That was the town, that's all I knew. For ever, the world was no bigger than Pine Falls. It was 3 hours by road to get to Winnipeg. So we didn't go.

 

We had TV in Pine Falls before a lot of people did, country people. We had one channel. CBC. And most of the time, you couldn't see it for snow. It was terrible, but we still had a TV. I still remember the shows. Daniel Boone, The Ed Sullivan show was forever. Hockey Night in Canada, everybody watched it ya know, that's just the way it was. But TV was not the end all like today's world with everything on there. It was turned on for the Ed Sullivan Show and it was turned on for some of the other stuff. I mean it wasn't full programming, it didn't run 24 hours, it ended. It ended at nighttime, the CBC Indian came on and pblck.. you're done. Yeah.. The CBC Indian! Ya, see that's not even correct anymore is it. On Duchie's Rock just outside of Pine Falls they had a big 400 ft tower just to get a signal into Pine Falls because the signal did not come. We were well into the 60’s before there was any kind of service and at that point people were putting up their 20 and 30 ft towers on their homes to get any kind of service. And that went on for a long time. But, watching TV wasn't part of the era that I come from.

 

There was a gym, there was my motorcycles, me & dad going hunting and fishing and stuff like that. So things that young people did, to go to the local dances and stuff like that is something that you followed along but that was something that I never had interest in any of those things. I had the town of Pine Falls to deal with. And with nature, everything was out there.

 

At 13 years old we all had 22 calibre rifles, and there we are, out in the bush. Shooting rabbits and shooting squirrels, we used to shoot squirrels and we used to skin them and take them to the local restaurant and sell their hides for a dollar a piece. The restaurant was what bought your furs, and the Hudson Bay Store was where you bought your winter boots. We lived from this small place. So we got a dollar for a squirrel and a dollar fifty for an ermine, a weasel. We used to trap weasels in the winter.

 

At Christmas time in the same bush outside of Pine Falls we'd be out there like crazy, two weeks before Christmas cutting down Christmas trees and drag them home and drag the from door to door to door til we could sell one.

 

We were always outside. We walked everywhere. Cuz there was a rink and we skated and played hockey as a young person. I had no success at hockey but I did play til I was 13, everybody played. And the girls had figure skates and we all went there on Saturday and skated in the rink. And in the summer time when we were young, we hung out at the swimming pool all summer long. Kids hang out right?  We'd hang at the restaurant in Pine Falls cuz it was THE restaurant, the same guy who bought your furs for a dollar. We'd sit in front of it on the fence and just hang there all summer long.

 

We were always into trouble at the mill, always some kind of trouble goin’ on there. And there was no such thing as 'fences' in my day.

 

We went to the local drug store and bought some saltpeter and we made GUNPOWDER. You crush it all down, and you put it underneath cans and then you put a match underneath there, and BLOW the can a hundred ft in the air. We always made gunpowder. We'd go to the mill and steal our sulphur and crush it with rocks and mix it with the saltpeter, put it under the can, make a trail, light it with a match, and it would explode BOOM. All my buddies had their fingers and eyes so we survived there somehow.

 

You were a kid. You were up to no good. You had your friends up and down the street and did all the things you did. You had your bicycles and picked on that neighbor, and stole crabapples from that neighbor, and raided that neighbor's garden, and just did all those childhood things that was just normal for me. Yes, some of the neighbors were pretty upset with this stuff, and they'd shoo you out, and they'd call your parents. But to this day I still live with the idea: It's called the spirit of getting away! Cuz we're all bandits at heart. Well, maybe I'm the only bandit I don't know, but I still haven't had to go to jail yet - so I'm not that much of a bandit yet. The Spirit of Getting Away.

 

In those days, we did all those things as children and it was an easy life, there was never a problem, we never suffered, we were never hungry, cuz just down the road on the reserve, people were hungry down there. And until you grew into a mature person did you start to understand those things. Because we lived in a pretty closed world, pretty close to perfection.

 

I always worked. I always had jobs. I had my own business when I was 13, had a lawnmower and 3 snow shovels. And I pushed and I pushed and I shoveled. My mom woke me up at 6:00 every morning of a snowfall in Pine Falls. The grader went around at night time and pushed up giant drifts in front of everybody's driveway. And I would shovel them going down the street so they could get to work. And they'd all empty their pockets of change. I made lots of money. I used to cut peoples lawns for $5 a month. That was a good pay. When I turned 16 I worked part time in the paper mill, for $2.86 an hour. That was a big deal. That's what men were making that had families.

