Benito, Manitoba, Canada

My mother was Canadian, born in 1913 and raised in Macoun, a very small town outside of Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was one of six children, the second oldest girl, and lived on the 150 acre family farm. Pictures in my mother’s photo albums show a two-story, white farm house with black shutters and a plain white door. The wrap around porch had handmade wooden rocking chairs and a swing, with a bright flowered cushion, suspended by a heavy chain. There was bright green ivy covering the side of the house and rose bushes lined the concrete stones leading up to the porch. My grandparents raised all kinds of livestock, farmed wheat, and a garden big enough to feed their growing family of eight.

When my mother left Canada and moved to Missouri in the early 1940’s, my grandparents passed the family farm to their oldest boy and moved to a homestead in Benito, Manitoba, Canada, a small town, maybe two-hundred people, most related to each other. The home was a modest, one-story log cabin with no indoor plumbing. When we visited, my parents and sister stayed in a one-room cabin in the back by the horse barn and I slept in the house with my grandparents.

The living room had a blue, handmade rag rug on the floor and my grandfather’s rocking chair sat by the stone fireplace. There was a small, dark wood table next to his chair and he had a brown leather pouch, holding cherry-vanilla tobacco. Some of my earliest memories are sitting on his lap while he puffed on the wonderful sweet aroma that escaped from his pipe.

The kitchen, next to the living room, had a black wood burning stove and white farmhouse sink. A black cast iron pot hung over the fire where my grandma made thick, meaty stews and chicken noodle soup. My grandma’s meals were the true definition of comfort food. The oak table and chairs, ornately carved, brought from the farmhouse in Macoun, along with a sideboard that housed the family china, sat just outside the kitchen. I remember sitting at the table playing cards with my grandma and kneading the dough to make her hard crusted bread and rolls.

The homestead didn’t have running water and I remember using the outhouse, with a crescent moon on the door, and the rope to lead me to it when it was dark. We brought water in from the stone well, and the smokehouse and cold cellar held all the meat and fresh vegetables picked from the garden. We milked cows, gathered eggs from the chicken coops and churned fresh butter, which was placed in an old white bowl on the table to accompany the freshly baked bread.

Bath time was Saturday evening, right after we finished washing the supper dishes. Grandpa brought water in from the well and heated it up in a big, black kettle on the fire. He poured it into the rustic, wooden wash tub and my Grandma scrubbed me with the homemade soap and washed my hair. Then she wrapped me in a soft towel and sent me off to the get dressed in my night clothes. I climbed into the big feather bed and she came in with warm milk and a book to read and not long after, I fell asleep.

I remember the two Esso gas pumps in the front yard of their home. The bright red tanks, large glass dome on the top with the ESSO sign, and the little spray bottle I used to clean the windshields of customers coming to fill up their tanks. My grandpa would give me a penny for every car I cleaned and at the end of the day I dropped them in my piggy bank on the fireplace mantle.

A few years after my grandpa passed away, my grandma sold their home and moved into the new, modern apartments in town. I spent every summer with her and I loved to walk down the cobblestone streets to the general store in town to buy milk, bread, eggs and anything else she had on her list. She always gave me extra change so I could buy rock candy and taffy from the big glass jar on the counter and a cold 7-Up, in a glass bottle, out of the cooler in the back of the store. I paid for the groceries, walked back to her building, climbed the stairs to the cozy, second floor apartment, and helped put the food away. Then she and I walked downstairs to visit her neighbor, Mrs. Shaw, where they taught me to crochet and do needlepoint.

My grandma moved in with my aunt in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, when she fell and broke her hip. She wrote many letters to me telling how much she missed Benito, Mrs. Shaw and my visits to her. She passed away in 1978 and I didn’t make the trip for her funeral. I wanted my last memory of her to be when she sat in the back yard of my aunt’s home and played with all of her grandchildren.

The last time I traveled to Canada was for my uncle’s funeral in 1986. My parents and I visited my grandparents’ graves in Macoun and made a trip back to Benito. It wasn’t the same as I remembered; the homestead, cabin, outhouse and Esso station were gone and a fancy grocery store was there in its place. We went to see the man we bought fresh honey from when I was a child, but he had passed away and his children were running the more modernized business. The cobblestone road had been paved and a streetlight blazed red and green for the many cars to pass through. The little store I bought candy and cold 7-Up from was gone, the owners retired and moved away.

I find it funny how time changes things, but the strong memories I made long ago still bring back the smells, sights and sounds of what shaped my life as a child. I wonder how different my life would have been had I not spent my summers in Benito with my grandmother and learned what life was like on a family farm in a very small town.