Remembering mother and father

Remembering mother and father

 

 

I received an e-mail from my eldest daughter, Kathy. She had been reading my blog and had some suggestions. Why don't you go back to the beginning and pull from all that experience, along with some hindsight, tells us what you learned through the years? My other children, Karen, and Kirby, agreed that they knew very little about my early life. The work I had chosen in the airline industry, which entailed a great deal of domestic and European travel. My early life events that came about because of my own family circumstances, had much to do with any advice I may have given my children as they grew up.

Both my parents were born in England. My mother was born in Stratford on Avon (Shakespeare's birthplace) in 1898, and my father was born in Bedfordshire, in 1880. My father emigrated to Canada in 1909 and my mother in 1913. They met and married in Prince Rupert, Canada, on February 21, 1918. I was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on December 5, 1926. I had a sister, Vera who was born on January 19, 1919.

My mother had three sisters and a brother. Her father, my grandfather, immigrated to Canada around 1910. He was an architect and brick maker, who arrived in Vancouver with plans to build a house, get settled, and then bring the rest of the family over. As fear of war escalated in Europe, he decided to send for my mother and one sister to come over, as soon as possible. War broke out before he was able to bring my Grandmother and the rest of the family to join him. Grandmother ended up spending the war working in a munitions plant in England. The long awaited family reunion happened at the end of World War I, in 1918/19.

My father was a master carpenter, who built our Vancouver home by himself. He was employed by B. C. Packers, a large fishing and canning company. He was in charge of building a number of whaling stations up the coast of British Columbia. Unfortunately, my parent's marriage was not destined to last. The twenty year age difference and the long separations while my dad was involved with building the stations, led to a separation in 1930.

It was the height of the depression. My dad was only able to find sporadic jobs but he did try to send us a few dollars from time to time. My memories of those years were often of going to bed hungry. I remember seeing bread lines every day with people in the hundreds hoping to get something to eat. There were young men trying to sell apples on street corners for a few pennies. Many times the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) would come along and confiscate their apples and money. Fortunately, my mother was able to get a job making boxes in a factory, for about twenty cents per hour. She once told me that if it were not for my sister and me, she would have ended it all. It was not a time that you want to remember.

As time went on, things did improve. My mother was able to get some financial help from the small town where we lived. After a couple of years, my dad was recalled to B. C. Packers when they started building again. He would come for a visit with my sister and me every so often and was providing financial help to us. He often told me stories of building the whaling stations up the coast. Most of the workers in his crew were Chinese and Indians from tribes in the area. The area was mostly wilderness in those years; supplies had to be brought in via Company boats that only came every few weeks. He had a few other workers, mostly Irish, Scotch, and Canadian, not many though, as few wanted to face that wilderness existence. Most workers had very little past building experience. This led to many arguments as my father tried to teach such a varied group. He told me of the time a few Chinese workers chased him over the roof tops with knives, because he would yell at them about their shoddy work. He told us that some of the Indians would get hold of hair tonic, or other product that had alcohol in it, get drunk, then run off into the woods and not come back for several days at a time.

In1932, I started public school, and my sister, who was eight years older than I, graduated from high school. She enrolled in a secretarial school and learned to use shorthand. My sister was very good at what she liked to do. She also studied elocution and won a gold medal in high school for one of her Shakespeare's presentations. I believe it was for her rendition of "A midnight's summer dream". After graduation from the secretarial school she was able to get a job as a court reporter, taking down the testimony at local trials. Later, during the war, she was selected to go to Washington D. C. and worked for the British Government as Secretary to the Air Chief Vice Marshall of Great Britain. Later in life, she used her special skills to become the secretary to the Chief Supreme Court Judge, in Providence, Rhode Island.

In 1937/38 most people were very concerned over what was going on in Europe. The great fear was that the world was once again going to be plunged into war with Germany. Most Canadians had close ties to England, many had relatives there. In the next blog, Canada declares War…