Interviewee: John Boars
Interviewer: Jon Duncan
 
Jon Duncan: Alright, today is the 24^thof July 1997. My name is Jon Duncan and I am here with John Boars, John why don’t you introduce yourself.

John Boars: Well my name is John Boars. I am one of five children of Mike and Kathy Boars. Who immigrated, Mike my father in 1825 to Canada and my mother and I followed in 1827. I think we arrived in Raymond shortly after because we first went to Toronto and my father was out west on a harvest excursion right after he arrived in 1925. After we arrived, my mother and I, I was three and a half at the time, we shortly thereafter arriving in May of 1927, we went to Raymond and started working in Sugar beets and went back to Toronto and back to Raymond because there was no work for people of non Anglo-Saxon Origin in Toronto, and jobs were scarce. So we came back out to Raymond and contacted from what in understand Mr. Raynight and Jim Walker, they were the president and secretary positions in the Night Sugar Company and we were urged by them to consider renting land from the Night Sugar Company. Which was the steed short horn farm at that time a big landmark between Stirling and Raymond we did that shortly after we arrived, probably late 1928 or 1929.

Jon Duncan: Alright, where were you born?

John Boars: I was born August 28^th1923 in Vitina Yugoslavia.

Jon Duncan: Let’s start with your parents, particularly your dad, what was his occupation?

John Boars: I don’t know that he had an occupation in those days, other than get a job he went to Grade four, what is equally grade four here and he worked in the United States prior to the war in a butcher shop I think. Then they were small time farmers in the village of Vitina Yugoslavia.

Jon Duncan: So he was brought over to Raymond basically to do sugar beets.

John Boars: Well he came out on the harvest excursion first and then because my mother wasn’t that pleased with running a boarding house which were the original plans in Toronto. My father says if you don’t like this you can go to Raymond but you will have to work on the sugar fields trying to feed up to fifteen young hungry Croatian men ageing from eighteen to twenty eight or something like that and working around the clock on shifts. It was just kind of work that my mother was not equipped to handle and so we came up.

Jon Duncan: So this boarding house, where was it?

John Boars: In Toronto, we bought a house it was 67 hook avenues, it is still there down in Toronto. Last year we went around seeing it and it was still standing.

Jon Duncan: Now your dad brought other families with him to Raymond.

John Boars: Yes, when we decided to go ahead with the rental the night sugar company was to provide the horses, no tractors. The equipment, that is discs, ploughs, drills, and stuff like that and we plated as many acres of sugar beets as we could handle. One person could probably do the hand labour on ten acres of sugar so you would have to have quite a lot of help that is just in the spring. Dad got in touch with his cousins Angela Boars, Peter Boars, and Mike Durvac. Those are three of the people that came out and we entered in to sort of oral partnerships, two of us in one partnership and another family by the name of Tooljacks who was Check origin who I think new more about farming and sugar beets than we did. We just worked that half section with a hundred acres of sugar beets or more.

Jon Duncan: Alright, now when your dad came out here to do the sugar beets, did he work on the sugar beet campaigns?

John Boars: I don’t think that he did any, maybe very temporarily. He more or less lived in the fields and as soon as we started the rental arrangement on the Steed place he stayed to supervise that. Our cousin Peter Boars got a job right off the bat that worked in the campaign. I don’t know that Angela Boars did and I don’t know that Mike Durvac did but Peter Boars did.

Jon Duncan: What about yourself?

John Boars: Well I was too young. I did get a job working in the Sugar Factory at Picture Butte where we moved to in 1938 after we purchased a farm there. In the year of 1939 I think it was the crops weren’t looking very good and my father said that either you or I have to go out and get some kind of a job to get us through the winter. I said well I will go. That inquired how you could get a job in Picture Butte. I was told by one friend that if you give me a big fat turkey ill make sure that this gets to the right people and we will see if we cant get you a job. I was about seventeen, Sixteen and a half. I remember standing in the line-up in Picture Butte going from the side walk all the way to the fence of the factory. I was clear at the end and the secretary there was in charge of employment. She said is John Boars there and I putting my hand up and walked through this crowd and got a job. I enjoyed it. I was young. I got to work and gave the money to my folks.

Jon Duncan: So you worked in the campaigns after you moved.

John Boars: The factories in Picture Butte, the farm that we had purchased was in Iron Springs.

Jon Duncan: So why did your dad purchase this farm?

John Boars: Well they could see that you were renting and you don’t get any equity. The sugar factory in Picture Butte was looking for people who would be able to run the land and do the beets labour too. My cousin Peter Boars we went together on purchasing the farm. At that time Peter Boars family had three boys that could pretty well work. We had two, they were young but still they could help. My third brother who later on in years became the president of the Sugar Beet Growers in Alberta and ended up farming our family farm in Iron Springs, he wasn’t able to do it then. But we could put in a handful of work; we hired and contracted out the work of hauling, digging and topping.

Jon Duncan: So your dad became a business man of sorts.

John Boars: Well you could call it a small business man. Basically a farmer, it was to make ends meet and to probably help feed the family and develop a future for them.

Jon Duncan: Alright, let’s talk about your mother for a few minutes then. What was her occupation?

John Boars: She was a house wife. My mother came from a group of women at that time that didn’t even go to school in the former Yugoslavia. My mother could not read and write. I don’t think that she would have been able to come into Canada had her husband not been here. My father sponsored my mother’s sister to come over, she was a single girl when we were in Raymond and she did not go to School other than one year. She was only just able to read a write. She sharpened her skills of reading and writing and she did pass the test. She came over as an immigrant. She stayed with us in Raymond. The first job that she got was as a domestic in the house of people by the name of Hogenson in Stirling.

Jon Duncan: Do you remember the trip over to Canada?

John Boars: No I don’t remember the trip except my mother retold the story enough that it becomes kind of a legend. She says she was glad that she had some people who could understand Yugoslavia; these were people that could help handle me. I was running all over the ship and she was sick for a major part of the trip from what in understand. I wasn’t sick at all, she was just glad that she had an adult to handle me.
Jon Duncan: Now when your parents came over to Sothern Alberta, were they ever able to pick up English.

John Boars: In those days there was really no way to do that, you picked up English the best way that you could. My father had been in Pasadena California three years prior to the war and could speak English. My mother couldn’t. Since we brought people over from Croatia and there was a small community in Raymond of probably upwards of twenty families from Yugoslavia. Socially we just worked in big Circles and my mother had no reason to try to learn English. She however did at one time have a young English girl of Mormon Stalk who worked with a distant cousin of mine. They didn’t have any way to get through by the winter and the second cousin asked my dad if we could come and live with them for the winter. My dad said yes you can come and share what we have and so this young Mormon girl was with us for several months in the winter. My mother couldn’t quite get over it because all she would do is according to my mother was put lipstick on sit on the chair and tell her husband I need this. My mother even said to me some place around there I remember don’t you marry a Mormon girl; you marry a good Croatian girl who will treat you how a husband deserves to be treated. That was the thinking at that time. This lady turned out later to have a nice family with a husband and they are in the area right now.

Jon Duncan: How is it that you picked up the language so well?

John Boars: I was young, I mean when I was in Toronto I was two and a half. I was there from probably the age of five or six. We went to school one year in a covered wagon made by Mr. Williams who farmed his own by Jim Walker. Mr. Williams senior drove a covered wagon, that happened one year and we had a stove inside and that is how I went to school so I was there during my school hours with the people in School. Then the next year or shortly thereafter that that farm probably belonged to the school in Stirling. So I went to Stirling from Grade two to about Grade nine. I never finished Grade nine but the students in Stirling was anywhere from 175 to 225. Out of the whole works they were all Mormon other than maybe fifteen or twenty. I spoke English as fluently as anybody could. Having started learning English at age three and a half, I got along just fine and fortunately today I don’t have an accent of any kind. I don’t even have a Mormon accent.

Jon Duncan: Alright, do you speak your parent’s language?

John Boars: Yes I do, I would call myself that fluent in it because I spoke the language at the level that it was thirty, forty, fifty years with my parents in the house. My father may say something in which my mother would say the odd word. I did speak and I would write to my cousins in the old country. I could get by probably better than the rest of the children.

Jon Duncan: What about your children, do they speak Croatian?

John Boars: No

Jon Duncan: It sounds to me like this farm that you grew up on in this area was somewhat of a community.

