Remembrance Day 2010

Thank you

• Lance-Corporal William King #31265,15th Battalion Royal Scots
• • killed in Belgium on Sunday, 14th April 1918 at age 20. William was the son of William and Lizzie Matthew King of Lochee, Scotland, born on the 12th of January 1898 at 12 Henry Lane. His father William was a yarn dyer and his mother Lizzie a jute weaver - he was our Nan's brother. His death is commemorated at the Ploegsteert Memorial (Panel 1) in Comines-Warneton, Hainaut, Belgium. The memorial commemorates over 11,000 men who have no known grave. They fought in 1914 or 1918 on Belgian soil beside French troops, and died in France or Belgium when the frontier was of little interest in this area in which trench warfare lasted longest. The following exerpt from the Royal Scots 1914-1918 War History would seem to describe the conditions under which he died ..."Our defensive cordon was drawn close round Bailleuil on the night of the 13th/14th April 1918, and during the readjustments that were effected under cover of darness the 15th and 16th Royal Scots were sent up to the station at Bailleuil and aligned along the railway. From midday on the new position became the target of German gunfire but our casualties were few".
  • In 1922, William King was posthumously awarded the British War Medal & Victory Medal. The 5 inch wide circular placque is inscribed around its' circumference with the words 'HE DIED FOR FREEDOM AND HONOUR' and has the figures of Victory and a lion in the center. The placque is accompanied by a letter from the Record Office and another from Buckingham Palace signed by the His Majesty the King.

Lance-Corporal George D'All #63260,3rd Battalion, Canadian Infantry, Central Ontario Regiment

killed on Tuesday, 13th of June 1916 at age 40. George was born in 1875 in Dundee, son of Alexander D'All and Mary Jane McDowell. He was our grandfather's uncle. Alexander had died when George was four, so his mother brought up their three sons, George, Samuel and Alexander. George married Jessie Gow Robertson in 1895, and they had five daughters who survived infancy - Mary , Jessie, Jeannie, Margaret and Georgina. The girls were left orphans upon George's death, their mother Jessie having passed away in 1913.His death is commemorated at the Ypres Memorial, Menin Gate in Belgium. The Memorial is dedicated to the men who were lost without trace during the defence of the Ypres Salient in the First World War.

Sergeant John Arthur Stockwood # 2869 Rifle Brigade, 10th Battalion

killed September 3rd 1916 in Belgium,age 38, his death is commemorated on the rial, as well as in the nave of Holy Cross Church, Cowbridge and the Cowbridge War Memorial. Son of John Stockwood and Rachel Thomas, he was born in Cowbridge in 1878. He left his wife Beatrice Naunton Davies and three young children, Marion, Alick and Arthur Mervyn.

2nd Lieutenant Lawrence Finlay Stockwood, Household Battalion

killed 12 October 1917, aged 20. His death is commemorated at the Cement House Cemetery, Langemark-Poelkapelle, Belgium. Son of Samuel Henry Stockwood and Alice Emma Taylor, he was born in Bridgend in 1897.

Daniel Joseph Linehan Bombardier - 147th Garrison Field Artillery

Our beloved Irish Grandad, Daniel left Ireland at age 12 to work in the pits at Coed Ely. Later in life he moved his family to Surrey, where my younger brother and I were born in his home in Worcester Park. Grandad died in Surrey in 1962 at the age of 71.

Joseph Albert Parsons, Unit 73rd Battalion and 13 Battalion Royal Hospital Corps, CEF

Joseph, born in Liverpool of Somerset origins, married Mary Robertson D'All, daughter of George D'All who had been killed in Belgium. Joseph & Mary's descendants are spread from the Maritime Provinces to British Columbia. He died in Montreal in the 1980.

Major the Reverend Alfred Beauchamp Payne

born at Cowbridge, September 17th, 1882, son of Thomas Payne & Mary Elizabeth Susan Stockwood. Appointed chaplain 60th Rifles, 1913. Volunteered for active service with this Battalion in 1914 and proceeded overseas. Appointed chaplain 11th Battalion at Valcartier; when the battalion was broken up at Salisbury Plains was appointed chaplain of No.1, C.C.S., with which unit he served until his return to Canada. Married Marion Frances Moore (daughter of the Reverend William Moore, Rector of Lyndhurst, Ont.); the couple lived in Saskatchewan where he was appointed Rector of Shaunavon in 1923.

