THE BEGINNING
My dad came down from Moosonee...he was a young man then. My mother came down with her mother and father. They met here (Chapleau). Dad carried mail from Moosonee to Missanabi. (He was a "mail runner" for the Hudson Bay Company as a young man, bringing the mail down from Moose Factory via canoe and snowshoe to the head of the rail, which was then at Missanabi, west of Chapleau).
He joined the railroad and built a house on Grey Street. I don’t know when that was, It was not as big as it is now, It had, upstairs, three bedrooms - a big bedroom and two small bedrooms. Dad and mother stayed in one bedroom and grandma and Gertie stayed in the other bedroom. All of us boys stayed in the big bedroom in the front. It had three beds in it. We slept sideways. There were no bedrooms downstairs. When grandpa came, grandpa slept on the pull-out bed downstairs. Many a time I slept with him.
Mike came to live with us when he was 8 years old. Grandpa (John Corston) brought him down (from Moose Factory). He was retired then from the Hudson Bay Company.
When we were young, there was myself and six other brothers and Mike and grandpa (on dad's side) and grandmother (on mother's side) and Gertie and Allan, dad's half-brother, (the one that eventually moved up to Mobert-White River). In all, sixteen lived in our house. (This also included Pat Swanson. The old Corston house on Grey street should have been classified as a hotel, for many are the stories about how many people lived there or stayed there for extended visits!),
We had two sittings for dinner, on a wood stove. Mother used to do the cooking and grandpa made the coffee and porridge in the morning. Grandpa was up at 5 in the morning. He used to make (whittle) clothes-pins once he came here, and kindling. He'd sit out in the back yard and make clothes-pins and kindling. Dad always used to get a barrel of apples every year. I didn't know where he got them...from a farm someplace.
Dad got the property for our farm (the Grey Street property) I don't know how he got the farm. They had to clear the land...so much land a year, build a house on it and a barn and a garden. I don't know when he (dad) built the house. It was there when I was born. We had to have a barn, when he had the cows. The barn was right where my house is now. Edwards had a barn too. We had cows with his cows in the barn, Down at the end of the street, where Sawyer's is now, at the end of the lane, across the street, that: was a barn too. Our job was to get the cows, take them to pasture and get the milk, twice a day. Thompsons had a cow...Trappanier had a cow at the top of the lane. Thompsons lived right at the corner, where Jones' live now.