The Doran Family
as told by May Slade
Land promoters from Canada were selling barren prairie for fruit farming. Mr. Doran and a man named Bert Colthorp came up together and obtained land near Bow Island. The Dorans had three children at this time, a son, Sherlock, and two daughters, Dorothy and Mayette. The school was four miles away, the children walked in summer but Mrs. Doran taught them at home in the winter. Two more children were born in Medicine Hat; Lillian and Arthur.
Continual crop failures caused by wind, hail, cut worms, grasshoppers and army worms, that took the paint off houses, buggies, grain tanks in wide strips, nothing could stop them as they just climbed up one side and down the other.
Mr. Doran had been working in Lethbridge in winter. Their last crop was in 1925. May had left high school to help on the farm and her dad decided she needed a holiday. What looked like an excellent crop would not be harvested for a month. She came to Elko to visit the Hild family that had been neighbours in Bow Island. While she was there, her dad sent word, they had been completely hailed out, and advised her to stay where she was and look for work. This was in July of 1925. May got a job in Cranbrook on the Godderis Dairy Farm, milking cows, doing the bottling and helping deliver the milk in town. By 1926 the Hilds had moved to Chapman Camp and were living in a large tent, so when May got a job as a waitress in the cookhouse that March, she stayed with them. Construction was going on all over. The recreation hall was being built and an outdoor swimming pool was also built. The newly built bunkhouses and cookhouses accommodated the men that were working at the Concentrator. Tom Crosley was the cook and George James was also working there.
In the fall of 1926, May was transferred to the Top Mine cookhouse where she worked with Tom Baker and Sam Derby and several other waitresses. These were wild and woolly days for everyone. May, having come from an isolated farm, had never seen so many men in her life. They were a good bunch and many happy memories remain of those days. It was here she met Walter Slade, a brother to Mrs. Lord. Walter had come to work for the Company in 1924 as a repairman for some of the machines. They were married in 1929.
Walter left the Company to work for the Cranbrook Courier, where he learned the newspaper business from Sully Sullivan. Many small newspapers were starting up in the area. It was Lloyd Crowe and Bob MacLeod that encouraged Walter to start one in Kimberley. On the 29th of June, 1932, the first one-page sheet called the Daily Bulletin was delivered free to everyone. It was only eight and a half inches wide and fourteen inches long and was published six days a week, from a small room above Chatson's store, now Fred's Place.
In 1940, Walter went overseas as assistant controller under Claude Brown in charge of the Knights of Columbus Army huts. May took over the publishing of the Bulletin. Up to that time she had never even sold an advertisement. What she thought might be a job for a couple of years, turned out to be twenty-six years in the business. The northwest corner of Deer Park Avenue and Howard Street developed into not only the home of the Daily Bulletin, but grew into a stationers and gift shop. May was assisted by many faithful workers. In 1942, Laura White, a law student from Revelstoke joined her staff and remained until her death in 1960. Fred Ingram was another, that gave Maya great deal of help from 1947 until his death in 1958. Gladys Coon has been a general assistant for over seventeen years. For a time the familiar column of "Picked up in Passing" by Bill Leaman was the first thing read by everyone.
In June of 1966 May sold the Bulletin but retained the stationers in smaller quarters across the street until recently when it was moved to the Platzl on Spokane Street. May still manages the store along with her many Com- munity projects. She has been a member of the Chamber of Commerce, the Retail Merchants Association and the Rate Payers Association where she was secretary for two years. She is a member of the Catholic Woman's League and the Soroptomist Club. She acted as a director on the Mexico-Alaska Highway committee, where they were trying to get it through this area. She worked on the committee with Cliff Swan when the incorporation of the City was being planned. She continues to work on many committees that keep her constantly on the go.
In 1948, May purchased the Pemberton property in Marysville and her parents came to reside with her in their latter years. Mrs Doran passed away in 1957 and Mr. Doran died in 1960 at the age of 87.
May is a sprightly, very active person that will probably never retire!