Interviewee: Lorraine Archibald
Interviewer: Sharon Turner

Sharon Turner: Today’s date is 19^th of March 1998, my name is Sharon Turner and I am in Stirling with Lorraine Archibald. Lorraine can you introduce yourself and tell us your birthrate and your parent’s names? 

Lorraine Archibald: My name is Victoria Lorraine Zaugg Archibald; I go by the name Lorraine. I was born in Lethbridge on February 8^th 1944, to Eldon Zaugg and Victoria Katherine Hirschie.
They lived in Stirling at the time and I lived all of my youth in Stirling. Left to go to university and came back in 1983.

Sharon Turner: I have heard a lot about, your mother was a school teacher wasn’t she?

Lorraine Archibald: Yes she was

Sharon Turner: Okay because I hear about Viki Zaugg, that wasn’t Viki Zaugg the school teacher wasn’t she?

Lorraine Archibald: Yes she was.

Sharon Turner: Oh, of course it is, Eldon Zaugg and Victoria. I have heard a lot about her in her interviews, tell us about her and how long she taught here at Stirling.

Lorraine Archibald: She taught at hutterites colonies for a couple of years and Wrentham for a year. Some of that time before she was married one year at a Hutterite colony, I believe it was, New Rock Port out here on the other side of town. They year before I was born, so after their first son was born, my brother Rodney. Then she started in that 1955 and she taught until 1981 and she taught mostly grade one but some grade two as well.

Sharon Turner: A lot of people that I have interviewed had her for a teacher and they said that she was a wonderful teacher.

Lorraine Archibald: Many, many students went through that class. It was kind of neat, the students of her last class a few years ago graduated and they gave her a special invitation to their graduation and honoured her with a bouquet of flowers as a special remembrance of that class which was really a special thing for her.

Sharon Turner: That is really nice.

Lorraine Archibald: She really enjoyed it; it was a nice gesture on their part.

Sharon Turner: That is really special. So tell us some of your earliest memories here in Stirling, your brother is a farmer, where was the farm located?

Lorraine Archibald: He inherited part of my grandfather’s farm; my grandfather came here with the first group of pioneers and worked on the canal. Some of the land that he had, there is ten acres actually in the town limits that is part of that land. It is on the south part of town out by where Kabatoff’s live,

Sharon Turner: Oh, okay

Lorraine Archibald: The part that was called the lower field that my dad had was just north of where the Mennonite colony lives on the way to Raymond.

Sharon Turner: Highway 52

Lorraine Archibald: Yes, and there was another piece of land that was there that was given to two of dads sisters that were just across the road and actually part of the land that is part of highway 52 and some of the land that Grant Nelson owns, it was all in that general area. He later had acquired some that was east of town but my dad had the pieces that were called the lower field, it is an irrigated piece of land out there.

Sharon Turner: So he wasn’t a dry land farmer then?

Lorraine Archibald: He did some dry land farming, he winded for a number of years from Albert Brandley who lived here also and eventually bought the quarter section that he farmed while he
had rented it and then bought that and then he had rented it another piece down at Wrentham for a number of years.

Sharon Turner: So you grew up out there then I grew up out there then?

Lorraine Archibald :I grew up right here in Stirling.

Sharon Turner: Oh, you lived here

Lorraine Archibald: We lived right here in Stirling, I think that that was very common in the early days. Stirling as I remember it when I was very young was a farming community and so people generally lived in town but farmed outside of town in the nearby areas. Very much like Joseph Smith Set out in Avo and those places kind of following that pattern. We had small animals in town; I always remember having a cow. I remember going to see the new calves when they were born in the spring. We had pigs and chickens, we were very much self sufficient compared to the way that a lot of families get food. Grew a big garden and always remember mom doing a lot of bottling and so on because freezers weren’t so prevalent in those days. We had a locker in Lethbridge where we would get meat and then just bring home enough to put in the freezing compartment of the fridge.

Sharon Turner: Where was that house located?

Lorraine Archibald: The house that I lived in until I was six, north of where mom and dad are now and it is on Second Street just straight across from here. I believe that the house had been owned by a man by the name of Soleman King, it was one of the very first houses built in Stirling if I remember correctly and if I remember correctly the third one is what I remember hearing.

Sharon Turner: Is it still standing

Lorraine Archibald: No, it was taken down not long after mom and dad moved out of it and dad built the house where mom still lives where I was when we moved in just before my seventh birthday. The first house was very small. Of course it seemed bigger to me because I was small but as I look at pictures of it now I remember it being very small. Small kitchen with a ling to room off the kitchenette I just remember the cream separator and that kind of thing. I don’t think that it was very big it was kind of a walk in pantry. Just a small walk-in where I think that the pantry possibly stood until it was brought in for washing clothes. It was a room that was mom and dads bedroom and the living room kind of combined. As my sister and I got older we shared a cot in the same room and it was another small bedroom and my brother had that bedroom. I don’t know why they had set it up that way other than perhaps it was so that the kids could go to sleep earlier at night and they could shut the door.

Sharon Turner: I read in the settlement of Stirling that they built these little homes they were two room homes with a lean too. And you participated in building it and then you could purchase it for $150.

Lorraine Archibald: Now I don’t remember that but I think that house was given to them when they got married in 1940. There was a pump outside where we got the water and the old outhouse. Lots of big trees around it which I remember, I remember hearing owls in the trees and later as we got older we built play houses up in them just out of the natural branches we used to climb up there and play a lot.

Sharon Turner: Who were some of your friends that you would have played with at that age?

Lorraine Archibald: Marilyn Hardy, Marie Eves, Karma Hirschie, Angela Spackhoe, Mary Koopets. 

Sharon Turner: You still see them?

