So says a local grandmother. But when pressed, she would not be willing to return to those days. Her early memories are of a difficult and hardworking life, with little time or energy left over at the end of the day.

“I recall going with my dad when I was about three years old. We had an old hay wagon great big wheels and two horses.” says a woman who spent her 1930s childhood in East Margaretsville. “In the winter, we used to go on bobsleds and sleighs.” Another, who lived by the Annapolis River in Nictaux during the early years of the century, was less fortunate. “We didn’t have much of a way to get anywhere, unless we walked. Mostly we were a home-gathering bunch.” 

In Nictaux, she attended the 2 room schoolhouse and was taught by Mrs. Whitman. The lessons are a distant memory now, but she recalls reciting the Lord’s Prayer in the mornings, and singing hymns and anthems on special holidays. “I heard a lot from the teacher about how to be honest, and truthful, and that.” Lessons that have lasted a lifetime.

“For a young girl in Nictaux, pastimes were games with little need for equipment; hopscotch, marbles and skipping. “We probably had rhymes, but there’s been too much on my mind since I left school for me to remember that,” she says.

“I remember walking about 3 miles a day to school out the Hayes Road and across the field to the school in East Margaretsville,” says Esther. “It’s turned into a house now. It was a one room schoolhouse with a stove in the middle of the floor. When I was only 4 or 5 I would help my mother clean the lamps and shades. All we had for light was 2 or 3 oil lamps and all we had for heat was wood. That’s a lot of work all by itself.”

Esther’s father worked in his woodlot in Morden. “He’d walk to the woods, 5 or 6 miles in the morning. He’d cut wood all day, then walk back before dark. After the morning, he’d build a fire to warm his dinner; he carried that with him.” No one in the family was able to shirk the chores. “I worked from the time I was 11 years old.”

“My mother worked out,” says a Wilmot resident. “She helped other women with having their babies. I had to help out at home.”

Cooking for a family of brothers and her father was no easy feat for one so young; the kitchen duties devolved onto her when she was a pre-teen. “There was no fancy cooking. They used to get a whole lot of Hash,” she chuckles, “My Dad teased me about that, always serving hash, but they always ate it.” 

Later on, there was paid work to be had in Middleton. “I walked from Nictaux everyday. It was a factory; Canadian Canners, I think it was called. I spent the day snipping beans or shelling peas when they went by on the belt. Then they went off down below to be stewed or canned and cooked.”

“We were all good blueberry pickers,” another senior says. “Folks would come and buy them, and that helped with the money. But they didn’t pay very much for a quart; not in those days."