Interview with Madeleine Presseau MacEachern interviewed by her son, Bernie MacEachern taped in 1995 or thereabouts. transcribed to text March/2020. Madeleine passed away in 2007.
(Note: A few parts of the conversation were inaudible and those parts of the conversation were omitted)
Bernie: This is Bernie MacEachern just doing a little bit of information about the Stirling mines. I just have a letter here, sitting with my mother. ""Stirling Mine, Richmond County. It was a Lead, copper, Zinc mine. It was started in in 1928 by the British Metal Corporation. Mr. Hearn was Manager in Montreal. It closed in 1930 for 5 years, reopened in 1935 and then it closed again in 1938. It was sold to another company, in 1938."
Madeleine: Yeah.
Bernie: Did they open it again in 1938?
Madeleine: Yes, by another company in 1942.
Bernie: What was that company?
Madeleine: I don’t know. Your father went to work for them.
Bernie: Is that right?
Bernie: So, Pa went to work there in 1937, was it?
Madeleine: 1928 when he (grandfather) went there.
Bernie: right.
Madeleine: Oh, your father, yes, yes, he went there early. He was in the cookhouse for a while then he went underground.
Bernie: Yeah, he was there for a while and then he must have gone back and …
Madeleine: In 1942 when they left, they took the mine away to Quebec. The mine, yeah, they took everything to Quebec, and they were back in 1942 with a new company.
Bernie: Oh, yeah.
Madeleine: I don’t know the name of it (the company) anyway.
Bernie: So, your father, my grandfather, when did he start.
Madeleine: He started in 1928 and he stayed till 1938, when the mine closed.
Bernie: Okay, then did he – he moved from there
Madeleine: To Quebec where they told him, they told him to take the powerhouse apart and send it to Quebec and that’s where they told him to go. They told him to go to Quebec, to the mine there, and leave - put the powerhouse back into (operation).
Bernie: Into operation
Madeleine: Yeah back together. And they stayed in Quebec from then on.
Bernie: That’s Calumet Island, eh? That’s where, most of our people are up there now, right?
Madeleine: Yeah
Bernie: Still living there?
Madeleine: Yeah
Bernie: Just looking here at a picture of the mine. Whose property did you say that was?
Madeleine: Billy MacLean, William MacLean. It was given to the British Metals for a dollar.
Bernie: oh yeah.
Madeleine: For a dollar, and then they started up the mine
Picture of the 1920/1930's mine buildings .
(Note: A few parts of the conversation were inaudible and those parts of the conversation were omitted)
Bernie: This is Bernie MacEachern just doing a little bit of information about the Stirling mines. I just have a letter here, sitting with my mother. ""Stirling Mine, Richmond County. It was a Lead, copper, Zinc mine. It was started in in 1928 by the British Metal Corporation. Mr. Hearn was Manager in Montreal. It closed in 1930 for 5 years, reopened in 1935 and then it closed again in 1938. It was sold to another company, in 1938."
Madeleine: Yeah.
Bernie: Did they open it again in 1938?
Madeleine: Yes, by another company in 1942.
Bernie: What was that company?
Madeleine: I don’t know. Your father went to work for them.
Bernie: Is that right?
Bernie: So, Pa went to work there in 1937, was it?
Madeleine: 1928 when he (grandfather) went there.
Bernie: right.
Madeleine: Oh, your father, yes, yes, he went there early. He was in the cookhouse for a while then he went underground.
Bernie: Yeah, he was there for a while and then he must have gone back and …
Madeleine: In 1942 when they left, they took the mine away to Quebec. The mine, yeah, they took everything to Quebec, and they were back in 1942 with a new company.
Bernie: Oh, yeah.
Madeleine: I don’t know the name of it (the company) anyway.
Bernie: So, your father, my grandfather, when did he start.
Madeleine: He started in 1928 and he stayed till 1938, when the mine closed.
Bernie: Okay, then did he – he moved from there
Madeleine: To Quebec where they told him, they told him to take the powerhouse apart and send it to Quebec and that’s where they told him to go. They told him to go to Quebec, to the mine there, and leave - put the powerhouse back into (operation).
Bernie: Into operation
Madeleine: Yeah back together. And they stayed in Quebec from then on.
Bernie: That’s Calumet Island, eh? That’s where, most of our people are up there now, right?
Madeleine: Yeah
Bernie: Still living there?
Madeleine: Yeah
Bernie: Just looking here at a picture of the mine. Whose property did you say that was?
Madeleine: Billy MacLean, William MacLean. It was given to the British Metals for a dollar.
Bernie: oh yeah.
Madeleine: For a dollar, and then they started up the mine
Picture of the 1920/1930's mine buildings .
This is a clearer picture of John's picture. Notes from the picture below added by the Editor with added info from Madeleine's description of the 1920/30's mine below.
