I began most of my interviews by explaining in a bit more detail what we wanted to know, and why. I told Mrs B we had found that many women had had their babies in total isolation. How did they cope? I told her, “We’ve found that some ladies were under conditions we found quite severe. Other ladies weren’t in difficulty at all, and things went along quite swimmingly for them.” I explained that those stories were all equally valuable, because they all give a picture of the time.

It always amused me when the interview subject jumped right in the moment I stopped speaking, as Mrs B does here. It was like a dam being breached. After being blocked by taboo and lack of interest for so many years, finally, a few questions from a curious stranger and torrents of experiences could no longer be contained. They came rushing out.

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MRS B.: Well, my husband’s mother, her husband took her over to a neighbour’s to stay, while he went to get her cousin to stay with her. And when he came back she’d had the baby.

KAREN: Oh, really!

MRS B.: They’re a great friend of ours, actually. Where she stayed with them, but he weighed seven pounds, and she was just a little thing, just really up to my shoulder. But she had no trouble, and this older woman had the baby all dressed and up in the rocking chair when the father came home.

KAREN: He missed everything! He was probably quite happy, anyway.

Here, I interject with a few housekeeping comments. I’m trying to slow things down so I can organize the timeline of the story a bit better. I note on the tape that I’m interviewing Mrs N. B., on May 27, 1997. I ask her if she’d mind telling me how old she is. She tells me she is 83, born in 1913, and she was a little over 20 years old when she had her first baby.

As I write this, the COVID-19 virus is gathering momentum globally, and we have begun implementing containment measures in Saskatchewan. Last week, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic. It was purely by chance that I decided to post Mrs B’s story next, so this exchange was especially poignant:

KAREN: And what did your husband do?

MRS B.: He was farming.

KAREN: So you were a farm wife right away?

MRS B.: Ya.

KAREN: How did you find that?

MRS B.: Well, it was different, anyway. My father was a minister. So I always lived in town. Actually, my adoptive parents… because my mother died in 1918 with that, you know, after the war, the flu epidemic. She had it just before I was five years old.

KAREN: One of the other ladies I was talking to told me a story of how… I think it was her mother… she lost her father in the flu epidemic, so her mother married a fellow who’d lost his wife in the flu epidemic so they could combine families, and you know, the children would have both a mother and father. It was more of a marriage of practicality.(I’ll link to this story when I find it.)

MRS B.: They lived at Gravelbourg then. And it was terrible there. All the doctors died with it. And they took the caskets out on the drays, you know, always had those horse-drawn drays, that take luggage and everything you know? To the trains. Four children died in one family. But there was four of us, like, we had… The baby was eight months old and a neighbour took him.

KAREN: So were you raised together with your siblings?

MRS B.: No.

KAREN: Are you in touch with them now?

MRS B.: They’re all gone now. My oldest brother drowned when he was 21. But my other brother was only 52, he died with cancer. And my other brother, … he only found me, actually, the year he died. So they’re all gone. I’m the only one left.

Mrs B’s husband had been farming with his father, but when they married and had their first baby, they moved to their own farm near Welwyn, Saskatchewan, north of Moosomin, “when Manitoba bordered it.”

KAREN: I want to sort of follow the course of your pregnancy along, just a little bit. When you first found out you were expecting, had you any idea of the processes that your body would go through’? Had you any idea? Did you understand the forces of labor and delivery?

MRS B.: I was very athletic, and it didn’t bother me at all.

KAREN: Really?

MRS B.: No. Then we went back to his parents, like, I had the baby there, eh?

KAREN: Had you been able to discuss being pregnant and having babies with anybody? We found it was sometimes just not talked about. How about appearing in public with a big tummy, is that something you would have done?

MRS B.: It didn’t bother me at all.

KAREN: It didn’t bother you?

MRS B.: No.

KAREN: So you would have gone out in town?

MRS B.: Uh hm.

KAREN: Oh yes. You’re quite a young thing compared to some of them that I’ve talked to. The 97-year old lady I talked to, (Mrs N. S) no way was she appearing in public with a big tummy. Did you see a doctor at any time?

Compare, also, with Mrs T. M. born in 1907.

MRS B.: No.

KAREN: During the pregnancy? The beginning and during the pregnancy?

MRS B.: No. Not really.

KAREN: You knew you were expecting from your own knowledge. You didn’t have any prenatal care or anything?

MRS B.: No. The only time they ever did was if they had problems. I was quite healthy.

KAREN: Had you been, you know, sort of taught anything about diet or exercise?

MRS B.: No.

KAREN: How about your feelings, as you were progressing through the pregnancy, were you feeling… was there any kind of nervousness, any trepidation, any worry, about…

MRS B.: No, I don’t think so, because I was so healthy, eh? I guess…

KAREN: You said you were quite athletic, were you involved in sports or anything?

MRS B.: Well, I played ball, and played hockey, ya.

KAREN: Oh cool! Good! Well you can tell me a little bit about the baby’s birth.

MRS B.: In October, the 25th of October…

There is a brief time-out here as she confuses the date of her first baby’s birth with her own birthdate, in 1913. We have a few laughs as she realizes she’s told me she had the baby when she was a baby.