https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=W7VfhuRHp2c
That’s, I never do that. You see, I hardly ever skipped school. And every time I did, God damn it, you caught me. I did it like three times. One time I drove to Hines Creek. Oh, three times. Really? It wasn’t very, I tell you, it wasn’t very often. One time I drove to Hines Creek to get away from you. I thought I’ll drive to Hines Creek. He’s not going to find me there. And then on the way back from Hines Creek, you drove by and waved at me. I said, Oh my God, he caught me again. So ridiculous. Hello everybody. I decided today that I’m going to talk to my dad as the subject for my YouTube podcast and find out more about his life, his young life on the Prairie in Saskatchewan about his father, my grandfather, his grandfather, my Greek grandfather, his mother, and what it was like growing up back in the forties, mostly, born in 1937, July of 1937. And we’ve talked about such things, but not that much. And so there’s lots of things I want to know. And so that’s what we’re going to try to talk about today. And I’m going to walk through his life with him and ask him a bunch of questions so that I have the answers to the questions. And I hope you enjoy it. Hello. Hey, George. How are you doing? Just as good as it gets. Good. Glad to hear it. So I thought I’d start by telling the story of this third floor that I built on my house. And so. One of the things we did, we were going to build a log cabin on the third floor of this semi-detached house right in downtown Toronto. Tammy and I thought about that. I guess we wanted a cabin out in the woods, but we thought we could at least build one on our third floor. And, and that sort of morphed into this Native American big house, which is all made of wood inside, unlike the, the plaster sheeting that makes up the rest of the house. So walking up there is quite a transition. And we built it with some local architects and with some input from a quack, high to Carver, who filled it up with totem poles. But on the walls, you and I talked about the possibility of tearing some old wood off the farmstead in Saskatchewan off the original buildings there that great grandpa Bernd homesteaded. And so that happened when the totem poles came across the country on a 53 foot truck. Joel, my brother, had helped tear a bunch of the wood off the building surrounding the original house and off the barn. And so the wall, both walls are done in gray wood or red wood, because some of the buildings were red, that barn red, or they’re, they’re made of doors from the buildings. So, and you had stripped some of that wood off years ago to use in your room downstairs as well. That was before that anything like that was popular. Yeah, yeah, I took the floor out of the loft of the barn. And I used it for flooring in the cabins at the lake. I didn’t know you used it for flooring there. You also used it in a decorative way in the pool room. That’s pool table, by the way, not pool. Downstairs here, you mean? Yeah. No, that wasn’t from the barn. That was from a friend of mine. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, I think I got the idea for using the old wood. Anyways, we did get the stuff stripped away from the old farmstead. So now your great-grand, my great-grandfather, your grandfather Bernd, from whom my middle name is derived, is a great-grandfather. Bernd, from whom my middle name is derived. He came to North America from Norway. No, he was born in North Dakota or in Minnesota. Was it his father that came? Yeah, his father and his father-in-law. Did you tell me they built a boat and came to Norway or came from Norway to New York? That actually was his father-in-law that built the boat. And the two families came. I think there were a total of nine or 10 on the boat. Yeah, they left Norway and sailed all the way to New York. And then they ended up in the Midwest, where there were a lot of Norwegian settlers. Well, yeah, Minnesota and North Dakota were the, well, Wisconsin too, to a certain extent. They were just the areas where the Norwegians were. They were just the areas where the Norwegians and the Swedes settled. Yeah. So they migrated that way. And then there was a move up into Saskatchewan. Yeah, about 1910, I think, was the first time that they came up and homesteaded. And then they left again, because it didn’t work out as, I guess, homestead life was pretty tough. You know, so they left again, but they didn’t sell the place. They did have an auction. My grandfather’s old clock was in the auction. And when they came back to Saskatchewan, they went to an auction sale and he bought it back. And I still have it. So how did they get up to Saskatchewan from Minnesota at that time? Was it rail? No, they drove up. In fact, I think you have a picture. I think you have a picture of the old car. I think you have a picture of the old car that they drove up in. I don’t know what it was. I can remember seeing pictures of it. They left and I presume they went back down to Minnesota, but then they came back. Oh, no. Or where’d they go? North Dakota, place called Vang, V-A-N-G. Both families were in that area. Not separated by too much. I think my grandfather worked in the dairy there. And by both families, who do you mean? Well, I mean my grandmother’s family and my grandfather’s family. And they were married when they came up to Saskatchewan already. Yeah. And so why did they decide to come to Saskatchewan if they were already settled in North Dakota? Well, the grass is always green around the other side of the fence. Yeah, except when it’s Saskatchewan. Burr. Free land. And it’s not colder in Saskatchewan than it is in North Dakota. Right. And so the Canadian government was offering homesteaders at that time a chunk of land if they would come in and do what to it? Well, they had to prove it up over a period of three years. I forgot, I think they had to break about 10 acres the first year. And I think they were required to have some sort of domicile on it. And that’s probably a loose word for home. Right. Right. And so do you have any idea why they left the first time? You said it was hard. I mean, we can talk about that in a minute, but any specific reason? No, I really don’t have. No, I don’t really have. I imagine there were a number of factors. I’m sure life was fairly tough in Saskatchewan. I imagine they were homesick. Anyway, that’s the story. They left. And do you know how long it was before they came back? I think it was about a matter of about a year and a half, something like that, or maybe maybe just a year. But I’m not sure that George. They thought they’d give it another try. And the second time they stayed. Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe it wasn’t as bad as they thought, you know. So what would it have meant to break 10 acres of land at that time? What would have you had to do and how? Well, you took your acts and you cut down the poplar that was on the place. And I guess there were a few spruce on it as well. And then you took your grub hole out and tried to dig the roots out. And you used your team to pull the roots out and wild them up and burn them and cultivated the land as best you could and probably sold some wheat on it. So that whole area. So that was that was near Nakum, Saskatchewan. If anyone wants to look on a map, that whole area, the prairie there would have been covered with trees. Yeah, there were trees there at that time. Yeah, it was covered with trees. So so to clear 10 acres meant you had to cut down hundreds of trees, I presume. And then you had to pull the roots out of the ground one at a time with a team of horses. That’s why you could only clear 10 acres or why you had to clear 10 acres. You said in the first year, 10 acres isn’t that big by far? You had to cut down hundreds of trees. I think it was 10 acres a year for three years to claim it up. I don’t know. I these are things we never really talked about when I was a kid. How do you know about it at all? Well, I guess sitting around the table listening to the adults talk, I guess, Well, I guess sitting around the table listening to the adults talk, I picked up a lot of it. So how many kids did your grandparents have? They just had the one Stanley Stanley and my dad. And Stanley was adopted. He was. And was he adopted in the United States or was he adopted in Saskatchewan? He was adopted in Saskatchewan. Do you know if they knew the did they know anything about him? Did they know anything about his family? Dad, I have no idea about that was something that was never talked about as far as I can remember. Do you know how old? I don’t think he was an infant. He was an infant. He was an infant. I don’t think I knew dad was adopted until I was a teenager. And then I probably didn’t believe it the first time I was told. Was it a shock? I don’t know what they’d call it a shock or not. It was I suppose it was a bit of a shock. Yeah. So and they had no other children? They had no other children. And so I remember going out to that farmstead and that would have been 25 years probably after you had left it with great grandpa Bernd. You a couple of times to ride on a potato harvester he had built and all the out buildings were still out there including the blacksmith shop and the the I don’t remember what you call it. It was this contraption like an enclosed sled that you used to go to school in. It was still intact. A caboose. Yeah you called it a caboose. Why was it called a caboose? Oh god only knows. I don’t know. I have no idea why it was called a caboose. That’s probably a good question to ask Google. All right so all right so you Bernd and his wife and I don’t remember Bernd’s wife’s name of course I never knew her. Clara. Clara. Clara. So they built a log house on the prairie and a barn and there must have been eight or nine other buildings small shed like buildings one of them was a blacksmith shop. Oh yeah well there were you know there was a they were there were different buildings over different periods of time but you’re right there were probably at least a half dozen other buildings and the house and the barn and the shop. And the pump which which was surrounded by a big tie a big tractor big metal tractor wheel. Yes it was a wheel off a steamer that we made a trough out of. And the cabin you grew up in which was a log cabin it was insulated with cardboard if I remember correctly but when I knew the house it was still standing right we could still go in it was still standing. Well I think it’s still kind of standing maybe not I don’t know I haven’t been there for a couple of years now. Yeah the last time I saw it was a few years ago and it had collapsed a fair bit I don’t think you could get inside it anymore but it had a central room and a bedroom on did it face which direction did it face. It had two bedrooms on the east side. Okay so it was one room one main room with two bedrooms on the east side or was there a bedroom on the other side too. No there was a kitchen and a hallway and a living room is what to what we called it and then there were the two bedrooms on the east side the house I guess was long you know it was long north and south. Right. And it wasn’t it wasn’t very big. No how many square feet do you think it was like 600? Yeah probably about that. Yeah like one floor of my semi-detached in Toronto. Probably. Yeah and you had two sisters grow up with you there. How many people lived in that house when you were a little kid? Well how old was I? Well how old were you when you left? I was a little kid. Well how old were you how old were you when you left that house and moved into town? I was probably about nine or ten. Okay so you you you have you should have some pretty decent memories of that place if you were that old okay so how many people lived there in that house from the time you were born till the time you were ten generally speaking? Well I guess there’d have been four adults and three kids. Four adults so your your grandfather and your grandmother Barrett and Clara and Stanley your dad and my mother Bernice Bernice his wife and your sister Judy and your sister Betty both of whom were younger than you. Great. Okay how did all seven of you live in that house? There was two bedrooms how was that how did you manage that? How did we manage that? I really have no idea how we managed that. Well who slept in which who slept in which bedrooms? Were all the kids in one bedroom? No. That would only leave one room for the adults. Yeah I don’t know whether I can answer that question or not. I don’t think I know. Okay okay you have a you have a soft spot in your heart for that house. A soft spot? Yeah well you always go back and visit it you know and you’re nostalgic when you go to the farm. Yeah I guess I have a soft spot for I grew up there. Yeah well what was it like to grow up there? Good. Good how? What did you do like when you were a little kid when you were just the earliest memories you have what are the earliest memories you have of being out there? Now you only spoke you spoke Norwegian out there right primarily? Well yeah kind of a Minnesota Norwegian I guess. My grandfather and grandmother spoke Norwegian mainly they could both speak English but mainly they spoke Norwegian. My dad spoke Norwegian when he was with my grandfather and grandmother and English the rest of the time. My mother Bernice probably could speak some Norwegian but we spoke some English too because neighbors weren’t always fluent in Norwegian. Although a lot of them were. So what was life like there on the farmstead when you were a kid? You had animals you had horses. We had horses and cattle pigs chickens. Who took care of them? Well I guess we all did or I shouldn’t say we all did but my grandfather and grandmother and mom and dad took care of them. And what did that entail and how many cows were there do you have any idea? Well I guess we all did. And how many cows were there do you have any idea? Well I would guess that there were probably about six cows that were milk producers and then the rest were raised for beef. Excuse me. Horses we probably had four or five horses all the time. And did you ride a lot? Ride a horse? Yeah. No not very much. I rode some but I wouldn’t say I was a cowboy or anything. Any any particular reason where they mean did you like horses was it interesting to you or were they work animals? Well both they were interesting they were work animals. I mean they that’s what pulled the implements when I was a kid. I can remember when we got our first tractor. And I can remember when we got our first rubber-tired tractor. But I can also remember riding on implements with my grandfather driving four horses in front of it. Plowing that and plowing in that sort of thing and harvesting? Well I don’t remember plowing as such but I remember seeding. Because on the seeder you could stand on a on a platform at the back of the unit and you had a good view of everything and there was something to hang onto so you didn’t fall off. And we had an old dog named Pooch who used to sit right up on the seed box and kind of look around the whole country while we were doing that. He got pretty good at balancing. How big of a farm was that? Balancing. How big a farm would have the family handled at that time? I think it was I think it was three quarters as long as I can remember. And how many acres are in a quarter? 