George Watson
Prince William, N.B.I was born in the year 1914 to James and Jane Watson on the Barrhill Road, Old Cummock Ayrshire, Scotland.
On June 9, 1928 we sailed for Canada aboard the Montclair which was a two-funnel boat. We landed in Quebec City and went by train to Fredericton, New Brunswick. Mr. Gillis, the Soldier Settlement Board agent, drove us from Fredericton to Dumfries in a Model A Ford on gravel roads. Our new home was the old Ben Griffin place, rock piles and mustard; a place where you had a hard time to make a living. When we got there the first thing I got hold of was an old Spencer Rifle. Jim, my brother, and I had some fun playing cowboys and Indians in the long grass around the door.
We had no blankets the first night or two, so we slept under our overcoats. After a while our trunks arrived with bedding, dishes, and clothing. We had sold all our furniture before leaving Scotland. The Soldier Settlement Board got us two horses, a new harness, a wagon, mowing machine, rake, cultivator, horse hoe, plow, separator, sleds, and four cows.
Then we had to learn to be Canadians.
My father bought a rifle from Eatons. It was a 44-40 pump action; a good little gun. He shot the head off of 54 partridge that first year. We also had our first feed of venison, compliments of that rifle and my father's marksmanship.
We put in some crops that year and the next winter we went to the woods to cut logs. We hauled our logs into Carson Siding and sold them to W.W. Boyce for $15 a thousand and a poor scale besides.
The next summer I worked for Fred Arbuckle for $1.00 a day. I did all his farming; pitching on sixty five loads of hay, nineteen loads of; straw, and plowing for him that fall. I was fourteen years old then. The next year I worked for Charlie Ellegood for 135 days earning $1.00 a day. I shot my first deer, a six point buck, with his old long-barreled 30-30 Winchester.
When I was sixteen, some friends and I went to Bonny River to cut hardwood by the thousand. It took us three days, driving a team-drawn sloven wagon, to reach Bonny River. We couldn't make a dollar a day so we quit and came home. I went to work for Billy Jones cutting cord wood with an axe. The pay was fifty cents a day. For the next two or three winters I worked for Billy Jones cutting wood for all the neighbours.
Times were hard - it was the Dirty Thirties - you did well to get enough to eat. In 1935, I went to work at St. Martins for the Rieds. We went to work in September and came out March 28. I got $32.00 a month that winter.