The old farm house had two small upstairs bedrooms with steep, sloped ceilings while downstairs there was a small bedroom just large enough for a double bed. Also on the main floor was a dry bathroom with a chemical toilet and a sitting room which was used as a kitchen in the winter.
We had no electricity or running water and relied on the Aladdin lamp and coal oil lamps for light. My grandparents, who were now in their late sixties, had us underfoot once again, only this time there were three children. When I think back to those days, it must have been hard on everyone.
During our time on the farm in 1942 my brother who was two at the time and I shared the chesterfield bed in the sitting room with mother. However in 1945, as the chesterfield bed was not big enough to handle mother and three children, in desperation, they shifted me to an upstairs bedroom.
 |
| Mother and family in front of Grandpa's Willis car 1946 |
During our time on the farm in 1942 my brother who was two at the time and I shared the chesterfield bed in the sitting room with mother. However in 1945, as the chesterfield bed was not big enough to handle mother and three children, in desperation, they shifted me to an upstairs bedroom.
In the sitting room, the kitchen range and a wood burning space heater generated the heat for the small farm house. There was a door off the sitting room leading to a steep staircase to the upstairs. Heating this small house was difficult so in an effort to keep the main floor warm, this door was only opened late in the day when heat was needed for the upstairs bedroom. Unfortunately, when you have a cold winter, not much heat drifted up when the door was opened.
The combination of a cold January, an unheated upstairs bedroom and freezing cold bedding that was beyond the ability of a mere hot water bottle to warm up, made for a terrible sleeping setup for me. Whenever I think back to that upstairs room on the farm, I can't help but think that if there was a gold medal for the coldest place I've ever slept, this would have been the winner by far. I have never been so cold in all my life. I had lots of blankets piled on top of me, but as a skinny nine year old, I wasn't able to generate enough body heat to warm the bed so would stay in one place and not move a muscle all night, the sheets around me were like ice cubes. If I unfortunately had to get up during the night and use the chamber pot, it and the hot water bottle which I had finally shoved aside, would be frozen in the morning.
The extreme cold persisted through much of January but finally, as we got through February and into March the weather started to moderate and I was able to give up the rides to school on the stone boat, and walk the half mile on my own. It had been so cold and there had been so much drifting snow that the caragana shelter belt surrounding the farm was covered in snow and a very hard crust had formed on top. It seemed quite odd that I was able to walk over the tall hedge on this crust of hard snow without sinking, but it was probably similar to the crust of snow that forms on ski slopes.
Meanwhile, my father had returned to work in Saskatoon. He was staying with his father in a small one bedroom apartment over a store on Broadway Avenue while trying to find a place for our family to live. His two younger siblings had also returned from Victoria so all four of them were in the tiny apartment.
Getting back to our pre-war lives was proving to be quite challenging.
 |
| My grandparent's farm |
 |
| Picture of the farm house |
