Narratives 16 To The End of WWII

On August 9th of 1944 a thunder storm worked it's way up from the West and brought hail with it. Some of the stones were as big as a turkey egg. 144 filled a pail. Bill collected 3 pails of it for soft water.
In July of 1944 I arrived in Keliher for embarkation leave prior to leaving Canada. I went to the post office and asked Mr. Eric Stevens if there was anyone in town from the South country so I could get a ride. He said, I will get you a ride. Last year I got stuck down your way and your brother pulled me out with his team of horses. Mr. Stevens would not accept any payment. I offered him money for smokes but he said he did not smoke. I said , for beer then, and he said he did not drink. Mr. Stevens just wanted to pay back my brother's good deed and he hired Hector Thompson to drive me home that day.
I believe my embarkation leave ended on cousin Donald's 17th birthday. Anyway, it was a Sunday and Sandy Goff drove us up to Leross to catch the train for the East coast. It was the same Model T Ford that his Dad had met Aunt Alice and Uncle Horrie with at the train station in 1919 when they arrived in Canada. It was now 25 years later. While I was home on embarkation leave, cousin Bud came home having been discharged from the army.
I went over to England on the troop ship Empress Of Scotland. Before the war this ship was named The Empress of Japan. While in England, besides my many duties, I visited most of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. They all made me welcome and I had an enjoyable time.
On the 26th of January, 1946, we set sail for New York on the world's largest ocean liner, the Queen Elizabeth. We ran into some very rough seas with waves 20 feet high but we never felt it as it was such a large ship.

Dick Nevard with the relatives in England, 1945.

Narratives 15 WWII

In 1944 the Reverend Tingey took the Church services at Headlands school. He came from Cupar. Up til then we had been having the rector from Ituna.

Anglican congregation at Headlands school in later years. 1951.
In the summer of 1941 Cousin Bud joined the Canadian Army and went to England later that year. On January 19, 1943 Bill drove us to Lipton with the team and sleigh  . It was a cold morning with the temperature dipping down to 40 below zero. I took the train to Regina to begin my life in the army. The saddest part of my life came in September of that year when I got a letter from my brother Bill informing me of the death of our mother. My Major granted me ten days compassionate leave so I caught the midnight train from Wainright, Alberta where I was stationed at the time. I arrived the next morning in Ituna at ten a:m. I did not stop for anything to eat there figuring I would reach Keliher by dinner time. I headed West on what is now the grid road not realizing that Keliher was further North and I would not pass it. It took me 12 hours to walk home. Towards the end I sat down for a rest every now and then. I was hungry, not having eaten for 24 hours. 

Narratives, 2

I know nothing more of Charles Fuller, never having heard of the name until I came across it at the Lands Titles Office. I'd heard that two other men came up with Dad and Uncle Arthur. The fact that Fuller filed on his homestead on the same date and his homestead number follows the others in sequence convinces me that he was one of the four. Bill told me that Dad spoke of a man named Wernick and thought he was one of the men who came up with dad and Uncle Arthur. There is no record of Wernick in Lands
branch office so I am afraid Mr. Wernick will remain a mystery. Bill also spoke of another Mr. Brown who he thought came up with the others.
I think Dad worked out both summers of 1904 and 05. He spent one winter on the homestead. He chored on a farm in Manitoba for a man named Foster. It was in open country and a blizzard came up while Dad was at the barn. There was no rope connecting the house and barn to guide him and he very nearly missed the house on his way back. He had just passed the house when a lull in the storm showed him where the house was.
In 1883 the Hogg colony was started over East in the next range. According to Walter Norris there were about two hundred came and settled a whole township. Mr. Quinton Hogg owned a large estate in England. He paid their way out to Canada and when they got their homesteads he took a lien on them. Crops were frozen and most of the men gave up their homesteads. a few stayed for a few years Tom Norris left his homestead and took another in the Hayward district close to Charlie Neil. Tom Norris had worked for Quinton Hogg in England as his gardener.
 Bob Drever told me that Joe Atkinson had the post office in Lipton in 1910.

Mr. Atkinson went back to England. Both he and Tom Norris homesteaded with the Hogg Colony.
In 1902 the Jewish Colonization Association started a Jewish colony northeast of the present site of Lipton. There were about 40 families in the colony. The Jews were scattered roughly from a few miles north of Lipton to a few miles south of Keliher. Herzel school was eight miles northeast of Lipton. There was a Jew on the southeast quarter of Section 24 after Charles Fuller left. His name was David Fastofsky. There is a Jewish cemetery three miles north of Lipton and six and three quarter miles east and three quarter miles north. There are 76 graves there.
Uncle Horrie came out to Canada in the spring of 1906. Mother and my older brother Bill sailed from Liverpool on June 20, 1906. Bill and I went to Liverpool to visit cousin Leslie Nevard and his wife Betty just 69 years later to the day. It was not planned that way, just co-incidence. When Bill got on board ship at age two he called out to his Aunt Emily, aunt Emmy, can I have another candy"? She replied, yes dear.

As a school girl Mother never dreamed she would ever come to Canada. One day in school Mr. Motom , the teacher , was taking a geography lesson and pointed out the province of Manitoba. He said "this is man-ah-to-bah, some day some of you may immigrate out there." Mother's thought was, oh maybe the boys might but she never would. Her brothers never did come out here but she did. Mother came out with another lady who had been out here before. I believe her name was Miss Prince. She came out to marry her fiancee, a Mr. Hammil. As the train steamed on it's way to Winnipeg Mother noticed the wild roses blooming and the prairie grass. She thought Canada can't be such a bad country if roses grew there. A passenger got off the train at one stop and picked some roses for her.

Mary and Bill Nevard.