Interview with Ole Nygaard Jensen

Date: Oct 2004 to Oct 2004
Location: Mount Forest, Wellington North, Wellington, Ontario, Canada

Transcribed Interview with Ole Nygaard Jensen

TC interviewed her grandfather, Ole Nygaard Jensen, in October 2004 for a school project. Ole’s wife, Inger, was also present, but in the background. It took place at Ole & Inger’s home at 216 Elgin St, Mount Forest Ontario. The interview was tape recorded and lasted for 58 minutes.

Information in this oral history transcript is only as accurate as Ole’s memory. Some of the stuttering and stammering have been removed, I, K Jensen, have not tried to confirm or correct information Ole has provided here. Anything in backets ( ), indicate the time on the recording, sounds heard or not heard, or if something could not be translated. Square brackets [ ] are my additions for clarification. A couple of excerpts are left out intentionally for privacy of living relatives which have been noted in the transcript.

Along with this transcript, I have included some images that Ole, and family and friends have captured over the years that are relevant to his interview. As well, I took some photographs of Ole's scrapbook. Most of the newspaper clippings in this collection are undated and unnamed.

Enjoy!

• TC = Ole's granddaughter
• OJ = Ole Jensen
• IJ = Inger Jensen

TC: (0:00) What was it like growing up in Denmark?

OJ: Pretty much like it is growing up in Canada. For me anyway. We started school when we were seven. And we had one and two grades together, first & second grades together. And then third grade & fourth grade were together. First and second went in the morning and third and fourth went in the afternoon. No, the other way around, yes, the small ones came in the afternoon. They only went from 1-4, I think.

OJ: Then after grade four, I went to Fredens(?) school. I biked 11 km every day, even in the winter time. That was like a high school. There I only went for three years to high school, then I quit, because I wasn’t too good. I don’t know, I didn’t care that much for school, but I went.

TC: (1:53) Then why did you decide to come to Canada?

IJ: (speaks indistinctly in background) …went to England, then came to Canada.

OJ: When I left school, I stayed home on my dad’s farm for a year …

IJ: Wasn’t it for only a half of one.

OJ: Yes, I can’t remember what it was, one year or half a year. But anyway, after that then I went to a boarding school for the winter, just for the winter. That was boys mostly from 15, I don’t know, 18 or 20. We were 7 boys there at that boarding school. (loudly) And the principal of the school said, “If I catch you up on the hotel, your suitcase will be standing out by the road.” (Ole laughs) “No drinking, and no girls in.”

OJ: And then after that six-months on the boarding school, I got a job not too far from, well the town was Roskilde. I was there for a year. It was my first job.

TC: (3:35) Your first job was where?

OJ: Roskilde.

TC: (3:50) Doing what?

OJ: Oh, that was on a farm. A nice farm. I’ll show pictures of that. (Interview stops briefly while Ole gets out the photo album, then resumes with Ole turning pages through his album.)

OJ: (4:22) I stayed home and worked for my dad again, after that. And then I got a job at another good-sized farm, also about 120 acres, no, probably more, about 150-acre farm that one. Up near where the queen’s castle is, it was called Fredensborg. (spells) F-r-e-d-e-n-s-b-o-r-g.

OJ: We were less than 5 km away from the castle, or thereabouts.

OJ: (6:21) And after then … no … I went to England. Yes, I got a little confused here. I had that job there at Fredensborg just before I went to Canada. I went to England from there [Roskilde], with one of my friends. There were two of us that went over there.

TC: (7:04) How come? Why England?

OJ: (Laughing) That was the thing to do, that was the thing to do. Quite a few young people did that.

TC: How long were you in England?

OJ: Six months.

OJ: (7:28) (Turns pages in album) There we are. That’s the old pictures from England.

OJ: That was one of the guys, also a Danish guy, but I didn’t go over with him, but he was there on the farm already. That was a guy was working … and that was the son, these were the people I visited in England. That was the family my friend stayed with. This is the daughter, farmer’s daughter. This guy, he had the motorcycle, and he left for Denmark, and then I bought the motorcycle off him.

OJ: And here we are out hoeing potatoes.

