My father had six youngsters and he never got five cents from the government in his life. My mother always had a cooked dinner. When 'twas potatoes and turnip, we managed to get a bit of salt meat. We had our fish. The next day we had fish and brewis with potatoes and drawn butter. The next day we might have potatoes and turnip and cabbage and puddings. Then the next day we had potatoes and herring, the best kind of food.

We had molasses buns and molasses bread. My mother made up plain bread one day and the next day she made up a batch of molasses bread, because there were six children and father and mother. She had molasses bread with raisins and molasses buns with pork in them, all the time.

The molasses used to last us seven or eight months before it would be all gone. But it would go. Because my grandmother and my father used to sweeten their tea with molasses.

There was no one hungry, only the sick. The man who was sick, he could not work, so the government should have fed him properly. But the government was not giving him enough. Well, that man, he saw hard times. And they did see hard times, the sick.

The lazy also saw hard times. But a man that was a little bit eager, who could go fishing and come in from fishing and go in the garden and dig his ground was okay.

Every year we had a pig. Every fall, when the cold weather came, we would kill our pig and we'd hang him up out in the store.

We kept cows for fifty-four years. We had thousands of milk, thousands of cream.

The women did a lot of work. They were looking after the family in the home. They helped make the fish and worked in the vegetable garden. They helped to make the hay, and tended the cattle. They kept the family going. The women in Newfoundland, they were the mainstay.