Epilogue

Epilogue:

         The family moved to a village near Montreal, called Nitro.  In many ways it resembled sleepy little Frensham, and the family was happy there, despite the hard life of near poverty.  Allan worked at night stoking furnaces, and attended classes at McGill during the day.  He graduated with a degree in English Literature about the same time as the Korean Crisis. By then another boy had been added to the brood. Perhaps because of his growing family he rejoined the army.

         We were moved to CFB Petawawa  (then called Camp Petawawa) where we lived for three years.  It was an idyllic place to be a child.  Mother was always happiest when she received letters from Korea.  Always they began with “Beloved” and ended with “Your adoring Pete.”

         Dad was typical of a career officer who has seen too much war – stern and undemonstrative with we children, but always loving with Mother.  He grumbled about the amount of food we ate, and we were dressed in second-hand or hand-me-downs for the most part.  There never seemed to be enough money.  Only now does it occur to me that he may have been supporting someone besides his family, or perhaps paying someone off.  We’ll never know, now. 

         And so our family grew, to finally include two girls and five boys.  We moved many times, never really putting down roots.  We older children left home as we reached adulthood.  Eventually our parents retired to Vancouver Island.

         Mother died first.  Dad moved to an apartment in Victoria, were he enjoyed life beside the ocean, as well as being close to the children who had also chosen to live on the coast, as well as s favourite grand-daughter and her boys.  Too soon it seemed his health started deteriorating.  Living with family members became problematic, and so he moved to an assisted living facility. 

         It seemed like a pleasant enough place, but that is where the real trouble began.  Because of his deafness he relied on his computer to communicate.  He began to receive amorous e-mails!  Why do you ignore me?  We were so close once.  You said you loved me.  I have followed you all over Canada.

          We were rather tickled about this, but Dad’s reaction was grim.  He answered none of the messages, and became reclusive, drinking heavily.  He only ventured out with his walker to cross a busy street for more booze, or if a family member was with him.  He began to fall and injure himself.  Our upright, soldierly father was becoming a problem.

         Dad was eventually admitted to a veteran’s care home.  Now sober, he became courtly and cheerful again.  One day he shared with the family the story of his postwar fling with the red-haired nurse.  It seemed she had been the resident in the assisted living facility who had sent him those desperate e-mails.  We’ll never know how she had found our father in Victoria, or how many other times she found him as he moved around the country.  We never learned how long the affair had actually lasted.  Had it caused his moodiness, or his drinking?

         When Dad died a woman we did not recognize attended the funeral.  She used a walker, and left immediately after the service.  As my sister said, “If she catches up with him in the afterlife, where mother has already taken up residence, Dad will have a lot of explaining to do!”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

         And so the life that began this story has produced a living legacy.  Scottish on one hand, English on the other, many of our generation and the one following us, bear the family names that recall their long-ago owners.  And now two of the great-grandchildren have brought their Scottish and English great-grandmothers to mind, in the persons of Sinclair and Eileen.

                  

New beginnings (con't)

         The time in Toronto comes to an end when the family is moves to Montreal, where Grandmother Sinclair runs a boarding house.  It is another strange place for Eileen and the children, but is much roomier.  There are several difficulties.  Allan, Grandmother’s baby, went off to the war without her permission, and his mother is still angry about it, six years later.  He not only surprised her with his wife and children, but the fact that she is an english bitch makes her instantly dislike her new daughter-in-law. She is kind to the children and buys them new clothes, but is very hard on her namesake.  Jean is not a meek child, and stands up to her grandmother.  Some part of her admires the child’s spunk, but she does not allow backtalk, and little Jean is often in trouble.  Eileen tries to keep the children in order, but it is difficult.  Grandmother screams when she finds little Allan on the kitchen floor trying to mix cocoa and corn syrup together.  The piercing screams bring Eileen running, only to be told, “You bitch!  Look what your fucking bastard is doing.”  Eileen cries as she cleans up the mess. 

         The children become very, very familiar with parks.

        

         One night Allan and Eileen have a long, private talk in their bedroom, next to that of the children.  Grandmother and her namesake both lie awake for a long time, listening to the sounds of crying and shouting.  They hear Allan saying “Sorry, sorry” over and over.  It is about some nurse that came over on the same ship with him.

         The next morning Eileen doesn’t come down to breakfast, and Allan is left to deal with the children.  He is very quiet.  Eileen finally appears, but her eyes are red and she seems angry.  She silently deals with the baby, and doesn’t even look at her husband.

Grandmother is the only happy one.  She is in the best mood the children have ever seen her in.

         Eileen takes the children into their bedroom and tells then they are going back to England with her.  Jean is so happy she doesn’t realize mother isn’t happy about this.  Grandmother goes out and comes home with an envelope, silently giving it to Eileen.  Inside is some money and tickets.  Eileen opens it and starts to cry again.  She goes to the room she shares with Allan.

         Now it is he who is angry with Grandmother.  He and Eileen have a long private talk.  Later, when the children are asleep, they go out on their own.  When the children wake up their parents are packing up.  Now it is Grandmother who has red eyes.  She refuses to say good-bye when they leave.

         Not long after that they get the news that Grandmother is dead, of a massive heart attack.  Allan’s brother and sisters come from the United States for the funeral and burial, on Mount Royal.

She leaves little Jean her bible, covered in black morocco leather, with gold-edged pages as thin as tissue.  On the flyleaf, in beautiful old-fashioned handwriting were the words, “To my Jeannie, always beloved, from your Angus.”

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.

Moving on . . .

To my faithful readers -
This ends the story of Grandmother James.  When my sister and I visited Frensham a few years ago we wanted to, but were unable, to visit her gravesite.  Now we move on to the conclusion of this family story, and it will be posted over the next several days.

On My Own

The rest of my story is not very exciting, but hard to tell in spots.  Len had left home, joined the British army and married a Swiss wife.  Their four children came and stayed with me for a few years while their father was overseas, and they attended the same village school Eileen and Len had.