John Boars: The closest thing was really the Hutterite Colony, we didn’t really share anything. But there were four operations at least two people in each one. Each would have forty to fifty acres. The other family that was not Croatian was Check. The languages are both slang languages, the words are variations of one another and I got so that I could speak Check just as fluently as they could and they understood quite a bit of the Croatian Language. We had the Williams family which was right close to us. Ten or twelve kids in the Williams family, they were over there all of the time. Our community there more or less was self contained that the men went to deal with the business and the women stayed home.

Jon Duncan: So all of these families lived on this one half section. How many houses were there?

John Boars: There were three regular houses, one was on the south side of the road and it is still there. We lived in that one for a while; it is one of the bigger houses. The other two houses were on the South side of the road, one next to the lake which is still there. The one west of that was another small house that the Tooljack family lived in. The kids, we all went out and played threw a ball, or softball games, riding steers or whatever it was. Our discussions were all in English. We went home and respectively spoke Croatian. My folks used to go and visit with the others in the evening. It was calledće večer za sjedenje, it means kind of going to an evening seating. My mother and father would go over to visit Mr and Mrs Boars and then we would go and visit Mr and Mrs Durvac. So that is the way that the time was passed. Us kids, we listened in on these conversations and we heard stories about all of these ghoast and goblins and what the good lord would do to you sinned and all of that. We went throught life, to me it was very plesent, i have nothing but the fondest memories of growing up in that town.

Jon Duncan: Alright, how many families lived in one house?

John Boars: We lived in a house by ourselves except for a period when the peter boys came over in 1933 or something. He was building a house on skids and he was going to put his family in it. It wasn’t finished. We for about six months we lived with the two families in three rooms. Two downstairs which consisted of a bedroom a living room and a kitchen all in one, there would be ten or twelve people.

Jon Duncan: Where did the kids sleep?

John Boars: Upstairs, we all had bunks thrown on mattresses made of straw and we had our little potties there because there was no inside plumbing of course. It worked out, you did what you had to do and as children we had no other information, as far as we knew that is the way that people lived.

Jon Duncan: This is the first house. How was this house heated?

John Boars: It was heated by a heater and a coal stove. I can remember that my father would wake me up in the morning so I could go down and put more coals on the stove.

Jon Duncan: Where did the coal come from?

John Boars: The coal came from someplace in a coulee west of Raymond as I remember one time my father and Mr. Durvac each took a team of horses and a grain pen and went out there for coal. Stayed there over night and brought some food for the houses. Mined the coal, put it in a wagon and took it home. 

Jon Duncan: How did you get water into the house?

John Boars: There was a well right beside the lake, I don’t know whether it was a spring or it came from the lake, more than likely just seeped through a water vain gravelled from the lake. That was the well for everybody; we just went down there with buckets, you just filled two buckets up and put them on a pole across your shoulders just like you see in the third world now, people carrying buckets. I was the one that went for water quite often, it was quite a chore to get.

Jon Duncan: There was no cistern.

John Boars: There was no cistern down there no.

Jon Duncan: Was the house insulated?

John Boars: I do not know but I would wager not but I really don’t know. I don’t recall it being cold. We also had as covers feather tics. You would pick loose feathers and the Checks were very good at this and made this amazing feather tics for other people in fact other people came and bought them. Mind you we slept on basically straw mattresses but if you just ruffle the straw and that was it. So I don’t remember being cold.

Jon Duncan: When you moved from the first house to the second house, what were the major differences? 

John Boars: I don’t know if there were any major differences. I think that it was done for the simple reason that two people could live easier in that bigger house and my father thought well I will go and take the smaller house by myself and Angela Boars would go in the other house. Just to accommodate what people were there.

Jon Duncan: Who cleaned the house?

John Boars: There was no question, the women cleaned the house. My father would come in with dirty boots, I remember this more, and walk right across the kitchen floor. Didn’t matter to him, he expected it to be clean but when he sat down, no matter what he did she would get him food right off the bat. It was a mans world and women cleaned the house and not only that the women also did the sugar beets with the men. They worked side by side with their husbands.

Jon Duncan: Who did the cooking?

John Boars: The women, my father would have trouble boiling water and I must admit that I am much different even today. It turns out that my son is.

Jon Duncan: What was a typical meal, let’s start with breakfast.

John Boars: If my memory serves me right we always had chickens, so we always had eggs. So we would sit and have eggs and then we would have milk and cornmeal. Cornmeal was a favourite food from Europe, like flower but from corn. My mother would fry that and they you would pour that on a plate, something like porridge. Pour some milk and that was one of the basic foods and you would always have coffee because coffee was a standard drink.

Jon Duncan: What about the lunch?

John Boars: The lunch, if I recall correctly one of the main meals that you had. You got up early, if you got up in the summer time you would be getting up at five o’clock and having coffee and some bread and jam maybe before noon. Then at noon you would have a basic meal of meat and that would be chicken most of the time or pork because we always butchered a pig. We had dried pork and dried bacon to my knowledge, and then we always had eggs. I know that Sunday the standard meal at noon was a chicken pie and. From the age of fourteen or maybe even more we would go out and catch the chicken, hold it down by its legs and step on its wings. Cut its head off, it would jump around a couple of times and then I would take it inside. We would feather it, my mother would carve it up and roast it and fry it.

Jon Duncan: So the midday meal was the big meal every day.

John Boars: Well I think as big of a meal that you would have. We had a pretty good meal. It wasn’t like how now we eat at six o’clock but back then the women were supposed to have the meal read five minutes after you got in the house. Quite working at nine and the meal would be ready at five after nine. That’s the way it was, it wasn’t the wife that set the times for meals, and it was when the husband and the workers came in from the fields.

Jon Duncan: Alright, well a couple more questions about your mom, was there a garden?

John Boars: Yes, you see it was irrigation, as a matter of fact the Check family; they were better farmers than we were because they came from a farming background. There was a big area there to have a garden. My father wasn’t really much of one to have a garden; my mother had to more or less do it. The Check family had a real top notch garden. They grew a few things, poppy seeds were grown for years there, and nobody ever said anything. In fact I can relate a little story that when I stayed home to look after him my mother would work on the fields. One of the women told me if your having trouble with your brother sleeping you just take some poppy seed, boil it, strain it, and give it to your brother and he will sleep. I did that and my mother would come home and asked how he is and I would say he is sleeping. Mother sooner or later found out that that is what I was doing and I said so and so told me that if I give him some of this poppy seed water that he will sleep. Mother was aghast I guess. There was a little discussion between her and the lady who suggested this. My brother grew up to be six food one and I don’t think that it stunted his growth at all.

Jon Duncan: So what crops did your crops did you family grow in the garden?

John Boars: Well in the garden a stable crop would be potatoes, another one would be cabbage, and beans. Beans are a very much used crop. We used to dry beans, green beans, make soup out of it. My mother had a recipe for soup that my wife now makes and to me it is one of the best soups that you could make. Then we ate a lot of times dry beans and I loved it. It was a standard thing that we ate. We didn’t have beef. Beef was too expensive I guess. We would butcher one or two hogs in the fall and then we would dry a lot of the meat.
 
Tape 1 Side 2
 
Jon Duncan: Alright John we just had to run the tape over. We were talking about your parents preserving their meat and that but did they have any way of keeping food cool?

John Boars: I think, in fact I know that people in Stirling had ice houses; we never had an ice house. We would just smoke it in the smoke
house. That is the method of preservation that we used.

Jon Duncan: What about vegetables. How did you parents preserve vegetables?

John Boars: Vegetables were preserved very easily. In the root cellar, it was just a hole in the ground that was probably three feet deep and maybe ten feet across and twenty long. You would then dig a hole and leave the dirt then you would get some CPR posts and put them as the roof then throw some straw and dirt on and build a entry way, slope it down with a door on it. Everybody seemed to have a root cellar. You could put carrots, turnips, beets, potatoes, cabbages. You could put that down there in that cellar and to my recollection is we could have them right out of the spring just about.

Jon Duncan: Alright, did you mom do any bottling.

John Boars: Not there, when we moved to Iron springs he then caught on to bottling and did that there but not in Stirling to my knowledge.

Jon Duncan: Okay, well I want to talk about the farm, how many buildings were on it?

John Boars: Well the barns, the big landmark there, it was a big barn, the roof was white, Steeds Shorthorns. It was an immense barn and it had leant too that went in the back covered here looking at city lots. It would cover better then one of the lots in Lethbridge. Maybe like two of these and it had a lean too on it. They had a horse barn that was a smaller barn and it had I think you could have I am sure that you could have sixteen horses in there. There was also a side barn. A side barn was farther away and it was built so that you could race pigs in there. We had pigs in there so it was quite a modern set of buildings for a farm. We used them the best that we knew how. Most of the time he place that we knew was the horse barn because we used horses for seeding, cultivating, ploughing, and pulling the wagons so the horses were the main thing that you had. 

