R'ortrait oflift in Southtrn Rlbtrta, 1920·40

excerp\B !tom the autobiogrtlphy at

Bruce Anderson Low, husband at RuthWatson

_Editor's Introduction: In preparing this book, this excellent autobiography came to my attention.
Bruce Low, born in 1919. vividly describes life in Cardston. a small Mormon community in
Southern Alberta. He depicts the common experience of all living there, as well as those living in
any of the other small Mormon towns that existed at that time, such as Magrath and Raymond.
Lydia and Dave Watson and their family lived in Magrath, Raymond, and Cardston. Life for them
was very much as portrayed by Bruce. ­

...If Cardston is on the Canadian prairie. it is only just barely. The surrounding
terrain is mostly quite hilly, and probably would be better used for ranching than grain
fanning. Nevertheless, fanning is the main industry today, as it was 100 years ago.
Fanners still have to work very hard to make a living on that windy, dry, rolling land. It
was an interesting area for a boy to grow up in, with its creek-river-prairie-foothill­
mountain environment so close. My deepest feelings of place were forged there. and are
with me still.

The dominant feature of the landscape is big Chief Mountain, Old Chief we called
it. It stands out to the east of the more or less north-south line of the Rocky Mountains,
like a bastion on a defensive wall. Its imposing vertical eastern face masks a gently
sloping western side, composed of talus rocks, which makes it rather easy to climb, as I
discovered in my earlier days. The view from the top overlooks at least one hundred
miles of prairie to the east, north and south -- looking green and verdant in the early
summer, and golden yellow in the autumn. with the rectangular fields of stubble
contrasting with the darker fields of summer fallow. In the wintertime, covered with
snow, perhaps a white desert would be the best description, as very few trees exist there
to break the flatness. Legend has it that Indian youths would climb to the top of Old
Chief and after fasting for a day or two, through dreams or inspiration would
communicate with their Manitou seeking answers to the way in which they should
conduct their adult life. I can't imagine a better place to go to leave the world behind.
When the winter Chinook winds blow, the background mountain chain is often obscured
by the Chinook arch, a gray-purplish mass of cloud covering the mountains but not
venturing onto the prairie. in spite of westerly winds up to 80 miles an hour. This
background leaves Old Chief alone in the clear air and the blue sky. A truly noble and
magnificent sight, and the most impressive memory of the area in the minds of all who
live there, or who have lived there. except for maybe the wind.

The prevailing wind is from the west. It comes from the north Pacific Ocean, heavy
with moisture. As it blows toward the prairies, it bumps into the mountains of the
western cordillera, where it loses its moisture as rain to western British Columbia and as
 A Portrait of Life in Southern Alberta

snow to the mountain area. Once past the mountains it swoops down onto the prairies,
drying the ground as it picks up the moisture it lost over the mountain area. This results
in occasional spectacular droughts in the Alberta-Saskatchewan-Montana area, the last
one occurring in the early 1930s. Even in a normal year rainfall is barely adequate, and
this has led to numerous irrigation schemes in the area -- a Mormon heritage.

It's not all bad, however. How sweet it is to have the Chinook winds break a
prolonged winter cold spell. When suddenly you can go outside without hat and gloves,
when the sun reflects brilliantly from the slushy snow, when the icicles melt and drip and
drop off the eaves of buildings, and when one remembers that summertime will return
again after all, even though everyone knows the Chinook will stop in a few days and
winter will return to grind out its allotted time. This warm wind does make snow
wonderfully sticky for the making of snowballs and snowmen, and the reflected sunshine
gives a temporary snow blindness to anyone coming inside out of the sun.

This west wind causes snow drifts to form in gullies, on hillsides, and in any
protected area. During the early ranching era, cattle from the open plAins would be driven
before the blizzard winds to seek shelter in coulees and river bottoms. There they would
pile up and freeze to death. In more modem times the highways would drift over, making
travel impossible unless a path was shoveled out. Before black top highways with deep
borrow pits were built, people would often travel in groups, in order to supply sufficient
shovel power to clear the road. Usually a truck heavily loaded would head such convoys,
and would break the crust of the drifts. to make shoveling easier. The same Chinook
winds blow in summer too, but instead of causing snow to drift, it is topsoil that drifts,
sometimes to the nearest coulee or fence line, and sometimes to the next township or
province. Modem fanning techniques have today eliminated much of this soil drifting,
thanks to strip fanning and shallow cultivation, but I can well remember the large black
clouds of drifting soil approaching and engulfing the town during the 1930s.