Eileen and Allan were true to their word, and sent me the fare to visit them.  It was in a village called Nitro, near Montreal, where Allan was completing his university degree.  I am ashamed to admit I swiped a beautiful serving spoon from the ship’s buffet, since I had no extra money to buy Eileen a gift of any sort.  I stayed and visited all summer, such a happy time.  Their other grandmother had died, so I was left to be their only Granny.  Jean and I spent a lot of time together, and I taught her to knit.  That Christmas she sent me a scarf she had made, full of holes, but I wore it to remember her by.  On my last day in Canada Eileen lined the three children up and had them sing the sad “Now is the hour/when we must say goodbye/soon you’ll be sailing/ far, far away . . .”  I remember we all cried.  I still have the photo on my dresser that Eileen took, of me surrounded by the children, including little baby Alex, whose second name was Bruce, after my maiden name.  I never went back to Canada, although Eileen visited me a few times, especially when she and Allan spent three years in Germany.

The years went by so quickly!  Len grew up into a responsible man finally, and came to see me once in a while, although his father never visited once I was on my own.  Eventually he died, and I applied for his widow’s pension.  Imagine my horror when I got an official letter saying that Mrs. James had already received it!  I had suspected he kept a woman in London, but married her?  It was one of the worst moments of my life, believe me, but what could I do?

Luckily my pension and my garden saw me through until I was no longer able to get around.  I am quite comfortable here in this nursing home, and they take good care of us.  I get letters and cards from my children and grandchildren, and imagine them all out and about in the world, although none of them are in England.  I’m getting tired of talking about it all now, and I feel tired.  Would you see if someone could bring me a cuppa?  Thanks, love.

The Leaving

I think I knew all along they planned to move to Canada,  Allan could finish his education and be close to his own mother.  They told me they would bring me over to visit, and if I liked it, they would be happy to have me come and live with them.  I wasn’t sure how I would feel about that, but I tried to put a good face on it all. 

The time came all too soon.  Allan would stay in London, awaiting orders to be shipped off, and Eileen and the children would leave on the Aquitania, a troop ship that had some room for the so-called ‘war brides’ and the Red Cross ladies who would look after them.  Eileen was to go to Toronto and stay with my sister Daisy and husband Fred until Allan joined them and moved them to his home in Montreal.  Eileen seemed excited about this new adventure, but little Jean, almost four now, moped and clung to me as much as she could.

At seven-thirty on their last day with me, I was in the kitchen, setting the round wooden table with my best rose-patterned china for the special breakfast I had used my last coupons on.

Thinking about the last few years and the changes they had brought, I couldn’t help but shake my head – Eileen had married so quickly, and the babies came so fast – three in four years.  And now they were leaving, probably forever.  I had always known she would marry, of course, but hoped it would be Joe, who lived only one house away.  I was brewing tea, and trying not to think about the lonely days ahead, when Edie Maidment from next door rapped on the door.  She had a little parcel of sweets for Eileen to give the children.  

“Chin up, old thing,” she told me, “At least the ruddy war’s over.  I’ll pop over this afternoon for a cuppa.”  As Edie slipped out the door, I could hear the girls getting up from bed, and turned to look at the stairs.  The girls were climbing down the steep stairs, being very careful, for there had been one or two falls.  Jean was scolding her sister for being slow.  “Come on, Wee!”  She left Mary to her own devices and came to me, burying her little face in my old blue-flowered apron.  She whispered, “Nanny, I want to stay with you.”  I could only hug her and say we can’t always have what we want. 

       As Eileen got the children seated, bibs tied on and breakfast started I could see she wanted to avoid talking with me, and I understood.  We got the children dressed and waiting by the gate for the bus that would take them to Portsmouth and their ship.  As they started to board Jean lost control and had a proper tantrum.  She had to be bodily carried to her seat, and I could hear her calling “Nanny, Nanny!” as the bus left.  I watched until the dust was completely cleared.  I would save my tears until bedtime.  At least the war was over, and I knew I should be glad.

Allan's War

         That son-in-law of mine!  Always getting into scrapes of one kind or another, and regaling us with his stories when on leave.  I never knew if his leaves were authorized or not, for often he came at night and left before dawn.  He simply couldn’t keep away from Eileen, who seemed to enjoy his visits as much as he did, from the sounds coming from her bedroom.

         It seems he was promoted and demoted several times, at one point being the youngest Warrant Officer in the Canadian army.  He was demoted once for driving his little infantry vehicle (I think it was called a Universal Carrier) into a tidal stream to clean it.  To his horror he discovered it gone, carried away by the tide.  He had numerous escapades with his Norton motorcycle, which he used on his night-time visits to Frensham.  On one occasion he collided with an army truck and was hospitalized for several days.

         He was chosen for officer’s training late in the war, and so missed D-Day, since he was on leave from Sandhurst.  When he was commissioned he was sent to Europe to join the Hussars, and commanded four armoured cars, leading the Allied troops to meet the enemy.  He lost all his new uniforms when an anti-tank shell passed right through the boxes carrying his clothes.  After a bit he received another set of uniforms.  He also lost these then an artillery shell exploded the trailer carrying them. 

         So Allan had his excitement during the war.   When V-E day was declared he came home on leave for a few weeks.  He applied to join the Canadian effort to defeat the Japanese, and on that day he came home to sit down with Eileen and plan their future.

'Nanny'

         From the time Eileen and little Jean came home to Frensham that baby became my special one – she was my pet, then and still.  When Allan came home on his occasional leave and took Eileen off for a few days in Portsmouth, or when they would go down to the pub, Jean and I would spend wonderful times together.  When Jean’s sister Mary Florence was born a little over a year since Jean’s birth, we grew even closer. 

         Two babies in the household, along with the continual worry over the war and rationing and never knowing when my husband would make one of his rare appearances made me feel more and more nervous.  Len was running around the village with his wild friends getting up to mischief at all hours, and more than once brought home by a home guard warden with orders to keep him out of trouble. Too often, it seemed, Eileen and Pete asked me to take care of the babies when he was on leave.   Finally, worn down by sleepless nights I went to see my doctor.  He told me it was because I wasn’t getting my monthlies any more, and I needed a few weeks of rest and quiet. 

