The Victoria Community Development Corporation
Joshua Antle

"When I was fifteen, I went to work on the Labrador."

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My parents were William and Elizabeth Antle. There were fourteen of us at one time and we all lived at home Even my aunt lived with us for a couple of years. My grandparents also lived with us. My grandmother was a very active women but my grandfather was crippled and he mostly stayed in a chair in the living room. If my grandmother didn't pay attention to him he would fall on the floor so that she would have to help him up and he would get the attention. The women done all the work around the house while the men were going away to work.

I worked home until I was fifteen years old. Then in the summer of 1939 I went to work on the Labrador. In 1940 I went to work on a crusher in Argentia. After this I worked with the Navy, also in Argentia, as a truck driver. I was working on the base and one day I was speeding and I happened to pass my boss who stopped me and asked if I was speeding. I looked at my boss and sauced him; so he fired me. Then I went to work at the steel plant in Sydney from June until December. In January I went to Buchans for three years. In 1945 I worked as a truck driver in Goose Bay.

In 1949 both myself and my wife had to go to the sanatorium in St. John's because we had tuberculosis. She got out in September of 1950 and I got out in February of 1951. After this I went to St. John's and became a bus driver with the city buses for ten years.

I also had my own business with my brother operating heavy equipment and machinery and in 1983 we sold the heavy equipment. This business employed five or six people in Victoria.

We had a two-story house and when we would go to bed we would warm a brick or a beach rock and put it at the bottom of the bed to keep our feet warm. Another way that we would keep warm is my mother used to put mats and old coats over us. It would be so cold that when we would get up in the morning we would breathe on the frost on the window to make a little peep hole so we could see what the weather was like outside.

Everyone would help do the chores. I would light the fire in the morning and then go feed the horses, come in and get my breakfast and then go in the woods. The women cooked and washed clothes and my mother would have to bake bread every night. In a week she would use 50 pounds of flour. I would also have to cut hay, cut and haul wood, set potatoes while my mother spread the fertilizer and everyone would help dig the potatoes.

Mondays were wash days. To wash clothes we had a pork barrel cut off at the middle and put on two chairs. Then we would warm the water on the stove in an iron pot for one or two hours and then we poured the water into the barrel with the clothes. For soap we would use glycerin soap.

We planted our own vegetables such as potatoes, turnip, cabbage, beets, parsnips and carrot. We'd sell some of the potatoes and turnip. We kept cows, pigs, hens, and a horse. Towards Christmas we would kill the pigs then smoke them in what we called the smoke room. We would use the ribs and legs for bacon and ham. We used to have bacon and ham all winter long.

In my free time I used to play hide and go seek, spin the top, baseball and tiddly.

We were not a musical family and church was always important. Here in the community there was the LOBA and the Orangemen's group. Ninety-nine percent of the organizations in Victoria were somehow connected with the church.

We had all of the holidays that we have now but at Easter we would buy a hat to go to church. Christmas was more religious. There used to be horse races and I remember there was an archway in by the Post Office for the coronation of King George.

We had a big school with three classes, two downstairs and one upstairs. Around 1945-1946 they built a big wooden piece on to the school and that made eight or nine more rooms. The front of the school faced towards Burke's Hill Road. Mr. Hunter Deering was the first person to have a school bus. In each class there would be about twenty to twenty-two students who used a pencil and a slate to do their work. Two pencils would cost one cent.

If you got sick the midwife would come and the undertaker would come if you were dead. If you got sick you would go to Carbonear to visit the only doctor, Doctor Stranford, and if you were really sick the doctor would come to visit you. If a woman went in labour you had to run for the midwife and the doctor if he was needed. If there was a serious emergency you had to get on the train and go to St. John's.

Click here for a PDF version of Victoria: Recalling Our Heritage.

Stories

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Power Plant | Victoria's Birth | Prison Camp | Midwifery

Special Memories

Click below for each memory
Josh Antle | Eva Ash | Samuel Burke | Doris Clarke | Ester Clarke | James Clarke
John Clarke | Nathaniel Clarke | Reg and Emmie Clarke | Roy Clarke
Beulah Cole | Mark Cole | Steve Cole | Clarence Collins | Nina Curnew
James Dean | Helen Higdon | Leonard Inniss | Fanny Inniss | Millie Langer | Virda Layden
Hazel Peckham | Violet Parsons | Norman Penney | Rosalie Penney | Harold Priddle
George Snooks | Sarah Snow | Jean Stephenson | William Stephenson
Lillian Vaters | Maxine Vaters | Annie Whyte | Cyril Whyte