Noble & Irene Yerex & Family

My grandpa and grandma started this family having 10 children working and living on the farm for most of their early years.  I was only around for grandma for 7 years and only have memories of her sitting in her rocking chair just like in the movies smiling at us grandchildren.

Grandpa I would see every Sunday for supper until he passed away in 1981 on Christmas day.  I can remember him to doing a little dance for me when I was young to make me laugh.  He bought a 45 record of a Christmas song called Tiny Tony which was my favourite Christmas song of all time.  I can remember him playing it on the record player in the kitchen of their home on Madison Street in Winnipeg.

Grandpa told 4 or 5 stories repeatedly during those 15 years, all baseball stories from the early 1900's which is pretty cool to hear about.  Baseball was his favourite sport.  He used the same tag lines for each, Lefty Treleven the pitcher who threw a fastball that curved up.  How he always let the bat hang, or how he would sneak a peek at the catcher, which he would make sure you knew that you weren't supposed to do it, to figure out where they were throwing to him and he hit the ball ever so high.  By the time the ball came down and the fielders missed it he was on second base and the pitcher walked over to him and said, "I didn't think you could hit a high ball."  He would say, "I didn't say anything, but what I should have said was I can hit anything."  If you would tell grandpa, you told me this story, he would ignore you and keep telling it.  I learned to just listen and for a while I could repeat the stories word for word.

He was an outfielder playing center field and could cover the balls the left fielder should have had and balls the right fielder should have had.

The summer 6 months before his passing, he came to one of my baseball games and came out onto the field during warm up and wanted the pitcher to throw one for him so he could bat.  He hadn't swung a bat in probably 40 years.  He stood there with the bat hanging like he always said he'd do and they threw a few pitches for him.  I was in left field mortified but everyone thought it was priceless.

My dad would cut his hair once every few months  for him and he loved the horse races.  He would go to the horse races as much as he could.  He drove a cab in Winnipeg for a few years.  He rarely had anything to drink, maybe one drink and only two at the most.  

I started to write this in 2014 and got sidetracked and decided to get this going again.  I have had to go to too many funerals lately and thought we could share our memories for future generations to come with some stories of the Yerex family.  

My childhood of going to family farms is over except for Bruce Fleger who is living on the farm he grew up on with Norma and Jim.  The Burton's farm has been sold.  Daune and Joan's farm was sold a few years ago.  Max and Lorna's farm was sold a few years back.  I'm glad my kids were old enough to visit every farm but unfortunately their kids won't get that chance.

So if anyone wants to contribute pictures you can email them to me and I'll post them on the picture page of the Yerex family.  If you want to tell stories about your families please add them to the comment section for your family.  For example if you want to talk about Carol, select her blog and add a comment.  Anything in general you can add it to the pictures or wherever you want.  

Carol Velva Yerex (Carson)

I could talk for days about my mom and my childhood.  I have people so jealous when I talk about how great my childhood was.  We did so many things and family was the focal point of it all.  We went to the farms of the Burton's, Fleger's, Yerex's in the Neepawa area countless times and coming from the city it was a lot of fun to relax and take in the view especially from Max and Lorna's home close to Riding Mountain.

She followed the sports I played and we had team parties, family parties throughout my childhood.  When family came in from the country they usually stayed with us for appointments or tournaments during those years.  As an only child it was great to have people around to talk or play with when I was a kid.

She was on the phone with many family members for hours and hours sometimes.  I imagine calling our home before call waiting wasn't easy back then.  With our family spread out over western Canada, we had many trips to Calgary, Edmonton, BC, Saskatchewan and around Manitoba.

Family and friends is what my mom lives for.  She was always the go to person when my older cousins would go to university and stay at our place for various amounts of time during the school year.  She is the youngest of the 10 Yerex's and sadly the last one of the ten still around after Uncle Daune passed away in October 2016.

She has written songs, she performs at senior homes a few times a year and still works three times a week and they ask her to work more.  I meet her coworkers and they all say she is the one they all lean on if they have a problem or need advice.  It's because she is calm and full of common sense.

