My Labrador Life

Ruby Budgell

Ruby Budgell now lives in Northwest River, Labrador. She spent her early days in a small camp on a river. Her father used the river to get to his fur traps in the interior. When his children were old enough, they moved to a village with a school.

I WAS BORN IN Nascopie River, January 5, 1924. That's where my parents were living at the time. My dad was a trapper, so I was born at the Nascopie River camp near the mouth of the river.

Father grew up in Kenemish which is across the bay. He fished for salmon and logged, working at that sort of thing all summer. Then in the fall he went in the country. He went up to Nascopie River. My mother went with him after they were married.

There were only two families there: My mother, brother and myself and my aunt and her children. My aunt brought me into the world. She was a midwife to mother.

My aunt used to look after trade with the Indians when they came out in the wintertime. She was Aunt Annie McLean, married to Gilbert Blake. She was my dad's sister.

So we were the only two families up there.

We lived there until my brother and I were old enough to go to school. That was about 1929.

We had to come down the lake, that big, long lake. Grand Lake is over forty miles long. We came down before the ice went out in the spring. I can remember, vaguely, coming down around the last year we were up there.