As told by Alice Marquardt De Nio to her great niece Randi Marquardt Berting. Alice was born in Medicine Hat on March 29, 1903 and died in Calgary on February 24, 1996.
Alice Marquardt received her first camera, a Brownie, at age 14 when she was leaving her family’s home in Bassano to attend boarding school in 1917. Her love of photography began then and continued her entire life.
As a young woman, Alice captured many good times with her camera, including photographing the fashion of the era.
“I was a flapper,” she shyly admitted. “It was fun. The skirts were so short, and we would wear our stockings with elastic at the top and rolled down to just above our knees. They were real silk and they felt so good - except when it was cold. There were no slacks then, and there should have been, for the weather up here.”
Photographs in Alice’s collection show pretty young women peeking out from hats pulled down close to the eyes. The look was both sultry and coy. The images portray Alice’s adventurous spirit – with photographs of her riding a chubby pony, perched on a tractor, swimming in a modest bathing suit (by today’s standards), even riding a dog sled while she stayed with a friend in Banff.
A few years later, Alice’s camera documented some of the tougher times. At age 25, Alice married Ernie De Nio in 1929, the year the Depression began.
“It was tough. There was hardly any work,” She said. “Ernie worked at a mine in Midlanville. There was only work one day a week because no one wanted to buy the coal and the prices were very low. The whistle at the mine would blow once if there was work that day, three times if there wasn’t any work. Sometimes they’d put up a big light if there was work.”
Alice said that many people were on welfare, which was about $17 per week. “That had to cover rent, food, everything,” she said. “Eggs cost 10 cents a dozen. The government shipped dried cod from Nova Scotia on the train and gave it to the people. The land was so dry that the topsoil blew into four-foot high piles in the ditch. The air was thick with it. The dirt blew in through every crack in the houses, and was on the tables, in the food. It was awful. Lights were kept on all day because it was so black from the dust in the air.” Food was scarce and expensive. We had to make homemade bean soup,” Alice said. “There were soup-lines everywhere. People were so poor.”
The dirt and the poverty and the heat dragged on for two, three years. One summer Alice and Ernie worked on a road crew that built the dirt road between Drumheller and Calgary. “Later it was gravelled, but not at first,” she said.
Ernie worked on the road while Alice cooked for the crew of eight, in a little cook-car. “I made everything from scratch,” she said proudly. “All the meals and bread every day.”
The cook-car was small, but it was their home while they worked on the road. Their narrow fold-down bed was next to the big coal stove, and she got up at 4 every morning, folded the sheets and put them away, folded up the bed and started making breakfast so the men could put in two hours of work in the cool early morning hours. Later, during the hottest part of the day, they could take a break.
The heat was relentless and the cook-car offered no escape because the coal stove heated it up so much each mealtime. When she wasn’t at the stove, serving meals or cleaning up, Alice sought what little shade there was under the cook-car.
Alice took many photos of the road crew, the cook-car and the horses that pulled it along the road as each mile was completed.
