Interviewee: Leonard Mckee
Interviewer: Mark Durtschi
 
Mark Durtschi: It is the 27th of January 1997; I am sitting in the home of Leonard Mckee in Lethbridge Alberta. Mr. Mckee is a long time Stirling Resident but has lived up here in Lethbridge for some of his later years. Is there anything that you would like to say before we get started? Any place that you would particularly like to give a go.

Leonard Mckee: Other than just a quick resume of my life history.

Mark Durtschi: Well why don’t we start out then with your folks. What brought them up, your early recollections of them?

Leonard Mckee: Well my mother came to Canada in 1899, Mary Florence Mckee; she was the second daughter of Henry and Emma Selk. They came from Idaho. My dad came to Canada with his mother and younger brother in 1909 or 1910 I cant remember correctly which because his father had passed away in the coal mines in Utah and his mother wanted to come to Canada because she had relatives here and she thought that if they came to Canada their sons wouldn’t be coal miners and maybe get killed like her husband was. So they came in 1910. My dad worked as a young fellow, thrashing crews. His mother was a great cook and in Maybutt Alberta they had a hotel there and she was the cook in the hotel for a few years. Also in the fall of the years she was a cook for threshing crews. She was a very good cook and my dad as a young boy was working with her. He would peal the potatoes and things like that on the threshing crew and the hotel. Later on then of course she worked for several farmers in the neighbourhood and later in the early 1920s he bought some land north of Stirling and went out there and got married to my mother Florence in 1921. I was born two years later in 1923 in October and I was born on my grandmother Selk’s birthday. I was very small and very tiny; they carried me for the first few months on a pillow because I was so small that they thought that that is the only support that I had. I was very week and I was not expected to live. Anyway I survived and my mother and father lived on the farm. As a youth I had a convulsion one time, I guess the still call them today but you don’t hear much about them. You kind of go limp fall over backwards and the first time I had my convulsion my mother didn’t know what to do. From what I gather from her she was so excited and she prayed and finally I came out of it. I would take them quite frequently. When I was about three or four my uncle Joseph Brandley was visiting with us and about that time I had a convulsion. I don’t remember what my folks said rather I was in the convulsion or right after. My mother asked him if brother Brandley would give me a blessing. That blessing rebuked my disease and after that I have never had another convulsion.  

Mark Durtschi: What did you say his name was again?

Leonard Mckee: Joseph S. Brandley, Cal Brandley’s dad and he was my uncle. He married Madeline Selk; they were my aunt and uncle.

Mark Durtschi: You never had another seizure after that.  

Leonard Mckee: Never had another seizure after that.

Mark Durtschi: I presume that you had been having lots of seizures up to that time.

Leonard Mckee: Yes, I would get hot and they warm and they would put cold packs on me and things like that. After this administration I never had one after that. So that is a testimony to me of the validity of the blessings of the lord, of the priesthood. Later on in life, not too many years after my dad put me on a saddle pony that he was breaking. He put me on it and as a kid I nudged him in the flank and he kicked up. I landed right on my shoulder and my neck, my mother was in hysteria. I came out of it alright and in the long run but it sort of knocked me out. Anyway I enjoyed farming, as a child I didn’t have any brothers and sisters and it was kind of awkward to be an only child and I thoroughly enjoyed my cousins coming to the farm and also going to their place to play as a young child. In 1929 I started school and I was only in school for a short while. I went to Stirling school but a recess time I was so shy because we never went to church very much at that time. I was so shy that as soon as recess time came I would sneak out and start walking home, four miles. If anybody was coming in a buggy or a little car or something I would hide down in the ditch until they passed by and I would go on home.

Mark Durtschi: Did you walk to school every day?

Leonard Mckee: No, I didn’t walk; at that particular time I think that they took me. Then I would walk right home all the time and about a month after school or in September I got whooping cough and I was out then for eight weeks and by that time I was behind so they just kept me out of school that particular season in 1929. In 1930 then I started going back to school.

