Interviewer: Jon Duncan
Interviewee: Alberta Kiddle Finely
Jon Duncan: Today is August 6th, 1996 my name is Jon Duncan I am here with Alberta Kiddle Finely, Alberta why don’t you introduce yourself.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: My name is Alberta Kiddle Finely and I was born in Stirling Alberta on the 20th of June 1904 at that time it was still the North West Territories.
Jon Duncan: That’s right it became Alberta one year later.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: That’s right. So when people ask me if I was named after the province I say no I was named before the province.
Jon Duncan: Okay, that would be true. Alright Alberta I would like to talk to you first about your parents and what you remember about them, so why don’t we start with your father.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: My father was born in London England, in Old Forg as they called it then. His parents became members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Laterday Saints after hearing the missionaries that came to England. His parents joined the Church and later immigrated to Salt Lake City Utah. When my father was about fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old, I am not to sure.
Jon Duncan: So you to Salt Lake and grew up in Salt Lake after that.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: What about your mother?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: My mother was also born in London England, I am not to sure where, I had it one time but I have forgotten. Her father was a tike thitter and her family also joined the Church of Jesus Christ and Laterday Saints and were persuaded to come out to Salt Lake City. When my grandfather arrived in Salt Lake City he was given the job of setting the type and punctuating the book of Mormon for publication.
Jon Duncan: Your father and your mother both grew up in Utah then.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes they grew up in Utah and met each other there and married. They were married in the old entailment house before the temple was built and my father actually helped to do a few things around the temple, he worked where they cut the limestone or whatever you call it.
Jon Duncan: The quarry
Alberta Kiddle Finely: In the quarry for a bit. His family donated enough money to put in one complete window in the temple.
Jon Duncan: In the Salt Lake Temple.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: In the Salt Lake Temple.
Jon Duncan: So he worked on that for a bit before he moved up here to Canada.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Now when did they move to Canada?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: They moved to Canada in 1901, my father came up and bought a farm in 1901. Then he went back to Utah and brought the family up. They came up on the nail gauge railroad and that is where they settled.
Jon Duncan: Okay so where was this farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: His farm was half way between Stirling and Raymond. So I was acquainted with people from both towns.
Jon Duncan: When he came up here did he build a house in Stirling to live on the farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes he built a home he was a good carpenter, he learnt that trade from another carpenter in Utah. So he built a house let me see it must have been four rooms downstairs and six rooms upstairs, two rooms upstairs, it was a total of six rooms anyway.
Jon Duncan: Okay so it was quite a big house then. Was that the house that you were born in?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Now he was an engineer by trade is that right.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes he learned electrical engineering in Salt Lake City and became the chief electrical engineer in DCMI shoe and overall factory.
Jon Duncan: So what made him move up here then?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well there was a big land boom on about that time and a lot of the states were moving to Canada. So he decided to come also.
Jon Duncan: Decided to come up here and start farming. Now he had had an accident as an engineer.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes when he was in the engine room one morning he was wiping the dynamos off with waste as they called it. Someone called ‘Oh Tom’ and he turned his head just long enough to get his finger crushed in the machine. He had been learning to play the piano and after his finger was removed he could no longer play the piano. So then he turned to the violin because he could finger the violin with his left hand and hold the bow in the right hand.
Jon Duncan: So he was quite a musician then.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes he was
Jon Duncan: So it was just shortly that he injured himself that he moved up here.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes probably a year after.
Jon Duncan: So did he do any engineering up here in Canada?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes he did he worked for the Bell telephone companies and he did a few electrical jobs that I can’t remember what they were because I wasn’t even born then.
Jon Duncan: Okay but he also had to farm right.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Ya well he had already bought the farm so he was doing carpenter work for people around the Stirling and Lethbridge for a long time. He strums the first telephone ling from Stirling to the Macintyre ranch and made the first call back over it to make sure that it was working right. He had a lot of firsts when he worked for the Bell telephone company he had a pay station installed in our living room and people had to come there to make telephone calls because there were no other phones in Stirling.
Jon Duncan: So your family had the first phone.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I guess so
Jon Duncan: That was with the bell company. Bell telephone, now his name was Thomas
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Matthew Kiddle. Yes
Jon Duncan: Now tell me you were one of the first children born in Canada.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I was, at one time people told me that I was the first girl born in Stirling but that was, I think that that was a mistake, I think that there might have been one before me.
Jon Duncan: But in the Kiddle family
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes I was the first child born in Canada. So how many children were there total. Our family had nine children, but the oldest boy had died in Salt Lake City and was buried there, before they came to Canada. I was the eighth child in the family then I had one brother younger then me.
Jon Duncan: Okay so you were one of the last children.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I had four brothers and four sisters.
Jon Duncan: Now you mother her name was Elizabeth Angus
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Slight
Jon Duncan: Slight, alright what do you remember about her.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: well she was not a very large woman, in her life she put on a few pounds. At first she was a quite tall thin lady.
Jon Duncan: Okay so you were describing your mother and the phone rang there.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes mother was very good at cooking, dress making, and many other things like making quilts. She taught me quite a few things.
Jon Duncan: What are some of the things that you learned from your mother?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Quilting, Crocheting, and general house keeping.
Jon Duncan: Now did you learn to cook from her?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Not to much, I was busy going to school and in fact when I was going to high school I staid with my brother Dale and family in Stirling during the week. Then went home on Saturdays and Sundays and came back on Monday to start another week of school.
Jon Duncan: So when you were in high school you were actually living on the farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I was living still with my parents on the farm but I stayed in town to go to school. I helped my sister in law with babysitting and clerking in the store, my brother had a store on a garage as I had told you once before.
Jon Duncan: The Kiddle store.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I used to clerk in the store sometimes.
Jon Duncan: You clerked for your brother?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: What did you have to do?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Just wait on customers as they came in to buy things.
Jon Duncan: What kinds of things did they sell there?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Groceries a little bit of dried goods.
Jon Duncan: You also said that there was a garage there.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: What was the garage for?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well cars would come into Stirling there was one or two already there. I believe that Nilts Nilsson had one, Laun Nilsson had one, and Frank Coffin probably had one. I can’t remember anyone else. Dale had one of the first ones in town, a Modle T Ford, which I learned to drive.
Jon Duncan: You learned to drive your bothers Model T Ford. So the garage was an auto repair shop.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: As well as supply gasoline.
Jon Duncan: At the same place.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well we had it in front of the store at first and then he decided to build a garage. So the gas pump was in front of the store actually.
Jon Duncan: So who was the mechanic there?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: My brother
Jon Duncan: Dale was the mechanic there.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: So do you remember him getting his first car?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, he went to Lethbridge one day and come back with a car that is about all I know about it.
Jon Duncan: So what was it like to drive in this car?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Really the only thing that I didn’t like was that you always had to change gears; that I had to learn to do smoothly so that it wouldn’t jam.
Jon Duncan: You didn’t like the standard clutch.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No I like these automatic cars.
Jon Duncan: So you say that you learned to drive in that car.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes I drove it one day part of the way out to the farm to visit my father and mother. Of course Dale was right beside me in case anything went a mess. Then we had our picture taken out at the farm. My father hitched up the buggy horse as we called him, old Bill. Then we had a picture taken of the car and the buggy with mother and father.
Jon Duncan: So your parents still had the old horse and buggy when Dale got his car.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes they never did own a car.
Jon Duncan: Did you ever drive the horse and buggy?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh all the time, to Stirling, to school before my sister got married, there was my sister and my brother and my self all going to school. But after she got married there was just Eddie and I and we used to drive to Stirling for a while but when I started high school Eddie, he didn’t start high school at the same time that I did. He went to Salt Lake City to learn the violin from one of my dad’s old teachers. So I was left alone, that’s why I stayed in town.
Jon Duncan: With Dale
Alberta Kiddle Finely: With Dale and family.
Jon Duncan: So did Dale let you drive the car a lot?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh no I wasn’t allowed to drive it very much but I did learn to drive it.
Jon Duncan: He just let you drive it every once and a while.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: It was lucky because when I married Harry Finely, well at first we only had horses but after a while he bought a Model T Ford.
Jon Duncan: So you already had practice on it, that reminds me you told me about the role in that Model T Ford, what happed?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: The one that Harry bought yes. Well I already had two children, two boys, Dale and John and I came to Lethbridge for repairs for some of the machinery on the farm. Going home Dale he said to me mama I am cold so I reached over to put the lamp robe closer around him and I accidentally turned the car and it went down into the bar pit and turned over.
Jon Duncan: Was anyone hurt?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Dale got a bump in the ribs and John got a nose bleed and that’s all that happed to them. The steering wheel bumped my thigh and made a black and blue mark. I think that I hurt my shoulder a little bit but no bones broken.
Jon Duncan: That was lucky, now who came and helped you?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Alfred Romeril came along in a car and he had another man with him so they saw us sitting by this, I was away from the car by then. The car was still upside down and he saw it, noticed us there. He came over and found out who I was and took us in his car, they got the car back on its wheels again. The other man got in my car and Mr. Romeril took me and the children home. When we got back home my husband was out on the tractor way up at the other end of the field, he saw the car going past with the smashed in top and he said my goodness somebody has had an accident with their car. He didn’t know that it was his own car.
