You know, I've tried to think about how we lived. I don't know how we did. There was no income. Roland was cutting railway ties that winter. I remember that he had eighteen dollars. That's all the money that I remember having that winter. We stretched the eighteen dollars over the very basic things. Flour wasn't as expensive then as it is now. There just wasn't anything.

Roland would catch rabbits. We had rabbit, bottled rabbit. And I used to say then, if ever I get to the point where I don't have to eat rabbit, I'm not going to eat it. And I don't. I got so turned off rabbit I haven't eaten it since.

The next year we kept a pig. We'd kill it in the fall since by then it was cold. It was cold those winters. It wasn't like it is now. We had cold winters and hot summers. Summers were like it is now. In fact, there wasn't any water, because the wells would go dry. We had to dig the wells by hand. And we could only go down a bit below water level, so when the weather was like it is this summer, the well went dry.

And that is what it is all about. We didn't have anything.

When this settlement was originally planned, it was planned so that people were closer together. A house on either corner. But there was nothing like that done.

I had just come from a fishing village where all the people were together. Here there was no social life, no support, nothing. My parents were up at Daniel's Harbour and I was here, in the bush, in the woods.

There was nobody. There were no lights. And you didn't see anyone. So there was a lot of fear. As a matter of fact I built up a lot of fears and after a month or so, I couldn't go outside during the day.

That's when I learned to fight fear. We had a clothesline, but I got to the point where I couldn't go out and put clothes on the line during the day. Because this was all new to me. I wasn't used to living in the bush, with nobody around. I developed a fear of the unknown. It was a deep-seated fear that I had to fight. So I fought it, and it made me a stronger person.