Jon Duncan: Did you have milk cows?

John Boars: Yes, we always had some milk cows, we would have anywhere from two to four milk cows. I can remember this quite distinctly, when any of the cows were in heat it was referred to as bulling as my recollection. My father would instruct me to take the cows down the road, way down to Marquardson’s place and he had a bull with his heard down there and the cattle would get into their cattle and our cattle and our cattle would be breed. He didn’t have a bull. 

Jon Duncan: So who did the milking?

John Boars: Well as a matter of fact in my side it was you milked if you had to. It wasn’t regular. My mother milked and I milked from the time that I was probably ten years old or less.

Jon Duncan: What would your parents do with the calves every year?

John Boars: Calves were killed for veil. So we did have veil sometimes. The female calves were grown and we would use them for milking.

Jon Duncan: Alright, with all of these animals on the farm, you would have needed a lot of hay.

John Boars: A lot of hay yes.

Jon Duncan: Where did your parents get this?

John Boars: I think a lot of it was harvested on the road allowances, they had the road allowances, and it was a fence between the two farms. There would be wagon draining down the middle or something but it had wild prairie grass and some alp alpha, to my recollection we would cut that, we had a rake and we would stack it in the top of the big barn. You would flick it up there and it was kept there. They you would also have some in the carrel behind the horse barn and the cattle barn. 

Jon Duncan: So there was a cattle barn as well.

John Boars: It was the biggest barn but we didn’t have that many cattle, we each had two or three cattle or something like that so you may have had. There was lots of room in the big barn. One family would keep theirs over here and another family would keep theirs over here. The cattle were turned out to go on the road and some kid would be asked to go turn them out and then after school bring them home to milk.

Jon Duncan: Were the cows and the horses kept in different barns.

John Boars: Yes.

Jon Duncan: Now, what crops did you family grow on the farm?

John Boars: To my recollection it was basically wheat and sugar beets. The main crops that were expected to be grown by us, I think that the only limiting factor was how much land you could get into shape. It is also my recollection that on that half section we had up to a hundred acres of sugar beets so if there were four families we each had about twenty five acres of sugar beets. The work was all done with horses and because nether my father or my cousin were cowboys. We ended up going to the ranch that still exists just down on the milk river ridge. Reignite would be there and he would tell my father that he brought in a whole pile of horses. Dad could pick all of the horses that he wanted for that coming year. My father didn’t know a good horse for working from a pull one other than being bigger. But you picked forty fifty horses and you hired some young local boys to break and train them. Living there especially during the beet hauling season was like having beat hauling season was like having chuck wagon races every day. Guys that used to drive the wagons would put maybe three tons of sugar beets on. Some of them had bennit buggy wheels which had rubber on them and others didn’t have rubber tires. Nevertheless the hauled all of the sugar beets to the factory in Raymond four and a half miles away, then they would race back with the horses. We had run a way’s, entanglements. Like I say it was Calgary stampeded every day.

Jon Duncan: Alright, now what was the wheat used for?

John Boars: Well the wheat was used to sell but also to get flower. I can remember distinctly we used to be able to take, I don’t know how much grain we had to deliver, grain to the elevator in Raymond and then they would give us eighteen sacks of flower which would be enough sacks of flower to carry us for what you might say a year. And the flower was stacked. I remember this distinctly up in the attic where the kids were sleeping. So the flower was there just some boards underneath and the sacks just piled on each other and we had maybe eighteen and probably Peters family had eighteen and they lived with us so we had quite a bit of flower with us but we used that during the year. Wheat never sold for very much but you would use the flower and we just took it up there.

Jon Duncan: Who did the threshing?

John Boars: The threshing was done by whoever had a threshing machine. I remember those who were quite the colourful functions on the farm. I remember more distinctly when we moved to Iron Springs because down there I think Schnider, two farmers, two brothers, Paul and I don’t know the other brothers name, had neighbouring farms there and they had a threshing machine and that meant that you had people haul the bundles in. I think that we did the binding and I know that we did the binding in Iron Springs because I was old enough to do the binding myself. Then we would stook it and I remember that the stooking machines were fed by the women. It was a jolly good time.

Jon Duncan: How a question that I have for you because your family was so heavily involved in Sugar beets, why don’t we talk about the process that takes place to raise these beets.

John Boars: At that time the sugar factory supplied the seed as it does even today. But it was a multi germ seed. It is like a little Russian thistle seed, and it is very prickly, the seed. There are germs in there, which is a single seed, two, three, or four in one of those nuts. And so you would plant these. You would plant quite a few pounds to the acre with a drill. Then the beets would come up and they would be as thick as hair on your head. So then the process was you had to go out and use a hoe and thin beats it was called. Thinning was the first job. At a price of $25 that you paid to do the sugar beets three times in the spring first would be thinning, then hoeing, then weeding. So the first time you went through and just test your holes between the beets, leave the beets hopefully eight to twelve inches apart. Then you picked out the weeds. A cultivator was used and these were just pulled, my father used to do this, it would be done with a team. My father used to seed it, he didn’t care if was like a snakes back. He used to say well you can get more in if you go like that. As I came of age I wanted to do the seeding. When we moved into Iron Springs I did start doing custom seeding because I had a team of horses and I could seed just as straight as a rifle shot. I would put a marker on the other side and I would just go straight and everybody wanted that. So if was first seeded but before it was seeded it was ploughed, all done by horses. Then seeded, then cultivated, the cultivator had discs that run on an angle and they left a strip maybe two inches wide beside the beets that is one inch on each side. This would cut along and this would be a little cutter in the middle. So the cultivator horse pulled would get rid of all of the weeds in the middle. Then the thinners had to come and pull out the seeds, that is the beets in-between and leave one every eight to twelve inches. We used to count the stand and a hundred percent stand would be a hundred beets in a hundred feet. That didn’t happen to often because of germination problems. You could have quite often a seventy percent stand or even higher. Then the next time that you would have to do is hoe the beets. That was get the next crop that came up as the rains came and as you irrigated them more wheat would come up. So the next time, you are not thinning because you have already thinned. You go and hoe the wheat’s out. The last time would be the weeding. The weeding was just going around, and by that time the weeds were a little bigger and you would just cut each one with whatever it was and that was all that you did. The beets in addition to being first cultivated and take the middle out, then they would get duck feet they were called and they would do the center part and they would get a shovel and put it on so you would make a trench between the beets and that is where the water would go. As soon as the water came, depending on how the rain came and the spring you had to irrigate. You didn’t have to but you would irrigate beets probably three times. It was gravity irrigation. The ditches were made in such a way that the water would flow so you would follow the flow of the land. Then you would plough a ditch about a hundred feet or and hundred and fifty feet if it was flat further away. Turn the water to fifteen rows, twelve rows, whatever and let the water go right through and move the canvas it was called or just a dirt thing in the ditch and you would stop the water and then it would go again. You would go to the next one and move right across. That was irrigating and you did these three times at least. In 1935 I recollect that there was no water to speak of in the irrigation system and there was no rain. I remember them saying that it was a very dry year and we got this figure is what I remember is that we only got five ton of sugar to an acre which is quite short of what at that time was expected, at that time if you had irrigation and irrigated and hoed and everything properly you could get twelve to fifteen ton per acre. I can remember my father in 1937 got fifteen tons per acre on his beets and that was an achievement and the sugar company awarded a pin to the person who grew fifteen per acre. I remember my father was quite proud of receiving this, joining the fifteen ton per acre club. Now they are raising thirty tons per acre. I might add another thing; we had invasions by web worms. Web worms could clean a crop a beets, you could just about literally see them eat the beets. If they ever were born in enough numbers and that depended on the weather. They would come to a sugar beet field and eat the sugar beets but they would go through a grain field and never touch it. So just as soon as the fields were expected by the farmer himself and by the company agriculturist or whatever he was. If there were web worms there the company had a poison that was put in cans and they sprayed it with horses and I remember one year there was quite a scare about these worms. 

Jon Duncan: Alright, so now how were the beets harvested?

