My Many Hats

By William McArthur

A Historical Autobiography: touching on nine decades tells of the Home Front; during WWII as never told before:

This preschool-age memory; shares a vivid recollection of growing up in a large family; with a brilliant but handicapped father, who ran a second-hand business in wartime; as willing hands contributed to the War Effort; He also tells of his contribution toward the building of the Alaska Highway; He tells how the Cars were raffled to build the Viking Carena; opened by Foster Hewitt of Hockey Night in Canada; and how the Carena became famous as the Home of The Sutters; who had six sons advance in Hockey to play in the N.H.L.; He tells of meeting the Commander of Clan MacArthur at the Halifax, N.S. Airport; leading to the Derbfine; selecting James Moir MacArthur as World Chieftain of Clan MacArthur.

This Anthony Henday Historian; since 1969; reveals for the first time ever; his Map of Henday's 1754 Trek into Alberta Territory; as the first-ever, non-native to enter Alberta. A must-read for any avid Historian.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Mar 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228825593

William McArthur

William “Peter” McArthur was born at Viking, Alberta, on October 17th, 1938 and as the third son of Peter S. McArthur and Olive (Boraas); both parents of whom had older half-siblings, the eldest of those having been born in 1872. Thus; at a very young age, Peter became very interested in history. He attended the Old Viking School until 1953 when he joined a Survey Crew as a Chainman, prior to operating a Grain Cleaner in Saskatchewan for three seasons; when he got started on pipelining prior to entering the Electrical Trade; he learned Basic Electronics and completed his apprenticeship to become a Journeyman and Master Electrician with his Inter-provincial Red Seal Certificate.After working a broad variety of Electrical Jobs; including much Industrial Maintenance; Peter left the Electrical Trade to become a leading Real Estate Salesman as a Canada Trust Realtor; becoming the top award winner in Medicine Hat, for some 17 consecutive months; an accomplishment that also vaulted him to a Third Place Award in the Prairie Region; as a Canada Trust Realtor. Throughout this time: he married Violet, and they raised four children; three boys and one girl; all of whom were educated in Taber and Medicine Hat; and they all continue to live in southern Alberta, where during their young years; Peter served as a Boy Scout Leader and also served as a member of the District Commissioners Staff in both Flatlands District and Medicine Hat District.It was his attention to detail that culminated in him being selected to serve as Treasurer for the Medicine Hat City Police Youth Band; with about 140 members; who operated a Marching Brass Band that toured across western Canada and had a special performing trip to Southern California in 1978; with 10 performances booked for the Band; including the Mickey Mouse Parade (40th Anniversary). These three busloads served as great ambassadors for Medicine Hat.Later Peter started his own Cabinet Business; building cabinets of solid oak; much like his Great Grandfather had done at McArthur’s Mills, Ontario. Peter has traced his roots to Peter McArthur who married Mary Cameron in 1723; perhaps being what led him to become a genealogist for Clan McArthur for eastern Canada and also led him to design a special Family Sheet Form that enables greater certainty to the flow of past generations. In 1990 he returned to Viking, Alberta to care for his mother in her final decade of life and he joined the Viking Senior Citizens Club, became a Director of Zone 7 in Eastern Alberta; he joined the Alberta Council on Aging and was the founding President of Zone 9, when it was formed. In 2020, after searching for all the possibilities surrounding Anthony Henday and having been into many archives and libraries; he had determined that in fact Anthony Henday had been enabled by his bedmate; whom Peter calls Pearl as she was a gem to him. It was Henday’s fine descriptions of each camp; his distance of travel and direction of travel that pulled at Peter since 1969, to complete his book Pearl of the West in 2020. Peter has been informed that a Documentary that has begun around his Anthony Henday Trek West 1754-55 is scheduled as a Two-Year Project.

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My Many Hats

William McArthur

My Many Hats

Copyright © 2020 by William McArthur

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-2558-6 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-2557-9 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-2559-3 (eBook)

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Wartime Memories

Chapter 2: Post-Wartime

Chapter 3: The 1950s

Chapter 4: Returning to Work in Alberta

Chapter 5: Curling for Relaxation

Chapter 6: My Very Different Electrical Apprenticeship

Chapter 7: Running My Own Business

Chapter 8: Scouting and a Change of Work.