         Where was I to find a few weeks of rest and quiet?  “I’ll take the girls and go visit Aunt Emily and Uncle William in Portsmouth for a while,” she told me.  It was a good solution.  They had lots of room in their house, and it would make it easier for Allan to visit her. 

         For two weeks I stayed in my dark house, taking the medicine the doctor had recommended and trying to ignore Len’s comings and goings.  I kept my handbag with he so he couldn’t filch what little money I had, and stayed in my bedroom as much as possible.  No sooner had I started to feel better when Eileen and the girls returned.  A bomb had destroyed the houses just across the street, and Eileen wanted to get back to my safe house.

         Mary had just started to walk when Eileen announced she was in the family way again.  By then Len was old enough to go out on his own and help with the war effort, so we had a little more room to put the babies.  Little Allan made Eileen very happy, to have a boy at last.  She admitted to being a little disappointed Mary had not been a boy.  I had been please Mary’s second name was Florence, but I never felt as close to her as I did to little Jean, who was my shadow.

         Despite the stresses of having Eileen’s family living with me, and despite the hardships of wartime, they were happy years for me.  Despite rationing, birthdays and Christmas holidays were special, times to look forward to and celebrate.  I had given little thought to the end of the war, and what would happen to the children.  Would they stay with me, in our little English village, or go to far away Canada?

The War-Weary Years, con't

As time went on life got harder.  We were strictly rationed as to our food, and on the ‘kitchen front’, as it was called, the shortages continued long after the war ended.  Access to sugar, eggs, cheese, margarine, tea, sweets, bread and all kinds of meat were controlled by ration books, which had to be presented before we were allowed to buy groceries of any kind.  New clothing, let alone cloth to make it, was almost unheard of until after the war.  We collected scrap metal of all kinds, glass bottles and rubber products to donate to the war effort.  Every window had to have blackout curtains, and the Home Guard wardens patrolled at night to make sure not a crack of light showed.   We were encouraged to build air-raid shelters in our gardens.  The precious space left over was devoted to growing as many vegetables as possible.  Fruit trees became even more important to harvest, for without them a supply of fresh fruit would be nonexistent.  We couldn’t go anywhere without our gas masks.  And always we listened to the wireless, in desperate need of the war news as well as encouraging messages from the prime minister.  ‘Steadfastness and Resolution’ was the motto we lived by in those years. 

         

The War-Weary Years

         By 1941 Eileen was expecting her first baby, and in Frensham we had first-row seating to watch the results of the bombings of London lighting the night sky.  We were near enough London to see the fires, but we hoped far enough away to avoid being a target of the Luftwaffe. 

         The worst time was one night in May, when over a thousand Londoners wee killed.  They said four hundred bombers crossed the channel, guided by a full moon.   The houses of Parliament were made unusable, so badly were they hit.  Waterloo Station was destroyed, as well as the Bow Church.  The British Museum lost almost a quarter of a million books.  Two thousand fires were started that night, and many of them continued burning through the next day.  On that night six firemen died and almost three hundred were injured.  London was bruised and battered.

         Prime Minister Churchill gave a wonderful speech over the wireless, and I remember some of it.  He said Hitler knows he will have to break us in this island or lose the war.  He said we must brace ourselves to our duties and bear ourselves so that if the British Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say that ‘This was their finest hour.’

         In late August Eileen went to Farnham to have her baby in the nursing home.  She and her new daughter stayed  there for two weeks.  That was normal in those days.  Not only that, the new mothers were given a pint of Guiness every night to help their milk production.  I was only able to make the trip to visit her once, and was only allowed to stay one hour, although the new fathers were allowed two.  Allan was away on a training exercise, but I learned they had agreed to name their daughter Eileen Jean.

         As I travelled home on the bus I couldn’t help but wonder what my granddaughter’s future would be like – I had no doubt we would defeat Hitler, but at what cost?

War and Weddings

         By the time Britain declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939, it was taken for granted all the countries of the Commonwealth would also declare war, and so it was.  Before the end of the year there were hundreds of young Canadians training in facilities near Frensham, and we saw many of them roaming our town during their leisure time.  It seemed natural our young women would be attracted to these soldiers from so far away, and my Eileen was no exception.

         She had been working for several years, and by the time war came along she was also serving as a volunteer in one of the Canadian canteens near Aldershot, on the weekends.   I wasn’t surprised when she announced she had met someone and was going to spend some time keeping him company, since he was lonely, like most of them.  When she brought him home after a few outings I could tell she was in love, and he seemed to be as well. 

I learned it was just he and his mother at home in Montreal, and that she had emigrated from Scotland at the beginning of the century.  Young Len took an instant dislike to Allan.  He went about shouting what all our young English men were saying.  “Them Canadians – over paid, over sexed, and bloody over here!”

            Meanwhile, by 1940 the war began to get serious.  After conquering Begium, Holland, Denmark and France, Hitler turned his attention on us in Britain. Although over three million people (mostly children and their caregivers) had been evacuated from the London area, it still seemed the Lutwaffe wanted everyone in the big cities dead.  Our ponds, Big Pond and Little Pond, were drained, since their reflection pointed the way directly to London. 

         My attention was only half on the war though, for at the end of June my Eileen married her Allan in a quiet wedding, in the church where she had been christened.  I had many private misgivings, but I was young enough to remember how the urgency of wartime makes young couples seize the day, for who know how long they have.  I did not tell Eileen what to expect, for in those days one didn’t, but nevertheless she glowed with happiness as she sent her husband back to war after their weekend honeymoon spent in her upstairs bedroom.  Then we settled in to deal with the war.

Darkening Days

         The years leading up to World War II were not all dark, I must say – my neighbours often gathered in Dougie Dadson’s shop and listened to the wireless news on the BBC.  We heard all about the doings of the Prince of Wales as he was sent around the Empire to show the flag.  He was very popular and handsome, so different from his parents, the dignified, unsmiling king and queen.  We also heard news of the Duke and Duchess of York, who also toured for the crown.  In the Illustrated London News photos the duke was a shy-looking pale reflection of his prince charming brother, but his beautiful and poised wife and little daughters made them a happy looking foursome. 