1956 - George, John, Jorgen & Alf hoeing potatoes.

And there, that’s the motorcycle.

1956 - Ole's Royal Enfield Motorcycle

OJ: (8:32) Oh yeah, in England, they also had about 30 cows over there. They used mostly grass sileage in England, but we just put them in big piles and drove up onto the piles with the tractor. You see, it’s so damp in England it’s hard to make hay, they made a little bit of hay, but not very much, it mostly went into sileage.

1956 - Sileage pile at Glebe Farm.

OJ: That’s a combine.

OJ: (9:11) There, that’s the house, it was a straw roof on the house there in England. Actually, it was three stories high, and we were up on the top floor.

1956 - Glebe Farm, Yardley Hasting, England.

OJ: But actually, in England, they were not as advanced as they were in Denmark, with the farms. The farms were not really as good in England as they were in Denmark. In Denmark they were really superior farms.

(pause)

OJ: (9:54) That’s the house that my friend stayed at. That wasn’t a straw roof. It wasn’t so bad.

OJ: Actually, where he stayed the farmer owned most of the farm, but where I stayed the farmer didn’t own the farm. Most of the farms in England, they were only rented. They rented the farms from the lord. In Denmark all the farms there were owned. (pages turn)

OJ: (10:35) Okay, then I went back to Fredensborg from England, but it was quite an experience in England. It was nice over there.

OJ: There’s my grandpa, and me. And there’s my Far. My Far, he had a tractor already in 1949. We got that brand new tractor (indistinct). So, we only had two horses left too. (page turns)

c.1940 - Ole and his grandpa, Anders.

OJ: Then I came to Canada. (page turns)

OJ: So, you want me to tell you something about Canada?

TC: Yes!

OJ: (11:40) I came over to a Danish guy to start with. He had a contracting company in Calgary. Yes, he had the farm (points to picture in album), that’s his farm house there, in Okotoks. He had a river running right through his property, you never seen so many swans that he had out front. A really nice house, and he also had a house in Banff, a really nice house in Banff, where the hot springs run down through the yard. This guy invented the 5-pin bowling ally.

c.1958 - Farm of Lars Villumsen of Okotoks, Alberta.

TC: What was his name?

OJ: Lars Willumsen. (spells name)

OJ: (13:20) You know what he also invented?

TC: What?

OJ: The electric golf cart. You know the ones you drive in the golf courses.

TC: So, you came over to work with him?

OJ: Yes, my mom and dad knew him, so that’s why I came over.

OJ: (Pointing to a picture in album) That’s him right there, and his wife. (indistinct). He also had about 30 head of dairy cows down on the farm.

OJ: That’s my grandmother’s house.

c.1950 - House of Anders and Anna Jensen. Built on Kildegaard, Gammel Ølstykke.

OJ: There they are. That was taken at Christmas time. I was there for Christmas.

c.1960 - Unidentified people dancing around the Christmas tree in Alberta.

And that was taken down from Banff (indistinct)… administration building … see the mountains.

c.1960 - Unidentified people at entrance to Banff National Park.

There’s one of my friends (indistinct) up through Banff National Park (indistinct) … See how he bends the tree there. (indistinct)

1960 - Peder Larsen bends a tree in Banff National Park.

OJ: (14:45) So anyway … (page turns) There is my first car. No actually, that is my second car. That was a 1951 Chev. …

OJ: (Page turns) (indistinct) … There’s Banff … (indistinct)… Willumsen’s house, when you turned up, you could actually see Banff Springs Hotel from his house. I think the hot springs ran into their pool. It was really nice. He was already a millionaire that time I came to Canada.

OJ: (16:12) There’s my first car, an Oldsmobile. Anyway, I worked for Lars Willumsen for about a month. He got me a job at Watson’s farm. Victor Watson. That was a big farm. He had 10,000 acres in Airdrie. (spells) (silence) It was north of Calgary, 17 miles to Calgary from his farm. He rented 10,000 acres from (?) Indian Reservation, [just outside of Calgary]. So, he had 20,000 acres all together.

c.1960 - Victor Watson Farm, Airdrie, Alberta.