Jon Duncan: So when did he find out that it was his car?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: When he came home for dinner or I guess that it was supper at that time, he found out that we had had and accident and he began pacing the floor back and forth. He didn’t say very much, he just kind of paced the floor while I was getting supper ready. I said well Harry don’t worry so much about it because nobody was hurt very bad, the car was smashed up a bit but it could be fixed. That is the only accident that I ever had with a car and someone said to me later do you still drive. I said sure I do, they said that a girl.
Jon Duncan: Okay, let’s go back somewhat then and I want to talk about your childhood. What are your earliest memories?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well my earliest memories are of course when I lived in the Stirling house. I just had a little ways to go to school, just about a block to the schoolhouse. I remember hearing the bell calling us to school at eight thirty. Of course we were always there on time. My sister who was six years older than me and teaching Eddie, my younger brother and I at home, when we played school she was the teacher. So I already knew my numbers and my alphabet. I could read a little bit actually before I went to school. I remember by first teacher, Mrs. Viapawn from back east. I think that it was Nova Scotia or New Brunswick that she came from. I admired the way that she dressed; she had long skirts and usually had a white waist with a high collar. That had bones on the side to hold it up. I remember that it was all lacy long sleeves with ruffles on the cuffs. I thought that she dressed beautifully at that time. She taught me phonetics and I was very glad in later life that I had learned them when I was young because I was able to read fast. I can read very fast. I read many books; reading is one of my great pass times.
Jon Duncan: So who were some of your childhood friends?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I guess that every little girl in town was my childhood friend. I can’t remember all of them. There was Bertha Morgenson, Ruth Young, and Jenavy Larson before she became Jenavy Barson, Jenny Oler, Alta Hirchie, Lara Christenson we were all about the same age and we all went to school together.
Jon Duncan: It looks like you had a good group of friends there. What did you used to get up to with your friends? What kinds of games did you play?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh we played tag, pump pull away was one of the games that I can’t even remember how it was played. Of course in the winter time we had fox and geese, hide and seek, I don’t remember many of the games very much, we played ball, later on I played a few games of tennis with some of the girls. Eudora Oler or Eudora Fawns I don’t know I guess that I had a care free and a happy childhood.
Jon Duncan: Did you play around the irrigation cannels much
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No, that wasn’t allowed, my parents would allow me to go out there.
Jon Duncan: Not out to the cannel. What about the ditches in town?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh we used to paddle in them once and a while but mother cautioned us not to walk with bare feet in the ditch because someone might have thrown a broken bottle in there or a tin can in there and we might cut out feet. So we didn’t do that very much.
Jon Duncan: So what do you remember about living at home, what you got up to in the evenings.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Like I said before we had kind of a home orchestra. We used to play tunes, my dad had a gramophone and he taught me how to waltz and two step.
Jon Duncan: So your dad taught you to dance, who was in this home orchestra?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Myself and my brothers and sisters.
Jon Duncan: What did you play?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I played the organ sometimes and sometimes I played the old bass tiggle.
Jon Duncan: What other instruments were in this
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Edward, younger brother learned to chord on the organ. My brother Walt played the flute and the pickle low and the clarinet. My brother Dale played the Drums and the cornet. My sister Lil and Sister Chlara played the piano. Ida learned a little bit but she wasn’t very proficient, neither was I exactly but. We learned a lot from our dad.
Jon Duncan: So the whole family was quite musical.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: We were musical and mother used to sing along with us.
Jon Duncan: Now this you would do every night.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: In the evenings after supper.
Jon Duncan: Was this and ever night thing?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Not ever night but whenever dad felt like getting his violin out.
Jon Duncan: You would just get out and play together.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: We taught Edward to play the violin to
Jon Duncan: Okay, now tell me about growing up with your brothers and sisters, were you a close family?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Very close yes. Yes we were.
Jon Duncan: In what way.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well we were taught that we were brothers and sisters and should always be that way, so we always were a very close family. Of course I remember my sister Clara getting married but I don’t remember my sister Merdle getting married because I was only two years old the day that she got married.
Jon Duncan: She was the first one married.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No my sister Lil was the first one to get married but I don’t remember. But Clara I remember her going away to go and Salt Lake to get married to Albert Perrett in the Temple there, because they didn’t have the temple in Canada at that time.
Jon Duncan: It wasn’t until 1923 that they had a temple.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I don’t remember when it was built actually.
Jon Duncan: Okay so let me just go to your school years now, how many years of school did you attend?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I went to grade eleven. I almost finished it but not quite. I quit school to get married.
Jon Duncan: Okay so you were…
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I was nineteen years old.
Jon Duncan: You met
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Harry Finely
Jon Duncan: And you decided to get married instead of finish grade eleven or finish grade twelve.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I didn’t quite finish grade eleven.
Jon Duncan: Before I get to Harry let me ask you about some of the homes that you lived in Stirling?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: My first Home of course was in Stirling. When I was about seven or eight years old my father tear our house in Stirling down, moved the lumber out to the farm and we began to build our farm home out there. In the mean time we lived in a big granary which he had built to hold grain, and then we had two granaries actually, a big one and a small one. They were well built granaries. We lived in them, I don’t know what time of the year that he finished the year but it was before winter came. So he put un to house during the summer
Jon Duncan: While you lived in the
Alberta Kiddle Finely: While we lived in the granary
Jon Duncan: What was it like living in these granaries?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well it wasn’t as comfortable as it could have been but I don’t remember it being anything but okay.
Jon Duncan: Were they insulated?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No but they were tightly built, my dad was a good carpenter.
Jon Duncan: So if they weren’t insulated was it cold in the wintertime’s.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: We had quite a warm summer I guess and I don’t remember ever being cold.
Jon Duncan: Okay so you only lived in those during the summer while he was building him house. Then you lived on the house on the farm until you grew up basically. You lived with your brother at Delbert in Stirling during High School.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: With my brother Dale yes and his family.
Jon Duncan: Now the farm was three and a half miles west of Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well it was about three miles west and a mile south of Stirling.
Jon Duncan: As how often as a young girl did you travel to Stirling?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well everyday to school when we were able to go to school.
Jon Duncan: Who drove the buggy?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: We all did we took turns. My sister Ida drove for a long time while she was the oldest. You really didn’t have to drive the horse he knew his way.
Jon Duncan: So when you got there where did you put the horses?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: When they had built a stable for the horses because there were a lot of kids coming to school on horse back to. They built a stable; you know where the library is now.
Jon Duncan: Ya
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well just a ways east of that they built a stable for horses. We used to bring hay in the back of the buggy for them and put in the manor and tie him in there until noon then we would take him for a drink and put him back in there until it was time to go home, we hitched him up to the buggy and drove him home.
Jon Duncan: Let me ask you one other thing. What kind of work did you do around the house as a young girl?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I mopped floor and did dishes and all those kinds of things, made beds.
Jon Duncan: Now did you do any work on the farm with you dad?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes I did, I used to tramp the hay in time. They would through it on a hay rack as they called it and I would go and tromp it down in the fall when the wheat was ready to stoop I used to help stoop the wheat. Not all of the time but some of the times. I used to help my dad around the place. When he was shingling the roof of our house on the farm I remember going up on the ladder and helping him lay shingles.
Tape 1 side 2
Jon Duncan: So you helped you dad shingle the houses you were saying.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes he helped me lay the shingles and he would come along and tag them down with shingle nails. I also helped him put the lath on the walls of the upstairs bedrooms. I used to be able to drive nails as good as he did and preparing the walls for plaster.
Jon Duncan: It sounds like you helped you dad quite a bit.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes I was kind of a daddy’s girl I was with him quite a bit of the time.
Jon Duncan: You also said that you milked the cows as well is that right.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Not until 1914 I was ten years old then and my father found it necessary to add a little bit more money to our income and he went to work for a farmer in New Dayton helping him put his crop in. So my brother and I milked the cows. Sister Ida helped a little I guess. We learned to milk cows, I could rid horses. I could also harness the horses then, I knew how to feed them and water them and that sort of thing.
Jon Duncan: Now when your dad went to work for anther farmer for that extra income, you started doing a little more around the house and the farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I used to go out and hill up the potatoes sometimes. I don’t remember doing to much gardening, mother was the gardener. She took real good car of our garden. She also took care of the chickens, I remember gathering eggs and helping her pick vegetables and rhubarb from the garden. In the house I learned to crochet and make quilts and a few other things that she taught me how to do.
Jon Duncan: Now let me ask you this, what did you family have for breakfasts when you were young.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well mostly cooked oatmeal or germaid as we called it.
Jon Duncan: So hot cereal
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Hot cereals usually. Sometimes toast with it mother packed up a good lunch so when we went to school we always had lunch at school.
Jon Duncan: What about for lunch?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Sandwiches of boiled eggs sometimes fruit cake, cookies and what not.
