A. Stewart MacDonald D.F.C., MD. C..M.
other side of the road. I remember my father lifting me out of the mess and putting me in a safe place in a wheat field, while he got the foal out of the gate.
I remember my grandmother who died when I was about six, telling me that when the snow stuck to the window panes in the winter, we would have a big snow storm. This was my first lesson in meteorology, which later became so important in navigation.
I remember my first day in school when I was on my way with Jimmie Dixon, who started up the wrong road, where I was willing to go, as I did not know the proper road to the school. An old feud between the East and West of Little Sands may have been the reason that the school was put more to the East than to the West of the district. As long as Jimmie went to school, no one dared touch his friends. Our friendship lasted over the next seventy years, but when he had left school, the old feud started up, and as I was the only boy from the West, it meant numerous fights.
I was born in Little Sands on March 12, 1912, and according to my father, it was one of the worst storms of the winter, possibly for many years. When my mother went into labour, he hitched the horse to the sleigh, to go about a mile away to get a woman who helped at deliveries, leaving my mother with two children under the ages of two and a half. On the way back from picking up the woman, a Mrs. Barker, the snow was so deep that Melbourne Dixon had to let the horse go and find its way home, while Melbourne and my father had to carry the woman through the deep snow some 400 yards or more to the house. The storm was so bad that the doctor living in Murray River, six miles away, did not get to our home for two days after my birth. As a result, there is only a dash for the doctor's name on my birth certificate. Perhaps
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