How many people can you get to know in 83 years?
Ask Elsie Boulton, the Glaslyn girl from Prongua.
She learned how to initiate a conversation from her father, the late Bill Lofts of Glaslyn.
"I just have always talked to people," says Boulton. "My dad had a very good memory. He knew a lot of people and my dad told me how to sell things. He had a knack."
William Thorneycroft Lofts served as a Liberal Member of the Legislature for the Meadow Lake constituency from 1948 to 1952.
"He was a politician and he was a salesman," says Boulton. "He sold cars and tractors and trucks way up to Meadow Lake, Makwa, all over."
A chip off the old block, Boulton is often asked, "Is there anybody you don't know?"
Boulton was born in Turtleford in August of 1930 and lived the first 33 years of her life in Glaslyn. She went to school in Glaslyn School until Grade 11, when she and one of her four sisters attended Sacred Heart Academy in Regina during the time their father was in legislature.
Of the five sisters and one brother, Bill, three sisters are still living. Boulton is the third oldest.
The history of Boulton's father's family is accounted in the book The Bill Lofts Story, written in large part by Lofts himself. His father, once a Boer War soldier, came to Glaslyn from England via Australia and Johannesburg, South Africa. The first section of the book recounts how the John Lofts family came to Canada, and the second section brings the history of the Glaslyn area and its people to life as Bill looks back at his life.
Boulton would also like to record her memoirs.
"I've kind of started a book," she says. "It's mostly in my head yet."
What would it be called?
Perhaps it would be titled Things That I Know.
It would be all about things the mother of three would like to tell her kids.
"I don't really know how to start it," she says. "I have started a few times, just writing stuff down."
She says she's always talked with her kids, telling them "things she knows," but, she says, there are sure to be things she hasn't thought to tell them. Or, she adds with a laugh, things she did tell them and they didn't heed.
Looking back, Boulton sees how much times have changed since her father's and grandfathers' times. Her grandfather John Lofts came to Midnight Lake in 1907. Her dad turned five on the boat.
In South Africa her grandfather had been a diamond miner, a soldier and a farmer, and was injured in the Boer War.
"Those were the days when they fought with knives and horses," says Boulton. "Brutal."
His wife Edith died after his youngest daughter was born. Heartbreakingly, John Lofts agreed to have a wealthy family adopt the young Alicia and when he decided to come to Canada he brought only three of his four children, Winnie, Bill and Laura.
It was at a time when such adoptions were common, says Boulton. Parents tried to do the best for their children, and sometimes that meant giving them up, she says.
"Dad and his second wife did go back to visit his sister," says Boulton, "but he never did talk much about it after."
Like his father, he must have foud it painful to talk about certain times.
"I know my dad said his dad never talked about the war. He wanted to forget it."
Nor did he share much about his time in South Africa.
"There were a lot of hardships - your wife dying, adopting a child out."
These are all pensive thoughts that may one day appear in Boulton's own memoirs. But the "things she knows" also include happy memories of growing up with a remarkable family - and of creating one of her own. Boulton raised three children with her husband Erwin on a farm in the Prongua area, homesteaded about 1903 by Erwin's grandfather. Both avid curlers, Elsie and Erwin had met through a curling bonspiel. (The curling rink was behind the Lofts' house in Glaslyn and Boulton began curling in her teens, but not until, as was her father's rule, she was strong enough to lift a rock. Nowadays, she chuckles, nobody lifts the rocks.)
Boulton had worked for her dad in his garage for years, starting when she was 14 or 15. When she told him she was going to leave to get married, he insisted she continue to work for him part time. So two or three days a week, she travelled to Glaslyn from Prongua to work, even after her children were born.
Eventually, of course, it became too difficult to commute and she became a full-time stay -at-home mom.
Stay at home? Not really.
From the time she'd first moved to the community, she became involved. Always an athletic person, she continued to curl, got involved with the Prongua Hall committee, the United Church, the Agricultural Society, the Lions organization and the women's barbershop organization Sweet Adelines from its beginning, two years before it chartered in 1982. She also served on the Prairie Pine Presbytery.
As her children grew she was that mom who got involved in all her children's activities, including 4-H and figure skating. (Boulton herself had taught figure skating in Glaslyn.) She can't count how many figure skating costumes she made.
