She passed away in and when I was cleaning out her belongings I found some handwritten pages. I was born October 21st, , in Loverna, Saskatchewan. My grandfather William Kinsey McFarland helped plot out the town and it is named after his daughter, my aunt — Edith Loverna — though everyone called her Vernie. Dad and Aunt Vernie were their only children and Dad was 10 years younger than her.
My mother was a school teacher and was hired to teach at Antelope School near Loverna. This is how they happened to meet. Her maiden name was Stella Maude Fitzgerald and she was the eldest of 10 children.
Uncle Gorden was next and he also became a school teacher, later a principal, and later became Superintendent of Education for the province of Saskatchewan. Everyone called her Minnie. My father and mother married at her parents house in Meota, Saskatchewan. Dad also had a homestead in Loverna, and that is where I was born. Two years later my little brother Charles Lorry was born. When I was four years old Dad left and went to Detroit, got a job and sent for us. I still remember our train trip.
Our first house was brand new and had lead pipes which eventually caused my mother and I to have lead poisoning. It was miserable. Then Dad decided to build his own house near some friends of ours. When it was finished enough to live in, we moved in. That was a bad luck decision, and a bad luck place, because within the next year my little brother died of spinal meningitis probably polio , my mother was so ill with tuberculosis she became bed ridden — our house burned down, and while staying with friends Dad knew from Loverna she died — on my 6th birthday in fact.
Dad took me up to Canada to live with his parents who were now farming at Edam, Saskatchewan. I heard about her most of my life in Canada, and as long as my Grandma Fitzgerald was alive. They had me skip a grade and I rode a horse to school. Grandma was really good to me. I had nice clothes — probably I was spoiled. The landing at the top of the stars going upstairs was my play area as it was quite large, and I had shelves for books, twenty some dolls, dishes, etc. I was a happy little girl while she lived and I was there until Grandma died when I was 9.
