I “Did you know that our parents were golfers in Riverside?” my oldest sister Margot e-mailed 23 Aug. 1999. That 1912 country club course designed by celebrated Donald Ross lies alongside the Saint John River outside our native city in New Bruns-wick. Among Canada’s thousands it rated 49th of late, tied with Ottawa’s Hunt Club and two others in Ontario. Slick-haired American professional Harold “Jug” MacSpaden of Winchester, Mass., won the Canadian Open there 1939 with 282 strokes, leading off with a course record 67 then finishing up two over par. He was presented with $1,000 and a cup, and in turn presented his teenage caddy with $100. It was the first and last time our Open ventured into the Maritimes as of 2008.
Margot continued: “Daddy turned Rosemary and me into their caddies [we were 6 and 7 then]. Being larger I carried Dad’s bag and got ahead on the Fairway with the ‘ser-ious’ players while Rosemary had more fun with mother and her equally frivolous con-sort. [Dad] had a putting mat at home and, being Dad, was not half-hearted about this.” The topic arose because Margot, when a 76-year-old widow, took up the game 1999, and was wise enough to take a series of lessons from a professional. Because I raised the sub-ject at every opportunity I thought I’d inspired her. Then I learned that she and retired Rear-Admiral Bob Welland, then 82-year-old golfer, were an item so obviously he had persuaded her. Margot Hanington died mid-’08 in Bob’s arms in hospital while they were visiting daughter Felicity and family in Victoria. Our children sent us to her death-bed where we mingled with four generations of Haningtons at her funeral plus Bob’s grown up children.
II Author/master mariner Tom Irvine referred to the “genteel poverty” of a naval officer’s life. Nigh half-a-century ago Bob Welland was captaining his destroyer on a mission in the Korean War Theatre and musing on the bridge how he could scrape up $120. The latest letter from his wife in Canada said that was what their furnace oil bill amounted to and please pay it because her house budget couldn’t stretch that far. As tens of thousands of horsepower drove his destroyer onwards Bob did sums in his head. Only four minutes of his warship steaming along was costing the equivalent of an entire win-ter’s worth of domestic heating oil back home. And that was before oil embargoes. Bob after retiring a rear admiral was a captain of industry. This widower hooked up with my oldest sister Margot, widow of Rear-Admiral Dan Hanington. Margot died in Bob’s arms 2008 in Victoria..
III Nova Scotia’s major coin before Confederation 1867 was a Spanish dollar used in the West Indies. [Salt cod and potatoes down, rum and molasses back.] A system evolv-ed called Halifax Currency on the basis of $5 to the British pound sterling. Britain want-ed Canada to remain in the sterling area. Paper money was issued in N. S. from 1812.
New Brunswick from 1786 favoured the Spanish pistareen akin to a shilling as its standard. In 1852 N. B. legalized dollars and cents in accounts although “pound curren-cy” remained the unit of account. The Uniform Currency Act of 1871 extended the deci-mal system to Nova Scotia, a British sovereign rated at $4.86 plus 2/3 became the stan-dard coin with no limits to tender on American gold coins. Prince Edward Island and British Columbia came on stream 1881.
Gold bullion had replaced the sovereign 1871. A mint under British jurisdiction was established 1908 in Ottawa and taken over by Canada 1931. Britain 15 Feb. 1971 abandoned the 12-shilling system, going decimal. This after 1,200 years of sterling.
Now you will understand why Grandma Lavinia Carew who died 1939 aged 75 in Halifax had always figured all her household costs out in pounds, shillings and pence to get a truer feel for every price before paying out dollars and cents. .
IV Unless you are a recent CanLit student, you don’t see much about my Uncle Joe Wallace, poet of blue-collar brothers and sisters in Canada. Our #2 son Stephen discover-ed him in university. The Canadian Encyclopedia Year 2000 ignored him. I heard him quoted to good effect on CBC 2 one morning still too sleepy to jot down exactly what was being said. Douglas Fetherling in Ottawa Citizen’s Weekly mentioned Milton Acorn’s “greater poetic debt to the Far Left poets Joe Wallace and Dorothy Livesay” rather than to Irving Layton, Louis Dudek and Al Purdy. Fetherling then was writer in residence at University of New Brunswick.
Our Granddaughter Marie-Pierre Wallace looked through the stacks of McGill University in Montreal. Four of Joe’s poetry books were there; three of those published in Canada are in the rare book section and one of his Moscow books with the Canadian Literature section. “I also found bibliographical and biographical references to him in the 1997 and 1987 editions of The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature “ continued Mary who is our #2 son Stephen and Lucie’s daughter.”
Steve himself chanced upon a balanced, 18-page essay on Joe and his poetry on a University of Western Ontario web site. This following was my Dad writing in his mid-70s of his older brother Joe, with whom he lived for some years in mid 20th century Toronto. “Joe made money from five poetry books, which got him as many invited guest tours through socialist Europe and similar free expense and publication profits twice through China [and was] met in 27 cities by local poets talking English. In 1956,” he continued, “Russia’s top sculptor did a vivid bronze bust of Joe. One of three such is in Peking obtained by China. Another is in Nova [illegible], Siberia. [The] third one was on nationwide travel exhibit and [in] Moscow’s main art museum.” Now you just gotta read Kin Tale XXIV.
Eggheads were rare in the Communist Party of Canada of the ‘30s so it tried “to induce prominent Canadian intellectuals to lend the prestige of their names…to the world-wide campaign against fascism.” [Fascists and Communists were at war in Spain.] Ivan Avakumovic’s 1975 history continued: “Those who threw in their lot with the CPC were a diverse crowd…[including] J. S. Wallace the head of an advertising agency and a promi-nent Liberal in Nova Scotia before he placed his gifts at the service of Communism.” A later entry: “J. S. Wallace was the senior bard of the Communist cause in Canada….”
Political science professor Ed Lavelle said late ’99: “The effect of the organization isn’t felt as it was at one time.” He was at Capilano College in Vancouver at the time. My discreet inquiries found that RCMP security had long before closed the books on Pinko Joe and my dad Howard.
V John French proved a 74-year-old knight in shining armour for widow Pearl Annie Hook. My wife Caroline’s younger brother Edward e-mailed niece Joan Turner: “Pearl’s husband Jack died in 1993 after a very long illness. After he died, Pearl seems to have lost any will to keep on living. She refused to cook for herself. She was living on candy and junk food.” Her daughter Shelly [she has three daughters and one son, as did John] had her over “so she would have at least one real meal each week.”
Edward, representing French elders at the marriage in Edmonton, wrote “John and Pearl were made for each other . . . did you ever see two giddy 74-year-olds? Actually Pearl won’t be 74 until July.” Widower and widow were wed 12 May 1999 by a bishop in the Moravian Church before 70 adults not counting children. Pearl was a nurse; John’s late wife, Dorothy Billers that was, had worked in hospital administration. John and Pearl shared five years of married life. He died in the fall of 2004 poor Pearl once again widowed. Soon afterwards she left Edmonton for Tennessee where she had relatives.
VI Douglas Joseph French Jr., his oldest sister Kay (French) Small laughingly told us, early took up the habit of eating meals left-handed. That was because he had his right forearm always ready to protect his head from knuckle raps at table from an indignant father. My wife recalls that Doug and older Kay were full of mischief, although Doug got into more trouble.
He was sent on to Poughkeepsie, New York, for the equivalent of high school. Christian Brothers there ruled him unfit for a religious vocation although his two youngest brothers earned Roman collars much later. The Second World War was in full stride when he came back to St. John’s, so D. J. Jr. made the Royal Canadian Air Force a career, even being commissioned “an officer and a gentleman”. After the air force he had a second career as Foreign Service officer with External Affairs. But he still ate funny.
VII Our extended family was concerned late 1999 to hear of my niece Felicity Han-ington (Dawe)’s beginning struggle with cancer. My oldest sister Margot wrote me:
“A little old lady made a beautiful card and got everyone in their church to sign it for Felicity. In the middle was a terse message: ‘Don’t you dare die, Charlotte’. I found that a very healthy attitude.” Charlotte Dawe is Felicity’s daughter, age 9 or 10 at that time. Felicity later that December dryly wrote us all: “I hope I can welcome the millen-nium the same as you – throwing up.” She was undergoing chemo plus other tummy-upsetting therapies. Mid –2008 my sister/her mother Margot died in Victoria visiting her. Felicity looked the picture of health to us out there as she, aided by husband Larry took on burdens of her mother’s funeral and estate.
VIII One of the Flag Officers I worked for in Halifax was the late Rear-Admiral Ken-neth Dyer. He entertained his staff annually at his residence and I was obliged to go. As I was leaving my wife mentioned she was having labour pains. This I told to Mrs. Dyer who allowed me to quietly make my escape even though the Admiral had told me to look out for certain of his guests. When I reached home all was well after all. Child Duncan, #1 son, was still up and greeted me cheerily: “S’matter, Dad, was the bar closed?” One time earlier I’d come home three sheets to the wind. That time early schoolboy Duncan asked: “Daddy’s drunk – how do you spell drunk?”
IX My mother while Rita Carew wanted to console her father who was pacing in his garden in Halifax after learning that his namesake son Frank had been killed in the trenches during the Battle of Passchendaele [3rd Battle of Ypres] over in Europe in the Great War. He was looking so drawn my mother hesitated to interrupt. Well, she thought, I’ll have a chance to commiserate with him tomorrow after work.
This was the eve of the Halifax Explosion of 1917 it turned out. Her father died next day, a harbour master rallying volunteers to batten down a ship alongside Furness line wharves in Dartmouth. An ammunition ship was on fire following its collision with another vessel in the nearby Narrows to Bedford Basin, Halifax Harbour. It blew up. A fifth of the population was killed or wounded. A blinding snowstorm the next day did more harm to survivors of the blast. A third of the city was flattened.
