Collection search - Mellows, Leonard -- Interview

Record information – Brief

1

Mellows, Leonard -- Interview

Item number (ISN):

379724

Series title:

[The Great War and Canadian Society]

Hierarchical level:

Item (Accession level)

Date:

1974-07-15

Item number (ISN):

379724

Link to related resource:

Type of material:

Sound recordings

Found in:

Archives / Film, Video and Sound

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Record information – Details

Fonds/collection:

THE GREAT WAR AND CANADIAN SOCIETY PROJECT

Accession:

1975-0098

Media:

Sound

Part:

2 of 2

Production date:

1974-07-15

Production company:

Opportunities for Youth

Production credit:

interviewer, Pauline Pytka

Description:

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Interview of Leonard Mellows, who was born in South Fredericksburgh, Lennox and Addington County, Ontario, in 1905. He talks about: his father’s farm; the only 3 cars in the township; roads maintained by statute labour; travel by team and wagon to the railway or dock; freight carried by sailboat; coal imported by schooner from the U.S.; a 100-acre farm being assessed 6 days of statue labour or six dollars extra; a rail accident at Collins Bay and the construction of a causeway to make transport there safer; the United Empire Loyalist ancestry of many people in south Fredericksburg; his family; his education; moving from the farm in 1935; the popularity of card parties, sleigh rides, dances and concerts in winter; strict attitudes about sex; the church as the social centre of the community; farming; the cheese factory; diaries in Napanee; Massey-Harris farm machinery; harvesting grain; the replacement of binders by combines circa the 1940s; home-made clothing; women’s chores on the farm; attitudes that men were superior to women; diseases such as tuberculosis, diphtheria, cancer and diabetes; childbirth; the sense of national unity when war was declared; the belief that the First World War was the war to end all wars; war as a constant topic of conversation; reading the newspaper; politics; the increased demand for food products during the war and how farmers benefited from this; a battalion recruited from Lennox and Addington County; conscription; reluctance by some men to enlist; the belief by farmers that they were just as important to the war effort as the army was; rationing of tea and sugar; inflation; the constant drift of young people from the farms to the city; the great social change brought about in Lennox and Addington by the Depression; the lack of jobs; eggs selling during the Depression for less than the cost of production; the introduction of rural electrical service in 1931; women’s suffrage; women getting the vote during World War One; farmeretteshelping harvest “hoe crops” and market gardens; the attitude held by many that Quebec was a province of traitors; the 1917 election; the belief that only a “solid Ontario” could defeat Quebec given Quebec’s support of Laurier; racial and religious prejudice of the era; religion as the bulwark of his community’s existence; the predominance of Anglicans, Presbyterians and Methodists in his community; the gradual decline in religious fervour after the Depression of the 1930s; higher education and how this led to a greater questioning of things; the role of the church as a community centre; gradual changes in sexual mores; the farm as a man’s world; the Depression as a greater impact on him than the First World War; the lack of interest by farmers in labour unions because of the contradictory goals of workers who want cheap food and farmers who want cheap equipment and a good marketplace for their produce; importing coat from Pennsylvania; the arrival of radio in the 1920s; the popularity of radio shows such as Amos and Andy, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, soap operas and dramas; fashions such as the shorter dresses popular in the 1920s; the lost art of story-telling; reading the newspaper in the evenings; the heavy work on farms and the lack of labour-saving equipment; short evenings because of early bedtimes; using horses on the farm; his mother’s breast cancer operation in Toronto in 1910; the lack of medical insurance; a local, wealthy American family who did not mix socially with the other residents and whose daughters smoked cigars; an only lady in the township who smoked a pipe and did not care what other people felt about it; the farmers’ lack of sympathy to strikers and the Winnipeg General Strike; listening to people’s conversations on the telephone party lines; getting telephone service circa 1910; hay bales sent to cities to feed horses; and the predominance of cars by 1925.~He also talks about: the family farm as a way of life and not just a business; changes in society such as the quest for higher education, urbanization, the development of technology and the quest for more money; pride of workmanship in the past; the discipline of life on the farm and the decline of racial and religious bigotry.

Language:

English

Notes:

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1. The interviews took place in 1974 and resulted in the publication of a book entitled "The Great War and Canadian Society" edited by Daphne Read - copyright 1978 - New Hogtown Press, Toronto.~2. Release forms, data sheets, and summary analysis/transcripts are available in binders labelled Opportunities for Youth - War and Canadian Society in VSA's audio-visual section.~3. Part of a series of recorded interviews with elderly citizens who lived in Canada during the period of World War I. The interview material consists of their opinions and observations about the war, the war years, and the effect on Canadian society during and after WWI.~4. The interviewee signed an agreement giving consent for a recording of this interview to be placed in the Public Archives of Canada for the purposes of historical research and also signed a publication agreement allowing any transcribed portions of the interview to be used in the book under the condition that no full names, addresses or phone numbers would be published.~5. Subject description is based on information found in the fact sheet, deposit agreement, publication agreement and summary analysis.
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Date modified:: 2024-06-04