Kevin Sullivan read these novels and used some of their imagery and sentiment to help form the basis of his series – much of which centered on the everyday humour and hardships that pervaded the lives of Canadian families during the Great Depression.

Here are two more enjoyable excerpts from Braithwaite’s novel, Never Sleep Three in a Bed (which fans may recognize as the title of the second season’s second episode):

I think the worst of all the bad things about growing old is that you lose the capacity to laugh at little things.  We would go to church and giggle so uncontrollably at the antics of the choir conductor that we’d have to leave.  We’d kill ourselves over some secret joke at the table until Doris would be ready to scream.  Laughter—that’s what being a kid is.

And competition?  Supposed to put mettle in your soul.  Well, we had plenty of it.

For example.  In a big family, treats are doled out by the parents carefully and exactly, so that each kid will get precisely as much as the others.  If they don’t, there is a battle.  All right, each kid has got his chocolate bar, or his seven jelly beans, or his two and a half cookies.  He then proceeds to eat them.  But there is always one kid who just pretends to eat his (this could be a girl, usually is).  He hides it, waiting until all the others are finished. Then he produces it, and slowly, tantalizingly, eat is in front of the others.  He’ll never share it, of course, because that would be unfair.  After all, everybody had an equal amount to begin with.  This little game, known as “making jealous”, is guaranteed to start a family row at any time.

….

My older brothers were champion teasers.  I was exactly the right number of years younger than them to be a safe target.  I was too small to be able to retaliate physically or mentally, and big enough to make the game worthwhile.  Somehow they managed to keep me in a bad temper most of the time, and on the constant verge of hysteria.

There was the occasion, for instance, when I spilled the milk.  Since Old Rosie, bless her soul, gave more milk than even we could consume, Mother used to sell a couple of quarts daily to the Branions, who lived near the school.  It was my job to deliver it in a large honey pail with a handle and lid.  It was a chore I hated.  There I was, toting that damned red honey pail, while the rest of the kids were carrying hockey sticks, or knocking each other on the head with dome crackers, or playing “chase” with marbles.

One winter day, when I was just about late for school and hurrying through the short-cut path, I slipped on an icy spot and fell. Both my hands went up in the air, the milk pail flew high, the lid came off, and the whole white, sticky mess came down on top of me.  It was the last straw.

Howling with anger and humiliation, I ran all the way back home and into the kitchen, where I told Mother the whole dismal story, my tears of rage increasing with the telling.  It was then that a big brother appeared on the scene.  For some reason he hadn’t gone to high school that morning, and arrived in the kitchen just as I hit the high point of my story.  I’ve got to admit it was the prefect opportunity, and he made the most of it.  Smiling benignly upon me, he said, “Cheer up, old chap, there’s no use crying over spilt milk!”

Then he took off up the stairs with me after him—screaming and swearing and throwing everything I could lay my hands on.  He barricaded himself in the bathroom, jeering back at me as I kicked the door, threatening every reprisal known to man.  I knew, of course, that I would never carry out any of the threats.  There’s an unwritten law in all big families that an older brother will run from a smaller one when the latter has become flaming mad.  It’s much the same sort of things as a great dane permitting itself to be chased off a poodle’s yard.  A kind of property right.  But just as it would be suicide for the poodle to pursue the dane any further than its own boundary or to attack it, so would it be folly of the worst kind for a smaller brother to actually try anything on a larger one.

Do you have any similar family stories that you would like to share?  Please comment with your thoughts below!