Colonel Illtyd Henry Stockwood, South Wales Borderers

born at Porthcawl 29 July 1892, son of Samuel Henry Stockwood & Alice Emma Taylor, he served with the South Wales Borderers during WWI in Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, as well as with the Tank Corps & the RAF in France and Belgium. WWII saw him again serving with the Borderers in the UK and in troopships. He died in 1932.

Private William Bertram Stockwood, 11th Battalion CEF (CAMC)

born at Cowbridge 26 March 1884, son of John Stockwood & Rachel Thomas, William emigrated to Canada before WWI and enlisted in the CEF at Valcartier, Québec on 23 September 1914. He served in France and England, married Emma Tuffs in 1915 and was invalided out in 1919 at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. He died 25 November 1952 in Victoria, British Columbia.

Inspector William Scrimgeour D'All Hong Kong Police Force

William, born in Dundee in 1904 to Samuel D'All & Agnes Dryden Scrimgeour,joined the Hong Kong Police Force on 18 May 1928. He married Helena Middleton Gauld in 1933 in Dundee, and was in Hong Kong when it fell to the Japanese in 1941. What follows is a newspaper interview with William almost a year and a half after he returned to Scotland.

Mr. D'All said that he had been a civilian policeman in Hong Kong for the past nineteen years. About three weeks after Japan declared war on the Allies, they captured Hong Kong. "Fortunately," said Mr. D'All, "my wife and family had been evacuated to Australia before this took place." He, with many others, was taken to Stanley Internment Camp, Hong Kong, which housed 2500 internees. Close by was another large camp for military personnel. "Christmas Day 1941" said Mr. D'All rather ironically, "was the day I was taken inside the barbed wire compound, and there I remained until I was released in early September 1945. We were given no time to go home for any extra clothing and necessaries, but hustled off to Camp in the clothes in which we stood." In the words of Mr. D'All, "Camp life was pretty grim." They had two meals a day, if they could be called meals which consisted of two small bowls of rice with a little vegetables among it. Many died from beriberi and more suffered from malnutrition. "Only on two occasions," said Mr. D'All, "would the Japanese allow Red Cross parcels to get through." They had to work five hours every day, which may not seem too long, but in their weak state it was a punishment. The work was of an agricultural nature. The only relief to a really horrible existence were the frequent bombing raids made on Hong Kong by squadrons of American aircraft."

William retired from the Force on 30 December 1946 and spent the rest of his life in Dundee. He received two civilian commendations for help given to other prisoners during his time in the camp. He passed away in Dundee, where his surviving son Ian and his family live, in April of 1977. William's service is mentioned on Tony Banham's "Not The Slightest Chance", a site dedicated to the defence of Hong Kong, 1941.

Corporal Harry King D'All Royal Montréal Regiment (32nd Reconnaissance Regiment)

born in Dundee in 1921 to Harry Bruce D'All & Helen (Nell) King, he emigrated to Canada with his parents in the early 1930's. He was in the Black Watch (Montréal) Cadets and enlisted in the RMR in 1939, serving in England in the Reconnaissance Troop. The letter above was sent by his mother in 1940 and salvaged from the sea when the ship carrying it was torpedoed. Nan had fortunately put the return address at the top of the letter, so it was returned to "Mum" labeled "salved from the sea". He met and married Mum, Gertrude Maria Linehan and when he was demobilised in 1946 we came to Canada as a family. After returning to England for a few years, we settled in Montreal for good in 1951. Dad continued with the RMR, now a peacetime militia regiment and retired as Regimental Sergeant Major. He died on 12 June 1988.

Dennis Price Linehan Royal Air Force

born in Tylcha Fach in June 1920 to Daniel Joseph Linehan & Gertrude Teresa Stockwood, Uncle Den served with the RAF for the duration of WWII. He married Joan Delafield, who passed away in 1995. Uncle Den lives in Evesham and most of his seven children and their families live in the surrounding areas.

John (Jack) Watson Chivas Merchant Marine

Jack's entire working life, peacetime & wartime was spent in the Merchant Marine. He and his wife Ella D'All, Grandad's sister, lived in British Columbia. Ella passed away in 1972, Jack in 1997 - they had no children.

