The Victoria Community Development Corporation
Doris Clarke
Contributed by: Brenda Rose (grand-daugher)

"I used to toast bread on the damper of the wood stove."

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I had three brothers and five sisters. My mother was Alice Pye and she married my father, Samuel White. When I was nine years old, my mother died. I had to do everything for the four of my sisters who were younger then me.

Me father remarried when I was twelve years old so I went out and began to work on my own. I started working at my older sister May's house to get the earn of my breakfast. I didn't get money only food.

My First real job was my first trip to the Labrador. I was thirteen years old. I went on the old Kyle. She's up in Harbour Grace now. The conditions on the boat were bad. You had to go down in the hatch and sleep on a pile of old bags you had to carry down to the Labrador. I remember when we had to use the pail. My Sister-in-law, Ann, used to sing out loud for all the men to hear - the hymn "When the Fountain Lies Open". There were thirty or forty of us girls that went down and it took two weeks to get down on the Labrador on the old Kyle. We had a good time though, playing cards, singing songs, dancing, and carrying on with the boys.

I remember when we got to the Labrador. There were old shacks set up for us in a place called White Bears. It was a fishing village set up for the summer. My job was to cook. I had five men to feed. I made fish' n' brewis, homemade bread, beans, soup, everything a man could want. I stayed down in Labrador for three months of the year doing this, June, July, August. For three months I earned thirty dollars.

I went to the Labrador for two summers but the second year I went to a place called Indian Tickles. This time I had nine men to feed and a mistress to look after. The mistress was the skipper's wife and I had to carry her breakfast in the bed to her every morning! On this trip I had my brother Sam with me. He would go down on the stage and go to sleep on a pile of salt while the men were out hauling their traps. He would stay there until I'd go down and call him when I heard the click of the skipper's motorboat and then I would help him draw the water for the skipper's fish. He was supposed to have all this done but he would go to sleep and then I had to go down and help him besides cooking breakfast for all the men!

The men would go out around four o'clock in the morning to haul their traps and be in again around seven o'clock with their load of fish. I never had anything to do with the fish unless now it was on "the bond" when they got it salted. I used to go on the bond when they spread it out, actually it was a fleet of white rocks.

One time I drove a jigger in me hand. There were about thirty-five jiggers on a piece of wire and I was drawing a gallon of molasses at the time. The molasses was in a puncheon and I was moving the jigger but it went into the palm of my hand. The mistress wanted to cut my hand open with a razor blade to get the jigger out and sew it up with a needle and sewing cotton. However, anther man wouldn't let her do it. He cut it off with a hatchet and took half out one side and half out the other. If I had let mistress cut it open I could have lost my hand.

Another time I lost my middle finger. One time I was cleaning fish to cook. I drove a fish bone up in under my middle finger nail. It rotted off halfway but an old man from Carbonear, Mr. Thistle, would come and dress it every morning and it grew out like a sock that was topped off. You never had no easy time in Labrador!

At the beginning of every summer I used to walk down to Kingston on the Nor' Shore three days out of a week. I was in collar then. That's in service when you had to go get things ready before you went on the Labrador.

We had to set potatoes and clean up everything. This was for the same people we went on the Labrador with. We had to work in their houses here, too. This was all included in our three months pay. We had to do this for two weeks, from daylight until dark.

We had a good time too, now. ‘Cause there were such crowd of us. The girls were chasing the boys and fighting over them.

When we left for the Labrador we left from Carbonear Pubic Wharf. It was rough going. I used to get seasick. It sure was rough going.

I went to the Labrador for two summers and the winter after I got back, when I was fifteen, I got married. The first night, after we went to the parsonage to get married, we went up to me sister May's house for a cup of tea. Then George went home and I went home. I didn't see him for another two weeks! Finally, ten or eleven of the boys got together and built a two room house for us in one day. There was a bedroom and a kitchen that we lived in. Then I had eleven children so the house got bigger and bigger!

George's father, my father-in-law, was Alexander Clarke but everyone called him Sandy. His mother , my mother-in-law, was Providence Dean but everyone called her Provie.

My husband worked and fished and hunted for us but I helped him out as much as I could. I used to pick berries for ten cents a gallon. I used to pick fifteen gallons a day with my hands. I had to take all my children with me as I had them. There was no baby-sitters around then.

One time I had two children with me. One was about one year old and the other about two. We were crossing the dam into the water supply and the two of them fell off into the water and cut their heads. At that same time I was eight months pregnant! There was a man came by and helped me get the children out of the water. Then he boiled the kettle and got me a cup of tea. The next day my friend who goes berry picking with, Aunt Fanny King, told me I couldn't go that I had to stay home. But I wouldn't listen to her, I went anyway! I'd go into the Big Level and up in the Rocky Pond Burn everyday. There used to be a man, poor Murdock Slade, who'd be in there on the hills to buy the berries from you. One day he went over on the Big Level and lugged all my berries out for me.

I used to lug every drop of water. I'd have to go up in the hill to the well in winter. I used to wash clothes with a wash tub and wash board; and we made our own soap.

I also used to lug wood. I would get between fourteen and fifteen turn of boughs a day! A turn is as mush as I could heave upon me back with a rope and someone else with me. I think that's why I'm cripple today.