Chapter 9: The Real Estate Man

Chapter 10: Connecting With Family and History

Chapter 11: Strange Events

CARING

SHARING

CAREGIVING

From Humble Beginnings

to Millionaire

to Serve:

17 Years of Caregiving

An Autobiography Touching on Nine Decades by William Peter McArthur,

Born at Viking, Alberta, on a day our Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, was in Bermuda.

Preface

Peter McArthur (1938–present) – Henday Historian Since 1969

These are my memories, as best I recall, urged on a little by my eldest sister Margaret Scully (née MacArthur), who was the person taking me to the Old Viking School, and enrolling me as Peter McArthur. Now Margaret believes that my memories ought to be recorded, as she knows of me doing many varied things throughout my life, all right Margaret, once again you win, and here it is.

OLD VIKING SCHOOL]

This school was the only school I attended in my formative years. I remember my first day going with my elder sister Margaret: in order to get to school we had to jump across a small creek flowing north, along the west side of Main Street, in the 400 block. I wouldn’t attempt it without a good run first—that, I guess, was my first running broad jump—and I cleared the flowing water. I started classes in Mrs. Clark’s Grade 1 class, as she was the teacher with the magic cushion, which cured more headaches than any doctor could.

I have always found my sister Margaret to be a very reliable person, except for when she registered me in the Old Viking School as Peter McArthur when in fact and reality I am William Peter McArthur, which left me with no record of being educated in the Viking School, and that is worth a good laugh.

When I was looking after my mother, Olive Olava McArthur (née Boraas) in the 1990s, Mother asked me one day, Peter, what is your earliest memory? After thinking a few moments, my reply to her was this: I remember Ole Amundson gluing heavy blue felt paper over the shiplap onto the inside walls of our house. This I would learn much later was the cover to form a good base for painting. So if that still constitutes a good base, let’s just start here.

Mother appeared to be shocked at my answer, as she came back with a response of her own: Peter, you can’t remember that, you were only nine months old then. And then I added further, I was lying on the bed, in our bedroom, and watching Ole as he frequently went to the stove in the kitchen during the time he was doing that. Mother then agreed that maybe you can remember that, as he did make his own glue in a big pot on the kitchen stove. It was Ole Amundson who did that all right. This was easier for me to remember with regard to Ole Amundson, as he was always a close friend of our family, and as I grew a little bigger I was allowed to walk over to hang out at his paint shop, where I was always watching him mix paint from can to can until he was pleased with the colour he had blended. He would take a brush and make a swipe on a board that had been used for the same purpose a hundred times before, then leave it to dry. The colour will change as it dries, he would tell me.

I spent many months, even years, on the farms of my uncles, being able to try my hand at everything, including pulling a calf, driving various tractors, even building a road with my Uncle, Iver Boraas, tearing down buildings and rebuilding some other building, as materials were scarce. These were my formative years, and when my Aunt Margaret was in hospital with her second-born child, Glenn, I became the chief cook and bottle washer and learned to cook most anything. Baking a cake became such a specialty that whenever I visited any of my aunts on the farm, they would invite me to bake a cake.

My grandmother, Sille Boraas (standing with her son Alfred Boraas in the picture below), was the main reason that so much Norwegian was spoken around the tea table by the throng of Norse women visiting regularly. I don’t remember Gramma speaking much English, if any. She was always the sweetest lady I remember, with her hat poised on her head in the exact correct way, and she carried that purse of hers in a very distinct way, as her picture shows. We always called her Gramma Gumbo, which was derived from the gumbo soil on their farm.

I must explain that my Gramma Boraas was the second wife of Grampa Boraas, as his first wife was taken while giving childbirth to their last child. Gramma had come from Norway to Viking and worked as a cook as the Vegreville, Alberta hospital before marrying Grampa, Gunder O. Boraas. in 1908. It is Gramma’s family from Norway that we continue to be dearly attached to. Gramma died suddenly in 1949, and she was the first dead person I saw, as I insisted on seeing her to say goodbye.

