Version 6.01

03 March 2021

David March © 2014

Photo from Our Harvest of Memories

Father: William Charles Hurley 1884 - 1959.

Mother: Sara Ethel Loucks from Meaford, Ontario 1881 -1949.

Married at Delisle, Saskatchewan in 1910.

Children: Doris and Marjorie. They also brought up a niece and a nephew, Eunice and Ben Smith qv

Doris was born May 10, 1916 in the farm house at Delisle. The family moved to Shellbrook in 1933, where Doris took her Grade 12. She did odd jobs for two years, including house cleaning. From 1937 - 1938 she went to Saskatoon Normal School.

’My first teaching job was at Jacquine Lake, a school located on a slope of land north of Smeaton. In January of the next year I came to Rich Valley after Mrs Mabel Lindsey had to quit due to ill health. My folks then lived on the farm north of the school. I stayed with the Warrens and boarded with Mrs Lindsey at the end of my teaching in Rich Valley. In those days a lot of children used to ski up to as many as four or five miles to school. I can remember looking and seeing all the skis lined up in the snow bank by the old barn. Oh yes, things went as usual with over ten grades in school. The school room was heated by an old barrel on its side. We used to make huge pans of soup or cocoa for the kids in cold weather and the kids used to take turns bringing things for it.

I remained teaching at Rich Valley until 1941. Then I decided I wished to travel a bit and I went to Cutknife to a little two-roomed school on the bald prairie where you could see for miles and miles. I had Grades one to seven in this school.

In 1942 I enlisted in the RCAF(WD) in the accounting section to see the world and I got as far as Aylmer, Ontario. There I stayed until my discharge in the spring of 1945. I got a job in the Civil Service in the Income Tax Division in Vancouver. I worked there for the next year and then in the fall of 1945 Carl Stevens returned from overseas and we were married in May of 1946. We moved to Chemainus and built our first house. Carl was working for MacMillan Bloedel on Vancouver Island and we lived there until 1973. I worked in the office at MacMillan Bloedel for a year. Then at a later date I started teaching in Chemainus, specialising in music. I had two children, Melvin born 1951 and Karen born in 1952. In 1973 we sold the house in Chemainus and moved to Ladysmith.’

From Our Harvest of Memories

Leading Aircraft Woman
W305191

DORIS MAY HURLEY