Our parents kept us pretty well in line, but still I think now that they put up with quite a lot. I remember I had one bad habit when small. No matter how late it was by the clock it was too early for me. However father corrected that one night. When the usual howling started, he quietly turned me across his knee and gave me a few spanks, which ended the bedtime howl. That was the only time I remember him spanking me. Mother would often give us a cuff, but never took a strap to us. Yet their word was law. We never thought of dis-obeying them.

My eldest sister married quite young and lived a couple of miles from us. In the meantime brother Will had been hearing reports of what a wonderful place Manitoba was. Uncle Billy Martin was living at Glenboro in Manitoba, so Will decided that he would hit out for himself, and so he left for what was called the Wild and Woolly West. Henry got in with a bunch of fellows who were going on an excursion to British Columbia, and he went along. I can just remember him coming home. There wasn't one bit of color in his face. He had had enough of British Columbia. He said he was so homesick, he felt the train would never get him back. He was too young, I guess, to leave home. Will was different. He worked for some time for Uncle Billy. Then he came home to Ontario and spent the winter, but in the spring away he went to Manitoba again.

When I was nine years old, father decided to go to Manitoba on a visit to Uncle Billy, and by that time Will had settled on the Gilbert Plains. Uncle Billy and father took a horse and some kind of a light rig, some grub and blankets, and drove from Glenboro to Gilbert Plains to visit Will, and see the country. Father was greatly taken with the coun-try, and Will got him persuaded to sell out and move west. Father had three younger boys and Will thought there was no future for them in On-tario among the stones. So when father came home from Manitoba, he talked it over with mother, for she would be leaving her aged parents and all her family and friends.

I mentioned father coming to Manitoba in 1890. Well that was not his first trip to Manitoba. He came out in 18 7 6 when brother George was a baby. The railroad was not through then, but they got paid so much for the trip, and got a steamboat ride across the Lakes and then walked on to the next lake. Father had a small trunk with a few ex-tra things, and he carried this on his back on these portages. He visited with his brother Billy Martin, at Glenboro. Uncle Billy had come out some years before. When he returned the fall wheat was ripe.

The years slipped by. The spring of 1891 found us preparing for our trip to Manitoba. And in the early dawn of a May day, we left the old home. We

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went by wagon the seven miles to Coboconk and took the train to Orillia. We wanted to say goodby to Mother's two sisters who were living there, and also their families. Robert and George, now two lads aged seventeen and fifteen, were left to come with the carload of effects. This carload cost father $12 7.00 to bring out, but it included many things that would come in handy in a new country. There was a team of colts, just broken in that spring, a couple of dozen hens in a crate, and, in another crate, a sow. Also there was lumber and shingles for a new house, which was built later and replaced the log house with the sod roof, which brother Will had built for us. Oh! That old sod roof- what a nuisance it was. When we felt the first drop of rain coming through, if it happened to be in the night, we jumped out of bed, picked up our straw tick and put it under the big kitchen table with an oilcloth on, which kept out the rain. I don't remember what the others did, but Alphretta, Ada and I, managed to keep dry under the table. What a treat it was when we got into the new house that didn't leak. That new house still stands today, with Ernest and family still living in it.

Well, to continue my story. We stayed a couple of days in Orillia, Ontario, then took the train for Winnipeg, Manitoba. We stayed at the Rosser Hotel in Winnipeg, till we got a train for Solsgirth.

Winnipeg wasn't much of a place then, but there we saw people riding on those hich bicycles -a large wheel and a small one. We also saw Old Fort Garry. Then we left Winnipeg for Solsgirth. We stayed at Solsgirth till the carload of stuff arrived. It was nice at the boarding place, and we kids quite enjoyed staying there. Father had bought a ticket for George, and Rob was allowed to ride in the car with the horses, to feed them. However father thought George had better stay with Rob for company. So the station agent said that would be all right, but he told father to keep the ticket himself, which he had bought for George. This proved to be a mistake, for the train men, on the way up, seemed to think father was riding on that ticket, and they kept threatening to put him off.

The boys were so glad to arrive at Solsgirth, early one morning in May. Brother Will had come out to meet us in April, but because of father's sickness, we were delayed for a month. When he arrived at Solsgirth, he got our letter and didn't know when to expect us, so he went back to the homestead. Father was still weak when we arrived at Solsgirth, so mother decided to leave him there, and also leave Alphretta to take care of him, as we didn't know the trials we would encounter, travell-ing the seventy miles over an unknown trail through the Riding Mountains.

They got everything unloaded, the wagon put