Helen Japp shares memories about her life

Helen Japp lived at Caleb Village in Kindersley before recently moving to Eston. She wrote about her life and memories, which we are pleased to share with you.

Memories of Helen Japp:

I was born April 24, 1924, in my parent’s home, nine miles southwest of Lloydminster. I had five brothers and three sisters.

Memories of my childhood are happy ones, with highlights of the year being the Christmas concerts and the July picnic that the whole community attended. Monday was children’s day at the three-day Lloydminster fair, and I always enjoyed the free Christmas theatre show when the Elks handed out bags of candy.

My school days were over when I was fourteen years of age, as we’d gone into the larger unit and were only taught to Grade 9.

I was fifteen when World War II changed not only our family but the whole community. It was not long after when my three brothers enlisted; two in the Air Force and one in the navy.

My youngest brother was in school at Lloydminster, and my younger sister was in school at Branford, Ontario. So at age seventeen, I was the only one home, as my sisters were married.

I helped Dad farm with horses. He did the seeding and binder work; I did the ploughing, discing, harrowing and stooking. Mother and I did the milking, as we always had several milk cows. I counted eighteen short jobs I had during off-farming season, helping families through an illness, or when there was a baby born.

In the winter of 1941, I went to Edmonton to take a youth training course, then came home for farm work in the spring.

I had one job in Lloydminster Hospital, replacing staff who were on July holidays. It was a change to be with other young farm girls, as we all stayed together after work in the nurse’s old residence in July 1942.

In July and August of 1944, I went to BC to pick fruit. I was called by my sister’s husband to come home to Alberta to help him harvest, as his dad was terminally ill, and my sister had her first baby. I went home after I’d helped him and stooked the best crop we’d ever had.

In February, 1945, I had a call from the manager of a clothing store, asking me to come and do the housework in the morning and clerk in the store in the afternoon. His wife was in the hospital, and his elderly mother and two small boys were at home. I went until his wife was able to manage, but it gave me a chance to be home for spring work for the last year of the war.

The war being over, I went and had a steady job in the store. I was there a short time when the manager asked me if I’d like to learn bookkeeping, as his bookkeeper was leaving to be married. I would go to the office in the morning and clerk in the afternoon. I worked in the office for three years, when I met my future husband at a dance.

We were married in September of 1949, and after a short honeymoon, we went to the farm at Madison, where there was some crop to harvest.

I got a call from Lloydminster asking me to come back to the store for the winter, as the bookkeeper was having trouble with the job. We left the farm in late October, and I would work in the office in the morning and clerk in the afternoon.

Ronald was able to find carpenter work, so we continued to move to Lloydminster in winter for seven years. By this time, Ronald had built a house, which we sold and returned to the farm in the spring of 1956 to stay. We now had two sons and a daughter.

There were over thirty veterans who had purchased land at Madison after the war, and we were all originally from Saskatchewan.

Our third son was born in Eston in 1958, and our family was complete. We always spent a week at a lake each July, first Waskesiu, then Turtle Lake and Loon Lake, where some family still go.

In 1971 I took my first plane trip to Holland. The Legion and the Dutch sponsored trips for families who wanted to visit war graves. My brother was buried in Germany, and the cemetery in Reinburg was included, so Ronald insisted that I go.

We started to travel after our family grew up. They were all married from 1974 to 1978, and in 1984 our sons all took over the land, and we retired to Eston. Our daughter married a farmer.

We made twelve trips to the Hawaiian Islands, then to Mexico, Cuba, England and Scotland, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji. We went to Ronald’s army reunions from Victoria, then to cities every three years across Canada. The last one was in Toronto. We then took bus trips to Florida, Texas and eastern Canada, and into the eastern states. We also took a trip to Alaska.

In June 2009, we moved to Caleb Village, and Ronald passed away in late November. We celebrated 60 years of marriage in September 2009 while living at Caleb.