1930 - Annual Convention Report

              70 A L B E R T A W O M E N ' S I N S T I T U T ES
opportunities to become leaders in their communities, also gives them a polish
that rubs off the rough spots, so to speak. The students leave these schools
with many happy memories and as many as can attend the annual reunion
of the Alumni Association of each school. This reunion takes place each year
in July, and is a most happy event. It is usually of some educational value
as well as renewing old acquaintances.
There are several worth while scholarships given each year at these
schools as well as the prizes for best work, etc. One thing that always im­presses
me while at these schools is the fine selection of instructors and the
close companionship between the staff and students.
The chief mission of these schools is not to educate students to search
for positions in the towns and cities, but to train the boys and girls to make
a profitable living by staying on the farms. One feature most important is
the problem of training our new Canadians so that they can go back and be
leaders in their own communities and be Canadianized in the proper spirit.
I hope that I have convinced you that the course of studies at these
schools are so complete that they provide a systematic training for the future
home- makers of this Province.
T H E OLD HOME STEADING
Dean E. A. Howes, Edmonton.
Indulgence must be requested should the story deal mainly with one par­ticular
home, because one can write more accurately about that which is most
f a m i l i a r t h i s is not the only reason, since it w i l l be manifest that there has
been a distinct prompting of heart interest. There is one other reason for the
present selection, and that is because our'home might well have been described
as an average home; while many were not perhaps so snug nor so attractive,
there were as many that were much more pretentious. We had reached the
era of farm home competition or rivalry, and our district could boast several
farm houses and surroundings that might have been described as commodious.
After all it mattered little how big or how small the steading, so long as love,
contentment, and progress were manifest. The famous " Senator" Devlin of
Ottawa once said, " As Shakespeare says in Pilgrim's Progress, ' a man's a man
for a' that'."
Every farm- born lad carries away from home a pretty clearly defined
mental picture of what the old home looked like from some familiar point of
vantage. When I shut my eyes and look at the old home, I see it as I used
to see it after I had reached the top of Pearl's H i l l , when I was returning
from school, or from many a long, long mile further than that. Surrounded
by a forest of trees of different sorts, the top of the house and parts of some
of the outbuildings were v i s i b l e . " T h e buildings would have looked plain
enough without the trees, but that was a contingency most of the early settlers
quite understood, although some of them never seemed to have had time for
providing this very necessary setting to the home steading.
The house was built of hewn logs, dovetailed at the ends, and was of the
familiar rectangular, story- and- a- half type, that in all probability succeeded
the original log shack of the pioneer. I never saw the logs of our house,
because it had been sheeted with inch boards, put on vertically and covered
at the joints by beaded moulding strips., Earlier than that it had been faced
with red brick, but the wall had proven unstable, so that it had eventually
been removed and boards substituted. This boarding had been painted an
indescribable color, t^- » f i n time became weathered to a rather restful shade;
this painting must have consisted of many coats of good paint, because the