It was hard feeding a big family and I never had a dollar from one end of the year to the next. I reared my family on nothing, a lot of lassy bread and tea! One of our traditional meals was salt meat boiled with carrots, turnip, cabbage and potatoes and sometimes we had a "pease pudding" with it.

Aunt Lot Parsons, the midwife, delivered all my babies except for one. All of them were born in our house. There was a doctor, Dr. Stanford, but back then you'd rather have a woman who could do the same thing. The doctor usually wouldn't come unless you were dying anyhow!

I had eleven children but four of my boys died as babies. I remember one of them was over fifteen pounds when he was born! There was Phyllis, Alice, Mary, Harold, Eileen, Goldie, and Elsie. If there were any doctors and hospitals around like there are now, they all would have lived. But they wouldn't have lived long enough to get them around the bay into St. John's. There were no roads then and no cars. It's not like it is now. I remember when I was having my second baby. Uncle Bill Dean had given me seven wire poles and I sawed up the seven of them at seven o'clock and twelve o'clock that night my baby was born. I just had to get it out of the way!

Every year we'd set our own vegetables. We set a lot and in the winter we had a cellar where we could put them all. I used to dig all the potatoes out with a potato digger.

My husband, George, also got a lot of food for us when he traveled the country. He would get trout, partridge and grouse every day by the dozens. It's not like it is today, only allowed to catch so many. He would go and catch a washing tub full of trout. I'd get sick of frying them all so they wouldn't spoil because there were no fridges then to keep them in. It's heaven now compared to what I had it like. Things have changed but I wouldn't part wit anything!

One time I used to mix two batches of bread a day for my children. One in the morning and one at night. In the morning I'd fry gandies for me children's breakfast to go to school. I made the gandies out of the dough from me bread and fried in a frying pan.

I never had any trouble to get me children off to school. They all got up and washed there faces in the face pan and off they went.

The first car we had was a ‘62 Ford. The family were pretty well reared up then and the roads weren't paved. Anytime when the children were sick, we would have to get them ready and take them to Carbonear on a horse and sleigh so they could see the doctor.

One in particular had asthma. She had to go out to get a needle. If she didn't get out she would have died. After the doctor got a car and he knew how sick she was, he would come to visit her. He would come every second evening to give her a needle but when he did, he would drive in the road with no lights on because of all the people that come out looking for him. He wouldn't turn the lights on until he came to our girl first because she was so sick.

We had to pay to see the doctor but usually he would be happy to get the trout and partridge my husband gave him. One time I gave the doctor fifty cents to lance my hand. I had cut it and it got infected so the doctor cut it to get the infection out. However, it got worse and only for Aunt Lily Cole, I would have still lost my hand! She would come every morning and dress it. She would put soft bread poultice on it. She would put bread to soak and then she'd put it on the stove and boil it and make a poultice to put on it. It would draw the infection out.

There were no street lights or lights in the house. We used lamps. We would burn coal and wood to keep the house warm. Sometimes in the morning I would have to break the ice out of the bucket and melt it on the stove to give my children before they went to school. I used to toast the bread for them on the damper of the wood stove back then. They loved it! When they came home for dinner, I'd have hash or chicken wings or something cooked for them.

I went to church, too, three times every Sunday. My children and I used to walk. In the wintertime there were no snow plows to clear the roads. You had to boot her through the snow just like it was! The snow used to be up the height of the two story houses. We would have to walk or slide down over it.

My children used to go randying on pieces of cardboard, canvas or whatever they could get. There were no randying slides or anything like that. Sometimes they would use a pork barrel stave, a piece out of a pork barrel. Some even made a "nansarey" (also called a hand-sarey) which was a seat on a pork barrel stave. A scattered one, usually the boys, had a "spancat," something like a nansarey.

In the summertime me children would go to the double brook catching branchies and go swimming. There was no such thing as a bathtub then, so they went to the brook. We never had a bathroom back then, only an old outhouse so the children had to get washed in a big scrubbing tub. Sometimes I would put two or three on the doorstep in the tub at the same time. I had to do that because I had to lug the water from the well up in the hill. I would do this with two big buckets and a hoop. This made it easier to lug by taking some of the weight off my arms.

I remember one time the boys made up a song about me brother Aus.

Aus got up in the morning, the sleep was in his eyes He tackled up the golden calf, and went for Mert and Ly
Down over the barrens to make the people laugh Lookin' for the hatchet to kill the golden calf.

They made up this song because he was going to kill a calf, and the calf was a golden colour.

I never made too much clothes though when me children were growing up. I used to make all me children's flannelette petticoats to wear under there clothes to keep them warm.

Aunt Lily Cole used to "turn coats" for the children to wear. She would turn an old coat that was worn for a year or two inside out to make it look like a new coat. They all wore hand-me-downs.

One time in Victoria clothes used to come from the United States in barrels that the government would sent. It would go to the United School and to the Orange Lodge. They divided it up between families that had children. Usually the more children you had, the more clothes you got.

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Special Memories

The Victoria Community Development Corporation Doris Clarke Contributed by: Brenda Rose (grand-daugher)

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Special Memories

The Victoria Community Development Corporation
Doris Clarke
Contributed by: Brenda Rose (grand-daugher)