Bernard Wimbush

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" height=120 BGCOLOR="#660000" TEXT="#F7F7FF" bgproperties="fixed" background="03d3f781dvldxa.png"> <div>  <FONT SIZE="7" COLOR="#66CC66" FACE="Brush Script MT" >Henry  Wimbush</FONT></div> <div> <FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#FFFF33" FACE="Arial" >  </FONT><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Home"><B>Home</B></A><B>   </B><A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Raphael Tuck"><B>Raphael Tuck</B></A><B>   </B><A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="List of Series"><B>List of Series</B></A><B> </B><B>  </B><A HREF="id22.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Acknowledgments"><B>Acknowledgments</B></A><B> </B><B>   </B><A HREF="id28.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact"><B>Contact</B></A></div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=360 style=" border-left: 15px solid #660000;border-right: 15px solid #660000;" BGCOLOR="#CCFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <bR> <div> <B>Bernard Wimbush</B></div> <div> <A HREF="id16.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Family Tree"><B> <img src="HTMLobj-668/aniGif.gif" border="0" align="bottom" width="50" height="50">  </B></A></div> <bR> <div> <B>Bernard was born in Finchley, London in 1890 and died in Canada in 1955 (</B><B>approx).</B></div> <div> <B>The following letter covering his working years until he joined the army in 1915 for the 1st World War.</B></div> <bR> <div> 1908 - Worked for Mr Gray's Nurseries  in Worthing, England for 2 years.</div> <div> 1910 - Emigrated to Canada</div> <bR> <div> Excerpts from a letter to his Sister (Olive Wimbush Keane) </div> <bR> <div> I had wanderlust. It is natural for male mammals to seek new districts in spring; we often come across them, Badgers and Muskrats etc. Lawrence (brother) was living in Johannesburg, South Africa, wanted me to go there. </div> <div> His mother said laughingly, no, now he wants to grow cabbages in Africa. </div> <div> I was crazy about flowers and gardening, but I also loved science. I went to lectures on Canada, and Daddy took me to see Lord Strathcona, then High Commissioner in London.  He had been a homesteader here and could get me a job on some farm. Daddy found someone with a brother who had a farm here in Alberta, Arthur Cable, now inspector of weights and measures for Calgary district, he offered $10 a month. </div> <bR> <div> On May 10 1910 I came over on the C.P.R. Liner Lake Manitoba, Dick, (brother) saw me off at Worthing, we lived at Saltley Lodge then. It was my first trip on a liner, hadn't even seen one before. I went as a colonist on the railways to Winnipeg, slept over night in the Immigration Hall on a chair. I had only four pounds when I arrived, we were supposed to have five, but they let me though because I had a job to go to. </div> <div> We cooked on a stove at the end of the car. Spent the night in Calgary and then on to Lacombe, then to Gadsby, which was my destination.</div> <div> My destination!  No one was there to meet me.  I asked a man if he knew Mr. Arthur Cable, he said he did, and would take me there after the ball game. I had a green sack and a box, so I jumped into his buggy it was 10 miles to Cables place. He stopped at a fence and said there was a gate somewhere, I found a wire gate. The shack was up on the hill. I saw two teams of oxen ploughing new sod. I asked one of the drivers if he was Arthur. He said he was, but Arthur Gates from Hove, as it was Saturday night they unhitched and called it a day. </div> <bR> <div> I made a great mistake coming here, I should have worked for the local florist but I didn't know any better.</div> <div>  </div> <div> I liked the change to the free life of the prairies, there were no conventions. We did, and lived as it suited us, not being married I was very ignorant of the world. It was a very rough life I had come to, not in the way of fighting and drinking as Arthur did not drink, smoke or chase women. We were 'batching it' and lived none too clean. Arthur Cable had a week's growth of red beard and glasses with the bridge tied with string. Life was simple and we did not have any milk or cows. But I enjoyed it, I would take his shotgun and go after rabbits and prairie chickens on Sunday. He had seven oxen, a four and a three team eventually I bought the latter. I just did odd jobs about the place and stayed the first year with him, I only got my board that winter.</div> <div> I got six months at $10 a month. We dug a well the following March, and he paid me $25 for that month. I went to work for a friend of his that lived 50 miles east. He wanted me to drive the three oxen on the breaking plough for $25 a month, so I went, it was a great life. </div> <div> The new country was well wooded, and close to the Battle River, it was very wet that year, we lived in a torn tent for 10 weeks and the mosquitoes were terrible. </div> <div> I broke 60 acres that summer and then a neighbouring farmer got me to help putting up hay. He gave me $1.25 a day, I raked and hauled the hay, and he mowed. I stacked sixty tons with him helping with the top of the stacks.  