Gramma Boraas was the only grandparent I ever saw, as both my parents were born of second marriages: Grampa McArthur was born in Ontario in 1850 and died in 1928, and Grampa (Olson) Boraas was born in Norway in 1857 and died in 1931, and this perhaps explains why my uncles filled the void of having no living grandfathers in my lifetime. While I spent more time with Margaret and Alfred than with the others, I was always made equally welcome by each of them. I would learn farm work and carpentry with Alfred, road building with Iver, finishing carpentry and some electrical work with Oscar, and George was the drywall taper, a real fine one in that trade.

Margaret Boraas at her 90th birthday celebration. Picture by Cheryl Braund, 2019

On one visit when mother was still living, one of that family commented on Mother’s Norwegian, saying, She speaks the same Norwegian we do. Of course I was amazed at that comment, but Mother learned to speak Norwegian well before learning English.

It was Margaret and her late husband Alfred Boraas with whom I spent much time on their farm, beginning in 1949. This aunt and uncle gave me every opportunity to learn many skills on their farm.

I found a wooden shoe near one of the old barns I was tearing down in 1950. Since my Aunt Margaret and her family were all Dutch, I cleaned the dirt out of the wooden shoe and hurried into to the house, declaring, Auntie, I found your shoe! Margaret had a laugh at the sight of it and said That can’t be mine, as it was only my mother and Henry who wore wooden shoes. As a treasure, I kept that shoe around for many years, as it may have been lost in the era when my father worked for Mr. Helfrich.

Chapter One

Wartime Memories

So, I had passed my first memory test of an event in 1939. Other things I remember were the frequent visitors to our house, as Daddy kept right up to date on world affairs, and listening to the world news on his battery radio, as WWII was raging on. At the same time, Mother had frequent tea parties with a bunch of Norwegian women, chattering away in Norwegian while I attempted to learn English.

My next very vivid memory came following the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and my father was letting everyone know that Sir Winston Churchill is going to address the Allied forces with a speech to be aired on the radio and come to our house and hear him my father was telling them all. And many of them did come, to hear Churchill say: We shall fight them on land, in the air or on the sea, but we shall never surrender (or very near to that) as he addressed the Allied forces worldwide in response to the Pearl Harbor attack. Then the United States joined with the Allied forces to defeat the Nazis.

During that critical time, the United States, utilizing their armed forces, built the Alaska Highway, with Dawson Creek, British Columbia being Mile 0. It was built north into Alaska, U.S.A. During the construction stage, a large troop of United States servicemen, on their way to their assigned duties, camped at the Viking Fairgrounds, which was on a twenty-three-acre site suitable for them to get some R&R. As I was then a young boy of about four years and living in Viking, I visited this large United States Army Camp, and while snooping about, one of their young men asked me if I could get him a pouch of tobacco. He appeared a little surprised when I asked him, What kind? and he replied, Whatever you can get!

Having been the runner for my father and many of his drinking friends, I was frequently going to the pool hall to buy them tobacco, and I was very well known to the pool hall owner, the late Mr. Ben Runyon, as a frequent purchaser for that crowd. This gave me a great deal of confidence that, if I could raise the money—35 cents, as I remember it—then the purchase of a pouch of tobacco would be easy.

This U.S. serviceman offered me a stainless-steel forceps, a surgeon’s tool for pinching and locking off a vein during an operation. Any thought of the importance of that tool to the military corps totally escaped my common sense at that time, so I agreed to get this serviceman a pouch of tobacco. Away I went to collect and count my empty bottles, turning them all into cash for this special purchase. I was a little concerned as to whether I would be able to locate the same soldier when I returned with the pouch of Vogue tobacco.

Fortunately, I was able to find this young serviceman, who was perhaps more pleased than I was, but we were both happy to close the deal, a deal from which I can always say I had an input into the building of the Alaska Highway when I was only four years old. The payment I received for that pouch of tobacco remains a treasure to remember him by.

