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| Notes for Adélard BASTIEN | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| STORIES OF ADELARD BASTIEN, by Françoise Bastien, Sep 1994 (translated from original French): "Papa grew up on a farm with his parents Moïse and Délima Spencer, his brothers and sisters and his half-brother Louis Bastien. They were very poor. "He often told us that his parents were so poor that they had to eat smoked herring all winter. It was stored in a barrel. He also told us that he had to get up at five o'clock in the morning to go and look after the several animals which they kept. He said that when he got back to the house he had a huge breakfast which his mother, Délima, had made for him--boiled potatoes, eggs and sometimes fatback pork. "Papa said that at the age of twelve he worked the land to help his father. "He told us that many times he found his Christmas stocking empty because his parents had no money. "Délima Spencer was a dressmaker. When she couldn't buy shoes for the children, she made them herself with sturdy material. Papa said that he wore those shoes all winter. "At that time, many houses didn't have concrete fundations. To protect themselves from the winter cold, people built a sort of enclosure around their houses. This enclosure was then filled with wood chips and sawdust. This was to conserve heat. "Papa remembered that sometimes in the spring, when the sun shone and there was still snow on the ground, he and his brothers and sisters would walk in the enclosure in their bare feet and let the spring sun warm them. "Unfortunately, Papa never got an education, because the school was too far away. Apparently there was an Anglophone school quite close to his home, but in those days his parents couldn't imagine their children attending an English school. "When he became a young man he started to go up to the lumber camps. He wouldn't come back until spring, and had to bring almost all the money he'd saved to his parents, because they were so poor that when they had to go to the grocery store they had to ask for credit from the good storekeeper. "One winter Papa was at the camp, and he fell ill with chickenpox. The boss of the camp saw this, and fired Papa. He had to walk several miles to get to the train. He said that he was feverish and felt very sick. When he finally got on the train, he sat down and didn't speak to anybody, and got out of his car with his face as concealed as possible for fear that the conductor would notice that he had chickenpox. If he had noticed, he would have had to demand that Papa get out of the train. "One year, after returning from the camp, Papa managed to keep the money he had saved for himself. He bought himself a horse and buggy. He said proudly that he had the most handsome horse and buggy in the village. He often spoke about it; he was very proud of it. "Papa loved to dance. He went to square dances at the homes of his friends in the country. His friends were all English. "Papa met Maman, Victorine Meunier, at Queen's Park in Aylmer. Maman worked in a mica factory in Aylmer (they use mica to make furnace doors, etc.). "Adélard and Victorine fell in love with one another, and set a wedding date for the next summer. Adélard became a businessman, selling ice and lumber and doing moving jobs. His business grew to the point where he had four trucks on the road. They had fifteen children and many descendants. "Papa was respected by the Francophone and Anglophone communities. He was loved by his children and by the public. He was always ready to help. He was hard-working, distinguished and very proud. At the age of 82, Papa walked fifteen miles to raise funds for the Friendship Fastball League in Aylmer."85 Le Soleil d'Aylmer/The Aylmer Sun, Sep 18, 1975, p. 14: DES HOMMES ET DES CHOSES What a nice surprise to discover among us one of those marvellous story-tellers who can take us back to other days. Eighty-six years old, sturdy as a chestnut tree, M. Adelard Bastien, whom many people know as the former ice vendor in Aylmer, tells us some incidents from his long history. Before we let him speak, let us make clear that his father was one of those agricultural workers who rented a farm and cultivated it to ensure the subsistence of their families, while at the same time using their strength to work for more prosperous farmers. Times were hard, and the children had to help their parents work on the farm while the father offered his services elsewhere in the area. "When I was seventeen, my brothers could continue to work the land around me. I went to work in Aylmer. ... Aylmer was only a village ... it was a place with a lot of pleasures for young people. "The last year I was in the lumber camps was 1910. That year I left early because I wanted to get married that summer." Once married, M. Bastien did not go back to the camps. He worked first on the maintenance of the railroad between Aylmer and Breckenridge. The danger drove him to become an ice merchant. "It was a year and a half that I was in charge of the section (seven miles of track). I asked the CPR for twenty days off to look after the ice. I said I would deliver the ice in the evenings after supper. As you know, there was great misery. Something had to be done. I took my salary each month, forty-two piastres, and paid my men to pack the ice; I cut it myself. M. Mondoux was waiting for me (the general store keeper to whom M. Bastien paid his salary every month). Just as I had finished the cutting, I met the boss, who had devised the first filtration plan. He said to me, 'You haven't been taking stone for crushing with your horse: $2.75 a day for the man, the horse and the cart, payable every week, and finishing at 5:00.' Everybody stopped work at 6:00 in those days. I came home and said to Mme Bastien, 'You know, I have a good mind not to go back to the CPR.' She said to me, 'You've lost your mind. Someone had hit you on the head. You worked for Paquette like a slave, and now that you're the boss you want to quit.' I said I thought I could manage to live without the CPR." In fact, M. Bastien convinced his good wife and did not go back to his job. "I got up at three in the morning, harnessed my horses and went on the north road. The town leased lots, then the others (the villagers) made gardens. I worked there for $1.50 a day. I worked until 6:00, returned home, had a cup of cold tea and a slice of bread to eat, harnessed the horse to a cart, and then went and earned $2.75. When the hot weather came, I delivered ice in the evenings--sixteen, seventeen, then I was putting in twentyhours a day. I started doing that in 1917. In 1921 I had built, I had bought those two lots side by side. Here I built an ice house for two thousand piastres. When I had decided to cut ice, I had leased the ice house at the Victoria Hotel (destroyed in a fire about 1917). In 1921 my clientele had grown so much tht I had to build a bigger one. Those ice houses had their walls filled with sawdust; they stayed at 32 degrees. It was great to have that amount of room; I could put 14,000 pieces three feet long in those ice houses. I cut my ice on the river. At first, I cut it just with a handsaw. Later I bought a [?harrow?] which was pulled by horses; that was much better. Still later, I patented a machine with a motor from a 1928 Chevrolet. " [We haven't finished translating this article yet. The remainder, and a second newspaper article, will follow.] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Research Notes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| His first name is also given as Adelard.12 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Modified Apr 29, 2002 | Created Dec 31, 2003 by Reunion for Macintosh |