 

Some people in my school did drop out. And some people in other parts of the world had to drop out, just to get a damn job, in my day. But, I didn't know that at the time. I guess I stopped liking school in grade 8, when they held me back. I was failing badly at that point in school and since I did very poorly they held me back that year, in grade 8. At that point in my life, if you missed a grade, you were downgraded within yourself. Then you had to do that grade all over again until you got to the next school, the high school. 'Across the gym' it was called ‘cuz we were all in one giant building. But you went in there with kids you didn't grow up with. You went with kids who were a year younger. So it's a negative thing.

 

But I kept myself at the school there because of the gym. No other reason. I would have gotten a job. And we were the Rams and we were this and that and we had our uniforms and we played all the sports. And we got on the bus and we went to Whitemouth and went to Lac Du Bonnet and played. We had a circle because the paper company had a bus and took us around. We had a good place and a lovely gym and you kept yourself busy with it.  And you kept dragging yourself through at 55% on all your courses until you graduate. I dragged and I dragged and then the powers that be didn't push me through in grade 12 and they said that you gotta come back next year for 2 subjects to finish, to get a graduation.

 

One of the things in my day, when I talked to a trade school is that I only needed grade 10 to go to trade school. You didn't need a high school education to go to trade school. Grade 10 was all you needed. They were looking for trades people. The theory of my time coming through and it's still part of today's world is that your kids have to go to University to become anything, It's still there, it's still a stigma, if that's the right word. In regards to "oh, they gotta go get this education". And yes, somebody's gotta be educated, but then somebody's gotta do the work too. So all you needed, to go to trade school was grade 10, so they thought they were going to keep me around going to that school again, and it didn't happen. I went to work in the paper mill right after that, that summer and I worked for awhile, knowing that all I needed was grade 10 to go to trade school.

 

At 16 years old I got my driver’s license, and I got my motorcycles, so life was all about the small town, the hunting and fishing, out with dad.... and especially that motorcycle. So the girls and the school and this stuff was not a big deal. You just moved along.

 

Chapter 2

Growing Up

That was the town, that's all I knew. For ever, the world was no bigger than Pine Falls. It was 3 hours by road to get to Winnipeg. So we didn't go.

 

We had TV in Pine Falls before a lot of people did, country people. We had one channel. CBC. And most of the time, you couldn't see it for snow. It was terrible, but we still had a TV. I still remember the shows. Daniel Boone, The Ed Sullivan show was forever. Hockey Night in Canada, everybody watched it ya know, that's just the way it was. But TV was not the end all like today's world with everything on there. It was turned on for the Ed Sullivan Show and it was turned on for some of the other stuff. I mean it wasn't full programming, it didn't run 24 hours, it ended. It ended at nighttime, the CBC Indian came on and pblck.. you're done. Yeah.. The CBC Indian! Ya, see that's not even correct anymore is it. On Duchie's Rock just outside of Pine Falls they had a big 400 ft tower just to get a signal into Pine Falls because the signal did not come. We were well into the 60’s before there was any kind of service and at that point people were putting up their 20 and 30 ft towers on their homes to get any kind of service. And that went on for a long time. But, watching TV wasn't part of the era that I come from.

 

There was a gym, there was my motorcycles, me & dad going hunting and fishing and stuff like that. So things that young people did, to go to the local dances and stuff like that is something that you followed along but that was something that I never had interest in any of those things. I had the town of Pine Falls to deal with. And with nature, everything was out there.

 

At 13 years old we all had 22 calibre rifles, and there we are, out in the bush. Shooting rabbits and shooting squirrels, we used to shoot squirrels and we used to skin them and take them to the local restaurant and sell their hides for a dollar a piece. The restaurant was what bought your furs, and the Hudson Bay Store was where you bought your winter boots. We lived from this small place. So we got a dollar for a squirrel and a dollar fifty for an ermine, a weasel. We used to trap weasels in the winter.

 

At Christmas time in the same bush outside of Pine Falls we'd be out there like crazy, two weeks before Christmas cutting down Christmas trees and drag them home and drag the from door to door to door til we could sell one.