         I will never forget how shocked we were when the King abdicated so soon after his father died.   That was when we learned how he wanted to marry an American divorcee.  It seemed like such a desertion of his country then, and still does, I suppose.  However, we would not have had the bravery of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to lead us through the war, nor the experience of having their daughter as our Queen.

         I don’t believe anyone in our county made such use of the newspapers as the people in our lane did.  We waited for the day-old paper brought home by Mrs. Ames, who charred for the town council offices, then passed it down the line.  I always asked for it last, so I could use it to line my canary’s cage after reading.  (“Dickie” was given to me by Len in a burst of generosity when we were first married, and since then I have always had a canary with me, for company.)

         The newspaper became my way of finding out what was happening in the world.  The Spanish Civil War was just the start.  Once Hitler had begun his occupations and annexing of this and that it began to become clear it wasn’t going to be easy to stop him and his Nazis.  Looking back at it all though, I think we were not told very much about what went on behind the headlines – the frustrated negotiations by various politicians were things we only had vague notions of in our little village.  I began to worry about my boy, wayward though he was.  He was just becoming old enough to go to war.  I should have worried about my daughter instead!

The next few years were hard but we managed.  I grew most of our food, made most of our clothes, and the precious money I made from sewing kept us in shoes and other necessities.  My parents took the children with them to Southsea every summer for holidays, and they came back brown and happy from their seaside trips.  I never told them about Len’s infidelities, only that he was working in London and came home when he could.

         Leonard did come home every once in a while, to see Eileen and little Len.  One year he won the award for his sales, and sent home a huge hamper, just in time for Christmas.  We feasted on ham, fruit, cheese and a huge goose that year, and had our neighbours in for a festive dinner.  My husband was not with us, and although nobody mentioned his absence, the children especially made it clear they missed their Dad.

         As Len got older he became a handful.  Perhaps if he had a normal home life he would have turned out differently, but by the time he was ten he started missing school and hanging around with some wild older boys.  They nicked sweets and cigarettes from the shops, got into fights and threw rocks at windows. 

         Eileen, bless her heart, was my angel.  She kept me company, cleaned the cottage for me when I was busy sewing, and tried to set an example to her brother, although he never listened to her.  When she was fourteen she left school to go into service for one of the families who had a villa outside of Farnham. When she was done for the day she would bicycle home, and I would walk down the lane to meet her.  She only ever kept a few shillings for herself, and I must say her salary helped us out tremendously.  Sometimes she would come home with a handful of flowers for me that she bought at a stand on her way home.  She knew I loved growing beautiful flowers but hated picking them, only to watch them die. 

         The years went by, quietly in our village, but in Britain and Europe things were changing, and not for the better.  In fact, the skies were becoming very dark indeed.

On My Own

         I don’t know how many times I was told in confidence by one seeming friend after another about Len’s affairs with local women, but always he would deny and then admit his so-called weakness.  He would beg forgiveness and swear he loved only me and the children, and I would forgive him, fool that I was.  We would be fine for a few months, then it would start again.  Finally one night he didn’t come home, and a note was placed in the mailbox.  Gone to London to seek work, he said, having got the sack as Commons Keeper.  Later I found out the husband of one of his lady friends had discovered the pair together and threatened to kill Len, after going to the Town Council to insist he be fired.

         The children and I were left with no means of support, and so I put it about that I was once more in the seamstress business.  At first a few friends came to me out of pity, but soon I developed a reputation for skilled work of excellent quality.  It was enough to keep us.

         Eventually I received a letter from Len, full of remorse, but containing some money.  He was working as a Hoover salesman in London, and he would send us money as he could.  He wasn’t all bad, but he was weak, 

Life in the Village

         Frensham is what you would call a rural village, or was in my time.  The war had not affected it very much, except for the boys and men it took away forever.  Before the gentry discovered it after the Second World War it was mostly made up of cottagers who lived as they had for generations.  They owned their own cottage and a little land, passed down from father to son.  They kept pigs and donkeys, even a few cows.  Many kept bees, made their own wine and often paid in kind for any services the neighbours might do for them.  You could imagine them stepping in from the last century, the men in their homemade smock frocks, their wives in long dresses under their coveralls.  They saved their money, were indifferent to books and newspapers and disinterested and anything that happened further than the next town.  They never took holidays, but liked to sit in the evening over a glass of beer or homemade wine, gossiping with their neighbours.  I believe they did not know what it was like to feel dull. 

         The old people lived quiet lives of self-reliance, lives of simple dignity.  Their children looked to the city for their excitement, and many deserted Frensham for factory jobs.   For the most part the village has an air of living in a time gone by.

         Almost directly across from Rookery Cottages was St. Mary the Virgin, dating back many centuries.  The prayer cushions were wonderfully worked by women long dead and forgotten and the windows were rich with stained glass.  Eileen, and later her brother Leonard were christened there.

         When the time came Eileen and little Len attended the village school.  Schooling had not changed since my time as a student.  A few rules of Arithmetic, a little of the geography of the British Isles, a little poetry, some nature study, penmanship, needlework for the girls, woodworking for the boys – all these were offered in the simple education offered to the children of Frensham.  When they left school at fourteen, their real education began.  Apprentiship for some, domestic service for others.

         Frensham is overseen by the Bishop’s castle, a grand building where Queen Mary once stayed while waiting for her future husband, the King of Spain to arrive in England.  It may be that the public can visit it now, but in my time the Bishop lorded over it like royalty.

         There are many lanes where one can wander into the countryside from the village, and from spring until fall they are lined with all kinds of flowering plants. In the village high street are grocery, hardware and ready-made clothing shops, as well as a bakery and a pharmacy.  When Woolworth’s opened its doors everyone was excited, for one could buy everything from greeting cards to cloth and sewing needs. 

         I loved those years living in Frensham while my husband was working as the Commons Keeper.  Our son Len was born a few years after Eileen.  Their father came home every night and we were a happy family.  Like Mrs. Maidment said, “Your Len will come right in time.”  

How could I know my Len was leading a secret life?

