“Father’s name was Valentine Schnepf.  He came to Canada in 1905 and bought land in the Carroll District.  We didn’t move up until 1911.  We left New Windsor, Illinois, by train. Of course, our supplies, horses, and household things were loaded in a freight car and my brother, John, and brother-in-law, Otis Tomlinson came in the car.  It had all been hauled to the car in a lumber wagon and it all left a week before we did. Dad and our whole family came by train from Rock Island, Illinois.

It was in Moose Jaw we got on this train, “Immigrant”, they called it, and we came right on to Calgary.  The seats were slat seats, just benches really, and you couldn’t really sleep, just sat up….. We waited for the train to come to Lacombe.  Then we waited for the train to come to Alix, so we travelled by train all the way….

We got into Alix on March 10, 1911.  We stayed at the Grand Hotel that was there on the same site that the Catholic Church [later stood].  We stayed there a whole week before our car came.  We had to unload everything, so Dad unloaded the horses first and took them to the livery barn.  Of course, our horses ate corn and ate it right off the cob.  The fellow at the livery put some in for the other horses and it scared them.  I know my brother said the fellow thought it so funny to see the horses eat corn like that…

The Grand Hotel was a two-storied building and it had 22 rooms upstairs for bedrooms.  There was a long hallway and a parlour downstairs, a kitchen…then the dining room, and of course the bar and waiting room. It was a big place.  Mr. King bought it from Mr. Bell, then in ’14, I think, he sold to Mr. Frisch.  Soon after prohibition came in, he just left and the hotel stood vacant.  A farmer bought it and tore it down.

It was in March [1911] when we came, of course, but when summer came, it was beautiful….

There were all kinds of fruit, saskatoons, and wild strawberries you could pick by the pailful, great big ones.  Mom canned them by the quart.  Then raspberries, pinchberries, and chokecherries: it would be purple with them.

How did we wash our clothes?  In those days you didn’t have washers and driers, and you carried your water from the well.  We made soap from grease and lye, Mom even made face soap; the only difference was she put perfume in it and made it like a cake of soap.  Then, too, you had to prepare all your own meat, butcher, make sausage, and smoke the meat. We baked bread using a starter, mostly.  My mother made vinegar so there was always plenty of vinegar.  We made butter with a dasher and a stone jar and later with a barrel churn as there was a lot of butter made. The smoked meat was put in sacks and usually buried in grain, as it was cold and kept the meat from moulding.  The sausage and spare ribs were fried down, put in a stone crock, covered with lard, and set in a cold place.  Yes, everything was done.  If you wanted vegetables and fruit for winter, you canned them.  You didn’t buy anything in those days.  We had a butter maker made from wood, it had a roller to work every bit of liquid out of it.”

This article is from the book Pioneers and Progress, a history of the Alix-Clive area printed in 1974 by DW Friesen and Sons Ltd., Calgary.  Copies of it and of its follow-up Gleanings are available for sale at the Alix Public Library, Alix Wagon Wheel Museum, and Alix Home Hardware.