The Victoria Community Development Corporation
Mark Cole

"I used to pick berries for 10 cents a gallon."

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I had five brothers and two sisters. I lived here all my life.

My grandfather went back and forth to the Labrador. He had a schooner that was his pride and joy. One time his son, Nat, who was in college studying to become a minister, went with him. My grandfather was looking out over the shore to see where they were headed. He asked Nat to see what's on the chart. "What's that place there?" Nat told him it was an iceberg. "An iceberg wouldn't be on the chart now, would it?" he was looking for an island. My grandfather said that's what it is to have learning!

I had an uncle that went to Labrador. He was handling the wheel at the time. At that time they used to go by the names of the rocks because they had no education. There was a fellow alongside him who asked the name of the rocks and the name of the islands. My uncle would tell him.

My father came from Carbonear. They cut out a path down there. There were no roads then. My uncle and Mr. Taylor took axes and cut out a path to build a house. They came here because there was a good supply of water. There was one man who had a house and they were hauling it to Victoria. When they got to the Ridge, that man decided against bringing his house to Victoria, and the men hauled it back to Crocker's Cove.

I had an older uncle in Freshwater. There were two doctors there at the time in Carbonear. My uncle was 92 at the time and blind in one eye.

The Coles came from Crocker's Cove and my father came in here. He's dead now. I believe that it's been 15 or 16 years. My father was Ambrose Cole and he was about eight when he came here and he died when he was 85 or there about.

I fished in Labrador with my father when I was a boy. I gave it up before my father did. Sometime around the Depression. My father worked in the mines at Buchans after that.

I used to cut hay, haul caplin and keep animals. We had hens, sheep, cows, and horses. I used to pick berries for 10 cents a gallon. You would get a note, not cash.

To buy a pan of bread it costed 10 or 12 cents a pan. A can of beans was 10 cents and a pack of smoking tobacco was also 10 cents. That was about all the money I had because I only had about 3 gallons of berries. I would get the bread, beans and tobacco and use it the next day. All summer we would be trying to save money for rubber boots which was $2.50 a pair.

I hauled the caplin from Spout Cove. I would go about 9 miles. I hauled the caplin back then for 35 cents a load and 10 cents a barrel. I would get a serving call around $2.50 to $4.00 a month.

There was a house in Spaniards' Bay and it was haunted. Someone would live in it far a little while and then move and sell it because they said they saw the ghost.

The last fellow who owned it figured out what it was. When the wind blew Northwest, it would go through the boards and this was what made the noise that everyone thought was the ghost. So it wasn't a ghost after all.

My uncle told me once that there was an old woman who would rock in her chair. She was dead but at night the chair could be heard rocking. The chair was sold and it happened again. After that, they beat up the chair and there they found lots of money! The old woman came back to help them find all the money.

This is a true story. To me it is true because my father told me and I believed everything my father told me. Someone gave my father an old door and he brought it home and he was going to hang it the next day. That night, my father heard a noise and so did everyone else in the house. It sounded like the dampers moving down on the old wood stove. Every time he would go down stairs the dampers would be tipped up. Someone didn't want his to have that door.

The house we lived in was old. There were no insulation and no electricity, but they used kerosene lamps for light. Some people had white floors. There was no canvas back then. They would scrub the floor with a scrub brush. We had to fill up the buckets with water because there was no running water. We also had no indoor bathroom. There was a pot we would put under our beds at night. It would get so cold that the pot would freeze.

When we went to bed, there were a lot of quilts on the bed. If we were cold, we would take the hooked mat on the floor and put that over us.

A man was watching TV once and when the broadcaster said, " thank-you for looking in on me." Then man said "see, thought you said he couldn't see me?" his son replied, " Sure, he can't see you!". "Well," said the man, "he said thanks for looking in on me." People didn't understand how TV's worked back then.

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The Victoria Community Development Corporation Mark Cole

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The Victoria Community Development Corporation
Mark Cole