OJ: (18:40) Okay, I’ll tell you my first job at Watson, what I did there.

OJ: I got on a little Ford tractor and I was mowing, you know like cutting the grass, with a six-foot mower (Ole chuckles). It could have been an eight-foot mower, but, anyway, an old mower, not a haybine or anything like that. And that was prairie grass. He had two sections of prairie grass. A section is 1280 acres. (Ole laughs). And I was cutting grass there for more than a month. (Ole laughs)

TC: Wow!

OJ: That’s all I did for the first month, at least the first month I was there, cutting the grass. For the cows. He had 200 head of purebred Hereford cows.

c.1960 - Rounding up the Hereford cattle, Airdrie, Alberta.

TC: That’s a lot of cows.

OJ: Yes, and then he had 200 head of purebred Charolais cows. No, they were not purebred. (indistinct) They were at the Indian Reservation, the Charolais. And the Hereford were at the ranch in Airdrie.

OJ: (20:40) So … what we did, it wasn’t even ready to turn the grass, it was just cut. It never rains out there, well it does once in a while, but not very much. So, we had a great big fork on the tractor, and we just drove along and scooped up until the fork was full. Then we took it over to a stack in the middle of the field. And it was stacked in the middle of the field, the hay. And when the stack was big enough, we made another stack. You see the cows went out there all winter and ate the stacks of hay. That’s why we left it out there, the cows were always out there. They just went and ate the hay. Man, that was a lot of hay. There were coyotes out there. (indistinct)

c. 1961 - Piling straw bales in the field.

OJ: We had eight miles from the farm out to where I was cutting hay. Eight miles from the farm buildings out to where I was cutting the hay. And that was all his land in between. You know how far it is from Mount Forest to Conn?

TC: Not in miles.

OJ: That’s eight miles. That was all his land, from Mount Forest to Conn.

TC: That’s a lot.

OJ: Yes, that’s 10,000 acres.

OJ: Anyway, I was there for five years. It was a good job.

TC: (23:00) So, did you come to Ontario after that?

OJ: Then I bummed around for around six months, or something like that. I hoed sugar beets. And we harvested peas. And then we went to Ontario and I picked tobacco. And then I came to Windfield Farm. … In Toronto.

c.1960 - Harvesting Peas in Alberta.

TC: That’s with E.P. Taylor?

c.1965 - Ole at the entrance to Windfields Farm, Willowdale, Ontario.

OJ: Yes. I was there for five years at E.P Taylor’s.

(24:18) (pause) (sighs) (pages rustling in background)

OJ: Oh yes, one year that we went to the Calgary Stampede, Roy Rogers & Dale Evans were there. You probably don’t know them.

c.1962 - Roy Rogers at Calgary Stampede.

TC: Probably not. No. Sounds familiar though.

OJ: (indistinct) They had a show, Roy Rogers & Dale Evans. (silence)

(- 25:50) [Intentionally left our for privacy reasons]

OJ: Oh yes, when I went to Windfield Farm, we were breaking horses there for the first thing. We had, I think, it was 70 yearlings we had to break. But of course, we were a lot of people doing it. There was probably …(silence) I don’t know, we were probably 15 guys (Ole chuckles).

c.1964 - Ole (left) and two unidentified co-workers.

TC: And they were race horses?

OJ: They were race horses, yes. That was, (excitedly slaps the table) Northern Dancer was among those 70.

1962-1967 - A page from Ole's scrapbook about Windfields Farm and the race horses. Northern Dancer in top clipping.

TC: (indistinct) Northern Dancer …

OJ: That was the famous one, maybe you don’t know.

TC: No.

OJ: (26:50) Yes, very famous horse. He was a thoroughbred. He won the Kentucky Derby, Northern Dancer. And he won the Preakness, and he won third in the Belmont, and he won the Queen’s Plate.

TC: The Queen’s Plate?

OJ: (indistinct) … And he was leading sire for many years. I don’t know how many years.

OJ: Anyway, I was exercising horses there for five years. (silence)

1964 - Ole exercising one of the race horses at Windfields Farm, Willowdale.

OJ: And I got married on Windfield Farm.

c.1964 - Inger & Ole before they married.