From Halifax my cousin Anne Carew Hallisey wrote 11 Dec. 2000:
“I went out to the cemetery on the 6th of December in honour of our grandfather who gave his life in the Halifax Explosion. However I think of our grandmother [Lavinia] and what happened to her that year. Adele [Grace] killed herself and was waked and buried from her [Lavinia’s] house. Her first son [Frank Jr.] had died at Passchendaele. Her husband [Frank Carew] was killed and for a time she did not know his fate. Her house in a terrible state and a family to care for…then came the blizzard that wreaked further havoc because the windows had all blown out. Daddy [Basil Carew] would tell us of taking a sleigh and making trip after trip up to the house to bring what he could back down to Aunt Ellie’s [Ellen Carew] where they sought refuge. A most terrible time for our family, but yet leaving us an example of great courage…they are heroic for me.”
Anne further added late 2004 that only the year before Wilma (Tapp) Oland [a Fraser link of ours] had told Anne that this death in battle of soldier son Frank and loss of husband and home in the awful explosion rendered Grandma speechless four full months.
A light moment from their marriage my oldest sister Margot heard long after from Grandma herself. Husband Frank was walking their Sylvia [later our maiden aunt] who cried a lot as a baby. This time he was letting his wife take it easy in bed. As he strolled Sylvia up and down their bedroom a draft would flip up his nightgown. Lavinia giggled. Frank always very much on his dignity thrust baby into her arms and never again walked Sylvia at night.
IX.A. Howard Carew Wallace tells of part of an Easter time letter he once received from Anne Carew Hallisey of Halifax, who wrote:
“I volunteer at Sacred Heart School, once the Convent of the Sacred Heart, and work a day in the archives of the school and love it. If I get a chance, I go back to the early records. The first Carew woman to attend the school beginning in 1860 was Mary Anne Carew, who later became a religious of the Sacred Heart. Your mother graduated in 1916 and won many honours”.. – Anne Carew Hallisey
Howard Carew Wallace added: “I spent several years at College Street School, likely grades IV to VIII. The Province agreed to the Convent provided that a public school was built. In the last century, it burned to the ground, brillia”ntly waxed floors aiding the flames. Anne was my little cousin since infancy living on the ground floor of Grandma O’Neill’s house at 78 Cambridge. She was the widow of Grandfather Carew killed in the 1917 Halifax explosion. As Harbourmaster of Furness Withy Lines there, he and his volunteers were wiped out while prepaaring to go by boat to the flaming vessel, to see what could be done. Bam!”
X In Saint John, N. B., where my sisters and I were born in the 1920s, Daddy drove a Hupmobile. The Great Depression killed off this car after 30 years of production as it had also the Duesenberg, Pierce-Arrow, Jordan, Marmon and Cord.
Two brothers founded the Hupp Motor Car Co. of Detroit 1908. Late in 1925 came a straight-eight cylinder model followed next year by a six. They sold well and a stylish 1928 model more so. By the end of that year a record 65,862 Hupmobiles had been made. The 1929 crash reduced sales 23 per cent. The company made no profit in the early ‘30s and a boardroom battle eroded public confidence. It stopped making auto-mobiles 1940 and switched with success to heating and air-conditioning equipment.
I was just four when our family broke up 1933. I have brief memories of a stur-dy, dark coloured, box like, heavily appointed sedan with grey upholstery. My mother said long after that their particular Hupmobile model was changed every five years, not annually. In Mount Pleasant outside Saint John we had a big circular driveway Dad didn’t quite negotiate one night. Our car was still canted into the roadside drainage ditch next morning. Not, I decided after looking at Dad and car from a safe distances, the right time to ask questions.
XI My oldest sister Margot and husband Dan Hanington were always doughy about everybody’s grandchildren and occasionally took a little person off our hands for a visit. Our #3 daughter Caroline was blessed with endearing big eyes that missed nothing. After a pleasant afternoon in the Hanington house in Ottawa, our pre-schooler reported: “There was a fire, in a cage, by the pussy cat.”
At that time the Haningtons were living on Echo Drive in Ottawa. Our daughters Catherine Anne and Caroline went back there when Margot died the better to summon fond recollections. At her funeral service in Victoria one of many e-mails we parents heard from the pulpit described how our daughters had felt as they sat together curbside on that street of such fine memories overlooking the Rideau Canal.
XII Harts were Irish-Canadian relations by marriage in 19th century Oshawa, Ont. Earlier Harts practised their Roman Catholic faith in the Sligo area of Ireland after fleeing persecution in England. Here’s a 15th century situation, likely of no bearing on our Harts.
Robert Cely couldn’t concentrate on business for running after girls or playing dice at Calais. Somehow he had became betrothed to a Joan Hart and thus was malinger-ing at Bruges on the Continent, afraid to return to the English Pale because charged with desertion in bishop’s court. Joan’s relations were trying to wring money out of the black sheep’s father, Richard Cely, merchant of the staple and owner of the manor of Brett’s Place in Essex. Old Richard countered by demanding back the presents his prodigal had showered on her. Back came in fullness of time a girdle of gold with a silver buckle and pendants, a gold ring with a little diamond in it, a damask carpet and so on.
The staple was the official channel through which English wool had to pass. It was fixed at Calais 1426 for sake of easy sailing distance to London and Channel ports and but a short ride from Bruges and Ypres. Four-fifths of wool leaving England went via Calais for further processing. Balance of trade was corrected but this took a lot of time.
XIII In a house full of growing boys, my wife Caroline’s mother in St. John’s, Nfld., had to be sure baked treats would last until the intended meal. Pat, the oldest would come at night and rummage around the kitchen in vain. Nor was #5 boy Harry the youngest any better at tracking down mom’s goodies. Most of the time they remained hidden in the stove oven. Mary Ellen’s #3 daughter did the very same to all of us and by golly it always worked by our handful of hearths too.
XIV Canadian armed forces officers generally were found to slot just after bank mana-gers in a survey done mid-1960s on where we stood in the pecking order of our country. Admirals of course normally rate much higher. Rear-Admiral Dan Hanington Ret’d in Victoria was hospitalized May 1998 full of cancer and shoved full of morphine. He dreamed that he and his ship’s company were prisoners of war of Germans [he won a Distinguished Service Cross in the Second World War]. It was up to him to create a diversion so that his sailors could get free.
The results were a fire in his hospital bed made from newspapers handy, fire alarms, smoke inhalations, sprinklers, and post trauma therapeutic counselling for the staff. Oh yes, he was persona non grata in that institution. His #2 son Brian arrived from Ottawa in time for all this and was peremptorily made sentry at his Dad’s bedside. He had plenty of time to reflect on this his wedding anniversary. Around midnight a calm bass voice issued from under the blankets: “How are you, my son?” and eyelids opened with an irrepressible twinkle.
XV No. 2 son Stephen our high bureaucrat long garbed himself in basic black and wore half-Wellington boots nearly all year round. He was taking me on a trip to North Carolina 1999, to winter golf with his #1 brother Duncan and wife Tina. Since Ste hadn’t time to buy enough golf shirts before our trip I gave him a selection of mine. “Dad,” he marvel-led, “you’re the Imelda Marcos of golf shirts!”
He wasn’t wearing one of mine as we arrived in Raleigh and his slacks looked as rumpled as usual. At the airport he asked an older black lady for the time. Sizing him up she thought he meant dime. “Why shoah, honey,” she said, diving into her purse for a handful of change, “what all would you like?” Steve was so touched by her generosity that he risked relating this little tale to a gabby parent.
XVI Howard Wallace Sr. during a Christmas interview in The Ottawa Citizen 1976: “My wife bought me four pairs of socks this year. I chose them and she paid for them. She knows what I got her too. Well she’s 79 and she’s found out there’s no Santa Claus.”
XVII Douglas Joseph French, my father-in-law, ran Newfoundland’s liquor control board. The Bay Roberts area had families named French but these were staunch Pro-testants. They were encouraged to see a French running things when they came into his office on business and gave D. J. a Masonic handshake to help their deal along.
Unbeknownst to them Doug was a Roman Catholic and 4th degree Knight of Columbus. He recognized their signal, squeezed right back, and make it a point to do whatever was possible for a Bay Roberts delegation. Afterwards was his time for a good chuckle.
XVIII Cavity-free teeth are the goal of most parents for their children but it was much harder to achieve before Ottawa began putting fluoride into the drinking water. Back then and previously in Halifax we didn’t keep soft drinks on hand because the sugar they left behind in the mouth did much damage. After all, who rushes off to brush their teeth after downing a fizzypop? And there was no dental plan available then for our multitude.
Grandma Wallace invited Marita over for afternoon tea. Our oldest was attending kindergarten in the Convent of the Sacred Heart thanks to Dan and Margot Hanington having their coxswain drive her back and forth. When she came back she reported with sparkling eyes that she had been given “a bottle, with something in it.” We didn’t have the boob tube in our home then, so she hadn’t been bombarded with brand names.
XIX Gil Hutton then an ordnance sub-lieutenant and metallurgist had been a messmate of mine in RCN Barracks, Halifax circa 1950. He married Catherine, another defence scientist, and we squeezed them into our growing family temporarily while they were travelling. We had to put them in a bedroom where Catherine Anne was already asleep in her crib.
Early next morning our soggy-bottomed little daughter proceeded to work her wiles on Gil, doing the damsel in distress bit by eyeballing him and smiling plaintively. She couldn’t talk yet. While his wife chortled under the bedsheets, Hutton got up, changed Catherine as best he could, and was rewarded with radiant smiles as next she handed him her slippers to put on.
In 1991 Catherine decided to quit the advertising field for a career change. Her award-winning firm Wallace Kearney McGill asked us for pictures and blew one up as a poster. In it she as a tiny tot was hopping about in white dress and diaper with a 1,000-candle-power smile for the camera. At her firm’s farewell cocktail party for her in the National Arts Centre, a cross section of Ottawa’s business community gladly raised a glass to her and autographed it.
XX No. 4 son Barnaby’ birthday 21 January 1962 meant he’d be unable to go to school for a long time compared to his siblings. The winter done with and aged four he began the habit of wandering down to our little neighbourhood school, Ecole Lamoureux, at that time bilingual. The windowsills to the basement level were nice and wide and he liked to perch on one looking in on the principal’s office. Being a personable little guy he’d chat up Sister Ethelreda in English and showed maturity for his age. It wasn’t long before this admirable woman sent a message home that he was to start school there that very September.