This last I include purely for its historical significance; having five Regimental Sergeants Major in one picture is a rare event. This was taken at Valcartier, Québec in July 1956 during the summer exercises of the Regiments.

J. Ritchie RSM Victoria Rifles of Canada

H. D'All RSM Royal Montreal Regiment

T. Turley RSM Black Watch (RHR)

W. Cunningham RSM Service Corps

G. Fogarty RSM Canadian Grenadier Guards

R. Diplock Brigade Sergeant Major (Ret)

matchboxes & golliwogs

Golliwogs are not politically correct in today’s world, but they were a part of my life, and my Gran made some lovely ones as well as other fabric dolls. They were fabric dolls of colour, patterned after the minstrel shows as they were portrayed back then. The one Dan is holding in the photo had a green and white striped suit with pink polka-dotted swiss lapels and shirtfront – Gran sewed every curl of his hair by hand and his earring was a curtain ring. His bowtie was pink. Heaven only knows where he is now, but I would dearly love to have him. Once Gran made a nun, dressed entirely in a white habit complete with rosary. Grandad was the gardener for a convent – the details are fuzzy so I am not sure whether it was for his retirement or that of the Mother Superior - but the doll was made for whichever event it happened to be. Gran’s pride and joy was the sewing machine on the sideboard beside the dining table. You turned the wheel by hand (no pedals or electricity) – she made all the dolls and their clothes on it and many other things as well. Mum used it to make my first dresses … The china doll I am holding in the same photograph was a gift for my last birthday in England, my ninth – and the second doll and the last doll I was ever to possess. Dad sent the money from Canada – she had a china head, arms and legs and a cloth body. Much to my dismay I was to discover that her head had a seam from ear to ear which split open as I dropped her within the first hour. Fortunately, Grandad had glue.

We didn’t have a lot, but then no-one in the rows of council houses did, that’s why we were all there. Grandad, a gentle Irishman who had developed black lung from laboring below ground in the Welsh mines from his teens to his 30s, had moved his family with no lock, stock or barrel to Surrey in search of work. He bicycled from Coedely in South Wales to the English countryside despite his lungs – he had little or no choice if he wanted to feed everyone. Eventually he found work on the railroad and later was the gardener cum general factotum at a nearby convent. Their first home in England was a disused Quonset hut where dampness misted the walls when it rained, a not unusual event, especially in the winter.

When they secured the council house that was to be their home until Grandad passed away 30 years later, it must have been a huge relief for him. Not a grand house, but it served his family of five quite well – a sitting room with space for a table and chairs, a scullery with Gran’s stove and another table, bathroom with just that – a bath, since the toilet although in the house proper, was reached by an outside door – and upstairs, one big bedroom, one smaller and the “box room” made into a third bedroom. Heat came from Gran’s kitchen stove and a coal fireplace downstairs as well as a fireplace in the ‘big’ bedroom.

When one reaches the so-called golden years as I have, you often wonder if all your memories are really memories or simply events culled from stories told to you by others. Obviously I cannot claim to have been a witness to Gran & Grandad’s life in Wales or their move to England – I can however recall with great clarity each and every room in their council house and have memories, as well as stories, associated with almost all of them.

This is one of the ‘culled events’ – most of my (remembered) life I have been terrified of fire in any form. As a child and even a teenager I simply could not even light a match, including the big, wooden kitchen ones. A sound in the night became fire crackling; sirens were signals of fire engines coming to wherever I was living at the time; the smoke from a wood fire meant that the wooden bones of my house were smouldering. The grate in Gran’s sitting room almost always had a nice, warm coal fire going – I remember the dampness on your back when your front was toasty warm, the firemarks on the front of your legs, somebody or other with chilblains, visiting the defunct air raid shelter in the back garden to fill the coal scuttle – never alone because there were spiders. As was the case with pretty much everyone we knew, the sitting room fire was the only one regularly lit, anything else was used just before bedtime and only briefly –they never did ‘take the chill off the air’, which was the reason given for lighting them. We did have hot water bottles though. Before these memories, something happened to which Mum ascribed my irrational fear of fire, something I honestly do not recall. I was barely toddling, Dad & Grandad were sitting on either side of the fire when apparently I decided to try out my newly-found legs; were it not for Dad seizing the back of my dress at the last second, my wobblies would have launched me face-first into the hot coals. I know it was pretty close because Dad could never imagine why I was not singed. Well, perhaps my skin was not, but my psyche sure was. Over the years I have become less paranoid as one does what one has to do in order to live – but that does not include using the gas oven with the pilot light in my present apartment (I have managed the stove-top burners without too much cringing) – I use a counter top electric oven to roast & bake.

