presented a play, "Love Lights the Christmas Tree " with Ronnie Johnston , Heather Marshall , Doris Chappell and Betty and Shirley Warren as the carollers. In more recent times, 1981, the Christmas theme was presented as a play, with the following children taking part: ??? Kathryn MacLauchlan , Jamie Connolly , Dennis and Norman Shaw, Brett Ellis, Craig Ellis, Robert Shaw , Randy Cameron, Cory Bolger, Patricia Reid , Jamie Misener , Toby Honsberger , Chris Misener and Mark Ellis . Funeral Customs Funerals for our early settlers were a do-it-yourself type of affair; the deceased was laid out by senior members of the community, the coffin was made by a member of the family, or a local carpenter; there was no embalming, the grave was dug by iriends,_and the wake was held in the family home; the hearse was a farm wagon or a bobsleigh. If the horse-riding minister happened to be in Fortune or St. Peter 's at the time, one imagines the Stanhope family buried the dead person them?? selves, in either a family plot on the farm, e.g. Shaw's, or in the Cemetery . Later the West Covehead and Cemeteries were available. In more recent years, residents who would lay out the dead included Joe Robison , John A. Kielly , Malcolm Kielly and Isaac Lawson , Mrs. Isaac Lawson and Mrs. Coles Bell. Best clothes were used to dress the deceased; one male layer-outer, who shall be name?? less, was heard to address the late lamented, "Come on now, so-and-so, you never had a collar and tie on in your life, but by gum, you're going to wear one now!" as he had a big struggle to get the shirt on. Perhaps rigor mortis had already set in; one can see why false shirt-fronts with collars attached were featured in village stores; very handy for corpse-dressing, as well as a quick-change for the living. In earlier times funerals were the object of much more respect than today; in a rural area such as ours, schools were closed and the funeral procession winding slowly (over the fields in winter) from home to graveyard, had a profound effect on the community, lasting for days. People and traffic stopped and men removed their hats or bowed as the funeral passed by. With the improvement in roads and the advent of the gasoline engine, we have seen great changes in funeral customs. Funeral carriages used to be drawn by black or white horses-the former for older people, the latter for children. In winter conditions the horses were often hitched in tandem. Carriages and sleighs are now replaced by motor hearses, which at first were thought to lack dignity, but are 87