Jon Duncan: Then for dinner, what was for dinner?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: For our dinner, well our lunch was our dinner. Then at supper time we always had a good supper, potatoes, vegetables, meat, and gravy.
Jon Duncan: Okay so supper was the big.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes actually because we were always home at supper time.
Jon Duncan: Then there were the evenings; you had family time in the evenings.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: We used to play or read or do our homework.
Jon Duncan: Did many people visit your farm?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Not a great deal on the farm, sometimes we would go on the horse and buggy to go and visit somebody. Like our neighbours, the Shieldas and other people.
Jon Duncan: So was it a lonely time for your mother on this farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I don’t think so, she was the kind that could keep herself busy and I am the same. I am never lonely I can always find something to do.
Jon Duncan: As a young girl then did you play mostly with your brothers and sisters.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well on the farm I only had my younger brother to play with. I became quite a tom boy, besides a lot of the time playing around Peter. Letting the cows in or letting the cows out or feeding the horses. Going to gather the eggs or whatever, I read a lot; I was always a great reader.
Jon Duncan: You loved to read. Well let me change gears a little bit here and talk about Harry your husband. What was he like?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well he was thirty one years old when I married him and he had had quite a lot of experience in many different places. He had worked with his uncle on the railway. The reason that he didn’t come was his family they came in 1909 and he came in 1911 so for two years he was helping his uncle with the mail on the train. Then he quit that and he went and worked for the logging camps. For a while before he came to Alberta.
Jon Duncan: How did you meet him?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: How did I meet him. Well I knew his brother and his father and mother and sister before I knew him. But we weren’t that friendly with the family except that we saw them once and a while. I used to see him ride his horse quite a bit up and around town but I don’t remember meeting him personally until one day I went over to my sister’s place and he was there. That is when we more or less started to see each other.
Jon Duncan: Last time you told me that you were doing you homework or something.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I had been doing my homework, my brother dale was an armature radio enthusiast and he had friends there that night listening to the radio with him. I got tired of the noise and I was trying to study my algebra and I got a little fit up with it so I closed my algebra book and went over to my sisters to visit her for a little while. That’s where I met Harry. I didn’t know that he was even there.
Jon Duncan: Okay so you just met him. So how long were you going out with him?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Lets se by that time I was eighteen years old, I guess that I went with him for just about a year and a half or just about two years before I married him.
Jon Duncan: What were some of the things that you did with him while you were dating?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: He used to bring his saddle horses out to the farm and we would go for rides. Sometimes my brother would go with us because we had a saddle horse to. We used to ride around the country, that’s all.
Jon Duncan: So horse riding was a…
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Pass time
Jon Duncan: An activity that you did quite a bit.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Of course we used to go to basketball games, the silent movies, we had dances but Harry didn’t dance. His brother Ray danced but he didn’t. So I knew Ray quite well before I started going with Harry.
Jon Duncan: Okay so where were these silent movies held.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: They were held in Stirling in that old meeting house. A man from down in New Dayton, Mr. Johnson, used to bring the silent movies up to Stirling and show them in the hall. My brother actually built their projection room in the old church.
Jon Duncan: So these silent movies; usually they had someone playing the piano.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No I don’t think that we did.
Jon Duncan: You just watched them in silence.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: There were a lot of comics which were like Charlie Chaplin. I don’t know what gang they called them but a gang of kids that used to be in the comics.
Jon Duncan: The little rascals
Alberta Kiddle Finely: The little rascals, that’s the name. We had picnics every once and a while.
Jon Duncan: Where did you go for the picnics?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: The church would put on picnics once and a while and so did the church. Where did we go? I don’t know where we went. We had a picnic in my sister’s front lawn one time. She used to have a lot of the pretty flowers and had some trees for shade. We would sit around and talk, I have got pictures of us doing that.
Jon Duncan: So picnics were big in the family.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Mostly in the family.
Jon Duncan: Now you married Harry in 1924.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Married him in 1924, 25 the spring of 25.
Jon Duncan: In the spring of 1925, now where did you live?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: At first we lived with my brother, my sister Ida and her husband, Fred Shaver, for a little while. While we were working in the beats, he was raising beets. Harry and I went and helped him with the beats. Used to thin beats and take the leaves out. Then we lived in the old Nelsons house. Iva Nelson lived in the house with his wife and two girls.
Jon Duncan: You had the front two rooms.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: We had the front two rooms.
Jon Duncan: You rented it from him?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Ya
Jon Duncan: Okay and from there where did you go?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well we moved to another house in Stirling. Used to be occupied by the George Seely family, I don’t know who owned the place. Weather George Seely owned it or he just lived there for a while. He moved to the flat head country after a while and the house was vacant so we rented it.
Jon Duncan: Now haw many years did you live there?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Then Harry’s folks moved away, his parents who lived down in Maybutt. The crops weren’t very good around Stirling; it was pretty dry out there. There wasn’t much thrashing to do so grandpa Finley who owned the. Guy Finley who owned a thrashing machine took his bit steam engine and his thrashing machine up to Blacky in Alberta. Afterwards he stayed up there and put his teams to work around the oil wells and the, I forget the name of the place. Anyway when the oil was finished…
Jon Duncan: Turner Valley
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes Turner Valley. He stayed up there he had to cook car up there so he set it down on the ground and made a house out of it. They stayed there and lived. Another man and himself used to drive the teams at the oil wells.
Jon Duncan: So he moved up from Maybutt to Turner Valley.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Then you moved up to their home did you?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes in Maybutt they had a brick house and Harry and I moved into that house. We spent one summer and one winter in that house.
Jon Duncan: Okay so in these first years that you were married, where did Harry work.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: On his dads farm.
Jon Duncan: Okay and what did they raise on that farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Wheat, Barley
Jon Duncan: Did they do any sugar beats.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No
Jon Duncan: You just helped out with some of the other beats.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: It was a dry land for them.
Jon Duncan: Okay so did he ever help out other people on the sugar beats.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes I think that he helped with Metsker a little bit with some of his farming. He worked for the Pengillys, this was before the marriage. After we were married I don’t think that he worked for anybody else.
Jon Duncan: Just a few years after you actually bought the farm for yourself.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes there was a lady in Iowa whose husband had bought land on speck I suppose, you know speculation. When the land boom was on and he had died in the meant time and she was a widow. She wanted to sell this farm and one day in Lethbridge Harry and I talked about it and we decided to buy that farm. So she came up from Iowa and we took her out to see the place, she decided that she would sell it to us so we bought it from her.
Jon Duncan: How did he tell you that he wanted to buy this farm?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: He took me over to the park in Lethbridge here and sat me down on a bench and said Alberta there is something that I want to ask you he said I have a chance to but a farm out north of Stirling. Do you thing that we should, do you think that we could make any money. I said sure we could. So he went back to the place where he seen the farm and they signed the papers to buy it.
Jon Duncan: So that is how
Alberta Kiddle Finely: So that how we got it.
Jon Duncan: So you figured that you would make some money on the farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, we did to.
Jon Duncan: Now what did he raise on his own farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Mostly wheat, some barley, some oats for horse feed of course because the horses were our main, we didn’t have tractors then. We had a whole string of horses then.
Jon Duncan: When did you but this farm?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I Suspect that it was 1924.
Jon Duncan: Before you were married.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No it must have been 1926, I am thinking backwards instead of forward here. Probably 1926 because in 1928 we moved out on to the farm and built a house.
Jon Duncan: Okay so now you bought this farm, it was quite a bit north of Stirling is that right.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well if you went by the road it was about seven and a half miles from Stirling. It was almost straight north of Stirling
Jon Duncan: So when you built the house in 1928 you moved away from Stirling for quite some time.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Spent twenty years on the farm.
Jon Duncan: Did you get back to Stirling much in that time?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well like I said I married a non-Mormon and we were a long ways from church. Because we didn’t have a car so I didn’t get to church very often. We attended the church seldom but once and a while we had our children blessed at church. I used to go to Elese society once and a while, quite often. Well after we got the car of course I started going more often. We always went to the children dances in Stirling. To take the children in so they could have fun. We didn’t have any phone, no radio at first, no indoor plumbing, but for entertainment we went to dances at the school house which was a bout three quarters of a mile from out house.
Jon Duncan: What school house was this?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: The Avian’s school house
Jon Duncan: Okay so that is where you children attended school.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: That is where my children began school.
Jon Duncan: Okay so how big was it, this Avian School, were there many students there?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes quite a few, I would say roughly two dozen, twenty five thirty.
Jon Duncan: Okay so you moved out to the farm, you spent twenty years on the farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well not quite twenty years from 1928 to 1945.
Jon Duncan: Which is when Harry died, Harry passed away then.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Then I moved back into Stirling with my family.
Jon Duncan: Where did you move to Stirling then?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well it was Roy Nelson’s old house but afterwards it became the Oka, they bought the place and we built another house farther north.
Jon Duncan: So you moved to the Roy Nelson house then it became the Oka house after and you built another house in Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, north of that, two blocks.
Jon Duncan: Now you moved back to Stirling right after Harry died.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: In the fall.