Nor do I recall the coal storage bin in its original incarnation as an air raid shelter yet I certainly spent time there along with the rest of the family. Since each house had an identical brick structure I am making a leap of faith in the assumption that the ubiquitous council provided this protection to those in proximity to London – rough concrete-roofed, solid brick – ours stood to the right as you went out the back kitchen door, Grandad’s shed was to the left, with the garden path between them. I bring this up because during the war years the little house that did so well for five was pushed to accommodate a few more – my uncle had married and there was a son John too; Mum & Dad were married & had produced moi – when Dad was off doing his Canadian Army duty & Uncle Den was doing the same in the RAF, his wife Big Peggy (big so as to distinguish from Mum’s little sister “our” Peggy), their son John & I swelled the family. Other sleeping arrangements elude me, but I am told that John & I were put to bed each night underneath the dining table where we could be easily grabbed & transported to the shelter when the air raid siren sounded – the table was also perceived as protection for the infants from an unannounced raid. I have often wondered how Auntie Peg at only ten years old felt about the ‘priority’ given to the babies – she did tell me once that what few toys she had became ours L. The dining table figured largely in childhood entertainment – our Gran espoused the philosophy that housework would always be there but children would not, so spend time with them while you can. Upended it became a pirate ship – we had cardboard swords & eyepatches with cocked hats fashioned from newspapers; with a sheet draped from leg to leg it was my faraway tree where sat on bed pillows and read when it was too wet outside (there was no heat in the bedrooms); it was a castle; it was what ever we children imagined.

This next sitting room memory is as clear as a bell. Our Peg, along with the young man who was to become our Uncle Brian, was looking after undeniably missish me and my young brother Danny who was ostensibly asleep upstairs. Gran had a kiddie table in front of the window – I don’t recall the exact task, but we were at that table when we heard Dan’s footsteps on the stairs. Being me, I leapt up before the adults could react and arms akimbo officiously confronted my little brother, who by virtue of the steps was now of a like height, only to receive a bloody nose as a reward. He turned and went backup without a word while Peg dealt with my nose.

A much much later sitting room memory occurred when I was on my first return to England – I had brought cigarettes for our Peg and was not aware that Grandad did not know that she smoked and handed her a package right in front of him.

The scullery was warm. Gran making small beer from dandelion leaves in the huge earthenware bowl, Welsh cakes on the griddle, thick bacon rashers with rind for Sunday tea, birthday cakes … on that same return visit, the neighbour lady arriving with a bowl of cherries from her tree so that I would not have to pick my own. Gran did the ironing in the scullery, with two castiron irons heated on the griddle. Off the scullery, the bathroom, where bath water was heated by paying the geezer (sp?) ie by putting money in the gas heater. During the war, bath water was rationed to five inches once a week so people shared the water. Until we left England, Dan & I always shared the Saturday night bath to save paying the geezer twice, a hangover from the wartime rationing & economics. The laundry was done in the bathroom – Gran had a washboard on which she scrubbed everything (on her hands & knees beside the tub) – before she had a mangle, she wrung everything by hand, even bed sheets, and hung them on the clothesline.

Soooooo, sooner or later I guess I should get into the rest of the tag line … memories have been at least partially covered, but what of the matchboxes? I began by stating that we did not have much. There are times when I think of my son’s and nephews’ birthdays and Christmases that I wonder how my generation was not overcome with boredom. So much STUFF! Now I am not going to claim that our Christmases resemble those of Mum and her siblings – they had stockings with an orange & a lump of coal – and the reason I am not venturing there is because I honestly have no memory of one blessed Christmas before we came to Canada – I don’t think much was made of them or surely I would remember?? Of course, nobody is left to ask either. I do remember having several lovely books, Johanna Spyri’s Heidi, Enid Blyton but am not sure how I got them. The Woolworths shop in our town carried a myriad of items as they did everywhere, and among those items were tiny, mini baby dolls not even as long as my little finger was at the time – these miniature dolls were within the realm of possible purchase and indeed I had quite a few, so did my friends. We collected matchboxes from our families and refurbished them up as wee beds and other furniture. A handmade pillow in a matchbox with the slip-on cover refinished in some scrap of fabric made a comfy baby cot. Gran used to put together entire sitting room sets, settees and armchairs, made from fabric and lace-covered match boxes – they were given as gifts and sometimes sold. It was Gran who supplied me with the scraps of material for mine.

