Prompt # 26 - Technology

Prompt # 26 - Technology

When my two grandmothers emigrated from England to Canada before WW I, they travelled by boat and the trip took about three weeks. When I visited England to see the places they were born, I travelled by air and the trip took about nine hours. Transportation seems to be one of the more obvious changes in the last one hundred years. When they arrived in Canada, both would have crossed the continent by train, one half way, to Manitoba, where they probably transferred to a branch line and disembarked right at the train station in the small town where she met my grandfather. The other crossed from Montreal to Kaslo, BC. Did the train go right into town, or did she have to transfer to the paddlewheel boat for the last jaunt up the lake? I don't know. But I do know that when the new Kettle Valley line was constructed within her first two or three years in BC, she rode the train to Kettle Valley, to work for another doctor, who just happened to live up the creek behind the ranch where her future husband lived. I have a picture of her on horseback which I am sure she only did for transportation purposes. It was her husband who loved horses, bred them, raced them. Both grandfathers worked their land with teams of horses and also had modern machines, tractors, swathers, rakes, thrashing machines, combines. In both cases also, half a continent apart, in Manitoba and BC, their farm and ranch are now owned by international conglomerates. Where the land once grew wheat for bread and pasta, now it grows canola for cooking oil. Where the ranch grew alfalfa to feed beef cattle, the fields are covered with shade netting over rows of ginseng.

Both grandmothers were married before 1920. Both would have received electricity in their homes well into their married life. By the time I remember visiting their homes, both had telephones—the wall-mounted kind with a mouthpiece on the wall and a bell-shaped earpiece that you picked up as you listened to see if the party line was busy, before you cranked the crank to call the operator and to give her the number you wished her to connect you to, literally, physically, at her switchboard in the telephone office in town.

Luckily, my family has not had a lot of medical difficulties, so the scientific advances in that field are less obvious to me. However, convenience and communication developments are everywhere. Rural electrification reached Manitoba in the 1950s. I remember when we got hydro on our farm. Electric lights replaced kerosene and gas lamps. A fridge replaced the icebox. A water heater replaced blocks of ice melted on the stove for laundry. A pump moved water from a cistern instead of buckets bringing it in from the rain barrel outside. Mum received a large Mixmaster kitchen appliance for Christmas. These conveniences never reached as far as flush toilets in that old farmhouse, but certainly in every home since that first, all the “modcons” have been present.

With electricity, we could then get television. A very wise retailer in town sold tickets to the first television which he displayed in his hardware store window. Our nearest neighbours and best friends won the television. We would all go over to their house to watch. Soon everyone in the area bought their own, installing the tall aerial on the roof to receive the only station, CKX Brandon, Manitoba. After that, we stopped visiting people because my dad would get so annoyed, going to someone else's house and all sitting quietly in the living room watching the television, not being allowed to talk. We could do that at home.

Electricity also meant new radio, record players, then stereo, electric sewing machines, electric washing machine, clothes dryer. As a teen, I had a precious transistor radio, and a small portable manual Underwood typewriter. As the eldest child and only girl, I got to drive the tractor while the boys picked up stones and hay bales. And I learned to drive a car when I was sixteen, although I didn't get my licence until I was twenty-one and bought my own car. A computer came into my home in 1981 and played a part in the end of that relationship. However, within ten years, I had my own PC, and today I have a PC, a laptop, a tablet, and a cell phone, but not a smart phone although if I had kids, I'm sure I would pick up on this one too. I don't like electronic “facetime.” Even selfie's require a Halloween wig and much cropping.

I still own four televisions and four radios. I do cling to the past, with my land line, and my DVR player, and a TV that plays old VCRs. Although I don't like to admit it, I guess I have to confess that I embrace technology hesitantly, slowly. Last year I bought a new-to-me car which I'm proud to say is from this century, 2005. It has a stick shift and driving it reminds me of when I used to drive the tractor and my brothers would complain about the jerky ride. The more things change, the more they stay the same.