Mark Durtschi: So if my understanding is correct during recess you would go home so you were cutting classes really.

Leonard Mckee: Ya

Mark Durtschi: You never got into any trouble though.

Leonard Mckee: No, I never got any trouble; they would bring me back the next day.

Mark Durtschi: How much school did you complete?

Leonard Mckee: I completed grade twelve, in 1942 I completed high school. Then the war was on and I had to go become a solider. I had quite a bit of sinus trouble at that time. So they rejected me on my heath of sinus. Also my dad needed help on the farm so they let me stay and work on the farm with my dad.

Mark Durtschi: So you didn’t get a farming exemption then?

Leonard Mckee: Yes I did get a farm exemption

Mark Durtschi: But they also rejected you because of the sinus

Leonard Mckee: Yes because of the sinus they rejected me. So for that time I farmed with my dad.

Mark Durtschi: How did you feel about that, all of your friends had probably gone off to war were you worried about
them coming back? Any recollections?

Leonard Mckee: Not particularly, other seemed to be a little bit older although some went after some of the young fellows went to war.  I was needed really badly on the farm at that time because, low grain and food for the country.

Mark Durtschi: Were you grateful just to stay home and help the war effort on the farm.

Leonard Mckee: Ya, that’s right, I enjoyed it. So we continued that and during the war years I played a lot of baseball for the baseball team and we played also exhibition games with the air force team that was stationed in Lethbridge and Fort Macleod. We had a very good team at that particular time too. I loved baseball, I was a pretty good hitter, I remember when I was hitting high school I co7uld hit the soft ball long distance and they finally nicknamed me slugger. Even today one of the fellows still calls me slugger. Anyway I enjoyed that and I also enjoyed playing hockey in the winter. My dad was so good by taking wee little fellows in a one ton truck.

Mark Durtschi: He had a tarp.

Leonard Mckee: He had a tarp over the one ton truck. All of us would be riding in the back of that just having a wail of a time. Another highlight of my life I told was in the late 1935 or 1936 Toronto Maple Leafs and Chicago Blackhawks played in the national hockey league and they were both eliminated in the start so they came to Calgary for an expatiation game. My dad took me, one of my friends and his dad and we went too Calgary to see them play. That was really a highlight in my life to see those professional hockey players. I used to listen to them all the time, Saturday night hockey in Canada.  It was a real highlight of my youth at that time to see that.

Mark Durtschi: When would those games be broadcast?

Leonard Mckee: They would be broadcast on Saturday night. Just like hockey night in Canada they would be broadcast on CBC radio. As I remember one time this one who administered to me, they lived a mile and a half south of us and our radio broke down. So Saturday in the afternoon I would walk down for a mile and a half to hear that hockey game and then I would sleep there Saturday night and then walk home early Sunday morning.

Mark Durtschi: Your parents weren’t worried?

Leonard Mckee: No, they weren’t worried.

Mark Durtschi: I presume that you had no phone.

Leonard Mckee: No, no phone, we never had the phone until I got married we never had a phone. Until I came back
from my mission, prior to that in 1946 I was called to go on a mission to New Zealand. We were supposed to go to Salt Lake in February of 1946. Just at Christmas time we got a letter from the president of the church and he said that there was a boat coming back bringing soldiers back to San Francisco and there was a boat available to go back to New Zealand. So we went down to Salt Lake in the middle of January and we were there for three days. We went through training and they shipped us right out onto the coast after three days in Salt Lake. By the way when we left to go to Salt Lake it was as cold as it had been this year or colder. It was forty below when we went to Coutts.

Mark Durtschi: I presume that you took a train.

