I was a skinny, underweight, jaundiced baby. Winnie Earle came to help my mother when I was being born and Winnie never left. She's still there in the big old house in Kelowna, BC. Outside of my parents she probably had the greatest influence in my formative years. She is a very good, honest, woman - a Christian in the noblest definition of the term. She was such a good example because she was so generous and unselfish. And a good companion, too. There was a creek running through our property and I can remember one hot summer day out in the back yard when Mom and Winnie decided to try the raft my older brother and I had made. They both ended up falling into the creek.
I grew up during the depression. A large number of tramps riding the rods came to our acreage in the Okanagan and one of them stayed as a handyman for a couple of years. Mr. Wilson was a great influence on me. When I was three years old we used to sit in the furnace room where he would tell me about the world and its troubles. He taught me to sing songs and to spell and read from the old Family Herold. He finally moved on. To me he was a sort of Hukleberry Finn folk hero, but I guess he was a traveller.
We had alot of people coming and going in our house. My mother's maiden aunt, Elizabeth Russells - Lizzy - was always around. Her family came out of the coal mines in Scotland and she used to tell me about the stories of the Old Country. She would sing to me a little rhyme "Billy Bennett/Going to the Senate". But I remember her in particular because she was outspoken, and when she was mad she would get us down and hit us with her cane.
My mother's father stayed with us for long periods. We called him Bumpy, but he was such a tough old bird we should have called him Rocky. He and I didn't get along from about the time I was born. His idea of discipline was to give you a kick in the pants when you didn't see it coming. He was an old soccer player, and he practiced on me all my childhood. My grandfather was completely undiplomatic about the way he spoke of other people, other religions. So one of my sports, when we were out for a family drive and he would say something outrageous, was to bait him by saying "My Dad says you shouldn't say that, don't you Dad?" It must have been terrible for my poor dad. If I baited my grandfather when we were alone, he would chase me. I used to be a pretty fair runner. and I got it all from running away from my grandfather. My family says some of my mosts unpleasant traits - like my stubborness - also came from him.
My relationship with my mother was the quiet understanding of friends. She was big woman then, bigger and I think physically stronger than my father. No matter what time we came in, she would always be waiting up for us. She was the one who got us off to school. And she had to do the disciplining. My father spanked me six times in my life: I remember every one. When he hit you, you didn't forget it.
My father was busy with his hardware business, but even busier in politics, with the Conservatives, and then Social Credit, and he was away alot of the time. I recall my aunt coming to visit once. And when her daughter got scarlet fever our house was quarantined for the summer. My dad didn't hang around: he went to live in an hotel in town and used to phone to see if we were all there.
My first big political shot was going with my dad to the Progressive Conserative national convention in Ottawa one summer just after my sixth birthday. I had had allergies and the Okanagan was thick and heavy with pollen so my mother had conned him into taking me with him on the train. As we went across the country, the train picked up political Conservative leaders who would meet in the club car. That's where I got a lesson in how to get ahead in life. I think I knew these people were special, with their talk and their forcefulness and the way they carried themselves. I used to hang around the club car, probaby bored while my father was talking to these people, and I would be flipping a quarter from the dollar I saved from my 10-cents-a-week allowance. This time the quarter flipped into the spittoon. Now I can't remember who it was - he was a leading politician - perhaps even a premier, but when I started to cry, he reached into the spittoon, fished the quarter out and dried it off, and then gave me another quarter along with it. I spent the rest of the trip trying to flip quarters into the spittoon.
I think I always wanted to get into politics some day. When my dad ran federally in 1949, Diefenbaker came to the house. Then my father had his fights with the Conservative party. As a young rebel I liked that, because he was leading forces - the Social Credit Party - that a kid could identify with.
In those early days my brother, Russell, and I were never enemies, but never close. R.J. is older than me, and it wasn't until we went into business together after high school, openning a home furnishing store, that we became so close, we could finish eachother's sentences. I was more influenced then by my sister, Anita, who was an incredible reader. She was four grades ahead of me, and she and I would go to the library, read the books as soon as we got home, and then exchange them - so I began reading at a much higher level.
I was active outside too: my friends and I did all the things we should't have. We had cherries in our orchard, but they weren't as good as the ones we stole from our neighbor's. Or we would swipe the wooden rifles from the garage from the fellow who ran the Home Defence training during the war.
As I got into junior high school, I started playing basket ball. It was the only sport I could take up, because I had to work after school and on Saturdays: I was picking fruit for pay in a neighbors orchard when I was ten. My ambition was to be a superior althlete which I'm not. I made the starting line up on the basket ball team because I worked the hardest. I was too competitive. I still like to win and I'm still competitive, but I'm just a shadow of my former self.
I also liked to win with arguments with my dad. We had the capacity to infuriate and love eachother at the same time. We both wanted to win every argument and have the last word. He taught me to test my own opinions. And boy, when I was wrong, I felt it.
I probably was the most rebellious and strong-willed one in my family. I once asked my dad how he put up with me, and he said, "A wise father does't see everything". He would have driven me away if he told me what to do.
He used that same reverse psychology in getting me into politics. I think he always felt I would get involved. There was alot of speculation that my father was going to retire in 1966. I was all prepared to run in his place, but there was no vacancy. When he did retire and I decided to run for the B.C. legislature in his Kelowna riding in 1973, the last one I told was my father.