Ernest Fiset and His 1929 Plymouth: From Farm Life to the Great Depression
In one photograph I have, Ernest and Deveta stand beside their new car, while little Floyd, cap perched on his head, sits comfortably on the hood. It was a 1929 Plymouth Model U four-door sedan, and Ernest was proud of it.
He had come a long way from the young man in Quebec who had once seen his very first automobile. Within twenty years, he had gone from watching one of these strange new machines pass by to owning one himself.
The Plymouth was marketed as a durable, practical family car, with a wooden-frame body covered by steel panels and wooden-spoked wheels. With its high ground clearance, it was well suited to the uneven prairie roads. On gravel, it could travel at roughly 20-30 miles per hour, and on improved roads, up to 45-50 miles per hour.
The standard colour scheme was Gallant blue on the upper body, Marquette blue on the body, and black running boards with orange striping.[1] The crank is in the engine, ready for a turn. With a sputter and a wheeze, they would soon be on their way, jouncing over the prairie roads.
In a second photo, they pose in front of a farmhouse with another family—perhaps friends, perhaps kin. Ernest is in the centre, one hand on his hip and his other elbow resting on the car. Little Floyd stands beside his father, squinting into the camera. Attached to the back of the car is a travel trunk, large enough to hold the tools Ernest might need on the road: wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers, spark plugs, a spare head lamp bulb, and a tire pump.[2]
Driving was a physical endeavour in the 1920s and 1930s, with double-clutch gears, constant steering corrections, careful attention to the engine temperature, an ear tuned to mechanical trouble, and frequent maintenance. Ernest would have known the car intimately: every vibration, every strange noise, and every change in its oil consumption pattern.
Ernest was doing well on his farm. He had a new barn, a new car, and enough confidence in the future to try something more. He went into the automobile business, buying cars and selling them to his neighbours on payment plans. They would make an initial downpayment and then repay the balance over time.
It was a risky business. Ernest borrowed money from the bank to finance the cars he sold. When the Depression hit, his customers could no longer keep up their payments, and he couldn’t make his payments to the bank.
Of course, he could not have known that trouble was just around the corner. Cousin Gerry Fiset explained: “And I understand he fell into the same trap as a lot of folk back then, where they would borrow money from the bank to invest. So all of a sudden, the stock market goes south and they’re left with nothing. And they quite often bet the farm against it, and that’s how he lost that.”[3]
A letter from the bank, dated May 6, 1932, outlined Ernest’s dilemma:
The Bank of Toronto, La Flèche, Sask.
May 6th 1932.
To Ernest Fiset Esq.,
Dear Sir—Received the under noted collateral notes for collection, the payments received to be applied on your advance from the Bank of Toronto.
[signed Manager]
H. Geoffrion $125
P. J. Dovitch $233
H. Geoffrion $337
W. A. Myers $185
Ernest had given the outstanding collateral notes to the bank in the hope that any payments the men made could be applied to his outstanding debt. Added up in Ernest’s hand, the grand total owing him came to $880. A lot of money in 1932.
From flying high in the mid-1920s, Ernest had been brought down by the end of the decade. The consequences would follow him for years, taking a toll not only on his finances, but on his family too.
Ernest lost almost everything. The original quarter-section homestead he had secured on his eighteenth birthday. The next quarter section he had been granted after his service in the First World War. The kit home he had built. His big hip-roofed barn. His horses.
Everything. Somehow, though, he managed to keep the car. Perhaps the bank was sympathetic to his plight. More likely, the Plymouth simply wasn’t worth enough to sell at a time when few people had money to buy anything. Whatever the reason, it remained.
And that car would see the family through the Depression and onto the other side. It was their transportation, Ernest’s means of earning a living, and a measure of security. Almost like a beloved pet or a member of the family, the 1929 Plymouth became associated with memories and stories that would be passed down for generations.
In about April 1935, the family moved north to Edam, Saskatchewan, and Ernest began travelling from farm to farm as a Watkins salesman. A tiny black notebook lists each of the farmers and their location in his district: 251 households—mostly farms—spread across an area that included St. Hippolyte, Vawn, Edam, Turtleford, Mervin, Dulwich, Livelong, Daysville, Spruce Lake, and Cleeve. From the southern point of Vawn to the northern point of Spruce Lake was 37 miles, with farms and communities scattered across the territory in between.
