He really was born in a log cabin on the top of a hill overlooking Moonlight Bay on Lake Wabamun. When he was young there were no fences in the country except around some farmers fields, and there was no herd law, so when the cows decide to wander they could really travel, and did. He and his brother would take the horses and follow the herd and fetch them home from Wabamun (even cows like to go to town) or where the current Provincial Park is, or farther north and east.
When they went to visit Grandma Lent down at Duffield they took the old Lac.Ste. Anne Trail which kept to the high ground across grandpa's old homestead.
He and Uncle Fred would ride their bikes all over the country to ball games and dances, and even to Edmonton sometimes. The highway was the only gravelled road in the country.
When he joined the army he had too much education (grade ten) for cannon fodder so he was picked as a clerk for the Army Service Corps. An army marches on its stomach.
In 1935, when they were sawing the logs that would later become the "big house" using Uncle Roy's "Titan" tractor to power Astlford's sawmill, a slash board got caught in the drive belt and swung around, breaking one leg and badly bruising the other. They had a hard time getting him down to the highway for a ride to Edmonton, and a terrible ride on a bumpy gravel road for someone in that condition.

Army- May 1941-Oct. 1945. Camrose- basic training for 2 months, Red deer- Army Service Corps training for 2 months then posted to Edmonton until April 1944, then Camp Borden, Ontario until being sent back to muster out at Calgary in Oct. 1945.

Edmonton- Transport and supply, driving vehicles and issuing travel warrants for trains for officers and others on official business. Also grocery supplies for Canadian Air Force in Edmonton. Assistant to Major Lilley and lived off base on 96 St. 106 Ave. Promotion to Lance-corporal in April 1944 and transfer to Camp Borden- Canadian Armoured Corps Training Centre. In charge of fuel for tanks and transport. Six 25'000 gal. tanks in a compound would be loaded from tanker trains then issued via pipeline to a service station with ten pumps. Gasoline, diesel fuel and hi-test (aviation) gas because some of the training tanks had radial aircraft engines for power. He remembers Armistce day when a bunch of troops were milling around, shooting off guns etc., in celebration and were moving toward the storage area. The consequences of a stray bullet or grenade in a high test tank were dire so he went out in front of the mob and led them down a side street away from trouble, then faded back into the crowd after a couple of blocks.

While he was at Camp Borden he used to take his weekend leaves in Toronto where he worked as a labourer in warehouses for fifty cents an hour to make enough money to go home on his furloughs. He usually stayed at the Salvation Army Hostel. He did have time to visit Niagara Falls one time with his sister, Marguerite, who worked in a munitions factory. They took the boat from Toronto, then a bus. They had a tour of the Falls and rode the cable car across the Niagara Gorge. The tour and meals were provided by a service club. One time he was on the radio on a quiz program, he didn't get the answer correct but won a dollar, which we still have.

He got two fortnight leaves and one ten day Christmas leave while he was in Ontario, 3 nights and two days on the train each way, fare sixty dollars for men in uniform, return.

Snowstorm of '42- Ambulances couldn't move and there was a man sick down the hill south of 100 Ave on 107 St. and they called in the army Chev. 1-ton panel truck. They parked on 100 Ave and four of them carried the victim up the hill on a stretcher and transported him to the Royal Alexandra Hospital. Got mentioned in the paper.

Drove Syd Lancaster, a radio personality, to Vermilion to do a radio show at the Vermilion School of Agriculture, which was used at the time as a Women's Army Corps training centre. They took the panel which had a wooden floor with a lot of cracks in it, there was no pavement on the roads and the dust inside was solid.

Dad was mustered out of the army in October of 1945 and spent a couple of weeks harvesting until he started at the mine in November. The pay was $.82/hr. and they worked an eight hour day. He walked or rode horseback or sometimes took the 1929 Chev. to work. He was on the tipple until the strike of 1948 when the company closed the mine. The underground workings were officially shut down on May 1, 1948. Dad worked on the farm and lumbering for the summer and fall and when the mine opened again in October he went back to work. He again commuted (sometime using the new tractor) until the summer of 1949 when we all moved to a house below the hill at the mine site. Since I was only two I was not consulted about it

Poppa worked as a labourer and tipple operator at the mine until he became tipple foreman, which was an increase in responsibility but no reduction in work load. By the late '50's he felt it was time to learn a trade. The opportunity arose to apprentice as a welder and he started his training at the Chicago Vocational Institute on 124 St. and 102 Ave. in Edmonton in 1958. He worked at the trade and continued his schooling at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary. While in Calgary for his six weeks of school per year he usually stayed with his cousin Helen Miller and her husband Art, who was an instructor at S.A.I.T. We all missed him when he was away at school, and I think he missed the crazy crowd of his family as well.

The little house on the hill we moved into in 1951 had grown with additions to the south and North by the time I was old enough to notice, but I do remember dad building the two bedrooms on the East side, one for me and my younger brother and one for my two sisters. He built at night after a full day of work. All of this work was on a company house and was just for his family.

About 1960 Mom and Dad decided to build something for themselves as an addition which could be moved somewhere when the time was right. To this end they built a separate building to the West of the house and joined the two with a hallway. It had always been Momma's dream to have a big kitchen with hot and cold running water in the sink and yellow linoleum on the floor, and lots of windows. This is what Poppa built for her, with built in cupboards and a mirror above the sink it was the talk of the camp for a while. There was a slight problem with the roof, which dad had made flat so as to go easily under power lines when the building was moved, it leaked.

In 1962(?) it was decided to put up a peaked roof. This was my first carpentry experience, putting shingles on the roof by myself. The leak problem was fixed and the house served many years. After we moved into our new house on the farm my sister moved in and lived until the addition was given to my other sister and moved to Wabamun. They moved from that house to a new one in town but the old place is still there housing somebody.

On August 26, 1999 at 1:23 P.M Poppa was dealt, by me, the "perfect 29" Cribbage hand with a five of clubs turnup. Momma taught him the game when they were first married and after more than sixty years of regular play he achieved this rarity. Since his retirement in 1984 he and I have played three or four games a day, seven days a week, the longest running cribbage tournament in the West.

Momma passed away in 1997 at the age of seventy-nine, we all miss her very much and I'm sorry she missed this because she would have loved it. I am writing her story but it's difficult not to be sad. As soon as possible Mom.