Buildings outlined in this photo of 1930's mine by John Presseau, brother to Madeleine.
Madeleine: (referring to the picture above) And then the powerhouse is there and the cookhouse and the bunkhouse for the men.
Bernie: I can see it them.
Madeleine: And the mill, Gerry was working up at the mill, my brother Gerry, and there’s an office staffed by some of the men and the managers and Mr. Manly, he was high too, in the mine – a Manager.
Where the families lived
Bernie: There’s the house up on the left there.
Madeleine: Yeah.
Bernie:: Who was up in the back?
Madeleine: The first house was ours, up there by Billie MacLean, and Couturier and Biron with their wives. There was a road going from there, you know, you used to walk up like that. You could walk up…
Bernie: From the mine up to the houses?
Madeleine: Yeah. It was kind of a shortcut.
Bernie: Biron, that’s still the same Birons that are around here.
Madeleine: Yes, yeah it is.
Bernie: The Couturiers what did they…
Madeleine: The Couturier’s, most of them are dead now. There’s one left, Irene.
Bernie: But are they around here, or no?
Madeleine: No, no. They went to Quebec. Most of them left when the company closed for good. On to the next company.
Bernie: Oh yeah. Ok, that must have been quite a spot back then.
Madeleine: Oh yeah. It was a big operation.
Bernie: Yeah. Lots of people up there. Do you remember, how many people would work there, a couple of hundred?
Madeleine: Oh my, gosh, there were more than that. I don’t know how many was in the bunkhouse. If your father was alive he’d tell you how many was in the cookhouse, how many was on the ground, how many was in the mill.
Bernie: There was a lot from Mira working up there, wasn’t there?
Madeleine: Not the first time.
Bernie: later on, then.
Madeleine: Later on, yeah. In 1943 when the other mine opened, and your father started going there.(Editor's note- Madeleine may have meant in 1949)
Bernie: I think that’s when John Angus worked up there.
Madeleine: And Donald MacLellan (and others in the 50’s)
Madeleine: Just here lately, they fenced the Glory hole what they called it because it was wide open. There were more animals drowned down in that darn Glory hole.
Bernie: I think they got that sealed off.
Madeleine: That was awful dangerous. (Editor's note - Madeleine may have been referring to the time the above picture was taken - late 30's. As of 2019 the glory hole was not fenced off)
Hauling the ore
Bernie: So, where did they haul the ore?
Madeleine: They hauled it by truck, to Fourchu to load on boats.
Bernie: It went to Fourchu?
Madeleine: Yes, it went to Fourchu.
Bernie: It didn’t come to Sydney, did it?
Madeleine: No, no. Because it was Dad (Arthur Presseau) that worked on the road from Stirling to Fourchu. He made road repairs.
When the Presseau family came to Stirling
Bernie: Mom, do you remember when you came down from Quebec down to Stirling area when the mine was opened?
Madeleine: I do remember. My mother went ahead of us in the last of May and Dad came to pick them up. Your grandfather came to pick her up and bring the baby. The baby was only a month old.
Bernie: Who was the baby?
Madeleine: Gedeon from BC. He’s in BC now and she took him to Stirling. And then dad came to pick my oldest sister and myself and my brother the last of June. They started bringing us to Stirling.
Bernie: He drove up there, was it?
Madeline: Oh yeah that was all gravel roads. It took a week to get from Quebec to Stirling. Now they can make it in two days. Laughter. Yeah, it was all gravel roads.
Bernie: I wonder, the baby, when he (Arthur Presseau) went up to get your mother and the baby, the baby got really sick didn’t he?
Madeleine: He had Eczema. He was full of Eczema. She had to wash him with something, not soap, she wasn’t allowed to use soap on him. I think it was Cornstarch or something like that. But, anyway, when she got to New Brunswich, the baby wouldn’t stop crying. He was crying and crying. She stopped in New Brunswich. They stopped at the house late at night. They weren’t going to open the door until they heard the baby crying. When they heard the baby crying, they came to the door and opened the door and she (Exilda) asked them if she could wash the baby and fix him up for the night. And the lady of New Brunswich said, “Where are you going?”. “We’re going to Cape Breton.” “You’ll never reach there with the baby”, she said. “Well I got to reach there”, she said, “even if I have to walk there.” So, anyway, she washed the baby and took him, and he fell asleep. He fell asleep until they came to Stirling. And when they came to Stirling there was only the shell of the house. There was nothing inside. There was no furniture. So, she came, and she took a barrel and left the two ends of the barrel and cut the middle of it and my father made the rockers under it. And she put the pillow and she put the baby in it. She put the pillow flat down on the barrel. And she put blankets and fixed the baby up and that’s all. And then the baby was wanting for milk and she had no milk. There were no cows, no milk, there was nothing in the house. They made a table of a barrel, two barrels and a board and she put a table clothe on. And when she wanted milk she went to William MacLean’s, Billy MacLean and she told Mrs. Couturier to go get some milk over there. There were two aunts. Billy MacLean’s two aunts were living at that time with him and Mrs. Couturier went there, and she asked for milk. She couldn’t speak English, so she asked in French. And all they could do was speak Gaelic. And she got scared and she ran back home, and she said to my mother, “There are two old witches there, I’m not going there, anymore”. So, my mother said, ‘You look after the baby and I’ll go get milk.” So she took the baby’s bottle and she showed it to the old ladies and the old lady made fun because she couldn’t understand what she wanted. So, they filled the bottle full of milk, and they made the sign for her to come back when they were finished. So, she went back home, and she gave the bottle to the baby. So, that’s how - that was the beginning of the bond.
