Dear Editor,
Re: Something to be said for small houses, Nov. 15
Your column brought back a flood of good memories for me as I experienced life in a home of less than 1,000 square feet; in fact, I experienced life in an original pioneer three-room house.
My dad bought a farm in the Interlake region of Manitoba, an area where every quarter section was settled by Ukrainians. Most quarter sections had a log home, a barn, grain sheds and chicken coops, although it is rather rare to see these buildings standing today.
Our place had the original log two-room house with an addition added on that became the kitchen. It also had a very large log barn and various farm buildings.
My dad decided he would move us into this pioneer home until he could build a new home on a property closer to Winnipeg. We moved in and away he went to work in the oil patch.
We went from all the amenities of a comfortable home to virtually none. There was no running water in the house and no toilet inside the house.
The house was heated with a wood stove in the kitchen and that is where my mom would do all her cooking. That meant every time you would go outside, you would bring in a load of firewood.
To wash down we always had water being heated on the wood stove and if you needed privacy to sponge down, you merely asked your family members to leave the kitchen so you could be alone.
It was a happy home. We would spend hours together by the wood stove reading stories, waiting for mom’s baked goods and doing our homework when the chores were done. Our connection to the outside world was a telephone that operated as a party line.
Being a small home meant we all had to sleep in the same room so we always would talk and laugh before we went to bed. You were close to your family.
There were times when there was a tremendous amount of hard work living in that small pioneer home, but we would sit together at the end of the day and feel good as a family.
My dad eventually set up a farm outside of Winnipeg and built a big, beautiful home with all the modern conveniences, but it was never the same as being together in that small pioneer home. We were never as close to each other as we were in that home that was under 1,000 square feet.
Tom Kunicky
Okotoks
