Iona [funerals] would be in the church. Oh yes, I done [the Catholics]; Orwell mostly, ’way up through to The Valley; with the horses, mind you, with the motor hearse too. You’d have to be there at seven o’clock in the morning.

We worked for a lot of years for 75 dollars for a whole funeral service. That would be around the ’35s or something like that. We charged that for a lot of years. It would have been less in the beginning. That would be real nice — the steel, plush interior, the whole thing.

Montague Furnishing Company made [the caskets]... . They were very good. There’d be a lot of black ones at the start of it. They’d be black for old people. Very pretty black, too, you know; just plain, you see, there’d be no tum—out; they’djust be plain, no couch. And they looked very nice. Then there’d be a grey and then there ’d be a white. We had little white ones for infants, and then [grey for] kids, 10 or 12 years old.

[My father] bought the hearse in Charlottetown. It was the best hearse in Charlottetown at that time. They got more modern, but our hearse was always considered pretty up, you know, pretty good hearse... .

When the cars started, we worked with the horses for quite a few years after that. But there was only a few cars around at that time. We were

Risdon Gillis Collection

Risdon Gillis readyfor afuneral, c.1950.

Risdon Gillis 17 7