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Martha said she had wanted to give birth to a “ball team” and as you will see from her story she accomplished that and then some.

Martha’s parents, living in Europe, could see the coming of the Second World War so they immigrated to Canada.  They settled near Borden, Saskatchewan. Martha was born there in 1931, the year of the Great Depression. Coming from a family of ten healthy siblings Martha believes the asthma she suffers from since birth, was caused by the Depression.  The loss of everything was difficult on her mother while she was pregnant with Martha.

As a child Martha struggled with her illness.  She spent more time in hospitals, than she did in school.  “I became such good friends with my doctor.  He was like another parent.  He even filled in for the tooth fairy.”  Her parents didn’t have a lot of money so they would butcher a chicken and/or send eggs and vegetables to the doctor for payment.  She quit school in Grade 8 because she was already behind two grades. 

Martha has many fond memories of her childhood.  At one point her dad moved an entire house ten miles to their property!  The town said he was crazy.  “Dad did a lot of crazy things.  Sometimes I think that’s were I get it from.”  He and my brothers dug the hole for (and built) the foundation for the house.  When they moved the house over it, it fit like a glove.

They only had one or two kerosene lamps so in the evenings they were very close as a family, always sitting near the lamps sewing or knitting.  Her mother always had bags of feathers that she had plucked from geese.  In the winter they would sit at the big table and strip feathers.  Mom and Dad would tell stories from the old country, and we would all visit together.  Mother made quilts for everyone with all the feathers, everyone except Martha, because of her asthma.  Martha’s quilt came later when they inherited a sheep.  She still has the quilt to this day.

At the age of seventeen she got a job at the Tuberculosis Center with great opposition from her parents. They feared she might get TB due to her already existing asthma.  Martha persevered, and for the first time she felt some independence of her own.  She recalls, “I was given a wash basin and a towel and sent to my first patient, a man!  I just stood there.  He said “don’t worry we train all the girls here.  You just wash up as far as possible, then you wash down as far as possible, and then you go out and I’ll do possible.”

Her parents decided that she should try living in Ontario, with her Aunt and Uncle for a while, to see if she would feel a change in her asthma.  It didn’t seem to make much difference.  While there, she worked in the kitchen at the Regina Lutheran College.  It was here Martha met her first husband Wilf, (he was a student).  At age nineteen, Martha was married in a beautiful satin dress which cost only $29.00.  The guests arrived, and stayed over!  The wedding happened during one of the worst snow blizzards ever.

Martha has many memories regarding the difficulties of asthma.  “My mother said before I got married, ‘you can’t get married because you know that is going to kill you’.  So after I got married she said ‘you can’t have children because you know that is going to kill you.”  You know I never felt better than when I was pregnant.  I would have been pregnant forever!  When I had my fourth one the doctor said, ‘now that’s enough’.  I said you know me…I’ll be back here in a year!”

Martha’s husband Wilf got a job in a logging camp on the island.  He was there on his own for a few months then decided to have the family pack up (now consisting of four children) and join him.  Martha and family spent one year there, twenty-five miles from Campbell River, B.C.  The logging camp was one big mud hole.  One day while Wilf and his friend went fishing, Martha was back at the cabin doing the laundry for six.  When she went to push the newly hung line of clean clothes out, the whole line came down right into the mud!  “I was never so mad” she recalls. The neighbor warned the guys when they came back from their fishing trip of what had happened.  Martha remembers the door opening and the men throwing their hats onto the floor checking to see if it was safe to come in!  It was really quite funny!

Wilf decided he was going to buy a place in Campbell River.   When Martha heard this she replied “you took me over the mountains, away from my family and now across the ocean.  I’m going back!” 

Sadly, at the age of thirty-six Wilf suffered a heart attack.  He was unable to receive disability (something else people had to fight for and eventually got, too late) so Martha had to get a job.  She found a job working as a nurse’s aid at the Vancouver General Hospital.  During this time Martha was also pregnant. After working as a nurse’s aid she began to waitress at night so Wilf could be home with the children. Eventually the waitresses were let go from the job.  When Martha went to apply for unemployment they said “no”.  Martha appealed.  When she went before the appeal board a man asked her if she had children and when she said yes he said, “You have no business working” and denied her benefits!

With Wilf unable to work and no disability income Martha had no choice but to start her own business.  Her brother-in-law came and helped her set up a coffee shop.  This was one of her hardest jobs.  Even with the help of two workers, and Ruth (her daughter) getting the boys ready for school, Martha worked morning to night seven days a week.  The only day they were closed was Sundays. 

Wilf decided to buy the Buena Vista Motel and trailer park on the King George Highway in Surrey.  She remembers the day she saw the motel, “I looked at the overgrown lawns and the cabins that were falling apart and I just stood on the driveway and cried.”  With 5 children and a run down motel she never cried so much.  One year later Wilf died of a massive heart attack.   With six children (one being a seven month old) and a funeral to arrange, Martha had no time to grieve.  The day her husband died Martha came back to the motel to find one of the heaters in one of the cabins was having a problem.  When she went to the cabin to fix it the fellow there told her his wife had left him and cleaned him out.  He was so upset she just listened to him.  She never did tell him her husband had just died.