The highway on the northern border of the town separates it from a large Blood
Indian reservation, and also marks a definite division between the true prairie and the
beginning foothills. When I was a boy the town herd used to be pastured on this
reservation. Each morning after milking I would drive our cow to the herd corral and
each evening return to the same to retrieve her for the evening milking. There were about
a hundred cows in the herd, and in those days of no refrigeration or dairies, having your
own cow was a necessity.

This reservation/prairie served also as a type of vacant lot playground for the boys
of the town. In the spring we would work like beavers, carrying water to pour down
gopher holes to drown out the poor things, just for the satisfaction of killing them. The
cruelty of the whole process never entered our minds, and the energy expended in the
operation would have astonished our parents, who had to endure our daily lassitude
regarding household chores. As spring faded into summer the sloughs dried up and with
it our source of water, our strategy then changed and we used binder twine snares. How
quiet and peaceful it was to lie on the prairie grass waiting for the gopher to pop its head

26

 A Portrait of life in Southern Alben.

up out of the hole. to be snared. The meadowlarks were always singing. the gophers
squeaking in their burrows, the breeze singing in the telephone wires. the ducks quacking
in the lakes and sloughs, and with the pun-pun of the grain elevator engines in the
background, all this softly combined to let small boys know that the earth was unrolling
as it should, and it was good to be alive and secure in this. the best of all worlds. Again.
the atavistic feeling of cruelty and killing was absent from our minds. leaving them blank
for the sensual feeling of smug contentment...

In the springtime the grass -- prairie wool -- would have a brief period of color
when the anemones (crocuses) would bloom. spreading a splash of lavender over the flat
areas. Later the gray-greenish tint of the grass slowly turned to the brownish-gray color
of summer prairie land, as the sunshine matured and withered the stalks. In the gullies
would grow buffalo beans, shooting stars, buttercups, wild roses, and wolf willow. to give
the lie to the thought that the prairie is always drab and colorless. Ground sparrows built
their small cup-shaped nests on the ground in the open, and we always wondered how
those small birds could ever find their nest again as they flew home with insects in their
beaks to feed their brood. The same meadowlarks that perched on the tops of telephone
poles or fence posts had nests in the tall grass, marvelously camouflaged. as did also
prairie chickens (sharp tailed grouse) which were very common in those times. High in
the sky circled hawks soaring on the summer thermals, screaming their defiance and
superiority to all and sundry down below. I used to think that ifthere was such a thing as
reincarnation, I wanted to come back as a hawk...

Lee Creek is about twenty-five miles in length. It begins as a spring halfway up the
northwest side of Old Chief mountain. and flows through the foothills, through the town.
to join the St. Mary's river farther on. The combined waters continue northeastward to
join the Oldman River at the spot where the famous Fort Whoop Up was located in the
1800s. The ten thousand years or so since the last ice age have given the stream time to
carve out a fairly wide valley throughout much of its length, and as it progresses eastward
it goes through mountain, foothill and prairie habitats in that order, all in the space of
twenty-five miles.
,
Since I lived a definitely rural/earthy existence, the creek area was part of my
playground centering around the farm, and particularly the swimming and fishing holes it
contained. What better reward for having picked berries all morning than to go
swimming all afternoon. The sun was always shining and hot, the water tepid, the sand
medium fine, and our bodies unencumbered with bathing suits. We wound up the
summer brown as Indians, but clean, clean, clean .- daily swimming did it. Even our
saddle horses were' clean, for we rode them into the pool in order to dive off their backs.
We also caught the odd fish, suckers mostly. though occasionally the odd careless trout.
The water was crystal clear in the summer and fall, and we used copper wire to snare
them, yanking them over our heads with a shout of triumph and lugging them home to be
cooked for supper by our mothers. We somehow had the feeling that we were mimicking
the Indians who had lived by this creek for so many ages past, and indeed we were.

27

 A Portrait of Life in Southern Albena

The creek presents quite a different aspect during the spring run-off. When the
heavy snow pack of the mountains and foothills is subjected to the increasingly vertical
rays of the April sun. plus the warm Chinook winds. then the flooding can be quite a
spectacle. This triple combination occurs about once every ten years. and increases the
volume of water carried by a factor of twenty to thirty times. The roaring sound this
meltwater makes can be heard for a week or so by anyone living within a mile of it...

