from Willy Pat Fitzgerald "I Want to Know What's Going On"
Willy Pat Fitzgerald:
I want to know what's going on. I reared a family of twenty-two in Victoria County - and I reared the most of them through the Depression, when the hard times were on in the 'thirties. They went through giving relief, the Liberal councillor. And he came to my place. He went in the pantry, what was in the pantry to eat and drink. I didn't hold anything against him for that. He came out of the pantry and told me I couldn't get any. "You got plenty to eat and drink and you can get it. This is only for those who haven't got it, and can't get it." I said, "Mr. MacDonald, that's not relief. That's what I call a lazy man's salary. If you work, you won't get any. But if you lay back, the county will feed you. That's a lazy man's salary." And he said, "I think you named it."
I never got five cents in my life I didn't work for. I never got relief. I never got a cent from the county or the government or anyone else I didn't work for. Always had plenty. You know, cash goes pretty quick, if you don't squeeze it tight. But the way we lived-she and I-we grew our own potatoes, our own turnips, cabbages, everything that we needed, we grew it. And in the fall-35 or 40 barrels of beautiful potatoes in the cellar. Always kept pigs. Any time we wanted fresh pork, I killed a pig. We always had two milk cows. The fall of '46, I killed two pigs-they'd weigh 250 each. I killed a yearling-I know she dressed 200 pounds. I had 700 pounds of fish, pickled fish and dried fish. I had two pork barrels salted full of fillet mackerel. I bought 35 hundred-pound bags of flour. There was a fellow went around selling beef in the fall. She bought a quarter-a hundred pounds, ten dollars. And I don't know how many deer I had. But I used to get a deer whenever I felt like it, when they were fit to eat. I don't think it's any crime to kill a deer when he's fit to eat. Middle of September till the middle of November-they're fit to eat. The first thing that'll spoil a deer is when they start eating spruce and you taste the spruce off of the meat.
And that winter of '46, there were twenty-one of us, and everyone home for the winter. And we ate four times a day-that would be eighty-four meals for one fellow. My wife worked hard. My wife baked all her own bread, cakes, and everything, and would use a hundred-pound bag every two weeks. She made all her own quilts and all the socks and mitts for twenty-two, besides doing all the wash for them in a washtub and scrub-board, hauling water from the brook. She worked hard. There's no doubt about it.
I am married fifty-four years, have a good wife, and we raised a good family. We have 106 grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren. I don't owe anyone and have enough saved to bury us both when we die.
Willie Pat Fitzgerald's story appeared in Issue 20 of Cape Breton's Magazine (out of print.) It is now available in the book Cape Breton Works
Subscribe to Cape Breton's Magazine
For another taste of Cape Breton's Magazine