About this time there was a great boom in real estate and my first employer had a circular, his friend in Moose Jaw had lots for sale. Being green, I bit, and paid $20 a month for three lots, which he kept from my wages, after four months I paid no more and put it down to experience. </div> <div> After the haying I went back to Cable's. They could not use me, so I went North and got a threshing job. Then back to Cable's to thresh for the winter. There were quite a few of us, two Cable's, Arthur and William and three Holroyd's. I cooked for the bunch but I got very little money for the winters work. </div> <bR> <div> Then I thought of getting a homestead so I asked around and someone told me of a man named Joe Camp who knew of such land. </div> <div> So I borrowed a horse and went 10 miles east to where he was working at a mine. This was January 1912 and Joe gave me the number of the quarter, it was a half section, 320 acres. I filed on it for $20 sight unseen, at Stettler, the nearest town with a land office on Feb. 9, 1912. I had to borrow $3 from Arthur as I only had $17 but now I was a landowner. I bought the team of three oxen for $300 on time, figuring to pay for them ploughing 40 miles south. I also bought plough, a blacksmith outfit, and a couple of reels of wire, and some rope to tie the oxen up upon arrival at my new estate. Williams would give me an old camp stove if I would go and get some furniture for him which was 50 miles east. They also gave me a harness and now I had to have a wagon, so I went north and threshed for a farmer for thirty dollars. Now I could go to my homestead with $35 and build a house. Arthur gave me three little windows, some knifes and forks and an old pail. So off I went and I got stuck in a slough before I had gone half a mile. The tongue of the wagon got stuck in the middle of it, I thought it would slide across but it dug down into the middle of it. So I unhooked one ox, as I had one behind and dragged it back again. </div> <div> There was a stopping house twelve miles south of Halkirk. I stayed there for the night, the cost was $1, this was about ten miles from Arthur's and roughly half way. Then I got stuck in a little creek again and this was no joke as it had snowed the night before. Three wheels had sunk up to the hub and when the ox pulled back it caused the eveners to break. I could not unload this stuff so I took the three oxen across the creek which was two rods wide and all mud. Then I ran out five strands of barbed wire and attached it the draw bolt and the evener. They all pulled hard for five minutes and then I detected a slight movement of the wagon and it came out bumpily bump, 'I could have crossed a little further down without any trouble'. It was late when I got down to the Post Office at Endiang and it was mail night so I waited for Joe's mail. He had the land next to mine, it was a full moon when I got up to Joe Camp's place at 11:30 pulled him out of bed and tied up the oxen. </div> <bR> <div> I lived a month at his shack while I built my own. I am writing this letter on this land, only the railway covers the site of his shack. </div> <div> To get the title of the homestead, one had to put up six months residence for three years and cultivate thirty acres, or six years for the 320 acres. I set out to locate my land; there were four big holes at the north east corner of each section, or square mile, with an iron peg, with the section number on it.</div> <div> I found the one near Joe's shack but it took me a long time to locate the others. He had not yet finished his shack, and needed nails to finish the floor. We went to the store, and when we came back the boards had been stolen and also some other little things. He only had bent boards over the roof and when it rained everything got wet, on one occasion I slept under the bed on the rough floor with my feet sticking out into the wet. Then I began to look for a site for my shack, I located a site on the top of a ridge and started to build a sod house, four feet thick which would be 12 by 14 feet inside. After I got it three feet high, I decided this was too much work so I dug down three feet in the middle. Then I built up the gables and left four square holes for my little windows. Now I had $10 left for the roof and I would have to go to Halkirk which would take four days. So I offered to do four acres of ploughing for a man if he would get the lumber, but when I came to build the roof I found I was 55 square feet of boards short. What was I to do, I had no more money but a neighbour lent me some of his left over well curbing boards. I had a bundle of hay in one corner to sleep on, a box for a table and a box for a chair and bits of wood across one corner for a shelf so I moved in and took up residence. </div> <div> I had a great time tethering the oxen at first, I tried tying the hind leg to the fore leg, but they all kicked so they all became lame. Then I tried tying the two front legs together, but they all just hopped along. Then I tied a pole to each on a thirty foot rope, but they dragged it all over the country, as there were no fences about here. Then I tied them in sloughs, with a stake driven in and this was all right.