"I still have some costumes," she says. "We dig them out sometimes for acting crazy. I have a lot of stuff yet."
She was also involved in the farming. She and Erwin had a mixed operation. She often hauled grain as well as taking lunches and meals to the field.
"The Boultons are great ones for having a coffee break," she says. "I always thought it was important, too, because if they are out in the field a long time kids don't get to see their dad."
She says, "I would throw them in the car - that's really what you did; there was no such thing as a seatbelt - and go to the field."
Later on her granddaughters also came on the outings.
"It was a big thing, taking lunch and drinking milk out of a sealer," she laughs. "In the winter time, they'd ask 'could we go eat in the field today?'"
Boulton has four grandchildren. Her middle child, son Benjamin who is currently working in Meadow Lake, has two daughters. Brittany, who will soon be turning 20, is taking classes online and staying with her grandmother. She is the fifth generation of Boultons to live on the original homestead. Bailey is 18 and graduating this year from North Battleford Comprehensive High School.
Boulton's youngest daughter, Kathy, lives in New Zealand with husband Antony, whom she met on a tour of Europe; he was the organizer and bus driver. They have two boys, Alex, 10, and Liam, 8, both born in New Zealand. They are very athletic and involved in sports, says Boulton, as are their parents, who enjoy sports such as soccer and cricket.
Kathy used to be shy, says her mother, but has ended up travelling the world. She first went tp Japan in high school as a Lions exchange student, and resolved to return. After getting her degree at university, she went back to Japan where she taught English and learned Japanese. She now teaches Japanese, French, English as an additional language and, occasionally, Spanish in New Zealand.
She is presently in Japan with a group of students from her school.
Boulton's eldest daughter is also a globe trotter. She has lived in Grand Cayman more than 10 years. Like Kathy, she is a teacher, but has always been involved in the hospitality industry, hotels and restaurants. She comes home once or twice a year, but they talk on the phone frequently.
This year is Carol's 50th birthday, and she has said to her mother, "I know what kind of party we're going to have, Mom. We will barbecue, and we'll have a bonfire and we'll dance on the lawn and try to do handstands and flips."
The party is planned for this summer, says Boulton. Ben will come down from Meadow Lake and all their friends and family will be invited.
Unfortunately, Erwin Boulton won't be there, having passed away three years ago, May 27, 2011, after 48 years of marriage.
"You never get used to it," says his wife. "I can't say I'm lonely; I'm a busy person. But it's quite a change."
What hasn't changed is that the farm is still "home" to her kids and the many nieces and nephews who used to visit in the summer. They enjoy rekindling childhood memories, asking Boulton to serve up her Mexicali casserole when they visit.
And, with children living in foreign countries, the Boulton farm is a repository of sorts.
"I am the custodian of a lot of stuff," says Boulton.
Two houses worth, in fact. When they built a new farmhouse, much of the "stuff" from the old house never even made it to the new house, and so it remains. Boulton says many of her large collection of books are still stored there.
"I don't know what's going to happen to them," she says. "The kids live far away and young kids don't want your books anymore."
Boulton has always been a reader and she still reads as much as she can, enjoying biographies, histories and stories about people.
"My mother used to get mad at me for reading all night with the flashlight or the lamp until there was no more oil left."
That was back when her father, among other business interests, owned the power plant for Glaslyn, whose two big generators were switched off at midnight (after blinking three times as a warning, of course) and turned on again at 7 a.m. It was usually her father or one of his hired hands who did the duty, but when they got older, Boulton and her siblings also performed the task.
Boulton's mother Lilly died in 1968 and her father remarried two years later. His second wife Anne, who helped him write his book, was the daughter of J.P. Long, a member of the North West Mounted Police at Fort Battleford. (Her brother was the Prongua Kid, a world champion cowboy.)
Boulton has taken her granddaughters to Glaslyn, driving around the town to show them the street named after her dad and the house she grew up in.
They said, "Gee, that's a small house."
Boulton laughs, "That house was the biggest house in town, two storeys. We thought it was big, but it really wasn't."
She also told them how much money she made in 1950 working at her father's garage.
"Did you mean a day?" they asked.
"No! A month," she told them. "I got $150 a month."
Ten cents went a long way at that time, laughs Boulton.
"You could get a really good piece of pie for 10 cents."