So, anyway she was waiting for the furniture to come from Quebec and she had nothing there, no chairs, no nothing. She had some barrels and stuff. So, anyway, she met- Mr. Hearn, was down from Montreal and she said, “Mr. Hearn” and he said, “How do you do, Mrs. Presseau?” and he kept walking. So, she said, “Mr. Hearn, I want to speak to you.” So anyway, after calling him two or three times, he stopped, and she went there, and she said, “Look”, she says, “you told for us to come over here. The house is empty.” And she says, “How are we going to live with all the children and everything?” So, he said to her, he said, “You go to the cook house. You ask them anything you want, and they’ll give it to you. “Well”, she says, “When my furniture and stuff come; it will be here in two weeks time, she said, “then I won’t bother you anymore”, she said. “That’s fine”, he said. Then she went to the cookhouse and she asked them for things that she could cook with. She got the stuff she needed.
About the Madeleine's Family
Bernie: She had 14 kids, was it?
Madeleine: There were three born in Stirling. Guy, Roland and Jacques.
Bernie: She didn’t have them all (when they came to Stirling).
Madeleine: No, she didn’t have them all.
Bernie: There were ten or eleven, then.
Madeleine: There was Horence and Gerry and Rene were working at the mine.
Bernie: Oh yeah.
Madeleine: Gerry and them - they were in the mill. You know, they didn’t go down (underground), and Dad was working in the Powerhouse and that’s where they were working. There was five of us in the convent, the boarding school in Arichat. We were there for three years then we moved to Cheticamp because there, in Arichat, they wouldn’t take any more boys and Mother didn’t want to separate the family in the boarding schools. So, we went to Cheticamp for three more years. And the last year I was there, Yvette got married that summer and she left in 1938 to go back to Quebec. She got married that summer and then she went to Three Rivers.
The language
Bernie: Could you speak English when you came here?
Madeleine: No, none of us did. The men, yes, because they were always around the men. Couturier couldn’t speak English. They used to go to the store and when they wanted something - shells for their guns, Arthur Couturier, and he says he went to the store and he said, “Bang, Bang” so Mr. John G MacLeod said, “OK”. He knew what he wanted so he gave him what he wanted. None of them could talk English. They learned that in the next fifteen years in Stirling. I learned – when I went to Arichat. I was ten when I was started school and I was too big to go in grade 1 with the little ones so they put me in Grade 3. And I couldn’t say a word of English. So, that’s how I started learning English like that.
Going to Church
Bernie: They used to come down to church and that in Mira, did they?
Madeleine: Not all the time. Dad used to love going to Lower L’Ardoise. It was the same distance from L’Ardoise to Stirling as it was from Grand Mira to Stirling - twenty-seven miles (back and forth).
Bernie: That was quite the trip.
Madeleine: It was quite a trip. I think we’d go every Sunday. One of us would stay home to prepare meals and the meals would be ready when they came back home.
Madeleine: They were one of the first ones there. They used to meet Johnny Black with the truck. He used to go and get the people and take them to Mira and one time his truck broke down and dad was coming to church, and he stopped, and he looked at his car and got it going. It was full of Grand Mira people coming to the church.
Bernie: That’s quite the trip now compared to even back then.
Boarding School
Madeleine: Oh yes, yes, yes. It took a week to go to Cheticamp, with what we took up. We had trunks and everything else. We had all our winter clothes and we’d stay in Cheticamp or Arichat for the whole year and we weren’t home for Christmas. We’d come back in July and August. And then September back in Cheticamp. The school would be closed every summer. We’d mark everything, shoes, boots, stockings, everything I would bring back, we put our name on, so when it was sent to the laundry, so that it wouldn’t get mixed.
How Madeleine met John Joe (MacEachern)
Bernie: When did you meet Dad? When did that happen?
Madeleine: That happened, wait now.
Bernie: What year would that be?
