Roy Allan O'Hara

  General Notes:

Roy served in the Air Force during the Second World War. He attained the rank of Lt. Commander. When he returned, he joined his father and brother in the I.H.C. dealership in Conquest. After his move to Saskatoon, he was employed as Foreman at Asphalt Services.
Notes written about the depression 1929-1939 by Roy: So what was it I wanted to know about hard times.
- Using cardboard of shoe boxes for insoles when your shoe soles wore out.
- Being a hired man on a farm for $5.00 a month with which he had to supply his own clothes and tobacco if he could afford it.
- Riding freight trains from coast to coast and up and down provinces waiting for someone to give you a days, weeks, or months work.
- Lining up at the town halls for gifts of fruit, potatoes, clothing from relief cars brought in from the Maritimes and Ontario.
- Counting bales from government box cars and of slough straw the cattle refused to eat.
- Being doled out relief feed, seed and fuel if you had a tractor.
- Moving, racking and stacking the only thing that grew - mostly Russian thistle and this had to be salted like sauerkraut and tramped to keep it from spoiling.
- Farmer after farmer leaving the light land and clearing the bush in the north.
- Model A Fords and old Buick cars had wagon tongues and teams of horses because none could afford motor repairs and gasoline.
- Farm after farm returned to sod and pasture to keep from blowing away.
- Foundations blown out and houses toppling from constant wind erosion.
- Kids were considered luck to receive five cents every Saturday for doing chores (usually all of them).
- When all bars and gum were five cents and it had to last 7 days.
- Prairie fires that couldn't be stopped by horses and walking plows. Everything too dry and burned like gasoline.
- When no clothes left a family til it couldn't be handed down.
- People were better for each other in those days. If anyone was struck by lightning, burning crops, barns, houses or any of many disasters, the entire community would gather to put in crops, take off crops, do summerfallow, build houses, barns, corals so a person knew he was in amongst friends. It is a good feeling, not to be found in abundance today.
-Hard times seemed to breed harder times. Wheat prices down, rye prices not paying the threshing bill. Cattle and hogs shipping to Winnipeg and not paying for the freight trip.
- Thin cows for fox meat brought two to five dollars and they were in the majority.
- Hard times and dry times ruined many business venture and left a lot of ghost towns, and the advent of grid roads, centralized schools, school buses and specialized teaching.
- Hard times didn't mean that people starved. They just didn't have the money or the Choice to worry about nutrition. Many people had many ills I suspect were from a diet of much the same routine.
- Doctors made many unpaid calls thought many people gave garden fruit, eggs, potatoes or fresh killed meat when they could grow something.
- Rural people fared fairly well off the land. Necessity and the old .22 rifle played a major role. Prairie chicken, partridge, rabbit, geese, ducks.
- Double barrel shotguns and short 30-30 bush rifles helped supply deer with or without licences. Many people could find time for moose and elk which were easy to get from the railroad tracks. Easy to sleigh out along the tracks and shipped home in box cars. hunters today spend much more time and money for much less. It was good for the people in the dirty thirties. They could use it well.
- Hard times had some good points. Everyone was in the same fix and community events knew no class distinction at sports days and dances. A dance with lunch for 25 cents and an orchestra that played for a dollar each. Ladies got in free if they brought sandwiches or cake. Some sandwiches used lard for butter didn't go down too good.
- CCF picnics with softball tournaments and tubs or ice cream brought millions of promises. One prominent advocate in Saskatchewan was M.J. Caldwell, later the national leader saw the formation of the first provincial CCF government in Canada.
- The dry years seemed to double the work load. Grasshoppers thrived in the warm hot land. Trainloads of sawdust (soaked with water and arsenic) were spread over the prairie crops and still the horde survived. Later years eased the pain when sprayers were invented.
- In the dirty thirties teachers began in country schools for two hundred dollars a year, while alternating boarding places with those families who had room. Some teachers had to take an I.O.U. for some of the $200 because the school board didn't collect any taxes.
- Municipalities had to eventually cancel out unpaid taxes or they would have owned all the land from tax liens.
- Governments also set up debt adjustment boards that literally gave people their freedom from debt and nothing was ever recovered by many grocers, lumber yards, hardwares etc.
- Many a man and families literally fell down from hard times and were never able to rise again.
Sincerely "Was There".