Cameron Farries came to Alberta from Ontario
in 1909. Ruth McCowan came to Alberta from
Wisconsin, U.S.A. They were married in 1917.
Born to them were three children: two sons and
one daughter.

Cameron and Ruth lived at Purple Springs,
Alberta until the fall of 1924. Then they
moved to Del Bonita where they had bought
the N- 1/2-10-1-21 -W4th from Gene Robinson.
The winter of 1924-25 they lived at the Wilson
place. In the spring of 1925 they moved the
lean-to shack that belonged to the Gene
Robinson place, back on to N.E.-IO-1-21-W4th
where the house now stands. There were no
roads or fences around them.

The shack had two rooms; the boys' bed folded
up against the wall. If the boys got too
rough in bed the unit would come down off
the wall on them.

In 1928 there was a terrible blizzard over
night. When they got up in the morning
the blizzard was still on but they couldn't
get the door open. The old shacks usually
had the door swing out. Cam figured maybe
some horses had backed up against the door.
The two boys went out through a window to
investigate. The snow was drifted to
within six inches of the top of the door.

The N-1/2-10-1-21-W4th had only twelve acres
broke on it in the spring of 1925. Cameron
and Dennis Guthrie used Jack Guthrie's oil
pull Rumley tractor to pull a five bottom
plow to break more land. Cameron was in
Del Bonita in 1912 when Grandma Farries
homesteaded, but he did not homestead at
Del Bonita.

Cameron was chairman of the Del Bonita
School board in the early 1930's. He
went to Lethbridge to interview teachers.
He hired a teacher for a year for two
hundred and fifty dollars.

In the 1930's he hauled oil from Maple Leaf
Refinery in Coutts for the steam boilers
on the oil wells in Twin River.

Cam, Nels Forsberg, and the two boys hauled
old six inch drill pipe into Lethbridge
from Twin River. There the boxings were
cut off the pipes, rethreaded for casing,
and then hauled back to the oil wells.
They hauled with 1935 and 1936 two-ton
Fords. These had eighty-five horse power
motors and V-8 engines. Their trailer
was made from a Model T Ford rear end.
The trucks and trailer all had 32 x 6
tires.

On one trip the snow was very deep on the
old road that went two miles northeast
of McIntyre Farm buildings. Cam and
his son had a load of this pipe on the
truck and trailer. They had to shovel
most of the two miles. They noticed a half
ton following them. They would shovel a
hundred feet or so, then drive the truck
up to the deep snow. The other half ton
truck would stop a quarter of a mile back
and wait till they moved up, then moved up
a little more. He would not come up and
help shovel. They decided to fix him.
When they started shoveling again, they piled
it behind their trailer on the road. They
didn't see any more of that truck. Finally
they recognized it as being one of the
Jew cattle buyers. Cameron did a lot of
bundle threshing for different farmers.
He threshed for John Tangen in 1936 when
his crop was ninety-six bushels and again
in 1938 when he had a bumper crop of
thousands of bushels. Number one wheat
was sixty-two and five eighths cents per
bushel, and hauled direct to the elevator.
They threshed for Bernard Powlesland in 1942.
Sid Powlesiand was pitching bundles. He
had a big fork and would throw on four
or five bundles at a time. He was loading,
down by a ditch and got too close so
upset his bundle rack. The reach broke.
One of the boys was running the separator
and saw Sid coming in with the team pulling
the front wheels. He had the lines in one
hand and with the other hand he was
pulling the rear wheels across the
stubble field towards the separator.
Really amusing!

In the early 1930's Ruth made butter and
turned it into Fisher's store for other
groceries at seven cents a pound. The boys
were left at home for a week to take care
of things. They were told if they wanted
to take care of the cream, wash and cool
the separator, they could have the cream
cheques. They took good care of the cream
and shipped a five gallon can of cream into
Cardston by Vesper's truck. When they got
the cheque it was for sixty-five cents,
a whopping thirteen cents a gallon. After
that they milked the cows and fed it to the
pigs.

Ruth also boarded some of the school teachers.
In 1931 a group of doctors, nurses, and
dentists came to the Del Bonita School to
work with patients of the area for a week.
One of the boys had his tonsils out in
the old Del Bonita School house.

Cameron Farries had a header for cutting
grain in the early 30's. In 1933 they cut
some for Oscar Weiss among others. In
1936 they rigged it and a header box up
to be pulled by a tractor. Mick Walburger
ran the tractor and one of the boys ran
the header.

In 1936 they had some grain that wasn't
worth cutting. That was a very dry year,
followed by the hard winter of 1936-37.

Cameron, Ruth and Phyllis Farries moved to
Lethbridge on December 1, 1944. Cameron passed
away January 29, 1945, less than two months
after he had moved to Lethbridge. Ruth
continued to live in Lethbridge. She
passed away June 27, 1975.

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