TC: Really?

OJ: Yes.

TC: I didn’t know that.

OJ: Yes. Actually, we were living on Windfield Farm when we got married. We got married in Toronto, in the Danish Church. (silence)

OJ: (28:35) (Looking in Scrapbook from Windfield Farm) There’s Windfield Farm. There’s the barn, and that’s the boarding house. I stayed there until I got married. They had rooms upstairs, four rooms upstairs, and we were two in each room, so there must have been eight boys. There’s the trainer, Peter Richards, his father was Third Lord Richard in England. There’s E.P. Taylor, that’s his wife. There’s Northern Dancer, when he won the Preakness. … (indistinct) (silence) … There’s E.P. Taylor’s house.

1962-1967 - A page from Ole's scrapbook about Windfields Farm and the race horses.

TC: That’s a big house.

OJ: Yes. On Bayview Avenue.

TC: Who lived in it? Did him and his wife?

OJ: Yes.

TC: Huh! (indistinct)

OJ: Yes, they had maids and chauffeurs.

OJ: (30:15) (Reads caption from clipping in scrapbook) “Taylor Residence at Windfields Farm is this spacious and shaded stone mansion. Inside its entrance is an area containing many racing trophies and paintings of race horses. Taylor, who heads the Argus Corporation, has been called the leading industrialist in Canada.”

1962-1967 - A page from Ole's scrapbook about Windfields Farm and the race horses. Ole reads the caption from the bottom clipping.

OJ: I actually think it was in the paper one time, that he was Canada’s richest man with 750 million at that time (Ole chuckles). That was in 1964-65, about that time.

TC: Wow.

OJ: (31:13) You see, that was the whole estate, was probably 50 acres he had. … (indistinct) he had a golf course and swimming pool over behind.

OJ: (Reading from scrapbook) Here are some of the other winners: Moosonee, Half Light. Oh no, it was Hardhead that he had, Hardhead. He came from England, that Hardhead there. E.P. Taylor had horses from England too. And he was shipped over from England, Hardhead there. He was a Hardhead. (Ole chuckles) The name was right. And here is Canada Princess. Oh, there she is again, Canada Princess.

1962-1967 - A page from Ole's scrapbook about Windfields Farm and the race horses. A race at Fort Erie where Hardhead took first place (bottom photo).

OJ: (32:24) (Page turns) There’s Joe Thomas, he was manager of the whole farm. And this was E.P. Taylor’s other trainer, his name was Gordon McCann. And there is … running there (silence) … oh Hardhead, oh that was Hardhead running at that time. That’s probably why I have it, he’s number one. (indistinct) Yes, look at that they are running in snow.

1962-1967 - A page from Ole's scrapbook about Windfields Farm and the race horses. In bottom picture, Stable Manager Joe Thomas (2nd left), and Trainer Pete McCann (center).

OJ: (33:27) (Page turns) There’s E.P. Taylor when the Queen Mother was over. She lived in E.P. Taylor’s house there, and E.P. Taylor, he moved out of the house when she was there. She had the whole house to herself. They had a little bungalow over behind here where his postman rented. That’s what we called him, the postman. I think he did other things too. He [E.P. Taylor] sent the postman on holiday, and he moved into his house, and then the Queen Mother had the whole house to herself.

1962-1967 - A page from Ole's scrapbook about Windfields Farm and the race horses. Ole mentions Queen Mother (in photo bottom left).

TC: Wow.

OJ: (34:05) And I remember they put new carpets in. They were so thick so that they had to take a little bit off the bottom of doors in order they could open (Ole chuckling). (indistinct) I wonder what year that was.

(Ole calls out to Inger) When was the Queen Mother over, Inger?

IJ: (Answers in Danish)

OJ: 65?

[Intentionally left out for privacy reasons]

(34:40) (Discussion about something Inger is sewing)

(36:08) (Silence)

IJ: So, can you figure it out?

OJ: Yes, a little bit. But don’t forget that everything is getting so old that I can hardly remember things any more.