XXI My Uncle Stephen O’Neill Carew (1906-86) was youngest of his family and restless. He ran off to sea but with some decorum because his older brother Basil took him down to the vessel in a horse-drawn cab. The last scene Basil saw as he started for home was the boatswain punching Steve, knocking him flat on the deck just to show him who was boss.
Steve became a quartermaster in Canadian Pacific Beaver freighters on the Pacific. A bolt of lightning damaged his eyesight so that he no longer could meet visual require-ments of the Canadian Navy in case of war. He joined the Princess Louise Fusiliers, a Halifax militia regiment, as Carews had done before him. He became Major Rocky Carew in the Second World War and his own family referred to him thereafter as The Major.
XXII Bruce Wallace was a restless young subaltern at the beginning of the Second World War. He had entered the Pictou Highlanders and chafed at the delay in getting overseas to fight instead of tedious training under canvas in Nova Scotia. Our Ottawa eye doctor for many years was a Fraser who was serving in the same unit. One day he saw my cousin sneak into the ablutions tent and land a kick on his C. O.’s wet bare ass. Bruce survived the war an RCAF sergeant Hurricane fighter pilot and d. 2001in Halifax a ripe old age.
XXIII Cecily Pascale was our youngest b. 10 April 1965 who somehow had to fit into a home already crowded with two adults and eight older sisters and brothers. She certainly spared no effort. She loved smooth rocks, shiny if possible. These were not easy things to find in a sub division built over cultivated land; after all the Ottawa Valley was not Nova Scotia where they must “farm between the rocks”.
When someone’s birthday came near little Cecily wanted to do her share. So she was out there, struggling gamely to roll or push home a favourite boulder as a present. She might find one that was blocks away but never missed a deadline. Her rocks proved too big even for doorstops and we wound up over supplied! All but one around our property we put to good use when we were anchoring cement porch posts. The final cherished one lies hidden under our deck.
XXIV How obsessed a creative writer can be is demonstrated in this story from my father. His brothers had managed finally to get Daddy out of mental hospital in Saint John, N. B., where he had been since his family breakup of 1933. He joined older brother Joe in Toronto where Howard, Great War infanteer turned pilot, helped make aircraft for the rest of the Second World War. Afterwards the brothers worked up unions to try to protect refugees from exploitation in Canada’s industrial heartland.
They were attending a concert when Joe suddenly started prodding Dad out of the hall in mid performance. Mystified, Dad followed. Soon they were in a tavern close by where Joe pulled out a piece of paper and said, “You just have to listen to this poem I’ve been composing.” And Joe actually lived to write another!
XXV Fred Small d. 27 March 2000 London, Ont., loved by many, admired by all. He was my wife’s brother-in-law who would have been 77 that May 19. What a teen-aged granddaughter wrote him follows:
I LOVE YOU
By Janet Turner
It happened one late Monday evening,
I woke up with a tear in my eye.
I looked out my window and saw a bird soaring,
My heart was aching and I wanted to cry.
I felt a cold chill go slowly down my spine.
I felt different, empty inside.
Then we got a phone call. He passed away,
The dearest Grandpa of mine.
I didn’t want to believe it, but I had to,
He had died.
We didn’t even get to say “good-bye”
He left me, and now he’s gone forever.
I cried for hours and hours, and then looked up
To the sky and said, “Grandpa, if you can hear me,
I won’t forget you, ever!”
As the years will slowly pass by,
I’ll grow more to understand why he has died.
And when I think back to this day, I’ll cry.
But I know he is with me, he is with me inside.
I know he is with me, and I know this because
When I pray to him, my heart is filled with grace.
It makes me feel like I can fly, just like a bird does.
Although I wish I were with him, I’m glad I’m in this place.
I remember the day that he taught me to hold my hands in prayer.
And thinking back to all those times, my heart begins to tear.
But then I’m relieved when I realize that he’s in Heaven,
Up with God is where he is, and belongs.
For his faith and his heart were as strong as the word “amen”.
Now it’s time we must say our so-longs,
So Grandpa, if you’re listening, I want to say
“I love you, and good-bye”.
And I’ll think of you every time I see your
Flag hanging only halfway up in the sky.
So I’ll end by saying these words I regretted never saying to you,
But to let you know that I have and always will truly mean them:
“Grandpa, I love you.”
XXVI James Michael “Pup” Granville (1864-1952) was tall, slim and dignified as “Crier” at Halifax County Court into his 80s. Leaving for work one day, Pup smoothed his mustache and donned his bowler hat as usual, not realizing that a flowery little hat of his wife Minnie was stuck on top.
My cousin Greta Marie Granville, his granddaughter, said he continued unaware and “carefully tipped as he met acquaintances”. .
XXVII Our #4 son Barnaby was diagnosed a celiac syndrome in 1963 when 20 months old. We had just come back to Ottawa from Halifax and thought the change of water had loosened his bowels. When he figured lead-based brown paint was chocolate milk he was through a flimsy barricade and drinking it which no doubt sped matters along. Doctors pumped and pumped his stomach, unaware before his consommation of porch paint he been eating molasses on dark rye toast.
The poor little fella was put on a diet restricting him to boiled food, nothing fried, no other fats but lots of banana. He wasn’t long in becoming an accomplished thief. At breakfast, he’d run a swift finger over a sibling’s toast for some peanut butter. He’d no-tice an kitchen empty, grab a stool, and reach into the top cupboard for cookies hidden there for the rest of the family. He’d be down off the stool and out of the room with his mouth crammed before anyone could react. In time his innards matured enough for his problem to disappear. Although he hasn’t peeled a banana for himself since, Barney’s early dexterity and quick moves may have helped turn him into quite the athlete. He was one of Canada’s junior national rugger champions, his photo on Canterbury High School’s Wall of Fame in Ottawa.
XXVIII Because of the 1860s Fenian Raids on Canada from south of the border, Thomas Bates Granville (1820-1915) bought a commission in the militia Down East. His father-in-law, Captain James Burroughs, was a British regular. Meeting in the street Thomas greeted him, “Hi Pops!” and neglected to salute him. He was put on charge and family historian Owen Granville isn’t sure if this matter was ever dropped.
XXIX Uncle Joe Wallace was calling at Mum & Pup’s place in Halifax. Who answers the door but Thomas Bates Granville by now a grandfather. He yelled up the stairs: “Your intended is here.”
My cousin Greta Marie Granville wrote from Halifax that Dot “was humiliated because she was only 16 and this was only her second date”. In a few years Joe and Dot did marry, in 1915, only to have her die in ’27 of tuberculosis.
The grandfather lived into his 90s. Family lore says what killed him had been their engagement party. Thomas had decided to live to be 100 and had taken to his bed for the winter. Curious about their party he got up, leaned out his bedroom window and fell out, dying a few days later. Owen Granville, family historian recorded this version, kinder than other possibilities mooted by his contemporaries.
XXX Mary Anne (Granville) Brennan (1817-?1905) was so religious in old age that it grated her younger brother Thomas with whom she stayed. He’d mumble words ending with “hypocrite” and when she asked what he was saying he would reply: “It’s a nice day, Mary.”
When only a child my Uncle Ed saw her after death coming downstairs dressed in black. He told Mum who suggested he have a Mass said for her soul. He dug into his little savings and did so. Then he saw her “go upstairs dressed in white” recounted my Cousin Owen Granville, family historian and a son of Ed. Mary never worked outside home. Favourite expression, “The trials and tribulations of this life are very hard indeed.”
XXXI Matthew and Cecily were barely into school when he caught chicken pox. He was bored alone at home and they’d always been close, being our 8th and 9th children. He was caught rubbing his pustules on her skin, hoping she’d get sick; be kept home, and keep him company. He got better and was back at school before little sister fell sick.
XXXII Grave diggers at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Sackville, N. S., made a mistake 1952 burying Pup Granville beside Theresa (Ryan) Granville, a snooty sister-in-law who once lived next door and whom he couldn’t stand. His spot was supposed to be else-where in the family plot with space enough for his widow Minnie to join him. She was buried regardless at Gate of Heaven in ‘59. My cousin Owen, family historian and grandson thought that “Pup was hen-pecked by a smaller, dominant wife”. Minnie aka Mum was warm hearted to my sisters and me.
XXXIII John Harder normally talks to daughter “Jasminigan” in English and her mother, our #4 daughter Cecily, speaks to Jasmine in French. When this little family went to the vacation cottage of Bill Rothery and our #3 daughter Caroline, Bill used English and our Caroline French. To her niece she identifies herself as Tante Caroline. At 20 months old Jasmine could only manage Ta’. Near the end of a meal in late summer of 2000, Caroline cleared some things off the table including a plate of small chocolate bars. Jasmine, robust eater, demanded: “Ta’! Chocolat ici!” Laughs all round.
XXXIV My cousin Bernie Granville was 31 years an economist at the Dominion Bureau of Statistics later Statistics Canada, Ottawa. He played violin after hours in two orches-tras. So how come a youth group came to him of all people for a jock speaker?
“Will Danny Gallivan do?” he asked them. This was the play-by-play broadcast-er of Montréal Canadien hockey games on national television when they were good play-off bets. We remember Danny announcing that some player “has just missed a galorious scoring opportunity”. His radio background was at CHNS Halifax and before that CJFX Antigonish, N. S. Back then Bernie was studying at St. Francis Xavier University there.
Radio programming was vexing for many decades last century. All too often a CJFX announcer would come on: “We regret that the program scheduled for this time is not available. Instead we present a selection of violin music by Bernard Granville.” A package again had failed to arrive in time. Bernie told me he always was ready for a panic phone call, his music stand positioned permanently in the broadcast studio, a corner of a fresh page of music turned down so that he could start playing forthwith. Thus every protégé in Clyde Nunn’s station owed Bernie, big time.
His music teacher made sure Uncle Ed bought a decent-priced Peter Womsly 1734 violin for Bernard. He had perfect pitch and “could tease out of a violin sounds that weren’t there for everyone,” commented his brother Owen, family historian.
XXXV In common with most of his generation, “Pup only used to take a drink on very special occasions,” said my cousin Greta Marie Granville about her grandfather. So when his son and namesake Jim was made monsignor around mid-20th century Pup walked to the liquor store downtown in Halifax to buy a bottle.
