Hazel's Mother

My mother was born on October 6, 1890 in Ontario, Canada, to Henry and Minnie Kline. Henry Kline was a successful farmer in Ontario, but in 1998, he moved his family to homestead land near Lorlie, Assiniboine. Henry and Minnie had 14 children together. However, two of these children (Henry and Louis) died during a diptheria epidemic before the family left Ontario.

My mother was very young when she and Dad were married. Girlish dreams of getting out on her own, of becoming someone of importance, of having beautiful clothes and of having fun had to be abandoned. Marriage and children were her lot, and her life became filled with the drudgeries of a pioneer woman. She followed Dad wherever his work took him, and worked to make each shack a liveable home.

The family kept getting bigger. Mother's wants and desires were now centered on her children. She wanted pretty clothes for her girls.She often stayed up half the night to make a pretty dress from a hand-me-down she had been given. (She was an excellent seamstress.) She dreamed each one of us would get a good education and be somebody. But life doesn't work that way.

My mother was the best mother in the world. Her patience was very short while we children were little. I was the oldest so I was expected to understand and help more. But I was sassy, mischievious, and always asking, "Why?" So as a consequence, I received a spanking from Mother almost every day.

Mother had a hard life. But she never complained. she was never able to get even the necessary things for herself, let alone anything extra nice. She wanted it all for us. She waited on all of us when we were sick, even though she was ill herself. She gave and gave of her time and her strength to better her family's lot, and this spilled right over to her grandchildren.

We loved her dearly.

In 1930, Dad, Mother, Ilene and Georgena moved to Burnaby (a suburb of Vancouver, B.C.). Dad again went to doing carpenter work. He bought an acre of ground and built first a small house, then a nice big home for mother. The only decent home she ever had.