180 160 160 so it was 480 acres and so the the farm obviously expanded past the initial homestead relatively rapidly? That I don’t know. I know who I know who owned the quarters that were bought and brought into the farm but I don’t know the details of it and I don’t I don’t know when. Right so when when when Berend and Clara came back up they made enough of a go at it the second time to establish a farmstead that was successful enough to buy other reasonably sizable pieces of land. I mean three quarters is not a immense farm by modern standards obviously but it’s not no land at all. It’s no it was it was probably at its time fairly average. I mean there were there were families that had one quarter of land. So three quarters was actually pretty good. And so everything you ate I presume pretty much came directly off the farm with the animals that you had so eggs and milk you were were you milking cows every day? I wasn’t my mother was a great milker. Great milker. I can remember her doing the milking a good portion of the time. Grandma showed me one day a picture of the cabin with the firewood she had split for the winter and if that cabin was 600 square feet and a story high the pile of wood that she split looked to be 1200 square feet and about at least as tall as the cabin. When she said she split it I don’t think she meant that she manually split it. She may have had something to do with it but we had a wood splitter which was run by a small gas engine. And you could split wood to beat the devil with it. Yeah well that sounds like a lot easier than having to do it with an axe. I know that grandma was a busy woman but that does she was. Yeah well she must have had her hands filled with three with three kids and a whole farm to run and then when the threshing crews came in if in the fall if I also recall she used to have to feed them as well and that was a wood stove. She and my grandma yeah and that would be 14-15 men. It pretty well filled the kitchen as I remember it. Yeah I bet so and they they were fed how many times a day would she feed them three times a day when they were threshing? Three times a day. Right so that’s 52 meals for very hungry men and that would be one of her many chores. Yeah nobody said it was easy. No no and grandpa showed me one time the or I saw a picture of him I think he showed me though the parka that he wore out in the winter to do his farm work and I mean Saskatchewan’s plenty cold it gets to be minus 40 there on no shortage of occasions and it also has quite the blistering wind and I mean it was a wool jacket and and jeans essentially underneath it. It wasn’t anything particularly bulky or fancy so I imagine winter was pretty well it could be pretty brutal. Well I think I think it was generally true that there weren’t adequate clothes for the for the temperatures that we did have. I mean the the best you had was wool you know and wool wool was the main thing wool pants wool underwear a heavy wool coat if you were lucky enough to have one maybe it had canvas on the outside for a windbreak but those guys were tough you know. Yeah well I remember grandpa’s arms forearms I mean they were no joke when he was a you know I remember him from about the time I was 10 I suppose I think that’s about where his memories come from he would have been 50 probably at that point and I mean he had he had immense forearms he would he’s a very strongly built person and he had done plenty of work so did you have a happy childhood would you say? Did I have a happy childhood? Yeah well like I said you’re attached to the farm. I would say yes I had a happy childhood. Okay and up up up to what age? Well I suppose teen years. So what what made it a happy childhood? Well what what wouldn’t have made it a happy childhood? Well I mean you were free to breathe you had acres and acres to wander around in there was lots of wildlife there were some chores it was just a good life. What chores did you have to do? Oh you had to bring in wood occasionally you had to bring in a pail of water usually it was only about a half a pail because you couldn’t carry a whole pail uh you had to go with the pump and pump the water into the pail and then it wasn’t very far to carry it but it had to be carried occasionally. So you weren’t overwhelmed with you weren’t overwhelmed with chores by the sounds of it? No I wouldn’t say I wouldn’t say I was overwhelmed with it at all no so you have had something I had some things to do. Right right and you did them? Yeah. And if you didn’t do them what happened or did that just not happen? Oh I imagine it happened I would imagine the scolding was probably the the main thing. Who from? Well the scolding would probably have come from my mother or my grandmother. Dad was pretty strict. He didn’t scold much. So in what way was he strict? Well let’s just say he was strict. Well I’m curious about your I’m curious about your relationship with your great-grandfather and your father because you’ve intimated that in many ways you were raised by your great-grandfather and I remember when I was about I think grandpa great-grandfather Barrett died when I was about nine ten. Not nine or ten yeah. Yeah on that well that was the first brush I really had with loss and I wasn’t so up to it I wasn’t so upset with his loss because I didn’t know him that well I mean I was sad about it because I liked him you know when but you were really broken up by that and so that was the first time I think I ever remember seeing you like emotionally distressed and it lasted at least a week you know which isn’t a tremendous amount of time but it was a tremendous amount of time as far as I was concerned. Yeah well it was he was pretty important. Yeah so who why was he so important to you? What was it about him and your relationship with him? I think kids have a have a real relationship with their grandparents if they are fortunate enough to have them around and you know I can remember walking three steps behind him all over the farm. So you trailed around behind him? Day in and day out. Uh-huh and and that was fine with him? Yeah or was it more it was fine with him? Was it more than fine? He told me to go home. Okay well that’s something I mean I remember the day for example we went out and rode on this now he was quite a handy person and quite a creative person mechanically I mean this yeah he was. This potato harvest year he built it well you could drive it and I don’t really remember how it harvested potatoes but he had built it pretty much from the ground up if I remember correctly. Well it didn’t really harvest potatoes it was built so that you could drive it in a potato patch without driving over the roads it had quite a bit of clearance and outrigger wheels on it. Right right. And it put mainly it pulled implements that harvested potatoes. I see I see so it was the it was a custom-built tractor in some sense. It was a custom-built tractor right? Right and he did work in the blacksmith’s shop. Oh he was a good blacksmith. He was a good blacksmith yeah and it was probably one of his I guess you’d call it a vocation because if it rose raining or if it was miserable it was pretty easy to find grandpa and me in the shop because there was usually a fire on in there and the building wasn’t very large so it was warm and there was always lots to do. What