The youngest of my ancestors to leave England for Canada was my mother's cousin, Ernest William Nevard, or as everyone knew him, "Bill". Born in 1902, he was only 4 years oldwhen he boarded the ship with his mother to sail to Canada and join his father, Ernest, who had come to Saskatchewan to homestead in 1903. Bill had very little formal education learning all the basics from his parents. He was a voracious reader and prolific writer writing many short stories and works of fiction on whatever scrap paper was available at the time. He also loved to draw and left many pages of his own unique type of art. Bill began helping out on the homestead as soon as he was able to and went on to farm the land himself until 1948. He loved his horses that he farmed with and they all had names. When farming became more mechanized and tractors were taking over from horses, this must have helped him decide to leave farming and seek other employment. Bill worked at the Fort Qu'appelle t.b. sanatorium for the next 20 years until he retired. He enjoyed his retirement, gardening re-building the old farm homestead house and spending part of the summers there. He died at age 73 doing a job that he enjoyed, cutting firewood on the farm on a sunny morning in November of 1975.
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