“On the way out of the store he slipped, breaking the bottle and his collarbone. Someone he knew picked him up and wanted to call my teetotaler father and my grand-father said, ‘Anybody but him!’” Nevertheless Dr. Ed Granville was called, looked after dad, “and replaced the bottle.” Every time I saw Uncle Ed he had a twinkle in his eyes.
XXXVI No. 2 son Stephen was always a deep thinker when a child. He usually managed to be around when his mother baked of an afternoon. They discussed a range of subjects but the matter of a religious vocation came up again and again. Caroline assured him that a woman usually did any cooking at a glebe house so cookies were likely to be baked. No matter how much he pondered, Steve continued unsure that a supply of chocolate chip cookies would automatically follow if he did commit himself to Holy Orders. He married early and his Lucie bore them two children, Marie-Pierre and Eli Edouard.
XXXVII Dr. Ed Granville (1889-1984) practised most of his life in rural or semi-rural environments of Nova Scotia at a time when house calls were the norm. My cousin Greta Marie was his oldest and observed: “his hours were very long as he never refused a call, no matter what the hour.
“When we lived in Bedford [now part of Halifax] during the Depression he had a list of young fellows out of work willing to make a few dollars accompanying him on night calls to the surrounding areas. Roads were not all paved or plowed in the winter so he needed them to help him out when he got stuck, and to keep him awake.”
In my naval public affairs role I got to know Egerton Allen of Bedford who had bragged that his family doctor wore a miner’s helmet to light his way up pathways to farmhouses on pitch-dark nights. His oldest daughter Greta Marie thought rather that Dr Ed was using a light, “about the size of a regular flashlight lens with an elastic that went around his head that he could have been carrying in his medical bag.”
XXXVIII Back in naval employ in Halifax or Ottawa I headed for work in starched, de-tachable collar and tie, carefully brushed uniform and shiny shoes. Or else in proper “plain clothes” when not. This must have registered on #3 son Christopher. He insisted from Grade I on that he wear white shirt and tie when heading to school. This was also a little lad who tirelessly called on businesses along our area of Bank Street job hunting. When a young man he worked at times in haberdasheries i. e. men’s clothing stores and continued to involve himself occasionally in gents’ furnishings for benefit of less know-ledgeable acquaintances. Our cool Chris doesn’t see how casually I dress in retirement!
XXXIX While on the subject, the Widow Hanington [my oldest sister Margot] combin-ed forces with widower Bob Welland, a retired rear admiral still handsome and always smartly turned out. He had retired later from being a captain of industry in Ottawa. Both families had been friends over many decades in the Canadian Navy and after. Margot died in his arms mid 2008 in Victoria.
In the summer of 2000 they were selling his Ottawa and her Victoria houses while building a joint new nest in Surrey, B. C., of his own design He was 82 at this time and she had just turned 77. Bob likes to cook on occasion so put two separate sinks in his kitchen plan. He felt two cooks sharing just one would put undue strain on any relation-ship. Margot d. in his arms mid-2008 in Victoria while visiting her daughter Felicity. Thanks to our children’s ready help financial and otherwise my wife and I were able to be at her deathbed.
XL Duncan and Stephen, our #1 and 2 sons respectively, are the same age every year for 10 days. Duncan is around average height and as his name implies, a bit swarthy. Steve is big-boned, tall and fair complexioned. They’ve been silent competitors all their lives. When Stephen took me along to North Carolina to join Duncan and wife Tina for golf early in 2000; I knew I’d see long driving and low scoring as they vied with each other. Everything always very low key of course.
At a driving range later both poled out super drives. Stephen carried on lambast-ing 300-yarders while Duncan quietly shifted to wedge shots at another target to the side. Then he was back to more driving. As if it has just occurred to him, Duncan pointed to the shorter target and bet that Steve couldn’t put wedge shots closer. Steve, oblivious as ever that Dunc had snuck in some homework, soon was hacking away with Duncan predictably more accurate.
Once again his older brother had sucked him in; but over time Steve has developed defences. He began to query Duncan’s ball position at address. As victim of his ploy myself years earlier, I felt that stepping in right that very moment was entirely justified.
XLI My wife Caroline’s kid sister Elizabeth certainly had a mind of her own. When she felt semi-cloistered nuns teaching at Saint Patrick’s Convent School in St. John’s, Newfoundland, were leaning on her, Biz stood up for her rights and then some! Sister Mary Bernadette of Grade VI and her pupil Biz clashed on more than one occasion. They were much alike, actually. However Biz could be really saucy according to her oldest sister Kay. Grinned my wife [Biz was as saucy as her grandmother used to be when she had been Kate Grant:“Elizabeth was a right hard ticket!”
Eventually this led to young Miss French organizing a strike against her teacher [if Sr. Mary Bernadette it actually was!]. She managed to persuade other students to go out with her that very noon hour. My wife attended this school but kept well clear of the confrontation. After three-score years, mind you, details are perhaps a little dim in recol-lections of siblings, Biz herself dead since 1998. But she did volunteer to us once while in Ottawa that she never took no for an answer.
To attend St. Patrick’s all parents had to do was put their children into school uni-form and come up with modest fees, such as “coal money” for heating in winter months. Belittlement before the whole class was the fate of kids should their parents get behind in payments. Now Elizabeth had to be “transferred” to tonier Mercy Convent in the east part of St. John’s where most professionals resided. Tuition fees there by contrast were substantial, the uniform different, and trolley fare necessary.
Another little victory of hers largely evaded notice of her parents. She and Caro-line took turns washing up after the customary cold supper on Sundays. They were among four youngsters eating in the kitchen while family grown-ups ate more formally in the dining room. To cut down on dirty dishes to clean, Biz served supper to her kitchen eaters on waxed paper.
Like Caroline, in time she became a registered nurse. She and Baz Walsh reared eight children. He d. in February ’98 and she that 23 May on her 68th birthday.
XLII Tom Grace, my great aunt Belle’s first husband, was somehow connected to people of the Grace Steamship Line. A family possession was an elaborate sword worn by a Grace at Balaclava in the Crimean War 1853-56. Tom’s monument is in Holy Cross Cemetery, Halifax, buried there with his two sisters, widow Belle and tragic daughter Adele. He died leaning over her crib after a business trip. She d. of gunshot not quite out of her teens. My oldest sister Margot after a trip to Halifax was advised that there is room in this Grace plot for cremated remains of my next older sister Isabel when her time comes, thereby assuring her of stimulating company.
XLIII Caroline French spent her first 10 years in the care of her grandparents. Back home her father traditionally took his children to lunch at the stately Newfoundland Hotel in St. John’s, after which they went off to Quidi Vidi Lake for the annual boat races.
My wife was 13 by now although this was likely her first time in a restaurant of any kind. Uniformed waitresses were passing by their table with trays held head high. One tray went by showing only two little rounded tops to Caroline, seated as she was at table. Making small talk, she whispered to her family that someone was having boiled eggs – for lunch! Turned out it was two servings of pie a la mode. She got ribbed by the family for years.
“Kiddy Viddy” races are something. Everybody in St. John’s used to stay home, waiting for radio stations to begin playing Up the Pond. [We Up-alongs know it rendered by Howard Cable.] This signalled that the weather forecast was favourable. Often it was not and the races had to wait another day or so. Boat pulling is actually done with grand spirit to this day on that nigh landlocked arm of the sea.
XLIV My middle sister Rosemary (Wallace) McDonald and her Navy husband Mac in the early 1950s lived a while on Edgehill Road overlooking the outer suburb of Armdale that now forms part of expanded Halifax. Caroline and I were newly married and back from honeymooning at St. Margaret’s Bay. The Senior Service had given my nursing sister wife some leave but not me; but never mind.
Rosie and Mac were going on one of their trips to New Brunswick [both were born there] and very kindly invited us to use their home until we could find something. Halifax was chronically short of accommodation from as far back as the great Halifax Explosion of 1917. We settled in gratefully and went to bed in their antique four poster whose mattress was so firm it rose in the middle. Next morning we had these itchy hives and the morning after that even more.
Suspicious, I phoned T’Other One. This was Commissioned Wardmaster Sid Wallace whom I had known since he was a chief petty officer and I a midshipman. He was the Command Hygiene Officer now. Boiled down, his main responsibility was fu-migating our warships. Mac kept retriever dogs at home but now they were with him in New Brunswick. Therefore we were the sole hosts for fleas left behind, Sid explained. He sprayed here and there and accepted a couple of good belts of Mac’s rum I offered for his trouble. Somehow I could never bring myself to replace that rum.
XLV Down East in the 1930s and before, many rural Nova Scotians couldn’t make a living farming or fishing yet managed somehow by doing both. If you go only two miles in any direction in the province you’ll find yourself in water well over your head – fresh or salt. We of town and city mainly fished only for sport since almost daily fishmongers drove their cartloads door-to-door. Rurals did partly for a living or just to put something on the table. O’Neill and Munro ancestors of ours operated from Portuguese Cove in outer Halifax Harbour and boated their catch into city markets early in the 19th century. A Carew ancestor in the role of a ship’s chandler kept commercial fishing and coastwise cargo sailing vessels in supplies when they called at Halifax.
In my time the city often reeked because it harboured large fish processing plants. [I’ll never forget how I was manhandled while breaking up fights at the annual fish-handlers’ banquet 1948.] Yet never were people more obsessed about fish than New-foundlanders. For centuries they turned to harvest their waters since so much soil on the Rock is marginal at best for agriculture. Today cod has almost totally been fished out.
The Newfie Bullet, narrow gauge railway train, heading inland from St. John’s would drop individual fishers by a “pond” each had in mind. We’d consider them lakes. From every shoulder hung a bag and in it “troutin’ buns” for the vigil. These were tea biscuits with plenty of raisins and beads of lard worked into the dough to quell the chill. Trout would be fried over an open fire with a “bile-up” of tea to wash down the bickies and catch of the day. Any remaining were brought home when the Bullet gathered all in often stopping for just one at a time. You can infer why it was called the Bullet. I rode it once from Gander to St. John’s. After Confederation in 1949 Canadian National Rail-ways looked long at the narrow gauge rail system of the Old Colony, then gave up on it in favour of trucking.