Madeleine: That was first - 1937. We had confession at the house, and it was in my mother’s bedroom and I met him that summer of 1937 and I went back to the convent then. In 1938 I came back and I was home and then in 1939 I was married.
Bernie: 1939?
Madeleine: Yeah. So, I knew him, when he came out of confession, who was there - John Angus’ (Gillis) brother, the one that drowned there.
Bernie: Danny?
Madeleine: Danny (Gillis).
Madeleine: With the priest - a server - and when your father came out, I said to Danny, “I’m going to marry that fellow yet.” I meant that and that’s what happened (laughter). I never went out with anybody.
Madeleine: So anyway, I stayed home that time, 1938. Yvette went away to Quebec and all that. Dad says, “Time for you to stay home and look after your mother”, so in 1939 I got married.
Bernie: You had a double wedding, eh?
Madeleine: With Armand and Florence.
Madeleine: He would skate from Stirling, go as far as he could on the road and as far as you could go on the water (River).
Bernie: Who was that?
Madeleine: Armand, going to see Florence in the wintertime.
Bernie: He skated there!
Madeleine: Yeah, skated there, quite a piece from Stirling to Martin D’s (Gillis - Grand Mira North). He skated and they, of course, they wouldn’t let him go that night. They said, “You’re going to stay here. He stayed over. So, what Armand decided was he was going to get married, so, well it was going to be one wedding, may as well have the two of us married together. We were dressed so nice. The two of us, same dresses, same things and we got married. Florence changed the time twice. The third time she decided to get married on Dad’s birthday, Sept 19/1939. So we got married in Grand Mira church.
Bernie: So, you used to go up for a visit to Stirling on a Sunday or something. Tell me about the time…
Exploring the Area
Madeleine: When Dad first came there wasn’t a place in the whole of Cape Breton that we didn’t visit. “Where are we going to today?” They’d go everywhere. They went to – what do they call it – the beach there?
Bernie: Point Michaud
Madeleine: Point Michaud beach. They used to go there. That was beautiful in summer. And they’d go somewhere everyday, every day. There wasn’t a place they didn’t visit, on Cape Breton Island.
Bernie: Sunday drives?
Madeleine: Sunday drives.
Bernie: He must have had a pretty good vehicle, then?
Madeleine. Oh yeah. He bought a brand-new Nash Rambler. When he left Quebec that was a brand-new car. And do you know who bought that Nash, Gordie’s father.
Bernie: Is that right?
Madeleine: Then we got another car. We always had a good car. He always looked after his car.
Bernie: I guess there still were a lot of horse and sleighs.
Madeleine: Oh yes, oh yes.
Bernie: Didn’t you go up one Sunday with Harry Thomas?
Madeleine: Yes, up to Stirling, yes, up the river, the Mira River. We crossed over at Victoria Bridge and we had to go the rest of the trip on the road, you know, and he had a horse. He had the horse there from the North side that he borrowed.
Bernie: So, you went up the river was it?
Madeleine: Yeah, we started from our shore:
Bernie: And you went straight up the river (up as far as Victoria Bridge)?
Madeleine: Who lived near Johnny Jim there. - next door -Fraser. We got the horse from Fraser. And he says if the horse goes through, you can jump out. Harry, your father, and I. Harry was working for your father the first year.
Bernie: Cutting in the woods.
Madeleine: Cutting in the woods. Another man was working twitching logs.
Madeleine: Yeah, anyway, another Sunday, Dad had that dam stallion. The devil was in him. He used to gallop and gallop and gallop and if there was another horse in front of him he would race to catch up to it. That was a horse that they, wait now, what’s his name, we used to go every Sunday - Gillis. Gillis had the horses. They used to go up that way.
Bernie: Who was “God Bless you”.
Madeleine: He was a man who lived halfway between Stirling and (Grand Mira). He used to go to Stirling to mass.
Bernie: to church up in Mira?
Madeleine: No, no in Stirling, at the mine.
Bernie: Oh, the priest was up there.
Madeleine: Yeah, he’d come there. He never put his necktie or put his shoes. He had big boots. So, he’d put on the shoes when he’d get in the house and he’d get somebody to put his necktie for him. Oh my, the darn horse. And Gillis’ horse was ahead of ours and ours knew he was ahead. It started going crazy. He started going so fast that he caught up to them. And you couldn’t hold him back. God Blessed, and we kept on. It was a long time ago. So, as it happened, Martin D and John Alex (Gillis) had come up to see Florence in Stirling. She was living there with Armand. So, John Alex had had the horse there, and was at Stirling. I was that scared. “So that’s alright”, John Alex said, “come on with us, since you won’t be scared.” Mary (Bernard - MacPhee/Gillis) was there. And they went to the Northside and your father said, “I’ll come pick you up.” He says,” I’ll go across the river to John Jim’s (MaEachern)”, and I was to walk from Martin D Gillis, “and I’ll pick you up there and we’ll come back”. So, we were coming back, and we said we may as well pick a short cut and we’d come out at Currie’s there, you know. So, we started walking because it was good and solid but when we got to Currie’s there, the cove there, we started getting wet. It was getting soft and your father said,. “We’d better go back inside, so we can walk past that spot there.”