Another source of amusement was faery dish gardens - faeries were after all a fact of life, they lived in the hedgerows and at the bottom of the garden, especially if the gardener let things run wild. We gathered moss, pretty coloured stones, tiny plants, berries and assorted items meant to make a comfortable habitat, then we cadged a dish and hopefully a bit of mirror or glass and spent hours arranging all our finds in the dish around a pond in a way we felt would please any faery. One of our neighbours had a derelict patio of sorts at the end of his garden where we could pick up small pale green tiles when occasionally allowed if we asked nicely. The fae loved them.

What do I remember about the bedrooms ? Well to start with I have no idea where Danny & I slept. There were three rooms, Gran & Granddad had the front room with the fireplace except when Mum was giving birth – then she occupied the big bed – three times. Peg has said she slept in the box room, which leaves the third room for Mum, Dad, Dan & me – not sure how it worked. In addition to the births, there was another exception to bedroom number one and that was when I succumbed to the German measles. This was the only bedroom with heat and the doctor was apparently extremely worried – the measles had closed my eyes and he was not at all sure what the outcome would be. Mum & Gran bathed my eyes incessantly for days. One day, when Dad came home and made his nightly visit - I can hear Mum’s voice “look Daddy, she can open her eyes” - I blinked open long enough to see a candle on the mantelpiece (the room was kept dark) … When Danny was born, he almost immediately developed what was referred to then as bronchial pneumonia. This meant that his cot was moved into the sitting room near the fire to keep him warm. Mum said it was touch & go for about six weeks – he came out of that (obviously J ) but suffered from the croup for much of his early childhood. I recall being awfully affronted when he was in hospital in an oxygen tent and got a new lorry! (Well it wasn’t his birthday after all). He was in hospital aboard ship with an attack when we travelled to Canada ,and so far as I remember the last one was on our first New Year’s in Canada, Mum & Dad were going out and we had to have the Doctor because Danny could not breathe. I was terribly impressed by the Doctor who interrupted a phone call on the party line so he could call the pharmacy. I for one outgrew sibling jealousy, but for along time Danny got a gift on MY birthday so he would not fuss.

On to the funny, sorta. Each November in England, one celebrates (or celebrated??) Guy Fawkes day by burning the Guy and setting off fireworks. Sometimes it rains – hard. One year there was a downpour and we children were relegated to watch from the house while Dad and Grandad ventured into the back garden to set Guy alight (with some sort of flammable help) and attempt the fireworks. I am pretty sure that they only did this to stop the whining at the disappointment with rain on Guy Fawkes night – that being said they did get the Guy afire as I watched from the bed under the box room window. Then the fireworks – there were some that were in strings, sort of curved up together, that ‘walked’. Walk they did, only one turned around and headed straight for Dad who took off running. Already hyper from the whining I was hysterical with laughter, jumped up and down, managed to fall in between the bed and the window, smacking my nose on the sill – yet another bloody nose. Many years later I was to learn from Peg that Dad had run because whatever they had used to light the Guy was on his clothes – it could have been a very different story.

Now that we are in the back garden … Grandad grew vegetables, all kinds of them. Potatoes, carrots, onions, cabbage stretched from the house to the laneway, unbroken except for a line of black currant bushes where the path ended halfway down. Dad was not a gardener but one spring Grandad enticed him into planting and caring for peas, which he did very well. He however did not think so because there was very little yield for the amount of plants in his estimation. Grandad listened to him then said that not much was sweeter than peas still in the pod (while nodding at Danny and me)… Dad never planted anything else. Two little children can wreak havoc in a garden. Grandad had to declare the black currant bushes verboten because we sat underneath them and ate the not quite ripe berries, making ourselves ill and limiting the crop. The previously mentioned neighbour lady with the bowl of cherries had a garden that was a child’s delight – apple, pear and cherry trees, blackberries, raspberries , black currants , gooseberries – the list goes on. We thought we were so smart! Down the garden we would go, past the shelter, crawling among Grandad’s veggies until we could cross into her garden sight unseen – uh huh. Why do you think she presented me with a bowl of cherries all those years later? Danny planted an apple seed and from it grew a tree. Gran used to periodically send pictures of the tree’s progress.

