Marcel Croteau

This biography was written by Marcel's wife Clara in 1997 and is posted here as it was received. It details the hardship of farming, the love and dedication of parents and their joy of world travel.

Marcel Croteau was born to Anthime and Irene Croteau (Mousette) in May 1918 on the farm located a few miles out of Debden. He had six brothers living and two sisters, two brothers had passed away in North Dakota before his parents moved to Canada.

When he was about six months old, in November of 1919, tragedy struck the family. Two more brothers and one sister passed away during the Spanish flu epidemic.

When he was old enough he walked to school with the older ones, going to Debden. A few years later Winslow Lake School near Mattes was opened. Now it was not so far to walk anymore. In his teens he quit school to help his parents on the farm, helping to make hay in the summer, baling it in the winter and helping with regular farm chores.

In 1935 he went to North Dakota with his Dad and a brother Lionel to visit his grandmother Zelia, as well as some of the aunts. His grandfather Flavien had already passed away. Life on the farm continued in this way. The older boys left home to find jobs, sister Marie entered the convent. Mike, Romeo, Alphie and Lionel got married. Now only Marcel and his youngest sister, Cecile were left at home.

In 1942 Marcel was called up into the army, taking his basic training in Regina, then on to Naniamo for three weeks, three weeks in Esquimalt, training as an anti-aircraft gunner. Then he was sent out to the Queen Charlotte Islands, after sometime he was granted leave to come back home to help on the farm, where he could remain until he got his discharge.

One cold winter's day in 1945 a bob sleigh with a team of horses drove into the yard. It was his sister-in-law, Lena Croteau (Lionel's wife). She had a passenger, the school teacher from Balsandale school. This episode was to change his whole life, as he met his future wife, Clara Zunti.

Clara was born on her parents homestead, N.E.22,37,24 W.3rd in 1922. She grew up there going to school in Deer Lodge, living on a farm about nine miles from the town of Luseland. Later on she took her Grade X11 in Saskatoon, then six weeks of teacher training. It was still during the war and there was a severe shortage of teachers. One day one of the instructors came into the classroom with a list of schools still looking for someone to start teaching at various places at the end of August.

Clara listened to the names of different schools, then decided to volunteer to teach at Balsamdale, a school near Polworth, boarding at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Baker. During the winter Mr. Baker had gone out to B.C. to try to find some work. Mrs. Baker was left to do chores. As Lionel was in the army overseas, Lena came to help her sister, Mrs. Baker with the chores. So one Sunday Lena decided to borrow the horses and sleigh and drive up to her in-laws so she could go to church with them on Sunday morning.

One day towards spring, Marcel's sister, Cecile came to Polworth on the train to visit with Lena as the latter was leaving there soon to go to Prince Albert. Marcel must have put a bug in Cecile's ear, asking her to invite Clara up for the week-end.

This was a simple matter as the train from Prince Albert traveled through Polworth and Debden on a run to Big River. It was a mixed train, freight and one passenger car. It went up to Big River Friday afternoon about five. Marcel was willing to take Clara back on Sunday afternoon to be back at school Monday. Marcel's dad had sold the car sometime earlier, so the good old horse and buggy was the mode of travel. By the end of June these two people decided they would be willing to spend their lives together.

In July Clara's older sister got married, so it was only natural that Marcel was invited to that wedding - this is when he met his future in-laws.

In the fall Clara taught school west of Bodmin, walking about a mile to school. The building was cold and drafty. First thing Clara's knee swelled up terribly, very painful. The doctor ordered her to stay off her feet, so rather than continue teaching, wedding plans were made for January, 1946. Clara would have had to go back for more studies.

Marcel's mother was not too well so if the wedding had taken place in Luseland, his parents would not have been able to come to the wedding. So the wedding took place in Debden. Clara's parents and her sister, who was the bridesmaid, came up to Mattes on the train. After the ceremony at the church, the dinner and supper were at the house, with a few more people invited for the evening.