Best fish prices of all for my childhood family were found at Glen Margaret on a bay an hour’s drive over mostly dirt road from Halifax. We vacationers would drift to the wee wharves as village men returned from St. Margaret’s Bay after ground fishing inshore or from their own mackerel nets. A haddock big enough for two dinners would cost us only three cents provided that a fisherman remembered we kids had tried to help him get his hay in or deliver ice door to door for ice boxes. Electricity only arrived in Glen Mar-garet after the Second World War.
One summer when we were grade schoolers my friend Alfonse Bates spent a week or so with us in the country. One day I passed him a hook and line and we were off. He had Newfoundland blood in his veins so there we were on a wharf in Hackett’s Cove, using squid for bait mostly. We landed well over 200 perch , chucking all of ‘em back into the water. Foncy fished with undiminished enthusiasm for hours in the hot sun. Finally I almost had to drag him the mile or two home to supper.
I rowed my wife’s fly-fishing father around Witless Bay in their rowboat once back in the 1950s. This inlet from the sea is about an hour’s drive from St. John’s and was where they had a finely built cottage they called The Shack. I couldn’t help but admire how delicately huge handed Douglas Joseph French played sea trout with dry lure. Our #3 son Chris was equally adept while just as obsessed as Foncy and Doug ever were. Of course, like Grandpa French, he girded himself with the very best in gear. Soon after he left the B. C. coast to captain several newspaper circulation teams door by door in Calgary. When Chris could compare his brook and pond sampling with previous blue water harvesting, he lost much of his élan for the sport.
XLVI As a young couple in Ottawa we were invited 1954 to vacation for a week at Kirk’s Ferry on the Gatineau River to keep Edna Baker company while her Navy husband Arthur was in hospital. That week stretched into two. Marita loved the comings and goings as she sat erect in her baby carriage, centre of attention.
At the resort’s swimming pool I dove off a whippy board and hit bottom fast, losing two front teeth and needing stitches to my brow. Now I was the centre of atten-tion when wife Caroline broke everybody up by saying: “For heaven’s sake, go to a dentist. You’re making the place look shabby!”
XLVII Barf stories abound in a family with nine children. One Friday evening we loaded up our first car, a second-hand yellow Pontiac Parisienne, and headed for an outdoor movie. Drive-in theatres were an entire sub-culture in Ottawa back then, some young-sters already pajama’d on arrival. The feature presentation was Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory whereas all 11 of us gobbled pizza and guzzled root beer. The comedy did hold attention of everyone in spite of cramped quarters. Normally long times in the car meant pins & needles for older ones since they were holding not much smaller kids on their laps.
We came home in good spirits and all went uneventfully to bed. However #6 child Caroline, about seven, was quietly sick in the night and then again next morning when she woke up in such a mess. The process was bath, shampoo, bedding laundered and, fortu-nately, a weekend for one subdued little girl to recover. Gene Wilder who played Willie Wonka recently turned to acting in detective movies.
XLVIII Aunt Anna Browne took in several orphans after her sister Caroline and spouse Patrick French died of influenza or tuberculosis 1898 in St. John’s, Nfld. The youngest was my wife’s father to be, Doug French. “…All except Uncle Phil,” qualified my brother-in-law Edward French. “He was a handful and a half!”
“He went to Mount Cashel [Orphanage] because Aunt Anna was unable to con-trol him. He ran away from there and went to Bell Island from which place he was re-turned to Mt. C. He learned his baking trade there and was a baker in St. John’s; but left there to go to Halifax and enter the ring as a pro boxer, under the ring name of “Johnnie French”. When Phil left St. John’s, he left a number of creditors behind, and Dad had to pay them off, over time.
“When Harry [Edward’s younger brother] went to Enfield [outside Halifax] look-ing for Phil French, the cronies there told him he must mean Johnnie French. I saw Uncle Phil only once, just before he died, when he was 86,” recalled Edward.
“About 1956 or so when Dad was on his way to or from one of his [liquor] conventions, he stopped off in Halifax and found out that Phil was living in Enfield. He looked up the address in the phone book and tried to phone him, but the phone was disconnected. (Phil only used the phone in the winter.) So Dad took a cab to within a block of Phil’s address and walked to the house. He saw a man leaning against the door- post; so he walked up to him and said, “Are you Phil French?
“Yeah! What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to beat the shit out of you!”
Phil never batted an eye, but looked around and then said: “Where are the 10 men to help you?”
“When Dad and I visited Uncle Phil just before Phil died [Tentative birth/ death years, 1888-1974] they got talking. Uncle Phil had a son named Doug who had died, but nobody would tell him that…He asked Dad where Doug was and Dad, thinking that he meant Dad’s son Doug, told him that Doug was in the Foreign Service in India. Then Phil was quite pleased that his son was in the Service.”
XLIX Grandpa Gimpy Wallace was keenly interested in health matters. When he was hospitalized with wounds in the Great War one doctor wrote “hypochondriac” right across his medical document. He wanted later to outlive some Soviet rural citizens allegedly into their 130s; gave up smoking, and tackled a problem of overweight after hooking up again with his wife in the mid-1960s. Rita, of course, was automatically expected to follow suit although a smoker since the age of 10 and smokers in those days were still the majority.
The old folk had settled into an attractive seniors’ place on Cambridge Street in Ottawa on the Dow’s Lake side of Carling Ave. My Dad volunteered to do gardening, possibly to clear the air after leaving ribald sentiments on a card hung on the Christmas tree in the lobby. Grandma was fond of our #3 son Christopher who was just the right age to help husband Howard Sr. and stick with it.
She made sure Chris took a break from time to time and whisked him up to their apartment in the King’s Sons and Daughters while Gimpy carried on with his projects. Once indoors, she went to the refrigerator, tweaked out a pack of cigarettes from the freezer compartment, and sat down with grandson while they snuck a smoke.
L One of Ottawa’s finest loomed suddenly, filling the doorway of my wife’s bed-room and she there sick in bed. Barnaby, #4 son, 7th child, Grade III, had stolen a choco-late bar from Shoppers’ Drug Mart after school. [“Wait ‘til your Dad gets home!” was a customary threat of mothers of previous generations.]
Right after work I must have taken Barnaby to the store to return his unopened candy bar and I suppose for him to absorb a lecture from somebody else. This infraction is engraved on his mother’s memory but not on mine. We were a large family by today’s standards so incidents soon became blurry or pale by comparison. Really and thankfully we had much to be proud of.
LI Mat, aged six asked for Midsummer’s Night Dream, a Kevin Kline production, for Christmas 2001. He asked his Nonny to watch with him, saying: “Don’t worry there are no scary bits in this one, but lots of mushy ones with, you know k-i-s-s-i-n-g; but I know when they are coming and will cover your eyes for you.” When Grandmother Hanington told him she actually liked mushy bits he went “Yukkk!!!!”
After Mat, son of my niece Felicity and Larry Dawe from Texada Island in B. C., opened this particular present he looked at his Nonny. This is what he said: “When we were driving down here I told my parents that when I grow up, if I can afford it, I will have my own copy of this – and look here it is.” My big sister Margot melted then asked: “Could there be a better Christmas Thank You?”
LII Jasmine Harder, nearly four, at Holy Cross church in south end Ottawa asked to light a candle “to Baby Jesus to thank him for a good life.” Her mother Cecily turned to my wife with tear in eye and whispered: “We must be doing something right.” Jasmine was all eyes and ears when Frank and Fran Rothery died 2003 within days of each other. It was her first encounter with death in our extended family. Frank had wanted cremation with ashes at their summer cottage complex. Fran favoured a conventional funeral and burial. The four-year-old chewed on this for quite a while and then came up with: “He’s in a pot and she’s in a box and that’s the way they wanted it.”
LIII “Bought bread” in Halifax was made chiefly by two large bakeries, Ben’s and Moir’s in the Great Depression. It was sold daily door to door by liveried men in horse & wagon. In the Dirty Thirties, these two bakeries had a Bread War. Day after day prices dropped until wrapped bread was selling for three cents, unwrapped for just a couple of coppers. Hard times were rightly called the Hungry Thirties so people were thankful that such a vital staple became easier to afford for many worse off. I still remember Grandma Carew slicing bread in her kitchen. She didn’t use a wooden breadboard instead deftly tossing a loaf with one small firm hand while cutting perfect slices by sawing a knife inwards from all sides. In that particular “war” neither bakery managed to bankrupt the other – another blessing during those tough times.
LIV My late big sister Margot consoled the widow of Cdr. Cy Ker who had died soon after Dan Hanington out west. They became friends. When retired Admiral Welland came into Margot’s life, Mrs. Ker entertained them and got Margot aside to ask why she only messed with admirals. “I told her she was younger and couldn’t appreciate that they were the only ones who’d find me cute. The dratted girl looked at me sideways: ‘Yes, of course, I haven’t noticed any commanders or younger hanging around your house.’ ”
LV From Margot as well: “We went to our Anglican Church…to give thanks…. Kneeling at the communion rail with a partner [Rear-Admiral Robert Philip Welland, DSC & Bar, Ret’d] is a new experience for me and I am moved beyond words until he hisses in my ear: ‘Don’t drink from that cup. If I have to die of AIDS I want to be having more fun than this!’ ”
LVI MacKenzie Touma Wallace [oldest of our #5 son Matt & Lily] was approaching three and obsessed with his video hero Buzz Lightyear. He wore his space hero’s cos-tume day and night including cape. Every mom with a kid that age develops dexterity in getting it into and out of washing machine and drier with minimum fuss. The extent of his obsession was made clear while he was playing games on a computer. The phone rang beside him and he answered with, ”To beyond!” That was little Mac’s rendition of Buzz Lightyear’s rallying cry, “To infinity and beyond!”
LVII Kayla Najla Wallace, 20 month old daughter of #5 son Matt & Lily, suffered from entrapment by older brother MacKenzie. Rising three, he would thrust an inapp-ropriate toy into her chubby little hands at summer cottage and then sound the alarm to handy adult. The toy would be confiscated. Kayla put her own button-pushing plan into effect. Unnoticed she’ll snitch one of his toys out of his lap and then toddle away as fast as she could, big eyes looking over her shoulder. Sometimes she was able to make a clean escape although most of the time he took off after her. That’s when she’d scuttle behind some adult for protection, face carefully unrevealing.