Bernie: You were walking, were you?
Madeleine: Yes, I was walking. I walked as far as John Jim’s and then Dad started coming across. So, when we got home I was all wet. Near Curries, there’s something there .
Bernie: A brook there.
Madeleine: A brook or something. It was getting soft.
Madeleine: And your father says, “Come on, we’ll go in, instead of going around, we’ll get solid ice and then we’ll go.” Those were the days, Oh Gee Gosh.
Arthur's Obituary
Bernie: OK. I’m just going to read a bit of the Obituary of Arthur Presseau (madeleine's father).
“Deceased June 19, 1955. Aged 67, Calumet Islands, Quebec. (That would be my grandfather). He was a well-known resident of Stirling Mines, Richmond County, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Mr. Presseau was born in Montreal and resided in Stirling Mines for 15 years before moving to Calumet Island. He was living there for 11 years. He is survived by his widow and fourteen children. The sons and daughters are:
Bernie: It is probably be easier for me to do the sons this way. The oldest was Horence; Gerald, which is Gerry; Rene; Armand; Yvette; Madeleine; Irene; Raymond; John (or Jean); Alberta; Gedeon, Guy; Roland and Jacques. In the obituary, they have, "the daughters are: Mrs. Charlie Cote, (which is Yvette), Noranda, Quebec; Mrs. John J MacEachern (Madeleine), Grand Mira South, Mrs. Florimond Carriveau (which is Irene), Calumet Island; Mrs. Gerard Sicard, (Alberte), Montreal; Horence of Montreal; Gerard and Armand in Sydney at that time. Raymond and Jacques in Quebec, Jean in Ottawa, Guy in Ontario and Gedeon in Vancouver and Roland at home, that’d be in Calumet Island, and Raymond in Montreal. That was quite a family Fourteen in all.
Madeleine: (expressing her agreement)
Exilda (Madeleine's mother)
Bernie: And just a bit on my grandmother. Her maiden name was Larocque, Exilda Larocque, before she married. She died at the age of ninety, May 1, 1981 Community Hospital in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec. She lived to be an old age. And that’s basically it. Thank you
Bernie: I can see it them.
Madeleine: And the mill, Gerry was working up at the mill, my brother Gerry, and there’s an office staffed by some of the men and the managers and Mr. Manly, he was high too, in the mine – a Manager.
Where the families lived
Bernie: There’s the house up on the left there.
Madeleine: Yeah.
Bernie:: Who was up in the back?
Madeleine: The first house was ours, up there by Billie MacLean, and Couturier and Biron with their wives. There was a road going from there, you know, you used to walk up like that. You could walk up…
Bernie: From the mine up to the houses?
Madeleine: Yeah. It was kind of a shortcut.
Bernie: Biron, that’s still the same Birons that are around here.
Madeleine: Yes, yeah it is.
Bernie: The Couturiers what did they…
Madeleine: The Couturier’s, most of them are dead now. There’s one left, Irene.
Bernie: But are they around here, or no?
Madeleine: No, no. They went to Quebec. Most of them left when the company closed for good. On to the next company.
Bernie: Oh yeah. Ok, that must have been quite a spot back then.
Madeleine: Oh yeah. It was a big operation.
Bernie: Yeah. Lots of people up there. Do you remember, how many people would work there, a couple of hundred?
Madeleine: Oh my, gosh, there were more than that. I don’t know how many was in the bunkhouse. If your father was alive he’d tell you how many was in the cookhouse, how many was on the ground, how many was in the mill.
Bernie: There was a lot from Mira working up there, wasn’t there?
Madeleine: Not the first time.
Bernie: later on, then.
Madeleine: Later on, yeah. In 1943 when the other mine opened, and your father started going there.(Editor's note- Madeleine may have meant in 1949)
Bernie: I think that’s when John Angus worked up there.
Madeleine: And Donald MacLellan (and others in the 50’s)
Madeleine: Just here lately, they fenced the Glory hole what they called it because it was wide open. There were more animals drowned down in that darn Glory hole.
Bernie: I think they got that sealed off.
Madeleine: That was awful dangerous. (Editor's note - Madeleine may have been referring to the time the above picture was taken - late 30's. As of 2019 the glory hole was not fenced off)
Hauling the ore
Bernie: So, where did they haul the ore?
Madeleine: They hauled it by truck, to Fourchu to load on boats.