did you do? I especially for him. Yeah what did you do in the blacksmith’s shop? Oh hell I can’t remember now. There was always stuff to do in there there was you know there was lots of there was lots of junk pieces lying around and we had a we had a I don’t know what you’d call it it was a wheel mounted on a on what was like a stationary bicycle and you used to be able to get onto it and pedal so that the wheel went around and then you could sharpen your sickle or your axe or your knife or a stick or whatever you had and you could spend a lot of time at that when you were seven or eight years old. And what what sort of tools did he make in the blacksmith’s shop? What sort of tools? Well I can remember him building a grain elevator. We’d call it we’d call it like an auger for grain and I think as I remembered he built almost all of it out of pieces. He bent tin or the galvanized metal that built a chute and wasn’t awfully big it probably only lifted the grain maybe 12 feet something like that but it worked sort of like it didn’t work like an auger it had a it had a belt in it so that it just picked up the grain and moved it along on a belt that had I don’t know what you’d call them even paddles of foot type on them. He was always building something. So was it from him that you learned how to use tools and to appreciate tools because you like to build things I mean you’ve gunsmithed? Oh I think yeah I think it probably was to a large extent due to him. Did he teach you explicitly or did you did he teach you explicitly or did you pick up most of it by watching? Oh well both. I’m sure that he probably made sure that I was kept busy and out of trouble while I was in the shop and you know that probably involves straightening nails and god knows what else. Right so you had small productive jobs to do while you were hanging about with them. Well they were you know a job is what the body is obliged to do. Yeah so this wasn’t a job. If it’s not obliged to do it then it’s fun or play. And so that’s kind of how you remember that as play? Well I remember that’s a good time yeah. Right so he was he was easy to get along with for you? He was good? Yeah yeah very good to me. How about your grandma? Grandma was great yeah. How? What was great about her? Well she was extraordinarily kind. I can’t ever remember her disciplining me other than maybe shaking her head or something. She taught me how to read at early age. We used to do homework together. There were always treats. Who knows? She was very kind. She taught you to read so that was how you learned to read? Yeah I don’t really remember learning to read. I mean I always had people reading to me. My grandfather read to me a lot. So did mom. So did my grandmother. I can remember reading the comics. That was very important. You know the cats and jammer kids and little Abner and that kind of thing. You know for a long time I didn’t read it. They read it. But after a while well I don’t know you kind of pick it up. So did people remember. Go ahead. Did people in your house read a lot when they were when they had some leisure time? I wouldn’t say a lot because there wasn’t all that much leisure time. And you know for many years when it got dark it was dark inside the house too. Kerosene lamps didn’t throw very much light. Was there ever electricity in the cabin that you grew up in up till the time you left? No. So that was all kerosene? Kerosene and later gas lamps. Which were a little brighter? Yeah they were considerably brighter. Right. And so it never had power. Right so people were up at dawn I presume and then well in bed well when it was dark and in the winter that would be pretty early. Yep. So you had a lot of time to spend by yourself if you wanted to wander around out into the fields and into the nearby woods and lake nearby? No sluice. Which aren’t as deep as lakes I guess. Similar but there were lots of sluice around and sluice always had wildlife around them. Yeah I wandered around a lot when I was a kid. I think I knew every bush within about five miles of home pretty intimately. Do you mean every tree? Well not every tree but I wasn’t about to get lost in it. Hmm yeah well there’s something about that exploration you do when you’re a kid that really familiarizes yourself deeply with a place. I don’t know if you ever do that again in your life when you move you know like I can remember the houses around the house I grew up in in Fairview far better into my imagination than I can picture the houses in this neighborhood. Like far better even though I only lived there for eight years and I’ve lived here for almost 20 I still have a much better map house by house in my head of the immediate neighborhood. I think when you’re a kid you pay attention to things in a different way than you do when you’re an adult because everything’s so new. Yeah yeah and well I believe you’re right I think kids pay attention to what’s going on. Yeah I think what happened well you kind of your your perceptions get kind of generic you know after you’ve seen 300 houses you sort of know what a house is and you don’t have to look at it anymore you just sort of replace it in your imagination with an image of a house you know and that works as a placeholder but you don’t know you don’t know the back alley in detail like you did when you were a kid and you know I think you really lose a sense of familiarity because of that that deep sense of belonging to a place is associated with that really detailed exploration. Like I’ve noticed in the houses I’ve moved into and apartments that unless I any corner that I haven’t cleaned any drawer that I haven’t organized is kind of foreign territory in some sense it’s not it’s not friendly to me but if I get in there into the details and explore completely the house which I’m trying to do with this house you know we renovated it two years ago three years ago but I was so sick I couldn’t remap it and it seems really foreign to me and I’m not happy in the house because I don’t really understand the house you know it’s alien to me and so yesterday I spent eight hours cleaning out a closet that was full of stuff I hadn’t been able to touch for three years and that was a great relief you know now I kind of like my closet now I know exactly what’s in it I know exactly where everything is I put it there like I sort of touched everything it’s mine now whereas before it was just this place that it’s full of stuff I didn’t understand and a bunch of work that I hadn’t done and you know it was leery of it there’s still a lot of the houses like that so I’m still not comfortable here but I will be before I leave in January we’re going to go through every square inch of it and hopefully put it in order it makes you much calmer to know the place you’re going to. Where are you going in January? I’m going on tour. Oh oh okay. Going to Washington first for a week or 10 days. Right I understand. Hey and I talked to Joe Rogan the other day. Yeah? Yeah so I’m booked on his show in Austin on the 24th. 24th of? 24th of January just just before the tour starts it starts. Oh yeah good. On the 25th. Yeah it was really good to talk to him. I always enjoyed listening to those. Yeah well Rogan he’s quite the guy. He’s uh he’s done a lot of things he’s tough he’s smart he’s funny doesn’t take any nonsense he’s nobody’s fool and he’s even-handed with people and generous and he’s a good guy like he really is a good guy he deserves his success you know he’s been a successful martial arts fighter he was a successful host on a couple of tv shows he’s been a successful