Lorraine Archibald: Actually Marilyn, Karma, and Marie I would see quite a bit. Two of the girls that I went to school with have already passed away. One was Nila Snore, Terry and the other is Mary Koopets who just passed away this last summer. From a class of fifteen graduating is quite a high number. Some of the kids I would see fairly frequently when I would come home to visit but there were a few that I hadn’t seen at all. One was Ken Oka and his father passed away a couple of years ago, when we went to the funeral was the first time that I had seen him since high school. Which is pretty amazing but he moved to the east, coming home at different times and his parents moved to Lethbridge. It is just kind of that way but it is always fun to meet with these special friends that we shared special times with.

Sharon Turner: Do some of them live in Stirling still.

Lorraine Archibald: I don’t think that any of them live here anymore. Parents of some of them still live here.

Sharon Turner: So your preschool memories, what memories do you have of preschool?

Lorraine Archibald: Not really a lot I remember playing outside a lot with friends, Craig Herget was one who lived very close and his mom and my mom were very close and I remember playing with him and playing with Henry Margretson who just lived across the street. We did things like, we used nature when we played you know like mud pies and the seeds off of the ash trees were bananas and we just played in the shade of the trees. Played house, we played with dolls a lot.

Sharon Turner: Good memories

Lorraine Archibald: Good memories

Sharon Turner: What about starting school, who were your teachers then?

Lorraine Archibald: My first Grade teacher was Mrs. Shautz. I think that her husband must have had something to do with flying; I don’t know whether he did it as a profession or flew. But I remember we were outside one time for either recess or a physical education class and it seems to me that he flew over or something and he commented about this. I don’t think that she was there to long, two or three year’s maybe.

Sharon Turner: What are your early memories of school? Which school did you attend, I heard that there was a big brick school and then there was the red school house.

Lorraine Archibald: The red school house is where I went to for the first four grades we then went to the brick school for grades five and six, I don’t remember whether it was part of the seventh grade but we moved into the present school house when I was in junior high school. I do remember that. We also used the old white building that was on the school yard at one time for our phyzed classes, I remember being in there for phyzed. I can also remember being in there for special classes, I can remember one in particular, a man that had been in Africa came and showed memorabilia and a film about Africa. I can remember that that was very impressive. They also held dance classes in that old gym. 

Sharon Turner: Did you take the dance? I heard that they had ballet and tap.

Lorraine Archibald: I did tap for a little while, by sister took ballet and tap. It was a fun experience

Sharon Turner: Africa seemed a long way away back then.

Lorraine Archibald: Oh yes it did. It was really different from anything that we had been in.

Sharon Turner: Return missionaries from all over and people who have immigrated.

Lorraine Archibald: Yes, it was pretty impressive. I remember the old treacheries that stood north of the old bridge school. I don’t remember who lived there but it was used as a library, public library. It is on the corner where the town office is now, and the library. They always had the library; it seems to me that it was a separate entrance from outside in that old white gym. I remember going into there to get books and those kinds of things.

Sharon Turner: I haven’t heard anything about that previous to the one that we have.

Lorraine Archibald: There were the two that I remember.

Sharon Turner: Who were your elementary friends and what kinds of games did you play.

Lorraine Archibald: Much the same as the ones that I have listed. We used to skip the rope when I was littler. I remember the boys playing marbles. There was a swing set where we used to swing at recess, swing on the swings. Even when I got into high school we played softball sometimes for physed, even before school, they would have girls out there in their skirts running around. I remember that in particular, playing tag, the boys chasing the girls in grades one and two. I think that that is a typical thing that still kind of goes on, must be something to do with the ages. I remember my mom playing house with my friends, we would have our dolls and she would be the nurse and bring babies to us at the hospital.

Sharon Turner: Is that right, isn’t that sweet.

Lorraine Archibald: And dressing up was something else that we played a lot, Sunday afternoon seemed to be a time that we did that a lot. Sometimes I would have a friend over for dinner. Often it was just my brother sister and I. various kinds of games, we had to use our own imagination’s we didn’t have the television until 1953 so I was nine years old by the time that we had our first TV. So we just made our own entertainment.

Sharon Turner: It is fun that your mom got involved

Lorraine Archibald: Yes, we had lots of fun, specific things just stick out in my mind of I think back to those times, and we had few photographs.

Sharon Turner: What kinds of activities did you have as a kid, did you have chores and house work.

Lorraine Archibald: Well because she started teaching school when I was in fifth grade and the first couple of years I had a cousin who helped with the house work and kind of had supper going by the time that mom got home late at night. We didn’t do a lot although I remember coming home from school and reading books while we were waiting for supper to cook. After that time we just started taking more and more responsibility for the chores at home. My brother did the outside things with the animals that were there although I remember gathering eggs and those kinds of things but by the time that I was thirteen, mom went away to Edmonton for a summer school. We did everything at home, cook the meals, and wash the clothes. My grandma had moved in 1950 to Stirling and lived just next door to us, just south from the house that mom and dad live in. Down the back alley from where I live. That house is still there, she came overt and ironed the white shirts but I made bread and looked after the garden. We had a lot of responsibility and that, with mom working too, we had to do the regular weekly chores you know like clean the house on Saturday. My sister and I were talking about this a little while ago, we both remember leaving the floor to be washed the last thing Saturday night. Because in the summer we were going in and out with chores and then we were going in and out to the farm. We always wanted it clean for Sunday so it got left to the last thing. I remember staying up to watch the late movie on TV. But we didn’t have the plumbing in our house until after I had left to go to university. I am not sure whether the water and sewer was put in when I had gone or it had been a short time before that. They finally had the running water into the house so we carried the water in for dishes, bathes, everything. We had the drain downstairs where the water could be drained through for washing clothes and so on. I remember the old coal stove downstairs where we would have to build a fire the day that we washed clothes; I remember hauling water in for washing clothes and those kinds of things. So I think that we are pretty spoiled no a days. I do every once and a while stop and thing about how blessed I am to have these conveniences available because I have lived the other way too, it was a way of live and we never really thought that much of it, you know it was just the way that things, and the extra work that was involved. 

