Andrew Sibbald, whose life spanned a century, was born in Ontario, November 19, 1833. Andrew’s father, John Sibbald, along with his wife and three children of Edinburgh, Scotland, immigrated to Canada in 1832, and settled in Ontario. Andrew was the first of their five children born in Canada.
The school was heated with wood in a round barrel stove, light at night came from a coal oil lamp and the teacher lived with the family of one of the students while being paid the handsome sum of $600 for the year.
As teenagers, Norman and his brothers Ollie and Wilbert joined Sykes Robinson and other boys of the district to develop their rodeo skills on the neighbour’s steers, horses or even milk cows. The furious owners occasionally caught them snubbing-up an otherwise tame wheel horse.
Helen managed to get a school on the prairie, northwest of Hussar. Shallow Water School was quite a change from the doctors’ homes she had worked and lived in, in Calgary. Her living quarters were a dugout basement under the school and it was full of mice. To get away from the mice as best she could, Helen slept on the floor of the classroom until some of her pupils brought her some cats.
Our bus driver was Mr. Eddie Rowe. He liked his chewing tobacco and carried a spittoon on the bus, which he never seemed to hit.
At this time, Slim Fenton started practicing with his horses to use on a chuckwagon. Slim asked Chet and I to help him. We were outriders for Slim for several years, participating in the Calgary Stampede, and different rodeos throughout Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Golf was played each summer for about four years when it was abandoned. Caddies for golfers made about 50 cents a round and wooden-shafted clubs were used.
There were no modern conveniences. The washing had to be done on a washboard. There were no bathtubs or indoor bathrooms. The mothers usually sewed all the children’s clothes, dad’s shirts, and knit all the stockings and mitts by hand. Everybody burned wood in the stoves. The wood had to be cut with an axe or sawed by hand. The water had to be pumped from the well and carried to the house in pails and heated on top of the stove for washing and scrubbing.
During the 1930’s the government was paying men $5.00 per month to work on farms and ranches and paid farmers $5.00 per month towards room and board. This was the first so-called “government assistance” Grandpa ever got.
At the time the Scott Lake Service Station and Restaurant was the only place to get service or something to eat between Calgary and Canmore. It was welcomed by many including the Cochrane and Canmore RCMP who could now stop for a bite to eat and coffee on their long shifts patrolling this new highway.