John Boars: They tested them for sugar in the fall and at a certain period of time in late September, early October you would get permission to start digging you beets. They had achieved a sugar level that was satisfactory and for those that are not familiar with that, if you could keep the beets growing long enough you would get more sugar. So they would expect that you would be digging the whole month of October. So the digging consisted of a beet plough which was two armed thing on wheels that had diggers on the side and they would just go along and as they went through the beet, where the beet grows, it was loosened by the dirt and its roots were freed from the soil. This plough was pulled by four horses. I used to as a matter of fact help to do that even in Raymond when I was younger. I did quite a bit in Picture Butte. I remember when you ploughed the beets people came in behind and picked the beets and put them into rows. You would take four rows and put them into rows. Then you would pile them all up either in a row or into bunches on the row and then once you picked quite a few like that then you would take beet knives and that was a famous tool in sugar beet growing; now it is all done mechanically. I can remember the Check people that came to Raymond and there were other people besides the church folks that raised sugar beets in there so they knew how to grow sugar beets and how to top sugar beets. They were super at this. That was a back breaking job as thinning was. And you would chop off the leaves and let the leaves go on the ground, they would be left there for the cattle to pick up and then you would rake a little space with the rake so that you could have a nice area because you would come along with the beet wagon and load it with the beet fork. So you would throw the beets on this pile and you would then get sixteen loads or whatever into these piles and they would come in these bunches. They would come with the wagons, these cowboys and help with someone helping them load. Would come along the side and they would throw the beets on and they would load up to three, three and a half ton. You would load dirt in there too because you can’t shake it all of and then you would haul the beets to the sugar factory. They would weight the sugar beets and then they would take a tear what they called a dirt sample, they would take a sample out of each load. They would take three, four beets in a bucket and then they would scrape off the dirt and they would weight how much dirt and how much beets and you always got a percentage that you were told to have brought in was the test sample for dirt was five percent. So if you brought in a thousand pounds and it was ten percent you wouldn’t get paid for it because that was dirt and was shaken out in the process. We even had beets that go caught in the winter and I can remember hauling this snow plough across the road because the ground was not frozen but there was a big snow fall and we dragged this big timber like snow plough across to push the snow out so you could see the row and you would come behind. It was cold and dirty and wet and I remember in Picture Butte as a matter of fact after we were there the third or fourth year we lost a better part of our crop because of a storm came in and we never got them out. We lost some beets in Raymond too.

Jon Duncan: Okay, let me ask you this, did your farm ever have a problem with grasshoppers?

John Boars: Yes we did and all we did was spray it used to be taking by hand and spray the ditch edges of the fence and stuff like that but id don’t remember. I think in 1935 if I am not mistaken a farmer there well known farmer by the name of Wylde had just come from Saskatchewan was reportedly telling stories of hordes of grasshoppers that had eaten up everything over there. Because we had an irrigation farm we never really suffered any lack of vegetables, potatoes, meat, and pigs. So I never even, they talked about the dirty thirties but I never really knew what that meant. I had what I wanted and I can recall in the dry land areas south of Stirling like Warner and Milk River, down there. Principal Sullen Low in the School in Stirling asked those of us on irrigation if we would talk to our parents that donate potatoes or cabbage or turnips or whatever we had to bring it to school. Somebody would pick it up as long as they could get it and they would take it down there to the town’s people. Because they didn’t have anything, there was no rain, there wasn’t much water coming to irrigate you at least irrigated your garden and got something out of it.

Jon Duncan: Alright, now how old were you when you started working on the beet field?

John Boars: Oh, I would say ten. What I would do then is I would go behind my mother and she would block the rows and show me how to pull out everything but leave one plant so that I could identify the beet from the weeds and so I would pull that out and you would be hit across the knuckles if you didn’t do it quick. So I would get that and then of course I would say well I can start doing the rest and so then I would say some place between ten and fourteen I would thinning on my own.

Jon Duncan: Okay, now did your father own his own implements?

John Boars: No, implements were all rented from the Knight, they provided all of the implements, and although we did end up owning our own car in 1934 I think we bought a Model A. I drove it when I was eleven years old, no drivers licence required. I drove it better than my father did because I was handy, I could read instructions and stuff like that.

Jon Duncan: Where did you drive it to?

John Boars: We would drive it to town. Drive it to Church. Sometimes the kids would be taken to school. So those were special occasions. Go to Lethbridge. I can remember going to Lethbridge with the Model a Ford. I can remember going in gravel ditch Temple Hill in Raymond.

Jon Duncan:How did you do that?

John Boars: Well gravel was so thick on the highway that if you are driving, I think that my dad was driving, I may just be scared to take the responsibility for this but the gravel would throw you if you were going to fast. The entire sudden dad found himself in a ditch. It wasn’t mud, it was just gravel.

Jon Duncan: Alright, so you kept this car thought the depression.

John Boars: Ya, I don’t know what we did with it because when we moved to Iron Springs, we ended up buying a truck, we didn’t have a car there for a while. We bought a 1940 truck. Peter Boars bought a ford 1940 and we bought a 1938 or 1939 international truck and that was used to travel. We used to only get a licence for the summer time, because we couldn’t afford to pay the licence for the full year.

Jon Duncan: Okay, did your dad ever buy a tractor?

John Boars: Yes, when we moved to Iron Springs my father and Peter Boars farmed together and bought a brand new John Deer AR tractor from the john deer pulp company on credit for John Deer. A drill, he bought a hand plough, and we bought two bottom ploughs, brand new john deer and they were purchased on Credit. I remember we couldn’t make the payments in probably forty or something. Dad asked me to go with him to see the John Deer credit man here in Lethbridge. The building is still up on Second Avenue down there. Dad wanted me to explain the best way that I could that we couldn’t make the payments and we would appreciate an extension of the terms and I don’t think that there was much to be concerned about and they gave us an extension. What sticks out in my mind was when we were in the office, the credit manager in John Deer, whoever he was; his hands were nice white and no dirt under his fingernails. They was some linoleum on the floor, he had a nice desk, nice white shirt and here we are, my fathers hands were all dirty and hands were skinny and rough and everything. I remember looking around and thinking to myself wouldn’t it be wonderful to get a job like this. I can remember that was one of the first things stuck in my memory. If only I could get a job like this, that would be the pinnacle of success. And that in just a few sentences that after I later on in life after I graduated with a degree in agriculture I ended up working for a company and my first office job was as assistant credit manager.

Jon Duncan: So it worked out for you.

John Boars: But that job didn’t seem that big when I took another, it was a nice promotion but it wasn’t as big as it looked to me.

Jon Duncan: Something I was going to ask you. How many brothers and sisters did you have?

John Boars: My sister Anne was born in Raymond in 1928, my brother Bing was born in Raymond in 1931, my sister Marie was born in Raymond in 1934, and my brother Walter who ended up with the sugar beet growers was born in 1937.

Jon Duncan: So there was a big family then.

John Boars: Well two brothers and two sisters and myself.

Jon Duncan: Alright, how did you get along with them?

John Boars: Well I think that I got along fairly well. You have got to remember that I, once I was about seventeen, eighteen, my father relied on me a lot, I was the oldest; I was in school until grade nine. However my father relied on me to do things with him and I can remember drawing up a farmstead when we moved to Stirling, where we would put the trees, where we put the house and so on, and ordering trees for a wind shelter. So I was the oldest and I was a boy so I had not much of a problem.
 
Tape 2, Side 1
 
Jon Duncan: Alright, John we were just talking about your responsibilities in the home when the tape ran out. Why don’t we continue there with you talking about your responsibilities? 

John Boars: As I was saying I was the oldest and I was a boy and my father used to sort of rely on my. My mother did too. So I was like second in command there so it was very nice. The rest of my brothers and sisters I got along and to this day. As a matter of fact the whole family is very close, my father was very authoritarian but was a very charitable and stuff like that. He used to call ‘John’ and I would have to come running I would usually be reading the Winnipeg free press in the outhouse and they could never understand what I was reading the paper for. I was a little upset with being on the farm and not having any money. In Stirling, up until then I didn’t really need anything but when we got to Iron Springs I was about sixteen, I liked to have a few bucks on Saturday. I remember how I used to ask my father, can I have five dollars. He would say I haven’t got it, I would see cows that we sold, I would see pigs that we sold, and cream cans that we delivered. I couldn’t see why you couldn’t have any money I thought my father is a cheapskate. We ended up going to Crows Nest Pass to a lumber mill up there and bought some slacks. They were the outsides of trees and they built carrels with this. My brother Peter Boars and his son Ivan, I and my father with our trucks went over there. I remember going over there and seeing food like you wouldn’t believe. Young guys working in the sawmill, working outside cutting the trees. I came home and I said to my mother, I do not like not having any money; I am going to get a job. He would say please son mother was, she was the oil that was poured all the time, as in most families. Son please doesn’t, so I followed my mother and I said okay. It wasn’t long before things turned around and my father when I asked for five dollars would give me ten. So things turned around and we were better off. I didn’t understand why things were like that but I did as I went on into later years.

