Eagles and Cats on a Cold day....

 Cold afternoon.......eagles flying into the sun, straight up above................

 White Cat sits on fence, contemplating some sort of exciting adventure .........

 White Cat sees the eagle.........................

 The eagle MUST see White Cat......but continues its swaying in the cold breeze. I think they coast on the wind for fun.........I don't think it's always to do with hunting. Unless they come across a fluffy white cat...........

                                      The coast moutains just slip away in to the snow belt.

From an autograph book dated 1930-1940

 I have this amazing autograph book, my mum kept during the 1930's, when she lived in Regina as a nanny. THough she would never tell y ou that she worked as a nanny. She married my dad in 1933 and moved to Victoria, glad to get away from the farm and the hard life of farm work. She loved poety, and would copy copious amounts of it. Some of these writings I found , in this little book, were incomplete.

 I have hardly anything from my dad. Except for a few entries in this book. At the time he worked at teh docks, in Victoria.

 The pages are quite stained, but none them are torn.....

 This is my grand father's ( Robert Shiels) writing.....the only example I found.

 This is from Kay, mum's best friend for years. She was killed a few years after this, in a bad car crash on the Malahat.  Kay pinned a lock of her hair into the book for safe keeping.

 Grandmother......Isabella Glen Shiels................apparently she was a bit of a tartar.

 Isabelle Cathie.....another one of mum's good friends. She painted cards for many years. I still have quite a number of those cards.

 My aunt, Isobel Schreder......she was 10 years younger.....not sure of the date, but about 1932, she would have been about 14

 My uncle, Stuart Shiels, second to youngest....Isobel being the youngest,he  went into the army as a Signaller about 10 years later.

                             My dad's sister, with an old diaper pin pinned into the pages.Can't believe I have a bit of each of them, and there are many more entries, with friends, relatives, poems, sayings, everything but recipes.......these people seem to just pop out of the pages once more........and live for just a moment longer.

Way Back When......

It is really something to be going through old photographs. Forgetting that you once saw them. Forgetting that these people lived, and stuck their feet in the dirt and had birthday parties and lived.....I have been cataloguing old photos. Over 6000 of them to be exact. They are all labelled, but all on one "card", so I am currently plaing them into folders, itemized and figured out so that anyone else looking at them will know who, what and where. Most of the old photos are unlabelled, but I have  a pretty good idea.... For example, in this first picture I know that these are the four Shiels siblings. My Uncle Bill on the far left, my mum, Nessie, beside him, Isobel  beside her and Stuart ( who later became a WW 2 war heroe) on the end. As for the  beautiful collie with them, I have no idea of her name, except that she is in numerous pictures and was well loved. This was the car of a visiting friend, to the Shiels' farm, in Bethune, Saskatchewan. Horse and Buggy was good enough for my grandparents.......so a car on the farm was pretty cool.

 Keddleston Girls Basketball team, dated Sept 8th, 1933.  My aunt Isobel is 3rd from the end. Keddleston exists no more, destroyed in a terrible fire  some years down the road. These girls were very proud of their "bloomers"...all the rage, new in the depression era.

 Car going down prairie road in 1933. I want to know where it is going, and where has it been and who is in that car. I love this photograph......draws you in...makes you want to go walking along the dusty gravel.

 My dad, Davy, in the 1950's, taking out a boat in Telegraph Bay, Victoria B.C. My mum once told me that the day was calm and the water like glass. A perfect day.

 Cut from a 1950's memorial newspaper.....in remembrance of those who died during the war. Just love this poem.

 My old house, built at 1425 Fairfield Road, in the  last stages of construction. The  house still stands, but has other homes around it and a full fledged garage.

Mymum and dad in the 1950's, before he got sick. Mum said they loved to wander around Beacon Hill Park in the spring time.  I still remember that she loved to kick off her shoes and sit on the ground.......just like she used to when gowing up on the farm.
   Pictures, I suppose do tell a thousand tales, and more. I can hardly wait to see what the next 1000 pics have to say....