Living on relief

Heroes Remember

Living on relief

Transcript

I remember when we were living on the dole relief, 6 cents a day. That’s $1.80 a month per person in the family, and my father had to work for that. When he got sick, to get nourishment, we only got the very necessities of life. And when he got sick, he had to get a doctor’s certificate, or prescription, to get like milk, eggs, and stuff like that, the necessities of life, you know, the vitamins. But most he lived on was fish, and pork, and salt beef and things of that nature or what we … the government would give him a little plot of land to seed potatoes and to grow and to try to keep the family going, from starving, and so on and so forth. Interviewer: So as a young boy you were probably out working, at a very young age. Yes, well, I did. I used to work on the fish wharves, and the fishers would come in with salt fish, and the Bowring brothers, or the Jobe (sp) brothers and the big merchants. And we got about five cents an hour. And then, after a while, then they put it up to ten cents an hour.

Description

Mr. Evans describes his family life before enlistment, the hard work and the poverty.

George Harold Evans

George Harold Evans was born March 17, 1926 in St. John’s, Newfoundland. He was one of thirteen children. His father, a First World War Veteran, worked in the Newfoundland fishery and Mr. Evans fished with his father.

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