When C. O. Card. after whom Cardston was named. rode over BC [British
Colwnbia] and Alberta (NWT) [Northwest Territories] in 1886 looking for a site for his
future home. he originally chose a spot thirty miles north of the border. When on the
following year the pioneers arrived there it was discovered that area was already taken up
by the Cochrane ranch. and was out of bounds to homesteaders. They backtracked about
fifteen miles to Lee Creek, and there settled. The land was still grass covered like the
adjacent prairie, but was quite rolling, albeit picturesque. The Old North Trail came
through this area, and travellers had been using it for a hundred centuries or longer. The
immigrants came up from the south, over the Milk River ridge, through Whisky Gap.
crossed the 51. Mary's river just north of Aetna and into Cardston. This was a route
which roughly paralleled the old whisky traders trail, which originated at the steamship
landing at Fort Benton, Montana and ended at Fort Whoop Up on the Oldman River. ten
miles southwest of Lethbridge.

Upon arrival the settlers built their log cabins out of the wind. in the creek valley. or
on the quarter section homestead land. and began their new life. I can recall quite a few
of these original dwellings still being lived in when I was young. Many of the old-timers
still had their long beards, and their wives wore ankle length dresses. tight bodices and
severely swept back hairdos.

They had to labour long and hard to survive and prosper. The best complement a
person could receive was to be told he was a hard worker. i.e. strong and willing. Mixed
farming was the rule, everyone having cattle, pigs. chickens. etc. even in the town.
Horsepower was being slowly phased out when I was born, being replaced by tractors and
motor cars. This all took time however. and wasn't completed until after World War II.

Roads were of graded up soil until the 1930s, and cars were not too dependable. I
often rode in my uncle's one horse sleigh in the wintertime, and pushed cars out of mud
holes in the road in the summertime. In town we had horse drawn drays 10 deliver
groceries. coal and ice. The town hearse was drawn by two gray Percheron horses, and
town boys had their own saddle ponies, which corresponded to the bicycles kids have
today.

People had to spend a good deal of time and energy on the mechanics of daily
living. Every Monday morning after our breakfast of oatmeal. or cocoa and toast. we
would heat a boilerful of water on the kitchen stove, cut up a bar of laundry soap into it,
and add some lye. When it all began boiling, the scum from the hardness of the water
was spooned off and the water was carried by bucket to the washing machine in the back

28

 A Portrait of Life in Southern Alberta

room. About that time Dad would go to work, we kids would go to school, and Mother
would be up to do the washing. At noon when we all assembled for our big meal of the
day, I would empty the washer, bucket by bucket, and mop the floor in the back room
before eating, while my sisters would hang up the clothes on the clothesline, where in the
wintertime they would freeze solid. What a switch from today's automatic washers,
completely undreamed of in 1930.

Boys wore bib overalls or jeans (they weren't the height of fashion as they are
today, rather a sign of poverty, not being able to afford real clothes) and home-knitted
sweaters. Socks always had holes in thejn (nylon was still a number of years away, to be
invented). Mothers were constantly darning them, putting them over old light globes to
hold their shape while plying the darning needle. Clothing was constantly being made
over and my mother was a whiz at it, using her treadle sewing machine. How she
found/made time for all her projects I cannot to this day figure out.

Bread was baked twice a week, garden vegetables were bottled every summer,
200-300 quarts, and that's a lot. Pickles, chokecherry jelly, peaches, pears, etc. for a
family of six, were also bottled and stored away for the long hard winter that was sure to
come, and always did. Peeling potatoes and carrots etc. for our noon dinner was done
with a paring or butcher knife, which took five times as long as it does today, with our
handy-dandy vegetable peelers, which hadn't been invented then. I can still remember
our standard meal of fried hamburger or pork sausage (which we liked best) with milk
gravy (a taste sensation that has nearly vanished today, what a pity) poured over mashed
potatoes, together with creamed corn or creamed green beans, home baked bread, perhaps
home made cottage cheese (we called it Dutch cheese) or pickles, and for dessert
probably a half hour pudding or a dish of preserved saskatoons (we called them sarvis
berries). In the summertime we ate radishes, which were usually wormy, and lettuce with
our meals, especially at supper, which often was bread and milk eaten with a spoon, out
of a drinking glass. Our supreme taste sensation was corn on the cob from our own
garden, golden bantam or sunshine varieties.