Bernie: It went to Fourchu?
Madeleine: Yes, it went to Fourchu.
Bernie: It didn’t come to Sydney, did it?
Madeleine: No, no. Because it was Dad (Arthur Presseau) that worked on the road from Stirling to Fourchu. He made road repairs.
When the Presseau family came to Stirling
Bernie: Mom, do you remember when you came down from Quebec down to Stirling area when the mine was opened?
Madeleine: I do remember. My mother went ahead of us in the last of May and Dad came to pick them up. Your grandfather came to pick her up and bring the baby. The baby was only a month old.
Bernie: Who was the baby?
Madeleine: Gedeon from BC. He’s in BC now and she took him to Stirling. And then dad came to pick my oldest sister and myself and my brother the last of June. They started bringing us to Stirling.
Bernie: He drove up there, was it?
Madeline: Oh yeah that was all gravel roads. It took a week to get from Quebec to Stirling. Now they can make it in two days. Laughter. Yeah, it was all gravel roads.
Bernie: I wonder, the baby, when he (Arthur Presseau) went up to get your mother and the baby, the baby got really sick didn’t he?
Madeleine: He had Eczema. He was full of Eczema. She had to wash him with something, not soap, she wasn’t allowed to use soap on him. I think it was Cornstarch or something like that. But, anyway, when she got to New Brunswich, the baby wouldn’t stop crying. He was crying and crying. She stopped in New Brunswich. They stopped at the house late at night. They weren’t going to open the door until they heard the baby crying. When they heard the baby crying, they came to the door and opened the door and she (Exilda) asked them if she could wash the baby and fix him up for the night. And the lady of New Brunswich said, “Where are you going?”. “We’re going to Cape Breton.” “You’ll never reach there with the baby”, she said. “Well I got to reach there”, she said, “even if I have to walk there.” So, anyway, she washed the baby and took him, and he fell asleep. He fell asleep until they came to Stirling. And when they came to Stirling there was only the shell of the house. There was nothing inside. There was no furniture. So, she came, and she took a barrel and left the two ends of the barrel and cut the middle of it and my father made the rockers under it. And she put the pillow and she put the baby in it. She put the pillow flat down on the barrel. And she put blankets and fixed the baby up and that’s all. And then the baby was wanting for milk and she had no milk. There were no cows, no milk, there was nothing in the house. They made a table of a barrel, two barrels and a board and she put a table clothe on. And when she wanted milk she went to William MacLean’s, Billy MacLean and she told Mrs. Couturier to go get some milk over there. There were two aunts. Billy MacLean’s two aunts were living at that time with him and Mrs. Couturier went there, and she asked for milk. She couldn’t speak English, so she asked in French. And all they could do was speak Gaelic. And she got scared and she ran back home, and she said to my mother, “There are two old witches there, I’m not going there, anymore”. So, my mother said, ‘You look after the baby and I’ll go get milk.” So she took the baby’s bottle and she showed it to the old ladies and the old lady made fun because she couldn’t understand what she wanted. So, they filled the bottle full of milk, and they made the sign for her to come back when they were finished. So, she went back home, and she gave the bottle to the baby. So, that’s how - that was the beginning of the bond.
So, anyway she was waiting for the furniture to come from Quebec and she had nothing there, no chairs, no nothing. She had some barrels and stuff. So, anyway, she met- Mr. Hearn, was down from Montreal and she said, “Mr. Hearn” and he said, “How do you do, Mrs. Presseau?” and he kept walking. So, she said, “Mr. Hearn, I want to speak to you.” So anyway, after calling him two or three times, he stopped, and she went there, and she said, “Look”, she says, “you told for us to come over here. The house is empty.” And she says, “How are we going to live with all the children and everything?” So, he said to her, he said, “You go to the cook house. You ask them anything you want, and they’ll give it to you. “Well”, she says, “When my furniture and stuff come; it will be here in two weeks time, she said, “then I won’t bother you anymore”, she said. “That’s fine”, he said. Then she went to the cookhouse and she asked them for things that she could cook with. She got the stuff she needed.
About the Madeleine's Family
Bernie: She had 14 kids, was it?
Madeleine: There were three born in Stirling. Guy, Roland and Jacques.
Bernie: She didn’t have them all (when they came to Stirling).
Madeleine: No, she didn’t have them all.
Bernie: There were ten or eleven, then.
Madeleine: There was Horence and Gerry and Rene were working at the mine.
Bernie: Oh yeah.
Madeleine: Gerry and them - they were in the mill. You know, they didn’t go down (underground), and Dad was working in the Powerhouse and that’s where they were working. There was five of us in the convent, the boarding school in Arichat. We were there for three years then we moved to Cheticamp because there, in Arichat, they wouldn’t take any more boys and Mother didn’t want to separate the family in the boarding schools. So, we went to Cheticamp for three more years. And the last year I was there, Yvette got married that summer and she left in 1938 to go back to Quebec. She got married that summer and then she went to Three Rivers.