stand-up comedian and then he’s been this ridiculously successful youtube interviewer and podcaster you don’t get successful at five different things without being pretty competent so so yeah i’m looking forward to seeing him and and he’s a courageous sort too so and he’s fun to have a conversation with because he has this great sense of humor so so back to your to your grandfather you spend more time with your grandfather than with your dad oh yeah way way more and why was that dad why was it yeah why do you think it was i mean was was that par for the course in those days i mean sometimes kids spend more time with their grandparents if if their well i think i think i think grandfathers probably have more patience than fathers do at times i don’t really remember spending very much time with dad at all did you get along with him did you get along with him i guess i must have got along with him when i was young but as a teenager i would have to say no i didn’t get along with him very well why well i guess i was probably i was probably as headstrong as he was who knows what sort of things caused conflict i guess damn near everything now you were you were at the farmstead until you were nine and then the family moved into nakum and how big was nakum at that time oh it probably was 400 people maybe and how much different was nakum when i got to know it when i was a kid from from the nakum you grew up in well i don’t think it was i don’t think it was an awful lot different i guess there probably were some things you wouldn’t do anymore when you were there that we did commonly every day never thought anything about it like what uh well can you imagine uh uh how old were you 12 sure younger than that too but yeah 12 okay 11 11 12 year old walking downtown with a 22 in his hand to the co-op store to buy some ammunition taking the gun into the store and saying i need a box of shorts 22 shorts and the people behind the counter wouldn’t even blink an eye they just give you a box of shorts and take your 50 cents from you i wouldn’t try that when when you were there even you know nobody was doing that then no no so that’s part of that freedom that you described yeah freedom and common sense i think is uh was a little bit more common then yeah well i wonder to some degree i wondered to some degree i thought that tried to think that through i mean people were working physically and directly in a way that they don’t so much now you know you’re on that farm you’re contending with animals well you’re contending with the cold you’re contending with the heat you’re contending with the light for that matter i mean everything’s work but you’re directly related to that work right i mean there’s an immediate payoff you you go out and and the chickens are there and you have eggs and you go out and milk the cows and you have milk and you churn it and you have butter and you turn the kerosene light on and you have light and you light a fire and you have heat you know what i mean is it’s hard work in some sense but the reward is instant plus it’s really real it grounds you to the to the actualities of things and then you know people were younger when they had their families and so i think they were more likely to grant their kids because they were a little more wild let’s say being young more likely to grant their kids a certain degree of independence because they were still young and wanted to have fun and then most people had more siblings than they do now you know and i think one of the reasons that people are more helicoptery around their kids now is because they they wait till they’re 35 to have them and so they’re older that by then and let and more cautious and then they only have one or maybe two and so they don’t have 10 you know it’s like you’re not going to stay on top of 10 kids that’s not going to happen i don’t think you can stay on top of four and so that means to some degrees the kids raise themselves right in sibling groups and the parents supervise but sort of from a distance and i think you probably get a lot more realistic view of the world and your place in it when you’re wrestling for position with like six siblings yeah hard to be hard to be it’s hard to be special in that situation i mean your siblings aren’t going to like that so you never know what these shifts cause and and that that that common sense it seems to me that’s associated with like a grounding in real things and and not this tendency we have now to sort of float off into abstractions yep yeah because when you’re even when you’re trying to build something and you’re building it out of wood let’s say because i built lots of things out of wood it either works or it doesn’t you know it’s really the proof of the pudding so to speak is right there in front of you and you can’t delude yourself into thinking your table top is flat and straight when it’s not it’s not flat and straight when it’s not it’s either flat and straight and the table is stable and looks half decent or it isn’t so true yeah yeah i even thought saw you know in my generation a lot of young men tinkered with cars because you could yeah right you could understand a car with a certain amount of work and you could figure out how all the parts worked and you could even repair them like yourself sometimes you had to buy a part but sometimes you could repair them and you had to take them apart and put them back together and if you didn’t put them back together correctly they didn’t work and now cars are so sophisticated that well they never get the hood open no well they never break down virtually i mean they will run they do well they run a long times but you certainly can’t toy with them like you once did they’re they’re not immediately at hand in the same way so i like nakum you know i thought nakum was a fine town it was it was quite a nice town it had a lot of brick buildings when i was a kid in in the early 70s the downtown was still thriving there was a butcher store that was thriving there was a movie theater there was a dairy that sold milk and if i remember correctly at that time there wasn’t anybody who ran the dairy there was just a refrigerator and if you wanted milk you just got the milk and you put your money in it basically what was a tin can there were no locks on the door or anything like that that’s just how people did it and that would have shown the community of probably 2000 people something like that well but surrounding nakum as well maybe you’re right maybe you’re yeah no but by that time there was no dairy and nakum no that that milk came from millford which was 30 miles away right but that’s still how it was sold oh that’s that’s exactly how it was sold yeah the proprietor of the theater was ralph smith and he had a great trust in people i guess and he said he lost very little money that he was aware of yeah well he’d know if he made a profit at least and certainly he didn’t cost him in staff so maybe and you never know maybe you know any it’s conceivable but probably not the case that the odd pilferer might have actually needed something to eat i suspect no because that isn’t necessarily what drives people to pilfering but yeah i thought nakum was a real nice little town and so and it it was you know the streets were nice and straight and the houses were well built it was it was quite a thriving little community it had a nice brick school that’s where you went to school so um so who everyone moved into nakum at the same time your your grandfather no no oh how okay how’d that work well my grandfather and grandmother were the ones who moved