LIFE THEN AND NOW

 Most of my ancestors were farmers in eastern Canada after migrating from Ireland in the 1840s.   They raised much of what they ate and traded or sold the surplus to neighbors, the local market, including the grain miller, distillery, and butcher.    They had some milk cows, a garden, fruit trees, butchered their own livestock, chickens, and sometimes feasted on wild game.    Much of the excess fruit, mostly apples were made into cider, the fermented type to add a little cheer to their lives.   Life was not easy as they usually worked from sun up to sundown.    Sunday was usually a day of rest and the only time to socially gather with others at church.  Getting there involved hitching a wagon to horses and traveling over a muddy trail to the nearest settlement 5 to 10 miles from home.   After church and depending on the weather people would assemble for a picnic, men would barter over the price of a cow, talk about their crops and maybe share some of their homemade beverages.  Women talked about when they were expecting their next child.

Women married young, had many children, and spent many hours cooking over a wood stove, washing clothes in a tub, and doing some of the outside chores in addition to tending the younger children.   The older children helped with raising their younger siblings and helped out with the milking, planting, and harvesting of crops.    

Some children never went beyond grade school.   If there was a crop failure or some family's house burned down they were at the mercy of relatives and neighbors.  There were no government social programs or insurance.

Many of the young men took up farming after leaving home, some worked in the meatpacking business, and later between 1900-1910 others went to work on the railroads in western Canada.   Visits to the local doctor were for broken bones, bad cuts, or to the dentist to have a tooth pulled.   Most lost all their teeth by the age of 50 and were fitted with false teeth.   Women usually died before their husbands, probably from exhaustion.   If a man became disabled or too old to work he was retired to a corner room in the house and dependent upon his children for care.  Most men, who were lucky died in their 60's and 70's from pneumonia or heart disease.

Today most of us have some kind of education beyond high school, worked an 8 to 10 hour per day job, 5 days a week, and retired after 30 years.   Our biggest challenge was making it through those years without losing our sanity.    We continue putting up with congested traffic, crowded markets, dodging the Covid virus, and making it home in one piece.   Many of us have not been to church in decades, socially gather at the local Bi-Mart parking lot or visit with a neighbor at the mailbox down the hill.  We have social security, Medicare, and maybe some sort of pension or IRA to get us through our retirement years.   If our luck holds out we might make it into our 80's and hopefully, our children have a corner room to put us into if all else fails.