        

        

Mrs James

         At first I was very happy in my new role.  Len and I moved to the small village of Frensham, not more than a hop, skip and jump from my old home in Farnham. We rented a small semi-detached house in a development called Rookery Cottages, kitchen and parlour downstairs, two bedrooms up.  (I soon learned the reason for our new home’s name – the trees behind us were full of rook’s nests, and sometimes their noise was deafening.  The privy was in the back, along with a pump for fresh water.  We used my savings to furnish it, and I did have a good time setting my little home to rights.  Len was offered the job of steward at the British Legion, and his salary kept us nicely at first.

         A daughter was born to in 1922, and we called her Eileen Lucy.  On warm summer days I would set her out in the garden in her pram while I worked in our little vegetable garden.  Len loved potatoes and onions, and nights I fed him fried potatoes and onions he would declare himself a happy man, and sit by the fire with his pipe while I bathed the baby and put her to bed. 

         Leonard did not stay a happy man for long.  He sometimes became very moody and would take himself for a walk after our evening meal, often staying out until well after midnight.  Remembering the difficult times he had experienced during the war I tried to be understanding.  He was never violent, but often came home tipsy, and once in a while smelling of perfume.  When I confided my fears to my neighbour, Mrs. Maidment, she shook her head and said, “There’s a man for you.  They have all the good times, while we women slave – it’s a dreary old life for us.  Have another baby, ducks, and keep yourself busy.  Remember, there’s lots and lots of spinsters out there that’s pining for the company of a man, since the war took so many.  Your Len’ll come right in time.”          

         Mrs. Maidment had lost her husband and only son in the war, and in time we became close friends.  I came to depend on her friendship more and more.  She was one of the few people in the village I learned to trust, for the gossip I was beginning to hear in the shops did not speak well of Len.  There were whispers about money missing from the Legion.  Dougie Dadson, who owned the greengrocers, took a special interest in my daughter, slipping her little treats when we had done our shopping.  My sister Rosie came over to visit from Farnham, and once she brought Mother’s treadle sewing machine with her in a cart.  “Mother said she no longer has any use for it, and she thought you could have it to make clothes,” she told me, as she played with little Eileen, “Besides, you could always support yourself if you ever need to.”  There was something in her tone of voice that made me think she was trying to forewarn me about something I already suspected but chose not to know.  In those days women simply had to put up with their husband’s ways and hope for the best.

         It wasn’t long before Len’s light-fingered ways were discovered and he was dismissed, only to find more employment as the Commons Keeper.  There are two ponds in Frensham, Little Pond and Great Pond.  Great Pond is surrounded by a large park, where one will find a sandy beach and picnic grounds, but most of the park is given over to a wildlife preserve.  For quite a while my husband was kept so busy he was too tired to go philandering at night.  

Changes

         I asked for and received a transfer shortly after Lily died, for I couldn’t bear living in Portsmouth without Lily.  She had been my dearest friend, closer than any of my sisters.  I was sent to a convalescent home near Salisbury, where the wounded were being rehabilitated. 

         One of the men in my charge was Leonard James, an extremely handsome member of the Royal Horse Artillery.  A cannon had backfired on him during training at Salisbury Fields.  He was injured in both mind and body, for along with the shrapnel wounds he was badly shell-shocked as well.  Despite his injuries, we slowly bonded with each other over the year I nursed him. 

         During that year I was interested to learn that many towns and villages were following the example of the large memorial the King had ordered to be built in London, and cenotaphs were springing up all over England.  In November of 1919 his majesty had instituted a two-minute silence to be observed in the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, in observance of all the Great War’s dead.  One of the more touching memorials was built in East London, where a class of five and six year old children had died in the bombing of their school. 

         Anti-German feeling was everywhere, so much so that King George decided to change the royal family’s name from Saxe-Coburg to Windsor.  He took the name from one of his castles, I believe.  I often wondered how he managed to live with his decision to refuse admittance to his first cousin the Tsar of Russia, when he was overthrown. I remember how shocked we were to hear the Bolsheviks had murdered Tsar Nicholas and his family in cold blood.   

         Change was in the air, it seemed, in those days.  Airplanes and fast cars were everywhere.  We nurses took a few of the more mobile patients to the cinema, where Ernest Shackleton presented his adventures in Antarctica in a film called “South.”  There were lots of labour strikes, from the bakers and miners to the Liverpool police.  Women’s fashions changed to skimpy little dresses that women had flatten their breasts to wear.  Marie Stopes authored a book everyone was reading, called  “Married Love.”  Like everyone else, I was fascinated to read her theories on contraception and intimacy in marriage.

         Our patients, for the most part, slowly continued to mend and be discharged.  When it was Leonard’s turn to leave he asked me to take a final walk around the garden with him.  We sat on a bench, and it was there, among the sweet-smelling lilacs, he asked me to marry him.   All he had in the world was the bronze cigarette  box presented to soldiers by the Queen as a Christmas present in 1914.  He was handsome and charming, and I accepted, but if I had known what I know now about Leonard James I would have, should have, said no.

In Flew Enza

         My friend Lily wrote me from Portsmouth that she was working with Dr. Harold Gillies, who was becoming famous for rebuilding horribly damaged faces.  He was developing all kinds of ways of helping men to cover or disguise their wounds, so as to make it easier for them to be out in public, as well as to make it easier for those who had to look at them.  Lily told me they were short of nurses, and begged me to join her.  It seemed so interesting I gave notice.  It did seem there was little we could do to help those in my ward.  Those permanently deafened and those so shell-shocked they might as well be deaf as well just seemed to sit by their beds and stare into space with that “thousand-yard stare” we nurses came to know so well.  The nursing assistants could just as easily make the beds and carry the food trays.

         Lily found a wonderful flat for us to share in Portsmouth. The work was fascinating, and some of the masks Dr, Gillies devised were so lifelike one never knew they were not actual faces, until it became clear the masks were not able to change expression.

