Doug started by saying his grandma came to Earl Grey in 1912, and he was born in 1943. The Earl Grey area was pioneered in the early 1880s. He recalled thinking at the age of 11 in 1955 that Earl Grey had started as a community long ago and how now, in 2021, relatively speaking, the Province is still pretty young.
Doug thanked his wife Donna, his family, friends and the other resources he drew upon to write his memoir.
Doug Brewster
He said one of the reasons for writing his book was to encourage people to think about the past, writing down the facts of their own stories. The book has two parts, his birth to the end of his formal education and then his adult life in present time. His readings for the evening were from the first part of his life.
Doug prefaced his first reading by explaining that he was born three miles south of Gibbs. After four years, his family sold the farm and moved back to his mother’s home of Peterborough. Doug feels his dad talked his mother into returning, and by the following spring, they had purchased the farm where Doug’s son Steven currently farms.
Doug read several excerpts from his book; the first showcasing with precision the little details of waking up on a cold winter morning, snow on top of the dresser, keeping his socks under his pillow so that they were warm when he put them on to dash across the cold floor of his bedroom. The details of Doug’s reading transports the listener’s mind there with him that you can almost feel the cold of the room as he would’ve felt it, feeling grateful for those warm socks.
A Lucky Prairie Boy is available for purchase at Brewster’s Ag in Earl Grey as well as at www.douglaskbrewster.com The Earl Grey Heritage Committee hosts cultural events related to the history of the area’s settlers and indigenous peoples.
- Jenifer Argue, Local Journalism Initiative reporter