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| Annie's house, Colinet |
I was still single when I brought Dick Fitzpatrick home from Markland Hospital to look after him. He was three weeks old. It was in March month in the height of a snow storm, neither cowpath or slidepath to go by. I didn't have a clue where the road was. Dick's Aunt Hilda came with me in a horse and buggy. We had no cows or anything so I had to go to Vince Hartson's as he always had cows to get milk for the baby. My best friend owned Dick. His grandmother and my grandfather were sister and brother. She knew she was in trouble and asked me to look after the baby if anything happened to her. She died that night. So that's why I took him and reared him. Dick's father did remarry and had one other son. I raised Dick as one of my own.
When Cyril Bonia came home from the war we got married. We went to St. John's to get the ring. We stopped to Angela Simmons' along the way and asked her to bake the wedding cake. Angela had to put it on the verandah to cool. When we got home that evening we got married. That was June 14, 1940. Down on the wharf in St. John's they had forget-me-nots for sale. He bought me a bunch. I used them for the bouquet.Seventeen days after we got married, Cyril went overseas to war in England. The first voyage they went without any convoy. They were torpedoed. Around Christmas he got home again. I was pregnant with the first child. Only a week or so home and he had to go to Argentia to teach fellas how to splice wire. He was fishing and at sea all his life.
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| Annie at age 93 |
The elections were always held in this house, right up until the time it got moved to Council halls, around 1976 or so. I had eight children – four still living, nineteen grandchildren and twenty-one great-grandchildren. I'm still in pretty good health. I live alone except at night I stay with my daughter. I can still do my own cooking and cleaning. I'm in the Senior's Club and loves a game of darts or cards and likes to knit and read.