</div> <bR> <div> Then a man offered me $4 an acre to plough some new land. He lived a long way off, so I loaded up my plough and blacksmith outfit and went. I could not get the plough to stay in the ground, so after half an acre he told me it would not do and he gave me $4 for my trouble. Now this was all the work I could get for cash the whole summer. The neighbour had a stack of hay but would not sell me a load or two, so I broke twelve acres of new ground for him. I didn't know where I was going to get any money to live on. I lived on dry bread and tea with no sugar or anything for two weeks. Then a neighbour brought me some little spuds and was going to give me some sugar. </div> <div> A man came along and wanted to buy one of my oxen. There was a lien note against the bulls, but what did I know of such things. He offered me $80 for my best and fastest ox, so I accepted. I owed $250 on them, and as Cable owed me $50 at the time of purchase, I figured I would send them $50 and live on the $30, but they wouldn't accept it. They were angry at me, but they let it go and I kept all the money and now I was rich for a time. I bought eight bundles of watertight shingles from a farmer for $2 each. They would be exactly the correct amount if I put them to the weather. So on the west side I put four and a half inches, but I used five bundles to do the side so  now I only had three for the east side, so with calculations, I figured five and a half inches to the weather would about do it. I think I had three shingles left over.</div> <div> In the meantime I was breaking my own land and I got 19 acres done that summer. Coal was cheap only $2 a ton, six miles away, but there was no wood of any kind here at that time. One day I went after a load and there was a cloudburst before I got back and I found my bed had been flooded with 6 inches of water on the floor. It had seeped away, so I moved my bed to a higher corner of the shack. A well was now necessary and a neighbour also wanted one so I dug and he pulled up the soil, digging down to 25 feet for both. He had asthma very bad and could not work hard he died the following summer 1913. I couldn't buy curbing for it, so he gave me some cedar ship lap boards for doing some more ploughing but cedar is terrible stuff for wells. I could hardly drink the water for some time and had to frequently empty it out but it gradually got better.</div> <bR> <div> I went back to Cable in the fall of 1912 as he had bought a mine and I worked for him to help pay off some of my ox debt. I used an ox to haul up the little cars of coal, it was only a bank mine, that is a tunnel run into an outcrop of a three foot seam, but he was working the seam below it, of four feet in places. This was below the level of the ravine in which it was located. So it had to have an incline to the chute and my job was to haul the cars up the slope to the chute with one of my oxen. I got $30 a month and board, which went to pay off my $250 debt. The cars were a third of a ton and we got 50 cents a car. I did this all winter whatever the weather as someone came for coal every day, except Christmas Day. </div> <div> I put in seven months and had nothing coming in at the end of it, they let me have some money however to carry on with. </div> <div> On Sundays I went to Cables to cut fence posts, I cut 600, enough I figured to fence eighty acres. Then I went 10 miles north to get a man to cut me some poles for my barn roof. I had dug a place out in the side of the hill, where my house was, before I left in the fall. I hauled the posts to a convenient place to load them up later in the spring. I ordered 20 poles but the man had cut fifty, the cost was $2 so I took them. I started for my homestead as soon as it was spring and at Halkirk I bought some lumber for the floor of my shack and a little over for a table. Now, when oxen haven't been working all winter they get very leg weary in spring and lie down to rest now and then. So when I started out, I only got four miles south of Halkirk the first day, due to my heavy load with the poles on top of the lumber and the trails were very muddy from the melting snow. I put up with a farmer and got eight miles the next day to another farmer where I got dinner. The next four miles were the worst to the stopping house, I took five hours to do the four miles. The ground was very soft and the wheels sank in three inches. One of the bulls was very leg weary and at every 10 yards would lie down, so I stopped them for a spell. I had already thrown 15 of the poles south of Halkirk as they were green and very heavy. At last I got to the stopping place and threw off the rest of the poles to fetch them later and I had no further trouble  getting home as the roads were firmer south of that point. </div> <div> I put down my floor and made a chair.</div> <bR> <div> Now for my well: I had only 16 feet of curbing, so I put a lid on it with a wire to open it. I left it shut last fall but it was still full of snow, so I began to dig it out. It got hollow so I knew I was nearly down when all of a sudden the snow gave way and one of my feet landed on top of the curbing, thus narrowly escaping a fall to the bottom. Someone had left the lid open while I was gone. I don't know how I would have got out if I had fallen in as no one knew I was back there and would not have been missed. I had two wooden tubs to water the oxen from, and a tripod of poles to hang the wheel and rope to. </div> <div> Someone had broken the improvised lock on my door and gone through all my things, but there was nothing of any value to take, as you may have guessed. Originally I had a stove pipe go through the gable with a couple of elbows, but I found that both had rusted away and could not be used. I