Sharon Turner: Pretty much everyone was in the same circumstances?

Lorraine Archibald: I think pretty much, there weren’t too many people that had the running water that had wells, we all had cisterns and they were filled from the irrigation ditches in town, I remember that they always had to be filled up before it froze, in the fall.

Sharon Turner: Some of those cisterns are still around, I seen them.

Lorraine Archibald: Mom and dad still have one by the old house. I don’t know if there is any water in it anymore, it really used to keep the water cold.

Sharon Turner: You didn’t drink from that did you?

Lorraine Archibald: Yes

Sharon Turner: Did you boil it?

Lorraine Archibald: No

Sharon Turner: Really

Lorraine Archibald: We never did, not that I can remember, I think that any sediment that there was would have settled to the bottom and then they would go down and clean it out. Then refill it and start again.

Sharon Turner: Did you help on the farm at all, with the chores and that.

Lorraine Archibald: Like I said when I was younger I remember gathering eggs and taking the cows for water, take them from the carrel to whatever little pond happened to be close enough. I remember helping with that but as I got older I remember in high school that I helped to drive the harvest truck. I got out of school for a few days and just take it around when they were ready to empty the combine. It made things go a little bit faster. I always enjoyed the farm work, I can remember changing water pipes to once we got the irrigation for the watering. Dad used to irrigate just by flooding the crops. They would get their water turns and they had to go whatever day they were allowed to use the water. For their particular farm and make the most of it. They still had their water turns and we had to get up and whatever hours they needed to be changed go out. Usually I didn’t do any of the lifting but they were either moving the line two or from it would be faster for them to find. My dad raised sugar beets for quite a number of years. How they used to do it, I can still see how they ploughed them up and gathered them up together in piles and they had a float that they would tape down in-between bolts on either side. Make a flat spot and workers would top the beats by hand and throw them into this pile and then they had a beat loader that came along and put them into the truck. The people that worked in the fields as they would thin the beets when they started coming up and then they would hold them later on and then help with the harvest, I remember many families that came to work, there were quite a number that were German. There is this one name that comes to me and I can’t think specifically of it but I know there were several families that came and I remember them coming into the house from time to time. Dad always treated them like friends and employees. Not anything less or different than we were. The Hegga family, the Japanese family that worked there, some of the children still have contact with the family. Actually some of the others occasionally would be people who would stop by the house. There were also Native Americans that worked there, in later years some of them lived in town; they built a little house out on the farm where, we just called it the big workers house because that is where they lived when they stayed there. They had basically a kitchen, bedrooms; it is still out there, not in that great of shape but still there.

Sharon Turner: Where would those families go in the winter time?

Lorraine Archibald: I don’t remember somebody else that I don’t remember but I do remember that happened from my dad talking about it and also from pictures that were taken. He had the German prisoner of the war come and work on the beat field.

Sharon Turner: Oh really

Lorraine Archibald: We have got lots of pictures of them working out there; they would have to go in and pick them up in Lethbridge and then take them back. I just noticed something on the TV last night; they were kind of referring to how these men worked in the fields around the area in Magrath, Stirling, and Raymond.

Sharon Turner: The Japanese as well or just the German?

Lorraine Archibald: Just the German, so that was still when I was pretty young, it wouldn’t have been after the war.

Sharon Turner: Now wound these had been men who had been captured and shipped here?

Lorraine Archibald: I think so. I think that was the case.

Sharon Turner: Not like German families that had been rounded up as the Japanese have been.

Lorraine Archibald: No, I think that they were actually Prisoners of war from the actual war. There were quite a lot of German speaking families that came when I was between three and four; it seems to be the time that I remember it the most. When several of these families came and some of them came to school, quite often they would be older by two or three years perhaps but would be in the same grade because of the need to learn the English language. I remember several of those. The has family was one, I think when Angela Spackhoe came they came, I don’t think that she knew English very well when they first came. There were several others. So we had a lot of immigration with other people and never found it a problem.

Sharon Turner: That’s a good experience.

Lorraine Archibald: Yes it was

Sharon Turner: What was the town like that size wise and community wise, downtown?

Lorraine Archibald: I remember the massive Fergenson dealership on the corner that they have taken down now. There was a café, and I remember being in after our dance classes, I don’t know how old I would have been, maybe eleven or twelve the year that we had the dance classes. I remember that we used to go over there quite often for banana splits in the café and they were so good. That was a treat, and the old pool hall that was there. We used to call it the bum shop.

Sharon Turner: Why was that?

Lorraine Archibald: I don’t know I guess some of the farmers in the winter time when there was not a lot to do, my dad used to spend time up there when mom was teaching school during the day. Everybody was got to school or whatever, so he would go up there and play cards or play pool. He used to come home with lots of chocolate bars, he had a drawer that had chocolate bars in it and we used to get one once and a while. It was kind of a gathering place I guess.

Sharon Turner: Was Stirling as big as it is now?

Lorraine Archibald: No, it was in my mind much smaller if I look at the homes that were here then and the homes that have been added. It actually had started to get smaller. A lot of people started to move away about the time that I was about to leave home to go to collage. Then about 1970, around 1970 it seemed like all of the little communities around became better communities and it started to grow. I know there were, Burt and Barbra Hartley, Grant and Connie Nelson were some of they young couples that were left in town for quite a long time. Of course I was off and not here all of the time then. After a few years and you have seen that there had been a lot of career families that were moving back and so we seen quite a change. We had a gamily project with our kids, we called it our getting back to school project in august of every year when the phone books came out we delivered them every year to Coaldale and Stirling. So it was interesting to watch through those years and that would have been through the late seventies or eighties before we moved down here.