Farmers spent several weeks a year putting up hay for their animals (horses
mainly), doing most of it by hand, i.e. pitchforks. Grain was cut and formed into bundles
by a binder and was then stooked by hand, often by women and boys, at a wage of one
dollar a day or ten cents an acre. Stooking means piling eight to ten bundles into a bunch,
with the heads of grain off the ground, to ripen for a week or two prior to being picked up
(by pitchfork), loaded on hay racks and carried to the separator (threshing machine),
where the kernels of grain were separated from the chaff (straw). This straw was left in
large straw stacks, scattered here and there over the landscape, to be used as winter cattle
feed. The cattle would create large tunnels as they ate their way into the center of the
stack. The next spring, ducks would make their nests in these decaying straw piles, and
later in the year everything would be burned (stacks and stubble) to clear the land for
seeding, thus polluting the atmosphere for miles around with the smoke.

29
A Portrait . in Southern Alberta
I or Life

31

 A Portrait of Life in Southern Alberta

All of our buildings were heated with coal and wood. Supplying it was good
business for local mines and sawmills, hauling it into the house was the job of the
family's children, cleaning up the dirtiness and smokiness after it was burned was the
mother's bane and burden. Long underwear and sweaters were worn all winter long. We
did have, however, several spectacular house fires every season, because of this means of
home heating. An antiquated fire truck plus a volunteer fire department insured that the
fires had ample opportunity to bum, also insuring that a good time was had by all who
turned out to watch it...

The volunteer fire department typified the way in which pioneer communities
functioned. Many people had their opportunity to serve on the town councils, school
boards, agricultural committees, Scout committees, Church positions, etc. It was
participatory democracy in action and it made people feel that they were important and
that their opinion mattered. Furthermore, the cooperation thus enabled people to have
conveniences they would otherwise have missed, e.g. rural telephones, irrigation
schemes, beef rings, libraries, etc.

Most homes had a large barn located at the bottom of the lot, in which they kept a
cow or two, and a pig and some chickens. By the time fall arrived, several loads of
prairie grass hay had been purchased from the local Indians at two dollars a load,
delivered -- just imagine. This hay had been pitched into the loft until filled, and the
balance piled outside at the back of the barn in a large stack. Thus for a six to eight dollar
outlay for cow feed, a family could be supplied with milk all winter

These barns at the bottom of the lot were sometimes the leftover horse barn from
the horse and buggy era (pre-1920) and sometimes it was a later structure built solely for
a cow, with occasionally an enlargement or a lean-to on one side to be used as a chicken
coop or pig pen. A family cow served two purposes: first, obviously, to furnish needed
milk, cream and butter, and second, to give a job for the young boys of the town, to teach
them responsibility and animal husbandry, and presumably to occupy their time such that
they wouldn't be able to frequent the local pool hall...

These animals belonged to a town herd in the summer time. Each morning after
the cow was milked, I had to drive her to the edge of town to join about one hundred
other animals, all of which were entrusted to the care of a local herdsman, who pastured
them on the grass of the Blood Indian reservation adjacent to the town. At six o'clock in
the evening they were driven into a large corral, from which the owners retrieved them,
driving them home for the evening milking. In my mind's eye I can still see all these
cows being distributed throughout the town in the hot, dusty summer evening sunshine.
At least half of them had to be driven the length of main street to reach their barns. This
was no great problem because all the stores shut down promptly at 6 p.m. Traffic was
minimal by then (there wasn't too much traffic anytime, anyway) and to this day I cannot
remember thinking there was anything unusual about it all. Didn't every town drive cows
down their main street? Didn't all towns have cow pies splattered all over their roads to
mix with the plentiful horse manure and dust and mud? The truth is that all towns of that

32
 A Portrait of Life in Southern Albena

era and area did. Overall it was then considered good husbandry and provident living.
and an indication of a degree of prosperity. It was all of these, but it was also of a time
and custom long gone. By the beginning of World War II it had vanished.

