Louise Boucher's Diary ( part 3)
My grandfather remembers when early ih March the settlers took their cattle and precious belolngings and moved to Saint Laurent to the home Damase Carrière. Grandfather's brother Ernest was born while they were in Saint Laurent at the end of April.
Only two of the Boucher family, Grandfather's father and his brother Solomon fought in the Rebellion. My great-grandfather was wounded in the hip.
My grandfather who was then seven years old can remember melting lead. It was bought in 25-poun bags, melted in a frying pan and poured into molds to make shells for the Métis soldiers. In May, word came that the steamship Norquay which ws loaded with cannons would destroy the settlement. Eighteen families moved in a hollow and hid there close to the home of Moise Ouellette. They did not suffer too many hardhips.c
When the Métis were defeated at Batoche, the Boucher family returned home. They had gained what thety wanted and each pioneer was given 160 acres of land which was called a "scrip". At that time the Conservatives were in power under the leadership of Sir John A. MacDonald.
A SCHOOL IN THE DISTRICT: When grandfather was nine years old his father built a new large logs house closer to the river where our house now stands and gave his old house to be used as a school and church for the Community. The settlers made batoche and tables for twenty-five to thirty pupils. Father Lecocq was one of the first teachers. The children learned reading, writing arithmetic and religion. They wrote on slates. Grandfather studied Readers One to Five and was the best reader in the class. As school was not compulsory, he left at the age of 12 to help his father with the farm work. The children played ball and skated and fished in the River. They would also hunt with a slingshot and a pocketful of stones.
As settlers moved in any my great uncles married, the land of my grand -grather was divided and sub-divided until he had only two river lots left. About one hundred acres were broken. It was slow and hard work. The trees were cut, the stumps pulled out with the oxen. The wheat was scattered by hand from a canvas bag tied around the sower's nect. Grandfather can remember ploughing with oxen xhen he was still a very young boy. The settlers usually plowed one and one half acre of land a day.
When he was fifteen, his mother baked bread for the first time. The bread was made to rise with yeast made from hops. Bread was quite a treat! Grandfather became a very skillful hunter and carried his gun where he went. They depended on this for food supply. When grandfather was a boy he saw mother cross the River with oxen seimming across.
At the age of 22, my grandfather lost his mother. It was a great loss and a great sorrow. She had always been so courageous!
When Samuel Rock and his family came to Bellevue from Minnesota my grandfather was 25 years old. At a house party at Jack Morrison's he met the lovely young girl Delia who was eighteen. He liked her very much and started courting her. Every Sunday was courting day. After church, grandfather would drive Delia back to her home with his horse and buggy and spent the day with her. The following summer on July 31, 1906, they were married.
ref: Louis Boucher's Diary (part 3) History of Saint-Louis, SK
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