Sharon Turner: Did those people move down to the farm or did they move to Lethbridge?

Lorraine Archibald: I think that at that point it became much more of a commuting bedroom type community where people worked a lot, much like it is now.

Sharon Turner: Do you think that is going to happen again with the twentieth highway?

Lorraine Archibald: Have even more people move, I guess that I haven really thought about it.

Sharon Turner: I have heard rumours that it is really going to have a surge now with the people wanting to get out in the country. At least that is why I moved out here.

Lorraine Archibald: It is nice; I remember the difference from moving to Lethbridge. Well we lived in Coaldale before we lived in Lethbridge and then we came here and each place was a little smaller and a little quieter. Enjoy the wide open spaces here, the birds and the frogs.

Sharon Turner: The cows in the morning, its nice, the geese

Lorraine Archibald: It is a way of life that I really like.

Sharon Turner: Very peaceful, I am not looking forward to going to Toronto we want to still live in the country. What kinds of social events did you have?

Lorraine Archibald: The church and school were the main sources of
 
Tape 1 Side 2
 
Sharon Turner: So we were talking about the Church and the school being the main sources of your social events, what types of events did you have at the school and at the church.

Lorraine Archibald: The dances are probably one thing that we looked forward too when we were younger and were a very important part of our social life as we got into high school.

Sharon Turner: The school had dances?

Lorraine Archibald: The school had dances and the church had dances.

Sharon Turner: As well as the community

Lorraine Archibald: They were all like community dances, even the high school dances weren’t exclusively just for the students they were for the students and parents came and we didn’t think anything of it. It was just the way that things were and I remember dancing his dances with him.

Sharon Turner: Jive or Waltz

Lorraine Archibald: He didn’t jive, he waltzed, he was a very good Waltzr but the jive did come in when I was a teenager and we did do a lot of that. We also had dance festivals in the church and music festivals wherever we would travel around. To Raymond, I remember going to a festival where we sang in Calgary. This was church related.

Sharon Turner: I didn’t think that they did that.

Lorraine Archibald: And the dances were, you weren’t pressured to have a date to go to a dance. Every body just went and had a good time and that was quite different, even a little bit unique. Even in this size of community to communities the size of Raymond, I think that there were more paring off and then when you go to places like Lethbridge, in my mind it seems to me from things that I have heard if you didn’t have a date, you didn’t go. It was more exclusive in that sense and it is like good family time although the younger children weren’t involved so much.

Sharon Turner: And so many people here were related.

Lorraine Archibald: Right

Sharon Turner: Second cousins and third cousins

Lorraine Archibald: As I had said, my grandpa was one of the first group of pioneers and also my great grandmother Hirschie came. Grandpa Hirschie came when he returned from his mission. He was on his mission in Switzerland by the time that my great Grandma came.

Sharon Turner: Was that Carrie Hirschie

Lorraine Archibald: No, Carrie was a sister in law, Carrie and Alf. All the brothers and sisters in that family came, my great grandfather had passed away in Utah and so she came and she lived until 1904. But all of her children came and my Grandfather was actually the oldest but he was the last married so several of their brothers and sisters already had families when they came. Grandpa wasn’t married to Grandpa until 1912 and he was twenty six years older than her.

Sharon Turner: Oh my goodness is that right.

Lorraine Archibald: She had come from Switzerland to visit Mary Mertz who was her mothers sister she had come through this way to marry a missionary and my grandpas spoke German of course because of being on his mission in Switzerland although they never met there. She came in on the 12^th of October and was married New Year’s eve of that year.

Sharon Turner: Really, was that his first marriage

Lorraine Archibald: Yes

Sharon Turner: Oh my goodness

Lorraine Archibald: So my mom says that she doesn’t really remember her dad without white hair. Some of my kids say that about me but I know that it isn’t true. It is just that I have been this way a long time.

Sharon Turner: With his age then, his wife must have been an early widow.

Lorraine Archibald: She was sixty five and he lived until he was eighty eight and then she lived until she was 93.

Sharon Turner: Really

Lorraine Archibald: Yes, I remember spending lots of nights with her after grandpa passed away; they said they moved to Stirling in 1950 and grandpa passed away in 1953. After that time my sister and I used to go and spend quite a lot of time with her, take turns and stay with grandma. She taught me a lot about sewing although we did have class in school. I guess in high school, I don’t remember that it was junior high but we had it in high school. I remember going to her place to do a lot of sewing. Mom had an old treadle machine but grandmas were the treadle one that was converted to electricity so it was a little faster to work with. So I did quite a big of sewing over there. We had a very special relationship and then they year that we moved down here my dad had a stroke and grandpa was still living and she was still in her own home. She was ninety two. I spent a lot of time with her that last year and to be able to go and visit with her and take little desserts, baking and other little things.

Sharon Turner: So she was healthy right up until

Lorraine Archibald: Pretty much, she didn’t do as much the last year or two but she had a garden I am sure until she was at least ninety

Sharon Turner: Holey cow

Lorraine Archibald: She had to get out and mow her own lawn. I remember the push mower but then she did get an electric one but it was good exercise. Very independent nature and a very hard worker, it was nice to have that sort of relationship. I remember my Grandpa Hirschie only because I was about nine when he passed away, I remember him chopping the heads off of chickens and chopping wood. But he had had a stoke about nineteen years before he died, mom was ready to go to normal school in Calgary and it did weaken his right side some but I remember when grandma had gone to Lethbridge and I remember grandpa coming over to get supper and I remember him sitting in his rocking chair. He was a very small man, physically. I have a few memories of him, he had Asthma and I remember how he wheezed when be breathed. My other grandpa, Grandpa Zaugg, grandma passed away before I was born so I didn’t ever know her and by the time that I was about one I had moved to the states and I remember him coming to visit on a few occasions, not to many.