She loves being a grandma and so far has been very healthy her entire life.  I love you mom.  

Muriel Gertrude Yerex (Bell)

Aunt Muriel was probably my closest aunt from my teenage years until her sudden passing in July of 2009.  She lived in Winnipeg from the early 80's on and my mom and her were very close, getting together often with hours and hours of talks on the phone.

Muriel had very solid morals and expected people to act in a certain way, which wasn't hard.  All you had to do was be a decent person and not try to screw anyone over.  If that happened you would hear about because she was not afraid to let you know about it.

She had a fantastic sense of humour and was an amazing cook as well.  

She had a lot of crappy things done to her after her second marriage ended in his passing and she had a hard time with her husband during his final few years on earth and she deserved better. She could have put up a big stink over it, but she decided to let it go, shame on those people.  I'm only putting this in here because maybe one day they might come across it and realize they were very cruel in my opinion. I won't get into it but they know who they are and I'm sure no one wants to dwell on it, but Donald wouldn't be afraid to talk about it, so you can ask him!

When Muriel first moved back to Winnipeg she actually moved into the suite I grew up in on Wolseley avenue, so it was nice to be able to see my old home for a few years that she lived there.  One school summer vacation I was on my own at home and was able to go to Aunt Muriel's place for lunch or breakfast if I got up early enough.  That was until she found work and that perk ended.

Muriel was a huge curling and baseball fan and loved going to the Goldeyes games with Ed and Carol.  Muriel would ask Ed about certain players and if he put down any of the players she liked, you'd hear, "Put a sock in it Carson! Put a sock in it."

They'd get calls from Muriel during curling games discussing the terrible calls or bad shots or the players they liked or disliked.  She loved a good time and a good party.

Many Christmases were spent at Muriel's place over the years and she made everyone feel welcome.  

During my teenage years, anytime I would tease her about her smoking, I'd hear, "Oh you're just a rotten teenager."  I heard that until I turned 20 and it changed to, "It wasn't long ago you were just a rotten teenager."

The 80's were many memories of Christmas parties at our place or hers, with her infectious laugh.  She seemed to have the most fun at family get together's, reunions or even just us visiting or popping by for coffee.  

Muriel and my mom handled our family reunion of 1987 and when we had the three legged race, the highlight of the reunion was Muriel and mom's three legged running.  It looks like they were running in slow motion. I believe it was the slowest run race in three legged history.

Mavis Margaret Yerex (Williamson)

I probably spent most of childhood with Aunt Mavis along with Aunt Norma because my cousins Garry, Dale, David, Bruce and Janice were close to my age so we would try and organize a week in Neepawa, a week in Morris and they would come to Winnipeg for a week.  Ideally all at the same time.

We lost Aunt Mavis way too soon on November 15, 2006 at age 70 from leukemia.  

Aunt Mavis was a very kind person and had a tremendous sense of humour and loved telling any story she found funny.

I could go on and on about stories of my visits to Morris and Reston but not all of them can be told here!

Mavis loved children and at family gatherings you could find her watching the kids play and have fun and she would have a half smile enjoying every minute of it.

She taught school and taught David for sure one year and I don't know if I could have handled my mom teaching me at school, but David didn't seem to mind.

I never witnessed Mavis angry.  When she did get upset about something it was a quiet talk with one of the kids she was upset with.  Garry had many of those talks.

Mavis and John loved watching hockey and it didn't matter if it was the WHA, NHL or WHL.  They would watch the Jets in Winnipeg and had season's tickets to the Brandon Wheat Kings in the WHL.  They golfed a lot too.  I remember John mentioning how Mavis would beat him at golf.  A. Because she became a pretty good golfer. and B. Because once the kids were old enough to be on their own Mavis golfed every day between housework and making meals while John was at work.  Some men may have been a little peeved about losing to their wife at golf but John told the story bragging about it.

My fondest memories from childhood summer vacations are at the Williamson's, Fleger's, Burton's, Daune and Joan's, Max and Lorna's, Tom and Judy's.  

