Pioneer moms passed down a lasting legacy

By Joan Janzen
joanjanzen@yahoo.com

With Mother’s Day just behind us, I mused about how the role of mothers has changed during the past number of decades? Two senior ladies were willing to share their memories of how their mothers coped while raising children during the Dirty Thirties on the prairies. Kindersley resident Lorna Dunn and Nelda Loppacher, a former Kindersley and Eston resident who now resides in Three Hills, Alberta, shared their memories. Each of them described their mother’s role in their life and how it impacted their own role as a mom later on.

Lorna Dunn was born in 1932 on a farm in Saskatchewan. It was during the Dirty ‘30s, and things were much different than they are today. Her mom had been a teacher before she married and was passionate about joining organizations such as the United Farmers Women and a rural poultry club. Later on, she upgraded her university classes and went back to teaching.

“She was also a firm disciplinarian, and her no meant exactly that,” Lorna said. “She sewed everything, even underwear. But she wasn’t a baker, so if we liked something, we learned how to make it.”

No one ventured too far from home in those days, and school and church attendance were the primary sources of social interaction. “We’d go to town Saturday nights in our old car. Stores stayed open until midnight on Saturdays,” Lorna explained. “We’d play ball, and we all had gloves, but we only had one ball. So If you lost it, you’d have to find it. Later on, we had a radio and were able to listen to hockey games.”

Lorna and her siblings learned all about responsibility because they all had chores to do. Lorna had to clean the lamp glass and make sure there was oil in it for night. She also learned how to cook and clean at an early age and iron using a heavy gas iron.

There weren’t a lot of clothes to iron. “You went to school in your school clothes and came home and changed into work clothes,” Lorna said. “You didn’t run to the doctor for everything either but treated most things at home.”

Nelda Loppacher is 95 years old, and her mother moved to Eston, Sask. from Quebec, with her dad and siblings. “Mother was a mother to her brothers and sisters since her own mom had died from cancer at 37 years of age,” Nelda explained.

Her mom married a farmer from Eston who had a homestead. “They moved into two granaries that they had put together,” Nelda said. “There was no electricity or conveniences. Drinking water was hauled with an old truck from a spring fifteen miles away and stored in a small cistern, and water for washing was brought up in barrels from a dugout.”

During those years of the Great Depression, life went on as usual. Nelda’s mother cooked meals, baked bread, churned the cream into butter, sewed the family’s clothes and made homemade soap for washing clothes. Water for laundry was heated in a boiler on top of the cookstove.

“In the summer, clothes dried on a clothesline; in the winter, they were frozen in the porch and brought in during the week to hang on lines in the kitchen,” Nelda said.

Milk and butter were kept in a pail that was lowered near the cool water in the cistern. Nelda’s mother raised chickens that were canned to provide extra meat.

There was also a huge garden, and all the harvested produce was canned. “The root veggies and canned goods were stored in a hole under the kitchen,” Nelda explained.

Her parents “did without” in order to send their children to high school. There were no school busses in those days, so the teenaged children were put into a boarding home in Kindersley. “I worked for my board with a business in town,” she added.

When Lorna Dunn married and had her own family, she noted that the biggest difference between the life of her parents and that of her own family was the ability to travel easily and having more money on hand. But she also carried forward life lessons her mother had taught her, such as remembering to be proud of yourself and learning to share what you have, whether it’s talents or material things.

Now she wants to pass all those lessons on to her family as well. “It’s important to share everything, the joy and sadness, wisdom. Learn to share what you have, and communication is big; I had to learn communication. A sense of humour is also very important,” Lorna concluded.

When Nelda got married, she and her husband bought her parent’s farm. “My mom went without so that we could have a new start. She left us a powerful legacy,” she concluded.

Photos like this one on display at the Kindersley museum made the chores of a pioneer woman appear to be light work.

This photo from the Sask archives shows a realistic image of life on the prairies as a woman hauls water.