Jon Duncan: In the fall
Alberta Kiddle Finely: He died in the summer time. We moved in the fall, after harvest actually.
Jon Duncan: Were most of your children still young then
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well John was the oldest and he was seventeen.
Jon Duncan: When you moved back to Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Ya
Jon Duncan: So did he take care of the farm after Harry died.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes he did.
Jon Duncan: He was the one to take care of the farm, the other kids wet to school.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes that’s right.
Jon Duncan: Then you remarried a few years later.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well three years after Harry died. Yes I did marry again.
Jon Duncan: Was it a man from Stirling
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No he was from Saskatchewan. We met at a dance in Macleod and he parents actually had lived in Macleod before that and they had a farm up there out towards Standoff. In fact the place was called Wellsville because that was his name, Wells.
Jon Duncan: His first name.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes they had a post office out there. The Wells family didn’t have the post office but a post office was put out there. It was called Wellsville Post Office. Of course his parents had died and so his brother went to Walawala in the States. He married and went to Walawala to live and Hardford went to Saskatchewan and he got married there.
Jon Duncan: Then his wife passed away and you two met in Fort Macleod and got married shortly after.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Okay let me ask you this. What do you remember most about Harry?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: About Harry well he loved to go hunting, he was very good with guns and brought home lots of meat and elk, moose, deer, he used to go hunting and some of the boys from Stirling used to go with him. Harold Christenson, one of the Holmen boys, one of the Hartley boys, I can’t remember his name.
Jon Duncan: That’s alright, that’s alright.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Anyway Ward Nelson sometimes and Neil Christenson who used to live in Stirling years ago. They enjoyed there tenting, Rocky Mountain house was where they used to go and hunt mostly.
Jon Duncan: Did you go hunting with him ever.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No I never went hunting with him. He used to tell me that he was going to take me hunting for bears and I said no you are not. Don’t take me anywhere near those bears.
Jon Duncan: Who did the butchering?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: The men did, they butchered their own meat.
Jon Duncan: Okay so you just stored the meat in, what did you have and ice box.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No but sometimes we buried it in the wheat bin.
Jon Duncan: Okay that kept it cold enough.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: When we butchered beef on the farm we used to cure the meat in a big pork barrel that we kept down in the cellar then we would take it up and burry it in the wheat.
Jon Duncan: The pork after it was cured. Now what did you used to cure the pork?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: A mixture of salt and water, sometimes we used to get that special kind of salt that they used to use. We used to use it. I remember the pork.
Jon Duncan: Did you have and ice box on the farm?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No Harry was going to make a place for ice one winter. He got it partly dug out so he could put the straw in it for the ice you know you used to put straw in then the ice on top then burry it with more straw. Then put dirt on top of that and keep it all winter. But we never got around to it. So we didn’t have any ice but we used, like to preserve eggs I used what they called a water glass in a big jar, used to put eggs down in that and with fish I used to lay them skin side down sprinkle salt on them and lay then down on a board with a big rock on it in a barrel.
Jon Duncan: What do you mean by this water glass?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well it was a certain preparation that you used to preserve eggs so we could put the eggs in the water and use then just like fresh eggs.
Jon Duncan: Okay so did you raise chickens on the farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes we did
Jon Duncan: The extra eggs were preserved in this
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I used to preserve dill pickles the same way and sometimes we made cabbage sourcrout. Not very much, I didn’t use that very much.
Jon Duncan: Okay so where did you get your water on the farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: We had a dug well, it was very nice. The water was hard but it was good. It was the best drinking water in the country. That is what a lot of people said when they came there.
Jon Duncan: So the well served all those years.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes it did, for washing sometimes we would use the fuel water and boil it. I used to put lie in the water and boil it until the scum as they used to call it came up to the top then we would scum all the scum off.
Jon Duncan: So you had a slew nearby on the farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, several of them.
Jon Duncan: Now did that stink up the farm at all.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No. In 1928 we had more slews, had a little bit there. Our land wasn’t exactly flat you know it was kind of out in the hilly section.
Jon Duncan: It had lots of hills and then lots of water sat where the low parts were. Let’s just go in a different direction here for a minute. You had said before remember Charles Magrath.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, vaguely because I was very young. But my dad used to drive him around the east part of the province because he was surveyor and dad used to take him down to foremost and all that country down there to weight out the land and to figure out how far they had traveled. Measured the circumference of the buggy wheel, tied a rope on it in a certain spot and every time it thumped they would add it to how many miles they went, how many rods they had measured. So they surveyed the land down east of Stirling.
Jon Duncan: That’s how they did it, okay. So your dad worked with Charles Magrath surveying south east Alberta
Alberta Kiddle Finely: That’s right
Jon Duncan: Okay, I want to move on Alberta. Let’s talk about the church in Stirling; you told me that you were a member of the relief society. What service did you do in the church?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I taught primary at school you know we used to have primary classes at school. After school Jenny Adamson and I taught…
Tape 2 Side 1
Jon Duncan: So we were talking about you teaching primary in school, you were still a student then.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes in the eighth grade.
Jon Duncan: You and Jenny Adamson taught some of the younger kid’s primary. What about religion in classes.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well religion class, I guess that’s what you called it actually instead of primary.
Jon Duncan: Now were there primary and religion classes?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well religion class is what we actually called it at that time; it was the only primary that I remember.
Jon Duncan: Okay
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Later they started having the classes in the church. I don’t know why they had them at the school but they did.
Jon Duncan: So what kinds of things did you do as a primary teacher.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well we had lessons laid out for us; we had to teach the kids what was in the lessons. I don’t remember what was in the lessons.
Jon Duncan: Did it have activities as well?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Not very many, well we sang, sang church songs.
Jon Duncan: You were considered like you mother then.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Now bishop Fawns, he was your bishop for many years.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes he was.
Jon Duncan: What do you remember about him?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I remember that he was a tall well built man. Well I liked him I guess, I did anyway, and I used to play with his kids, Jenny and Eudora. That’s about all I remember about him, being at church and all that.
Jon Duncan: Did you visit with him often as a bishop.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No I don’t remember doing that. My sister was married by bishop Fawns. Fred Shaufert was married in his house.
Jon Duncan: So when you married Harry he was a non-Mormon.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: That’s right
Jon Duncan: This family lived in Maybutt area
Alberta Kiddle Finely: They had come from Wisconsin, they settled there in 1909.
Jon Duncan: How did he feel about the church?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: He never had anything against it, he encouraged me to go to church, and we had our children blessed at church
Jon Duncan: Did he have many friends that were members of the church.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, lots. You see his dad ran a thrashing machine and all of the boys from Stirling used to go and bundle x, kitchen bundles as they used to call it. He was well known in Stirling.
Jon Duncan: Many Mormons worked for your dad actually.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: When he moved out on to the farm it was quite a distance, hard to travel by wagon.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: You know we had a democrat like my dad had and a few horses of course. I don’t know we were just busy farming and raising kids. We just didn’t go to church very often.
Jon Duncan: Were your kids born on the farm?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No they were born in Lethbridge.
Jon Duncan: In which hospital
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well my first child was born in Stirling; the other two were born in the old Gaults hospital, John and Marvik. Mary said that she was born there to but I don’t think so I think that Kay was born at home on a farm. Mary and grant I think were born in St. Michaels.
Jon Duncan: Now Bill was your oldest son, you say that he was born in Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, in the Nelson home.
Jon Duncan: Was a midwife there?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, Liza Christenson mother of Harold Christenson. She was my Midwife.
Jon Duncan: She was a midwife for many women.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, when I was born it was Sister Hanna Russell’s that was the midwife for my mother.
Jon Duncan: Okay and Russell was the midwife back then. Your children after that, most of them were born in Lethbridge
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: So why the change, why did you stop using midwifes and go out to Lethbridge.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: They kind of frowned on having children at home at that time they began to think that you should go to the hospital and have your children.
Jon Duncan: This was the government you mean.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No I mean the doctors, were against having children at home.
Jon Duncan: So there was pressure to go into the hospital instead. The one child was born on the farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: On the farm yes.
Jon Duncan: Was that just a surprise
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes that was a surprise for us. She was premature, caught me unaware.
Jon Duncan: You weren’t ready.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: It was just before Christmas and the snow was about that deep and
Jon Duncan: About a foot deep you say
Alberta Kiddle Finely: About a foot or so deep. I wasn’t suppose to have it until February but I had it December.
Jon Duncan: So who delivered her for you?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Nobody, I was all alone I just had my two boys and my oldest girl were there. This was my fourth child. I told the kids to go to the kitchen and watch for their father. He had gone over to the neighbours to get the neighbour to take me to Lethbridge in their car. They had a car and we didn’t. When he come back he had the other fella’s house keeper with him and she happened to be a midwife so she took care of the baby
Jon Duncan: But it was born before they got to the house.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: It was born before they got to the house
Jon Duncan: That was probably quite a short
Alberta Kiddle Finely: It was okay, it was fun.
