Item T3689:0001 - 0002 - Maria Santatori [pseudonym] interview

CALL NUMBER: T3689:0001 PERIOD COVERED: 1908-1964 RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1979 [summer] SUMMARY: Born in Fernie, BC; parents are of Italian descent; third eldest of seven children; after the 1908 Fernie fire, in which the two elder siblings died, family moved to Nordic, Alberta; was sick throughout childhood; attended five years of school; was blind from age ten to twelve; was married at fifteen after the birth of a child; was naïve about men and sex; mother was Catholic, but Anna attended a ;Protestant church in Nordic because there was no Catholic church in that community; talks of her first husband and his work in the railway and subsequent divorce; worked in Vancouver as a waitress; custody and care of her two children from her first husband; her second husband was away from home working around BC; discusses her husband's problem with alcohol; worked all her life and managed to purchase a house and two small businesses; she talks about and describes various members of her family, and discusses taking boarders in her home between 1959 and 1964.

CALL NUMBER: T3689:0002 PERIOD COVERED: 1925-1979 RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1979 [summer] SUMMARY: Discusses her relationship with her five children; second husband died in 1966; took in Hungarian refugees, approximately 1957; describes the renters in her home. Her husband cared for her when she had a hysterectomy and was sick and depressed; finally sold the house in 1972; has been in poor health and has had cancer; felt she has always tried to help a lot of people if they are in need; regrets ;marrying so young and naïve. She considers that living on Vancouver's skid road in the East End at present is bad, especially with muggings; relates how muggers once ran her down and stole her groceri;es and the ninety cents she had; she understands what being poor means, as she had in the past gone to the Salvation Army for a meal.;