I’m Doug Dixon, born on July 6th, l924 in Grand Falls, New Brunswick. I’m the oldest of 7 children, 2 boys and 5 girls. We lives in a small house in the country, across the road that separates our Danish grandfather and grandmother (Andreas Jensen and Maria (Christensen) Jensen), who were farmers.
Our mother was one of 4 children, l boy and 3 girls. Our grandparents were very good to us. I used to help my grandfather do chores. He taught me to speak Danish, and our grandmother couldn’t talk very much English, so she also used to talk to me in Danish.
I did not start to school until I was seven years old, because the one-room schoolhouse was overcrowded and we had to walk about one mile to get there…it was quite cold some days in the winter there.
I remember getting my dad’s sharp axe, in doing what I had watched him do…I put my left foot out to hold a piece of wood, but I missed and cut my small toe on my left foot…it sure hurt when my grandfather had to help my mother get my rubber boot and sock off, so they could stop the blood by bandaging up the cut.
I always used to love the winter because we could go sliding…we had a sled that our father had built for us (Irving Dixon, of course)….he also made snowshoes for us. I had a pair that had small red tassels around the front part of the snowshoes. He also made a pair for Max Bronnum, a person who I picked rocks with at his father and mother’s farm.. Some of the older people thought that we were spoiled because our parents did not make us do more work! I suppose they compared us to their own children, who were made to work on their farm.
Well, I did have to help milk cows, and clean stables, etc. I hated every bit of it…but if I didn’t do that, Albert Jensen, my uncle would not give us any milk, or cream, vegetables, etc. His father, my grandpa Jensen gave him the farm. (Albert never married)..Albert also had to keep his Sister Agnes, who was a bit retarded. I don’t go into the details about her, but she became pregnant by a fellow who used to help Albert on his farm. She had a baby girl, whose name is Marilyn…she is still living just up the road on the other side of this farm near to where Philip and Ursula lived. At the time of Marilyn’s birth, I was 14 years old. I could say that I wasn’t such a good student; the grades were o.k. because I liked history, spelling, geography…but I quit school when I was 16 years old.
Our father, said if I didn’t go to school, they I had to work…and then I had a job as a waterboy on a road construction job. I was sitting on a stump and watching a Diesel shovel work when a well-dressed man walked over to me, and asked me if I wanted a job. I said “sure…and asked what kind of a job”….he said as a water-boy….I said “ok, when do you want me to start”, and he said “how about right now?”. At the time it was about 2 p.m. It took me by surprise, when he asked me if I would find some good cold water. I said that I knew where to find some good cold water…there were lots of good cold water springs close by.
A story of when I was in grade 8, we had a teacher whose name was Ingraham, he had been in the army , and he was quite strict, so we didn’t fool around with him, but he was very good to me. My Uncle Albert bough me a 22-calibre rifle, and he allowed me to bring it to school with me.
This teacher would lock it up in the library, and I would hunt with it on the way home, if I shot a partridge then I would give it to him. He lived in a camp on Salmon River (Near home). I’m sure he had to walk about l-l/2 miles and the first half mil was all up hill, and Salmon River was a properly named, as there were plenty of salmon that came up the river from St. John, N. B., the St. John, being New Brunswick’s longest river.
One day, our neighbour came by with his team of horses and his son sons, Bernie and Peter Christensen…their father’s name was Neils…they were going down to get some hay. So I was asked if I wanted to go along and they said we could go swimming after we had loaded the hay. So we did, and while we were wading across the river, I saw a salmon floating towards me ; the water was running quite fast, and it wasn’t really too deep where we were wading when the salmon got close to me, I grabbed the tail, and brought it ashore. It weighed 10 lbs. so we shared it between our two families.
What had happened to cause it to not be able to swim was because it had been attacked by a lamprey eel…these eels would attack the salmon on its side and then with their mouth which was like a sucker, but it had sharp teeth, and it would suck the blood out of the salmon.
But let me say that this salmon was still good to eat!!
