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KINUSO, LESSER SLAVE LAKE
My grandmother was very unhappy in Kinuso. She didn't like her sister-in-law and was unhappy about the growing debt the family owed at the general store. She thought my grandfather was capable of working in an office, but he didn't have confidence in his English which he had learned in Belgium (the family spoke French).
In 1919, when the children were five, six and seven years old, the parents were forced to take work at a lumber mill in Chisholm, northwest of Athabasca. My grandfather worked as a bookkeeper and my grandmother, a cook. Because the mill had no facilities for families, the children were taken to a convent in Grouard. My father never mentioned the convent. My aunt Jacqueline, however, has said it was quite horrific, obviously because of the separation from their parents, but also because of the unkind treatment they received from the nuns.
We don't know how long this period lasted. Finally, my grandmother decided to leave on her own or possibly with the children. She went to Lacombe near Red Deer to work as a maid. Fortunately, my grandfather went after her and agreed to move to Edmonton where he got a job as a writer for a small French language newspaper called La Survivance. I estimate that the move took place between 1922 and 1925.
In 1914, English was the fourth most common language in Edmonton, after French, Cree and Gaelic. Copies of La Survivance were digitized at the University of Alberta because of their importance as historical documents.
Pictured in the photos are my father in the front row bottom right with his Grade 8 Class; with friends at Moose Lake, his sister, Jacqueline, on the right; a copy of La Survivance; my father, his brother Albert and their dog.
EARLY LIFE
When my grandfather returned from the War in 1919, the family moved to a homestead at Kinuso on Lesser Slave Lake, where my grandfather's older sister, Maria Jeanne, and her husband, Emile Vanderaegen, had a general store. A homestead was a large piece of government land that was made available to pioneers who were willing to work hard to establish a farm. In Alberta, the main homesteading years were from 1870 to and 1930. By 1919, it is likely that most of the best land had already been taken.
There is very rich farmland west of Kinuso in the Peace River District. As I was curious about how far east this good land extended, I made an Internet search and found Statistics Canada information from the 2006 Agricultural Census. In the Big Lakes Area which includes Kinuso on its eastern boundary, small amounts of rapeseed, oats, and barley are grown. By far the biggest crops, however, are used as fodder for cattle and pigs. Annual gross farm receipts in Alberta that year were $470.90 per acre, whereas in the Big Lakes Area, they were only $174.00. Agricultural capability of the land seems to be limited largely to stock raising.
I don't know if the family had livestock. If they had cattle, they wouldn't likely have had to eat so much fish. I can remember my father telling us about the family's efforts to grow timothy. He said the whole family sat around the kitchen table, placed the timothy on the table, and pounded at it with their hands trying to remove the seeds from the chaff. When I searched timothy on the Internet, I discovered it is a type of hay or alphalfa used for cattle feed. I don't know what the seeds would have been used for, but the attempt was not successful. I can only say that I admire their determination.
Pictured in the photos are my Dad and his brother, Albert, in a dugout canoe; my grandfather Albert Darimont with horses; my Dad flying a kite; and my Dad's sister Jacqueline aged 18.
EARLY LIFE
My father was reserved and also reticent about personal things. He had a stoical approach to life. In his view, people should tough it out during difficult times. Display of strong emotion or "showing off" to him would be inappropriate. He hated irresponsibility and had even higher expectations of himself than of others. Though he was a kind and sympathetic person, he rarely expressed affection and was hard to get close to. For example, I can't remember him ever telling me something of a personal nature about his childhood. He took his responsibility as a father very seriously, but in today's terms, would have been considered very old-fashioned.
I have very little first-hand knowledge of my father's early life. From my mother I know that for a long time the family lived largely on fish they caught in Lesser Slave Lake, located north of Edmonton and east of Grande Prairie. For the rest of his life my father refused to eat fish. On the positive side, he had a lifelong love of the outdoors and of the North. The family's financial misfortune and the Great Depression which began when he was 17 years old help to explain his frugal life style and his refusal to take on any debt except for a mortgage.
The photos are of Lesser Slave Lake in northern Alberta and my father with his tent.