Another little black notebook kept track of his car expenses. Over the one-year period from April 1935 and April 1936, Ernest put 4,950 miles on the odometer.[4] The Plymouth was beginning to show its age, too. In 1936 he was paying for repairs that he could ill afford: new vacuum tank floats, a battery box, work on the fender and radiator, and the installation of a mirror. He kept meticulous records of his mileage and maintenance: gasoline, oil, a new tire tube, repairs and replacements. On May 22, 1936, Ernest recorded that four gallons of gasoline had leaked out. That day, he could afford to put only 48 cents’ worth back into the tank.
He was away from home often, travelling the roads of his district in an effort to sell his wares. For his children, though, his return home could be an event. One evening, Laura was so excited that her father was home that she ran out into a raging Northern Saskatchewan blizzard to meet him. She nearly died on the way to the barn, but Ernest found her and saved her.[5]
Ernest was enterprising and willing to work hard in an economy where work was hard to find. In addition to his Watkins sales position, he laboured nine and a half days for one man in August 1935.
Ultimately, it wasn’t enough.
In the spring of 1936, the decision was made to move west to the area near Cranbrook, BC. How Ernest came to make that decision is unknown. Perhaps he heard about a “make-work project” through what Cousin Gerry called the “coconut telegraph”—word passed from one person to another.
Laura, who would have been seven years old, remembered the adventure of travelling with her siblings on the week-long journey west. They slept under the ’29 Plymouth.
In the Cranbook area, he worked in a lumber camp for a week in July 1936, then he started a new side business with a partner, called “Fiset and St. Louis Wood.” During the winter of October 1936 through January 1937, they cut and delivered 149 ricks of wood to various customers.
Ernest found work in a government relief camp, where men carried rocks to build a wall alongside the highway between Moyie and Lumberton. It would have been hard, physical work that did not pay well, but it helped tide the family over until he found work at the nearby Spruce Mills in Lumberton.
At Spruce Mills, logs were transported from the mountainous forests to the mill using a 30-kilometre water flume system. In the winter, when the flumes were frozen, the logs were hauled on horse-drawn sleds. The operation required many work horses, and Ernest had always had a way with horses. That skill helped him get a job working with them at the mill. He was, as Gerry remembered, “making pennies a day” at the mill. “And it was better than what else he could find.”
Times were tough and meals were scarce. Gerry explained: “Well, it’s hard to imagine where your first thought when you get up in the morning is, what are we going to eat?”
His father, Floyd, who would have been eleven at the time, remembered “that they would put a pot of beans on the stove with ham hocks in it. And by the evening when [Ernest] got home from work, they were ready to eat. One meal a day.”
Ernest was always looking for another way to earn money— and for an opportunity to put his beloved Plymouth back on the road. By then, the car had been parked for a couple of years because he could no longer afford to keep it running. Still, the old Plymouth represented an opportunity to bring in a little more money.
Cousin Gerry told the story:
“He [Ernest] had that old ’29 Plymouth. And it had a vacuum operated fuel tank. They really didn’t have much in the way of fuel pumps at that point, so Dad [Floyd] was curious as to what made the thing tick. Well, the Chinese in Eastern British Columbia were treated as less than dirt. And they weren’t allowed to ride in the back of the bus, they rode in the baggage section and it’s 15, 20 below zero in the middle of winter, not very nice.
So, they had approached grandpa [Ernest] about using his car to take them to Cranbrook, and they would put the insurance on it, and they’d buy the plates, and they’d put gas in the car, all he had to do was run them into Cranbrook, and when they were ready to come home, run them back.
And Dad [Floyd] had taken this thing apart. So, Grandpa comes home all excited, he’s going to finally get to drive his ’29 Plymouth, and it’s apart. FLOYD!! (laughs)
Apparently, he didn’t sit down for awhile.”
Sources:
[1] Tod Fitch, “1929 Plymouth (Engineering Code U),” in Plymouth: The First Decade, retrieved September 8, 2026 from https://www.ply33.com/Models/U/
[2] J. R. A. “1929 Plymouth Hidden Treasures,” in Antique Automobile Club of America, retrieved September 8, 2026 from https://forums.aaca.org/topic/409319-1929-plymouth-hidden-treasures/
[3] Gerry Fiset interview by Karen Inkster Vance, 3 August 2019.
[4] Ernest Fiset black notebook, in possession of Karen Inkster Vance. In April 1936 he had a starting odometer reading of 17,750 miles. By April 25, 1936, it read 22,700 miles.
[5] As told to Beverly Inkster by her mother, Laura Fiset Burt.
Such a great story. Thank you for sharing. There are many photos in our family albums of family taken in front of cars around this time. They must have been proud of the cars they owned. One meal a day. Yikes! We have it so easy nowadays. I can't begin to imagine what it must have been like.