Sixty years later, I met her at church. And she remembered me. Of course, I was an old, retired teacher at the time. She put her arms around me: she said, “You were my little darling.”

I was 16 [when I started to teach]. Grade 10 was as far as you could go in the country schools. Then, if you had to go to get 11 and 12, you had to come to Charlottetown. And that was at Prince of Wales College. It was like the labyrinth to us. And another thing, when I got my Grade 10 I had never been to Charlottetown. I had never been on a train. So my mother took me in, took me up to the college, had me registered, found me a little boarding house, went back on the train, and left me there.

I was resourceful. It was a new experience. In those days, you could get a teaching licence, which they called a second class licence, to teach. And usually, you went back and taught in your own home school, with the kids that you went to school with. The first year I taught school was in my own home school. I made the wonderful salary of 310 dollars for the year. A week’s wages today. But of course, I lived home and did a lot of chores for my board..., so my 310 dollars was a bonus.

At the time that I went to Prince of Wales College, I boarded in a place that’s now Johnny’s Mayfair.I That was the house. I think it’s been fixed up since, but there was three sections to that. And I lived with a lady, Mrs. Miller. It was right on Kent Street so I couldn’t get lost.

I’d never seen an electric light at that time. We had lamps [at home] you know, kerosene lamps and that. It was the first time I had ever seen an electric light switch, but we soon learned. Or a telephone. There were no telephones except, probably, one telephone in the whole district, and if you needed to make a phone call you had to go there.

I can remember my mother having to get things together to give me. I was a big girl, about the same size as my mother. And she had just bought herself a nice suit and she insisted that I take the suit. She gave me her good suit and did without. Parents were very self-sacrificing. And it hurt me to think that she had to give it to me to wear. And she made my clothes, you know, to get me ready to go to college. She made skirts and blouses, and we knitted our own sweaters.

I think [teaching] was wished on me in a way, because my mother had an operation for cancer. She was quite incapacitated with the small children, young children. My [oldest] sister was away at college and my other sister had gone in training for a nurse. And I was supposed to stay

1. Johnny’s Mayfair is a newstand and snackbar in Charlottetown.

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