Mary Hartson returns to school forty-five years later

The following story was written by Mary Hartson. The story was condensed from The New Horizons Reading Series. It was published by the Western Community College. Mary and her husband now live in Corner Brook.

I was born in 1933 in a little community in White Bay. I was the third oldest of seven children. There are five boys and two girls.

My father was a fisherman and a telegraph line repairman. He was also a cook in the lumber camps for Bowaters.

My mother was a maternity nurse. She was asked by the Department of Health if she would take the nursing course. She accepted because there were no doctors or nurses except at St. Anthony or Gander.

If doctors were needed they’d have to be flown in by seaplane and that was not always easy. So in 1942 my mother took her training at the Grace Hospital in St. John’s.

In 1940, at the age of seven, I began school. In the morning you had to take wood and kindling; in the afternoon, only wood. We had a one-room school which meant only one teacher for all grades, fro Kindergarten to Grade Eleven.

We grew all our own vegetables and we raised pigs, goats, sheep and hens. That was where the majority of our food came from but it took a lot of hard work.

When I reached the age of ten my schooling years were over because my parents thought my chores were more important than going to school.

At the age of twelve, in 1946 we had a tragedy in our family. My dad died. right then I thought my life was over because without my dad what would I really do? He taught me everything I knew. When I was eight he taught me how to make my first bread. He taught me how to shear sheep and how to spin yarn.

My mother was always kept very busy going from place to place borning babies and she would care for the mothers for nine days. In summer she would travel by boat and in winter she would travel by dog team.

After my father’s death, my mother and I took four of my brothers to the orphanage in St. Anthony because my mother could not support the family on her own. It was a hard thing to do. My youngest brother was three years old.

I will never forget how he cried when my mother gave him to the mistress at the orphanage. It was very difficult for all of us. I cried and wanted him back. That night I asked my mother if I could stay for the winter to work in the orphanage to be near my brothers.

The mistress told us it would be much better if I could work in the annex or the hospital and visit the children sometimes.

I wasn’t allowed to visit them until they were content with the people who were taking care of them. So I stayed away for a week before I visited them. I worked there for a year. By that time my three younger brothers were content. The older one wanted to go home with me. He wasn’t allowed because he was in school.

It was very hard to leave him there knowing how much he wanted to come home with me.

Then I received a message from Doctor Curtis, who was the chief doctor at the hospital and supervisor of the orphanage. What he wanted me for was both happy and sad. He gave me permission to take home my youngest brother who was only four at the time. I felt very unhappy knowing I had to leave the other three there.

They stayed in the orphanage until the oldest one reached his sixteenth birthday. My mother took them all home in June of 1954 and thank God, life began all over again. I was happy for them because they were getting their education, which was something I never had the chance to get until forty-five years later when I returned to school.