Jon Duncan: Did your parents ever play with the children.

John Boars: Very little, we weren’t Mormons but for all practical purposes my father just about never drank. We weren’t to drink. We weren’t to smoke. We weren’t to go to pool halls. We weren’t to gamble. We weren’t to fish. So you know I suppose we would be close to puritans or something. That was my family and the Peter Boars family and the other family, we were raised pretty strictly. I still don’t gamble, I oppose gambling, people that went fishing, it was thought that they were people who didn’t have something else better to do. That was an idol thing, we didn’t play sports. In other things we were well treated but there were things that we were not suppose to do. I can’t say that we didn’t do some of those things for instance we used to go down below the track; the railroad track went through Stirling to Cardston. We drove the cattle on the north side of the track and you couldn’t see what was going on from where the houses were. The boys would get ropes and rope the steers and ride them. The parents were against this but we would do the same thing in the carrel. I can remember even the dirty thirties men just like flies on the cars. They would see people working in the fields because we were working the sugar beets. You were always in the fields with the sugar beets. They would jump off and see if they could get a job. We would give some of them a job and give some of them a meal. They would do that and when the train came back from Cardston.

Jon Duncan: Why was it that they left so soon?

John Boars: Well it was a back breaking job and we didn’t have a lot of jobs. We couldn’t pay those cash; it wasn’t something that you could just pay them. We had to wait until we got paid so that we could pay them. They would go up in the barn and sleep.

Jon Duncan: When was your father paid?

John Boars: Usually you were paid with sugar beets just as you are today; you received an initial payment if I recall and then you received additional payments as sugar was sold and wheat when you delivered it. The groceries were all on Credit, we used to go to Stones and Stirling, Raymond, I remember in Picture Butte and Iron Springs the Gibbens people had the general store there and we would run up a bill, with my recollection, of 600 dollars for the year in groceries. But we paid that when we get paid from the sugar beets and from everything else.

Jon Duncan: Another question that I have about your parents. How did they discipline the children?

John Boars: Very strictly, we weren’t abused but let me tell you, you got swatted quite a few times. Nobody was ever hurt to my knowledge, we knew that if we stepped out of line that we received a hand to the backside, or a slap on the face. Kids were supposed to be kids. But it wasn’t anything that was not I think the same every where else.

Jon Duncan:Okay, know you mentioned this before, you grew up in a predominantly LDS region. What faith was your family?

John Boars: Catholics

Jon Duncan: What was it like to be catholic on a Mormon community?

John Boars: For all I know there were Catholics there were people from other denominations but basically it looked like the rest of the world was all Mormon because all the people in those towns, Stirling and Raymond, were all Mormons. I remember my father distinctly telling me that I should not go to their meetings that they had for the LDS youngsters and I can remember that they had boy scouts. I asked my father If I could join the boy scouts and my father was quite concerned that if I joined the boy scouts the would white wash my mind and I would end up saying that I think we should be Mormons and join the main flow. That was the deal but boy did I ever want to be a boy scout. The leader of the Boy Scouts in Stirling was the post master, Kristie Christenson. Him and his wife did a lot of community work and he was the leader of the scouts and Donnie Nelson, a classmate of mine of the two Michelson boys they got me to going the Scouts and I finally got my father to let me join the scouts and the last year in Stirling I went to a camp in Waterton and I really had myself a good time. I was a good scout because to me this was a privilege; it wasn’t something that I had to do like probably most of the other kids. But I was treated, as a matter of fact I think that Kristine was so impressed by me that when I came back year’s later and practiced law here in Lethbridge. He knew that I was here and I was in the School board and he got to know me. He came in and I did legal work for him. So I got along with the people very good but to me the world consisted of Mormons and there was Lethbridge. I remember one of the school teachers in Stirling that the Mormons were restricted in how close they could settle to Lethbridge because at the time that they came up here it was twenty miles. Later on of course we had a Mormon mayor in town and he joined everybody else just like everybody else did. We all got along reasonably well.

Jon Duncan: Alright, where did your family go to church?

John Boars: Well I can remember going to church with two nice black horses and drove all the way to New Dayton and went to Church. I don’t suppose that it was that much further to go to New Dayton that it was to go to Raymond. New Dayton was just a small place as it is today. Whereas Raymond was a big center, immigration people came in to work on the sugar beets. Croatians, Slovakians, Checks, Hungarians, you name it, and so it was thriving municipality so we used to go to Raymond quite often and if I recall the priest was Father Foot if I do recall correctly. My parents used to be quite Strict, my father stricter than my mother as far as religion was concerned.

Jon Duncan: Did they have religious books in the home?

John Boars: Not really, I don’t recall, we had a prayer book, the prayer book for my father was in Croatian. Later on in Iron Springs I had a prayer book that I got from catechism and the sisters in Iron Springs. That was the extent of that; the religion was more or less passed on orally.

Jon Duncan: Okay, the next topic that I want to talk about is your schooling, now how many years of school did you have in Stirling?

John Boars: I never finished grade nine, so I went there from about maybe grade two, maybe three because I went one year in Raymond until grade nine and then I quit. I used to always quit in the spring for three weeks in the spring to help with the Sugar Beets and I used to take time off in the fall for three weeks to a month and still catch up. I was always able to catch up. I was always I think in the top half of the class at least in some places. I had no trouble with that. As I said we were in a totally LDS environment because the children there taught about the mutual, the scouts, girl guides, and stuff like that. The queen and the king and to me that was all quite foreign. However, I had no problem, I consider even today, Donnie Nelson, the Michelson boys, Erickson boys to be personal friends of mine.

Jon Duncan: Alright, so you had friends. Were you well accepted in the school?

John Boars: Yes, I don’t know how I was accepted by the senior people; I was certainly accepted by the teachers and the children in the school. One teacher Jean Marquardson, his father had the Marquardson farm south of us. He was a teacher and I can remember him as a reward, it was either grade seven or eight, he took us on a trip to Cardston in the park. A guy buy the name of Jacobs had a trucking business in Stirling. He got the Stirling truck to put a tarp in the back. He went to the Wolf Creek or whatever creek is in Cardston there in the park area and had breakfast and a little lunch and then came back.

Jon Duncan: Now why was it that you only attended through grade nine?

John Boars: When we transferred to school in Iron Springs there was no High school so I immediately went to School in Picture Butte and there was a little Van. I went for a few days before thinning started then my father said, son you have got to stay at home. I can’t pay anybody to thin the Sugar Beets and we need help to thin the Sugar Beets. I said sure, so I stayed home then by that time the Season was over and Grade nine had a provincial exam. Grade eight didn’t, Grade eight didn’t so I was passed all the grades in Stirling but to pass grade nine you had to write a provincial exam. I didn’t go back to write the provincial exam in Picture Butte. I got to know some of the kids for about a month and that was it. So I didn’t go. Next fall things turned around and dad says how you would like to go back to school. I said that it would be a good idea. My mother helped me and got me a lunch I was going to go and the van pulled up, driven by Leonard Hayme I think, one of the neighbours there and asked if young John is going to go to school and I was ready to go and then it dawned on me. I am going back, I didn’t pass, I am going to have to go back a grade and I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t know these people that well anyway, I just got to know them in Grade nine as it was, now I have to go and repeat grade nine. I took my lunch bucket and came back in the house, threw it across the floor, to my recollection I started crying I said I am not going. So dad went out and told Leonard that I wasn’t going. That was it and I stayed home until I was until I was in service.

Jon Duncan: Before we talk about your experience in service. What were your favourite subjects in school?

John Boars: Well we used to have spelling bees and I was always one who stayed there to the last few, probably didn’t win it to often but I was able to spell pretty good. Social Studies were a preferred subject with me. I always was interested in who was, even to this day. I can remember Arlie Chew who later was a sugar company’s field man in Raymond telling me that when I came back to visit law he said you know Boars he says those social studies notes that we got from you were the best notes that we could get. I can always remember I wanted to get your social studies notes and I didn’t think they were that good but Arlie thought that they were.

Jon Duncan: Alright, now who were some of your favourite teachers in Stirling?

John Boars: Well like I said to you Marquardson certainly was, the Proctor girls, Sullen Low was the principal and then going down further I don’t really know that I had any favourites although I do remember Marquardson. We played marbles I was asked marble king down there. My father couldn’t afford to buy marbles for me but the knees in my pants were always out because we always used to play the ring.  You would each put in two glassies’ we used to call them in the ring and, ten people playing there were twenty in there. You would shoot from the circumference of the ring, if you could knock one out that was yours and as long as you could keep knocking them out with one Marble hitting another marble the circle was yours. Well I always used to clean up and I remember a champ, Elwood Romeril, his parents were pretty well to do and he would always get new marbles. He always used to loose them and I would have a sack of marbles and I would have to hide them from my dad. He would ask, what did you do to your pants, I would say well I don’t know.

