Durant.  I was on the prairies then and this farmer had the Durant in his garage and he had hardly driven it, so I bought it from him for $400.00”.

Ernie revealed something very interesting about himself.  He said, “When I was young lad, I made up my mind to do something.  I’m going to have nice cars, nice family and a nice house”.

For his young age, he had a plan for his life and he knew that family life was very, very important.

“In 1950, when I was working at Port Melon, I came into Vancouver for my 4 days off and went to Duecks on Broadway, where I seen a 1949 Chevy Fleetline.  But the only way you could get a car at that time, was to have 1/2 cash. It was less than $1,600.00.  Later on I got a 1952 Pontiac and then an Oldsmobile.”  Ernie’s love for cars is very evident even now, from the ship shape condition of his pick-up truck.  Anyone with an eye for a ‘mean machine’ can see that Ernie loves his truck.

“I would never take my cars in to have them fixed; I would work on them myself.  I used to teach my boys how to fix cars when they were growing up.  They have to learn.  Whatever you do, if you take something apart, make sure you put it back together.  If you take something apart, put the pieces side by side so you don’t lose anything.  When you live on a farm you have to know how to fix everything because you can’t have someone come out to the farm to fix things for you.”

Ernie met his future wife, Wilma, in Ladner, at the theatre, where she worked as a cashier.  Ernie says he went to the movies often.  Wilma lived with her Mom and sister, her Dad had passed away.  Wilma and Ernie courted for 1 ½ years, got engaged, but didn’t get married for another year and a half.  They were married in 1956 and have celebrated their 50^th Anniversary.  The first son was born in 1959, and their other 2 children came close together.  A daughter was born in 1961 and a son in 1962.  Their eldest son lives in Ladner and has 2 girls.  Their daughter lives in Surrey with her husband and son.  Ernie and Wilma joke that they can almost see their daughter’s home from their window.  One son moved to Vanderhoof, and Ernie and Wilma enjoy going to visit with him, their daughter-in-law, and two grand-daughters.

“After I left Port Melon, I worked for 3 ½ years at Fraser Mills, on the Fraser River.  It was owned by Crown Zellerback.  My brother and I put our names in for a job at a new plant, Weldwood, on the Surrey side of the river.  My brother got the job then called me about an opening.  Ten days after he started, I joined him, and stayed there for 35 years.  I worked at many positions at the mill starting on the green chain, then as a forklift operator and later on the lathe and cut-off saw.  You have to do everything.  I really liked the work.  The mill was going to shut down and they asked me if I would consider moving to 100 Mile House and work as a lathe operator.  I didn’t want to go up there so I retired early. I was 59 when I retired.”

“We lived in Surrey then, where we rented a home.  We moved to 3or 4 different places before we bought a place of our own.  After I started working at the pulp mill my wife looked for a place to buy and we bought a brand new home, never been lived in before. The house cost $16,000 in 1964.  Wilma worked at the Bank of Montreal until 1957 or 1958 when our first son was born.  That’s when we moved to our new home in North Delta.”

During the summers, Ernie and his family did a lot of camping because they had a truck, camper, and a boat. “I liked fishing, as did the kids, so we’d go out in our boat on Chilliwack Lake.  We did a lot of camping there.  I’d make pancakes over the open fire for everyone and we had a good time. Later I sold the camper and we bought a 24 foot Class C motor home, but when Wilma and I retired in February 1987, we decided that we needed a bigger one so we bought a 30 foot Triple E, with a diesel motor in it.  We went down south for 5 years in the Yuma area and had a lot of friends there.  It’s too bad I can’t go back any more.”

Ernie and Wilma had a very interesting hobby they worked on when they were down south.  Using aluminum chair frames, they covered the back and seat sections with beautifully knotted macramé designs.  Wilma had taken a class on doing this craft and Ernie became very proficient at it.  They bought the cord in Bellingham in a variety of colors.  Ernie could make any design at all, eagles, trout, horses, flowers, cats or even a tractor!  “We kept some ourselves and gave some to relatives and friends.  It’s amazing what you can do with your hands.  It would take us about 4 or 5 hours to make one chair.  Wilma and I would make them at the back of our motor home so no one would see us.  If we did it out front, everyone coming by would stop to talk and we wouldn’t get any work done.  We sold them there and got orders from people.  Finally I told Wilma not to take any more orders because I wasn’t having enough time to enjoy my vacation.”

Ernie went to see his Mom every summer, or whenever he and Wilma had holidays.  They were there when she died.  She was born in 1902 and died in 1972, and is buried in the cemetery at the church there.  His Mom and step Dad had sold the farm to his uncle but now it is filled with oil wells.  “You can’t even farm it now because of the wells, so the farm is lost”.  One year later after Ernie’s mom passed, Wilma’s Mom died.  She was from Ladner.  Her Mom and Dad had become Canadian citizens after they came to Canada from Holland, in 1927, on their honeymoon.

Ernie and Wilma had a nice time together after retirement.  “I told my kids, I came into this world bare naked and with no money, so I plan to go out the same way”. 

Ernie and Wilma did a lot of motor home touring going all over, even across Canada.  “That was an experience boy” he says.  Ernie’s advice, “If you have a chance, don’t cross Canada in a plane, go with a truck and camper, or a car.  You can meet the nicest people in campsites.”  Wilma is a good driver and now she does all the driving.  “Our motor home has a new motor which had a 6.2 diesel in it and now it has a 6.5, and it’s a nice looking machine.”

Once before when we left for a trip in 1982, our kids asked us where we would stay if we couldn’t find a park to camp at?  Ernie told them, “If there is a graveyard, I’ll pull in there.”  As Ernie recalled the event, he had a real mischievous twinkle in his eye.  “And that’s exactly what we did!  When we got back, I told the kids where we had stayed one night. It was quiet there”, he smiled. They had a lot of good trips.  They even went all the way to Newfoundland.

Once again, Ernie told us about his resolve as a young lad, and what he wanted to get out of life.  The three things he wanted most; a good marriage and family, good cars, and a nice home. 

“And, I got it all” Ernie says.