You felt welcome in every one of the Yerex siblings' homes and after some of the stories I've heard from people I've met over the years, it's safe to say I was very lucky to be in this one.

Glen Arthur Yerex

Glen was instrumental to my existence.  Besides my middle name named after him he was also good friends with my dad Ed Carson who met my mom through Glen.  He was a baseball player who was a catcher and caught for his brother Daune and my dad.

Glen married Vera in the 60's and although never had kids himself he did act as a father to me at times when I was growing up as they only lived a few blocks away in the Wolseley area.

Glen smoked and drank and always made sure to tell me to never start either.  He liked to gamble at the races and he liked to have fun.  I got to work construction with him for a few summers and it was a lot of fun.

He talked about my dad like he was a hero.  Always saying he was "Number one."  His stories were always entertaining.  When he was in the hospital during his last few weeks of his life he made sure to tell my kids to not carry on like he did during his life with regards to smoking and drinking.  He always wanted others to be healthy yet he did the exact opposite.

He had a hearty laugh and loved to hear about what was going on in everyone's life.  He loved a good joke.  Enjoyed talking about construction, baseball, hockey and always asking who I thought was going to win the Stanley Cup this year.  I was right maybe once or twice and of course bragged to everyone that I'm never wrong.  He made some great memories growing up in the Wolseley area.

Norma Rebecca Yerex (Fleger)

My auntie Norma was taken way too soon.  She was a real lady and many of you may not know she had wrists as powerful as I have ever seen.  There was a game you played where you had a broom and you face each other and grab the broom and you try and twist the broom down making the other person have to let go.  Uncle Jim said go try with Norma and she almost broke my wrists!

Another story happened in maybe 1980.  We used to go out to the farm for a week every year for summer holidays and slept in their camper beside the house.  Garry, David, Bruce and myself had a lot of fun talking to all hours of the night in the camper.  But this one time there was a fair of some kind and people from around the country side would enter their jams and jelly's to be voted on for best jam or jelly's and auntie Norma came home with ribbons for her jam's and jelly's and her cranberry jelly came back with a first prize ribbon and I was looking at the ribbons and all the jars of jam's and jelly's and the labels were hand written by auntie Norma, and on her 1st place winner it said "cranbelly jelly."  I said auntie Norma, take a look at your winner.  She looked at the label and said what Robbie?  I said it says, "cranBELLY jelly not cranberry jelly."  She must have laughed off and on for hours that night.  I think the funniest thing she thought about that was that none of the judges or people at the fair noticed it either.

Noble 'Daune' Yerex

Uncle Daune was probably the most mischievous child of the ten.  I could write a book on stories about Uncle Daune. 

At the 1987 family reunion David Williamson was to tell stories about the ten kids and we spent the weekend at Tom and Judy's writing them all out and Uncle Daune fed us all the stories as long as we didn't say he told them to us.  We spilled the beans to the family much to his dismay.

My favourite story about Uncle Daune was in about 1983 so we were 16 or 17 years old and we were staying at his place for some family event.  He had one of those huge satellite dishes that they had back then.  So he got all sorts of television stations including the Playboy channel.  We teased him that when he went to work we were going to watch the Playboy channel all day long.  We never thought anything about it because we weren't going to actually do that.  But we wanted to watch some movies of course.

So Uncle Daune went to work and we woke up at noon and wanted to watch some movies.  We put on the dish and it was all snow.  Nothing would work.  We couldn't figure it out.  So we ate breakfast and got dressed and went out to the dish to see if we could fix it.  I noticed that the dial had a little notch in it and the pointer on it was about half an inch off and I said look at this.  I said let's try to move it back and we all agreed we didn't want to wreck it so we just left it.  

Uncle Daune came home from work and we said we think we might have done something to his satellite because it wouldn't work and he said, "Oh...hmm it was working yesterday, I'll take a look."  We never thought about it and once we became adults we brought it up one time and questioned him about it and he finally admitted that he turned the dish a bit off because he didn't want us watching the Playboy channel all day long.

