By Land and By Air

students and a great friend after he got older and left school.

I cannot recall any enemy I made during the year. I tried to be a Jekyll and Hyde before and after school.

When I finished my year’s teaching at Wood Islands school, I got a job at Compton’s Shook Mill, where they mostly made butter boxes. The working day was 10 hours, but we were also expected to help putting up hay in the evening. The pay was 11 cents an hour, double time in the evenings. We lived in a cabin where several men stayed. There were washbasins outside and we had to shave with cold water.

I was eating in the canteen in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, 57 years after being a teacher, and a woman came and sat beside me and said, ”Don't you remember me?” I said, ”yes” although I thought she was someone else, but when she mentioned her husband I knew who she was. I could remember all of 57 years before, when I had caught her eating an apple and made her put it in the stove.

She would still recall that day - what a dirty trick! I had students in all classes - I still see my Grade I and Grade X students.

The school was seven miles from home and I travelled by bicycle and motorcycle in the summer. In the winter I rode to school by horse and saddle. I was loaned a western saddle from Caledonia. I had a young horse that seemed to travel through any depth of snow. Riding on a saddle on a moving horse in winter is quite warm. There were a lot of bare roads that winter, which was very hard on horseshoes. The mailman had to put sharp shoes on his horse every few days. Angus Panton shod my horse and he made calks of an old washer with the best of steel and as a result, the shoes were good, even the next winter. He said he would go broke if he did that for others. I

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