Preparations for Sunday were felt on Saturday afternoon and evening. Special house cleaning and baking were in order, shoes were polished, pming done and so often after sundown a choice chicken was quietly lifted off its roost to await instant decapitation on the woodpile chopping block. I have seldom if ever experienced such an atmosphere of peace as that found in a henhouse at night with its occupants dozing on the roost. Thus it was that every chicken dinner had its tinge of sadness and some small feeling of guilt attached to it. Heavier farm work, too, seemed to wind down just a bit earlier on Saturday and confessions that evening were regularly scheduled in readiness for the sabbath.

Sunday centered first of all around the celebration of the parish Mass which for years was scheduled for 9.30 am. and maybe 9 o’clock in summer. Long before Mass, wagons and

.sleighs, many with bells, and their occupants would converge on

the church by road from Eldon, Valley and Iona. Parishioners from Newtown and Orwell Cove most often took the short cut through Farrell’s woods, down his farm road, along the railway and eventually onto the highway at the station a few yards from their destination. At the church door w0men and children dis- mounted while the men proceeded to the barnyard to tie their animals along the fence there, with several also putting their horses in the parish barn. On the west side of the church was the car park, but in the 305 and until after the war automobiles were scarce in summer and absent in winter.