         We did find time to go to the cinema a few times, but the one I recall most vividly was the gala evening about Lawrence of Arabia.  The introduction was a lead in by the Welsh Guards playing what seemed to be Arabic music. It set the atmosphere, as well as the incense piped in.    We were told the painted set had been used in the “Moonlight on the Nile” scene from an opera.  Exotic dancers came on and did the dance of the seven veils.  Then Lowell Thomas came on stage and explained he had been with Lawrence and had filmed his exploits.  As the lights dimmed he invited us to “Come with me to lands of history, mystery and romance . . .”  There was no doubt Lawrence was a dashing and exciting figure!

         When we cam out into the evening I suggested we stop for cakes and tea, but Lily had a bad headache.  We had been nursing men who had come down with the Spanish Flu, and most of them had died, in their weakened condition.  I learned later that fifty million people around the world died between 1918 and 1920 of the disease.  The streets of Portsmouth became quiet, as most people took refuge in their homes.  As we walked to the hospital we got used to hearing the little street urchins chanting their grisly song;  “I had a little bird/ It’s name as Enza/ I opened the window/ And in flew Enza”.

         The morning after our outing to the cinema my dear friend was admitted as a patient.  By evening she had died, and I was heartbroken.

Nursing Career

Nursing Career

         During World War I  Britain lost almost a quarter of a million of her young men.  The ones who were not killed suffered many injuries, and some of them were horribly disfigured.   We nurses saw most of them only briefly, on their way back home, where they were repaired and rebuilt during their convalescence.  Some were too badly injured to be moved, and all we could do was sit with them and comfort them while they died. 

         Most of the time we were kept just behind the front lines, in field hospitals.  We cleaned and bandaged wounds.  We disinfected stretchers, blankets and instruments, as well as soldiers infested with lice and fleas.  We wrote letters on behalf of blinded soldiers.  The very worst cases were gas poisoning.  With mustard gas the body starts to rot after about twelve hours.  The skin blisters and the eyes become extremely painful.  Nausea and vomiting begins.  The gas attacks the bronchial tubes and strips it of its mucous membrane, so swallowing becomes almost impossible.  Chlorine gas blinded, and it became painful to watch lines of soldiers, arms on each other’s shoulders, groping their way along.

         When we were on leave I couldn’t help think that if those at home saw the effects of the war on their loved ones they would not have encouraged the boys to go off and fight “for king and country.”

         I stayed nursing after the war ended.  I loved the work but caring for some of the wounded and maimed took every ounce of energy and compassion we had.  Some of those affected by the trauma wrote stories and poems.  One of the most affecting was called “Suicide in the Trenches”, by Siegfried Sassoon;

I knew a simple soldier boy/who grinning at life in empty joy

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark/and whistled early with the lark,

In winter trenches, cowed and glum/with crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain/no one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye/ who cheer when soldier lads walk by,

Sneak home and pray you’ll never know/ the hell where youth and laughter go.

Grandmother James' Story

Grandmother James’ Story:

         I am old now, and a grandmother several times over, but I remember being young, being a wife, being a mother, being deserted, being betrayed, living through two world wars – I remember everything.

         Old Granddad William James came from Ireland to Portsmouth in 1870.  He was a military man of the Royal Horse Artillery, and he was posted to Hillside Barracks.  Not long after he met and married my Grannie, whose name was Hol Crosse.  They had four boys – Albert, Percy, Bill and Leonard.    On reaching the age of fourteen, every one of those lads became drummer boys in the Royal Horse. 

         Leonard and I both grew up in Southern England, in what the historians called “La Belle Epoch” – the beautiful time.  Well, it may have been a beautiful time for the rich, especially the aristocracy, for not for the poor working classes. I left school at fourteen, just like the rest, and was apprenticed as a seamstress. At first I was kept in the back, doing plain “straight stitch” sewing on the treadle machine – seams and suchlike.  As I learned more I was able to sew the tailored traveling suits and day dresses the gentry came in to be fitted for.  I loved sewing the gored skirts and low-cut evening gowns.  By 1909 the skirts had lost their fullness and the silhouette was slim, and women showed their feet again.  But I did not enjoy the treatment I was often given by our clients.    Many of them were what I would call “stuck up.”

         As much as I enjoyed making my own wages and living at home with my parents and sisters, our life in Farnham was much the same from day to day. Farnham is in a valley, and a river flows just south of town.  But one day as I was walking home I saw a crowd collecting around the narrow bridge that fords the river.  The river was quite swollen after the heavy winter rains, and I could see a horse and cart under the arch.  The driver, one of the village lads, seemed trapped under the cart, and a number of people were shouting advice to each other as to how to rescue the boy.  I saw Mr. Bourne the schoolteacher handing one of the local bricklayers a rope. The labourer fashioned a noose, descended into the river and secured it under the driver’s armpits.  By then several other men were down in the water and they hauled the poor lad out.  Mr. Bourne had had the foresight to cut the horse fee of its harness, and it scrambled up onto the meadow.  The driver was carried to the nearby inn.

         Mr. Bourne is really rather a handsome man, and my younger sister Emily says he is kind and patient, especially with the younger children.  He replaced old Mr. Johnson who retired two or three years after I left school.  I knew he is not married, so I persuaded mother to ask him to tea, so I could formally meet him.          

         I wore an afternoon dress I had made myself, and I knew I looked well in it.  The talk around the tea-table turned to Germany and how Mr. Bourne was certain the Kaiser was preparing to challenge Britain for mastery of the seas, and was openly hostile to France and Belgium.  I paid little attention to the talk of war between my father and Mr. Bourne, but by the end of tea found myself liking him more and more.  He was so different from the village lads!

         Well, to make a long story short he and I started walking out together, although in Farnham there were few places to walk to.  A stroll in the woods, or along a back lane to view the flower beds that grew in almost all the cottage gardens or tea with his friend the doctor and his wife made up our courtship.

         Then in August of 1914 an archduke and his wife were murdered in Austria and although this did not cause the war, somehow Britain, France and Russia declared themselves against Germany and suddenly all of Europe was fighting.  John Bourne asked me to wait for him until Christmas, when the war was sure to be over, and then we would be married. 

         Our village emptied of all the young men, those who were not disabled, and we at home were left to worry.  Christmas came and went, and families started to receive telegrams regretting the death of our boys.  Among those was Captain John Bourne, who died in France. 