into into faribut and nakum or yeah nakum they moved into nakum and i’m not sure why i ended up there but it probably had but it probably had something to do with my grandfather and grandmother anyway i was in about grade three i think when i joined them in in nakum and went to school there and mom and dad and the girls stayed on the farm it we saw it it sounds like we were really separated but you know the distance was about four and a half miles and it wasn’t as though you didn’t see them every day because most days you did see them and was that was that an okay separation for you were you were you unhappy about moving from the farm were you happy to be moving into nakum with your grandparents yeah i told you i got along with my grandfather and my grandmother exceptionally well and what about they probably mom i got along quite well with mom she was very kind too and what did she think about you moving into town away from her i really don’t know jordan uh i don’t know i know what you thought about well it was clear that she loved you beyond belief i mean i remember one time we were playing cards up at the lake in saskatchewan and um grandma was up there this isn’t that many years ago maybe 15 years ago something like that and so you would have been 70 i guess 68 something like that and grandma would have been well in her late 80s and we were playing cards and oh you were getting teased i think julian was teasing you and i think maybe i was teasing you and grandma said don’t you pick on my wallie and she meant it and i thought oh this is so funny she wouldn’t have said wallie she just said walter yes that’s right that’s what she said don’t you pick on my walter well really cracked us up you know because well you know you were 70 year old grandfather by that point and she’s in her nearly 90 and it was just like listening to a 20 year old woman maybe talk about her four-year-old it’s like don’t pick on my wall mom definitely spoiled me yeah well so she probably missed you when you left yeah she probably did but like i said you know it wasn’t a big deal you know it wasn’t as though we were gone for any length of time at the very most it would have been a school week you know and probably well for a good part of the year it probably wouldn’t have been that because my grandfather always went to the farm every day uh-huh uh-huh oh you know i don’t know if there was something extraordinary going on so do you did they move into town because they finally had the financial resources to have two houses well again jordan i honestly don’t know i would suspect that that might have been the case yeah well those are pretty cramped those are pretty cramped living quarters did you get along with your did you get along with your sisters well i can i could say yes and i could probably say no depends on the whole i think we got along relatively well how much age difference was there well betty was two years younger than me and judy was seven years younger than me yeah well seven years is a long gap because she was very spoiled with betty or judy judy was very spoiled because she was the youngest judy was very spoiled because she was the youngest you know betty was the in-between girl right right so when you were out on the farm did you have a lot of friends or was it mostly activity that centered around the farm oh had friends but you know they weren’t they weren’t right next door right you know they were they were miles away but you had you know you had you had the occasional friend that would come over and uh i had a i had a good school friend called helmer wunderboom and helmer could really ride and he used to ride over on his horse every once in a while and we would go for a ride you know with with around with him me on my me on the horse that i rode not very well and helmer clinging to it like a comanche so how was it that he got to be a better rider than you just more practice more practice i guess yeah and so well helmer helmer was probably more of a cowboy than i was too so what made you not a cowboy i mean you’d like to carry your 22 rifle downtown into naecom that sounds like a pretty cowboy thing to do so what was the difference i don’t know uh i really don’t know what the difference was uh uh so you could read before you went to school yep did you like to read obviously why obviously stayed with it what do you mean by that well i don’t think you do things that you don’t like for very long do you if you like it you do more of it so you read were you were you a reader in comparison to your friends or was that a rather common pastime because when i grew up most of my friends didn’t read you know not much so i was very different well yeah the difference so was that i didn’t know what my friends were like at home very much you know even when i went to to naecom to school i can’t say that i really knew very much about very many of my friends as far as their reading went one maybe anyway yes i could read before i went to school i can tell you one thing that i can remember quite well i had learned how to do cursive writing and this was before i went to school too my grandmother had a really lovely hand and so did my grandfather you could tell that they were taught how to write anyway i was copying a comic and i was doing it from the print to cursive writing but what i didn’t know was that you stop between each word that sounds pretty damn simple but i can remember that asking my grandmother uh how does this work now how do i how do i well how what do i do when i come to the end of this word and start the next one just connect them and keep going anyway just an aside well it’s simple when you learn it but it’s not necessarily obvious when you haven’t learned it so that’s right did you like school yep did you like school all the way through school oh no i’m sure there were periods of time and when i was a teenager that i would sooner have been out farming or out helping on the farm in fact i think i’ve got one report card that says something to the fact that if if walter attended more regularly he would do much better ah and that would have been junior high yeah that was probably about grade nine somewhere in there so what did you do when you skipped school that’s i never do that you see i hardly ever skipped school and every time i did god damn it you caught me i did it like three times one time i drove to hinds creek three times really it wasn’t very i tell you it wasn’t very often one time i drove to hinds creek to get away from you i thought i’ll drive to hinds creek he’s not gonna find me there and then on the way back from hinds creek you drove by and waved at me said oh my god he caught me again so ridiculous you weren’t very you weren’t very inventive not not in that regard that’s for sure no no so why did you stay with school you graduated was that calm was that the standard routine was what did most people graduate or did most people drop out grade nine or grade 10 i again i don’t really know i would think that the majority of kids of my generation probably finished school by going by that i mean go went to grade 12 not all i mean i can remember several of my friends dropping out prior to graduation you know in in the grades before but a good many of them finished school yeah almost all my friends from junior high dropped out you know well most of them went many of them went worked on oil rigs and you could understand that to some degree but i had well jobs jobs probably weren’t that plentiful that the time i got out of got out of school or was in school anyway great grandpa had a band yeah you