Leonard Mckee: We took the train to Salt Lake and it was cold it took us from Friday night and we arrived in Salt Lake on Sunday morning. I had two or three missionaries from Hillspring going to New Zealand at the time. It was quite an experience. I met one of my aunts in Salt Lake at the Hotel Utah and she came to me and we talked for a few minutes and that was quite an experience for me because I had never been in a big city like that before, I was just a little farm boy. Getting on the boat was quite an experience because I had never been on quite a large boat at any time. It was still barracked up just like bringing soldiers home from the war with Monks and everything and that is the way that we went out. From forty below to a hundred degrees above in a matter of a week or so was quite a contrast.

Mark Durtschi: Now when you were in the mission field did you teach just the English speaking people or did you teach the mariners as well?

Leonard Mckee: There were five of us and the mission president chose me to stay in the office for eight months of my mission to help with the secretary and business in the office there. So I was there in the mission home for approximately eight months. I was very fortunate to be in the mission home, I had a swell time at the home. I would get to go with the mission president on trips on weekends sometimes. He had a Lincoln car and I had my drivers licence and drove one the wrong side of the street just like they do in England. That was quite an experience. I was sent to the English speaking people in Wellington, that is the capital, I was able to meet the Prime Minister of New Zealand at one time. Most of them could speak in English. I enjoyed that, they were a little more lenient at that particular time, while I was in Wellington I played on the softball team. When I was called back to a town north of Auckland I was there for about five or six months and I played softball in that little town and I was also able to coach ladies softball. Later in my last few months I was called back to Wellington to labour. We had an elders theme and a lot of the players were very good players and we won the New Zealand Championship as the Mormon elders for that particular year in 1948. I enjoyed it in New Zealand they were friendly people, they would give you their bed if they had to. They were very appreciative of the elders.

Mark Durtschi: So you did associate with them even though you didn’t speak their language. Well tell me how do you feel about your mission?

Leonard Mckee: I enjoyed it because everyone was so friendly. It was a little hard at first because after I got out of the mission home a lot of them had drifted away from the church and we were more or less trying to go around and find saints and re-establish them to come back into the church. The president was the only one out there for about four or five years.

Mark Durtschi: So you were re-establishing the church after the war?

Leonard Mckee: Ya, after the war, I met president Mathew came out to New Zealand while I was there with his wife, it was a real experience to talk to him. He was an exceptionally fine speaker.

Mark Durtschi: Well let’s shift gears a little bit. Lets talk about your wife, how you met, maybe a little about your marriage.

Leonard Mckee: Well she came out to New Zealand as one of the first lady missionaries that had ever been to New Zealand. In June she came out. I was privileged to go down with the mission president to go down and meet her and her companion and an elder or two. Then she was in the mission home for about four months while I was there and then I was transferred up to Wellington. We became acquainted and that was about all at that particular time. Other than we came to conferences and we would all go through them. We all slept together, the men in a tent and the ladies in a tent. It was quite an experience in that too. So we would associate a little bit while we were at the conference. Then when I was released from my mission so was my wife at that time and we came home together with her companion and a couple other missionaries. When we got to San Francisco Rosemary went on to Salt Lake and I went to Sothern California to see my grandmother Mckee. She was living in Las Angela’s and I went down there to see her at that time. Then I came home in June of 1948, I had been in the mission field for almost two and a half years. 

Mark Durtschi: How did you come to take over the farm?

Leonard Mckee: Well I was home there with my folks for over a year and a half and then I went down to a conference one fall and I met Rosemary again. We started writing back and forth after that.

Mark Durtschi: Was that just a chance meeting?

Leonard Mckee: No, I don’t think so because; well maybe it was a chance meeting again.

Rosemary Mckee: Ya, it was a missionary reunion

Leonard Mckee: That’s right, it was a missionary reunion. Then I took her on a date while we were down there of course and we started writing and finally I persuaded her to come and see what the prairies looked like and she came up. She decided that she would be my wife on the old bald headed prairie instead of the mountains so a year later we were married in the Salt Lake temple.

