When
my mother reached Canada after sailing from London with 600 other war brides on
the Britannica, she was in for a shock. She had married my father on July 30th
1943, and was on her way to a French Canadian village called Field, in
northeastern Ontario. She still remembers leaving on March 21, 1945 and
arriving on April 13th in Halifax. There was one baby boy with her, and one on
the way. About six months later my father was discharged and went to meet them
in the town on the Sturgeon River, with the sawmill the church and the cross on
the hill.
My mother once told me how they met. It was thirty years later; she was sitting with me in her bedroom, which she had finally furnished to her liking in French provincial “When I first saw your father it was in Hyde Park; he and the two with him were all in uniform. Later, I heard from my friend Sally Perkus, who was with me at the time that Fern had said, ‘See that woman there — I’m gonna marry her.’ ‘Bloody cheek,’ If I’d ‘ave known that I wouldn’t have spoken to him.” She laughed and her eyes drifted back to the moment. “I spent the day with him and made arrangements to meet the day after. But Sally told me what he had first said and I went with her to a carnival. He ended up finding me at the carnival… [That was April 25th 1943 according to her logbook entry on Wednesday April 25 1973: “30 yrs ago today I met Fern.”]
“Sally and I were working at a factory, Eveready’s, your father was loading bombs on planes. Sally and I would ride our bikes to work singing all of the popular songs that would pass the time. Sometimes we’d grab hold of a lorry and it would pull us along. Then the time would pass even sooner. One day both Sally and me got fed up with Eveready’s and quit, and started working at the factory across the street. But that place was worse, so we came back that afternoon, and got our jobs back. I missed my family and London when I came over.
“After arriving in Halifax, I took the train to North Bay. When I arrived in Field, someone came to meet us in a nice car. I thought the Deslaurier’s must be well off to afford a car like that, but it turned out to be a taxicab they had hired. Taxis were much more different in London. They took me to your grandmother’s house, across the street from the Sturgeon River. It was all so primitive, with the outhouses and all. I knew I was in for some rough times.
My mother once told me how they met. It was thirty years later; she was sitting with me in her bedroom, which she had finally furnished to her liking in French provincial “When I first saw your father it was in Hyde Park; he and the two with him were all in uniform. Later, I heard from my friend Sally Perkus, who was with me at the time that Fern had said, ‘See that woman there — I’m gonna marry her.’ ‘Bloody cheek,’ If I’d ‘ave known that I wouldn’t have spoken to him.” She laughed and her eyes drifted back to the moment. “I spent the day with him and made arrangements to meet the day after. But Sally told me what he had first said and I went with her to a carnival. He ended up finding me at the carnival… [That was April 25th 1943 according to her logbook entry on Wednesday April 25 1973: “30 yrs ago today I met Fern.”]
“Sally and I were working at a factory, Eveready’s, your father was loading bombs on planes. Sally and I would ride our bikes to work singing all of the popular songs that would pass the time. Sometimes we’d grab hold of a lorry and it would pull us along. Then the time would pass even sooner. One day both Sally and me got fed up with Eveready’s and quit, and started working at the factory across the street. But that place was worse, so we came back that afternoon, and got our jobs back. I missed my family and London when I came over.
“After arriving in Halifax, I took the train to North Bay. When I arrived in Field, someone came to meet us in a nice car. I thought the Deslaurier’s must be well off to afford a car like that, but it turned out to be a taxicab they had hired. Taxis were much more different in London. They took me to your grandmother’s house, across the street from the Sturgeon River. It was all so primitive, with the outhouses and all. I knew I was in for some rough times.
When
my mother reached Canada after sailing from London with 600 other war brides on
the Britannica, she was in for a shock. She had married my father on July 30th
1943, and was on her way to a French Canadian village called Field, in
northeastern Ontario. She still remembers leaving on March 21, 1945 and
arriving on April 13th in Halifax. There was one baby boy with her, and one on
the way. About six months later my father was discharged and went to meet them
in the town on the Sturgeon River, with the sawmill the church and the cross on
the hill.
My mother once told me how they met. It was thirty years later; she was sitting with me in her bedroom, which she had finally furnished to her liking in French provincial “When I first saw your father it was in Hyde Park; he and the two with him were all in uniform. Later, I heard from my friend Sally Perkus who was with me at the time that Fern had said, ‘See that woman there — I’m gonna marry her.’ ‘Bloody cheek,’ If I’d ‘ave known that I wouldn’t have spoken to him.” She laughed and her eyes drifted back to the moment. “I spent the day with him and made arrangements to meet the day after. But Sally told me what he had first said and I went with her to a carnival. He ended up finding me at the carnival… [That was April 25th 1943 according to her logbook entry on Wednesday April 25 1973: “30 yrs ago today I met Fern.”]