The next day, Mr. and Mrs. Zunti, Dorothy and the newlyweds took the train. For their honeymoon the couple first visited her sister in Humboldt, then went to Luseland where a small party was held in the bride's home. On their way back home they visited Marcel's sister, Marie(called Sister St. Alban then) in Duck Lake. They lived with Marcel's parents for sometime until the latter had a new house built in town. Cecile in the meantime, decided to visit one of her friends in Thunderbay where she got a job, eventually meeting her husband to be and was married the following October.

Work on a farm never ceases. After Marcel was gone all day, often baling hay for others or for himself, doing chores etc. It was still with the stationary baler powered by horses. To move it from place, it had to be jacked up, wheels put underneath it for transport, then pulled by a team of horses to the next place, after which the wheels had to be removed again.

Summertime was haying time, but help was no longer readily available so some labour saving device had to be made. Rather than loading all the hay in the rack as previously, a sweep was constructed of lumber. Two teams of horses pulled the sweep, one on each end, first gathering up the bunched hay, then bringing it to the stack. Two long poles were placed on the end of the pile then the two teams of horses, one on each side of the stack, pulled the sweep up to put more hay on the pile. The stack had to be topped by hand to spread the hay, making a waterproof barrier. If left as the hay was dumped, there would have been uneven spots where the water would have gathered, soaking the hay underneath causing it to rot.

In the wintertime the hay had to be hauled from the field to the barn for the cattle. Often there would be huge snowdrifts which had to be shoveled out before you could get to the stacks. Any hay not used for the cattle was baled and sold. At first the baled hay was shipped by freight on a box car. Later the freight charges became so expensive so some companies sent their trucks out to pick up the hay on the farm.

In 1952 Marcel bought his first tractor and power mower which made cutting hay so much faster than with the horses. Two years later an automatic baler was bought, the idea being to bale the hay right in the field rather than having to stack it first. That first year was a very wet summer so a lot of hay spoiled before it could be picked up. We also expected that the regular hay rake would work with the new baler. Not so! Now we had to invest in a side delivery rake- so much for progress! Haying was still a lot of hard work but it was no longer so labour intensive, even though the individual bales had to be picked up from the field and stacked in the yard later on.

Our first girl, Antoinette, was born in March 1948, then son Casper two years later in January 1950 and Lorraine in 196l. We had always hoped to have a bigger family but that was not to be. We were thankful for our three children.

In 1950 we bought a truck which made hauling the milk to the cheese factory much less time consuming. In the spring of 1952 Marcel decided to build a top for the back of the truck. We put a mattress in the back, our luggage and used it to make our first trip out to B.C., to see Marcel's two brothers, Romeo and Lionel, stopping first in Edmonton to see Alphie.

Also in 1950 we bought a milking machine so Marcel could milk the cows alone, no more bringing the little ones out to the barn or else leaving them alone in the house. That year we put a coat of stucco onto the house, making it quite a bit warmer as well as giving it a new look. Then in 1952 the power line came to the farm - we had electricity! No more coal oil lamps! Got a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner, later on a deep freeze. So while canning vegetables was still done to a certain extent, the days of freezer food were here.

During the winter Marcel had cut a number of the bigger spruce in the yard. This was sawed into lumber, then used to build an addition to the barn.

About 40 acres were brush cut, then broken. his meant picking roots before the land could be worked and ready for seeding. Then we had a small field of grain. Later on more land was broken and that was eventually put into broom grass, which yielded better than wild hay. As we were heating with wood, a lot of firewood had to be made.

In the spring of 1951 Marcel's mother had passed away. While his dad stayed alone in town for a few years, he finally came back on the farm where he stayed until he passed away in 1966.

In 1956 we traded the truck for a car. We then went to Thunderbay (Port Arthur as it was known then). On the way home we stopped in North Dakota to visit Croteau relatives. Anthime and the two children stayed with Marcel's sister, Cecile, while Cecile's husband Fred and Marcel and I went to Toronto.