Mark Durtschi: That is a nice story. Could you tell me a little about life on the farm after you were first married?

Leonard Mckee: Well it was quite a change for my wife; we didn’t have any running water or electricity at that first year. Then we put in a power plant and had our own power plant.

Mark Durtschi: Is that that windmill?

Leonard Mckee: Yes, we put in a windmill and put a power plant down there and we got electricity. A few years later then we got the Calgary power and we also managed to put up a telephone for all of the farmers out in the country from Wilson siding and we were on the Lethbridge Rural line at that time. It was about twelve to fifteen farmers on one line so it was. It was defiantly a party line. We also said that we could only talk for about five minutes because if there was an emergency or something like that but we got along quite well. Later on then of course we dug a cistern and hauled Salt Water?

Mark Durtschi: Did you have a well before that?

Leonard Mckee: Yes, and we lived in this small house and then moved into Stirling. We were on the farm there for ten years and all of the kids were born in Lethbridge, we had four boys and two girls.

Mark Durtschi: Would you like to talk a little about each one of them?

Leonard Mckee: Yes, my folks were living in Stirling. The two oldest boys, Terrance and Brent stayed with them in Stirling for one or two years. It was kind of hard for my wife to have six young children all together, so they should have helped out for their first and second year grade school Terry and Brent. The rest stayed home. About that time then the busses came to take the children. So then e brought them home and they all went to school on the busses. Terry and Brent, the two oldest and then Desmond, then Theresa, then John, and Dianne, we had quite a time with them too.
 
Tape 1 Side 2
 
Leonard Mckee: Also about that time we got a television set in 1955. The kids of course would like to watch the cartoons and thins on TV. When time for milking they didn’t want to go so I would walk up with the power pole to pull off the power on the power pole. Took out the power and the lights would go out and then the boys would have to go, they couldn’t see the TV so then they would go out and help milk the cows then.

Mark Durtschi: So you turned off the electricity to the whole house to get them out of there?

Leonard Mckee: Ya

Mark Durtschi: It worked I guess.

Leonard Mckee: Ya it did work

Rosemary Mckee: You didn’t have to do that all the time.

Leonard Mckee: No, no, not all the time but sometimes. They would get so engrossed and I thought well I have to figure out a way to get them out other then scolding them or trying to spank them. I would do that and then they would come rushing out hurriedly and do their chores and then come back. They were very good kids to have in the harvest and doing the chores. When they got a little older they would help, I taught them a lot about farming, combines, tractors and they were good at it. They would do the work and enjoy it. We had a good time.

Mark Durtschi: Did having television change your family?

Leonard Mckee: So that helped a great deal when they got the television and so they would be more content in that then going out and staying out later then they should have. I still maintain today that the ideal place for growing up and managing children is on the farm. It gives them something to do and they are more obedient with things such as that.

Mark Durtschi: Well lets move on to the next chapter as your kids grow up?

Leonard Mckee: Well they all went and graduated in Stirling high school, all of them. Bret and Desmond played basketball and they were both good ball players. Terry was a little short but he wasn’t a bad ball player himself. He was a little short; you have got to be a little taller to be a good basketball player, unless you are really good. The daughters were very good cheerleaders. Theresa was the fourth in line and she was sort of the tom boy and she was very good at softball and at basketball. They didn’t have a girl’s basketball team in Stirling at that time but she could shoot the ball right in the basket really easily. She was really good. She was more sport than Dianne, Dianne was more musical and she learned to play the piano, she became a school teacher. Theresa became a nurse; she graduated from nursing at BYU. She was a nurse in Salt Lake for a couple of years. She came back to Canada; she got a little home sick and whatnot. She came back here and worked in the St. Michaels Hospital and later on married Glen Anderson from New Dayton. Dianne taught school after she got her diploma and taught in Glenwood. She met a young fellow by the name of Jim Wolf and they were married in the temple.

Mark Durtschi: How did John come to take over the farm?