Sharon Turner: It would have been a long trip.

Lorraine Archibald: It was a long trip in those days; I remember holding his hand and going for a walk, remember him singing to us. He was a self taught musician. He taught himself to play the fiddle and he was herding sheep as a young man. When he was about nine, an older brother had come first and then a sister, from Switzerland, then my grandpa and a brother who was a couple of years older than him came and they were all working to save money for the parents to come and they both passed away before they could come so they were left as orphans. In very humble circumstances.

Sharon Turner: Now who would these younger children had lived with at this time?

Lorraine Archibald: They lived with the older brothers in Stirling.

Sharon Turner: What happened to the parents?

Lorraine Archibald: They died at different times and I don’t remember specifically the, grandma died first and the Grandpa.

Sharon Turner: Isn’t that sad.

Lorraine Archibald: Ya, that was pretty sad but grandpa had learned to play the fiddle, he played for a lot of the dances here and Elva Michelson talks a little about him standing kind of in a arch way down at the Michelson house out here and he would play the fiddle and they would dance. Between a kind of parlour living room set up. I have heard other people talk about how he played it. He also played the mouth organ and he had a couple of cousins who played the mouth organ. I remember them playing and I remember grandpa playing it once but I don’t ever remember hearing the fiddle. He and his sister Eliza who married Theodore Brandley sometime after they came to Stirling, she is the one that talked him into coming to Canada and they used to yodel and sing, I have heard of his relatives down in Utah where he lived after he was married again talk about how he used to yodel. 

Sharon Turner: Wish you had that on tape.

Lorraine Archibald: Ya, I wish I had that on tape but I don’t.

Sharon Turner: Did you spend a lot of time with aunts and uncles in the Community?

Lorraine Archibald: Very much, one of my uncles, Elva Write farmed with my dad, well they kind of cooperative farmed, they had their own land but they kind of farmed together. The other brothers, Alfred, Terrace, and Thingle, the just kind of, If someone needed help they helped each other. But all of my dads brothers and sisters except for one sister lived in Stirling all of their lives. So we did have our close family relationship. With my mom’s family non of them lived here in Stirling we had close relationships to and that has been really special I feel that it is important for kids to have that experience and that interaction. So that they know their aunts and uncles and cousins, it gets harder and harder, I know that it takes a lot more effort now as people spread out so much more.

Sharon Turner: Do you feel like you were related to most of the town?

Lorraine Archibald: It was like a big family. It is a nice feeling. Anyways I am skipping around here, back to the entertainment, I thought of another thing and then I will talk about some of the things that I talked about before the tap stopped. Missionary farewells, that was a social event that was done on a day other than Sunday, it was spoken in Sacrament meeting when they left and came but they always had a farewell party. I can’t remember if they danced, I know that they would talk and they would usually divide the town usually east and west, half would bring sandwiches and half would bring squares and cookies, then we would always have a lunch. It was a special kind of program, kind of a farewell program for them.

Sharon Turner: Did most of the young men go on missions then?

Lorraine Archibald: Most of the men that were in my age group, within a few years older, most of them went. There were three that didn’t but most of them did by that time I think it wasn’t as much a voluntary thing where they go to the bishop as much now and ask to go. It was more of a calling from the bishop but I think that anyone who wanted to go pretty much had the opportunity.

Sharon Turner: What about in the fifties?

Lorraine Archibald: I don’t remember.

Sharon Turner: I remember that when I was baptised at eight it was missionaries that taught us.

Lorraine Archibald: What I remember growing up was Melvin Spackman, he married a girl from Cardston, and I do remember him going.

Sharon Turner: The ones that taught us in 1958 were here for two and a half years.

Lorraine Archibald: Pretty amazing when you stop and think about it, how hard it would have been to read a lot of the pioneer stories and having to leave early or not.

Sharon Turner: Do you think that it was lost, a lot of that sense of sacrifice and that.

Lorraine Archibald: Ya, its good, its quite different now, we talked a little bit previously about the drama and how and the important part of our social activity that I remember Elodia Christenson was one of the ones that did a lot of the drama, another one was Dorthy Hirschie, she did quite a bit as well.

Sharon Turner: What plays would you have remembered them putting on?

Lorraine Archibald: I don’t remember the names of many of them. But I do know that they were really fun. The young people, the school children could go for a matinee in the day and they would put, I don’t remember if they ran it more than one day, or if it was just like one evening. But we got to go watch it after school and the adults would go in the evening which was probably better for them because it was harder, the old movies that they used to bring in once and a while.

Sharon Turner: Where did they show these movies?

Lorraine Archibald: In the Church cultural haul. I remember seeing Bambi and Pinokeo, particularly those two, I think maybe peter pan as well. I do remember going to Raymond in the theatre once and a while and to some of the theatres in Lethbridge but that was more when I was getting a little bit older. I was thinking of something else that we did but I can’t remember what it was. I can’t remember what it was and I don’t know if I wrote it down or not. My dad loved to play cards. We used to play rook a lot. Cobbage meetings were something that the youth were involved in.

Sharon Turner: What was that?

Lorraine Archibald: It was like a fire side and I remember the missionaries coming to speak. We had house parties. That was a common thing, rook was very popular. Christmas time we would open our presents and so on Christmas morning and gather our friends and go from house to house to see what everybody got.

Sharon Turner: Before going to the dance?

Lorraine Archibald: Before going to the dance. They had a dance for the young children in the afternoon on Christmas day and New Years day and then there would be a dance with the adults in the evening.

Sharon Turner: It was a busy time.

