Preserving the Past

Recording family history helps keep memories alive and allows future generations to know where they came from

- Kelly Roblin

This is a story about my grandmother Veda Ramsay née Storey’s childhood when she and her family moved to North Bay, Ont., for her mother’s health. She related it to my mother, Donna, who typed it out befor re it was lost forever. Here are my grandmother’s memories in her own words.

My Northern Home

On September 1, 1922, when I was 11, my parents, older brother, four younger brothers, and sisters and I moved to the North Bay area (eventually we would be nine children in all). My mother was in poor health and needed to go to a drier climate for her lungs. My father had heard of government land, north of North Bay, which could be bought cheap for the clearing of partly burned forest. He talked my two uncles into going along, so they agreed to take up three sections.

My father rented a boxcar on a freight train for our furniture, cow, and team of horses, as well as my two aunts’ furniture—just the things we really needed such as beds, tables, chairs, and stoves. My older brother had to go in the boxcar to look after the horses and cow on the trip. On the passenger train was my father, mother, me and my brothers and sisters, two aunts and their children. My two uncles had gone on a few days ahead to be there to meet us. We got off the train in Feronia, seven miles from where our land was located. My uncles were there with the wagon. We put the younger children, trunks, and bedding on the wagon, while the older people walked behind. We were 19 in all.