know i wouldn’t say he had a band he was in the band what was the band do you remember the name of the band no hell no i don’t know that that’s way before my time well they still play i can remember seeing them play in the living room no i know you can remember some of them playing i think the majority of the ones that he played within the band were probably long gone disappeared was it was i don’t know that was it a big band oh hell i have no idea i don’t even know if you’d call it a band i call it a bunch of guys that got together to play for dances yeah dad was a pretty good guitar player and he could sing yeah well i can remember grandpa singing i mean we don’t have i don’t think we have any recordings of him singing which is too bad but i can remember him singing yeah he had a pretty plaintive country voice and he was pretty good guitar player he made me a guitar grandpa yeah i still got it downstairs here i know it’s in two pieces what happened was that in the closet um it was strung too tight and the neck eventually worked loose from the body oh i don’t think i knew that yeah that’s what happened to it and i guess you’re not supposed to leave a tightly strung guitar like that for too long or perhaps i’d strung it too tightly knowing very little about very little about guitars yeah anyway it’s sitting behind the chair down in the basement when did you meet mom when did you meet mom i would imagine that i probably met her when i went to integrate three in natum what do you think of her i think that i thought she was wonderful right off the bat you think that well yeah i kind of do i thought that about tammy yeah well yeah i was right too haha yeah so was i well good good for us yeah what the hell do you think accounts for that good luck good luck yeah she told me she kind of knew too tam well i don’t know i don’t know that Beverly knew i mean we weren’t we weren’t always uh good friends even but were you in the same grade or was she one grade lower than you it was one grade lower than me right tam and i were in the same grade so she was a year older than me because i was younger for the grade but so we were that that facilitates a friendship being in the same grade oh yeah oh yeah yeah definitely but but don’t forget we were in the same room oh right as the other grade because they were at least three grades in a room so uh we were probably in the same room much of the time when did you start going out oh well i think the first time we went out we had been to a birthday party across the road from where we lived in in akem and some kind of a game she had to walk me home which really entailed walking across the road a little bit farther so if you count that one we were probably um 10 11 maybe hmm and obviously you count obviously you count that one yeah when was the first time we went out out i think probably it was i think i must have been through school grade 12 or past grade 12 and for some reason i knew that Beverly was babysitting at her brother’s place that evening and so i went and knocked on the door and uh said something witty like to dumb i’m here or i don’t know what anyway i think that’s the first time i that we were together that way and then i think we were together most of the time after that what drew you together do you think why was she attracted to you do you know oh god only knows that she well you were you were pretty good looking oh yeah i was really handsome rich yeah no i don’t i don’t well maybe that was it no i don’t know she probably made a big mistake but anyway well you you have your good qualities yeah fair enough what drew you to her yeah hey what drew you to her what what drew you to her what drew me to her well i told you i i always thought she was something special and uh i probably followed her into saskatoon when she when she went to take nursing and to take nursing that was probably my main motivation so you said that you graduated high school and then you basically followed mom to saskatoon were you planning to go on to further education yeah i think i was when did you decide you wanted to be a teacher oh i don’t know i had a you know i had a couple of really good teachers in high school and maybe that was part of it i don’t know you know joe fafanoff and and uh frank du pont what made them good well they were just they were just they knew their subjects well they taught well and they were good people you know they were easy to get along with and yeah did you i did a lot of i i did a lot of marking for frank uh on the weekends and that kind of thing maybe that was part of it i don’t know these were men you respected yep yep still do what made them good teachers well i told you oh yes they they really knew their subject matter they were interesting to listen to and they were just good people and so you moved to the city how often had you been to saskatoon before i mean that was that’s a pretty big city by nakem standards how many times had i been there before there before oh i would guess you could probably count it on one hand so what do you think of saskatoon it was fine were you excited to be in the city or were you would you prefer what have you preferred the small town in the farm oh at that time i think i preferred the city i mean there was lots of you know there was lots going on and that kind of thing did you have a good time in university did i have a good time yeah i think so i had a car that wouldn’t start when it was cloudy but yeah most of the time it was good why wouldn’t it start when it was cloudy don’t ask me it was the most perverse beast i ever had so how old were you when you asked mom to marry you you mean the first time how many times did you have to ask oh hell i must have asked her master i have no idea how many times oh yes i bet you know exactly how many how many no i don’t i don’t know i i tried to talk her into marrying me a number of times and she wanted to be a nurse and that was that was the first thing to get done and but yeah no i asked her i asked her more than once i’m sure i think i asked tammy five times well i i don’t think you have the record but i’m not sure she asked me once too so that worked out okay the final analysis oh well i don’t she actually she actually well she had come to montreal to live with me and we had discussed getting married but she felt it was time and she actually asked me on isn’t it sadie hawkins day isn’t that yeah yeah that we didn’t even know it we didn’t even know it it just happened that way no no yeah that was pretty funny little little abster a little abner was it just as real as santa claus you know yeah yeah so and i said yes it was it was a good deal yeah yeah it’s a good would you would you say that you’ve had a happy marriage yep i would say i have had a happy marriage what was more important to you your family or your career oh no doubt at all family what was the best part of what was the best years you spent with your family well i i think the best years were the years that you guys were home and growing up they were great years and of those years younger kids older kids older kids what was better for you oh i i can’t say that because it was all good no there’s no doubt that was the best time of my life why was the best time of my life why who knows why come on i think it’s it’s instinctive for some people yeah well you’re really good with little kids well there was no doubt you seem to trust them yeah well i seem to be relatively good at that yeah and most little kids trusted me yeah not not very many that i had shy away from me so you spent a lot of time with me when