“Sally and I were working at a factory, Eveready’s, your father was loading bombs on planes. Sally and I would ride our bikes to work singing all of the popular songs that would pass the time. Sometimes we’d grab hold of a lorry and it would pull us along. Then the time would pass even sooner. One day both Sally and me got fed up with Eveready’s and quit, and started working at the factory across the street. But that place was worse, so we came back that afternoon, and got our jobs back. I missed my family and London when I came over.
“After arriving in Halifax, I took the train to North Bay. When I arrived in Field, someone came to meet us in a nice car. I thought the Deslaurier’s must be well off to afford a car like that, but it turned out to be a taxicab they had hired. Taxis were much more different in London. They took me to your grandmother’s house, across the street from the Sturgeon River. It was all so primitive, with the outhouses and all. I knew I was in for some rough times.
My mother once told me how they met. It was thirty years later; she was sitting with me in her bedroom, which she had finally furnished to her liking in French provincial “When I first saw your father it was in Hyde Park; he and the two with him were all in uniform. Later, I heard from my friend Sally Perkus who was with me at the time that Fern had said, ‘See that woman there — I’m gonna marry her.’ ‘Bloody cheek,’ If I’d ‘ave known that I wouldn’t have spoken to him.” She laughed and her eyes drifted back to the moment. “I spent the day with him and made arrangements to meet the day after. But Sally told me what he had first said and I went with her to a carnival. He ended up finding me at the carnival… [That was April 25th 1943 according to her logbook entry on Wednesday April 25 1973: “30 yrs ago today I met Fern.”]
“Sally and I were working at a factory, Eveready’s, your father was loading bombs on planes. Sally and I would ride our bikes to work singing all of the popular songs that would pass the time. Sometimes we’d grab hold of a lorry and it would pull us along. Then the time would pass even sooner. One day both Sally and me got fed up with Eveready’s and quit, and started working at the factory across the street. But that place was worse, so we came back that afternoon, and got our jobs back. I missed my family and London when I came over.
“After arriving in Halifax, I took the train to North Bay. When I arrived in Field, someone came to meet us in a nice car. I thought the Deslaurier’s must be well off to afford a car like that, but it turned out to be a taxicab they had hired. Taxis were much more different in London. They took me to your grandmother’s house, across the street from the Sturgeon River. It was all so primitive, with the outhouses and all. I knew I was in for some rough times.
“Eventually
Fern started working the mines in Timmons, where the twins were born, in July
of 1947. So that made Bob, Rick, Terry and Sue.” In 1950 my family moved to
Toronto where my father got a job working at Goodyear inspecting tires. It was
not easy for him to get a job, as he had a heavy French accent. The four
children were left up north for some time, till my parents were able to send
for them. I was born on February 9th 1953, in Toronto. Kim and Danny were born
in 55 and 1958, making seven children.
Around the same
time my mother shared about meeting my father, I heard some stories from my
dad. In the peacefulness of the summer evenings my father would sit on the
veranda passing the time. There were two tall trees in our front yard, a maple
and an elm. I would sit with him and ask him to tell me about his childhood. At
times, while telling me these tall tales he would get excited, and more of his
French accent would come out. “There was a man on the other side of the river
who was trying to build a house, but he couldn’t figure out how to get the
lumber across. There was a pile of two-by-fours where my friends played, so we
thought we’d help him. He had been praying to God to find some way of getting
his lumber. So a bunch of us kids found some old tire-tubes and we made a sling
shot between a couple trees. By having a number of kids pull those tubes back,
we could send those two-by-fours like arrows across the river. We shot them
quickly, so it must have seemed to that man that the boards were falling from
heaven. He got on his knees and thanked God.”
Another time my father told me how he had dived from the bridge, and would come up through the logs. One time he could not find a hole in the logs, and had to swim an incredible distance before coming up for air… Another time he shimmied all the way up a tall pine, but when he reached the first branch it busted, and he fell and broke his arm. He was able to hide his injury for a week, until the pain became unbearable. The same thing happened with an umbrella. My father would jump off the highest peak of the two-story house using the umbrella as a parachute. But it turned inside out, and he fell, ruining the umbrella. So he hid the umbrella until a very stormy day, when he took it out and brought it back in, and said “He ma, look what the wind did.” The most shocking story was about him having a job carrying buckets of water up a hill, and taking a cow to pasture across the railway tracks. One time the cow refused to move when a train was coming.