We traded the car for another one and with that we traveled quite a bit. Put a tent in the trunk, bedding and camping gear. Gas was a lot cheaper then, so travelling was not nearly as expensive. One year we went to Thunderbay, then Cecile, Fred and Norman went with us, or should I say we went with them as they used their station wagon. We put the luggage on a rack on top and wrapped the tent around it. In Gaspe the plywood board that Fred had put on the bottom of the rack disappeared. Through Quebec all along the highway, children and adults too were standing with loaves of bread or hand carved boats for sale. hat piece of plywood likely ended up as someone's boat!

One year we had gone to Oregon with the car and our tent of course. Through Nevada it was so hot and we ran out of water. It really looked like rattlesnake country with all that sagebrush. No way did anyone want to sleep in the tent, so we did not even take it out of the trunk but waited until we saw a motel where we stayed the night without no air conditioning! The next day we were about two miles out of Eagle Point, OR when there was a severe rattle in the car. Not knowing what it was, we stopped and checked things out. There was nothing we could see so decided to go on into the nearest town to a garage. There we learned an engine bearing was shot. As they did not have the ability to repair in town, we had to leave the car there over the week-end. We phoned a cousin and she came to pick us up. On Monday morning another cousin took Marcel back to Eagle Point to pick up the car.

We had a real nice visit with relatives in Medford. Uncle Xavier had honey bees so he gave us several cans of honey to bring home. Wouldn't you know one of those cans of honey spilled so we had one sweet mess! Someplace along the way we managed to get rid off some of the sticky stuff by sponging things of with water.

Another year we had gone to Spearfish, SD then up to North Dakota. We had planned to camp at one of the regular campsites, but both that and the overflow were completely filled up, so we looked around farther on for a clearing where we could pitch our tent. Suddenly we spied a place that looked promising. That night there was a severe thunderstorm and a lot of rain. In the morning we realized we had camped right under the power line.

One year we went out to BC then up to Barkerville, Prince George, Jasper and Banff, again camping most of the way, except when we stayed with relatives.

By this time besides making hay, Marcel had gotten a job working for the rural municipality, cutting grass along the grid roads in the fall. Then he would leave early in the morning and not return home until after dark, except when it rained.

About this time too, Bang's disease (Brucellosis) had broken out in the cattle. This made it necessary to round up the cattle every so often for the vets to test them and eventually we had to sell the whole herd but later we bought some steers. After another year we bought some heifers hoping to rebuild the herd. As there was only a wire fence between our cattle and the neighbours who also had Bangs in their herd, it was inevitable that it again spread to ours. Once again we sold all the livestock.

This was the beginning of the end of farming so we decided to put up the farm for sale and in the spring of 1976 we bought a lot in town, sold the machinery at an auction and construction was started on a new house in Debden. In August of that year we moved and Marcel quit his job for the municipality when he sold his tractor and mower.

In 1977 Lorraine was going to be taking her Grade ll and it was her last year in Debden school. Marcel had promised to take her to Disneyland. As he never liked city driving nor flying, it was finally decided to go on a tour bus. We all enjoyed it, Marcel especially was hooked on tours now. That was the first of many bus tours we have taken since then. We have been in all 50 states of the union, all the provinces of Canada, as well as several countries in Europe.

Some of the interesting places we have seen include the Capital building in Washington, DC, the White House, the United Nation's building, the Statue of Liberty, President Kennedy's gravesite, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park, Disneyland and Disney World, the space centre. We thought we would get to see one of the shuttles blast off as it was ready to go the next day, however one of the astronauts had a sore throat so the launch was delayed a few days. By this time we had already left the vicinity so did not see it take off.

In Europe we got to see the Vatican, the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the outside of Buckingham Palace, watched the changing of the guard as well as many other interesting places. In Canada we toured the Parliament Buildings, went up the CN Tower in Toronto, saw Niagara Falls, many famous shrines down east, panned for gold in the Yukon, saw the big terminal elevators both in Thunderbay and out at the West Coast.