August 2, 1824

August 2, 1824

Dear Diary,

I haven’t really gotten a lot of news. Well I still have a lot that I wrote down when mama took me to the news stand but…all the ones I have left are the ones mama recorded for me. And to be honest…they are so boring. I mean she wrote down stories about timber wood and discovering the foundations of your community. I mean…did she honestly think I would be interested in those stories? Well to make matters worse, mama never got the chance to read my stories or see how I develop them. So today, she decided to watch me write them in you Diary. And I couldn’t say that I thought her news stories were boring right in front of her. So I wrote the stories in my notebook, that way it would seem like I was writing in you. And since mama never saw me write my stories before, she didn’t know the difference between you and my notebook. It was kind of funny seeing her being tricked so easily…but…I felt really bad about lying to her. So to make myself feel a little bit better about what I did, I will write her stories in you as well.

The first one I will tell you is about timber.

In British North America, the timber industries were higher than ever because England needed timber for many different reasons. (They needed it for paper, for building ships and houses, shoes, eating utensils, furniture, wagons, and jewelry).

*I personally think it would be kind of cool to walk around wearing jewelry made out of wood.

Anyways…I should get back to the story.

So where was I…oh yeah…lumber.

So meanwhile, the lumber industry’s workers were living in isolated camps near the St. Lawrence River, the Saint John River, and the Ottawa River. They were cutting down trees and turning the logs into squares so that they would be easier to pack on ships.

And yeah…that’s pretty much it. I don’t think there was anything else mama wrote down about timber and lumber. (Thank goodness)

Now I will tell you the other story about…about…something to do with our community. (I forget what it’s called).

Here’s the story…well…it’s not really a story. It’s just a bunch of questions mama wanted me to answer because she thought my answers might be interesting. But I’m not going to tell you my answers; I will just tell you some of the questions and my favourite answer I told mama. So the questions were basically asking you what you daydream about and why you want to remember things in the past. So my favourite answer I said was answering the question that asked, “Why do you want to remember people or events from the past?”

And I replied with “sometimes I wish I didn’t remember things from the past; like papa’s death and how it happened, and even how we had to move houses. But I do like some memories, especially the ones that happened only because of the bad times we had as a family. If we didn’t move, I wouldn’t have started to write in you Diary, and I wouldn’t have known about the news stand, then I wouldn’t know how good of a writer I was, and how I was going to write a book. So even though we all have some bad memories…I would just like to state that I would still love to remember them, than try not to at all. After all memories have a part in making us who we are.”

And that’s what I told mama. I think it answered the question but she was staring at me the whole time I was speaking, so whatever came out of my mouth was put on paper.

And that’s all I have for now Diary.

Love,

Samantha Jones