Jon Duncan: It worked out alright though. Alright now let me ask you this when you were on this farm for twenty years where did you do you shopping.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: We did our shopping. Sam Feber had a grocery business in Maybutt. We used to go to that store most of the time.
Jon Duncan: So you traveled seven miles to Maybutt and did shopping there.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: If we were in Lethbridge we would load up while we were there
Jon Duncan: Did you order much by catalogue.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No my mother had, not groceries but clothing from Eden’s Catalogue. I sometimes ordered cloths from the catalogue but not very many. Usually I sold the girls dresses and the boys shirts and pants. I even sold overcoats for them.
Jon Duncan: For your children.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Now as a mother what did you have your kids do around the house?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Nothing, well yes they did little chores for me but nothing significant.
Jon Duncan: You did most of the house work, most of the cooking and you let them run around and be children.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Did Harry take care of them
Alberta Kiddle Finely: They used to take care of each other; I never had to worry about them. Older ones took care of the younger ones…
Jon Duncan: Okay we were talking about the farm and the phone rang so I just stopped. You were just saying that you enjoyed living on the farm, why was that.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well that was the happiest part of my life. I had my husband and my children. I was brought up on a farm so it was nothing new it was the same old kind of life but I always like it.
Jon Duncan: Let’s take a slightly different turn here and go back a little bit in your life. You said before that you remembered Rob Davis’s café
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh yes I used to go there a lot to buy candy all the time when I was a kid in Stirling yes.
Jon Duncan: What did you use to buy the candy?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well ten cents or a nickel or whatever my parents gave me.
Jon Duncan: You didn’t trade eggs or stuff like that.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well one time I tried that but my mother stopped me doing that.
Jon Duncan: She didn’t want you doing that
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I went to Brandley’s store and Mr. Brandley told her that I brought eggs to trade for candy. After that I didn’t do that anymore. She said, you shouldn’t do that, you shouldn’t do that.
Jon Duncan: So wells café that is where you bought your candy.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well no I bought it at Brandley’s store that time because I knew that kids had been trading eggs for candy, I tried it. When the other kids do things you think well I can do that to.
Jon Duncan: You also mentioned that there was a bank in Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well ya where the Library is now there was a bank in Stirling.
Jon Duncan: Do you remember who ran that bank.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I remember a man named Hoddleton from Lethbridge that worked in the bank.
Jon Duncan: Was it just a local bank.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: This was after I got a little older because I remember people that ran the bank. I think that it was Royal Bank or something like that.
Jon Duncan: In Stirling
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Not sure what bank it was.
Jon Duncan: You said also that Anne Nelson had a café.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes down by Carl Mertz’s fuelling station.
Jon Duncan: That was in Stirling or in Maybutt
Alberta Kiddle Finely: That was in Maybutt. Well you know where Carl Mertz is.
Jon Duncan: So she had a café.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Ya, I think that it was going on to the garage if I remember right well next to it anyway, just west of it. I worked for Anne there for a while
Jon Duncan: You worked for her, what did you do?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Clean plates and serve people when they came in.
Jon Duncan: Was that before.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No that was after Harry died and I had moved back into Stirling again. Of course Anne was a friend of mine.
Jon Duncan: So you went back to work at the café then. Now tell me about the Jukebox there.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: When they were putting the road in between Lethbridge and Coutts these men used to come in for their dinner all the time. This one fella always used to come in and put a dime or whatever it took in the jukebox to play a tune and the tune was you are my sunshine. I got so sick of it that he headed for the jukebox I said number thirty is broken, he just looked at me and went right ahead and put this dime in, you are my sunshine.
Jon Duncan: He didn’t mind one bit.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No he didn’t.
Jon Duncan: Alberta how long did you work at Anne Nelson’s café?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Part of one summer
Jon Duncan: It was just briefly that you worked there. That was after you had moved back into Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Another place that you worked was in the post office
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes Elodia how to make out money orders and lay down people that came in and sell stamps and work with the mail.
Jon Duncan: When was this that you worked in the post office?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well about the same year that I worked in the café or the next year.
Jon Duncan: Okay so these are jobs that you had after you moved back to Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: For a while I would go and take Eudora Olers place in the Library
Jon Duncan: So you worked in the Library as well, you had a few different jobs in Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Ya
Jon Duncan: What do you remember about working in the post office?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I remember that I made a mistake on a money order one time.
Jon Duncan: What happened when you made that mistake?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well Elodia just took it and I don’t know what she did with it. I suppose that they had to, they are numbered you know, and I suppose that she had to report that that one was wrong.
Jon Duncan: Now Eudora was a close friend of yours
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: What do you remember about her?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: She was a very pleasant girl to be around and sometimes we sat in the same seat in school. Used to I don’t know.
Jon Duncan: She wrote news for the Lethbridge herald.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes and so did I.
Jon Duncan: You did to okay so what kinds of news.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: What happed to people, people that came to visit or if they had to go to the hospital. If they were just strangers visiting in Stirling or you know social news.
Jon Duncan: So this was the news in Stirling that you wrote for the Lethbridge Herald. Did you take turns with Eudora?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No, I can’t quite remember how it happened.
Jon Duncan: Once and a while you wrote for the Lethbridge Herald. Now if I go back to school here for a little bit who were some of the teachers that you remember.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well like I said Mrs. Diapawn was my first teacher. I can remember another lady who came from the east, she always wore bright jet necklace and I always said that when I grew up that I was going to have a black jet bead necklace just like hers.
Jon Duncan: Okay so did you buy a black jet necklace later
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Not until I moved back into Lethbridge I was in the Jewellery shop one day and I saw it and decided to buy it.
Jon Duncan: That necklace just like your teachers.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No it wasn’t quite like hers but it was nice anyway.
Jon Duncan: Who were some of the other teachers that you remember?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I remember Emerbal Asian, she was my teacher in the lower grades. I don’t know maybe six or seven maybe younger than that I don’t know. I remember a man named Donald Marryel, and Mr. Braner from Raymond, there were several other lady teachers that I can’t recall.
Jon Duncan: Now who was the principal?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: J.A. Mercer and J.E. Earl, Elmer Spackman, Three principals that I remember.
Jon Duncan: That you remember what were they like?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well they were nice, maybe a little bit strict sometimes. We were taught to obey so things went along smoothly.
Jon Duncan: What was discipline like back then?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Discipline, we never heard of discipline problems in those days, not very many. Thought I remember the teacher leaving the room one time and the boys started throwing chalk and erasers at each other. One of them got caught and had to stay in after school, I don’t know what type of punishment he got.
Jon Duncan: So kids were generally well behaved. Now when there was a problem who administered the discipline?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I guess they were sent to the principal unless the teacher himself decided to make them right.
Jon Duncan: Who were the caretakers?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Where there were a couple caretakers Mr. Spangler was a caretaker at one time and then later on Mr. Sikes, John Sikes.
Jon Duncan: They took care of the school right.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Alright, I want to talk about your writing but before I do that I want to talk about World War 1, what do you remember about the war?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I remember that my dad used to take a paper coal of the family herald and weekly star. I remember him opening up the paper one day and there was a big black headline on it England Declares War, I remember that very plainly. He was glad because he had heard about the atrocities the Germans were visiting on the Austrians, who it that they had invaded was, they invaded a country. They took over part of France.
Jon Duncan: It was Austria against Serbia, Russia was helping Serbia, and Germany was helping Austria.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No they were invading these places, trying to take them over.
Jon Duncan: You told me before about some Red Cross work.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I didn’t do much of it but I know that a lot of people were knitting and rolling bandages and things like that for.
Jon Duncan: Red Cross helped out during the war. You were on the farm when the Second World War broke out
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes and to tell you the truth I don’t remember much about it because the boys from the airport here in Lethbridge who were training to be pilots used to come from the airport down our way. They used to come over the farm and hop over the fences go all the way down and hop over the fences and go all the way down again, come up and turn barrel rolls and do all kinds of stuff. Right over our farm.
Jon Duncan: They were doing all of their stunts over your farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, I had an air show of my own lots of the time.
Jon Duncan: From the boys that were training in the Air Force. Well let’s go on and talk about your writing, you were quite a writer you tell me.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I only wrote things that came up. I helped put out I belonged to the writer’s workshop here in Lethbridge and I helped the put out the book called Prairie Patch Work. I was president of the Prairie Patch Work Writers.
Jon Duncan: What was your first story that you ever had printed.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well it was called over land in an over land and that was about our trip to the flathead country when my brother Dale still lived in Stirling. He took me and my husband and my little boy and his own little boy and his wife and my sister Mertle and her husband there were six of us in this car. We went on a camping trip to visit Ray and Marg Finley who lived down there and also George Seely.
Jon Duncan: Where did they move?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Flat Head
Jon Duncan: Okay so when was this story published.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Right after I came back I saw an add in the farm and ranch review that was asking for excerpts of camping trips so I wrote the story for them. Right after you came back from the trip itself.
Jon Duncan: So it was published in the farm and ranch magazine. That was the beginning of your writing career.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well not quite the beginning, before that I had published little odds and ends in the family herald. Just little fillers as they call them.
Jon Duncan: And what were in these fillers?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Paragraphs about something or another.
