- by George Bunney Jr. pg 205 Big Hill Country 1977
My father came to Cochrane from Cornwall, England, in 1912. He worked at the blacksmith shop owned at that time by Sam Christianson. In the fall of 1913, he left Cochrane and went to work in a blacksmith shop at Pincher Creek, Alberta. He came back to Cochrane and at that time a shop was available at Bottrel. This he rented from Mr. Boucher and went into the blacksmith business again.
In August 1914, World War I broke out and Dad, being a British Reservist, had to go. He served Overseas until 1919, then came back to Cochrane and purchased the blacksmith shop from George Hope. He later sold the shop back to George.
In January 1920, Dad and Miss Lily Edith Peyto were married, and in 1921 they moved to the C. W. Fisher place and started a dairy business. They remained there for eight years. Dad ran a door-to-door delivery of milk to the residents of Cochrane while living in the Fisher place. In 1929 he purchased the Tweed property south of the Bow River and moved the dairy business there. For twenty-five years, Dad delivered milk door-to-door, never missing a day. Because of ill health, he stopped the daily milk delivery and started shipping cream to the creamery. In 1954 I took over the dairy business from my father.
Mother and Dad had two children, Ellen, and myself. Ellen married Ed Beynon. She passed away on April 16, 1948. They had two children, Florence, and Edward Clive. Edward passed away on June 4, 1944, at the age of 5 months. I married Donna Washington and we have three sons: George, Alan, and William.
We sold our property south of the river and moved to a dairy farm north of Bearspaw. About a year ago we sold this farm and moved to our present home, two miles east of Innisfail. I am still in the dairy business with a purebred herd of Holstein cattle.
Dad passed away in 1961. Mother lives in her own home across the road from us and keeps well at the age of 82 years.