         Despite my grief I knew I had to do something besides sew fine clothes for ladies.  My friend Lily and I decided to train for nurses, and so we joined the Great War, as it came to be known.

June 13, 2011

To those faithful few who are following this story:  You are probably wondering about "the rest of the story" - it is coming really!  The scene shifts to England, where we will meet the English side of Eileen's family.  Stay posted for future blogs!

Boots and Beauty

Boots and Beauty:

         Our trip to England was aboard the Duchess of Richmond, one of the seven troop-carrying vessels that safely crossed the ocean in advance of the brutal Battle of the Atlantic.  Many members of the Royal Montreal Regiment lost their kipper breakfast the first day at sea! 

         From Grennock, Scotland, we traveled by train to Aldershot in  the south of England, were we were marched to Albuhera Barracks, where we shared our first English breakfast.  Albuhera and her sister barrack, Corunna, memorialize battles fought in Spain and Portugal in the late 1700’s, and were built just after the Crimean War.  The six barrack blocks accommodated an entire infantry battalion.  Each two-tiered block sheltered a company, which was divided into platoons of thirty-five men each.  We each had a pull-out bed, three ‘biscuits’ that served as a mattress, and one blanket.  There were no pillows or sheets.  Over each bed hung a two-shelf cupboard for personal kit and pegs for webbing equipment.  A coal-burning stove stood in the middle of each dormitory, and provided the only heat.  Common areas included toilet and shower rooms, a few small spaces for senior staff and stairwells.  On the grounds were canteens, mess halls, a transport compound, and a guard house which fronted an enormous gravel parade square.  Thus were the accommodations of the Royal Montreal Regiment.

         The winter of 1939/40 was one of the coldest on record, and we shivered through the nights, despite wearing our greatcoats, socks and balaclavas to bed.  The water and drainpipes regularly froze, and our coal rations were always used up too soon.  The twelve men under the command of Section Commander Corporal Peterson trained assiduously yet haphazardly for a war that was yet to happen.  My hard work paid off, for I was soon selected to be the platoon’s Senior Section Commander, earning me the three stripes of a sergeant, and a bed in the platoon sergeant’s room.

We sergeants learned the night before the skills we hoped to teach our soldiers the next day.  And so our preparations continued.

         We Canadians were often hungry, not having adjusted to the overseas scale of rations.  Aldershot had long catered to soldiers, and civilian rations had not been drastically cut.  We often spent our pay nights downtown for steak suppers and a pint or two at the pub.  Our hikes back to barracks were often interrupted by the lure of a ‘cuppa and a bun’ at the NAFFI  canteen.

         It was there one wonderful night I met my Eileen.  Some six weeks later we were married in the seven-hundred year old village church in Frensham.  We bonded against a much larger canvas – the end of the resistance of Finland to the Russians, the collapse of Denmark, the surrender of Norway to the Germans, the defeat of the British Expeditionary Force and their subsequent evacuation from France, and the devastating surrender of France.  We were only weeks away from coming under the bombs of the Luftwaffe when our brief honeymoon weekend ended and we all once more turned our attention to the business of defending England, who now stood alone against the devastating threat of Hitler’s Germany.  

Darkening Days

         The next few weeks were dark for Mother and me – grieving for and burying my father on Mount Royal also made me realize how highly regarded he was, as well over a hundred of his union brothers attended the graveside ceremony.  Back at our house, Mother silently served the mourners cake and coffee.  She would not, she told me, serve alcoholic drinks at her home.

         Mother grew more quiet and reserved as the months passed.  I think the radio was her only companion.  She listened to the CBC with ever-increasing intensity, for the news was blacker and blacker.  Every week, it seemed, Hitler and his cohorts marched an inch, a foot, a yard or a country across the face of Europe.  My friend Gordon and I even joked about how tough it would be to live through World War Two. 

         In 1937, all of sixteen going on seventeen I enlisted as a militia guardsman, choosing my father’s old Battalion, the eighty-seventh.  I learned how to form a mass of webbing equipment into the recognizable shape of puttees, carry a rifle and wear a scratchy woolen uniform.  Then I was off for a week’s training at Valcartier.  The real soldiers twitted us mercilessly as we were drilled hour after hour, in the heat of a Quebec summer.  Hordes of mosquitoes feasted on us.  I think they were better fed then we militia who dined on army rations.  I decided I would soldier no more, and returned my kit to the stores.

         Fate had other plans for me, however.  On September 2^nd of 1939, England declared war on Germany.  Assuming we were at war as well, Gordon and I presented ourselves at the armories as recruits.  The Royal Montreal Regiment was to be my home for the next six years.

         My militia experience was used to catapult me into guard duty.  To the dismay of some apartment tenants we were ordered to march up and down behind the armory, two hours on and four hours off, for night after night.  Gordon and I attested – that is, volunteered to be sent overseas for as long as the King desired.  I had heard his stirring speech over the radio and was inspired.  A little younger than me, my friend had to wait several months before signing, but I was now a regular soldier!  Several months of drill followed. 

         I learned that Prime Minister MacKenzie King had visited Europe and had been impressed by Hitler, not falling in with the general sentiment until England actually declared war on Germany.  Despite the increasingly dreadful stories regarding the treatment of the Jews in Germany, he saw to it that Jewish immigration to Canada was next to impossible, so stringent were the rules.  I also learned his government refused to allow any of the 1300 members of the Mackenzie/Papineau Battalion who had volunteered to fight Franco to enlist against Germany, on the grounds 'they were all communists'.  During my weekend visits home, my mother also told me how fifty-three thousand unemployed young men had signed up, lured by three meals and a $1.30 daily.  “To support Britain, they say! How many of them don’t give a fig for the English. How many of them come from good Scots families who are secretly glad to see England on its knees for a change?;  Now they’ll know how it feels.  Any Scot could tell them.”  Looking back on my mother’s behavior I can see she was getting what we used to call ‘a little funny in the head,’ but I was very young and full of myself, and didn’t really understand her rantings against the English to be anything out of the ordinary.

