Page 633 More Big Hill Country 2009
In the book Taming the Prairie Wool ( 1967) the story is told of Thomas Henry Norris, and his son Arthur Ernest Norris coming to Glendale, homesteading and establishing farm and family on NE Sec 34 Twp 25 Rge 3 W5M.
The first of the big changes for the family came in 1946, when after returning from the Second World War Art and Susie’s oldest son Sidney bought the Thomas Standring farm at SW Sec 14 Twp 26 Rge3 W5M. For a number of years he resided during the winters at his parents’ home and commuted by tractor to do his daily chores at the new place. During the summers he “batched it” on his own farm.
Daughter Ellen went to normal school and taught in a variety of one room schools around Alberta. In 1948 she married Henry Buckler and they moved to Water Valley where they began their family, later moving to Bottrel where they farmed with Henry’s father David.
Younger brothers Phil and Bob continued to farm with their father and took over the farm from him in 1954. In 1954 Art and Susie retired and moved into Calgary.
Electricity came to the district in 1950 and that made life much easier for both farmer and farmer’s wife! Mechanical milking machines, refrigeration systems, bulk tanks and pipeline systems were added to the farms as they became available.
In 1958 Sid bought a house located near 26th Ave and 6th Street NW in Calgary, and had the house moved to his farm. The house was moved by Bill Wearmouth. In January 1959 Sid married Rose Holmgren from Red Deer and the two of them moved into his “new house.”
In 1960 through 1962 the three brothers designed and built new parlour barns to modernize their dairying businesses. The barns were built by a co-operative effort with Roy Buckler, Art, Sid, Phil, and Bob Norris and their helpers all working to get the barns built, the cows milked and the farming done in good time. The new barns were clean and efficient and, once the cows adjusted to the change, made life easier for everybody. Uncle Phil has one word of advice for anyone making a major change to the routine in how dairy cows are handled. “Don’t feed them for a day prior to making the change and cleaning the new barn will be a lot easier.”
By the end of 1963 the next generation of the Norris family was complete. Ellen and her husband Henry Buckler had six surviving children, Hellen, Valerie, John, Tim, Charlie, and Victor. Sid and Rose had three: Marjorie, Susan and Arthur. The Buckler children attended Westbrook School and Cochrane High and the Norris three attended Andrew Sibbald Elementary, Manachaban Middle School and Cochrane High . Hellen graduating first in 1968 and young Art late in 1981.
In the winter of 1971/72, after a brief stay at the Bethany Care Centre in Calgary, both Art and Susie died, he at age 90 and she at 79. A big hole was left in the heart of the family. But both of them had numerou siblings who kept an eye on all that went on within the family for the year to come.
Always the Norris homes were places of warmth and hospitality. Friends and relatives came from the city and further afield for visits of varying lengths. Many cousins and second cousins found opportunities for work with “the uncles”. For many of the girls in the family their first job outside of the family home was to go to “the uncles” for a summer and cook for the men and the hired men. Those poor uncles survived a real variety of early cooking disasters with good humour and unending kindness. Hellen and Val both lived with “the uncles” for their university years as the Non-is farm is in easy commuting distance of the University of Calgary.
Two big changes happened at Phil and Bob’s in the 1970s. The drilling of a good water well at the North end of the farm ended more than 50 years of water worries, and they also had a new house built for themselves across the yard from the home they’d lived in all their lives. The new house was built by Gordon Hewitt and was designed by “the uncles” with input from their cousin Ken Bond who was an architect.
In 1976 Sid and Rose decided that the time had come to stop dairying. Doug Reid purchased the herd and quota and rented the barns and land. It made selling the cows much easier knowing that they would be in the hands of someone who knew them and was so skilled with them.
Phil and Bob continued with dairying until 1986 when they sold their cows and quota to Fiona and Garnet McConney. Once again a difficult decision was made easier due to the quality of the people buying the cows. Fiona and Garnet also rented the barns and land from Phil and Bob for a few years.
And so, after 60-plus years of successful dairying by three generations of Norrises, the herds were sold. Both Sid’s herd and Phil and Bob’s had been recognized with numerous awards over the years from the Alberta Dairy Herd Improvement Association for milk quality, production levels and excellence of individual cows. Pedigree lines begun with the breeding records kept on the two farms are still active in the Alberta Holstein herd.
In retirement Sid drove school bus for Judd Pickup for 10 years, retiring from that at age 65. He remembers his “kids” fondly and is always happy to have them speak to him when he is out and around. Phil and Bob made the switch to a Charolais, Hereford cross cow calf operation.
In 1992 Uncle Bob married Mavis Robinson, a widow from Toronto who had recently moved to Calgary to retire close to her sons and their families. Several years later Uncle Phil also married.
In 2005 there was much celebrating in the family as both the Buckler farm and the Norris farm reached the 100 year anniversary. Parties were held at both farms that summer with friends, relatives and neighbours coming from near and far to reminisce and reconnect. Dignitaries did their presentations and plaques are proudly displayed.
All four of Art and Susie’s children are quite well and still active in the local community and their respective churches.
Sid (widowed in 1987) lives with his daughter Sue and her husband Bruce Hewitt in the house they built on the pasture quarter SE Sec 15 Twp 26 Rge 3 W5M. Phil lives at the Big Hill Lodge in Cochrane. Ellen is at home on the Buckler farm in the summers and stays in Cochrane with her daughter Hellen in the winter. Bob and Mavis divide their time between the farm and their retirement home in Calgary.
Members of the next generation continue on the farms and in the community. John and Reet Buckler living on the Water Valley farm, Tim Buckler is on the Bottrel farm as are younger brother Victor and his partner Charlene and their family. Charlie and his wife Kim now have a U-Pick strawberry farm and market garden on the Bottrel farm as well. Art Norris and his wife, Molly Shier are raising their son, Kieran on Sid and Rose’s farm where they have a cow-calf operation. Marjorie lives in Northwest Calgary and remains busy with her involvement on the farm, with the family, her church and her career with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Today, in 2007, Art and Susie Norris’s descendants are spread across Alberta and Canada, from New Brunswick in the East to Alberta in the West and from Red Earth Creek in the North to Calgary in the South. The family farms continue to be “home” for one and all.
Deep Dive
- Cochrane’s farming landscape has gone through change – Cochrane Eagle
- CHAPS Cochrane
