I’m sitting here now, writing this letter to you, and before my number drops, I would like to bring this to your attention for your magazine. My name is Juanita Williams (nee Dyke). I am 85 years young. Some medical problems. Taking care of myself, living alone, living in Ontario for 43 years. I have been ordering your magazine for some years and buying them off the shelf at different stores. Why, I still have a mag from when I moved here, before you moved back home. My Mother This is about my mother, Lillian Dyke (nee Groves), born in Ropewalk cottage on the corner of Pennywell Road and Ropewalk Lane. The ground then reached back to Mundy Pond Road. She worked at Colonial Cordage before and after she married Cecil Dyke, at $13.00 a week. She then trained for midwife. She had seven children, born and raised on New Pennywell Road in a tarpaper shack. She borned hundreds of babies in the area of Mundy Pond, New Pennywell Rd. and Old Pennywell Rd., and Empire Avenue. She laid out the dead, washed mother and babies for nine days after babies were born, even lined caskets with satin; she sewed up cuts and saved a child’s life after pulling him from our well before the fire truck arrived. She worked all this time and walked to work every day to Buckmaster Circle scrubbing the drill hall on her hands and knees. We lived in our tarpaper shack on Crown land for 15 years until she saved enough money to buy land next door – 14 acres. After that she built a house – which still stands today. With my father sitting on a rock telling mom and me and my brother how to mix mortar and attach the concrete blocks for the basement. But I remember he didn’t tell us to wear gloves, guess we never had any. Well, the concrete dried under my nails and next morning I had blood running from under my nails – my pride and joy, my nails – gone! Well, we built the house and every kid on the road that could drive a nail helped. We were so happy, my brother and family had running water, no more buckets or wood to chop. My mother was the only woman on our road who worked seven days a week. She controlled most of the kids on our road. Would think nothing of a boot in the a** if you were up to no good. Even went into one woman’s home and pulled a guy out from under his bed because he shot me with a BB gun while I was coming out of the henhouse. Mom’s Dad George Groves and his two brothers came over from England in the late 1800s and cleared the ground for Groves Road. Had ground that covered the lake that City is using for drinking water. Now that ground is useless because you can’t build, could contaminate the pond water, the land is a lost cause. My grandfather also had a horse and buggy, black in colour, and did a lot of funerals at the time. I have a picture of him here with his black top hat and white spats on his boots. He was a surly old man who never said much, but actions speak louder than words. He had his bath on Saturday night and took Epsom salts and went to bed. He lived to 82 years, the Epsom salts never killed him, I don’t think. (I beat him in age, haha!) My Father’s Father Came from Greenspond, Bonavista Bay, also his wife Ellen Parsons. Lived on 26 Cashin Avenue. He and his dad were carpenters by trade, they did most of the houses on Cornwall Heights – that was inside lathing. They also did inside lathing of the arena on Bell Island and got marooned there when the U-boats torpedoed the ore ships at the island. My grandfather Sam painted the first sign for the Big Six store on Water Street. Now it’s taken me three days to write, or should I say print, I can’t write, hands are a bit shaky. God love the one that has to edit this, my blessings to her.   (In the end we do not cease to be, we become memories.) Sincerely Yours, Juanita Williams Brockville, ON   Oh, I forgot to tell you, my mother borned twenty children in one family of twenty-one children. One was a set of twins, she couldn’t get him, and the mother had to go to the hospital.