Oh gosh, we were not all bad and we were not alone in what we did – not that it makes it right – we were stealing. Idle minds and all that. This of course was before we found other things to do with our minds. Having the example of Gran, I was given a needle and thread when I was very young – I made the clothes and covers for the faeries and for a doll that was a precursor to Barbie. I watched Gran & Mum knit, begged needles and wool and taught myself how – to this day I knit with the wool in my left hand – I never did master the multi-tasking right hand. I read anything I could set my hand to – all of these things before I reached the age of four. Children are amazingly self-sufficient you know. The end of the garden path, halfway down the garden, was where I used to sit on sunny days to read, sew or knit – that is until I discovered my tree. At the very bottom of the garden was an unpaved laneway between us and the houses across the back and nestled in the lane, stunted and gnarled, was an ancient (to my mind) apple tree. Lord only knows whose it was to begin with. Its branches spread out horizontally as if it had been pruned that way and right in the center where the branches split, was a space just big enough and comfy enough to accommodate my four-year old bottom. So there I read.

Once more I have blathered on …. Hopefully someone will like it …….

a guest blogger .......... and robins ...

We have a guest blogger: When Maggie saw the robin she sent me her full story about the wingèd creatures which I felt had to appear here.

Our family is by birth Celtic ~ Irish, Scots, Welsh …. we have by default inherited a love of music, a sense of destiny, a belief in the otherworld of fae and elf as well as a healthy respect for the unknown. I firmly believe in Maggie’s robins – Mum instilled a love of family in all of us and I cannot imagine her not watching over her brood.

Thank you Mag …

♥♥♥♥♥

I remember when I was a child; my mum would often say that when she died she wanted to come back as a bird so she could fly over all of us to watch us. Just one of those childhood things that sticks with you. In the few weeks following the terrible loss of our dear mum, when sitting in the living room at the cottage I noticed that whenever I looked out the door, there was a robin sitting on the fence “looking” straight towards me. Then I found at home, in the back yard again on the fence, there was a robin “looking” at me. One morning as I walked the dogs before work, there was one hopping along the grass, jumping to each lawn as we went down the street. That’s when I knew, Mum was watching.

Four years ago we went to Wales to visit my mum’s sister. I was telling her about my robin and she, too believed it was her sister. She said they never had robins in her part of the country, but wished she would see one. A couple of months later, she called to say she was standing at the sink looking out at the beautiful old tree in the yard and what did she see…yes, a robin.

I continued to see my robin. Though obviously not the same one every time, there was just always one there… the city, the country, no matter where.

Then quite suddenly my darling aunt passed way. We were so sad; it was like losing Mum all over again. Her daughter called me a few weeks after and said that she and her dad were sitting chatting in the solarium, when they heard some rustling in the bushes outside She turn to look and not one, but two robins hopped from the brush!!

After that when I looked to the fence, or watched while walking there were two.

I guess one could say that if you are looking for them you are going to find them - that they are always around, but you just don’t notice them. It is probably true, but I like to believe Mum and Peggy are with me.

Then, last year Uncle Dennis, Mum and Peg’s older brother died. Poor old man, must have been so sad having lost his baby sisters and was gone fairly soon. No, I’m not going to say there were now three robins everywhere, but within days of his death, I was at the park with the boys. It is quite a large area and often there are flocks of seagulls, or Canada Geese landing and grazing on the soccer field. I was just standing as the boys sniffed every blade of grass, when I realized there were a lot of much smaller birds on the field. I walked over to find they were of course, robins. I am going to say 20 or 30, grazing. They stayed until we got quite close, then they flew off.

Since that day I have to say that I don’t always feel like I am being followed by the robin.

Sometimes, of course, but not as frequently. To me, the large gathering was Mum and her family telling me that they were alright now, and she and her siblings were back with their beloved Mum and Dad who they had missed for so many years and they were happy. She still pops into check once in awhile, and I always say “Hi Mum” and then remind Sammy he can’t chase them!