Back to my story about if I didn’t go to school I had to work…..
Boy, this was just a great break for me….It meant to me that somebody had confidence in me…I worked for that company (Dexter Construction) all summer, that was in l939. At that time, 1939 jobs were difficult to get. I’m talking about jobs for labourers: or anything that would give a person a little money. I was earning 15 cents an hour, and a labourer was just getting 20 cents or 3 dollars per day for 10 hours…hard work with a shovel, so I consider myself very lucky. There were even married men with a family in that year who would have liked to have had my job….I paid my mother $3.00 per week for my board. I was considered then to be rich!
My dad worked in the lumber mill, he was a ‘filer’…he sharpened a lot of the saws. I went back to school in the Fall, as the contract with the Construction company was completed. As I said, I wasn’t considered a good student….I really didn’t want to study in those days, so I quit school in the spring of the year l940. That is when I went on the log-drive with my dad that was in the month of April. We had to walk about 15 miles to get to the camp, where we ate and slept. We had to get up at 4.30 a.m. and have breakfast there to work. I had to carry a lunch for about 8 men…we would meet at a given spot at about 9.30 a.m. and then again about 2.30 p.m. We had lunch out on the river, then when we got in about 8 p.m. we had our big meal in the camps. Sometimes, we had to sleep in what was called a lean-to..this was a temporary thing that was sloped, and we had a big fire built at the front where we slept with our clothes on….and at one place we couldn’t even built a fire as it was an area that had been burned, and it was an area that had been very dry weather for about three days. It had grown up with long dry grass. (I’m getting ahead of myself).
My dad was in charge of the big boat, 8 ft. wide and 40 ft. long…..it was called a “Wanguan Boat” (an Indian name), which used to carry all the blankets and sometimes the cook’s stove and food. Where there were no camps,it was a hard job…you had to know your business. There was a big paddle on the back and another big paddle at the front. We had a very good river-man of French origin: his name was Fred Rivard, he had had a lot of experience in how to run the river in such a large boat…if it had upset, or God forbid get the blankets and other things,like food get wet would have been a disaster.
There were packages of cigarettes, tobacco, cigarette papers for rolling the tobacco to make the cigarettes also. It (the boat) wasn’t fit to be handled by an older worker. They usually put an older worker at a sharp turn on the river to make sure that the logs didn’t jam and cause the water to rise and float the logs into the woods. Sometimes on the bigger rivers, dynamite was used to clear the jam and keep the logs going.
…I was never a teenager! I used to get a shovel and work with men when we had to do road work. A family was credited with so much money, deferred from county taxed, the teams of horses that were used to haul the gravel to fill holes, etc. I even had to work at picking mustard which grew in the fields where oats and barley, wheat and oats were planted. It was boring work.
Well, I will now go on to the fall of l941.. I went in the logging camp where we had a bunkhouse, there were upper bunks and lower bunks. They were at the same level, and divided into spaces about 5 ft. apart, separated by a board, just room enough for two men. We slept on clean straw, we were given 2 or three wool blankets each. The fellow who was in the same bunk as me was Junior Hendricksen…he also was from near home, we had gone to school together. There was also a Willie Larsen, and Irving Larsen, our next door neighbours. Irwin and I were in the crew of 7 men, and also Vaughn Johanssen was also one of the seven men . We had a man who had two horses, he was called a teamster, the horses pulled the logs to a yard where they were piled close to a road where they would be piled again on the side of the river. When spring came and the ice left, the logs would be rolled into the river and floated down to the mill and sawed.
The food was very good in the camp where I stayed. We would all sit down at the table and the food was in dishes; potatoes, etc. pie, teapots, and there was a man called a “cookee” who walked up and down and as soon as a bowl of food was empty he would fill it again…we were not allowed to talk, because the ‘cookee’ and the cook had to wash dishes and if too many workers were talking, it held up these people from doing their work.