LVIII Sign language helps babies make needs known before they can talk. Cecily our ninth tried it on Allegra her second. In the middle of the night a tiny apparition appeared at their bedside from time to time signalling she was hungry. Most of her requirements were covered by about a dozen signs. One day this wee blonde waif was languid from a winter cold and reaction to an antibiotic. Our #3 daughter Caroline generously makes herself available outside her usual day care hours. Allegra draped herself on her aunt’s ample bosom for 40 minutes. Then she took aunty by the hand and guided her down-stairs to her usual day care crib. Allegra conked out there for four hours. Concern was voiced that sign language may delay speech. However among her earlier utterances was the complete sentence: “I don’t like that!”
LIX My nephew Brian Hanington when a young naval officer was often adrift at start of the working day in a Halifax destroyer alongside. Her first lieutenant was Jim Smith, later my good friend. One day he summoned young Brian and pointedly asked him: “Is there anything that we, the other officers of this ship, can possibly do to help you solve this problem?” Brian regaled me about this much later when a civilian. I asked Jim about Brian whom he recalled as a young and rather too intellectual a sub-lieutenant to entirely fit in. In the wardroom dreamy Brian had without any consultation substituted a classical selection rather than the record already on the player. As executive officer Jim was presi-dent of the mess. He pulled that one out of the machine and substituted something with lots of gittar twang and percussion. After all, a party was underway. Later on Jim got his brass hat. After Commander Smith in Ottawa succumbed to heart trouble in recent years, widow Carole the Alberta girl moved to Halifax if only to soak up atmosphere of her late husband’s beloved navy but all too soon died there. Far happier to relate in 2008, Brian with his wife Debbie and their clever, handsome sons Simon and James attended the lavish 80th birthday party laid on downtown by our offspring as a surprise for their mother Caroline.
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LX Our #4 son Barnaby pulled out all the stops when having his children for Christ-mas 2004 in Atlanta, Georgia. He laid out all the traditional decorations with cookies and milk for Santa’s visit and even had an imprint of Santa’s boot in the fireplace. Clara aged six and Gavin, four were at daddy’s bedside 4 a.m. Christmas morning When he guided them to festive scene and multi presents, Gavin’s aside to his sister was, “We must have been on the ‘good’ list.”
LXI In 1960 the bulk of Canada’s Atlantic fleet sailed for Bermuda and Wintex 60. Getting clear of wintertime North Atlantic storms meant that warships arrived south wave-worn down to bare metal in spots. Paint Ship in benign conditions was first order of business and crews then worked up the beginning of another annual cycle of training. Wives left at home in Halifax coped with a record snowfall of 73.2 centimetres in just one of a series of storms. My wife bundled up all five children we had at the time for out-doors so that she could clear back and front porches and sidewalk. Her ankle biters helped when not sliding down banks of snow she’d just shovelled up. When the fleet returned its wives were awarded the Order of the Snow Shovel, a medal struck for the occasion complete with ribbon. In 1961 the fleet was away again to Bermuda and an-other medal was struck for a second Order. Each of these awards soon became collectors’ items. The record 1960 snowstorm was not broken until 2004 when the Halifax area received a fall of 95.5 cm Feb. 19 with another 15 following that weekend. A curfew was invoked for a couple of nights so that by now a larger city could dig itself out and get round to repair all the power outages.
LXII Several generations of Newfoundland women in the 19th and 20th centuries have given birth to five sons – no more, no less – including my wife, the former Caroline French. Who knows, more may be unrecorded. Thomas Grant (1837-1920) married Mary Cashin (1850-1927) who presented him with 11 children including sons Richard, John, Peter, Thomas and Vincent before the 19th century was over. My wife’s grand-mother Catherine “Kate” Grant (1877-1956) was Mary’s fourth child. She married Har Brownrigg and presented him with daughters Mary Ellen, Nellie [later Sister Mary John] and five sons, all between 1897, 1918. Her boys were Edward [died at birth], Garret, Thomas, Harry and Francis. Their oldest, Mary Ellen, wed Douglas Joseph French and had four girls as well as five boys. The lads were Patrick, Douglas, John, Edward and Henry. Her oldest daughter Mary Catherine “Kay” married Canadian wartime navyman Fred Small. Of their 11 children, boys were Frederick, Douglas, John, Thomas and Patrick. The sixth French child, Caroline Mary, married Howard C. Wallace in Halifax. In their nine, five males are Duncan, Stephen, Christopher, Barnaby and Matthew. My wife’s kid sister Elizabeth with Basil Walsh in St. John’s and its periphery had eight, their five boys being Douglas, Robert, David, Paul and Kenneth. Five in the eye, eh?
LXIII Our founder father, Thomas Wallace from Sligo in Ireland, took his discharge from 27th Regiment of Foot, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, to settle in Upper Canada as the War of 1812 wound down. Irish born William Blakeney (1672-1761) had been colonel com-manding at Battle of Culloden 1745 in Scotland. A lieutenant-general defending Minorca 1756 he was made knight of the Bath and Irish baron. Another unit from Enniskillen was composed of dragoons nicknamed The Skinks that fought in the heavy cavalry brigade under Wellington at Waterloo when Napoleon was toppled again. Wellington began his army career in The Skinks and then had the Fusiliers under him in his Peninsular Campaign in Portugal and Spain against Bonaparte’s brother. From such hardy foot soldiers of yore evolved today’s Royal Irish Regiment in Ulster.
LXIV When Miss Anna Browne was rearing her late sister Caroline’s orphans the archbishop of St. John’s swooped up teenage Julia and Edith ca. 1915 and sent them off to Boston to train as nurses. Aunt Anna went to work in their hospital’s kitchen. The sisters stayed in the USA and each got married. “Jule” with Douglas Oliphant reared nine children; “Ede” and William Eberle had none. Edith and husband, showing signs of the good life, turned up 1950 in Poughkeepsie, New York, where their nephew Harry, my wife’s kid brother, received his habit as an Irish Christian Brother. Douglas Joseph Sr. and his wife Mary Ellen attended as Harry’s proud parents. So too did Harry’s own sisters Kay and Caroline from London, Ont. Newfoundland Frenches corresponded with Edith and Julia; in fact Doug Sr. on business trips dropped in on each of them. As for Phil see Kin Tale XLVIII.
LXV “Our Street is off limits for cars,” wrote my oldest sister Margot in spring. She and retired admiral Bob Welland decided to build right there in Surrey, B. C., “because he spotted small sized bicycles about and we might have young people livening us up…The little people are out in baby strollers, small tricycles. Next the older ones wearing cycle helmets and on roller blades. At the end, street hockey. I went out yesterday to welcome the new neighbourhood baby born during the winter. All the young mothers greeted me with hugs and the littles hugged my knees. Bob has a barbecue each summer for all the families and they enjoy him hugely. When we have snow (rarely, but …) or a problem such as a fallen tree, the young men are around with chain saws and whatever might be needed. So the old-fashioned neighbourhood is not dead, and we have the delight of each spring seeing last year’s pram babies on tricycles, and last year’s riders of those on two wheelers!“ After Margot died in his arms mid-2008 in Victoria, Bob bless his heart gathered up all the neighbourhood kids again on his return, this time for a farewell party for Margot. Three water guns Bob supplied livened up their party no end.
LXVI Carrie Marie Sylvia Wallace was among a group of babes in arms being baptised at Holy Cross Church during Mass around 30 years ago in Ottawa. Our grandchild proved star of the show. Garbed in a christening gown sewn by Mary Ellen French, my wife’s late mother, Carrie laughed, cooed and sang throughout the ceremony. And noisily filled her diaper! Over years we hearken for Carrie’s witty monologues as she enjoys a family gathering. We were glad that she took drama, a fine-figured woman learning to tread the boards of a real stage. Her ability to entertain and kindness to children and pets these days are channelled into child education and day caring. One long-term goal is to become a child psychologist. In the meantime she’s Screaming Meanie Massacre on an Ottawa roller derby team, initially the Bytown Blackhearts.
LXVII Jessie Lee Wallace, younger of our #3 daughter Caroline’s girls, is interested in anything and everything. She’s a fine writer, artist, belly dancer and so on. She gradu-ated cum laude 2004 from the University of Ottawa, her arts baccalaureate having a con-centration in visual arts. Of many options being considered by this attractive live wire, applying principles of art that she has acquired to tattooing people held a trendy attrac-tion for Jessie. Her mother calmly observed, “Better she does it now than later.” Jessie went back to university to upgrade her degree to honours level. Then she went back to waitressing, joined an upscale department store to manage its cosmetics department and embraced Buddhism.
LXVIII Canada’s Arthur Currie was a large militia soldier of pear shape although superi-or in tactics compared to some other generals conducting battles of the trenches in the Great War. Allies were bogged down to the point where some of the French army mutin-ied following collapse of General Nivelle’s spring offensive of 1917. British commander in chief Sir Douglas Haig wanted Currie’s Canadian Corps to take the Belgian village of Passchendaele after Germans had bloodied an offense by British and Anzac [Australia/ New Zealand] soldiers. Currie argued that battle in that quagmire of mud might mean 30,000 Canadian casualties. Haig managed to persuade Sir Arthur who opened his cam-paign 26 October 1917 after careful staff work, preparation and training. By Nov. 7 Canadians held the village and five square kilometers of mud. Nine Victoria Crosses, the British Empire’s highest award for valour, went to Canadians after the appalling struggle. In the end, Passchendaele cost four Canadian deaths less than Sir Arthur’s original estimate. Canada had succeeded where other nations had failed. My young uncle Frank Carew of Halifax was a Nova Scotia Highland battalion runner carrying orders and reports back and forth in the fighting and thus had no chance. He was wounded just the once and bled to death on the battlefield. Canadians justifiably call it Battle of Passchendaele. The English prefer Third Battle of Ypres. Long after Haig confessed to Currie that the big thrust was meant a diversion to help out the Army of France whose poilus were spent and had mutinied in their trenches, destabilizing the Allied line.