only had an axe, a hammer and an old chisel thing which I used as a screw driver so I cut a square hole through the roof over the stove, before I could do any cooking. I made fine bread in those days. </div> <div> I ploughed one more acre before I returned north to get my fence posts, which took two trips of forty miles and eight days. It did not rain and the roads were hard. I was quite penniless when I got to Halkirk the first day, walking all the way, I bought some biscuits for thirty five cents and slept in the wagon just outside the town and it froze that night too. Next morning I went on to Cable's mine and he lent me $10, I bought some old fence wire from a German farmer the winter before, and took it along. The hardware man in Halkirk asked me where I got it and I told him. He said he had sold it to him and had not been paid for it. He didn't do anything about it so I got out of town without delay. It was all coiled up and tied up with twine, which had rotted. I got about two miles out of it, some barb, and some plain. It is still on the fences around my old homestead. </div> <div> I got a job ploughing 39 acres this summer for $2 an acre. I started the first of June and was to be finished by July 15. I was buying milk from a farmer who lived a mile from my place, so I would leave the oxen hitched to the plough and fetch the quart of milk and then take the oxen home with me. The owner of the land I was ploughing for died before I was finished and the Trust and Guarantee Company took over his land. He left his square mile of land to his brother who died the day before him. He had only paid me part of the money so the company owed me $65. They paid $20 and expected to pay the rest when I was finished, they were not going to pay the rest. </div> <div> A strong letter produced results, so they sent me $45 by return mail which they owed me. </div> <bR> <div> I had a good crop that summer and I returned to the mines in the fall. Well I went threshing in the fall and then on to Cable's mine. This winter I put the oxen with a farmer. They used a horse to haul the coal. My wheat  was in stock, so I wrote Joe to stack it. He had two stacks on my place and wrote me that it had all been eaten by cattle which had got through the fences. So there was 200 bushels of wheat gone. There was a strike at the mine because one worker had to stand in water for the same pay as those on dry ground. So I lost a months work. I went for the oxen and back to the homestead. Then went to the rancher whose cattle had eaten my crop. He would only give me ten bushels of oats, and told me to put up a legal fence. I would have to have a post at every rod and three barbed wires. I only had two wires. I couldn't do anything legally so I had to accept what he gave me. There were rocks on the wires to let the animals out I was told. I had to put in ten acres to do the necessary cultivation duties and I had to buy ten more bushels. I got it done somehow and it yielded two big loads of green oats, which I sold for $17.50. I broke ten more acres of new land as I had to have thirty to prove up, to get the title. </div> <div> I went threshing in the fall and had to sell the bulls as one had played out, being old and minus teeth. I got $110 for the two of them and spent the winter at the homestead living on the money. It was terribly lonely. It would be two weeks on end that I would not see a living thing. </div> <div> It was seven miles to Harden Plain so I went three times a month for the mail. It cost me $3.48 a week to live there from the 1st January 1915 for six months. I worked for a farmer in the fall stoking his wheat. </div> <bR> <div> Mother had written wishing I would do something for the war. I had varicose veins and my teeth needed fixing so I decided to enlist. I felt so out of it with Dick, Boydie and Ruty in various branches of the services. I went to Red Deer but there wasn't a recruiting office there and I hadn't enough money to take me to Calgary. The bank did not know me and I knew no one there. I made a long distant phone call to Bert Cable who worked at the store at Halkirk. He sent me a money order for the thirty five dollars I had in the bank and I sent him a cheque. So off I went to Calgary and I met two solders and asked them where the recruiting office was. They took me to the fifteenth and were glad to, as they would get an extension of there leave for bringing in a new recruit. Directly the doctor saw the varicose veins on my right leg he said they would have to come out. So the following Sunday evening I had them out. I stayed there for twelve days; there were three other men with the same trouble. </div> <div> And so I come to the end of this portion of my reasons for coming to Canada, and some of my doings therein. I omitted to mention that in February I went to Stettler to prove up my land with Joe Camp, on the same errand. Four month later I got the certificate, but as usual the name was misspelled, so I sent it back for correction. This took another two months. I sent it to Mum and it got lost in the return mail, so I got another made out for $4. One doesn't get the original title that stays in the land titles office. </div> <div> The End</div> <div> <B>The letter was generously loaned by Annabelle Schuring (Wimbush), Olive's daughter and Henry's granddaughter.</B></div> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>