The story of the purchase of the motel is one in its own.  The short version is the man Martha and Wilf purchased the motel from decided he didn’t want to sell it to them.  He thought they could just run it for him and he would rake off the profit. All of this after the papers had already been signed!  Martha and Wilf fought through the courts about this issue and unfortunately it continued, to Martha’s dismay, after Wilf’s death.  Martha was at her wits end only to find the lawyers were crooked!  What was she to do?  Being a woman of action Martha decided to go to the media and talked to Jack Webster.  It was he who recommended a reputable law firm to her.  In the end for only $130.00 they got everything straightened out, a fraction of what the other lawyers had charged her.

People who lived in the trailer park consisted mostly of retiree’s.  They became a built in babysitting group for Martha.  She was so fortunate to have their support.  As for bookkeeping, Martha couldn’t have done it without the help of Wilf’s older brother Ed.  He was a great help.  When she said she couldn’t do it anymore, and was about to give up, it was Ed that told her “you have to do it!”

Family wanted Martha to sell the place and move back to Saskatchewan. “I thought, oh yeah, with six kids that novelty would wear off in a hurry!” she says.  Alone, Martha ran the business for two years with four children in school, and two babies at home.  The boys missed so much school because they were called home so often. 

The boys were needed to help out with the motel and trailer park which was located on six acres!   She often thought they wouldn’t make it through school but they all did.  They also helped out with the other children.  Especially helpful with the younger children was her daughter.   The story can’t be told without the mention of Martha’s six children Rick, Ernie, Ruth, Chris, Wilf and Kurt.  They all helped Martha so much.

When Martha met her second husband Doug, she couldn’t believe he wanted to take on her six children and the motel.  Doug’s oldest son was already out on his own, so Doug and his daughter moved into Martha’s two-bedroom house with one bathroom.  “Talk about a wonderful man!”

Martha wondered how things would be for Doug and his daughter, moving into such a big family.  She was happy to learn later her stepdaughter has fond memories of having big bon fires on birthdays. It was a good experience for her.

Doug was a projectionist and carpenter.  Martha recalls he never missed a day’s work!  Even when she broke her arm, he still went to work.  “I remember one day I went to the post office, I was almost in tears.  The person there said I see you broke your arm.  I said yes, and I can’t even do up my own brassier and I can’t tie up my shoelaces!”  Everyone in the post office had a chuckle.

Growing up on the farm Martha learned valuable lessons.  One time her mother was repairing a leather shoe with a large needle and string.  Accidentally, the needle went through part of her thumb and out the nail.  She told Martha’s brother to get the pliers and pull it out.  That’s the way Martha’s mother dealt with things.  She was always in charge.   Martha believes she got her strength from her mother.  Her dad on the other hand, in midst of a crisis would just light a cigarette.  He just didn’t know what to do.

Martha’s friend May came into her life via a motor home.  May had enough of living in a motor home so Martha offered May and her husband a cabin, free of rent, in exchange for May’s help around the motel.  This mutual understanding worked out perfectly for the nine years May stayed, and they became great friends.

Since the motel was so close to the border there were always strange things happening.  In the seventies there was a double murder in the house across from the motel.  Three guys were hired to kill a fisherman and his fiancé happened to be there, so they killed her too.  Martha recalls that day.  She was having a cup of coffee “I noticed a car that looked suspicious and I got my binoculars.  I got a good look at the guys.  Eventually I ended up having to identify them and what an experience that was.  I had to go to court everyday I was so nervous.  I couldn’t concentrate to read so I went to Woolworth’s and got two pillowcases and sat there doing my embroidery.  Every time I went up to testify I would snag my dress on the stand, so I told somebody about it and said ‘I’ll bring a hammer tomorrow and do it myself.’  The next day it was fixed.  When I had to go identify the suspects, two officers sat at each door with rifles.  My heart was pounding so hard I was sure everyone could hear it beating.”

Martha recalls how her love of baking was a great help to her as well.  “I remember when I used to get upset, and that was quite frequently because there was always something going on that shouldn’t have been going on!  I would come in the house and start to bake, that way I could beat the heck out of something without killing it!  The kids would come in and say, ‘ok mom what happened?’”

Martha sold the motel in 1999.  She just felt she had had enough.  “I feel I had a better education at the motel than I could have gotten at university, good and bad.” 

Doug and Martha moved to a house in White Rock.  The first thing Martha noticed in her new house was the phone and the doorbell never rang.  “I felt like the bottom fell out!” Doug agreed with Martha to become more involved in the church.  They enjoyed singing in the choir, and Martha did baking for funerals and such.

Recently Martha tried to go on a trip with her sisters to Hawaii.  When she was preparing to go she broke her ankle going down the stairs.  Once again Martha’s way of dealing with things shines through.  She didn’t want to bother anyone so she waited until the next day to call her family! 

After surgery, and home alone, she devised her own way of letting the nurses in and getting the mail.  She made a pulley system with a string and a safety pin on the end with her house key.  She lowered it for the nurse to open the door.   As for the mail she used a slightly different approach, she lowered a plastic bag for the mailman to put the mail in.

Martha gave birth to six children, became a businesswoman in charge of a motel on a Grade 8 education and lived through the death of two husbands.  One can see the strength Martha pulled from her mother in a comment she made. “You learn to do things like that when you are my mother’s daughter; you just do what has to be done.”

Martha recollects, “I wouldn’t have wanted to miss any of my experiences I have had…(she laughs) other than the logging camp!”

Martha has accomplished her dream, and has a marvelous “ball team” of family and friends!