Jon Duncan: Alright, so what would during the recess breaks, was it just marbles that you would fire.

John Boars: Well I think that I should tell you this. The guy who was the care taker at the school he was a lightweight boxing champion at one time in the province at one time. He used to take us down into the basement of the school and give us boxing lessons. I remember going down there in recess and I was boxing with a guy who was younger than I was but bigger. He hit me with the open end of the glove and not with the glove part with the back, and knocked me out. I can remember to this day, I didn’t like that feeling. So that was the end of the boxing. We used to catch steers and ride them out of the school yard and I used to be one that would ride them out of the steer yard, get on them, put a rope around their front feet, around their stomach and you could ride them out. That was about the biggest that I had been taking in any organized game. One incident that I remember in Stirling also, the school burnt down. I don’t know exactly what year it was, I must have been in grade seven or eight. It was a three story if I recall correctly. The top story windows were not really completely demolished by the fire. So a few of us were taking rocks and breaking those windows. I remember somebody coming out and asking us, there was about half a dozen of us in school and the police came and charged us with breaking the windows. They fined us if my recollection is correct about thirteen dollars to pay for these windows. I told my father that I had to have thirteen dollars. My father asked me for what and I told him breaking windows. Well I got hell more ways than one. My father went with me and gave them the thirteen dollars, he wasn’t going to disobey the law because he was in a different country and you don’t know what the laws are.

Jon Duncan: Alright, so you didn’t really play any organized sports after the boxing.

John Boars: No, there was no basketball as there is today, to my knowledge that I recall. I think that we played pick up ball, we played pick up ball at the Steed place. We played marbles at school, the guys, and girl’s hopscotch I guess.

Jon Duncan: Did you ever participate in a July 24^thcelebration?

John Boars: No not to my knowledge.

Jon Duncan: How were students disciplined in the school?

John Boars: One time when I was drinking out of the fountain and I was suppose to be back in school during recess. I was thirsty, I ran back and the principal caught me and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and threw me down on the floor. I don’t think that it really hurt me all but I think that I hit my nose on the floor and my nose started bleeding. Then the proctor girls were teaching there. They came rushing up and stopped the nose bleed and that was the end of that. I think that Sullen Low was quite upset that that happened; I don’t think that he meant anything by it. My father was as much of a disciplinarian if I got in trouble at school I didn’t dare tell him at home because he would say that I deserved it.

Jon Duncan: Alright, did you do much dating in school?

John Boars: No, you looked around and I remember some of the girls that were real pretty chicks you might say in those days. In my class there would be Joyce Spackman, Ruth Christenson, just two girls, the Oler girls were twins and other girls. There was no dating while I was there, that I went on.

Jon Duncan: Did you go to any of the dances.

John Boars: Not to my knowledge. I think that was more under the church and I don’t recall going.

Jon Duncan: Alright, now did your family have a telephone in the home?

John Boars: No

Jon Duncan: What about a radio?

John Boars: I don’t think so; I think that we had the first radio when we moved to Iron Springs. We subscribed the Winnipeg free press when we were in Iron Springs and I used to just beg to go and get the mail in Iron Springs. As soon as I got the paper home I knew that dad would find some kind of job for me so I would pretty well dilly dally and read the paper and I would have the paper pretty well read before I got home.

Jon Duncan: Okay, what programs would you listen to on the radio?

John Boars: In Stirling like I say we didn’t have one but in Iron Springs we listened to Wilf Carter. Wilf Carter was our famous cowboy singer. He would be singing about heading for the Calgary stampede. In those days you sort of imagined yourself being a cowboy. I used to think of, as a matter of fact if I am not mistaken I ordered a book of how to train and break colts. I didn’t do much with it. Didn’t have any colts but I remember that was something but that was the end of that.

Jon Duncan: Okay, as you said, you only got to grade nine when you were young. Now how is it that you ended up being a lawyer?

John Boars: Okay, when I was waiting to join up, I knew that I was going to get a call. As soon as I got my call I said to my father I got a call and I have to go in the service. My father said he heard that if he got somebody in the town to certify that he was needed in agriculture production then I could stay. My father said you don’t have to go, I just said dad I have to go. Anyway an argument ensued and finally I went and took my medical and I was as healthy as a horse. So I said look dad I am not going onto the army, I am going into the air force because they didn’t have a prerequisite of being grade eleven or twelve. They would accept you into air crew no matter what level of education you had. You had to pass a certain test. I thought to myself, horary, now I can go and be a pilot, which was my aspiration.  I went to my dad and I said I am going to go to Calgary and I am going to join the air force, can you please let me do it. I went to Calgary 1947 November 17^thand joined the air force. Everybody else was doing it, I am doing it too. I came home and had a little pin that said I had singed up but I wasn’t in service yet, I wasn’t called up. I was pretty proud of that. Finally I was called up in March of the next spring to start the service, I went to a boot camp in Edmonton and I remember when we went on beet marches on boot marches or whatever they called them down town and we could see the university down the river. You could see these engineers who were out on spring training of surveying I guess you could say. I thought, oh boy wouldn’t that be nice, being in University. I remember riding the train out of Calgary to Edmonton and I met my pilot, Jimmy Simpson from Medicine Hat. He lied about his age and got in and he was going to be a pilot but he was already in Grade eleven I think. I remember them talking about stories in University some of the other boys and in high school and I didn’t know any of it, I was a farm boy. I thought oh boy I would like to go to school. Anyway in Edmonton I went through manning and I wouldn’t be accepted into initial training school which was a school for bombardiers, navigators and pilots.  Mostly because I didn’t have any algebra, trig, or anything like that which you were required. I remember Jack Humphrey’s whose father was the superintendent of the school was there already and he got in. He ended up a pilot in the Air Force he said to me John listen, no matter what you do you had better play ball. Because if you don’t make it to the wireless operator or air gunner you will be out of air crew, I said well I can’t do that. So I remember, I challenged him on my aptitude test as I took and the officer said no we cant give you the records but you didn’t make it. He said I will tell you what we will do; you can go to be a wireless operator if you like. After listening to Jack I said okay, I will be a wireless operator. We went to Vancouver and took pre training of some kind, he took some high school. I finished that and finally got posted to Winnipeg number three wireless school and took a month course wireless. I was asked where I would like to go for my air training and bombing. I said well Lethbridge had got a bombing and gunnery school so I would like to go to Lethbridge. I came here and I graduated here March something on the 14^thor something like that in 1944. Then after you graduated because I didn’t have any high school I didn’t make the top grade but I made the middle and the top third of the class was allowed to choose where they wanted to go. If you wanted to be a bomb aimer, bombing command they could go and if they wanted to go to training command they could go and if they wanted to go to transport command. The middle bunch would have to go where they needed them and the bottom bunch went directly overseas. So I was in the middle bunch and I sent to Edmonton to fly, I really enjoyed that. It was nice, you are young, your single you booze all night and fly all day. It was really nice. Finally the school closed because they were winding up the air training place and in August 1944 I was supposed to go overseas. By that time I was realizing that I have got to get an education. I went overseas and took advanced flying over there, took operational training over there. Finished everything except going to the initiation training to transfer on to
 
Tape 2 Side 2
 
Jon Duncan: Alright, John we just had to switch the tape over there, you were explaining you experience overseas.

