New Beginnings

         “I want to stay with you, Nanny,”  Jean whispered to her grandmother, the morning the family left to take ship to Canada.

“I know, love, I know,” Nanny replied, “but we can’t have everything we want.”

         Jeannie knew then that there was no going back, so she did the only thing in her power, when the time came to board the bus.  She had the biggest tantrum she knew how to throw.  It took two people to wrestle her onto the bus and into her seat.  It took quite a while for her sobs to become hiccups.  Her mother Eileen promises they will see Nanny again.  Jeannie doesn’t understand a lot about time and distance, and she has to hope that means it will be soon.

         After a long while they arrive at the shipyards.  The Aquitania has been boarding for a while, but there is still a long line of women with children and babies, as well as many soldiers in uniform waiting in line.  They are all going to Canada, Eileen explains, and Daddy will be coming along later.  She is far too busy to explain Canada and later to her daughter. 

         The little girls hold hands, and Jeannie clings to her mother’s skirt with her free hand.  Finally they climb the long gangplank and are on the ship.  The baby is crying for his dinner, so while Eileen tries to feed him and settle into the cabin they share with three other war brides and their children, Jean and Mary slip out of their cabin.  Little Mary confuses the soldiers in uniform with her Daddy, unaware the women and children are forbidden to mix with the soldiers.  Her sister’s influence is the only thing that keeps her from getting too friendly with any of the men who are nice to her.

         The seven day trip is a long one for some of the young women, who become bored and foolhardy, are caught with soldiers.  The other mothers call the women tarts, a term Jeannie doesn’t understand at all.  She likes tarts very much!  When the ship arrives in Halifax the women who were in the lifeboats with the soldiers are not allowed to go ashore to meet their new husbands and families.  They cry and cry, for they are being sent back to England, and are being called “undesirable aliens”.  Jeannie wishes her Mum had gone in a lifeboat with a soldier, so they could go home. 

         When they are finally on the dock, a kind Red Cross lady gives them all something to eat.  Eileen is also given a pile of clean nappies for Allan.  The lady is very kind and encouraging, putting them on the train that will take them to Toronto.  They are to stay with Nanny’s sister, their Aunt Daisy and her husband, Uncle Fred.

They are met at union Station and taken to a small duplex.  Because it is half a house, Jeannie takes it into her head that Nanny’s house must also be near, because she lives in half a house as well.  Mum takes the children on many walks to the park, because the little house is very crowded for three adults and four children. 

         People on the street smile at the way the children talk, but Eileen becomes embarrassed when she uses the wrong words.  A lorry is now a truck, shops are stores, hair grips become bobby pins and bangers are now sausages.  Between her pronunciation problems, sorting out the strange new money and being in a huge busy city, she is often upset.  Toronto is so different from slow little Frensham, with the one-story school she attended, the ancient church across the road, and the pond with the swans.  She misses her mother and the villagers she has known all her life.  And most of all she misses her husband.