Horses too, had practically disappeared by then. During the 1920s and the early
19305 (Great Depression time) they were still the mainstay of most of the farming of the
area. They were also used in town dray service, delivering coal and wood. groceries and
ice, gravel and lumber, and pulling the town hearse. They pulled wagons in the summer
and sleighs in the winter, and were often more dependable than the Model Ts or Model A
Fords, or Chevies or Stars, or McLaughlin Buicks, or Durants of that period. Our town
had two harness shops, with the semisweet smell of oily leather mixed with the pungent
acidy smell of horse sweat ever-present. There were three blacksmith shops also. where
small boys would watch the smith rasp the horses hoofs, work the bellows on the forge.
pound the metal horse shoes into the proper fit and nail them home onto the hooves of
often skittish horses. The smell of the buming slack coal on the air-pumped forge. mixed
with the always present perfume of horse manure gave a most distinctive "air" to the
place. By 1939 all three blacksmith shops had gone, their workers had retired or died or
joined the army to become welders and/or cannon fodder in the coming war.

When the Palliser expedition was sent out by the Canadian goverrunent in the late
1850s it reported that, in effect, there was a large triangle (roughly, Edmonton. south to
the border, east to Winnipeg, back to Edmonton) which was unsuitable for agriculture
and settlement. Time has proven them only partly right. Most of this large area supports
agricultural communities to the tune of several million people, thanks to better farming
methods, machinery, seeds etc. The greatest physical problem is drought, although
uncertain market prices are a perennial worry as well.

During the 1930s when a major drought came hand in hand with a world wide
depression, farmers in the western part of Alberta certainly had hard times. but were
spared the calamity of total crop failure that occurred in areas farther east in the Great
Plains region. Hard work and minimal rainfall enabled them to just keep their heads
above water. My father worked in a town totally dependent on the farming trade, and so
our family had hard times too. The strongest exterior influencing force on my life was
the depression of the dirty thirty era.

Hard as life became physically, it was even harder for people to maintain courage,
hope and optimism. However, we were lucky to be living in a town containing many
people who, by their influence, rallied and encouraged people to hang on. President
Wood, our Church leader,spent his-life prevailing upon his many flocks to strive to lead
honorable lives and to work hard and intelligently, promising us all that by so doing we
would win in the end. His wise counsel constantly lifted spirits in those dark days. The
calibre of men and women who taught me in grade and high school was also of the
highest degree. As I have observed their lives over the past fifty years, I realize how
fortunate I was to have been taught by them. From them I learned attitudes as well as
facts.

33
 A Portrait of Life in Southern Alberta

The cultural events we had were surprising. both in numbers and quality. Due to
the fact that we were cut off in a comer of the province. having poor roads and
undependable transportation. we were forced to improvise on our own. There were quite
a number of people who spent considerable time and energy promoting music. drama.
dance. etc. Each year the community would sponsor and perform a different operetta.
such as The Mikado or Once in a Blue Moon. or Once in a Pirate 's Lair. most of which
are long forgotten now. They involved the efforts of fifty to one hundred people over
several winter months. and were of a surprisingly high standard of performance. They
were the highlight of our winter season. Church dances were held almost weekly. and
thanks to a prepaid budget system. they were within the means of most people and
provided much of their winter entertainment. School festivals taught the art of speaking
in public, and at the very least furnished the opportunity for shy country kids to partly
overcome their bashfulness.

This ten year depression period provided me with a schooling of sorts in human
nature. It brought out the goodness in many people and the weaknesses of others. I found
out that honesty and decency and compassion are often ignored in the struggle to survive.
I know how it feels to be a "have-not" and the resulting envy of. and semi-anger toward
the "haves". The feeling of bitterness that those at the bottom end of the ladder have
because they feel they are not getting their fair slice ofthe pie. I've seen the hopelessness
in the faces of people who have been slammed down too often by adversity. their supply
of toughness and optimism completely exhausted. and seen how necessity sometimes
forces people to live a nearly animal-like existence...

My public school and high school education followed the method then in vogue.
which had considerable rote learning, especially in the lower grades. This method isn't
all bad, because everyone needs a base from which to learn to think, but it was often
carried to excess. I can't forget teachers whacking kids over the head with a ruler because
they couldn't remember the date of the Magna Carta. or how much was seven times six.
Exam results were graded down to a fraction of a percentage point, and pupils were
considered "smart" if their average was over 80%, and only mediocre if only 79%.
Failure was under 50%. The names of the passing (and failing) students. with their final
marks, were published in our weekly local paper each June. Just how it might have
affected a kid's self confidence was never considered. This approach to education was
brought in from the province of Ontario, which in tum had imported it directly from
England, thanks to their United Empire Loyalist ancestry -- it was Tom Brown's School
Days 100 years later. Queen Victoria would have been pleased. Fortunately this whole
approach died away with my generation-and about time, too.

