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David
Sillers
I am not sure of the year my father Donald Sillers first came West, it
was about 1880. My father and mother were born and raised in
Huron County, Ontario, near the town of Exeter. He filed for N.W.
24-1-16 in 1882.
After my father had a bit of a farm shaped up, he went back East and
married my mother. Her name was Mary Jennison. Her people
were English and came from England. My father’s people were
Scotch and came from Scotland. After my father got farming, it
was not very smooth sailing, as some years were very dry and other
years we were hailed out. When there was not a crop the price of
grain was very low. The price of wheat was sometimes as low as
fifty cents a bushel. Sometimes it was lower, and the price of
oats was ten cents a bushel. My father kept a few cattle, but the
price of them was all too low. It took a good cow to bring
twenty-five dollars. We used to milk eight or nine cows, and my
mother used to make quite a bit of butter, and used to sell it to the
store in Cartwright, at ten cents a pound. Eggs were eight and
nine cents a dozen, and five dollars was a big price for a pair of
little pigs. My father seemed to be unfortunate in other ways
too. It was not easy to pick up another horse, but he finally got
one from Mr. George Crawford (Mrs. Olive Atkin’s father). By that
time the season for summer fallow had past.
Our house was very small, and there was not much in the way of
furniture. The food was very common, but substantial. My
mother made all our clothes from material purchased from our local
stores. There was no weaving or spinning, but they did make a few
rugs and mats. My father tried to bring us up right, in his own
way and was very strict. We had to be like mice. Our social
life was rather quiet. My brother Floyd and I started to school
to the Old Rose Valley School house. He was six and I was
eight. We walked the first year, and the second year we had a
pony and a buckboard. Some years we used to get into Holmfield on
the 26th of May, where they would have football games and pony races,
and some foot races for the boys and girls. There would usually
be a picnic through the summer at some of the school houses.
In the fall there would be a box social or a meeting in Holmfield to
raise money for the Church, and that was about all we got out of it too.
It was many years before we ever got to the Killarney Fair. I was
17 before I ever saw Killarney Lake. Very little visiting was
done between neighbors and there were no clubs of any kind. At
home father played the violin a little, and the only game we had was a
crokinole board. We played that nearly every night, and got to be
quite good at it.
My people were of course Presbyterian, and there used to be services in
the Rose Valley School house, mostly in the summer months. The
school was different then too from what it is nowadays. You
started in the first book, and on to the second and third and so
on. We were just taught reading and writing and arithmetic and
some history and geography.
Our mode of transportation for a long time was just a team on a lumber
wagon, later on we did manage to get a top buggy.
In politics, may father was a staunch Liberal and was a strong
supporter of the late Senator Finlay Young and the Honorable
Greenway. But outside of being a scrutineer at the polls on
election day, he took no further part. In 1904 we moved off the
old farm to one in Holmfield. In the spring of 1906, we moved to
Killarney.
I think this is all I can think of………
Wallace Sillers
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