A block South of Holy Family School, on the corner at 18th Avenue and 92nd Street, sits a modest and unpretentious little white house. During the 44 years that I’ve lived in North Battleford, I have driven by the little white house hundreds of times. Yet I, like almost everyone, had no idea that it had a unique and fascinating history. Then a call from a local history buff persuaded me to research and write the story on the little house. As my colleague put it, “The little white house has a remarkable and storied past – stretching back to our city’s early history.” Here is its story.
The little house was built in 1929 by Bob Mallet’s father, Robert Samuel Mallet.The story of the little white house is essentially the story of Bob Mallet who grew up there and his grandfather’s dairy farm. The dairy barn was located west of the little house and next to where is now a back alley. Bob’s grandfather’s house was situated just west of the barn on the property where Mr. Chong and his family now live on 91st Street.
Haystacks occupied property south of Bob’s grandfather’s house – across 18th Avenue. Pasture land stretched west past where Bready School now sits, to the northwest and north past Territorial Drive, a full mile North to the Nyholt property.
Bob’s grandfather’s land was bounded on the south side by what is now 17th Avenue. The property south of 17th Avenue was owned by Otis Jones who operated a large piggery. Holy Family School sits on the site of the manure dump.
The population of North Battleford in 1931 was 5,989. The city was well developed to 15th Avenue to 96th Street on the west and 107th Street on the east. But there was virtually no construction, roads, or any kind of infrastructure development to the east and north east of the Mallet dairy farm. A house here and there dotted the landscape.
Interestingly, another dairy farm occupied the land on which sits the present-day River Heights Lodge. A large ravine ran north to south about 300 yards east of the little house (through what is now Kinsmen Park) across Railway Avenue West toward the west side of King Hill. The south part of the ravine still exists and can be easily seen from Railway Avenue.
Bob Mallet was born on April 19, 1932 to Robert and Hedly Mallet at Notre Dame Hospital in North Battleford. He received his elementary education at King Street School, and his high school education at the North Battleford Collegiate Institute. Bob lived in the little house until 1955.
Growing up he helped with the farm work – forking hay and feeding cattle, cleaning the barn and hauling manure, and helping with the milking operation. He also had to split wood, pile wood, feed chickens, gather eggs and haul them to Shiplett’s Royal Dairy located across from the present site of the Bowlarena and pick weeds and hoe in the family garden. But life wasn’t all work and no recreation. There was still time to play with friends and explore.
Bob’s grandparents arrived in North Battleford in 1909. Details about Robert James Mallet’s work and business dealings are sketchy, but we know he operated a dairy in partnership with a Mr. Headly. This partnership was dissolved and by 1920, Bob’s grandfather was running a successful dairy enterprise at what is now 18th Avenue and 91st Street.
Likely the best descriptive phrase of a dairy farm operation is that it is labour-intensive. That holds true even today, but running a dairy farm in the 1920s and 1930s was truly an exhausting proposition. Perhaps the most demanding part of the operation was providing feed for 50 dairy cows. Cows had to be herded to pasture and then herded back. Hay had to be cut, forked onto hay wagons, transported to the farm site, forked into large hay stacks, forked again onto wagons, then forked to the barn loft and finally forked down through a door to the cattle below.
Green feed (oats) had to be cut, made into sheaves with a binder, stooked, forked onto wagons and transported to the farm site. The Mallets bought hay and raised oats on 70 acres of land just west of the Omar Hebert farm located northeast of the city, a three-mile haul to the farm site. Of course, all of this hay and green feed resulted in prodigious amounts of manure, all of which had to be shovelled onto a stone boat and moved by horse to the manure dump. The Mallets did not use tractors in their dairy operation, only horses. Considering that the dimensions of the Mallet dairy barn (built out of railway ties and concrete block) were 100 feet by 60 feet, that was a lot of manure to shovel. One can imagine farmers and hired hands were in superb physical condition in those days.
Feeding 50 dairy cows was a fundamental component of the dairy operation. So was providing water for 50 dairy cows. Fortunately, watering cows was considerably less taxing because Mr. Mallet had invested in watering bowls. The well was in the middle of the block between 91st Street and 92nd Street. Water was pumped into the barn by electric pump. Bob’s grandfather had also gone to great expense to invest to connecting to the North Battleford power grid with a line running from east of the ravine.
Water bowls were in place for every two cows. The cows were restrained by iron stanches hooked at the top which opened and swivelled with the top closing over the cow’s neck – hooked on chains at the top and bottom to allow swivelling. This allowed the cow to move its head up and down, and to lie down. The cow could push its nose into the water bowl in front to activate water flow.
Fifty cows were milked twice a day by hand, until 1939, when Delaval Milking Machines were added to the operation. It was necessary to bring in hired help for this. The milk was not pasteurized (the Co-op began pasteurizing milk at its plant on Railway Avenue West in 1935) but it was cooled. Five-gallon cans of milk were transported to the cellar of the senior Mallet’s house and poured into a large lever-operated copper holding tank. Jars were then filled, one by one, and capped by hand. The milk was left to cool until the following morning at which point it was transported upstairs and into the horse-drawn milk wagon ready for the daily run.
The daily door-to-door milk run began early in the morning. The entire west city was covered street by street, an undertaking that usually finished before noon. Clients traded their empty containers for full jars. During the Great Depression, the Mallets were lucky to get paid in cash. Often, payment was a matter of trading milk for items, music lessons, doctors’ appointments, and the like. In a 1935 edition of the The Optimist, 11 quarts of milk were advertised for $1. Hard times also required that the dairy operation be scaled down so that the Mallets were milking fewer cows.
In 1935, Robert Mallet quit delivering milk door to door and sold directly to the Co-op Dairy at 1192 – 97th Street who in turn wholesaled it to grocery stores, and sold it directly from the plant. This move likely cut the labour requirements of the dairy operation by 35 per cent.
Disaster struck the Mallet dairy operation in the summer of 1943. During a yard cleanup, sparks from burning grass, propelled by a small whirlwind, were carried to the hay on the roof of the barn, igniting it. The fire quickly spread to the straw insulation and the rest of the barn. The loss of the barn meant that the cows had to be put out to pasture for the entire summer, and milked outside. A temporary barn had to be hauled in for the winter.
Robert senior sold his dairy farm to Henry Volk in 1945, after which it exchanged hands a number of times. By the mid 1950s, the cows had been sold, the buildings dismantled and the enterprise ceased to exist. By the early 1960s, all traces of the dairy farm had disappeared as the boundaries of the city steadily pushed westward and northward. All that remained was the little white house on the corner.
Bob inherited the little house from his father in 1955 and owned it until 1987 at which point he sold it for the princely sum of $24,000. It was subsequently sold again, and then again for $139,000. A single mother and her young daughter currently occupy the house.
(Source - Bob Mallet)