 

We were always outside. We walked everywhere. Cuz there was a rink and we skated and played hockey as a young person. I had no success at hockey but I did play til I was 13, everybody played. And the girls had figure skates and we all went there on Saturday and skated in the rink. And in the summer time when we were young, we hung out at the swimming pool all summer long. Kids hang out right?  We'd hang at the restaurant in Pine Falls cuz it was THE restaurant, the same guy who bought your furs for a dollar. We'd sit in front of it on the fence and just hang there all summer long.

 

We were always into trouble at the mill, always some kind of trouble goin’ on there. And there was no such thing as 'fences' in my day.

 

We went to the local drug store and bought some saltpeter and we made GUNPOWDER. You crush it all down, and you put it underneath cans and then you put a match underneath there, and BLOW the can a hundred ft in the air. We always made gunpowder. We'd go to the mill and steal our sulphur and crush it with rocks and mix it with the saltpeter, put it under the can, make a trail, light it with a match, and it would explode BOOM. All my buddies had their fingers and eyes so we survived there somehow.

 

You were a kid. You were up to no good. You had your friends up and down the street and did all the things you did. You had your bicycles and picked on that neighbor, and stole crabapples from that neighbor, and raided that neighbor's garden, and just did all those childhood things that was just normal for me. Yes, some of the neighbors were pretty upset with this stuff, and they'd shoo you out, and they'd call your parents. But to this day I still live with the idea: It's called the spirit of getting away! Cuz we're all bandits at heart. Well, maybe I'm the only bandit I don't know, but I still haven't had to go to jail yet - so I'm not that much of a bandit yet. The Spirit of Getting Away.

 

In those days, we did all those things as children and it was an easy life, there was never a problem, we never suffered, we were never hungry, cuz just down the road on the reserve, people were hungry down there. And until you grew into a mature person did you start to understand those things. Because we lived in a pretty closed world, pretty close to perfection.

 

I always worked. I always had jobs. I had my own business when I was 13, had a lawnmower and 3 snow shovels. And I pushed and I pushed and I shoveled. My mom woke me up at 6:00 every morning of a snowfall in Pine Falls. The grader went around at night time and pushed up giant drifts in front of everybody's driveway. And I would shovel them going down the street so they could get to work. And they'd all empty their pockets of change. I made lots of money. I used to cut peoples lawns for $5 a month. That was a good pay. When I turned 16 I worked part time in the paper mill, for $2.86 an hour. That was a big deal. That's what men were making that had families.

 

Some people in my school did drop out. And some people in other parts of the world had to drop out, just to get a damn job, in my day. But, I didn't know that at the time. I guess I stopped liking school in grade 8, when they held me back. I was failing badly at that point in school and since I did very poorly they held me back that year, in grade 8. At that point in my life, if you missed a grade, you were downgraded within yourself. Then you had to do that grade all over again until you got to the next school, the high school. 'Across the gym' it was called ‘cuz we were all in one giant building. But you went in there with kids you didn't grow up with. You went with kids who were a year younger. So it's a negative thing.

 

But I kept myself at the school there because of the gym. No other reason. I would have gotten a job. And we were the Rams and we were this and that and we had our uniforms and we played all the sports. And we got on the bus and we went to Whitemouth and went to Lac Du Bonnet and played. We had a circle because the paper company had a bus and took us around. We had a good place and a lovely gym and you kept yourself busy with it.  And you kept dragging yourself through at 55% on all your courses until you graduate. I dragged and I dragged and then the powers that be didn't push me through in grade 12 and they said that you gotta come back next year for 2 subjects to finish, to get a graduation.

 

One of the things in my day, when I talked to a trade school is that I only needed grade 10 to go to trade school. You didn't need a high school education to go to trade school. Grade 10 was all you needed. They were looking for trades people. The theory of my time coming through and it's still part of today's world is that your kids have to go to University to become anything, It's still there, it's still a stigma, if that's the right word. In regards to "oh, they gotta go get this education". And yes, somebody's gotta be educated, but then somebody's gotta do the work too. So all you needed, to go to trade school was grade 10, so they thought they were going to keep me around going to that school again, and it didn't happen. I went to work in the paper mill right after that, that summer and I worked for awhile, knowing that all I needed was grade 10 to go to trade school.

 

At 16 years old I got my driver’s license, and I got my motorcycles, so life was all about the small town, the hunting and fishing, out with dad.... and especially that motorcycle. So the girls and the school and this stuff was not a big deal. You just moved along.

 

Chapter 2

Growing Up