As I’ve been sifting through things I’ve discovered a couple of books of Aunt Agnes’s poems, as well as an article that was written about her in the Calgary Herald not long after she died (the paper is dated Feb. 2 1992).
I was always fascinated by Aunt Agnes and Uncle Harry’s house. The outside was surrounded by beautiful paintings on the fence, the inside with weird pieces of clock strewn about (I think I must have been in the work space Uncle Harry used to build his grandfather clocks).
Because she keeps popping up I thought I’d share the article written about her, as well as one of her poems.
Homesteader never forgot her rustic roots – by Brian Brennan
If southern Alberta had been hit recently with a prolonged utilizes failure, Agnes Copithorne would have remembered how to make do. She began her married life in a homesteader’s log cabin west of Calgary in 1927, and always kept kerosene lamps and Franklin stove around as reminders.
“Habit is strong,” she said. “Nothing new is purchased if the old will do.”
The old was good enough when she and husband Harry built their kitchen out of scrap lumber and rusty nails salvaged from an old granary near Cochrane.
It was good enough when they bought their first radio, their first car, their first pieces of farm machinery.
“We like to think that our homesteader’s cabin had not forgotten the past entirely,” said Agnes.
The cabin, near Jumping Pound Creek on the south side of the Trans-Canada Highway, belonged originally to Harry’s Uncle Sam, and Irishman who homesteader in the area during the 1880s with his brother John, Harry’s father.
Harry was born in 1902, moved to Victoria with his parents at age 10, and returned at 16 to work on his uncle’s ranch. Nine years later, he met and married Agnes.
She was Agnes Rollefstad, born June, 1906 in Hopple, N.D. and raised in Schuyler, Alta. In 1925 she took the train to Cochrane to take a job as a ranch cook on the Copithorne spread. Harry met her at the station and their destinies were sealed.
“We’ve only had one fight,” Harry told a reporter 50 years later, “and it’s not over yet.”
Home renovations became their life’s work. The cabin was cold as an outhouse when they moved in. Harry became carpenter, plumber, and electrician. Agnes played carpenter’s helper. A new kitchen emerged from an old back porch and woodshed. A new dining room emerged from the old kitchen. To put bread on the table, they grew grain, and raised Herefords and sheep.
They recycled before the word was invented. They built their kitchen window with wood from an abandoned chicken house. They electrified kerosene lamps, and enclosed a deck with windows salvaged from a demolished greenhouse.
Their doors were never locked. Travellers on the highway were forever breaking down nearby, running out of gas, looking to use the Copithorne phone. Agnes invited them in for tea and home-made biscuits, and filled up their tanks from a canister kept permanently filled in the shed outside. Nobody was ever turned away. Tourists, truckers, and escaped convicts all received the same friendly welcome.
For recreation, Agnes sewed, wrote poetry, short stories, and plays, and painted with the Calgary Sketch Club. In 1967, as a Centennial project, she invited members of the club to help her decorate the fence around her home. They filled the panels with mountain scenes, ranch scenes, bucking horses, and red-eyed bulls, and created a local landmark. Twenty years later, Agnes redid the 24 panels herself as a Winter Olympics project. She was then 81.
Harry retired from ranching in 1967, turned the business over to son Jim, and started building grandfather clocks as a hobby. Agnes continued to paint, and published three books of poetry.
She was diagnosed with cancer last March, moved into the Bethany Care Centre with Harry in August, and died four weeks ago. Harry, now 90, remains at the Bethany. Their youngest grandson has become the fourth generation Copithorne to occupy the old homestead.
Agnes Copithorne is survived by husband Harry, son Jim, two grandsons, and two great-granddaughters.
Remembering Yesterday – Agnes Copithorne
It seems like only yesterday
We broke the land with two oxen
And a walking plow.
Picked stones off the field
Hauling them away to a rock pile,
Readying the earth for planting.
Winters were long, the snow deep
Mother knitted our mitts and socks.
The long black wool stockings
Itched unbearably until
They had been through several washings.
In felt boots and four-buckle overshoes
We trudged through the drifts to school.
Thawed out around the pot-bellied stove
Before starting on the hated arithmetic
Problems laboriously scratched out
On a slate.
In the evenings, by the light of
A coal oil lamp we played Old Maid,
Checkers or Dominoes.
Bedtime came early.
And there were chores, always reminded
That idle hands were the devil’s tools.
No hockey, no basketball
Or any of that nonsense
Life was uncluttered, uncomplicated.
Stress unknown.
The Sattvic Life 