The language
Bernie: Could you speak English when you came here?
Madeleine: No, none of us did. The men, yes, because they were always around the men. Couturier couldn’t speak English. They used to go to the store and when they wanted something - shells for their guns, Arthur Couturier, and he says he went to the store and he said, “Bang, Bang” so Mr. John G MacLeod said, “OK”. He knew what he wanted so he gave him what he wanted. None of them could talk English. They learned that in the next fifteen years in Stirling. I learned – when I went to Arichat. I was ten when I was started school and I was too big to go in grade 1 with the little ones so they put me in Grade 3. And I couldn’t say a word of English. So, that’s how I started learning English like that.
Going to Church
Bernie: They used to come down to church and that in Mira, did they?
Madeleine: Not all the time. Dad used to love going to Lower L’Ardoise. It was the same distance from L’Ardoise to Stirling as it was from Grand Mira to Stirling - twenty-seven miles (back and forth).
Bernie: That was quite the trip.
Madeleine: It was quite a trip. I think we’d go every Sunday. One of us would stay home to prepare meals and the meals would be ready when they came back home.
Madeleine: They were one of the first ones there. They used to meet Johnny Black with the truck. He used to go and get the people and take them to Mira and one time his truck broke down and dad was coming to church, and he stopped, and he looked at his car and got it going. It was full of Grand Mira people coming to the church.
Bernie: That’s quite the trip now compared to even back then.
Boarding School
Madeleine: Oh yes, yes, yes. It took a week to go to Cheticamp, with what we took up. We had trunks and everything else. We had all our winter clothes and we’d stay in Cheticamp or Arichat for the whole year and we weren’t home for Christmas. We’d come back in July and August. And then September back in Cheticamp. The school would be closed every summer. We’d mark everything, shoes, boots, stockings, everything I would bring back, we put our name on, so when it was sent to the laundry, so that it wouldn’t get mixed.
How Madeleine met John Joe (MacEachern)
Bernie: When did you meet Dad? When did that happen?
Madeleine: That happened, wait now.
Bernie: What year would that be?
Madeleine: That was first - 1937. We had confession at the house, and it was in my mother’s bedroom and I met him that summer of 1937 and I went back to the convent then. In 1938 I came back and I was home and then in 1939 I was married.
Bernie: 1939?
Madeleine: Yeah. So, I knew him, when he came out of confession, who was there - John Angus’ (Gillis) brother, the one that drowned there.
Bernie: Danny?
Madeleine: Danny (Gillis).
Madeleine: With the priest - a server - and when your father came out, I said to Danny, “I’m going to marry that fellow yet.” I meant that and that’s what happened (laughter). I never went out with anybody.
Madeleine: So anyway, I stayed home that time, 1938. Yvette went away to Quebec and all that. Dad says, “Time for you to stay home and look after your mother”, so in 1939 I got married.
Bernie: You had a double wedding, eh?
Madeleine: With Armand and Florence.
Madeleine: He would skate from Stirling, go as far as he could on the road and as far as you could go on the water (River).
Bernie: Who was that?
Madeleine: Armand, going to see Florence in the wintertime.
Bernie: He skated there!
Madeleine: Yeah, skated there, quite a piece from Stirling to Martin D’s (Gillis - Grand Mira North). He skated and they, of course, they wouldn’t let him go that night. They said, “You’re going to stay here. He stayed over. So, what Armand decided was he was going to get married, so, well it was going to be one wedding, may as well have the two of us married together. We were dressed so nice. The two of us, same dresses, same things and we got married. Florence changed the time twice. The third time she decided to get married on Dad’s birthday, Sept 19/1939. So we got married in Grand Mira church.
Bernie: So, you used to go up for a visit to Stirling on a Sunday or something. Tell me about the time…
Exploring the Area
Madeleine: When Dad first came there wasn’t a place in the whole of Cape Breton that we didn’t visit. “Where are we going to today?” They’d go everywhere. They went to – what do they call it – the beach there?
Bernie: Point Michaud
Madeleine: Point Michaud beach. They used to go there. That was beautiful in summer. And they’d go somewhere everyday, every day. There wasn’t a place they didn’t visit, on Cape Breton Island.
Bernie: Sunday drives?
Madeleine: Sunday drives.
Bernie: He must have had a pretty good vehicle, then?
Madeleine. Oh yeah. He bought a brand-new Nash Rambler. When he left Quebec that was a brand-new car. And do you know who bought that Nash, Gordie’s father.
Bernie: Is that right?
Madeleine: Then we got another car. We always had a good car. He always looked after his car.