John Boars: Right, and so you had a chance to corrupt what they call it, they would bring in fifteen to twenty bomb aimers, fifteen or twenty pilots, fifteen or twenty wireless operators, gunners and stuff like that. You had three days to mix and pick up and join with people. I met Jim Simpson at that orientation. He looked at me and he says hey, don’t I know you Mr. John Boars. Ya, you are Jim Simpson; I says can you take off plans and land them. He says I think so, he says can you send Morse code I say I think so. Okay, do you want to fly I said sure and we picked up an air gunner, tail gunner, we picked up a navigator, a binder, we later picked up a flight engineer. Finished the training and we are going to go finish the training on Lancaster and the war was over then. So the war was over then what are you going to do after the war. They brought in all of these school teachers and gave them commission and they became the councillors. They said we have got the courses and we would like you to come in and discuss with us what you might like to do. Weather you might like to go into training, farming, whatever. I took one after another. I took aptitude tests, I took I.Q. tests, and they would look at the manual. My father was hoping that I would do that and buy a farm. I didn’t want to; I said I want to go to university. Finally after eight, nine, ten of these interviews with all of these people that are Canadian officers with an education degree or school certificates. You think that they would deviate from their instructions, no way! Finally in the city Turkey where there was a hole in for Canadians. I went to another interview with a councillor. Low and behold, it was an Englishman. How became councillor on a Canadian station I don’t know. But anyway I walked in there, I wasn’t going to go, I was going to give up but the other students there sort of said everybody is going. I walked in there and he said what do you want to do. I said I would like to go to university. He looked at everything, he said I don’t know why you would want to go to university, and I would recommend not going to university. I said I would like to go and take law. I got so while I was over in England we used to drink beer and have parties with Jim Simpson whose mother was a poet. With Jimmy Cathna who was another pilot whose father was a university graduate and we would talk about all of these things and just thought, boy I want to get an education. Anyway I came to Winnipeg to be discharged and the seal was just a young guy and the air force if you survived you got promoted because there was nobody left. They were nice enough guys but anyway he called me in and he says, this just doesn’t add up, we haven’t got a program for you. You haven’t even finished grade nine. I talked to him like a Dutch uncle and finally he says well who am I to tell you no, go ahead. I went to Calgary and I remember I had a test, they gave us grade twelve exams and I passed history and social studies just like that, without ever going to school. Not the others, not chemistry and physics and all of that. So they sent us to Red Deer and in Red Deer we could bring up our education so that we could go to University. While there I asked out priest what should I take, French or Latin? He says well be a priest, Latin. So I took Latin but there was no Latin two teacher so I had to switch to French. I finished Latin one and French one. But there were no French two teachers so then I came to Calgary and thought that there would have been a French two teacher or a Latin two teacher there. Nope, the councillor called me in, he was another teacher who was here later in Lethbridge. He says you want to go to Law school, there is no way that you can go to law school, and you have to go have French three and Latin three. I said look, I have Croatian 252. He says you could speak if you didn’t have French three and Latin three requested here you don’t get into law school. I said well what can I do. He says well look, you’re from the farm why don’t you try and take agriculture. No I said, I don’t want to take Agriculture, why don’t you take education. No, finally he says well I finally have to give up, I guess that I will have to take agriculture, what can I do. Well, he says, you can take economics. That’s alright, Ill take economics. So I went to Edmonton, wrote my grade twelve exam, all we did was write exams every week but prior exams that were given. We never learned anything, we just learned pass exams. I passed my exam with a 64.5 average and you had to have 65. When you are a veteran they overlook things like that. Went to Edmonton and enrolled in the faculty of agriculture. On the campus I was doing the news on Campus I was prime minister of parliament. I was the leader of the liberal party because the rest of the group was just a bunch of lawyers so they wanted someone who wasn’t a lawyer. I was very active at the university in extra curricular activities. Graduated in agriculture, in the middle of my class if I recall correctly, then I had to look for a job. I went and got a job, and kept it for ten years. That was the break in which I met my wife, I went down to Avon Port Eyewash she was an American from down there, ended up getting married to her. So then after about ten years I ended up a sales manager in the branch in Toronto. I was on the road as traveler; they called the block in those days. Then I came into system credit manager, then I went to credit manager in Winnipeg and then I went, they asked me to go to Toronto and be a sales manager. I was the number two or three man in the firm. However they got people from the top of the massy company which was then in the shape of being taken over by other people. These people from Massy were gobbled up by JIK’s company. One by the name of Gordon McMillian became the president of the Canadian. They set up an individual company for JIK’s Canada and he and I didn’t see it often. When the manager was away on holidays for a month he would come up every day and ask how things were. You would show him the 1409, which was a sheet that you showed him what you sold, what was outstanding. That was done every day.  The snow was up to here in Ontario. It was a bad winter. McMillian was upset with this; I got so upset I said Mr. McMillian  do you want to run the branch, come on upstairs and have my job, you run it. Anyway this ended up in my being asked to take over as the manager of advertising. It was suppose to be a promotion. I said don’t kid me; I am now in charge of advertising as sales manager. When you are going to put me in charge of advertising as a manager, I’m going to have to be under somebody who is sales manager. Well I asked for a transfer back to Alberta. Then I went to see the university and I said to my wife how about we go on back. That’s what you want to do, have three kids. I applied in Calgary to enter university in law; it wasn’t that popular at the time. Things were pretty tough. I got in just like that. Took my aptitude test, although I was ten years older than anybody else was, I was thirty seven, thirty eight when I started. Graduated when I was forty, wrote the bar exams, started practicing a brand new profession at the age forty one. Then I came back to Lethbridge because this is where I wanted to be, come back here in 1966 and started a law practice with a firm here and then went on to have my own firm. There I was.

Jon Duncan: So how important has education been to you?

John Boars: It is the most important thing in my life. Probably as a result of that I can tell you quite straightforwardly that every one of our children has a university education. I had five children, two of them had two degrees, on has one degree and I think that is the best thing that you can get in life. It gives you a chance to compete with the top people; it gives you a chance to grow up. I knew a long time ago that a degree didn’t help you very much getting a job but it helped you grow up. I was at that time on city council in the school board in Lethbridge. Every one of our children attended the university of Lethbridge here because it was starting, just a small university. They did at least for one year and then they went on to different universities to get different degrees.

Jon Duncan: Alright, I want to go back no to your years in Stirling in particular about the depression years. Now we have said some things already. But I do have another question, how often were there dust storms?

John Boars: Well I don’t recall real big dust storms but I recall the fence behind the house on the bigger house that was on the south side of the road. There were trees and a ditch and a fence there. The sand was so thick and piled up so high that the original fence was pretty well covered. We would go out to play as kids and we would be playing and we would reach the next barbed wire. That is how the sand was. This all came from the farm that was directly west of us which was Jim Walkers. You could see even to this day where that was below ground in certain places. Because at that time there was no strip cropping practiced. There was no even cover on crops practiced. When a storm blew as it did quite often here especially in the fall it really took the soil with it. In 1947 after I had graduated in Agriculture I took a course in entomology and we zeroed in on grasshoppers. Grasshoppers could survive the winter if they could hatch and stand dormant and then in the spring they would come out. So one way to limit the amount of grasshoppers was to go over the field with a disc and by that way you would open them to the weather and they would freeze and there would be no grasshoppers. I told that to my dad and he rented a quarter sections that was just solid sand. I said to him we have got to disc that, kill all of the grasshoppers. Okay, lets just see, so we did that and the whole farmstead that was right beside there was covered in dust and they were ready to sue us. But they didn’t do it. That land just blew like you would believe. You had to know how to practice and it shows you that real knowledge is sometimes dangerous.

Jon Duncan: Did dust come in the house?

John Boars: All of the time. That’s, what the heck, you could have birds fly into the house, that is how poorly the house was constructed.

Jon Duncan: Another question that I had for you of how the depression affected your family. What were Christmases like?

John Boars: Very happy, Christmas was a very big celebration for the Catholics and for Croatian Catholics. We used to go to midnight mass then you would come home and as I said my father wasn’t a boozer but he would have some liquor, some hard liquor they didn’t mix it. They had one shot of something and then we would talk until all hours of the morning and then we would go for Christmas dinner to one of the families. There would be two or three families in one place and for after that meal was consumed two or three days passed you see there are Christian holidays. There is Saint Johns day and Saint Stevens’s day right after Christmas. So we would go for Christmas diner in one place and then Saint Johns day they would come to whoever had a John in the family like I did. And so we visited with these families and it was basically a religious thing, there was no Christmas tree, there were no presents. That wasn’t done, that only happened when I grew up later and had my own family.

Jon Duncan: Okay, so there were no presents and nothing like that but still a pretty important celebration.

John Boars: Ya, whole families were there, the older people would tell stories that they were familiar with and young people just gobbled up these stories and they were nice. They bought candy for us and oranges for us so it was a feasting.

Jon Duncan: How often were you given a new pair of clothing?

John Boars: I can honestly say that I as given enough clothing in enough clothing and my mother would always be yarning things. My mother used to knit socks. I still have a pair, my mother passed away in 1978; I still have a pair of them in the bedroom that she knitted before she passed away. That was her pass time, she would take wool and put it into thread and make socks with it and so we had socks, she would always yarn them. We didn’t wear white shirts, we weren’t business people, we wore ordinary shirts pants were patched. The girls had skirts our of elisions flower bag sacks.

Jon Duncan: So it sounds like your family didn’t go without.

