My PARENTS' WORK - District of Saanich

He never knew when his day ended. Sometimes
he had to go our after supper and do some
deliveries. For awhile my mother worked. There
were fields of flowers, and she used to go down
and pick them in the spring and dry flowers at
the Gordon Head flower place."
MARIE GRIFFIN, 81
"My dad was a street car driver, my mother
was a housewife. The housewife job is all day,
particularly in those days. Everything was
cooked with wood and coal. Dad's work day
was eight hours and sometimes he had a split
shift. He'd have to sit around for two hours
between shifts-four hours on the Number 6
which was Hillside and four hours on Number
4 which was Esquimalt."
HERBERT CROFT, 80
Inspector. On work days, he'd get up at six. He
would start at seven, and then he would finish
abour six at night. They were long work days
because when he got home, he was also
working on stuff."
BOB GILLESPIE, 71
"My father was with the Hudson's Bay
Company. He started out as a trapper and ended
up in top management. He was very successful.
He was with the fur trade bur you don't mention
that now because everybody hates fur coats. I
had all these fur coats I had to get rid of."
OLIVE 'BILL' PATTERSON, 80
"My dad was a postman. He did Harriet and
started at Washington, then up to Harriet and
he did Wascana. I used to help him very often
on the weekends when I wasn't in school."
"My mother was home all the time, bur my
father worked at the Victoria Daily Times. He
GRACE HAWKINS, 79
was a maintenance man there, and sometimes "Their work day could be anywhere from 12
I'd get jobs there myself He had a split shift­ to 18 hours a day, and their main income was
he'd go to work early
running the
in the morning and
tearoom in the
he'd be home by noon
summer months. In
and then he'd go back
the wintertime it
again around 4."
was hard work. My
ERIC 'STOFE' STOFER, 85
father had a lot of
property to pay
"We had a farm and
taxes for. He worked
the work day was quite
in the bush cutting
long. We had dairy
wood to sell to the
cattle and a rourine
dairy. He supplied
milk roure so the milk
fence posts to the
was delivered house-to­
Gordon Head Fruithouse
around Greater
Growers'
Victoria. My mother's
work was long and hard
Herbert Croft's father in the conductor's uniform.
Association and got
the contract to cur
without many modern conveniences to help her cedar poles for the BC Telephone Company
out. There were four children in the family so after he convinced them to come our
there was a lot of work to do."
Blenkinsop Rd."
JOHN PENDRAY, 75
"My mother was a homemaker. They all were,
no mothers worked. My father worked at
several jobs. He did work for Saanich, bur he
also worked in the foundry which is where
they make molds and things like the
streetlights downtown. He was a BC Bee
ERIC WALLACE MCMORRAN, 75
"They worked every morning and every night.
If it weren't for their singing, I do believe they
would have gone mad because it was all work
for them and this small Glee Club society kept
them sane."
LILLIAN EASTON, 79