Leonard Mckee: Well, John got married quite young with a young lady. He had two young daughters. His wife took the children and left, supposedly she didn’t like farming. She left and after about a month or two she gave the kids back and gave them to John.

Mark Durtschi: She took the kids back and left?

Leonard Mckee: Ya, and left, so John stayed with us and the two little girls. My wife looked after their children while he was living with us with the littler girls. John then was starting to farm with me full time. Later on John married another lady and they had three boys and she didn’t like the farm so she up and left and came to Lethbridge. So he has had quite an experience in getting married. Now he is married for the third time and has a son and she grew up on the farm and she likes the farming so I think that will be hopefully happy.

Mark Durtschi: How did you slowly lean yourself away from the farm and had the horse over to John?

Leonard Mckee: Well he was living with us and he thought well I think that I will build, he married his second wife and they lived in Stirling and rented the Mopium home. Finally when he was working he said I think I am going to build a new home in Stirling. I said well I am sixty years old so maybe I will retire and help you, ill move to Lethbridge and you can stay here on the farm. So that is what he decided to do then.

Mark Durtschi: I understand that you still work on the farm.

Leonard Mckee: Ya, I still work on the farm. I am still active as far as farming is concerned.

Mark Durtschi: I am wondering if we can shift gears and go back and talk about a few parts of your life in greater detail. For example could you tell me a little more about farming with horses?

Leonard Mckee: Well I got into the age as a young boy of farming, about the tractor era was coming when I started to get into tractors. So I did farm with horses, I remember for two years or so we would have four head of horses on a wagon filled with grain to the elevator. Other than that I didn’t do too much with horses. About that time we got into the tractor business and I started driving tractors.

Mark Durtschi: So when you got the tractors that kind of did away with the horses?

Leonard Mckee: That’s right, that’s what happened yes. I can remember just when I was a young lad, I must have only been about twelve or thirteen years of age we had a old caterpillar tractor and we pulled an old combine behind. I was quite large for my age and I could start the hand tractor with the levers to drive, there was no steering wheel, you step your foot on it. I drove that tractor about thirteen years and some one else stood up on the back someone else stood up on the back. But I can also prior to that I can remember my dad in the dirty thirties he used a header instead of a binders they would head and they would cut the grain. They had a platform that would go up into the wagon. Then they would take the grain out of the wagon and put it in stacks then later on they would bring the threshing there next to the grain that was standing up. They would put it into the threshing machine and it would go into the machine and they would have wagons at the other end with a spout that kept the grain. Then there was a long pipe that would blow the straw into a pile.

Mark Durtschi: Was that heading machine, was that the next step in progression to the binder.

Leonard Mckee: Yes then after that they would finally start combining pulled by tractors.

Mark Durtschi: You were just in your young years in the middle of that transition.

Leonard Mckee: Ya

Mark Durtschi: Tell me how you and your dad did the haying when you were younger.

Leonard Mckee: We had grass land and as a younger boy my dad had a half section of grass land and he would go and get, I as a young boy would bring the horses into the carrel and take them back out to the pasture in the evenings. He and his hired man would harness them up and cultivate the land and drill the land with horses. I was a little to young to do any of that at that time. Other than bring the horses in from the pasture and taking them out in the evening.

Mark Durtschi: What were some of the other things that you have seen as far as farming mythology goes?

Leonard Mckee: I have practically seen everything although I haven’t done everything. From farming from horses to gas tractors with lugs to rubber tired tractors to tractors with no cabs and with tractors with cabs to keep away the dust. Pulling eight foot discs and drills to now in this day and age they are up to forty to sixty feet in width. With the lug tractors if we did twenty five, thirty acres a day we would think it was great. Now they can do that in an hour or two.

Mark Durtschi: You said a little earlier that you used to play with your cousins a lot when you were kids. What were some of the different things that you would do with them?