LXIX Chuck Brown long was the only golf equipment discount store in Ottawa. He broke up with wife Jill and stayed in Florida. She ran the Ottawa operation and two more stores in Montreal and somehow found time and energy to serve on City Council. I was an admirer of Mrs. Brown who had just publicly disclosed that she had cancer. I took an opportunity to chat with her in her Somerset street store downtown here. She was un-failingly polite although eye contact wasn’t the best. I rejoined my wife Caroline who took another look at me. I had my golf shirt on inside out. Once again my spouse laugh-ed so hard that she cried. The first time years earlier we had her visiting father out for a scenic drive. Late Mayor Charlotte Whitton had been successful in getting our railway station out of downtown and into the ‘burbs. The new edifice had won an award for its looks. I thought a detour worthwhile so that D. J. and I might discuss the merits of that questionable award. After half a dozen passes I finally got us there by which time my wife’s laughter had dissolved into tears. Old D. J. obligingly murmured some compliment about our find but later confided to his daughter that I was “a bit of a dab hand.”
LXX Grandma Lavinia Carew from 1933 until her death in 1939 aged 75 provided my mother Rita and us four children a haven in Halifax after our retreat from Saint John, N. B. I wrote of her recently to my oldest sister Margot in Surrey, B. C. “What a rock for us: she just quietly loved,” replied Margot. “I always thought you and I were the particular benefactors of her quiet common sense and acceptance of all that came her way…You of course were [at that time] ‘Grandma’s only grandson” to her enormous pride. She also exhibited that pride when you came home mittless on a bitter winter day. [You had] given yours to a poor little paperboy: ‘I told him my Grandma would make me another pair.’ I suspect she sat up half the night [so] I believe a new pair was by your plate of [breakfast] porridge.” Aunt Sylvia Carew had told me much the same story long ago. Old Murph, boss of lifeguards at Waegwoltic boat & swimming club on the Northwest Arm, told me to leave the children’s wading area because I was all alone there. “My Grandma said I could stay here until five,” I outruled him. He chuckled then mildly sent me away.
LXXI Elizabeth (French) Walsh died on her 68th birthday 23 May 1998 in St. John’s. Her surviving older sisters sorely miss her in part because Biz was always a free spirit and as mouthy as her maternal grandmother Kate. See Kin Tale XLI. When only eight or nine she appeared downstairs for breakfast with her eyebrows hacked off. Women have always plucked eyebrows but not with scissors. Her mother shooed her upstairs out of sight of her father. “With him off to work, Mom got bottled black ink we figure and re-created her brows,” recalled her next older sister Applications continued until they had grown back in again. Our #3 daughter Caroline must have inherited some characteristics of Biz because in her early teens she couldn’t stop plucking hers. She and most other adolescent females who hung around a neighbourhood doughnut shop were easily identi-fied as habitués there. None had any eyebrows, just clumsy crescents pencilled on shiny skins.
LXXII When we lived on Warren Street in North End Halifax our #2 son Stephen turned three in 1959. Grandma Rita Wallace gave him $2 as his birthday gift and he told her he would use her money to buy a farm. For a score of years he and Rob Phillips have shared 170 acres in Ste-Cécile de Masham high in the Gatineau Hills beside a park. Its marginal farmland both families, with a little help from my wife, largely planted it over with ever-greens. Now they average close to three metres tall.
LXXIII As our stair-step family members arrived in this world each older child was asked to keep a special eye out for a wee one. Thus our oldest, Marita, looked out as best she could for Duncan. He in turn had Stephen; Christopher had Caroline and so on. That every child took this responsibility seriously was born out in various ways. One memor-able event involved Christopher and infant Caroline. She had just learned to brace her heels and propel herself backward in her carriage. One day the back was down while Chris was keeping an eye on her as a matter of course. She dug her heels in and heaved. He was there to catch her by head and shoulders while calling to Mom for help. Today they are still special pals.
LXXIV Mat Dawe, my big sister Margot’s grandson out west, “tried to teach Bob a com-puter game, recommending he read the tutorial first. Bob regarded that as warmly as any man told to ‘read the handbook’. When he found that he did not have his computer glasses handy, and had to confess it, Mat looked at him with ill-concealed impatience, packed up computer etc and just said: ‘I think we shall just put this away for another day’. R. P. sort of slunk off.” Retired Rear-Admiral Robert Philip Welland DSC etc “keeps marvelling, ‘How does a little kid of nine get to talk like a retired British Army major?’ ”
LXXV A bit over half a dozen years ago #5 son Matthew in family chitchat was already referring by name the son he and Lily were momentarily expecting. It was Mac this and Macadamia that. “Hold on, Son: are you linking your baby with academia, the scholarly world,” asked I? “Or with a nut?” asked another. We all hooted while Matt kept his face bland. Lily gave him a penetrating look but remarked mildly, “Are you teasing me again?” Macadamia is an edible nut from an evergreen. The kid is actually called MacKenzie evo-king a powerful northern clan of Scotland.
LXXVI Mediterranean and Middle East cultures make much of male heirs. Some of this appeared within a Page Opp feature 1966 in our late and lamented Ottawa Journal. The story was Canadian peacekeepers on the island of Cyprus and on the Egyptian side of Israeli borders. They were keeping apart Greek and Turkish factions on Cyprus on one hand, Egyptians and Palestinians apart from Israelis on the Gaza Strip as well as along the Egyptian-Israeli border.
News media from Canada were visiting United Nations Camp Rafah near the Egyptian border with Palestine and Israel. Obligingly, the Canadian soldiers brought in a sheik friend from the wilderness. He was an elderly man whose Bedouin tribe used to summer in Israel’s Negev desert and winter in Egypt’s Sinai. Hostilities prevented the tribe from grazing Negev so the sheik had to settle his nomads on a Sinai oasis and lead a 20th century agricultural revolution. Our Canadian military helped settle him in at an oasis with spare materials. He replied to reporters’ questions through a translator, revealing that he governs his people strictly in accordance with their sacred Koran.
Questions slackened. I’d heard that he had five wives all told. Two were dead and of the other three, one was a beautiful 15-year-old only recently acquired, according to army camp gossip. To keep things going I asked him how many sons he had. He re-plied three, giving me a piercing look. I countered that whereas he had three sons from five wives I have five sons from one wife. I’ll trade you, he offered. How about the 15-year-old I asked. “Take them all, said he with fed-up gesture. We all guffawed. Gordon Eastwood, city editor of The Ottawa Journal, was decent enough to phone my wife on his return to Canada to ask her would she mind if he printed that exchange? Caroline, al-ways a good sport about such things, gave him the green light. It ran on Page Opposite beside the Editorial Page and drew national and international readers.
LXXVII Number Three daughter Caroline Junior as a qualified social worker ran a down-town drop-in for alcoholics and addicts; scoured streets and soup kitchens to find and give tubercular down and outers their medication on the spot and then assisted recovering mental folk to once again live on their own. There were successes and failures but Caro-line lasted longer than your average social worker before inevitable tragedies got to her. For some of these good works which she was pioneering our plucky daughter was under the umbrella of the Canadian Mental Health Association. There were heartfelt farewells from her admiring peers and at one of these she spoke movingly about dedication and how she would miss it all. Listeners had tear in eye until she abruptly closed with, “But I’ll get over it!” After a shocked silence everyone in the room dissolved in laughter. Her next project – running a day care for tiny nieces and nephews. Guess what: she went back to that CMHA Project Upstream once those kids started school.
LXXVIII About year after mother, sisters and I had retreated from Saint John, N. B. , to Grandma Lavinia Carew’s house in Halifax my little cousin Anne Kathleen Carew was born to Uncle Basil and Aunt Kathleen 1934 in the flat below us on Cambridge Street. We five had settled in nicely with Grandma Carew and her youngest son Uncle Steve, a kindly bachelor at that time. Grandma set a fine table and I was fascinated with her big, bright pan with its hollowed out streams that fed a little pond at one end with juices from every ample roast. Little Anne was a baby more adorable than most and I delighted in cooing to her through an open window off the lower front verandah. She grew into a dainty little girl frail by comparison to the rest of us and sometimes she’d feel a bit under the weather. When her mother asked her what might help she’d reply – “Some of nan-ny’s dish gravy.”
LXXIX My late Uncle Steve Carew early ran off to sea [see Kin Tale XXI] and ever after carved intricate sailing vessels standing inside liquor bottles that he first emptied. He displayed a real talent for carving of all kinds in comparison to his older brother Basil whose basement workbench stood as neglected then as mine today. It was a boon to have someone so handy for repairs and Basil on occasion begged for aid from kid brother when something went wrong in his immaculate home we called the doll’s house because always looking so exquisite. Money was always tight Down East so much got done by offering a good slug of rum for services rendered. One of Uncle Basil’s projects was so involved that Steve demanded an entire bottle. It was rum or whisky he made Basil get for him but when the job was completed, Steve, who relished occasional Irish merriment, kept everybody up for Teabun wouldn’t head home to Dartmouth ‘til his reward was empty.
LXXX The good wife’s oldest sister Kay had 11 children, most of those deliveries quickly over. In one case husband Fred Small got her as far as St. Joseph’s Hospital in London, Ont., but not through its doors. Kay gave birth on the lawn, and mother and child were swooped indoors with no harm done. When it was time to take them home Fred was presented with a bill for green fees. As for Lily, #5 son Matthew’s spouse, she made it into a hospital elevator before having their daughter Kayla. Matt was there holding the door open to the delivery room floor, directing traffic.
LXXXI The late Elva Hewitt, Registered Nurse and Midwife, ran Canadian Mother-craft in Ottawa. This kindly, gray haired woman pioneered getting husbands more in-volved in the delivery process half a century and more ago. The delivery room itself still was utterly taboo to fathers in those days. I dutifully attended mothercraft classes with wife Caroline and happily told anyone who’d listen all that we were up to. Her suitcase was packed well before contractions were due. Under our mattress extra bedding lay ready between scorched newspapers just in case matters became even more urgent. I ac-companied her into the labour room. It was warm, dark and womb like. Some woman whooped “I’ll never let Jim near me again!” I spied a neighbour through the dimness and greeted her politely. Oops, she wasn’t our neighbour. I was soon whisked away but allowed afterwards to see my wife in the recovery room. Her tummy looked flat so I peeked under the covers to be sure. A quivering belly tufted with blood greeted my eyes. “Would you mind if I lie down for a moment on this empty bed beside you, dear?” That was the exact moment I was fired. For eight more births Mrs. Wallace crept out of the house, taxied to hospital, phoned me from its recovery room and, still breathing heavily, announced gender, weight and time of our latest arrival.
