Being born and raised on the starkly beautiful, rugged Hebrides Islands off the northeast coast of Scotland probably gave Donald and Margaret MacLeod the best possible preparation for life on a homestead in Alberta.
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Our father came from Glasgow in 1910 and a year later our mother made the arduous journey alone with four small children, leaving family and homelands to face an unknown world.
The four children then were Ann Mary, Margaret (Peggy), Alister and Isabel.
By the time we arrived in Canada, Dad in partnership with our uncle George MacLeod, was building one-room schools in different areas of the province.
It was while building the first school in the Lake Isle District that Dad filed on a homestead there - the SE16-54-5-W5. We left Edmonton and moved to the homestead in the summer of 1913 arriving at Fallis on what was known as the Grand Trunk Railway.
A long remembered experience was in being met there by our neighbours the Van de Ruse brothers and riding in an oxen pulled wagon over a narrow rutted wagon trail. Steep hills, deep mud holes and muskeg with newly laid corduroy, made our ride a slow and often precarious one.
Our first home was one-room log cabin and one winter was spent there. The following spring a better site was chosen close to a lovely creek. A log barn and chicken house were quickly added to house the two cows, a few chickens and a team of horses.
Our well loved pony, Mona, also became a part of our lives then and she remained the delight of we children for at least 20 years.
Dad and Mother were very community spirited people and were quickly involved in annual picnics, Christmas concerts and meetings which were always held in the early years in the school house.
Dad served on school boards and later as municipal councillor and eventually both he and Mother were very active in the local U.F.A. and U.F.W.A.
Dad was able too, to help many of our neighbours who were struggling with the language, by writing letters for them and helping them to get the titles to their homesteads.
Mother often boarded the school teachers and managed a meal and over-night stay for the travelling ministers who held services in the school once a month. In fact she always welcomed and managed a meal for anyone travelling in the district or for neighbours who just stopped in or who had come to visit.
Alister and Peggy started school at the Lake Isle School in 1913. There were children attending of many races, colours and creeds but there was a total, happy lack of any awareness of differences. It was just a group of eager children who enjoyed being together and were expected to respect their teacher.
In the winter months the old heater often took all day to warm the school room and everyone remembers huddling around it to keep warm; even our lunches had often not thawed out at noon time.
Isabel became school age in 1916 and this was the year that Catherine was born.
Making a living was difficult and Dad often sought summer work in the building trade, between seeding and harvest. Mother and we children had to do the farm work and of course every drop of water had to be carried from the well for the household. Large washes were done by hand on a scrub board and bread baked with a stove that required wood which had first to be hauled in, sawn and split and then carried in to the cabin.
Fortunately wild fruit was usually plentiful and somehow Mother squeezed in time to can and preseve for the winter months. A large garden provided winter vegetables, which were stored in a root cellar, but often they remained edible only until spring and then there was a dearth of vegetables until the new crop came along.
The struggle of those early days was shared by everyone and this brought about an inter-dependence which developed a strong sense of community and of caring.
As progress was made roads were improved and the Lake Isle post office and general store was built about 1914. Later a community hall was built with volunteer labour.
During the flu of 1917-18 whole families were stricken at the same time and consequently were dependent on neighbours to feed and water their stock, see that there was a supply of wood and water in the home, and help any way possible.
Onoway's small municipal hospital, which supplied our nearest medical care had one doctor and two nurses and of course could not cope with the epidemic. Surprisingly, in spite of the severity of the illness there were few fatalities.
The severe winter of 1919 and 1920 caused great hardships and became known as the year of the hard winter. Because of the shortage of feed for livestock, farmers were forced to pay high prices for hay; many of them lost great numbers of livestock.
It was this severe winter that led Dad and Mother to take over the general store at Darwell from J.E. McConnel of Lac Ste. Anne. That spring of 1920, Eileen was born and greeted with great enthusiasm by we older children who were thrilled by the prospect of a baby in the house.
After a year of operating the store Dad decided it was not for him and gradually began working the homestead, leaving Mother and Peggy to the store keeping. He was always on hand for "treaty" days when the Indians came for their annual government payment; he had learned a bit of the Cree language and had established a rapport with them. We never did buy the store, instead operating it and the post office for the owner for four years.
This new home was large and comfortable and we had now acquired a temperamental Ford which seemed to have to be pushed up any steep hill and have a water refill at every slough we passed.
Our enjoyment of this spacious home was short-lived; a few days before Christmas in 1926 it caught fire in the early hours of the morning and was quickly burned. Some furniture was saved but a crushing blow to Mother was the loss of treasured items brought across from "the old country".
Again we moved into a small house after being taken in by kind neighbours while it was made habitable.