Prompt # 51 - First Home

Prompt # 51 - First Home

I lived in my first home for 17 years, a farmhouse five miles from Oak River, Manitoba. (10-13-22, section, township, range) The house stood atop a small hill in the middle of fields, beside the pasture, with a fence separating the barnyard and granaries. The house had been built in 1891. It was surrounded by a windbreak of American elm, Manitoba maple, and poplar. It was about a half mile from the main road, which is unusual. The house was located before the survey for government road allowances had been made. This meant that the lane was long and winding, curving past two sloughs which had water in spring and bulrushes all year. The second slough also had muskrat houses. I loved living on the farm. I've written about the pasture, my favourite escape. And about the fact that nothing remains. House, yard, barn, barnyard, trees have all been bulldozed and the land broken, folded into the fields. So now it is truly a magic place which exists only in memory.

Prompt # 50 - Godparents

Prompt # 50 - Godparents

I'm not sure if I had official godparents, named at my baptism, but I always associated two women as my godmothers. The first was Mrs Ethel Grove who was the mother of a friend of my father's. I don't know why I think so. We had no special contact except when our family visited her on our trips from Manitoba to BC. She moved from Bradwardine, Manitoba, my father's home town, to Trail, BC with her daughter Ruth who was a teacher. The two later moved to Sooke, BC to be near Mrs. Grove's son Ralph. Before my parents were married, when my dad was in the Canadian army waiting in England, he visited the Groves when he was on leave. They had gone to England to visit family and got trapped over there when the war started. I think they may have been in Scotland.

My second godmother was Joan Smith, a good friend of my mother's. Their mothers were best friends. Joan was also like a sister to my father who had worked for her parents. I was named for Joan and for my maternal grandmother, Winifred Joan.

I left home at seventeen to go to university and never lived with my parents again. This meant that I seldom saw the people they visited. That and the fact that I still lived in Manitoba while everyone else lived in BC.