“I just love it and I am looking forward to it,” former Moose Jaw resident Bernice Stirton says about becoming a centarian. Stirton turns 100 years young on October 27th- despite feeling like living until 85 is a good age to live to.
During her lifetime, Stirton has seen a full spectrum of changes. From taking a horse and buggy to school to today with our modern means of transport.
“I just couldn’t believe it all,” she said when asked about all of the changes that have happened in her lifetime.
“I went to school until grade eight and then I moved into Moose Jaw. Everything was wonderful,” she said.
Stirton attended the one room country school, Petrolia School, during the Great Depression. Petrolia is a district south and east of Moose Jaw near Pasqua. Her daughter, Dorenda Bailey, attended the same small country school as a child.
“My mom and dad both went to Petrolia School; their parents sort of homesteaded there,” Bailey said. “Yeah my mom went to the same school as I did and she rode horse and buggy to school.”
Every student who attended school went there by horse and buggy and the horses were stabled during the day in the school’s barn. Those who lived nearby would walk.
Stirton said in the winter it wasn’t much fun.
“Oh well we just put up with it,” she said. She would sit up on a bale of hay and they had blankets to help stay warm.
Stirton (nee Boyle) would meet her future husband Alan Stirton at Petrolia School and the couple would marry in 1942 at Petrolia Church.
Alan and Bernice married during the middle of the Second World War when he was on three days leave in 1942. The couple would spend over a year apart as Alan was enlisted in the Service as a member of the air force.
“We didn’t see each other at all. All there was were letters,” Stirton said.
Alan was stationed as a flight instructor at St. Catherine’s, Ontario. Later he would be stationed in Ireland and he flew ‘flying boats’ over the ocean searching for
enemy submarines.
Stirton stayed at home in Moose Jaw until Alan came back and then they went farming, daughter Bailey said about her parents.
The couple farmed until the 1970’s in the Petrolia region near Pasqua growing mainly wheat and barley, as well as being one of the first area farmers to grow flax. They then retired in Moose Jaw.
“He (Alan) loved flying and she was at home in Moose Jaw while he was away at the war. His dad had some land so they started to farm then. She grew a big garden every year,” Bailey said.
The farm did not have running water and cooking was done on a wood stove.
She would gather with other farm wives in a now defunct group called the Petrolia Tea Timers to socialize with.
Bernice and Alan went on to raise four girls together, her “pride and joy” she said. She encouraged them all to get a good education.
“(Life on the farm was hard) but we just had to do it,” says Stirton. “You never thought about anything, you know; we just went along. We had to live without this and we had to do without that and that is the way the world lived.”
Alan as a former military pilot followed the Canadian Snowbirds religiously as they based nearby at the airbase then known as CFB Moose Jaw (today’s 15 Wing).
Alan and Bernice would move to British Columbia to retire eventually ending up in Comox.
Bernice now lives in a senior’s home near Comox (BC), “and of course the Snowbirds come out there every spring to do their formations and she just loves that,” Bailey said.
“One of things she was most proud of was that her husband was a pilot in the war, [so] they followed the Moose Jaw Snow Birds. She loves the Snowbirds and calls them “her boys.”
Sadly, Alan passed away a decade ago but Bernice continues to look forward to when the Snowbirds visits each year.
She misses Moose Jaw dearly and is very proud to be from Moose Jaw.
