Published in The BANAR, November 2017 by Joce Whyte
Second Blackburn Public School: A brick school was built on the northwest corner of Adam Kemp’s farm after the wooden school burnt down in 1915.
I have fond memories of my parents Howard and Irene Kemp. They made a happy home for us seven kids and I was the youngest and a little spoiled by everyone. Dad loved his six horses and Mother loved the Holstein cattle that we had on our 100 acre farm in Blackburn.
We supplied the Ottawa Dairy with many eight gallon cans of milk and we stored the cans in a cement tank filled with water and ice. Dad would go each winter to the Ottawa River and cut blocks of ice, bring them home with a team of horses and would store them covered with saw dust. We used the ice in the ice box in the house too.
On the 10th of each month we would receive our milk cheque and would go to the Byward Market where all the farmers gathered. Mother and my youngest brother Ken sold the eggs and chickens and bought the food for the month. We filled our gallon bottles with vinegar and molasses. The groceries were in brown bags tied with string. If I was good Dad would buy me a plaid dress and a nickels worth of candy. Dad let a bee man use our rented land each year over on the Montreal Road in exchange for an eight gallon can of honey.
The feed truck delivering cattle food would stop at the house with a 100 pound bag of white sugar, 50 pounds of brown sugar, a bag of rolled oats and bag of wheat flakes for porridge.
The Raleigh man and Watkins man came around with a suitcase of medicines we could buy.
The baker came a couple of times a week.
In public school we kids were the caretakers and we used to go early and light the wood furnace. It was our job to keep it going until 4 o’clock. We swept the floor after school. In the morning we carried in water for drinking and cleaning. On Saturdays we scrubbed the school and then the outdoor toilets. We got $5 a month to do this.