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.
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.
Did You Know...
Kat Brown, The essential books to read about neurodiversity, January 31, 2023
