Rural Manitoba Memories by Leanne Dyck (family memoir) part 4

In Part 3 of Rural Manitoba Memories,  you learned that my grandparents opened a tea room and grocery store in Eriksdale after WWI. You also learned (learnt) what it was like for my dad to grow up in Eriksdale. 

This Sunday? What did my dad do after graduating from school? Did he take over my grandfather's grocery store? Is that grocery store still run by my family?

Grandpa Willetts' store

Rural Manitoba Memories

Aunty Kay: Dad had the Red and White Store until after the war and sold it to Larry Whitney in the fall of 1945.

Leanne: Free of the store, Grandma and Grandpa moved to BC.

Grandma: When Mrs. Everette met us, she said, when I stepped off the train, “My, you look tired.”

My reply was, “You would too. I’ve been pushing this thing up every hill since Calgary, and holding it back on every down grade.”

R.H.H., reporter: This week’s column should be of particular interest to all those fortunate people who live in the vicinity of that locality known as Upper Lonsdale. In our wanderings up and down the avenue recently, we noticed that the local Post Office had moved...

This move seemed to us to be a fine opportunity to drop into Mr. Willetts’ new place... I like the new place and told him so. Four other people who came in while I was there, told him the same thing. If you haven’t been in there yet, I wish you would do so at your first visit to that popular shopping district. You, too, will approve of the change he has made, I’m sure.

Although only a small store, as stores go, Mr. Willetts has a wide variety of notions and dry goods. He is to be complimented on the fact that his entire stock looks so clean and fresh. This is an asset in itself as it inspires customer confidence.

I'm blessed to come from a family of writers. People who wrote for fun and to build community. Their writing built this memoir.

 The memories continue...

Read the next installment of 

Rural Manitoba Memories

on May 5 at approximately 4:40 P.M.

Just a normal Sunday afternoon, I thought, when...

Okay, so, picture this. My husband and I are playing our board game. Our usual Sunday fun

Rural Manitoba Memoirs by Leanne Dyck (family memoir) part 3

In Part Two of Rural Manitoba Memories, you learned that the First World War was hard on my grandfather and grandmother. This Sunday...?

After WWI, many soldiers returned to Canada to farm or to teach school or to... My grandfather... And what about my grandmother? Did they remain in Manitoba...in Eriksdale?

This is the house where my dad was born. I lived in this house until I was 20.

My grandfather built some if not all of this house.

Rural Manitoba Memories

Aunty Kay: Daddy returned in the spring of 1919.

Dad: I was born in Eriksdale in 1920 and as there was no hospital here I decided the easiest and simplest course was for me to be born at home, which I was—home being the house where we still live at the junction of highway 6 and 68.

Aunty Kay: In 1922, I arrived to complete the family.

Grandma: Home from the war, Jim decided to open a Tea Shop. We reasoned the farmers’ horses need a rest—the farmer also needs a spot of refreshment, like a cup of tea and buns—so in 1920, opened the shop. Jim couldn’t do it alone, so we added rooms on the back of the shop and moved in. Jimmie was 2 years old, Kay six months.

Dad: Eriksdale was an exciting, interesting place for a boy to grow up.

We lived downtown, where all the action was; farmers driving their horses to do their shopping and other business. Passenger trains and freight trains passed through town. Almost every night we would have a rock train thunder down the track.

We had four general stores, a butcher shop, two hotels, one of which was three stories high, there were a couple of blacksmith shops, a grain elevator, a creamery, and two garages.

Ward’s Garage was nearby. It was a favourite hang-out of mine until I began using colourful language that I’d picked up there. My mother was not impressed; decided if I was able to learn those words I could learn better things. So at the age of five, I was off to school.

My teachers were all dedicated people who worked very hard to give me an education.

Equipment and teaching aids were not readily available at the time so improvisation and inspiration were the tools they used.

Grandma: We were ten years in the restaurant business, gradually taking in a stock of groceries. As cars came in, the tea shop business declined and at last was dropped.

OTHER PEOPLE'S MEMORIES

Leanne (Willetts) Dyck

One of my summer jobs during High School was as a tour guide at the Eriksdale Museum. I enjoyed losing myself in other people's memories.

Maybe locals came in but I don't remember them. Tourists were the ones who stood out. They wanted to learn about us and the museum was their introduction. Most traveled from other parts of Manitoba or Canada or even from the United States. A man came from England. He impressed me by using four place names in his address. And I remember a woman. I'll always remember her.

I greeted her with a smile. "Hello, I'm Leanne Willetts."

And she said, "Willetts? Your grandfather, Mr. J.H. Willetts, owned a Red and White store. He sold groceries, dry goods, and cattle feed.