John Boars: I could not say that our family went with out. I am sure that my father would have liked to do better but we had everything that everybody else had and we had no sense of being deprived of anything. We didn’t have some of the good things. I wanted to be a boy scout from the time that I found out about it. But that wasn’t so because the Mormon influence was there. My father was concerned that Ill become a Mormon. I think that it was illogical. I don’t think that the Mormons put any pressure on anyone but young kids will do that and that is really what happens.

Jon Duncan: Okay, so on of the last things that I wanted to talk to you about is politics, you have been involved for many years. But I want to start by asking this, was your father involved politically?

John Boars: He wasn’t involved politically. He was kind of a leader among the group. He was the one that Reighnight got a hold to bring his friends over and we brought his friends and relatives over. He helped decide who was going to go where. They used to have a Croatian fraternal union in which was a fraternal union for people of Croatian origin, headquartered in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. We used to have a little lodge down there. My father served as president on it for several years. This Saint Peter Boars, the cousin of mine he always did the secretaries work. My father didn’t do the secretaries work, he wasn’t a very good writer. He was always the president, not always the president and decides how it should happen, lead it. My father didn’t really have any politics, other than when I got involved in Politics later on. 

Jon Duncan: Why was it that you became involved in Politics then?

John Boars: I always enjoyed leadership. I did the radio news at the university. I was prime minister of mock parliament by chance. The chance was that pretty well ninety percent of the rest of the people wanted to be lawyers, known as limbos on the campus. Often times when the elections were held for mock parliament was held they were all lawyers. That still drags as far as liberals are concerned, they were outnumbered lawyers. Why? Because you become you become a lawyer you join the liberal party, you do your bidding and you do your campaign and you would get to be a judge. That wasn’t my hope. My goal was to be a Politian, a lot of liberals, which was their goal. I can tell you that in university, the last year that I was there or the second last the faculty of law didn’t even hold classes on a Friday when there was an annual meeting of the liberal party in Calgary. Most of the law students ended up in the meeting, nobody would go to class.

Jon Duncan: Okay, now what offices have you held?

John Boars: Well I was not an organization man. I didn’t, I was the president of the North Western constituency for a while because there was no body else to take it. But I wasn’t the organizing type. I was the type that wanted to do spouse policy and I wanted to get involved in policy.  I wanted to be a candidate. I ended up before I finished law school working for the liberals in the second last manning election. I worked for the liberals and went around trying to get liberal candidates where ever we could. Back then the conservatives were scarcer then the liberals were. This was 1963. So then because of that the liberals got to know who I was and I was paid to work in Alberta. They told me that if they elected more than six liberals they would give me a job if I wanted it until the term started. If not my term would quit once the elections were over. We only elected four liberals so I didn’t have a job. Sao I got a job with the GIC Company for a few months for two years in university terms, helping them in promotion and what have you. I became involved in liberals politics there and I was involved in Calgary when I was there and the manager for GIC was conservative and didn’t like me being involved that much. Like I always told them I work overtime and all this but I want to be involved in Politics. I said, if I have to be involved to the detriment of the company I will let you know. I won’t do things that are detrimental to the company. He believed me and we got along very well so I was quite involved in politics. When I graduated I moved back to Calgary and got an article with the person who in the firm as the senior member of the firm. He was a liberal member. In those days they had the single transfer ballet and having the saving transferable ballet and they were elected right across the large of the city. A liberal always got in. So I got the article at the firm as it turned out, then I got involved with one of the leaders for the leadership campaign and then I came to Lethbridge when I came here before I tried to get a placed article I couldn’t. Finally these people at the firm here got a hold of me and asked me if I would like to come and work for them. I decided to jump at the chance. We bought a house and borrowed some money from my father and were ready to do the inside painting I got a hold of Marie and told her that I had a chance to go back to Lethbridge and that is what I wanted to do. We were in this house right here actually with a lot of additions. Anyway we moved back here and I got involved with the liberals here. My first time running for office, the meeting was at eight o’clock at night and a snow storm occurred here in Lethbridge so they cancelled it.  But about four o’clock that evening, two people who were active liberals in Lethbridge came to me and they said why you don’t you oppose the mayor for the nomination.  I said don’t be silly, he has got a few people coming there. We will get some stuff for you. I finally said alright, I don’t care, go ahead. So they were going to propose me as a candidate and I was going to run against the mayor of the town in the liberal nomination. I was happy to see the mayor. As it turned out the snow came, the president liberal association heard that I was going to run and said that well we cant hold the meeting. I said well that is fine with me, phone sherry, it is fine with him. So instead of on that Friday it went to the next Wednesday. By that time I thought well I can phone a few people, I have got a few friends here. So I did, I phone a few people. I went to a meeting, had the little meeting, there were maybe fifty sixty people at the meeting. I won the nomination. The mayor wouldn’t even talk to me after that. There I was the liberal candidate for the provincial election in 1967 still the last election that the Social Credits won. I came in third I guess. But I enjoyed it, I went for two weeks, the law firm was pleased to have me go because they were liberal supporters. That was fine. I could take the two weeks off. Another lawyer in town was prepared to help me work and I had two weeks of campaigning. The next year came the federal election. Because of my publicity of being involved in the provincial elections I thought well why I don’t run for federal. So I told the guy that helped me, the lawyer. He said well I thought that you were going to run for the liberals provincially. I said well I think that I am going to run federally. He was just discussed with me doing that because I think that he was trying to run once more. He had run before. Anyway, I ran for the nomination, we had 1100 people at the nomination convention. Now in a hundred and fifty delegates, I won the nomination at the fourth ballot. I became the liberal candidate and therefore I was for six weeks, I took off from the firm and I did nothing but candidate. The happiest time of my life I just enjoyed it. We even had a helicopter tour the territory on the last day but I wasn’t the establishment liberal. There were a lot of liberals that wouldn’t support me. I of course was not a Mormon; I had a Mormon for my campaign manager, very capable man. We covered some steps like that but I was not Anglo-Saxon, I was catholic. So when it came to some of the people that didn’t matter to them so somebody else would get their vote because of their ties. It worked the same way; you could put other labels on those people. I came within 500 votes of winning the whole city of Lethbridge. I lost in a rural area by 2500 votes. Anyway, I did very well. By that time Pierre Trudo angered a lot of western Canadians by what he was going to do for Quebec. The liberals just got whipped out in the west. I never even got the nomination. I got involved because a guy asked me to run for a school board, I ran for the separate school board for four years, four times. I always won the school board elections that were a separate school. And because of that we didn’t have anybody who was prepared to run for the liberals, I ran for the liberals three times after that. The last time that we ran, just the NDP candidate and I, our votes were larger than what dick Johanson got. I became the second runner up. So then I didn’t run anymore. But as a result I had been involved in thirteen elections. I enjoyed it.

Jon Duncan: Alright, now you also had been in city council.

John Boars: I ran four times, the first time around I didn’t make it but the second time around I led the losers. The second time I made it, the third time, the fourth time, and the fifth time that I ran. I enjoyed that.

Jon Duncan: Alright so you have had a very successful political career.

John Boars: Notwithstanding but to see, I could only win if I didn’t wear liberal on my back. Now I am pleased to say that we have got a liberal in east Lethbridge, things have changed a bit. So we do have a liberal, however, they are useless under our system of government because the government, as long as they have a majority they can do as they want.

Jon Duncan: Alright, do you think that there is a future for the liberal party?

John Boars: I think that there is, I question about a future for Canada, I think that the future for Canada as far as Quebec, I think that Quebec will leave, if they don’t leave this time around, they are going to stay until they are free. It is much like Northern Ireland, much like Croatia. A large minority is going to be consistent on getting their way. I think that they will. They may not, if they don’t, that is fine but I think that there is a future for the liberals, today we never earned that. The government, either in the 1997 or the 1993 election but that is mostly because there was nobody else to be a national party and form a government. So regional members out of the west, we now have an official opposition at least by the reformers. Then you have got a regional party out of Quebec and so the NDP have a few members but really you don’t have an alternate form of government. Canada was always governed by two parties, Liberals and Conservatives. The conservatives are whipped out now. I don’t think that they will come back. Not with standing, they have got twenty members now. The liberals are going to have to change drastically to be the opposition to the reformed. If Quebec goes, the liberals had better be careful about trying to form a government because reordered is going to be on the march.  

Jon Duncan: Alright, well John I would like to thank you for your time today.

John Boars: I enjoyed it.

Jon Duncan: I did to, I did learn a lot and I think that it is time to turn off the tape.

John Boars: Thank you

Transcribed By Clinton Dovell