Leonard Mckee: Well as a kids first we would play marbles a lot and then as we were getting older I would go into Stirling and we would have little guns made out of wood and we would have rubber bands off the tires, cut them up and then you would shoot with the trigger and if you hit somebody with this rubber ring you would say I killed you. We played that a lot as youngsters, even on Sunday afternoons that was a great time to play with the rubber guns in the afternoon. We didn’t have church in the afternoon; we just had Sunday school in the morning and then church at seven at night. I was the only child so I was a little shy and I liked to play with my cousins if they came out. If we went into town I would play various games with them, run sheepie run, hide and seek those kinds of games.

Mark Durtschi: How did you play run sheepie run?

Leonard Mckee: Well we would run and hide somewhere and then we would have to make noises. If you found them without but after a while we made noises and then they would catch you and then they were the winners.

Mark Durtschi: It sounds like you got together quite a bit.

Leonard Mckee: Ya, we got together quite a bit in the summer time, not so much in the winter.

Mark Durtschi: Would you go to each others houses all of the time?

Leonard Mckee: Ya, well we were on the farm and we would have to go and occasionally they would come up to our farm in the summer time with their parents and visit.

Mark Durtschi: Can you tell me a little bit more about that windmill that you had and how it worked?

Leonard Mckee: Well we bought this steel windmill and we put it with cement to hold it up properly and we had a cellar and we had theses big batteries to charge up with the wind. From the west it would blow and charge up the batteries and then when the wind was down we would still have electricity. It was far superior to the Colman lamps that we had at this time. We had that for eight years, maybe more and the Calgary power finally came in and we were hooked up to electricity on the farms.

Mark Durtschi: How much volt system was that, do you remember?

Leonard Mckee: I think that it was a thirty two volt system, big batteries. It was about twelve to sixteen batteries that we had.

Mark Durtschi: They lasted the whole time that you had it or did you get new batteries?

Leonard Mckee: We took care of them pretty good and if my memory serves me correctly I don’t think that we ever bought any new ones.

Mark Durtschi: You had them down in the root cellar?

Leonard Mckee: In the root cellar yes

Mark Durtschi: They stayed warm in the root cellar?

Leonard Mckee: Ya stayed warm in the winter time. We had a lot spuds, my dad would plant a lot of potatoes and I remember one time I wanted to play baseball so badly and my dad said well you just cant go until you go out and hoe the potatoes. Eventually I reluctantly put the hoe over my shoulder and hoed all of the potatoes. He says okay you can go and play baseball. So that is what I did.

Mark Durtschi: Getting back to the wind charger, what different things did that electricity run in the house?

Leonard Mckee: As far as I can remember all we had was the lights in this power plant, the radio I think came from a six volt battery; these others were thirty two volt.

Mark Durtschi: Did the batteries ever go dead?

Leonard Mckee: Not very often as I can recall, we generally always got plenty of wind from the west. In the winter times from the north and then in the summer we would get a lot of wind from the west. The dry years there was plenty of wind in the thirties. That was quite as I said before that was much better than Coalman lamp.

Mark Durtschi: Did life change at all for you on the farm during the depression?

Leonard Mckee: Not very much, of course I was the only child, my dad and mother. My cousins there was about five in the family I can’t remember too much, we always had plenty to eat, of course we grew a garden and cows and meats and things like that. My dad was a good butcher, as a young boy I didn’t seem to be under nourished or anything like that. It didn’t bother me too much at that particular time, of course I was young.

Mark Durtschi: I presume that he had a garden.

Leonard Mckee: Yes, he had a garden.

Mark Durtschi: Did you get to weed it?

Leonard Mckee: Yes, especially the potatoes. He would plant a large group of potatoes. Then he would sell them, it was a huge seller. We would get the potatoes out of the ground, put them in the cellar and had all kinds of potatoes all summer long, gave some to our neighbours and relatives. We even had that cellar until; we only tore it down about 1970 sometime. It lasted a good fifty years.