OJ: (36:30) And there’s my horse …

26 Sep 1964 - Ole holds 'Lady Victoria' race horse winner.

OJ: (37:15) (continues looking through scrapbook) I always thought of her as my horse … Lady Victoria … there she is again. … and there’s Peter Richard … and Joe Thomas … (indistinct) … and there’s Northern Dancer, he’s a good-looking horse. And there’s Arctic Dancer, that was his full sister, but she was never as good as he was. She was a different horse.

OJ: (38:05) There’s the little Lady Victoria. Actually, Lady Victoria was a half-sister to Northern Dancer. They had … (silence) … Oh yes, Lady Angela was mother to this horse, Lady Victoria. Lady Angela was mother to his father. Lady Angela was mother to his father, that was what it was. So, then they were not half-brother & sister.

OJ: (39:23) There’s Queen’s Birthday, I always rode him a lot too. He wanted to kick up every day, when you get on it. He turned his head down, the ass-end up, (loudly) vruump! Well, I knew what was coming every day. I just hung onto him you know. And he only did it once. He did that every day. … Most of the other guys if they ever got on him, he kicked them off, so I was always riding him, because he didn’t kick me off. I knew exactly what he was going to do.

7 July 1964 - Ole holds 'Queen's Birthday' race horse winner.

(40:17) (indistinct) (reading an article) …

OJ: (40:45) That’s Ted Kornblum, he lived right next to us, we lived in number 13, he lived in number 14. You see all the houses in Windfields Farm they had numbers.

1962-1967 - A page from Ole's scrapbook about Windfields Farm and the race horses. Ole mentions Ted Kornblum from clipping on left.

OJ: (41:01) There’s Evening Fields … (page turns)

OJ: (41:08) So, when you worked at the race track, you had to have your thumb print done…they were afraid that…and then you had to have your picture taken too, because, well, you just showed this card (shows his identification card) here…but you had to have this (thumb print card) here too, they were afraid that someone was going to run away with all the money…they had a lot of money there. So, then they wanted the thumb print. … (page turns) (silence)

1967 - Race track identification.

OJ: (41:50) So anyways, we got married on Windfield Farms.

TC: Yes.

OJ: Oh, I already said that. In 1965. (silence)

TC: (42:12) The story, when you first got to Canada and you first landed in…

OJ: (42:19) Oh (Ole chuckles). In Newfoundland, in Gander, Newfoundland. (Laughing) Yes, it was the most desolate place I ever seen. (silence)

OJ: (42:49) But of course, I flew from Gander to Montreal. From Montreal to Toronto. (chuckles) Toronto to Winnipeg. (chuckle) Winnipeg to Regina. (chuckle) Regina to Calgary. (chuckle) Yes, that was a long flight.

c1957 - Trans-Canada Air Lines passenger plane.

c.1957 - Calgary Airport

TC: Yes. Wow.

OJ: (43:18) Well, first I flew from Copenhagen to Norway. Then from Norway to Gander. And that was before the jet, there were no jet planes at that time, so there were all small planes.

TC: Oh yes, lots of stops. What year was that?

OJ: (43:52) That was in 1957. I came to Canada (struggles to remember) to the 3rd or 13th of May. (silence)

OJ: (44:25) And you know on Windfield Farm, that was the easiest job I ever had. So, I got a second job, when I was on Windfield Farm, making Lolas.

TC: Those are the popsicles?

OJ: (44:55) Yes, (indistinct) …and they made orange juice and school drinks for the schools. I was there for five years, probably, all together. I forget what year I started, during my time at Windfield Farms, but after I left Windfield, I was there [at Lola] full time. (Ole stammers) … Then we bought a house out in Pickering.

1971 - House at 64 Kingston Road, Pickering, Ontario.

OJ: (45:40 to 45:54;+) [Intentionally left out for privacy reasons]

OJ: Then we bought the farm.

1980 - Ariel View of Proton Township Farm.

TC: What year was that?

OJ: (46:46) That was in 1972. Yes. And then we moved to Mount Forest here in 2000. Twenty-eight years on the farm.

2000 - Ole and Inger stand in front of their new home at 261 Elgin St. N., Mount Forest.

TC: Wow.

