There were four crockery barrels on our back porch. I was four years old.  We all had jobs.  My job was to get things from the crocks.  One held eggs preserved in water-glass; one was filled with oolichans (eels) in salt; one, my mother’s concoction of lye, oil and I don’t know what, which was the soap used for dishes, the floor, the laundry, the dog and our Saturday night baths in the tin wash tub; and one, goose grease, the salve of all bad things from cut fingers to leg-aches and whooping cough.

When I see an episode of the TV show, “Survivor,” featuring people touching or tasting unusual forms of life: insects, worms and the like, I am returned immediately to the back porch, West Saanich 1941; my fingers dipping in to those awful, cold, nasty-smelling  textures and all that “survival” meant then.

The job of my next-oldest brother, Roy, six years old, was to perform one-hundred strokes on the hand-pump at the well on Monday morning before school. Other days we used the bucket down the well but Monday was wash-day and my mother needed more water to fill the big pot on the stove. 

The comedic Roy’s dramatic yelling of “this is slavery”  ricocheting down the Durrance Farm valley, as we all counted to one hundred, will last in my memory forever.

My eldest brother, Bob, the only one with a clear memory of my father who had died in the war, and who, because of that had become “the man of the house”, held the job of hunting to provide the occasional change to chicken, eggs and milk, the staples of our ten acre scrub farm.   

My mother had been a crack-shot, had taught us about guns and the “twenty-two” above our door was a respected piece of the décor. Only Bob was allowed to touch it.  I remember him, skinny, pale and proud as a soldier, aged eight, stumbling home up the gravel road with the gun and a brace of pheasant for a celebratory dinner.

There are so many memories of Vancouver Island before it was “discovered”.

What about the thick, grey-coated foliage of every tree and blade of grass from the top of the Malahat to Mill Bay…  was that where Bamberton was? 

What are your memories?       Did we “survive?”

I think so.

Anne Duggan.
Advice and Advocacy for Seniors & Families. 
778-265- 9715   anne@advisingseniors.ca 

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