My dad, George Parrett, in England at 17.

My father, George Parrett, lived at Bishopstone, Wiltshire, near Salisbury Cathedral in England. As a young man he saw an immigration poster from Canada, showing a farmer with a wheelbarrow, and a single pumpkin, which filled it, and the message, "this is what YOU can grow in Canada." Although knowing nothing about farming, he was hooked, heading for Winnipeg in 1912, working out for "ten dollars a month and all found." He bought a farm at Pilot Mound and sent for mother, Mabel Purchase, in 1912. She arrived in April, in a blizzard, which happened to be a holiday, so they had to get a special permit for a church marriage. The required paper arrived at 9 PM, so they were married the day she arrived. (Who would do otherwise in those days?)

Dad

Mother, Mabel (Purchase) came from Moreton, Dorset, where she had known my dad briefly. There were few eligible men in Moreton, so, like many, it was off to the Colonies to be married. Being a landowner (a prairie farm) she thought that dad must be a lord or a least a duke! After the wedding in Winnipeg, they took the train to the Pilot Mound farm, being met by a neighbor with a buckboard. (Mother expected at least a coach-in-four!) There were no roads then, just snow- drifted trails, and mother told us that she expected to see the Manor House over each rise. And there it was "a shanty on the prairies!

This was my older brother, born in 1914 on the Pilot Mound farm. "At our neighbor's, as the telephone poles didn't reach to our farm." Dr Speechley came from town in a cutter, and was thrown into a snowbank three times, so arrived after George Jr. was born. Unfortunatly baby George died in the epidemic of 1917.

About Me

You can read how my live-in UVIC student took her two months Basic Training in the Reserve Army- a Maid in a Million Men (?) And how the men's toilet was on one side, the women's on the other- "AND NO DOORS!" Click the link below:

A RIFLE GIRL

Mother Mabel, sister Mamie and me (Roy) in 1918.

Mother and dad survived hailstorms, rusted crops, early frosts and late ones until 1917, when they gave up and moved to Winnipeg where they had relatives. Dad joined the army, was drafted for overseas in 1918, but with the winding down of the war, he was left at Val Cartier in Quebec. Meanwhile, mother wangled a permit for Enland, for herself, Mamie and infant me, and proceeded, only to find father left in Canada. She visited her family in Dorset, returning to Winnipeg, and Brandon in 1919.

About Me