OJ: Well, lots of people have been longer on a farm.

TC: What year did you go to England?

OJ: (47:25) (silence) In 1950, I was 12 years old … in 54 I was 14, 16 years old … oh that must have been 1956 I was in England. I was only over there for six months, anyway. Then I was at the last place in Denmark for six months. At Fredensborg. … I went right from Fredensborg to Canada. I was only there for one winter. I was in England in the summer time. So, that was in 1956.

TC: Okay, so I think that is almost everything.

OJ: (48:42) What did we do on the farm? We had pigs.

1985 - Ole prepares needle to inject piglets with iron.

TC: Yes, pigs. I know that. You were a pork producer, I got that. …

OJ: (48:56) Oh yes, I was part of the Farm Safety Association for Grey County. And I was in the Pork Producers for Grey County. I think I was [director] for maybe 10 years. And I think it was the same for Farm Safety, in there for about 10 years. The Pork Producers sent a guy to go to the Farm Safety. And I was him. I can’t remember if I went the first year, I was in the Pork Producers, but I’m sure I went the next year.

c1999 - Ole's Name Tag for a Pork Producer event.

OJ: (50:18) And then of course, I was in the “Grown in Grey”. I think I was in there for five years. “Grown in Grey”.

c.1999 - A 'Grown in Grey' (Agriculture in the Classroom) event. Pork is more than food. Ole explains about by-products of pork.

TC: What was that?

OJ: What was that? … (indistinct) (silence) … education … They started out with grades 5, but I think they ended up with grades 5 & 6 the last couple of years. They had 900 kids come for the 2-day session. I was for the Pork Producers. One year I did the Farm Safety too. At the same time. Nobody came for the Farm Safety that year, so I went over there. I went back and forth. Have you been to that in Wellington, they call it (indistinct)

TC: No, I don’t think I have.

OJ: They had it down in Elora at the research station.

TC: No, I don’t think so.

OJ: No? I wonder why Mount Forest didn’t take the kids down there. They probably figure they’re all farm kids.

TC: Yes. We went to something, like a fair or something …

OJ: (52:56) Now I know what they call it. Agriculture in the classroom. You know, that “Grown in Grey” is agriculture in the classroom. Yes, that’s what they called it.

OJ: You went to what?

TC: I don’t know. Some kind of fair, did a lot of games. In Elora or Elmira.

OJ: (53:29) Oh, it could have been that. They might have had a different format than what we did. It was up in Chesley, or in Dundalk we did it too. In the arena, we all set up there. We had our pig station set up in there, with a few pigs. We had eight minutes to talk to them. They came around in groups of anywhere from 6 to 10 kids. I don’t think we ever had more than 10 kids, that would be too many. They would go to the pork producers, and then go to the dairy producers, and then go to beef producer, and they would go to crops, and they had forestry, bees, sheep. They had sheep shearing.

TC: We might have done something like that. I remember something about making butter. (indistinct) I don’t remember too much about it.

OJ: (54:42) They had chickens (indistinct) they had pretty much everything there. I think we had 22 stations for that, where they could go to. But since we had so many stations, they split them up. One half of the group would go to ten stations or something like that, and the other half would go to the other stations or whatever. Suppose to compare notes when they go back to the classroom, to see what they learned.

OJ: (55:45) Dundalk, they were the best kids and they were the worst kids, that I had. One year they were fantastic, really good kids. (Ole laughing) The next year the were the worst bunch I ever seen. (laughing) I got so mad at them so I almost told them to shut-up. (Laughs) Yes, it’s funny, you go from one year to the next to get good kids and the next they can be so bad.

OJ: Yes, that was actually fun to do that.

TC: Well, I think that is everything.

OJ: (56:40) One year it was so cold. Standing there freezing …(indistinct) And the next year, I remember, it was such nice weather, it was 25 degrees, that you were in short sleeves, and the year before that we wore big coats, everything was so cold up there.

OJ: It was in April; it was always the second week of April. (indistinct) … I guess it was just like going to a hockey game, it gets pretty cold too.

OJ: (57:55) No, we actually got married in Sunset Villa. That’s where we had our party.

(58:04) [End].