the good old days in murals - part 1

On our summer holiday we visited the town of Sooke on Vancouver Island. While driving around the town I spied what looked like pictures from old photo album only they were wall-sized! Imagine my delight to discover two entire walls of these reproductions.

I'll share those beautiful and nostalgic murals with you today and next Tuesday. I have captioned each mural with the information displayed beside it.

Loggers using springboards and crosscut saws felled these giant douglas fir trees by hand in 1900.

Mr. Wes Carscadden mowing oats on the Murray farm located at Murray and Goodmere Roads, in 1920.

Woodside farm, established in the 1860s by the Muir family has consistently remained agricultural.

A Jersey cow, vital to the farm in the 1920s resided at the Milne farm.

This barn, built in 1932 at Woodside farm, is a landmark along west Coast Road. Photo taken in the 1970s.

Hay load on the farm of Herb Blythe, in the Kemp Lake area in the 1940s.

Sooke Farmers Institute Exhibit, displayed in Victoria, in 1910.

Margaret Dunbar, during the apple harvest at the family dairy farm, Dewdney Flats, in 1926.

Kay Welsh sitting on a 1929 Studebaker, in 1948, with bountiful potatoes grown on the family's Grant Road farm.

Cluny McPherson (left) and Victor Willerton planting potatoes at the old Adolphus Poirier farm, Otter District, 1988.

Here is a little information about the collection and artist A.J.

I'm trying to figure out why these murals resonate with me so. It surely has something to do with the independent spirit and perseverance that ooze from these pictures. Perhaps it's also because I grew up on a farm and know, at a gut level, what it feels like to care for the earth, work hard, and feel pride (good pride) in the results.

My favourites are the two girls—the young girl (Kay Welsh) perched proudly on the running board of that posh Studebaker between bulging bags of potatoes, and the woman (Margaret Dunbar) with her work-worn face, hooded eyes, and slightly worried expression, posing for just a minute before she carries on to deposit those apples in the cold room, perhaps, or the kitchen where floury crusts are already in pans and waiting for their filling of fresh-crop apples.

Come back next Tuesday for more murals of the good old days.