Lorraine Archibald: It was a busy time, like I said, I don’t know how the moms did it with all of the activities but everybody participated. It was a fun thing.

Sharon Turner: You mentioned before about a time that your dad didn’t go to the Christmas party and you were wondering why he didn’t go.

Lorraine Archibald: It was the year that he was Santa Claus at the Christmas part at the church. I had gone up to him and didn’t ever know that it was him, we found his slippers. At first he said that he was just staying at home so we thought that he wasn’t going to go but he had other things to do that night that we didn’t know about.

Sharon Turner: He did a good job for you not to recognise that it was him.

Lorraine Archibald: I don’t remember how old I was but I was past seven so I wasn’t tiny.

Sharon Turner: Did you still believe in Santa

Lorraine Archibald: I did

Sharon Turner: He had to put on a good show so that you didn’t realize.

Lorraine Archibald: I was probably in the third or fourth grade so it was getting close to the time that I didn’t anymore but I sure didn’t know that it was him.

Sharon Turner: We were talking about your ancestors before, how old were you when you left Stirling?

Lorraine Archibald: Eighteen

Sharon Turner: And that is when you went to collage.

Lorraine Archibald: Yes, I went to collage; I boarded in Lethbridge with cousin of my moms and caught the bus out to the collage and then came home on the weekends.

Sharon Turner: A two year teaching degree.

Lorraine Archibald: I met my husband the year that I worked in Lethbridge in March and we didn’t get engaged until the end of June. We didn’t get engaged until a year after that; I went up to Edmonton to finish the rest of my degree. Came back and worked in Edmonton to work off my school loans. Then I had them paid back by the end of the fall and I taught in Lethbridge school for a year at Gabber’s School. Took a year off when our son was born, we were married at Christmas and out son was born the next November. Then I went back the following year and taught at central school.

Sharon Turner: Now where was central school?

Lorraine Archibald: It was where the public library is now; there is a senior’s high-rise in that area now too. It had much the same architecture as the older part of Gabber school, much like the one that Stirling was actually. That was kind of fun, one of the teachers that was there was Gladys Roloug. She had been a teacher of my moms when she was in junior high. My mom taught with her in Wrentham and then I taught with her in Lethbridge a short time before she retired.

Sharon Turner: Is that right

Lorraine Archibald: It was kind of special; she was a girl that had been raised in the Wrentham area her family was from Wrentham area too. We still have ties with that family; mom gets together with her Wrentham friends when they have birthdays and so on. Every once and a while I am invited to go when it is Gladys’s. 

Sharon Turner: That’s neat, from there you and your husband moved where?

Lorraine Archibald: We lived in Lethbridge for six years and then we moved to Coaldale

Sharon Turner: How long were you there?

Lorraine Archibald: We were in Coaldale for about twelve years and then we came back here.

Sharon Turner: What brought you back to Stirling?

Lorraine Archibald: Carrie was helping quite a bit on the farm in the spring and the fall. My brother lived in Taber and Brooks and Medicine hat and wasn’t close enough to be of a lot of help so he had been coming down to help and as the boys got older they would come and spend the summer and help grandpa on the farm. We had contemplated on it for a long time and decided finally that we needed to make a decision. So we prayed about it and decided that we would put our house up for sale and if it sold we would come and if it didn’t we would stay because we really liked Coaldale. The house sold really fast and came and moved after school was out and in July of that year my dad had his first stroke and he was hospitalized until December, it was just that it was a lot more convenient, it wasn’t that it we didn’t go anymore it was just a lot more convenient to be here to do the farming

Sharon Turner: What did your husband do in those eighteen years?

Lorraine Archibald: He worked for Canada packers for part of the time he worked as a bookkeeper and then he worked at united feeds. He still had his full time job. He had the and just helped on the farm. Then dad got so that he was able to help back on the farm. He did quite a bit on the farm for a couple of years I guess. He had another stroke in 1986 and that is when he actually became bed ridden. Spent about three years in the hospital in Lethbridge and then was at home the last five years of his life. So we not only had to help with the farming at that point but also to help with his care once he was able to come home. He was just so much better at home and was so much happier.

Sharon Turner: He was certainly meant to be here.

Lorraine Archibald: Yes, that is what we felt. Then when my husband passed away it was like another reason to be here so that I could be here with mom. It was nice for both of us to have each other.

Sharon Turner: You say that he got in a farming accident, what happened?

Lorraine Archibald: He was trying to unhook a bailing wagon and he. They were both kind of alone and kind of hobby farmers so to speak. He had gone to go and get the tractor unhooked from the bale wagon up at the, he couldn’t get it loose, the hammer got lose underneath and when it finally did come loose it moved over and landed on him.

Sharon Turner: This was two weeks after your father died.

Lorraine Archibald: Yes

Sharon Turner: So what happened at the farm did your friends.

Lorraine Archibald: I still have one son who kind of runs the sixty acres of hay and we work out the land a Hudson’s My husband hadn’t farmed for about the last four years other then the little piece out south of town here, it just got to be too much once the boys weren’t there to help because they used to be able to go out and over the summer follow after school. They were quite capable of running tractors and stuff and they were a lot of help. It was a very good experience for them because they learned a good work ethic by having the farm work to do in addition to their school. It is good for them to be busy and involved.

Sharon Turner: What are some of the biggest changes that you have seen in Stirling over the years?

Lorraine Archibald: Probably the fact that it was more of a farming community when I was younger, I think that most of the men were farmers and had their farm land that they worked whereas now there are fewer that farm and more probably that work in the city and teach school and those kinds of things. Of course there have always been some teachers but the majority it seems like were farmers

Sharon Turner: Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about.

