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24 Life as a
Trapper's Wife
everyone would stay in the house and rest. We would
be glad to get a rest.
| Mail service |
Mail from Canada and Newfoundland
was brought to |
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Battle Harbor by the Newfoundland
steamer and it would then have to travel up the coast by dog team. There were
about four teams to cover the coast from Battle Harbor to Nain. Jim Saunders*
was one of the men who helped take the mail from Makkovik to Nain. That's
between eighty and ninety miles. It would take him about four days in fine
weather and the pay was twenty dollars a trip. So you can see what it was like
back in the early 1900s. I suppose it was more complicated before that. |
Midwife at
eighteen |
During the first year I was
married there was a woman expecting a baby and the nearest midwife was
about |
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twenty miles away. The woman's
family were going to get the midwife two weeks before the baby was due, but a
cold snap of weather came and the waters partly froze up. They could not get
the midwife. It was in November when the baby came and I had to act as midwife.
I got along all right with the help of an old man who was there. I was so
afraid I would lose the mother or the baby. I was sick in bed for three days
after, but the mother lived and her son lived also. |
| Winter fish supply |
These were the kind of things we
had to go through to live and get along in Labrador. As time moved on and I
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recovered from the shock, the ice
completely froze over. I went to catch trout for my winter. I walked four miles
and carried enough food for a week. I caught about 500 trout. I built a
scaffold and put my trout up where the little animals could not get at them and
covered them over with boughs of the trees so the birds could not steal them. I
went back home for a while until the ice was nice and strong. |
*Freeman Saunders was his
father. |