Erma Isabelle Yerex (Massing)

What I remember most about Auntie Erma was her stories about brushes with angels and how she loved going to the casino when she came to visit along with going to see palm readers or psychics.  She would talk about her stories and no matter how much you commented during her stories she just kept on telling them until they were completed.  She was probably the most prim and proper sister which sounds kind of funny considering she liked to gamble and considering the family she came from because all of them were very classy and that just goes to show what kind of parenting Irene and Noble gave to the ten.  

She said one of her psychics that read her tea leaves told her that one day her ship was going to come in.  She was very proud of that reading and then she looked me right in the eye and said, "you know they don't read your tea leaves, they read your mind."  I always enjoyed her visits when she came to Winnipeg.  

Ardyth Irene Yerex (Wood)

I never got to see Aunt Ardyth very often because she lived in BC she was a lady everyone enjoyed being around.  She was always up for fun and to witness the look on her face when someone was talking and not making any sense was hilarious.  She had the same look with her hands on her face when listening to you tell a story but you'd get questions and comments and you knew she was interested.

Whether it was making drinks or cooking supper, her and Woody seemed to have all sorts of fun living life.  I can remember Aunt Ardyth's many trips home to Manitoba in the 1970's with Marcy and her sisters, one of which I have on film, with Marcy teaching her mom and the aunt's on how to dance with the young kids in the 70's.  It's priceless.  They did come one time in the winter and my cousins watched in horror as me and my friends played ball hockey outside at minus 30.  They didn't join in!

We had numerous trips to the coast over the years and we usually made our way over to Comox to visit.  When she was still in White Rock my dad found out what the ocean can do, as it washed away all his clothes and sandals while he went for a swim.  I'm not sure why he decided to go for a swim out of the blue in the Pacific Ocena because he never did much of that on the beach here when I was growing up, but he did attempt it there and paid the price.

Max Gordon Yerex

Max was the second oldest of the ten.  Max married Lorna Pierson and they had 5 kids Tom, Ken, Chris, Grace and Laura Joan.

I loved going to the farm at Aunt Lorna's and Uncle Max's as a kid.  The first time I milked a cow, the first time I fed a cow that bucked her head and splashed my face with milk too!

Their kitchen probably had the best view of the rolling hills out of all the farms, with Jim & Norma's place a close second.  They all had nice views but because their farm was close to Riding Mountain National Park the view was amazing so high up.

Again, all the kids were older and mostly moved away from home by the time I was hanging out there.  Laura Joan was there and was super nice to me growing up.  She had a mischievous side to her, a lot of fun.  I do remember our bike experience pedaling down the hill towards the road.  Laura thought it would be fun to put me on the handle bars and double down the lane, it didn't end well as she lost control of the bike in the gravel and I went flying off.  I wasn't hurt and I remember Laura laughing her butt off.  She also has the best story out of our family on how she met her husband.  She can tell that story!

I never had a dog until we got into our own home in 1979 so the farm dogs were always fun to play with.  I remember Snoopy and Bingo on their farm.  2 of the nicest dogs ever.

But my favourite was the bird they had when I was little.  It talked and loved the attention.  One morning after staying there I got up early and went to the kitchen to play with the bird and he loved to talk.  I guess the adults had a long night of drinking and I was the first up which was rare with this family of farmers.  Anyway, my dad came out to use the bathroom and looked like death, and with perfect timing the bird says, "Good morning pretty boy."  I was about 4.  It was priceless.

Uncle Max always had the same advice for me and that was to quit hockey because it was too dangerous.  Uncle Max had so much stuff on the farm.  Old cars, tires, parts you name it, he probably had something you could use from their garage to the north of their home.

I remember going hunting with my cousins and my dad one year and we visited Uncle Max at the farm.  We started talking about getting old and Uncle Max said he won't be moving from the farm.  And Tom said, "you're having trouble walking now, how are you going to get your groceries?"  Max said, "Well, you can just pick up the groceries and drop them off here for me."  Tom laughed and said, "I won't be doing that, you're going to have to move into a home."  Uncle Max said, "I won't be moving into a home."