As well as the three R' s, we studied courses in citizenship, art and art
appreciation, English grammar, geography. history, etc. Our maps of the world showed a
great deal of red, i.e., British Commonwealth countries, and we studied English history
almost exclusively, together with the geography of those red places on the map; we even
spent a fair amount of time studying Canada. Our literature, history and geography

34

-
 A Portrait of Life in Southern Albena

pointedly excluded any reference to the US whatsoever. If I hadn't been living just
fifteen miles from the border with connections to my Utah relatives. I could have spent
the first dozen years of my life believing the US was a vast. relatively uninhabited
wilderness. I have since discovered that this stupid antipathy was mutual and that
American kids were educated to believe that Canada was one vast snow field. probably
still do.

The main thrust of our four years of high school was to prepare us for university
entrance. We wrote departmental examinations (provincial) every June and paid $10 or
so for the marking thereof. About one out of ten went on to more formal education.
Once a year a school "inspector" - would visit each classroom 10 insure that the
Department of Education curriculum was being followed. Since teachers were graded on
this rwo hour visit, considerable effort was made 10 make a favorable impression -- after
all, a teacher's future standing and salary depended on it. In the three years I taught
school I had a special pre-rehearsed program drawn up for the day the inspector arrived.
all the kids were in on it too. It seemed to work, although I'm sure the inspector (he' s
now called superintendent) wasn't fooled much.

During the 1920s and 30s school inspectors were mostly veterans of the 1914-18
war, as were many of the civil servants of that period -- Indian agents. policemen. post
office workers, national park employees, etc. Not just all of them were competent in their
jobs, but they were surviving veterans and the government rightly gave them preference.
These people were strong supporters of the authoritarian, British oriented. semi-caste
system of society which paid their salaries and they seemed to go out of their way to let us
farmers and low-lifes know that they were definitely one cut above us. In one respect
they were, with their dependable jobs and good salaries (for that time), but I know now
that we were 100 easily conned and looked up to many phonies simply because they had
government largesse to thank for their position. Since many of them were from urban
areas of our nation they also brought what we thought of as their sophisticated
condescension with them, as they raised their families out here in the sticks. In fairness. I
must admit that it must have been hard on them to live in a community which was 90%
Mormon and which oriented itself much more to Utah than to Ottawa. Socially we didn't
mix very much. By and large it was a draw -- they looked down on us and we ignored
them, both positions being mutually exclusive...

Our public school in town had eight classrooms surrounding a gymnasium. This
just nicely accommodated the first eight grades (l to Vlll, no kindergarten) with about
thirty to thirty-five pupils per grade, one teacher per room. The building was siruated in
the middle of a block, the playground space was a grass-weed mixture interspersed with
areas covered with coal ashes which had been carried out from the furnace. The west half
of the grounds was the girls side, and the east half. the boys, with no mixing. When the
bell rang we lined up to be marched in, two by two, girls first, lower grades leading.
Sometimes a teacher would play a march tune on the piano located in the hall and
sometimes just a "left-right. left-right" by the teacher in charge would do the trick. Our
desks had inkwells in them (shades of the 1890s) to be used with the straight pens and

35
 A Portrait of Life in Southern Alben.

nibs that were in vogue at the time. (How could anyone possibly learn to write with those
newfangled fountain pens, after all? Those goose quill types had been used successfully
for hundreds of years, hadn't they?) Every room had solid windows on the peripheral
side of the building which gave excellent light and ventilation. The front wall of each
room was blackboard, with additional blackboards on the sidewall vertical sliding doors.
which camouflaged the hooks we hung our coats on. The floors were of wood and were
kept well oiled to keep down the dust. This gave a certain smell to the school and also
would have provided excellent fuel for a fire, which fortunately never did occur...

The one thing that set us apart from the hundreds of other small towns in the west
was the Church. For a dusty rural village, Cardston had a great amount of musical
activity. This was related directly to its LDS background and its aim to instill a bit of
culture into our lives. As well as the usual religious influence on morals and ethics and it
was pretty exclusive there -- it took over most of our social life. It sponsored nearly all of
the cultural events in our community (dances, drama, picnics, lectures. etc.) as well as
sporting events. Because nearly everyone was a Church member, all civic affairs were
influenced by the Church position on cooperation. honesty, hard work and optimism. It
gave scope for people to feel responsible and worthwhile in their own eyes. This outlook
on life has been a great boon to me personally and I am indebted to the Church and the
people behind it.

36