"The depression was hard on farmers like my dad. He needed feed for our cows, but he didn't have any money. Those cows were the only things keeping the wolf from our door. So, he swallowed his pride and asked your grandfather to loan him the feed.

"Mr. Willetts was a businessman. He needed to make money--his family needed to eat. But you know what your grandfather did?" Her eyes were wet with tears as she told me, "He gave my dad the feed--gave it to him."

Yes, I'll always remember her.

Aunty Kay: When they closed the lunch room [tea shop], we moved back to the house on the corner of what is now Highway 6 and 68.

Uncle Jim: Jim and I began our friendship in our early teens. Jim spent almost as much time at our house as he did at home. To begin with, everyone called him Jimmie the Kid, but that was soon shortened to just Kid.

We played hardball on the senior team, only because they needed all the bodies they could get. Jim played right field for a time. Jim also played goal for our hockey team.

If the other team got the first goal Jim would grit his teeth and they had to work hard to get any more! He played goal for Lundar too when our team thought they had a better goalie. He showed us a thing or two then!

Later on when I started driving truck, I would go and pick up Jim to go with me. Sometimes at night I would go and tap on his window to wake him up—NOT on his sister’s window! [Uncle Jim married Aunty Kay in the spring of 1946—and they lived happily ever after.] I was always afraid that their super-hound Snip would take a piece out of me! One year Jim drove for Pop, we went to all the country dances we could afford and got so we could do the Shottishe and all that.

Dad: All good things come to an end and school ended.

Leanne: My dad was sixteen when he attained the highest level of education available in Eriksdale, at the time—grade eleven. However, he continued to self-educate throughout his life. He especially enjoyed reading both religious and scientific books.

I'm blessed to come from a family of writers. People who wrote for fun and to build community. Their writing built this memoir.

 The memories continue...

Read the next installment of 

Rural Manitoba Memories

More about Eriksdale...

Rural Manitoba Memories by Leanne Dyck (family memoir) part 2

 In Part One of Rural Manitoba Memories,  you learned that my grandpa Willetts planted a seed in Eriksdale, Manitoba's rocky soil, that grew the tree that eventually produced me. This Sunday...?

Among my family's legacy is the story of the toll waiting takes on women during the time of war. 

I'm guessing but I think the woman in this photo is my grandma Willetts 

and I think she was a nurse's aide during WWI.

Rural Manitoba Memories

Aunty Kay: My mother was born in Manchester, England and came to Canada to stay with her sister-in-law and her three young nephews while my uncle Tom was working in Winnipeg.

Grandma: Mrs. Everette and I (I was twelve years younger than she) often talked about writing a book, in our younger days. We both had a good sense of humour, she used to say, “We’ll tell them what it is really like, living up here, how I broke my best Sunday-go-to-meeting parasol over the oxen’s back when he decided to walk into a mud hole to rest and relax on the way home from town.”

Aunty Kay: Uncle Tom’s homestead was next to my dad’s. My mom and dad were married the following year.

Leanne: My grandparents married on December 18, 1913. Seven months later—on July 28, 1914—the First World War was declared.

Grandma: Tom went overseas in 1914 and within nine months he was dead. Jim went overseas in 1916.

Leanne: As a newlywed, and while grieving her brother, Grandma had to watch her newly-wedded husband march off to war. I can’t even imagine how much courage, strength and faith she must have possessed. How many times did she twist the Mizpah ring on her finger and offer a silent prayer?

Mizpah Prayer

May the Lord watch between me and three while we are parted, one from another.

Grandpa was a pacifist. He requested to serve as a stretcher-bearer. The army, in its wisdom, made him a gunner.

Aunty Kay: Daddy served overseas at Arras, Lens and Passchendaele with the 16^th Canadian Scottish under Colonel Peck.

Leanne: TheCanadian Encyclopedia describes Lens as ‘the first major action fought by the Canadian Corps under a Canadian commander.’

Colonel Cyrus Wesley Peck was awarded the Victoria Cross and the Distinguished Service Order for acts of bravery.

A Tale From The First World War

A. J. Willetts [my dad]

published in Memory Opens the Door, 1974

One day after the folks had moved to BC, they were back here visiting and Dad went with me to the train to pick up the mail for the Post Office.

One of the crew stepped off the train and Dad said, "Well if it isn't Wilfred Lamb."

They shook hands and, pleased to meet each other, immediately began talking. As they chatted Dad told Mr. Lamb about a notice he had found on the wall of a bombed-out building in France, during the First World War. The notice advertised a boxing match, to be held in Eriksdale, between Wilfred Lamb, Peter Whittall and others.

Thinking the paper would be of interest to Mr. Lamb, Dad arranged to meet him on the station next morning when the train went south, to give it to him. Then he went on to tell me how he had come by the notice.

