Eveline (Backs) Prestie

We had a lot of questions about what we found out. We thought we could get more ideas from interviewing someone who lived here in Millarville at the time of the temporary housing. Ev Prestie's father ran one of the garages in Millarville during the early 1940's so we interviewed her.

Mrs. Prestie also helped us on our dig. She could tell us stories about some of the artifacts we found. She told us a story about the remains of a barbed wire fence we found.

Mrs. Prestie - Local history expert

Eveline Backs was born in Olds, Jan.12,1938 and moved to Majorville in 1943. Her earliest memory is walking with a group of kids two miles to get to Sheep Creek School. She remembers once she missed walking with the other kids and she got to school about recess time because she spent most of her time picking wild flowers on the way. The schools were small back then and so were the classes. Not very many kids went to school. Most of the roads were graveled.

In 1945, her family moved to Millarville where where they were about 10 other families. Now she had to walk to a school but this time it was two and one a half miles the opposite direction. When she was 9 years old her dad bought the family a horse and then when she was 11 years old her dad made her real dream come true when he bought her a horse of her own. She spent most of her time around horses and riding them. The kids had to walk down to the community well to get the water and they would have to carry the water in buckets and if they were lucky in the winter they would put the buckets on a sled. On Halloween they would have fun by pushing over the outhouses so people would fall in at nighttime when they went to use the outhouses. When they got caught they would get into trouble.

She married Clayton Bruce in 1964 and had three children: Greg, Darryl, and Tracy. Her second marriage took place in 1974 to Vic Prestie and because they both really liked horses they ran a horse breeding farm. Mrs. Prestie has lived in the Millarville area most of her life and is always generous in sharing her memories and showing artifacts to students. Life seemed so much simpler then.

[More information about Mrs. Prestie is in Foothills Echos. (Millarville Historical Society, 1979, pp. 464, 465.)]

First Mrs. Prestie drew a map of what Millarville looked like in the 1940's. She showed us where some of the skid houses were located. You can't see on this map but behind all the skid houses is a big hill rising out of the valley.

Ev Prestie talked about these things (our notes appear in a popup window so you can see the map at the same time). We took notes about what she said about life in Millarville.

Daily Life Oil Industry Background