I Have a Story to Tell You

Rose Esterson

165 I talked to Rose Esterson in a seniors’ nursing home in Montreal in 1974. Rose was born in 1897 in Kiev, in the Ukraine. She came to Canada in 1925. Rose was a fighter for workers’ rights. She was very proud of her union card, which she pulled out of her bedside drawer for me to see. I AM FROM RUSSIA, from the Ukraine. Like you have the province of Quebec, I am from the province of Kiev. I lived there from the end of the First World War, 1914 war, for seven years. I left there because the burgrich is killed my father, killed my brother, killed everybody. This was during the Kiev Pogroms [1919–20] and these burgrich belonged to the rich families, they were a little bit well off, and it was these people doing the killing. That is why I left Russia and went to Poland, and I was there from 1921 to 1925. I was twenty-eight years old and my husband was thirty when he died in Poland of a heart attack. The Bolsheviks had beaten him! I come here in 1925 and then it begins a very, very bad time for me. I used to go to work for one dollar a week or $1.50 a week and I am supposed to support my three children, three daughters, and pay rent, and pay gas, and pay light, and pay other things. I lived in a house with my mother. The rent was twenty-two dollars a month. Five of us: my mother, myself, and my three daughters lived in one room and I rent out the rest of the rooms—I rent for five dollars a month. My mother looked after the children and I went to work. My children are raised without a father and without a mother because I am always away in the factories and my children were small children . I never got married again. During the Depression it was so bad! People used to stand here in the corner for sandwiches, you know. But I didn’t stand for sandwiches. The Rose Esterson  Jewish Federation used to make lunches then and we all used to go to help. I told her, Thank you, Mrs. Box. I have already. I’ll support myself by myself. I didn’t take anything, nothing for nothing, I didn’t take their charity. I looked after myself. Then in 1939 comes Hitler’s war. I didn’t get into the needle trades until I came to Canada because I was not in the trades at home in the Old Country. At home I was sitting reading books and having a good time. But here I started to work in 1925. I worked in dresses, in different operations. A person, you know, is supposed to make a living. So I went there myself. I used to go to a shop and the boss used to tell me, Miss, come in tomorrow and I’ll see what I can do with you. And I would say to him that I am a married woman, not a Miss, and I got to eat and make a living. Sometimes the boss used to say, Miss, take your seat and go. I wouldn’t give you a chair at the dinner! So I told him, Excuse me, if I have a behind, I have a chair! I don’t want your seat. Everybody knows that I’m a big fighter. Not to fight with somebody but to fight for my rights! My children went to high school and to business college. I never sent my children into the shops. No. Because at this time the bosses have no respect for a person.You see,at the time,three or four people used to come from overseas and make a little bit of a shop, a little factory, and the workers used to slave from seven in the morning to ten at night, and got paid fifty cents for two dresses, can you believe? Once I worked for this boss who says to me that I should go the next day and have a dinner in a [charity] kitchen for twenty-five cents. I said, Why should I go there? He said, Mrs. Esterson, I gave them a donation of twenty-five dollars, so you can go and eat there with your children. I told him, If you didn’t pay me twenty cents for two dresses I...