Mark Durtschi: Did you have chickens also?

Leonard Mckee: Yes we had chickens.

Mark Durtschi: What did you eat that you didn’t grow yourself?

Leonard Mckee: Not much.

Mark Durtschi: You had your own wheat?

Leonard Mckee: Ya

Mark Durtschi: I guess your mom made bread?

Leonard Mckee: Oh yes, she made bread all the time.

Mark Durtschi: Could you tell me about your pig Ink?

Leonard Mckee: You bet, as a young fellow we had this pig and he loved milk and got in the habit of milking and squeezing it and he would open his mouth and drink milk. He loved milk very much. So after he was full he would just sort of sit down and look at it and just be there with me until I finished milking the cow.

Mark Durtschi: What did he look like?

Leonard Mckee: He had such a pretty face as I can remember nice smooth face, and nice smooth skin. I have never seen a pig cuter than this Ink pig of mine at that time. After I got through milking the cow I carried the pale over toward the pig pen and said come on Ink it is time for you to get back into the pen. I never had to run after him he followed me right over to the pig pen, I would open the gate and he would go right in. A few months later when my dad had to sell him, I just cried like a baby. I was so attached to this pig. I hope I meet him in the next world.

Mark Durtschi: You want Ink again.

Leonard Mckee:Yes, I want Ink again.

Mark Durtschi: Tell me about the winters.

Leonard Mckee: The winters were really cold, especially riding a horse to school. Although I would carry a little bag of oats on the back of my saddle, strap it on there. I would feed the horse the food at school. In the summer time we had a vacant lot in Stirling, it was about two blocks from the school and I would leave the horse in this vacant lot that my dad owned. It would eat grass during the day and then I would walk back the two blocks, catch him, put my saddle on and ride home. I rode horse for about eight years to school. Then when I got into high school there was more activity, playing ball and we went in Stirling for the winter months.

Mark Durtschi: Tell me then, what were the roads like in the winter time?

Leonard Mckee: Well the roads were terrible, we had no gravel, and we had no maintainers. We had just steel things that you would pull around with horses. My dad at one time drove horses for the county and he would grade the road with the horses. They had sort of a grader and you would hook on with chains and they would grade the roads.

Mark Durtschi: These were all dirt roads?

Leonard Mckee: Ya, dirt roads finally we got a little gravel but all the time that I was growing up it was all dirt roads, we were lucky to have that.

Mark Durtschi:I can imagine that they got really muddy especially in the spring.

Leonard Mckee: Oh yes, you couldn’t move at all you would have to go by horse. 

Mark Durtschi: You mean horse back?

Leonard Mckee: Yes but of course farming my dad had about ten miles from one farm to another and when the rain came he just couldn’t work that’s all, At that time the had tractors and equipment.

Mark Durtschi: As the years have gone by you have seen many things happen in Stirling. Would you like to comment on that at all?

Leonard Mckee: Yes, well Stirling will always be my home town and I love it dearly and I am grateful to be associated with it and with the older people of Stirling. We have had two or three Selk Reunions. My mother came to Canada in 1988 as one of the first settlers and they settled in Stirling and it will always be my home town. My dad and mother are buried there and we have a plot for my wife and I to be buried by them. It will always be our town. I am marvelled as to the way that it has grown in the last ten, fifteen years. New schools, lovely homes, the new church, I was still in Stirling while the new church was built. Since then we have moved to Lethbridge and I still remember Stirling and the good times that we had there as youth and growing up and raising our family. We thought it was better atmosphere in smaller towns and on farms to raise children and enjoy more family life in a small town and on the farm. I have seen many things happen in Stirling. I associate still with my friends and relatives in Stirling and I will always love the village and be very thankful that I had the opportunity of being in that local.

Mark Durtschi: I would really like to thank you…
 
Transcribed By Clinton Dovell