Lorraine Archibald: Talking about the changes I remember as a young person we never locked the doors, they never locked the doors when they went anywhere, I don’t know if most people did but I think that it was common for most people to just leave their doors unlocked. The town was just like a big family. I did get to the point, I remember sometime after I had left home that mom and they had someone go into their house. Mom was teaching and dad was away farming or whatever, they did have the house broken into a time or two. I guess that it wasn’t broken into in the sense that they didn’t break locks or anything.

Sharon Turner: Was anything taken?

Lorraine Archibald: I think that there may have been a little bit of cash that was missing I don’t think that I don’t think that there was that much around but it was the beginning of the time that they locked their doors, my mom, even if she comes over here she locks her door. I don’t do that if I run up town, if I am going to Lethbridge I sometimes do it and sometimes don’t.

Sharon Turner: Your more on a main road, it would be easy to be in and out.

Lorraine Archibald: But even when my husband was here we very rarely locked the doors at night. Of course now that I am by myself I do, I just feel a little more secure to have them locked at night. That is something that has changed a lot. I was just thinking, we were talking about how the town had changed, I remember the stores. We shopped a lot more at the stores in town when I was growing up. Going to town, I mean even I could see a difference even in my kids and the amount of chasing around so to speak. Even in the older kids to mine, the world just broadened so much faster then when I was a kid. 

Sharon Turner: When you shopped at the stores you probably were self sufficient enough that it would be very small items that you would go for, you probably spend a lot more on groceries now then you used to.

Lorraine Archibald: Right, that’s true, I remember a family by the name of Holmans the grocery store that is now Canadian Grocery. There was a fire; I remember the fire alarm going in the wee hours.

Sharon Turner: In that same building?

Lorraine Archibald: In the same building.

Sharon Turner: So it just burnt the inside

Lorraine Archibald: It must have done the inside damage, I don’t remember the specifics I just remember the fire. There were two little grocery stores then, it was actually the Hitching Post as it is now, but there was another store run by a china man that is right next to where fletchers live. The building is still there. I remember that little grocery store and stopping in there. Cheese was one thing that I remember we bought, and treats, those kinds of things. I think that mom shopped here more often because mom didn’t run back and forth to town so much. Basketball was something that was really important; I remember when the high school played basketball. In was probably in the process of the new school being built or something, I don’t remember the exact time. I remember them playing in the church hall.

Sharon Turner: We don’t cross over any more.

Lorraine Archibald: No, but it was really fun to, basketball has always been important in Stirling, you heard that lots too.

Sharon Turner: I have heard it lots and I am wondering how much of an influence Jack Hicken had on that.

Lorraine Archibald: Well Jack didn’t start teaching until after I left school. I think Mr. Lanshuka was probably the coach when I was in school.

Sharon Turner: Girls and boys?

Lorraine Archibald: Girls, we had a basketball team one year and Blaine Spackman who was just a high school student was our coach and I remember only playing a couple of games, it seems like Wrentham had a team. We had a team, I don’t really remember, it wasn’t any tournaments or anything, it was just a few games. We had a volley ball team when I was a kid
 
Tape 2 Side 1
 
Sharon Turner: You were talking about the house that your father built and moved into, is that the house that your mother is living in now. 

Lorraine Archibald: Yes, I think that he drew up the plans even for it. I am not sure exactly when he started it but it wasn’t as quick a process as building a house is now days. When they started building I know that they used tuck man a groove boards, I would guess maybe four to six inches to form the basement and when they got it all formed they put me down on a rope, I was six. They put me down to the bottom of this form and I had to sweep around the whole outside edge before they poured the cement. I still can remember that. Chuck Perrett was just a young man, an older teenager, probably finished school and knows that he was one of the ones that came and helped him but they dug the basement themselves and did all of the major building. They had cedar siding on the outside and the house wasn’t painted on the outside or in for years and years in fact I don’t think it was painted until I left home. Eventually they put the vinyl siding on it. It was painted on the outside before that.

Sharon Turner: So, on the inside it was chip rock walls?

Lorraine Archibald: No, it was plaster, I remember a fellow from Cardston came from Cardston and built the cupboards. I remember going over to get them men to come over for supper. I don’t remember that he stayed with us but he must have worked long enough that we fed him supper before he went home.

Sharon Turner: Now this is about 1951?

Lorraine Archibald: Yes, we moved in actually in January of 1951, just kind of right after Christmas.

Sharon Turner: This was a big house?

Lorraine Archibald: It was very big; it had the full basement and, two bedrooms upstairs a living room and it was a very special home. I learned to dance, dance in-between the kitchen a living room with my dad. Put the record player on and whirl around.

Sharon Turner: Lots of memories there

Lorraine Archibald: Lots of good times, lots of good memories growing up. Good parents and a good home, good community, good friends.

Sharon Turner: So when your, I just want to back up a little bit here, I am just curious about your grandparents, your grandfather coming to Canada as a child and leaving his parents in Switzerland and they died.

Lorraine Archibald: They came to the United States actually; they lived in Part Valley Utah.

Sharon Turner: So they came as Mormons then, they had been converted in Switzerland

Lorraine Archibald: Right, the family was converted there and three of his children were baptised the same day. In 1883 I believe it was. Grandpa and the other brother were baptised. It is interesting, when I was about my mid age we had to do some family history and find some family stories or something for mutual. I guess it was the first that I really got into reading anything about the history and I found out that my Grandpa and Emma Selk who later came to Stirling. You may have heard of her, and raised her family. Actually this was Daryl Nelsons Grandmother were baptised as Children the same night in Switzerland. They had to go at night because of the persecution. I thought that was so interesting because her granddaughter Marie and I were very good friends, particularly through junior high and high school. To find out that our grandparents had been baptised in Switzerland on the same day and the eventually both ended up here in Stirling. It was just kind of an unusual story.

Sharon Turner: Did they socialize together, do you know, like here in Stirling, they knew each other.