LXXXII My cousin Frank Wallace & wife Eva remain a tall, fine looking old couple [see Section 3] whose daughter beauties have advanced enough in years to be bothered by hot flashes. The women have found a quick and stealthy remedy – arching bosoms into the freezer section of a refrigerator. One who’s not as tall for relief backs her bottom instead through open door to main compartment. Surely others all flushed up in hot, hazy, humid Ottawa would understand.
LXXXIII An historic flight across the ocean was repeated 86 years later by well-heeled adventurer Steve Fossett, age 60, and co-pilot Mark Rebholz, 52, in a custom-built replica of a Vickers Vimy biplane that made the first trans-Atlantic flight June 1919 from New-foundland to Ireland. Alcock & Brown had done the initial crossing in an ungainly First World War bomber. It took them 16 hours and 20 minutes to go from St. John’s to crash- land in an Irish bog. July 2005’s commemoration flight took about 45 minutes longer and touched down instead on a golf course over there near Clifden. Alcock & Brown’s great feat was recorded by a Canadian postage stamp. When Grandmother Brownrigg died she willed one to my wife. My Caroline’s older brother Doug in Ottawa is a stamp expert who paid her $1,200 for that heirloom. It bought our rock maple dining room furniture and a new fedora for me. In a later decade we were being entertained in Doug’s condo downtown when his wife Eileen told us that the stamp was worth $50,000.
LXXXIV Our # 3 daughter Caroline ran a day care at home in Ottawa mainly for nieces and nephew. My wife and I dropped by a few times every week. We were there again, this time to help celebrate Billo’s birthday. For 20 years he was our daughter’s spouse. “Grandma and Grandpa, this is my mother,” said three-year-old Allegra Harder, formally introducing us to our youngest offspring Cecily, age 40. Once again we’d been treated to the appealing outlook of little people, although I must emphasize that Cecily and former hubby John had never neglected us.
LXXXV My Uncle Frank Wallace took an International Correspondence School course in advertising [his brother Joe ICS manager for the Maritimes] and formed Wallace Advertis-ing Agency after serving in trenches overseas of the Great War. His little sister Greta went to work for him after Sacred Heart Convent schooling. Early last century the accep-ted range of employment for women was extremely narrow. When a Halifax merchant named Caldwell dealt with the Agency he talked to Greta as if she were receptionist so Owen Granville, one of her several sons, lately told me. What “Rat” Caldwell never knew was that Greta composed and shaped every ad he ordered and never let on that his in-creased sales were thanks to her creative efforts. Joe by the way worked for Wallace Ad-vertising until his radical politics made clients and Frank too nervous. Greta knew my mother as Rita Carew at Convent and so recruited her for the Agency. Howard Vincent Wallace didn’t return until 1920 because still hospitalized in England for war wounds. Soon Howard and Rita wed and were off to Saint John, N. B., to form a branch of Frank’s Agency and then went on their own there. That’s where my sisters and I were born in-stead of Halifax.
LXXXVI Our Cousin John Granville, retired in Kingston, Ont., and one of four brothers from Bedford, N. S., was in Ottawa for the funeral , Feb. 2007 of sister-in-law Stella (Ryba) Granville, wife of Bernard. See Kin Tale LXXVII. In the funeral parlour he told me a story about my Dad. John some decades ago was working here at the Central Experimental Farm when he espied Uncle Howard Vincent Wallace wandering through splendid floral arrays, snitching ? samples. Relations got John to go see Howard Senior to find out what was going on. At the King’s Daughters residence for old folk both of them sat among potted splendours where “Gimpy” admitted taking samples but only inferior cuttings. Federal gardeners knew and tolerated his forays because in effect he was culling for them. I paused to savour such scrupulousness then told John how Dad maybe got to be gardener in the first place. Read King Tale XLIX to find out.
LXXXVII Former Stanislaw Ryba of Sydney, Cape Breton, N. S., died of heart trouble 8 Feb. 2007 Ottawa, wife of my cousin Bernard Granville, mother of two daughters, grand-mother of four. I seized an opportunity at the funeral parlour to share a memory with mourners. Early in retirement I had approached Bernard, retired economist from the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, for Granville background. He invited me to consult a family history prepared in the USA by his brother Owen. While Bernard took his customary constitutional walks, his Stella played hostess, including lunches, as I built up notes. Owen’s opus referred to her as “intense”. So here I was, doing research while discussing numesnumerous problems of the world with this warm, concerned woman. A burnt out hack writer, I silently wondered while we were solving global situations, if I’d ever get the Granville details right. Not long after I circulated my own version and to my relief none of them ever told me I’d got things wrong. At the funeral I spied a few smiles and nods during my special recollection.
LXXXVIII War Brides, almost 48,000 by 1946 and their nearly 22,000 children, sailed to Canada from overseas and had their train fares as well paid by our government to des-tinations across the nation where for the most part their husbands were waiting for them. These plucky women, by far the bulk of them British, had married Canadian servicemen during the Second World War and proved willing to uproot themselves to start a far dif-ferent life in Canada as soon as possible after hostilities ceased. Most of them stayed on in the New World. Like their Canadian veterans of war across the Atlantic – Return Men we called them – War Brides here have been dwindling away fast. On 3 January 2007, so did Margaret Anne (Bowen) Brownrigg , aged 83, at a home for the old in Carbonear, Nfld. She had married a Newfoundlander in the wartime Royal Air Force, Harry Brown-rigg of St. John’s, uncle there of my future wife Caroline French Reg N. I met Miss French after she became a naval nursing officer in Halifax and was lucky enough to have a duty trip to St. John’s where I saw some of her family. For her first 10 years my intend-ed had been raised by her grandparents so I visited Widow Kate. At the door stood Caro-line’s Aunt Margaret clad in grey buttoned sweater, coarse tweed skirt, lisle stockings topped with navy blue gym bloomers. “Aunty” Kate’s was draughty after all and who hasn’t encountered dowdy Englishwomen. For more than half a century, whether she was in St. John’s or Montreal we exchanged Christmas cards. She and husband Harry stayed with his mother in her declining years. For long periods Margaret was alone with mother in law while Harry worked near Montreal on aircraft production. Eventually they built in the Quebec metropolis but remained childless and then Margaret a widow. When frail she returned to the Old Colony to spend remaining days at the Interfaith Home in Carbo-near. Her obituary mentioned dear friends of the War Brides Association near and far. Truly this was a woman remarkably devoted to duty.
LXXXIX Margaret Mary Sylvesta Carew (1893-1972) is better known to all who remember this plump little dove with bright blue eyes as Aunt Sylvia, or Souci that baby cousin Anne Carew called her. My auntie nursed in an upscale Manhattan hospital and kept an indulgent eye on younger sister Rita and children in Halifax. Gift parcels were followed by her visits to Carew relatives in Nova Scotia. When she arrived there in 1960 we asked her if she’d be godmother to our newborn Caroline Jr. This seemed to buck her up no end and she accepted gratefully. Souci retired to a nice Bluenose nursing home and when she died 1972 she appeared in a dream to our young Caroline. This god daughter gave her first one Carrie Marie a third name of Sylvia in her memory. In my earlier Carew accounts years ago is my older sister Margot’s fond recollection of Miss Sylvia’s late and secret love in New York ending with his death.
CENTESIMUS Can blondes and brunettes, apart from the funny papers, really get along? We have a case in our extended family. Allegra is ash blonde with eyes as blue as her Great Aunt Sylvia’s were. Kayla is a dark Mediterranean beauty like her mother Lily. Only three weeks separate in age these little cousins in Ottawa. When it came time for school both were bused to l’Ecole Lamoureux only a few hundred metres from our home from which our own nine had attended. It now had an experimental curriculum so there were misgivings that these bright and independent little girls might disrupt classmates so perhaps it would be better to separate them. Sometimes they caught up with each other at recess but in soccer they played on opposing teams. One was in goals where they both hung out, hugging and chatting as the game swirled around them. The teachers were very tolerant but for school term 2007/08 both were in the same class where they sat side by side. Whenever possible the teacher handed them different stuff. As they worked on their separate poems one day a student neighbouring Kayla kept bugging her. Allegra leaned over to her and said: “Don’t disturb Kayla: she’s doing her work.”
Family insights are also frequent in Sections 1 through 4, e.g. see Mary.
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Basil St John Carew (1937-2009) was born a blue baby. During his childhood, parents were always on the lookout for smaller sized clothing that would fit. At one point, he commanded the sea cadet squadron dad attended. Basil would make dad the front right post so to keep everyone moving nicely. He trusted Howie to keep the march time correctly–a point of pride.
Told by HCW to CKW Dec 2016
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Stephen Carew was known as Rocky Carew. When young soldiers under his care stepped out of line and were due some form of gov’t sanction, he’d offer them a choice: my punishment (and no record) or the gov’t’s punishment (mark on their service record). Invariably, they’d swallow hard and opt for Rocky’s consequence. He’d proceed to lay a beating on them. Not many screwed up again.
HCW told to CKW Dec, 2016
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Joe’s Interruption:
Howard Carew Wallace, Howard Vincent’s son, tells a tale at age 87 that his father told him about Joe and his famous poetry:
Apparently Gimpy was at some fancy do in a theater of some kind, all dressed to the nines for a night of culture. Joe showed up at an intermission and enticed him out of the place. He had something “very important” to share with his brother.
Gimpy reluctantly relented and soon found himself nearby at a bar where Joe lined up drinks for both of them. Finally he asked what all the fuss was about. Joe, still conveying a hushed sense of importance, proceeded to show Gimpy a draft of a poem he’s written.
That was it. Gimpy was beside himself. It wasn’t even a finished poem but a draft!
*told to CKW 30Dec2016