Cape Breton's Magazine

No, not because of that, because of too much restrictions. Cattle'd get out through that, get out on the highways and every? thing. Then they'd take them to what they called the pound; you had to pay for to get them again. And feed got high. Everything got so high, people couldn't keep them. Cheaper to buy it, almost. Years ago, cattle roaming were only through the woods. You could turn them out in the morning after you milked them and let them go. They either came back again themselves in the evening, or you had to go hunt them and bring them back. (Running the farm, were you running it pretty much just for your family?) Just for our own use, yeah, that was all. (Were you able to raise your family off of the farm?) Not all alone, but you raised all you ate. You could raise all you ate. Nearly every? one around here then had a couple of pigs, a pig killed in for the winter. They'd have a barrel of salt codfish, a barrel of mackerel, all the potatoes in the cellar, all the carrots, all the parsnips. What you're buying now, all you had to do was go down in the cellar there--you never were hungry, I can tell you that. Only for that, the time of the Depression, half the people would have starved. Only for the small farms. And now, hardly a small farm on Richmond County. That's, all, just a couple of big farms. There's no land hardly now. There's land, but it's all grown up and all. It's all drained out--no cultivation or anything. They had a chance during that first Depression. If there ever come anoth? er one--goodbye! I don't know what they'd do. They'd do nothing, that I could see. and get it. Now you've got to go all to the store for that. Lots of fish that time, too. Out in the bay, here, was full of them. Piles of fish. But now, the fish have barely a thing to eat. (Why is that?) Pollution from the mill, pollution running out in the bay. Those codfish that's out there. You go up under the strait there, up under the (heavy) water plant, and catch fish up there. You can't eat them. Up there around the strait. Those fish go right up to the strait, plays around Hawkesbury harbour and around, a lot of them, codfish. Went up there about 3 years ago, and we caught 10 or 15 codfish and haddock up there. Brought them home here, we had to heave them out. Couldn't eat them. Right dead--the same as if they were in the freezer for 2 years. And full of worms, right full of worms. That stuff running out of the mill--running right out on the floor of the ocean. (You were saying, 80 years ago here...?) All fishermen here then. Everybody had boats, and fishing. Now we wouldn't see a boat hardly out here--a couple of times a week, we might see a boat go up. (And this was all sailboats in here.) All sailboats. (What did they do for wharfs?) That was all settled across there. Now it's all grown up, the people all left, went to the States and went other places, and died. No one there at all, only--well, not a house from up there--from where the church is there-- and go way out around--there's a point there--you go way out around and go up the other way. Not a house. Theire were about 20-some houses there. (Did the coastal vessels still come in with food, during the Depression?) No, it wasn't too many. Most all the people raised their own stuff in the ground. We always did. In those days, we never bought nothing here. I never bought noth? ing in the line of potatoes, in the line of garden stuff--carrots or vegetables or pork, beef--we had all our own cattle. Couple of pigs every sum? mer, and hens. The only thing we had to buy was stuff you had to go to the store for, like sug? ar, or butter, or molasses - - all you had to do was go down to the cellar