My First Eighty Years : The Life-Story of a Man Who Came to Canada in a Covered Wagon

In this memoir, Samuel Smith Parker traces a lifetime on the Canadian prairies, beginning with his family’s arrival in Alberta in the 1890s and continuing east to his eventual home in Saskatchewan’s Spiritwood municipality. Although Parker’s early life included homesteading and farming, his anecdotes encompass a variety of professions and locations, offering a cross-section of work, community service, leisure, and excitement over the course of 80 years. Pool hall brawls give way to municipal council appointments, and stories of time spent in Quarantine Camp while enlisted with Lord Strathcona Horse in WWI trade places with accounts of family vacations to British Columbia. Throughout, technological advances and social changes impact Parker’s experience of prairie life.