         One day, in the course of a battalion parade Regimental Sergeant Major Wharton searched our ranks for someone, anyone who showed even the faintest signs of soldier-like qualifications.  He picked me as one of four who were to train as Company Physical Training Instructors.  (The reader who appreciates irony should refer back to my high school days!)  Four weeks of six-hour days of physical exercises and competitive games prepared us for being loosed on our respective companies to promote physical fitness.

         Very soon, with the appointment of Major-General MacNaughton, we learned we to be mobilized.  The Toronto Scottish, the Saskatoon Light Infantry and the Royal Montreal Regiment, were designated as the Division’s machine gun units, one unit to each brigade.  I spent my last weekend at home,   Having completed my last night school class a couple of weeks before signing up, I spent some time sorting through my textbooks and notebooks, cleaning up my bicycle, and helping my mother as best I could, shoveling the sidewalk and stacking firewood.  We were to be secretly spirited away so as not to cause a disturbance, so I didn’t even dare leave a note for my mother.  Even so, she must have had known, although we both pretended it was a normal weekend.

         And so we entrained for Halifax in the darkness of a late November evening, and were soon on our way to war.

Employment

         I soon discovered that Montreal did indeed have lots of jobs for boys with bicycles.  Even more, I discovered a sort of caste system among us.  Those who delivered telegrams and cables from the two national railway systems were mostly men who were paid more, frequently received tips, and wore a uniform.  They looked smart in their peaked caps, grey jackets and riding britches with knew-high black leather gaiters.  The rest of us wore what we had, worked for about eleven hours daily, and collected the princely sum of about five dollars weekly.  We worked as gofers and fetchers, delivering packages and small goods in all seasons and weathers.  Pharmacies, tailor shops and printers employed us.  There were always more boys with bicycles, so turnover was simple.

         An Otremont pharmacy accepted me.  Soon I learned to use the tradesmen’s entrance, smile brightly, and say ‘yessir’ or ‘nosir’.  Once or twice I was tipped a dime, but mostly I received a curt ‘thanks’ or ‘merci’.  The dying winter’s sleet and rain made the roads slippery, and often the bike’s wheels stuck in the trolley tracks.

         That job lasted a few weeks.   I was spending the day delivering packages of cigarettes, cough syrup or bottles of Canada Dry.  In between I shivered, cold and wet, in the basement storeroom.  Eventually it dawned on me that this job was not the high road to success, and so one pay night I took my five dollars and didn’t go back.  My wise parents didn’t comment.

         My next employer was a kindly Jewish tailor who lived by dry cleaning, pressing, altering and invisibly repairing costly garments.  He was patient and painstaking in his work.  My six-day a week hours were reasonable, beginning at eight-thirty and seeing me on my way home shortly after six.  Balancing hangers of freshly cleaned suits across one shoulder, I was easily able to steer with one hand on the flats; the hills proved more difficult.  It meant transferring my load so it travelled perilously close to the well-greased bicycle chain while I toiled uphill, and the results were predictable.  My boss merely frowned and sighed as he took the soiled and torn garment from me.  He could see I was truly penitent, accepted my remorse and promise it would never happen again, and set about ‘invisibly’ mending the damage.  For the next three days I could not have been more careful.  But then disaster struck on an even longer hill!  Mortified, I hurried back to the shop, placed the results of my ineptitude on the counter and fled, neither asking for my pay to date nor a reference.

         Answering an ad for messenger boy with a bicycle I was next employed by two young people who had inherited their late father’s small printing shop.  The work was not onerous – delivering paper samples and proofs for customers’ approval, collecting paper of various kinds for the presses, delivering completed work, and doing odd jobs around the shop, all within a sixty-hour work week.  I was still earning a five dollar weekly salary, but was now on the working edge of the print world.  It was enjoyable and in some ways exciting to hear the noise of platen and roller presses, the smell of ink and the crisp feel of printed paper, the sense of ever-fleeting time between start and finish of a job, and the pleasure of delivering the end result on time.

         Around this time a new soft drink came on the market.  Pepsi Cola was accompanied by a belief that if one held a half-empty bottle up to a certain light a very naughty picture would become visible.  It sent scores of my fellow workers scurrying to buy the soft drink.  The rumors were, of course, false, but it did put Pepsi on the market!

         My photo-engraver father understood the pleasure I was taking in this type of work, and saw to it I was interviewed for an opening in the photo-engraving department of the Montreal Herald.  True to the old tradition of union members with children to launch into the world, the wheels were greased in my favour, and Mr. Finn, the flat-footed shop foreman became my new supervisor.  Still earning five dollars weekly, my job, (and, I thought, probably my life!) depended on keeping the two cameramen supplied with a never-ending supply of clean, clear sheets of glass.  Watson and Bill photographed the black and white photos through a filter of very fine dots and developed negatives onto pretreated sheets of zinc.  Subsequent treatments eventually transformed the images ready for the newspaper productions. 

         I discovered the users of the images were not in the building – they were on the second floor of the Montreal Star, three blocks away.  And they always had to be delivered right now!  Both newspapers were owned by a minor member of the British House of Lords.  The Star provided its Anglophone readers an afternoon paper, and the Herald would come out in the evening.  A third newspaper, the Gazette, gave its readers a morning paper.  Thus the Anglophone residents of Montreal three papers.  Only the Gazette is still running.

         During the three years I was employed there my weekly salary climbed to eight dollars.  I received the occasional tip for the seasonal ‘bottle run’ to the provincial liquor control store.  It was enjoyable for the most part, and a useful education, of its sort.

         It was during those three years I found myself meditating on the wisdom of being a high school dropout.  Cap in hand, I found myself in night school three evenings a week, in an accelerated program designed to grant me a high school diploma before my eighteenth birthday.  My time away from school had changed my attitude towards studying, and my life now felt purposeful.

         It became more so when I realized my father’s health was beginning a rapid decline.  I suppose I knew my mother and I were looking at a future devoid of our husband and father, although we never spoke of it.  I will never forget the night my mother sent my friend Gordon to find me at the high school and rush me home in time to say goodbye the finest man I had ever met.