and the trolleys and every other damn thing. You’d like to be back and asleep in a spruce bush away by yourself.

After the War

Everything was pretty hard up here. You’d hardly know the colour of the dollar if you seen it.... I often think of what Sergeant Stewart said on the field. After the war was over some of the boys were saying, “Well, we’ll soon be going back.” He laughed and said, “And what in hell are we going back to?” He says, “We left nothing and we’re going back to nothing.” Well, right as a book you know. What did we come back to?

I started up at carpenter work. I was supposed to be a pretty good carpenter. There was lots of repairs to be made and new buildings to go up. Of course, the pay wasn’t too big then. All you’d get, perhaps, was four dollars a day. But I got along all right. I was always going. I built all these windows and doors and everything... . My windows went all over the Island.... And, in several cases, I’d have to go in and install them. But I was going all the time.

I worked across in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in the lumber woods putting up camps in there... . I was getting around six dollars a day. That was big money then. But, of course, that, today, wouldn’t be worth going into a store with. They’d charge you that for standing around a few minutes. I spent 13 winters over there, working all the time. That’s where I seen the unemployment an awful lot. Well, I’ve seen big men there that’d put me in their pockets leave camp [without work], going home to a house with half-starved kids.

This morning there was five or six of us coming out to work, out from the camp... This fella said to me, “I’m going to quit today, Harry.” I says, “What’s the matter? Are you sick?” “No. But,” he says, “am I a damn fool working when I could make that money at home doing nothing?” And I says, “You with a house full of kids.” I says, “The taxpayer will be feeding them, too, won’t he?”

And then we had another fella. When he seen the first fella, he said he’d go too. He says to me, “Do you know, my heart; it’s acting up today.” There was nothing wrong with his damn heart, no more than there was with mine. And he’d eat as much as two men and a dog. So that’s the way the game went, see. I never drew anything on that damn thing ’cause it looked to me too much like begging.

F—m