Edwin David Conger

Edwin David Conger

Edwin Burn Conger wrote of his father, Edwin David Conger: He was born in Bellville, Ontario and as a very young man went to St. Paul, [MN], I think, to see if he would like to be a druggist, like his cousin there.

From there, with his cousin Eddie, on to New Orleans, New York and Cuba. I understood they played the stock market, and at one time my father told me he made more money in those few years than the rest of his life.

Going back to Ontario, he hit the road again and this time to Alberta where he homesteaded. The farm prospered very well and then he sold it and we moved to Vancouver, B.C. where he purchased a hotel. They did not tell him that with the coming of Prohibition it would not be profitable -- so after a short time he joined the Army.

My brother, Roger, could not take the climate, so we moved back to Alberta -- Phillips, to be exact. After my mother died Dad moved to Mercoal where he lived until his death. As there were five of us all under ten, my sisters and I went to Toronto to live with his sister, and my brothers lived with a cousin in Alberta for a number of years. We all ended up in boarding school in Edmonton. When I was 17 Dad remarried and it was a very happy marriage. I am as fond of my half family as the full.