By this time (1943), World War II was raging on, and all of us kids were summoned to help load railway cars with scrap iron for the war effort, and we were quickly trained not to ship off good usable parts that might be needed by farmers. We were likewise taught to save usable steel such as flat iron, angle iron, round iron, shafting, gears, etc. If it might be needed locally, we were expected to know that and set it aside for such uses. Father was a generous man in looking at the needs of the army, having himself enlisted for WWI, yet he now had to weigh the value to the war effort against the potential needs of the local farmers who fed the armed forces. We learned at a very young age to respect the needs of both parties in any decision. I remember the importance placed on gathering all the old brass and copper to be loaded into the rail car, in a special corner, for the war effort.

Daddy was seriously disabled with a back injury, as he had been run over by a truck the year I was born; therefore, all of us kids stepped up to help at every turn. One thing Father taught us at a very young age was the simple way of splitting a nut that had been rusted onto an old piece of machinery that we were breaking apart for any usable parts. Father’s business was the sale of second-hand parts for horse machinery. This business thrived throughout the 1940s and into the early 1950s, and we supplied parts to farmers from Northern Ontario to Northern B.C.

When implement companies determined that they would no longer make parts for certain horse machinery, we became a hole-in-the-wall supplier with our lot full of used parts. Daddy had laid down a system for us all to learn; in this way we were all well-trained parts people, and according to farmers who came looking for certain parts: Those kids can find any part on that lot! Which was true, but we all were taught Daddy’s system.

Growing up with a physically disabled father may have been our greatest opportunity to learn. Our highly intelligent father, who could hardly write more than his signature, "P.S. McArthur," as he was known for business. His ability to do math in his head would amaze anyone, as he could readily multiply two- and/or three-digit numbers in his head. I remember when he was teaching me to do the same thing: it was not as difficult as one might think, the catch of course was the common-sense factor of simplifying the question, or equation, then calculating the simpler parts before adding them for the total—all in your head, of course.

Having gained a good understanding of math prior to starting school, my learning included playing cribbage with Daddy, which was common for all of us kids, as we could count any cribbage hand with the best of players. Having been taught the 15–2, 15–4 method of counting a cribbage hand at the pre-school stage. This set us apart from the rest of our friends. Math was second nature to all ten of us kids and enabled us to work at any job with no problems.

In 1943, I was going out selling Gold Medal garden seeds, supplied by the Gold Medal Seed Company of Brooks, Alberta to one of my older siblings. It was while they were in school that my mother would say, Peter, would you like to take those garden seeds over to Mrs. Frausto? Away I would go on my mission, where Mrs. Raye Frausto would pick out the seeds she wanted and make the appropriate payment to me for same. When I returned home, Mother would suggest the next customer, Grampa Loads. He was not really my grandpa, but we all called him Grampa Loads. After dealing with Mr. Loads, it might be Mrs. McLaren next and so on until all my customers had been served, one by one, and in that way Mother closely scrutinized my sales and cash receipts.

The same process took place when I was selling Easter cards or Christmas cards during the same years, which was tremendous sales training. Soon I was helping with the delivery of the Toronto Star Weekly, the Edmonton Bulletin and/or the Edmonton Journal. These papers were delivered to customers in Viking, Alberta. The Star Weekly, as the name implies, was a weekly paper, whereas both the Edmonton Bulletin and the Edmonton Journal were delivered on a daily basis.

The daily papers were delivered to the delivery persons (paperboys) by Sunburst Bus Lines, the daily motor coach that served customers along Highway 14 between Edmonton and Chauvin, Alberta with an occasional bus being destined for Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. We met the bus at Joe’s Ford Garage in Viking and receiving our bundled papers, which each paperboy would quickly untie and count to verify the number, confirming the proper number for their delivery route.

Papers were then placed into the carrier’s bag for door-to-door delivery to each customer on the route. Once a week we collected from each customer for their papers delivered, and each paperboy made payment directly to the newspaper company for all the newspapers received from them. This was great business training.