i was little kid yeah what do you what do you remember about that particularly well what can i say what do i remember i don’t know i remember quite a few things but i don’t know if any of them are god-awful important you know well pick one there well i remember the time that we hatched those chicks in the porch in nip one didn’t it one yeah that was cool that was that was interesting pretty good yeah uh uh i remember driving home with you to nakum a number of times and talking the whole time because you’d never stop asking questions yeah well hasn’t changed much no i know you kind of are who you are yep that’s right no there were lots of good times george all good times i think i remember mostly when i was little kid reading with you oh yeah yeah well that was great that was so much fun i thought so that’s what i remember i was pretty little but what i remember is that well first of all we had a dr su’s book come every week or something like that because we were in a book club and used to come home every every night and after dinner we would sit lay on the rug we had a hooked one of those hooked rugs and we’d lay on the rug and you’d put your arm around me and way we go through one or two books and you taught me to read you know and i remember that going on for quite a long time and it was wonderful to have the attention and uh well and to be given that gift of literacy as well and to have it instilled in me in such a young age you know i mean i loved reading it’s really shaped my life in every possible way so you know and i remember you know one of the things that was different about you we had our differences when i was a teenager sounds kind of like the ones you had with your dad you know both stubborn and i you know i had hanging around with rough kids and we misbehaved a lot a lot of drinking and that sort of thing you know and i you you put up with them that’s about all you should have done really i suppose but most of my friends you know they didn’t have a good relationship with their fathers they had no respect for them and it was i know yeah yeah it was really rough on them those those my friends those are my teenage friends or you know the ones in junior high yeah yeah i know and uh you know when when we were alone with my friends they’d have a bad interaction with their dad or something and they’d be pretty hard on it met bad mouth them and i could tell they were mad bitter resentful angry about it and they had their reasons or hurt by it or a combination of all those things disappointed but i never felt that way i mean even when we had altercations yeah i knew that fundamentally despite whatever altercations we might have that you were on the side of my better angels let’s say okay well yeah well that’s a tricky thing to manage you know is that yeah but it’s a tricky thing to manage because when you have kids you kind of on the one hand you want to like the kid you know but on the other hand you want to like the kid that they could be even better so you have to kind of balance that acceptance for and appreciation for who they are right now with a desire to foster further development and i think mothers sort of specialize in the former and dads to some degree specialize in the latter it’s not that cut and dried obviously but the fact that you had belief in my potential was has always been of inestimable value and one of the things that really hurt me when i went on tour and talked to so many people was that that was so lacking for so many people you know they didn’t have someone who really had their back like really when the chips were down both you and mom i knew of that i knew that that was true and that gives you kind of a foundation underneath you you know well you obviously had it with your with your grandparents and your mother yep i don’t know what it would be like to grow up without that you know you’d be pretty lost pretty alone yeah well it there’s no doubt it would be tough anyhow we always mom and i always said we were young and dumb so everything goes well yeah well what’s been the most challenging part of your marriage dad what’s been the most challenging part of being married because you’ve been married how long now i don’t know 60 i don’t know 64 years something like that yeah well that’s a long time we got married in 60 what does that make it 61 61 yeah it just feels like 64 yeah it just feels like 64 yeah uh most challenging thing jesus i don’t know i guess maybe the most challenging thing is trying to be a decent person because i have a lot of trouble with that what do you mean well just that what do you have to control well i i’m very stubborn i guess probably quite opinionated and very vocal all those things can cause problems and i know that they’ve caused problems for your mom yeah well mom’s kind of gentle person although she’s got a spine yep she’s a good person yeah she is a good person she’s easy to get along with she laughs a lot she’s easy to get along with she laughs a lot friendly outgoing yeah i can’t i can’t ever remember really having a fight with mom you know and when the kids when we were kids and we used to make her upset you know because we were rambunctioning around too much um and we made her upset that always made us feel guilty because you know mom didn’t get upset if you if you made mom upset you’re probably being bad so we just feel guilty about it so yeah well you know being stubborn and opinionated and assertive has its virtues too well they have its virtues but they are making it very difficult for us yeah well it’s not easy to negotiate continually with someone under the same house and you and mom are quite different in many ways too so you have those temperamental divides to get to to cross i mean she’s more extroverted and social than you are yeah i wouldn’t say i was extroverted and social social no well you took my personality test right and i mean you were assertive on the extroverted scale but low in enthusiasm whereas mom is high in enthusiasm and not as assertive so you remember things too long yeah well i was curious you know yeah well it’s probably true yeah well i didn’t you know i gotta say when i when i grew up i never saw you really back down so that was something no you uh i don’t back down very often and i’ll be damned if i’m going to back down to this government or whatever in the hell we’ve got so when are we going to see each other again do you think well i guess when you come to see me because i can’t go anywhere and i can’t see i can’t see it changing yeah i’m not very happy about that no i’m not neither but i gotta live with me too yeah i know i’ll come up i got my two around pretty soon yep i’ll figure it out and come up good got anything else you want to say what what what what’s the best relationships you’ve ever had in your life the best relationship yeah oh i guess for me your mother you you born joe yeah well you know in our culture kids they get a bad rap you know but one thing if you’re careful you can have the best relationships you’ve ever had in your life with your kids you know people think of kids as this like interruption in their life or an inconvenience or no no that’s not right they’re the best thing that it happens to you if you’re careful you’re right anyway off to the uk yeah yeah before we can’t talk before we can’t talk yeah off to the uk tomorrow yeah well we wish you luck thank you i don’t think you need it but uh it’s good to have some luck too yeah it’s gonna be an incredibly exciting trip ridiculously exciting trip it’s a ridiculously privileged trip i will i’ll call you call you