You ate your meal and then went back to the bunkhouse and it was lights out at 9 p.m.,…no noise after that. Only some workers snored….we got up at 6 a.m. and the fellows who had horses to look after had their own bunkhouse, as they had to get up at 4.30 a.m. and feed their horses. A horse doing the hard work had to have about l-l/2 hours feeding time.
One of the men used to go in for a dip in the ice cold water that was where the water wasn’t completely frozen : he didn’t stayin too long. His name was Jerry Cyr, a French Canadian. Well, anyway I put on a few pounds and had to buy bigger pants and shirt. The food was so good, and we had to be in bed so early at 9 p.m. except on Saturday nights, we would stay up until 11 p.m. Sometimes we would play cards, and we even had a fellow who could play the ‘fiddle’…his name was Amos Cote. (as I write this my sister Dawn phoned me yesterday and mentioned that Vaughn Johanssen is in the Veterans’ Hospital in Grand Falls, and thee is also anothe4 older fellow, named James Holt, we called him ‘Buster” he is 94 now (ie. Oct. 07)….and Dawn said a sad thing had happened in Scarborough, Maine…our cousin Shirley Brown (Beckwith) son, Gary had passed away with a heart-attack on Mon. Oct. 27, 07,…he was 60 years old).
Back to the memories.
I finished working in the woods on December 23rd that year then walked out of the small building to catch the train to get back home to the New Denmark Station.I was home for Christmas (year 1941) and an older man who was home for Christmas who was working at a big construction job told me and a lot of other young fellows that men were needed to work on construction at a place called Shipshaw, Quebec….well, a large group of us (about 25 men) all went there. When we worked in the woods, we only get $l.50 per day, and free food…and the construction site we were with paid 45 cents an hour, and we worked 10 hrs. per day, giving us $4.50 a day, or night. We had one old fellow, a Swedish fellow named Oscar Petersen, who was 64 at the time…his grandson Charles Petersen was in our group.. Well, I was assigned to work drilling holes in rock, with a very big drill powered by compressed air. Where we had to work was very dangerous. We had to have a safety belt with a rope attached to a steel drill bit l” in diameter also.
There were two of us and the big jackhammer had to be tied, as it was on a sloped hill and we would have tumbled down about 30 ft. onto more rock. Well, that was too much for me. I worked with a fellow, a French Canadian from near our home ..in the Grand Falls, NB area, his name was Armedois Martin, he couldn’t speak a word of English, but I don’t know what happened to him anyway. The person who was the leader of this group had two sons who were working there on the construction site, one was Alfred Page, they were of French origin, Alfred was on the dynamite crew, and quite often they would need extra help on that crew. Alfred had a short name, we all nicknamed him “Bideau”…they were our neighbours near home in N.B. Alfred’s father was a foreman on that power house site, so this night, it was the 10th of January, Bideau came to me and asked if it I’d like to help on the dynamite crew. I said, O.K. it was quite an easy job compared to drilling with those big jackhammers anyway.
I helped for a couple of nights on that crew. The foreman of the powder men, whose name was Ralph Lorette, who originally came from St. Stephen New Brunswick, and he liked the N. B. fellows, so I finally got on steady. There were a lot of nights that it was so cold that the airlines to operate the drills would freeze up and stop the air, so you couldn’t drill the holes to put the dynamite in. It was moisture in the air that caused the air lines to freeze, and also the jackhammer would freeze. However, it was a much easier job, but also more dangerous. It was the month of March, March 8th to be exact, when some of the people who were on the dayshift came to my room about 6.15 p.m. and asked me if I wanted to go to town to Jonquiere. I said I’ll see what Ralph says…He always stopped in to pick up Isaac Page (Bideau’s father) who was in the same camp as I was in. I saw Ralph, and he said “o.k….we can manage one night without you for one night”. I had not been out to town since I had started to work, which was Jan. 2, l942. Anyway, I went out to town with John McKay, Buster Holt, and I can’t remember who the other fellows were. Well, sad news now. Bideau came to me the next morning, he was filled with tears, and said Ralph was killed, and his father was not expected to live. I was really so sorry for Ralph: he had a wife and two children, and he was only 26 years old. Isaac was about 60 years old.