News was much quicker by Father’s battery radio. An example I remember was in May of 1943 when Allied forces successfully broke the Hitler Line on their push to Rome. Father was quite excited that it was the combined efforts of two military groups that had made this historic break through the Hitler Line after many other attempts had failed, and one of those two field groups was the Royal Canadian Engineers. That was the group with which Father had been enlisted in WWI, and now, as disabled as he was, Daddy was enjoying this moment of success with his former group.

Iver Boraas, who was wounded in 1943

The second field group of infantry, was none other than the Seaforth Highlanders, camped alongside the Canadian Engineers, and together they had been successful. The Seaforth Highlanders, on that 23rd day of May 1943, suffered their heaviest losses since the group had been formed in 1908. Quite ironically, I had checked for that report in the daily newspaper I was delivering and learned little at that time beyond what Father was telling us.

In those days, Gramma Gumbo, otherwise known as Mrs. Sille Boraas, received word that her son, my uncle Iver Boraas, had been with the Seaforth Highlanders on that historic day and he had been wounded in one leg by a shell during that battle and was in hospital. This brought the need to defeat the Nazi Party much closer to home!

Mother was somewhat concerned about her brother, and she arranged for her older brother, George Boraas, who was on the farm with Gramma, to pick us up and take us to the farm for a day with Gramma. Because George was the eldest son, he remained at home on the farm to care for his mother. This news of Iver been wounded created so much stress that Mother wanted to go out to the farm and help them with some household chores for a day.

Since we had no vehicle, George picked us up in the morning with his old car. Daddy stayed home while Mother, Margaret, Jim, David and myself all piled into the car for this day at Gramma’s farm. It may have been my eldest sister, Margaret, who took a very revealing picture of her three brothers, who got a little laugh out of some of Daddy’s pipes. Daddy had a number of crooked stem pipes, made with an S shape to the stem, which lowered the bowl of the pipe about one and a half inches lower than a straight-stem pipe. We three boys had each taken a pipe from Daddy’s supply of many pipes, thinking that we could cause a little excitement at the farm.

Three McArthur boys, each with a pipe, c. 1943.

Peter, Jim and David behind George Boraas’s Old Tin Lizzy speaks a million words, as we were proudly showing off our pipes for this picture, while in fact none of us were smokers.

It was about that time that I helped by trying to load buffalo bones, hauled into Sandy Ross at the elevator by various farmers, to be weighed before piling them in stacks along the railway for reloading into railway cars for shipping away as part of the war effort, much like we were doing with scrap iron. I guess in those ways I did my little part toward the war effort!

As much as the war was raging on, the home fires still had to be attended to, and for these purposes I turned sod in the garden patch with a spade, and we picked berries such as saskatoons and raspberries for preserving. We played with Aboriginal children of families who camped around the slough just north of our house, being the remnants of the long-since-drained (c. 1918) Viking Lake. These children were a lot of fun, as their parents gave them free rein like our own did; thus, we were allowed to develop our own common sense.

Together we went over to another tent, located west of the hospital, along the north side of Township Road 480, but also west of that portion of the Old Lakebed, or slough, as most called it. This tent was about a quarter mile east of the range line that became Highway 36. That range line had been known as Lovers Lane and was a muddy lane between the willow trees growing along the sides, with signs of lake bottom clearly visible. Along with the Red Crow and Cardinal children, I always enjoyed picking bottles through that swamp-like area, and any candy or ice cream cones resulting therefrom were well earned.

The Aboriginals all knew the Viking Ribstones as a very sacred place. I remember going out there on foot from Viking, across the fields on a trail that we were told would take us up there. We were not to go farther east than Six Miles, which we could determine by fence lines and road allowances,

Reviews for My Many Hats

[aeboraas · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Being a cousin of the author I most enjoyed this book as I am familiar with many of the people referenced including my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Also, having grown up in Viking during my youth I can relate to many of the people and landmarks referenced by the author in the book. All in all, it was a very sentimental reflection upon my extended family and historical roots of the community and province that are very near and dear to me.