The Victoria Community Development Corporation
Nathaniel Clarke

"We would put nails across the track so the train would run over them."

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In my family there were twenty-three of us including Mom and Dad. I had twenty brothers and sisters but not all of them didn't live, two or three died. My father was Gus Clarke and he had a brother by the name of Alf Clarke and another named Willis Clarke. My grandmother was part of our family. Her name was Aunt Valla Clarke.

I was a carpenter and a painter and worked on Bell Island and in St. John's. My father used to go to Nova Scotia to work in the coal mines. The women mostly stayed home and raised their family and kept the house. I can remember going to Labrador It was a new experience for me because I never fished before and I was only fourteen years old.

My father's house was a two-story house with no plumbing or running water. We had to make sure that there was water lugged for the night and we had to clave splits and make sure they were brought in. I remember when I got my first television; it was a Marconi.

Everyone would help with the chores. My mother used to wash clothes everyday because of the big family.

We planted every kind of vegetable and we had around 150 hens, a cow and a calf, a goat, pigs, sheep and a horse.

I used to play cricket, baseball and a scattered time if we had a pair of skates, we would go skating. I also used to play the mouth organ.

Church was important in our activities. I didn't go to church or Sunday School every week but I did go once in a while.

Certain days in the summer the Orangemen would have a picnic. I can remember Uncle Jack Lambert. He used to boil the kettle in front of the church on the school field. He would take the kettle inside if the weather wasn't suitable. After the men were finished eating we would take our mug along with us with a piece of string tied onto our mug so we would know which one was ours.

Christmas was quite different. We never had much to celebrate. There was a lot of jannying. Nearly everyone would go jannying back then.

There were no paved roads and we would travel by horse and carriage. I can remember the train. I was very young when the train used to go through so I didn't travel on it. Me and me brother when we would hear the train blowing. It would be blowing out by Freshwater Station and we lived over here by the road and about 400 feet from our house would be the track. We used to run up and put nails on the track across each other and when the train would run them over them it would flatten them out and make an X out of them.

There was one doctor, Dr. Stanford. He belonged to Carbonear. This doctor, in the winter time, he'd use a horse and sleigh and no matter how stormy it was, he'd get in.

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

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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