He ended up in the hospital and in the senior home at the end  of his life and ended up loving it because they served him all day long!

At my wedding Uncle Max was in a wheelchair in my ex mother-in-laws kitchen at the ceremony and she asked if she could get anything for him and he said, "I'd sure like a slice of that pie."  They talked about that for years after.

We went to visit him in the senior home and he had an aerial shot of his farm and at that time he couldn't walk because of his problems with his flat feet and ankle, he was basically walking on his ankle it had fell down so far.  So he was saying he is going to get his foot fixed and he's going back to the farm, he said he couldn't walk so he couldn't stay on the farm.  And my favourite line, "I can't walk, and if you can't walk what good are you?"  He did try to get around with his walker but he didn't like that.  At least he loved his last days being served all day.

Sibyl Mary Yerex (Burton)

This part is written by Rob Carson Sibyl's nephew and a few stories when I used to visit:

Sibyl was the oldest of the ten kids and was married to Galvin Burton and they had 4 kids, Blaine, Miles, Brenda and Myrna.  Sibyl is responsible for the family tree of the Yerex family and she has it traced back to the 1600's!!!  But what I found most interesting was the little stories about the people that we are all related to and that's why I thought this would be fun for future generations.

As a kid growing up in the 70's in Winnipeg, going to the farms of my mom's family was always fun for me.  I got to ride horses, milk cows, feed the chickens, collect eggs from the chickens, dodge cow patties and the peacefulness of it didn't impress me until my 20's but when it did I started wondering what was going to happen to all the family farms with the changes in farming.  Big large farms were taking over and making a living farming was slowly going by the wayside.  Now I cherish every time I got to go to the farms and I love the wide open prairies and hopefully will be able to have a nice acreage out in the Neepawa area when I retire.

I can remember like yesterday driving into the Burton's drive way, the hill out front with the garter snakes that lived there.  The cats and the yard part in front of the house with glimpses of red from the trim and barns really stand out.  I remember the smaller second house for Galvin's mom which was originally the home for Sibyl and Galvin when they first got married.  I remember the bear and deer heads in the little sitting room and my favourite the beads from the hallway door to the sitting room that you had to go through during the 70's.  Yes Auntie Sibyl was modernized in the 70's!

My cousins Miles, Blaine, Brenda and Myrna were older than me and hardly around when I was there but Myrna was maybe 7 years older than me, and when she was around she spent time with me playing games they had, and if you think I can remember the one favourite we played I can't, but someone 19 years old playing with a 12 year old was amazing! I really appreciate that more now than I did when I was a kid.

I remember Miles up in the corner room with his electronic stuff soldering things and it was so cool, I was afraid to touch any of it when he was there but I sure took a close look when he was gone but never touched anything.  I still don't know what he was doing but it looked cool!

I remember the old fashioned washing machine in the basement and the ping pong table.  We had plenty of parties there too.  I remember watching my Montreal Canadiens play the New York Islanders in the playoffs one of the years in the late 70's and taking their ski-doo out one Christmas and pulling a sleigh behind it with Bruce Fleger and David and Garry Williamson on it and going all over their land, they had a trail and we had hours and hours of fun that time, and we always talked about doing it again but we never did.

I always remember Sibyl in the kitchen cooking and telling stories and talking about family and then she'd bring out the green tractor for me to play with, it moved perfectly.  You could steer it and it was the coolest thing ever.  I just like the way it seemed to float across the kitchen floor.  Galvin was either at the kitchen table or outside working on machinery or working at something and he always had a saying or funny anecdote to tell.  I loved the porch to.  I was hoping this home would stay in the family but once Sibyl and Galvin were gone, the kids rented it out for a while and finally sold it.

I was always nervous about touching things because the house was always immaculate, but they had some cool stuff.  I remember a venus flytrap, small cactus.  Like most of the Yerex family, the Burton's were and still are the nicest friendliest people I've known!

Family Tree