Life Stories

I love personal histories. In 1985 I compiled a family history for my mother's relatives.

I contacted members of the extended family and asked them to send me the story of their branch of the family, and some of them even included photographs. There were fascinating stories of pioneers arriving from England, marrying, homesteading, raising families, and adapting to a life that was totally different from what they had known. Their experiences included coping with WWI, WWII and the great depression. There was the tragedy of a young sailor drowning when his boat capsized in the dark, as he returned to his ship. There was the humor of discovering that the person being chauffered in Jamaica, had been his sister's Sunday School teacher in a tiny sawmill town in Alberta. There were stories of establishing schools and churches and communities. Stories of walking long distances to and from rural schools, of favorite schoolyard games and friends and teachers and subjects and dances and parties. There were stories of farm life, with chores and favorite dogs and horses and other animals. And responsibilities like threshing grain, splitting firewood, and fueling the wood stove, of lifting heavy buckets of water from the well and carrying them to the house. Even young children could take a turn cranking the milk separator, churning butter and cleaning the chimneys of the kerosene lamps.

These items were not in the form of long lists, but were woven into the stories of people's lives as children and adults. And I felt their excitement at new technologies, as tractors replaced horses for farm work and cars and aircraft replaced wagons and trains for transportation, and as a dark house could be magically lighted by the touch of a switch. These stories gave me greater love for my extended family. And they gave me a new sense of my own place in the world and in my own family. 

- Bill Buchanan