Lorraine Archibald: I am sure that they did and I imagine that the community was much the same as it was, the things that they did through the church and community work.

Sharon Turner: The sacrifices that people made because of persecution.

Lorraine Archibald: We took a lot for granted, the way that we live now days. I guess that if we have a grateful attitude that is the important thing. Because of the sacrifices that came before us that we can live in the comforts and freedoms that we enjoy.

Sharon Turner: That is why I think that it is so important to do family history because you don’t know what sacrifices were made so that you have what you have until you meet your ancestors.

Lorraine Archibald: Right, that is something that I am really enjoying. That is one of my Endeavours is to learn more and get some of the histories put together, written up in ways that I want to be able to hand down.

Sharon Turner: We have so many ways to do that now, through the tapes, through the computer; there are so many easy ways.

Lorraine Archibald: Right, I am just grateful for those who took time to write down the things that they did. We have come across recently the journal of my grandpa’s brother who came first and one of his posterity has taken the time to type up on a computer. It includes the first thirty four years of his life.

Sharon Turner: Now how did you come across it?

Lorraine Archibald: Through family in the states, as I said our family has been real close these cousins that were in the states have always been very special to my dad and to his brothers and sisters too. There were a few of them that would come up here occasionally to visit. The traveling of course wasn’t done as frequently but they would go down to visit there as well.

Sharon Turner: That is a special find.

Lorraine Archibald: It has been very nice to have this and I kind of have picked up on this about the year that our second son was in collage and I decided that I wanted to go out to Peterson Utah that is where my grandma Zaugg’s family is from. I decided that I wanted to go up to meet some of them and see if they had any pictures or histories or things that we didn’t have. I was able to get quite a few pictures from one of the cousins that is out there and has kind of followed through on some of that line. We have also had some of these Zaugg cousins on the other side that the families have come up here. I have a sister who lives in Utah and she has been involved with some of the Zaugg reunions that they had down there so she is gotten to know some of these people but there is one family in particular that came up here on their honeymoon when they were married. I kind of remember them being here. They had just been very special supports for the family. If someone in the family had passed away, they came for Dads funeral. That was really the first time that I remember meeting them except when they were on their honeymoon. They may have been here times when I wasn’t around, but they came back to Barrie’. They came up to Uncle Ferris’s when he passed away last August. They stayed here and as we were talking about these things then that they said that somebody had this. She had it on a disc and she couldn’t get it to work on her computer and my sister’s husband is very good on computers and so he went over. They live in communities that are fairly close there in the Salt Lake area and were able to get it so that it worked on her computer and then he got a copy of the disc. So when I was there in February I had him do me a copy off and as we were reading that there was so much of the Swiss history in there because he was the second oldest child. He tells about where the family has been and the places that they have been and the places that they have moved. Just a lot of general information to the family in general that was really important. It is really neat to have that; I mean we have known a lot of his story and how he came and why he came and so on. In the beginning there was a man in this park valley that had had a lot of his family whipped out with some disease, many of them had died and he was looking for a young man, a healthy young man to come from Europe to work on the farm. He was willing to pay his fair and then he would have to work to pay it back. He worked through the missionaries and the missionaries went to Grandma and Grandpa Zaugg and asked if this Fred would like to come. He was going on fifteen I think at the time. The arrangements were made and he came to Part valley Utah. He worked and saved enough money, we have copies of some letters that his mother sent to him after he came and they were trying to decide who was going to come next, would it be father. Anyway they decided to take the sister Mary, the sister younger than him to come. She married the son of this Hirschie that had sent for him to come. They saved and then it was the two younger boys that came

Sharon Turner: Now you say that that was the second oldest to come first, was the oldest?

Lorraine Archibald: The oldest was a girl and that was Eliza that eventually married Theodore Brandley. She stayed, I don’t know if she was working in Switzerland or something but because they wanted a boy first, that was the reason that Fred came. When they were trying to decide who would come next I think Grandma says in one letter about Marry being small and it was just easier for her to, maybe fair would be less. I don’t know how they determined.

Sharon Turner: Probably who she needed to keep too.

Lorraine Archibald: They had talked to the leaders of the church and they were all kind of being counselled on who should come and what was going to be the best. They worked for that opportunity to come. One of the places of the history, I don’t think that Fred would have been married; he might have been by the time that Grandpa came in. Anyway, after he was married his wife writes in one of her writings that when Paul and Louis, Paul is my Grandpa, that they had to sleep in the barn because they didn’t have any other place for them to sleep. So that was pretty amazing what they went through.

Sharon Turner: You can’t imagine, and so many families made these sacrifices.

Lorraine Archibald: Right, it is not that it is unusual, it was normal. They weren’t all done the same way but there were very many sacrifices.

Sharon Turner: It is nice to know

Lorraine Archibald: It is, our heritage is very important to us.

Sharon Turner: There was something else on here that you wanted to talk about too.

Lorraine Archibald: I covered the two things that I had marked that I didn’t.

Sharon Turner: Is there anything else that you wanted to be sure that was on the tape?

Lorraine Archibald: Not that I can think of right now.

Sharon Turner: Anything that you want to leave for posterity.

Lorraine Archibald: To be true to your heritage, to appreciate the sacrifices that have been made. That they could have the gospel and live in a good land where they have the freedoms, it is not a perfect land but we had the freedoms to warship as we desire and what a great blessing that is. We treated those sacrifices that those many people made so that they could have those things. We are what we are because of them. They are part of us and part of who we are.

Sharon Turner: Well this has been very good.

Lorraine Archibald: I hope that there is some information there that has been helpful.

Sharon Turner: I am sure that there is, thank you very much.

Lorraine Archibald: You’re welcome
 
Transcribed By Clinton Dovell