Jon Duncan: Okay so you did a little bit of that as well. Now what were some of your other activities and interests besides the writing?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I have so many hobbies that I can’t remember them all. I liked paid; make quilts, crochet, and doilies.
Jon Duncan: You have done quite a bit of quilts is that right.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes I have.
Jon Duncan: How many quilts?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: My sister and I helped to quilt 100 quilts in one winter.
Jon Duncan: 100 quilts in one winter
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes with the relief society.
Jon Duncan: This was after you were married.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I guess that it was after I moved back to Stirling.
Jon Duncan: After you moved back to Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Must have been yes. I didn’t attend the relief society that much before. Although I was once the literature teacher in the relief society before I moved, before Harry died, while I was still living on the farm.
Jon Duncan: Okay
Alberta Kiddle Finely: After I moved back to Stirling I taught in the
Jon Duncan: In the relief society.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I guess it was in primary because I was teaching the trail builders. Donald Billson was one of my people there, I remember that. I was secretary for a while to.
Jon Duncan: Okay, secretary in the primary.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: That was after you came back. Now how many years did you live in Stirling after you came back from the farm?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: From 1945 to 1966 I guess it was
Jon Duncan: Then you moved to Lethbridge in sixty six. Why was it that you moved to Lethbridge?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well my youngest daughter had gotten married and I was divorced from my husband so I was all alone then. So I started coming to Lethbridge and taking up little jobs of housekeeping or babysitting. Grant and Judy were living in Lethbridge at that time and had two little boys; she couldn’t find a decent babysitter she said. So I said well if you let me live in your basement I will baby sit your children, so that was the arrangement.
Jon Duncan: That’s why you came up here.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: That’s why I came
Jon Duncan: Okay and you basically lived here ever since.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes I bought a home; I lived with them until they bought a home on the north side and then I bought a home on the north side as well. But I didn’t like it over there and I moved back to the south side and bought another house on Tenth Avenue.
Jon Duncan: Okay so you have had a few houses here in Lethbridge as well.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: well I had them for a little while ya.
Jon Duncan: Let me ask you this, what happed to your farm after you came back to Stirling?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well my son John was married then and farming so he farmed it. He had been farming ever since and then he bought it from me.
Jon Duncan: So the farm did stay in the family.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: But you did move back to Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I wanted to send john to university but he wouldn’t go he said he was going to stay and farm.
Jon Duncan: Did any of your children attend university.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes my youngest daughter is a teacher; she has her master’s degree in education.
Jon Duncan: Where does she teach?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: She lives in Sure Wood park and teaches there
Jon Duncan: Up near Edmonton, Alberta just a, oh looks like we have to turn the tape.
Tape 2 Side 2
Jon Duncan: Okay now let me ask you this; tell me what the depression was like?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well when we lived on the farm we had our own food, we raised cattle and pigs and chickens so we had just about everything that we needed in the food line and we didn’t suffer much. Except for cash we didn’t have much of that, we traded wheat for flower. Only had a few things to buy like sugar small staples for the house. Other than that we had our own food so we didn’t suffer very much but like I said we were very poor and everybody was in the same boat so it didn’t seem to matter much.
Jon Duncan: So the depression affected you just a little bit.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Very little we didn’t have clothing we couldn’t but very much in the way of clothing; we had decent cloths but not very many of them. Not much handy cash so I used to but cloth and make dresses for the children, shirts for the boys and different things.
Jon Duncan: So during the depression because you lived on the farm it wasn’t that bad. Do you remember other people struggling?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes there were some I guess that were really badly off because they didn’t have all the things that we did. Like they didn’t raise their own cattle and probably had a few chickens maybe but what else I don’t know. Ya there were some that were really in bad debt.
Jon Duncan: Did your family help any of these people out?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: We weren’t called upon to do much it is a good thing that we weren’t because we barely had enough for ourselves most of the time. Had lots of food though never had to turn anyone away that came to eat they all came to share their meals with us.
Jon Duncan: Were there many hobos around?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Not to many, we didn’t see many. We were off the beat and track. I remember the Rolly man coming around with his horse and team, they would sell rolly goods. He used to stay with us overnight most of the time because he was from Taber. One night he came and he says Mrs. Finley do you have room for another boarder. I said oh ya there is always room for one more. We had two hired men at that time and they looked at each other and wondered where he was going to sleep you know. I wasn’t worried because I knew that he always carried his own bed roll and slept under the wagon.
Jon Duncan: So the Rolly man actually stayed at your house quite a bit was this during the depression that he stayed there?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh ya he used to come around selling Rolly products. We called him Uncle Charlie.
Jon Duncan: Okay, this was before the depression wasn’t it.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes before and during, I don’t know when it quite but he used to come for several years.
Jon Duncan: Okay now just to change chores a little, let me ask you a little about the train station in Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Train Station, well I remember that when we lived in Letbridge before we moved on the farm, I remember that we went to Lethbridge several times on the train. I remember Sam Russell was the conductor on the train.
Jon Duncan: This was when you lived in Stirling before moving to the farm?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes.
Jon Duncan: You would just catch the train to Lethbridge.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: And go back the same day, about four or five o’clock in the afternoon
Jon Duncan: Why the trip to Lethbridge?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Why the trip to Lethbridge? Well sometimes to see the doctor and the chiropractor, especially after my first baby was born I had some back trouble. So I used to come up and see Dr. Smith.
Jon Duncan: Were these trips to Lethbridge common?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh yes, they didn’t cost that much on a train those days.
Jon Duncan: About how much
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Maybe a dollar, I don’t know.
Jon Duncan: It wasn’t that much. So you were able to go to Lethbridge and back quite often.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes I went say a couple of times a week to see the chiropractor.
Jon Duncan: Did you go off into Cardston or Foremost?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No, that train always came from Coutts straight to Lethbridge. The other train that used to go back used to go to Cardston. The one that cam back down to Stirling. I think that they spent the night in Cardston If I remember correctly and then come back down the next morning. Go back to Lethbridge. They had both freight and passenger cars.
Jon Duncan: So the train that you caught in the morning came from Coutts to Lethbridge. The one that you caught in the evening would go from Lethbridge to Cardston.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I think so yes.
Jon Duncan: Was the rail station quite a busy place.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes it was quite a junction. The trains from Foremost way from the east I don’t know whether it was from Medicine Hat, I don’t know. From Saskatchewan I guess used to come up through Stirling.
Jon Duncan: So what kinds of activities were going on?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well they were always loading barrels, I don’t know what was in the barrels but some things were in the barrels and something’s like they bought groceries from grocery stores and things like that. Parcels, they took parcels on the train. I wasn’t very interested so.
Jon Duncan: Did many immigrants get off at Stirling?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Very few. They mostly came all the way up to Lethbridge. I remember going down when I was in the primary when I was just a child we came down to meet the general president of the primary, She came on the train and stopped in Stirling long enough to hear us sing a song.
Jon Duncan: So you sang for the general.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: We sang
Jon Duncan: The last time that I came here you told me a story that you remember about Clinton Hardy when he was just born.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well when I was a little kid I was quite fond of babies, I thought babies were so cute and they were. My sister had a baby that I used to go and play with every once and a while, go across the street and play with her little boy. When Clinton was born my mother told me that I could go over and see the baby. So I went over to Ray Hardys place to see the new baby, it seemed that Ester Hardy was there that day who was the sister to the mother of the baby. She had a little puppy with her which I thought was so cute because it was just a tiny little thing. So they took me in to see the baby and the first thing that they said was isn’t he cute I said yes he is cute but he is not as cute as Hesters pup. So I told Clinton that little story one time and he laughed, thought it was quite amusing.
Jon Duncan: You liked the puppy better?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Everybody broke out laughing and of course I was so little I didn’t know really what they were laughing about.
Jon Duncan: Alright now the story that always had quite a few dances.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Lots of dances every night in think that they had a dance.
Jon Duncan: Did you attend most of the dances?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: When I was old enough and even before I was old enough.
Jon Duncan: Okay
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I remember my sister’s husband taking me on the floor, well he and I were going together and I danced with him. Fred took me out to dance, John Oler was the floor manger and he said to Fred you better take that girl off the floor, she is not old enough to dance. So Fred said of course I will but he didn’t take me off until the dance ended.
Jon Duncan: How old is old enough.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I was only thirteen you were supposed to be a little older than that I think. But I can’t remember.
Jon Duncan: You say that they had dances every Friday night. There were also special dances.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh yes, I was never in those special dances.
Jon Duncan: I mean did they have valentine dances.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh dances like that sure and sometimes they had basketball dances as the called them. They ladies would bring a basket off food and the men would bid on them and whose ever basket they got they had to eat supper with them. I remember having fun over that a time or two.
Jon Duncan: What were some of the other big dances that they had?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Christmas, New Years, sometimes an Easter dance. Then once and a while there was a wedding and they had a dance after the wedding. I can’t remember any other special dances.
Jon Duncan: Now the children’s dance was quite a popular dance
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh yes the Christmas children and I remember myself and my little brother dancing at the children’s dances. I met quite a few friends that were from out of town to because they would come into the dance.