Bernie: I guess there still were a lot of horse and sleighs.
Madeleine: Oh yes, oh yes.
Bernie: Didn’t you go up one Sunday with Harry Thomas?
Madeleine: Yes, up to Stirling, yes, up the river, the Mira River. We crossed over at Victoria Bridge and we had to go the rest of the trip on the road, you know, and he had a horse. He had the horse there from the North side that he borrowed.
Bernie: So, you went up the river was it?
Madeleine: Yeah, we started from our shore:
Bernie: And you went straight up the river (up as far as Victoria Bridge)?
Madeleine: Who lived near Johnny Jim there. - next door -Fraser. We got the horse from Fraser. And he says if the horse goes through, you can jump out. Harry, your father, and I. Harry was working for your father the first year.
Bernie: Cutting in the woods.
Madeleine: Cutting in the woods. Another man was working twitching logs.
Madeleine: Yeah, anyway, another Sunday, Dad had that dam stallion. The devil was in him. He used to gallop and gallop and gallop and if there was another horse in front of him he would race to catch up to it. That was a horse that they, wait now, what’s his name, we used to go every Sunday - Gillis. Gillis had the horses. They used to go up that way.
Bernie: Who was “God Bless you”.
Madeleine: He was a man who lived halfway between Stirling and (Grand Mira). He used to go to Stirling to mass.
Bernie: to church up in Mira?
Madeleine: No, no in Stirling, at the mine.
Bernie: Oh, the priest was up there.
Madeleine: Yeah, he’d come there. He never put his necktie or put his shoes. He had big boots. So, he’d put on the shoes when he’d get in the house and he’d get somebody to put his necktie for him. Oh my, the darn horse. And Gillis’ horse was ahead of ours and ours knew he was ahead. It started going crazy. He started going so fast that he caught up to them. And you couldn’t hold him back. God Blessed, and we kept on. It was a long time ago. So, as it happened, Martin D and John Alex (Gillis) had come up to see Florence in Stirling. She was living there with Armand. So, John Alex had had the horse there, and was at Stirling. I was that scared. “So that’s alright”, John Alex said, “come on with us, since you won’t be scared.” Mary (Bernard - MacPhee/Gillis) was there. And they went to the Northside and your father said, “I’ll come pick you up.” He says,” I’ll go across the river to John Jim’s (MaEachern)”, and I was to walk from Martin D Gillis, “and I’ll pick you up there and we’ll come back”. So, we were coming back, and we said we may as well pick a short cut and we’d come out at Currie’s there, you know. So, we started walking because it was good and solid but when we got to Currie’s there, the cove there, we started getting wet. It was getting soft and your father said,. “We’d better go back inside, so we can walk past that spot there.”
Bernie: You were walking, were you?
Madeleine: Yes, I was walking. I walked as far as John Jim’s and then Dad started coming across. So, when we got home I was all wet. Near Curries, there’s something there .
Bernie: A brook there.
Madeleine: A brook or something. It was getting soft.
Madeleine: And your father says, “Come on, we’ll go in, instead of going around, we’ll get solid ice and then we’ll go.” Those were the days, Oh Gee Gosh.
Arthur's Obituary
Bernie: OK. I’m just going to read a bit of the Obituary of Arthur Presseau (madeleine's father).
“Deceased June 19, 1955. Aged 67, Calumet Islands, Quebec. (That would be my grandfather). He was a well-known resident of Stirling Mines, Richmond County, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Mr. Presseau was born in Montreal and resided in Stirling Mines for 15 years before moving to Calumet Island. He was living there for 11 years. He is survived by his widow and fourteen children. The sons and daughters are:
Bernie: It is probably be easier for me to do the sons this way. The oldest was Horence; Gerald, which is Gerry; Rene; Armand; Yvette; Madeleine; Irene; Raymond; John (or Jean); Alberta; Gedeon, Guy; Roland and Jacques. In the obituary, they have, "the daughters are: Mrs. Charlie Cote, (which is Yvette), Noranda, Quebec; Mrs. John J MacEachern (Madeleine), Grand Mira South, Mrs. Florimond Carriveau (which is Irene), Calumet Island; Mrs. Gerard Sicard, (Alberte), Montreal; Horence of Montreal; Gerard and Armand in Sydney at that time. Raymond and Jacques in Quebec, Jean in Ottawa, Guy in Ontario and Gedeon in Vancouver and Roland at home, that’d be in Calumet Island, and Raymond in Montreal. That was quite a family Fourteen in all.
Madeleine: (expressing her agreement)
Exilda (Madeleine's mother)
Bernie: And just a bit on my grandmother. Her maiden name was Larocque, Exilda Larocque, before she married. She died at the age of ninety, May 1, 1981 Community Hospital in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec. She lived to be an old age. And that’s basically it. Thank you