What had happened is that they used a gasoline operated generator to get power to set off the dynamite caps, which were wired and connected in a series, and there were two wires that went to the protected building where the generator was operating from. On this day they were waiting for Ralph and Isaac to set off the dynamite, and as they were a little late getting ready, they set off (the shot) and everything seemed o.k. but Ralph went out to see if all the holes were exploded, and he must have left the generator running, as there were a couple of holes that didn’t go off, so he picked up the two wires and wired to the two holes, and of course, the dynamite went off and killed him instantly.
From that time, I was a little bit afraid of ever using that generator…however, as far as I know, we never used that generator again.
I remained at that job until about August lst, l942, when I quit the Foundation Company, and went to work for another company, called C. A. Pitts….I worked on a well-drilling machine on the night shift, while I was there, an old Oscar Petersen was there. He quite the Foundation Company….and one day he and one of his cold chums named Girst Ingaman, a Swedish-Laplander came to work…they were on the day shift (dynamite men)…and they were drunk….so their boss said he couldn’t let them go to work like that.. and so he said ‘why don’t you fellows go up behind the hill and lay down until you sober up”….well, they did, but they didn’t show up the next day.
I had heard about this and I said “I think I know where they are”…I was living in Kenogami then, and Irvin and Amy Larsen lived there also. I went over to their place which wasn’t too far from where I was, and sure enough there was old Oscar and Gust Ingeman still drinking. I said “just what do you think you fellows are doing…so Oscar said ‘well, our boss said to go up behind the hill, and we’re still here, and we’ve been here for two days. Oh, they were real characters. Old Oscar had the shakes when he drank a cup of coffee, he had to use his two hands to hold the cup…but when he had a drink of whiskey, and after a couple of drinks, his hands became real steady!
Well, I was getting tired of working nights, so I spoke to a fellow from home, named Sid Paulsen, he was a pipe-fitter on the day shift, he was a good friend of the pipefitter boss, named Walter McDonald, and he said he would take me on his crew of pipefitters…So, it was a great relief to be working on the day shift. Two of the fellows amongst those pipefitters were French, one was named Armand Biladeau, and Al Gagne. The spoke very little English, and so I learned to speak French quite well. I stayed on the pipe fitters’ crew until l943.
One nice day in April, I was working up on the roof of the power house and I cold hear a train whistle and that made me kind of lonesome….I said to myself, Doug, what are you dong here…there is a War going on and I think it is time for you to get going…I was soon to be called anyway. So I told my boss I wanted to quite and join the Navy if I was fit enough. At that time, you were supposed to give one week’s notice before you left your job. Anyway, he back-dated my notice, and I left there and went to see my father, who was working in an ammunition factory at a place called Brownsburg, Quebec. I stayed there at one of the boarding houses, where he lived….There were about four girls from around our home working there….Mary Christensen, Lillian Larsen, and I don’t remember the other two names.
But…I went back to New Denmark. I didn’t look for anyone who had been called for Military Service…I don’t really remember just how long I stayed at home, anyway, I remember going to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and tried to enlist in the Navy, and at first, I was not accepted as I didn’t have proof of my education. (it was grade 8 required before your acceptance)…so went back to New Denmark, and my Uncle Albert (Jensen) signed the forms that I had been given before I left again for Halifax, that I had graduated from grade 8 (I had quit there in the month of April l940, during that year to go on the log-drive), and hadn’t bothered to finish the year….and also as I was a native New Brunswick, Canadian I had to go to Saint John, New Brunswick, in the month of June, in l943, and I believe it was on the date of June 8th when I was accepted….the Recrutiing Officer was quite surprised at the experiences that I had had on construction, like being a powderman, etc. etc. at such an early age….I was just 18…(a month shy of my birthday July 6th).