Jon Duncan: What would they do at these children’s dances?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well they had all kinds of dances for children I mean they would waltz and two step sometimes actually three steps. Some of them didn’t know how. I don’t know they had a dance where two rows of people would line up and we would cross over. The orderly codderly was the actual name of the dance, an English dance.
Jon Duncan: Okay so what other celebrations or social occasions did they hold in Stirling? For instance pioneer days
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes on the 24th of July we used to celebrate.
Jon Duncan: What were some of the things that you did on the 24th of July?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I used to go down to the park and have a barbecue or a picnic then afterwards there was a baseball game or a rodeo kind of affair.
Jon Duncan: Which park was this?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: The park where the swimming pool is now.
Jon Duncan: Okay, before they had a park out on the north east corner of Stirling, is that right?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes that’s right. They played baseball down there. It was down close to where the Seely hotel used to be in the early days. Later on John Sikes had a limber yard there, then later on Brandley’s build a house down there for Marie Oler and what was her husband’s name. He was a Brandley, Marie Oler married a Brandley anyway and they built a house down there.
Jon Duncan: Down where this park was on the corner of Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Okay
Alberta Kiddle Finely: They kind of had a rodeo down there one time and a boy named
Jon Duncan: Are you talking about Baskem
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No he was from north of Stirling on a farm. He got hurt there, he was hurt so bad that he was crippled, he could walk but he walked crooked from then on.
Jon Duncan: Okay
Alberta Kiddle Finley: That is the only injury, bad injury that I ever remember anyone having from the rodeo.
Jon Duncan: Okay, now where was the flat?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well my father had a house on fourth avenue or fourth street whichever one goes straight through Stirling east and west.
Jon Duncan: That’s the fourth avenue.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Fourth avenue, well that is where we lived. Right across the road from us there was a big square pole flat; Bishop Fauns had the next lot. It was right north of Bishop Fauns’s hosue. But it was also right east of my sister Mertle’s place.
Jon Duncan: So it was right where the new church is.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes where the new church is where the old flat was. Ya we lived in the street right here and Mertle lived right in this block here.
Jon Duncan: Just west of the flat. Now what did they do there at the flat?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I used to play baseball mostly, I mean that was a good thing and that is where the Chautauqua tent got pitched when they came to town.
Jon Duncan: What do you remember about the Chautauqua?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I remember that there were speeches and there were songs. People recited poetry; we were generally given some of the higher class literature.
Jon Duncan: What kinds of activities did they do?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I can’t remember that.
Jon Duncan: Was it like a circus.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No but there were people that acted on the stage and put on skits of some kind.
Jon Duncan: Was this a big event in Stirling?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, it seemed to be a big event, there were a lot of people that came to it from out of town.
Jon Duncan: So you remember going to those?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, they pitched a big tent and had lots of seats there for people to sit on, benches.
Jon Duncan: Now how often did they come to Stirling?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well it was in the summer time, I don’t remember if they came every year or just once and a while.
Jon Duncan: What about Canada day, was that a big celebration in Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Sometimes, they put on a little celebration on the first of July. They would have concessions where they sold candy and ice cream and things like that. They would have a little parade and maybe a baseball game.
Jon Duncan: So there was the pioneer days the Canada days, Shitaco came once and a while, were there other travelling theatre groups.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes I remember my dad taking us to what he called the devil ringers they played music by ringing bells and they also played the glasses, I don’t know what you call that. They were classes filled with water and they would run their hands over then and they would play beautiful music with them. I used to know the name of the bell ringers.
Jon Duncan: The Swiss Bell Ringers.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Ya I used to know their names but know I don’t remember it.
Jon Duncan: were they called the Swiss Bell Ringers
Alberta Kiddle Finely: The Swiss Bell Ringers yes but they had a name; they were kind of like a family. Maybe they had other people that weren’t of the family but I used to know their name. I can’t remember it now. I have forgotten quite a number of things because I lived out of town for such a long time and those things are passed and gone you know what I mean.
Jon Duncan: Ya I do. Now I do have some other questions here, when did you first get water in your home?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: We had cisterns we called them that we filled from ditches. First they would dig a hole and fill it with gravel and charcoal and stuff and they would run the water through that, like a filter. It would run into the cistern and we would put Javek or some kind of germ killer in the water.
Jon Duncan: Did you pump the water from the cistern into your house.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well in Stirling yes I was able to do that. Sometimes they had to go outside and pull it up wit buckets out of the cistern. But I did very luckily was able to get a pump in the kitchen so I could pump water from the cistern.
Jon Duncan: That was when you moved back to Stirling. On the farm you always had to go out to the well.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes we had to go to the well which was down the hill from the house.
Jon Duncan: What about sewer did you ever have indoor plumbing?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No
Jon Duncan: You always had the outhouse type of arrangement now when did you first get electricity?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I don’t know when but.
Jon Duncan: Was it on the farm or when you moved back to Stirling?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: In Stirling but after I moved in after Harry died. But yes we did not have electricity when we first moved there. We got electricity and gas later, that must have been four or five years after I marred Hardford which was forty eight or fifty two or three somewhere along there. Somewhere in the early fifties before we got electricity and gas.
Jon Duncan: So what difference did it make to get electricity and gas?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well easier keeping house. We didn’t have to clean oil lamps and we didn’t have to go out and drag oil out of the cistern.
Jon Duncan: Were you able to get some electrical appliances
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes I got an electric stove after a while.
Jon Duncan: What kind of stove did you use before then?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh coal stove.
Jon Duncan: You used coal, what was that like to cook on.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Both of them were good, I baked the beast bread that I ever had in my life when we were out on the farm and I had a coal stove.
Jon Duncan: So it worked fairly well then
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh yes, we used to have a hot water thank on the end of the stove where you could keep water nice and warm. Not boiling or anything but just nice and warm to clean dishes and stuff like that.
Jon Duncan: What about washing cloths what did you use to wash cloths?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I used to put the water in a big boiler as they called them and heat it.
Jon Duncan: Then a washboard or did you have a ringer?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I used both; I used the wash board for daily cloths a lot of the time. I got a washing machine.
Jon Duncan: Now when did you have a washing machine?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well it was a gas powered washer after I moved into Stirling. I bought a gas powered washer, I had it on the farm that’s right, my uncle in the states died and left some money and that is when one of the first things that I bought was that gas powered washer.
Jon Duncan: Powered by gasoline?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Okay, not natural gas.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Nope not natural gas, gasoline.
Jon Duncan: So you bought it to save yourself some time?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: And I also bought a sewing machine, I had one before that but I traded that old one in and got a new one.
Jon Duncan: One that worked a little better for you.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well maybe not quite as good sometimes.
Jon Duncan: Okay was it a foot pedal?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: It was okay. Now here is another one, when did you get your first TV?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: After I moved back to Stirling. We had a radio on the farm but no TV
Jon Duncan: Okay, what was it like to get a TV?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: It quite opened up the world up for us.
Jon Duncan: In what ways?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well we got stations that were on the network, what ever they called it. Got news from many places, that began to get movies, plays that was quite nice to have.
Jon Duncan: What kinds of shows did you like to watch?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I liked the musical operas.
Jon Duncan: So whenever that came on TV you sat down to watch them. What did the kids watch?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: They had several programs for kids to watch. They had a program from Lethbridge that was quite fun for the kids they, I don’t remember who ran it. Then Georgia Green had a children’s program.
Jon Duncan: On one of the local stations.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: How many stations
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Only one at first, TJOC I think was the first one.
Jon Duncan: Okay so you said earlier that when you were on the farm you used horses mostly
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Did you ever get a tractor?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh yes. We had about three different tractors on the farm first we had a, names seem to escape me a lot.
Jon Duncan: Was it a john deer.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well that was one of the better ones that we got later, the first one, my son should be here today, I can’t remember the name of it.
Jon Duncan: Massy
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No
Jon Duncan: Short line
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No, I completely forget the name of that tractor. It was our very first one.
Jon Duncan: That’s alright; you don’t need to remember the name. What was it like to get a tractor?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh well we didn’t have to use to horses so much you could and start the tractor and go out in the field and do a lot more with the tractor then we ever did with the horses. So after a while we decided that we needed a combine also, he sold a bunch of the horses and bought a combine. His dad didn’t like that because the horses used to belong to him but we had a whole pile of horses. I can’t remember how many horses there were but we had a whole string of horses. He said Harry that will break you, but instead of breaking us it made money for us. After we combined out crop he went out and combined for other people so that way we paid for the combine.
Jon Duncan: Okay so the tractors really did make a difference on the farm?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Oh yes, when we first moved out there it was all hard you know it hadn’t been broken up. He started ploughing it with horses that was to slow because he wanted to put a crop in of course and that spring was quite wet to so it kind of delayed things a little bit just to get it ploughed up. We had a couple of neighbours that were Italian and they had a tractor.
