The Victoria Community Development Corporation
Eva Ash

"If you could run and jump on a horse's back, you were old enough to ride it."

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In my family there were ten children and my two parents. My parents were Samuel and Cecilia (Snow). My grandparents were Francis and Myra Collins and Henry and Cecilia Butt.

The women stayed home because they had to keep house. I mostly did housework which included getting our water from the well. We used to bring it in buckets. We used to have to bring in the wood and coal, too. The women would do all the clothes and wash the dishes.

On Saturday night we would polish our shoes for Sunday and shine em' and lay 'em on a bench We had to go to church on Sunday mornings. All the vegetables had to be peeled on Saturday night.

All vegetables were planted. We planted everything. Potatoes, turnip, carrot and cabbage. The only animal we kept was cow.

The grandparents helped out doing the cooking and sewing. My husband (Baden Ash) was overseas. When he came back he went to the Labrador surveying land. He got our first radio when we got married in 1941. It was battery operated because the war was on and we couldn't get a meter for the electricity.

When we were children we used to play cobby. We would get out the cans and make mud cakes. Then we would play shop. We would have checkers and we would play on the verandah. We would have to clean it off before Father came home. The only musical instrument we had was the spoons.

The church was important in activities because my parents were that type. Sunday morning at 10 o'clock we would have catechism. At 11 o'clock we would go to church. We would come have at 12 o'clock, get our lunch and then come home for supper, then go back to church again. As part of the church there was the Ladies Aid, now called the UCW.

Every summer we always had a Sunday School picnic. Then the rich people who had a car would pick us up and take us to Carbonear. Then we would come back for the races. In the night time, we would play hoist your sails and run. We also had garden parties.

In Christmas there was mummering. We would decorate our tree with fruit such as grapes and oranges. We would put rosebuds all around the tree. For presents we would probably get a pair on knit socks. We had our stockings filled with oranges and apples, grapes and nuts and candy. There would be some little toy.

I lived in Carbonear and I went to school at College High in Carbonear. It was a nice building that had a janitor and a coal furnace. There was four rooms. It went from Kindergarten to grade 11. I used chalk and slate. Then we got pencils and scribblers around grade 4.

Our main means of transportation was walking. There was no such thing as a driver's license or an automobile. There was only a horse and cart. If you could run and jump on the horse's back, you were old enough to ride it. There were only gravel roads. I can remember when the train used to go through Carbonear, Victoria and down the shore. There was a station down on the track.

In Carbonear, there was one doctor, Dr. Stanford. He would visit people house to house. In the winter he would travel by horse and cart. In the summer he went around in a car. All we had to take then was cod liver oil.

When we went into labour we would call the midwife. Back then the midwife was called a granny and she would come and born the baby in the mother's bedroom. They used to boil water and scissors. If someone got pregnant and they weren't married, the pregnancy was hidden away because that was the biggest sin of all.

Some home remedies they used were cod liver oil, Minard's lineament, Sloane's lineament. If you were constipated they would give you Epsom's salt and goose grease.

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