My earliest memories are of events that happened when we lived at Potvin’s house, a much improved house over the log one a half mile south-east where the family lived at the time I was born. Although some people say I was too young to remember it, I am sure I do remember when a new sister came into our family. Two younger sisters were born at Potvin’s house: Genevieve and Jean. I do concede that it could not have been Genevieve, who was less than three years younger than myself, so it must have been Jean, a little less than four years younger.

There was a strange lady in our house, with a lot of busy activity going on when we woke that day and we noisy children had been sent outside to play before breakfast. We had a make-shift teeter-totter which was a plank over something, maybe a log or barrel but not really very high. I was on one end with somebody else on the other when somebody, a grown-up, came out of the house to announce we could come in and we had a new baby sister. Of course, it was years later that I determined that the strange lady was a midwife and that Jean had arrived so close to midnight that we celebrated her birthday differently than that at which it was officially registered.

Sue’s note. As I posted this I asked Dad what he remembered about Potvin’s house. He mentions it often in his stories to me. Being that he was only about 3 1/2 when Auntie Jean was born he couldn’t describe much about it for me. He remembers that it was a much nicer house than they had been in. “Kind of square” with no porch and steps up to the door that was about the height of the top of his 3 year old head. He says it did have a cement basement but doesn’t remember what was in that basement, not a furnace he thinks.

It must have been well built because he says that years after they left it the new owners moved it to North Battleford and their children lived in it for years. He says that as far as he knows it is still there.