"I was with the 16^th Canadian, and they were a pretty tough regiment. It didn't matter how tired we were, we always marched back from the lines. But, there came a day at Passchendaele, when the regiment was in bad shape, we were told to make our way back as best we could. I was so weary I just had to sit down to rest.

"While I rested, my pack of ammunition slipped off unnoticed and I had gone quite a distance before I realized what had happened. Without protection, I would not get far, so I picked up the rifle and ammunition of the first dead German soldier I came across and continued to make my way back. I met one of our officers and hurried to explain the lost equipment and my reluctance to be travelling in that area without some means of protection.

" 'Good thinking, soldier, carry on,' was his comment.

"When I came across the bombed-out shell of a building, I knew it was time to rest awhile, for I was incredibly tired. I probably dozed a bit, then as I looked around in the dim light I could see 'ERIKSDALE' in huge letters on the wall opposite my resting place. That shook my confidence considerably. It just could not be, not here in France. But, it was there. Each time I looked up I could see it. Clearly, I had become deranged, 'looped' as some of the fellows called it. I hurried away from that spot, yet, that word 'ERIKSDALE' on that wall haunted me. Had I been seeing things, or was it real?

Next day I went back to that place. It was there. On a great big notice! A notice telling of a boxing match, to be held in far away Eriksdale, Manitoba. My home town! I took it down and sent it home and that is the paper I shall give to Wilfred Lamb, tomorrow."

How did the notice get on a wall in France? Who knows? I have pondered that question many times.

Probably, someone from 'home' had sent it to their soldier at the front. He, for want of something better to do, had hung it there—and perhaps for a few moments forgot the Hell of War as he gazed at an ordinary notice from home—and savored in dreams, the day when he would be 'going home'. 

It is quite a few years since that day. Wilfred Lamb passed away not long after and I have often thought I should have had a copy made of that notice, but—one is inclined to put off things not of immediate concern. Now, it is too late.

I'm blessed to come from a family of writers. People who wrote for fun and to build community. Their writing built this memoir.

The memories continue...

Read part 3 of 

Rural Manitoba Memories

Rural Manitoba Memories by Leanne Dyck (family memoir) part 1

 Writing purchases for the writer a kind of immortality. 

My dad, my aunt and my paternal grandparents all wrote--for fun and to build community. I've collected their writing for many years. This memoir was pieced together from that collection (with additional words, here and there, from other contributors) as a loving tribute to my family. 

Aunty Kay and Grandma Willetts

Rural Manitoba Memories

Aunty Kay: They say the greatest things parents can give children are roots and wings. Leanne’s roots are right here in a little town in the Interlake where she has grown up surrounded by a loving and caring family.

Leanne: My paternal grandfather’s hand-written memoir begins…

Grandpa: I, J. H. Willetts was born on May 7, 1886, in a small house in Allastone Mene near Lydney, Gloucestershire.

Leanne: Grandpa was the fourth son in a family of ten—eight siblings, two sisters, and six brothers. In 1889, his youngest brother Albert died of diphtheria. Albert was four and a half. Three years later, in 1901, Joseph, an older brother by three years, died in a mine accident. Joseph was eighteen. Life was tough in Allastone Mene. It’s not surprising that Grandpa would want to try a new somewhere else.

One fine May day in 1906, after promising to visit his mother, Grandpa packed his bags—or, no doubt, bag. He travelled to Liverpool, boarded the good ship Lake Manitoba and set sail for Montreal. Grandpa was twenty years old.

Aunty Kay: Daddy came to Selkirk, Manitoba as his brother Charles had a contracting business there. He worked for a few months on construction for the Canadian Pacific Railway near Kenora. In the spring of 1907, he decided to take up a homestead in the Manitoba Interlake.

Lucy Lindell, local historian: Eriksdale’s first white settler was probably Jonas Eric Erikson, who applied for his homestead on March 20, 1906, though presumably, he had been living there as a squatter prior to that date. It is known that Manuel Erikson, Jonas’ son, had a small log shack near the southern most corner of the north west quarter of the section, adjacent to his father’s quarter on which is now, the village proper.

Leanne: Eriksdale was built on the ancestral home of the Cree. Manitoba is the birthplace of the Metis nation. All through grade school, I had Cree and Metis friends and classmates. As reported in the 2016 census, Metis was the third largest ethnic group. The largest ethnic group was English, followed by Scottish.

The Rural Municipality of Eriksdale, Manitoba was formed in 1918.

The memories continue...

Read the next installment of 

Rural Manitoba Memories

Did You Know...

Kat Brown, The essential books to read about neurodiversity, January 31, 2023