These beautiful boys are a huge part of Maggie’s life, and were it not for her, heaven only knows where they would be. Maggie rescued Joe from an horrendous experience as a stray which left him scarred, blind in one eye and with shotgun pellets in his scalp.We will never know what actually happened, but he has come sailing through it all, sweet and gentle. Sam, poor Sam was in foster care, not because of mistreatment but because his owners were no longer able to care for him. Maggie took Joe to meet him, to see if they would be a “fit” – well, when they curled up together in the back seat of the car – he “fit”.

My sister and many like her save animals from fates they do not deserve.If you have room in your heart and in your home, think about rescuing one – two ???

family around the corner ....

After having spent a fair amount of time on this earth, I have reached the conclusion that in the grand scheme of things, the only thing that actually matters is family. There may have been times way back when my thinking kind of skittered away from that fact, but I always came home. If you think about it, one works to support a family, votes to protect (hopefully) your family’s way of life, espouses causes to prolong or bring the planet back to what it once was – to save it for your family. Sooooo, pretty much everything you do ~ or at least I do, since I won’t speak for others ~ is essentially for family. We are eventually forgiven the lapses that occur in our late teens and twenties when we quite naturally became me-firsters.

Even though Mum’s family were in England and we were in Canada, there was a close relationship. Her sister Peg had one daughter and brother Den had seven children, and of the eight, only Den’s first son John is older than me. During the war, Mum and her sister-in-law lived with Gran ~ John and I were put to bed each night under the dining-room table to protect us from bombs if we could not be taken to the shelter in time. I once spent a holiday with his family before we came to Canada when I was nine. The next time I saw my cousins I was sixteen, then twenty-seven, then fifty-something – but –we were always in touch.

Which is why it is so difficult to understand that we knew nothing of Dad’s family in Canada.

Dad was an only child, so there were no aunts and uncles for us there. His Mum Nell had a brother Jim who flitted in and out of our lives as children. Jim had a daughter who was (rightfully I think) estranged from her father, so we never knew her. Grandpop of course had his three sisters, Ella in Vancouver who visited Montréal once, Lizzie in Dundee whose daughter Irene was mentioned occasionally and Jean, also in Dundee.

One of the first things I was to discover was that there are many, many more and not very far away …

family around the corner ….

Fifteen years ago give or take, an article of mine was published in our daily newspaper. There were several congratulatory calls, none of which prepared me for the one that opened with “are you young Harry’s daughter?” .. I am she, however only family would use the term - the few times I had heard it was when Grandad read us letters from Scotland – the gentleman went on to say that being young Harry’s daughter, I was then related to his wife.

He was Gordon and his wife was Anita, daughter of Mary – Mary proved to be first cousin to our Late Grandpop, Dad’s father and although Mum was aware that there was a connection she had no idea what it actually was. Mary’s name had been mentioned often when Dan & I were children, always in the context of one or the other of our parents or Grandpop having “run into Mary”, but never once was it said that she was family. Even more shattering to me was that Gordon & Anita had called from within walking distance of our home!

We got to know Anita and her family over the next few years. Mary had three children, one son Albert had gone to the Maritimes, another, Tommy to BC and Anita stayed here. At Mary’s 100^th birthday party in 1995 we met relatives from both ends of Canada and from the USA . To think that we had grown up in this city, at times even on the same street, with family out there of whom we never knew just floored me. Anita’s children Donald and Maureen are of an age with Dan and myself ~ it might have been nice to have been friends with cousins in the neighbourhood as well as with cousins overseas.

Mary, whose story as I have come to know it I will tell you later, lived to the grand old age of 110. Anita, whose Gordon is also gone, is in her 90s now, very “with it”!! ~ I love her company J

We had been told all our lives that we were the only family to have emigrated – how wrong that impression was.

It was not until three or four years after this that I seriously dug into the family history. Mum had passed away after a lengthy illness, I had a hand-me-up computer from Liam and to be completely frank, I needed something to occupy my mind – this was it. So it was that I set off with absolutely no idea of how to proceed and funnily enough, it may have helped J Joined a genealogy message board mostly concerned with American ancestors and through the members learned what was out there and how to proceed. One of those “members” in Iowa remains a friend to this day, although we have never actually met.