Many summers my parents would drive up north over 250 miles to visit our relatives. We’d stay at our grandmother’s house and visit with all the cousins. My grandmother’s husband died when he at the age of 27 just after my father was born; then she married her brother-in-law, following an Old Testament custom.” She would cook for us on a big stove fired by coal and wood. One of the first things that Kim and I would do when we arrived was to go running on the logs in the river, or go to the cross. The logs would be all jammed together and we would play lumberjacks on them. My grandmother always knew when we went to the cross. If you stood by the little house behind her house you could see the giant steel cross that overlooked the town. All around the base of the cross were blueberries; we’d pick them and yell, and bang rocks on the metal cross to see if our echoes returned. From the cross you could see the Sturgeon River as it made a turn through the town, the Catholic church at the bottom of the hill, the few stores and hotel, and the houses. Sometimes a train would pass through. At every minute, at the sawmill, there would be a log being turned as it was debarked, then it would roll back into the water with a big splash. We couldn’t hear the splash from the Sawmill, but we could be heard at the cross. When we came down grandmother would be waiting for us, telling us the priest had called and said we were up there.
Perhaps one the reasons I remain optimistic may be because I witnessed a frog hopping out from the belly of a snake. It was in front of my grandmother’s house in Field, a French Canadian village in northern Ontario, and the snake had just been run over by a car. It was a summer and the cicadas were buzzing, competing with the noise of the lumber mill, which constantly debarked logs that had floated down the Sturgeon River. The frog was covered in slime, but having cheated death managed to hop across the road. Just beyond the road was the river, which I was looking at, to see the logs floating by. My father had told us stories of diving into the river and swimming under the logs, and how he almost drowned, having great difficulty finding a space between the logs to come up for air. Perhaps that was a reason for my father to be optimistic. But imagine being that frog, swallowed whole, in the belly of a snake, there would not be much hope.
Another time my father told me how he had dived from the bridge, and would come up through the logs. One time he could not find a hole in the logs, and had to swim an incredible distance before coming up for air… Another time he shimmied all the way up a tall pine, but when he reached the first branch it busted, and he fell and broke his arm. He was able to hide his injury for a week, until the pain became unbearable. The same thing happened with an umbrella. My father would jump off the highest peak of the two-story house using the umbrella as a parachute. But it turned inside out, and he fell, ruining the umbrella. So he hid the umbrella until a very stormy day, when he took it out and brought it back in, and said “He ma, look what the wind did.” The most shocking story was about him having a job carrying buckets of water up a hill, and taking a cow to pasture across the railway tracks. One time the cow refused to move when a train was coming.
Many summers my parents would drive up north over 250 miles to visit our relatives. We’d stay at our grandmother’s house and visit with all the cousins. My grandmother’s husband died when he at the age of 27 just after my father was born; then she married her brother-in-law, following an Old Testament custom.” She would cook for us on a big stove fired by coal and wood. One of the first things that Kim and I would do when we arrived was to go running on the logs in the river, or go to the cross. The logs would be all jammed together and we would play lumberjacks on them. My grandmother always knew when we went to the cross. If you stood by the little house behind her house you could see the giant steel cross that overlooked the town. All around the base of the cross were blueberries; we’d pick them and yell, and bang rocks on the metal cross to see if our echoes returned. From the cross you could see the Sturgeon River as it made a turn through the town, the Catholic church at the bottom of the hill, the few stores and hotel, and the houses. Sometimes a train would pass through. At every minute, at the sawmill, there would be a log being turned as it was debarked, then it would roll back into the water with a big splash. We couldn’t hear the splash from the Sawmill, but we could be heard at the cross. When we came down grandmother would be waiting for us, telling us the priest had called and said we were up there.
Perhaps one the reasons I remain optimistic may be because I witnessed a frog hopping out from the belly of a snake. It was in front of my grandmother’s house in Field, a French Canadian village in northern Ontario, and the snake had just been run over by a car. It was a summer and the cicadas were buzzing, competing with the noise of the lumber mill, which constantly debarked logs that had floated down the Sturgeon River. The frog was covered in slime, but having cheated death managed to hop across the road. Just beyond the road was the river, which I was looking at, to see the logs floating by. My father had told us stories of diving into the river and swimming under the logs, and how he almost drowned, having great difficulty finding a space between the logs to come up for air. Perhaps that was a reason for my father to be optimistic. But imagine being that frog, swallowed whole, in the belly of a snake, there would not be much hope.
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