Tape 3 Side 1
Jon Duncan: Okay we were talking about the Italians.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes a couple of Italians had bought the farm north of us and they had a tractor so Harry and I went over there and contracted with them to make up the saud in the south half of our field so we could plant a crop that spring.
Jon Duncan: So that is how you got it all ploughed up was to use a tractor
Alberta Kiddle Finely: So that was pretty quick work they did it for three days where he would have been a week or more on it or more than that.
Jon Duncan: How many horses did you half to use during that time?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I think we used four to six head of horses on our plough with two ploughs on it.
Jon Duncan: Did he have two teams?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes we had lots of teams. I have pictures of us hauling wheat in the grain can with four head of horses on them.
Jon Duncan: So you had these several teams and you would spare the horses every once and a while to give them a break. Alright so I just have a few last questions, one of them is How do you feel about being a Canadian?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I am glad to be a Canadian but also I am a dual citizen, I have my United States citizenship also.
Jon Duncan: Now why do you say that you are glad to be a Canadian?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I don’t know, I like Canada I think Canada is a wonderful country, I think that more people should think more of it.
Jon Duncan: What are your feelings toward Alberta?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Of course I was named after Alberta and that is my birthday so I have always been fond of it, I don’t wasn’t to live anywhere else.
Jon Duncan: Alberta is home then
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, its home.
Jon Duncan: Okay well before I go there are just a few other things that you have written down that I think we should talk about. One is Juvenile Delinquency, what do you remember about that?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I remember that the tron had a JP as we called him, and if anybody did something and were reported doing it the Justice of Peace took over and apprehended them. I don’t remember what kind of punishment they got.
Jon Duncan: Was there a jail in Stirling?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No there was never a jail.
Jon Duncan: Were there any serious crimes.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well not outside of windows. My son went out and started tearing down a hay stack and he got shot.
Jon Duncan: Your son got shot
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Was the injury bad.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, he got a few pleats in his behind.
Jon Duncan: How did you get those out of there?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Had to take him to the doctor
Jon Duncan: You took him to the doctor wow. What about toilet tipping was there much of that?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: There was a lot of that.
Jon Duncan: So toilet tipping was just on of them.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes that was one of them. But those kids were tearing down a haystack. So the guy shot at them, I am not going to give any names.
Jon Duncan: Now you were in the mutual for a few years there.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: In young women’s
Jon Duncan: What kinds of things went on there?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well we had the beehive girls and the laral girls and we were taught a lot of things that girls should know about homemaking and
Jon Duncan: Cleaning house cooking.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: How we are supposed to live and dress.
Jon Duncan: Did you attend twice a week or once a week?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I think that it was once a week.
Jon Duncan: Where were the meeting held?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: In the meeting house.
Jon Duncan: Do you remember the bishop’s house in Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes I do.
Jon Duncan: What went on there?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Actually my dad lived on fourth avenue as I told you before and when they came to Canada they had to have a tent but they also lived in the, I didn’t because that was before I was born. My mother and her daughters lived in the relief society store house I guess it was called which was right north of our house in another lot just right north of where we built our home.
Jon Duncan: So there was a relief society store house as well. That was still around when you were growing up
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Ya
Jon Duncan: Was it still used.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes a Dutch family lived in there when I was a kid after we hade lived in it. I can’t remember there name either but I remember that they were Dutch.
Jon Duncan: Now you told me before that you belonged to a farmers association.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Ya it was the United Farm Women’s Association.
Jon Duncan: This is when you were on the farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: The farm women got together and had meetings. Sometimes we would play Whist.
Jon Duncan: was this a card game Whist
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: What other things did you do?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well we w2ould take a couple of cakes with us or something and have a little cake or something like that. Then later we would have dances in the schoolhouse that was our main form of entertainment.
Jon Duncan: Was this at the Amaian Schoolhouse
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: So was this Farm Women a political organization.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well there was the united farmers association you see and the women had their own section of it.
Jon Duncan: This was more of a social club.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: We would swap recipes and information about the U of A.
Jon Duncan: Now tell me something do you remember the social credit party coming to power.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes I do
Jon Duncan: William Aberheart
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: What do you remember?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well I remember that he was giving some of the farmer’s thirty dollars a month or something like that, stipend. I think that’s what he called them to vote for. He had a good policy; I remember that was quite a workable policy that would have better for people if they had stayed with it I think, much more than some of these other political parties.
Jon Duncan: Okay so you supported him.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: What about his message, did that appeal to you?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: His religious message, yes and no.
Jon Duncan: Why do you say yes and no?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well because the Mormon’s religion was the one that we come to and believed in. He wasn’t Mormon so we didn’t worry about what he said.
Jon Duncan: So the evangelical message wasn’t as important as his political message.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: That’s right, but I believe that if people live as christens as they are suppose to do the world would be a better place for all of us.
Jon Duncan: Did you vote for him?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Not me, I didn’t have the vote then I was just young, before I was married.
Jon Duncan: Oh really, So you didn’t vote back then.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No I didn’t vote until 1923 I believe when women got the vote.
Jon Duncan: He took power in 1924 was it?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes he did, well actually I don’t remember very much about him because I didn’t pay any attention to politics at that time. I was two interested in our farming and raising a family, very busy people.
Jon Duncan: Did you know Sullen Low from Stirling?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I knew of him but not personally.
Jon Duncan: Didn’t really know him. You mentioned to a Derek your father built a hay Derek.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: What was that?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Well at the bottom it is quite like this and comes up into a center, from there there is a big V shaped arm that reaches out and it had a long rope with a pulley; A big fork, a hay fork as they call it, it would come down like that and pick up the hay and transfer it to a hay stack.
Jon Duncan: So it was basically like a big fork that was used to pick up the hay.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: Did the kids ever get to play on the stack?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No we never were allowed to do that. My dad said stay off it and we stayed off it.
Jon Duncan: Now Alberta there was another question here, most of your neighbours were immigrants when you lived on the farm.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes
Jon Duncan: They were from places like Czechoslovakia
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria, and different places like that.
Jon Duncan: How did you get along with them?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Just fine, they were wonderful neighbours and they respected my husband. We were all good friends.
Jon Duncan: It wasn’t too much of a problem then.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes except for the language they had a hard time making themselves understood, we had a hard time understanding them. But we got along.
Jon Duncan: Do you remember when the hutterites came to town?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I think that they were here before that.
Jon Duncan: Were they always here, do you always remember them?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: It must have been when I was quite young when they started coming into Canada.
Jon Duncan: Did you get along with them
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Just fine yes. In fact I think that they came and helped us dig our well when we lived on the farm.
Jon Duncan: So you really got along with all these different groups of people, it really wasn’t a problem for you. What about the Native Americans?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Native Americans?
Jon Duncan: Indians.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Like me, I was a native Canadian but. My father was still American when he came here. So I was born of American parents and I married an American man.
Jon Duncan: By Native American I meant Indian.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Ya we got along with them alright, we never had any trouble with them.
Jon Duncan: Were their many around.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes they used to come down from the Blood Reserve some times. I don’t know where they were from, maybe from Saskatchewan even and they came through town. They didn’t stay long in Stirling, they pitched their tents across the coulee south of Stirling, but they moved on.
Jon Duncan: They came to work?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: I remember when I was a child; no they didn’t come for work they just came to scrounge for whatever they could find. Anyway they never stole anything from us that I know of. I remember when I was a child that my father made a swing out of two big telephone poles, it had bolts with rings on them. They tied the ropes to these swings and they were swivel rings. I remember sitting out there with my doll having a big swing one day and the Indians were coming in from the east. You know where Adamson’s farm is; well they were coming in on that road into Stirling. They were driving horses on wagons. They had a little colt and some dogs following them, they had kids on their wagons too. I was afraid of the Indians at that time; I didn’t want anything to do with them. My mother had said if you are a bad girl I will give you to the Indians. So I was a little afraid of the Indians so I jumped off the swing, grabbed my doll and got into my mothers bed, as far under as I could go. My mother traded a nice loaf of bread that she had just baked for one of those coat hangers that the Indians used to make.
Jon Duncan: So they did a bit of trading.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Yes, they were always begging for something so she traded him a loaf of bread, maybe two loafs I don’t know for the coat hanger. We hat that in out house for years and years, I always remembered that. Every time that I saw that coat hanger I remembered running in the house and crawling into the bed.
Jon Duncan: Did Stirling ever have a Swimming pool that you can remember?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: After I had moved into Stirling, after Harry died the Lions made a Swimming pool and my kids learned to swim there, some of my kids not all of them.
Jon Duncan: There was no swimming pool before that?
Alberta Kiddle Finely: No, I never got a chance to learn how to swim.
Jon Duncan: The kids just played in the Cannels and the ditches then.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Ya but we weren’t allowed to go down to the coulee. It was all muddy in the bottom and there were blood suckers and all kinds of things.
Jon Duncan: In the coulee that went through Stirling.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Ya.
Jon Duncan: Alright, well Alberta I want to thank you for your time. You have given us some real good stories and I really appreciate you doing this. I think that we will shut the tape off now and call it a day.
Alberta Kiddle Finely: Alright
Transcribed By Clinton Dovell
