Fever At A Young Age

Amy Florence, so named for aunts on both sides of the family, was born on July 10, 1904, just sixteen months after Bill, and so they were often referred to as the twins, as well as “Bill the bawler, Gint the squawler”. I guess descriptive and ofte uncomplimentary nick-names are usual in large families. Amy’s was “Legs” because she was rather tall and rangy as a youngster. During the winter when she was thirteen, she suffered from rheumatic fever and spent summer months in bed. All the following summer she had to wear woolen underwear and - a fate worse than death for a Cudmore - was not allowed to go into the water. The damage to her heart apparently didn’t show up till later in life. She attended the same schools as the rest of us and had the usual brush with the notorious Mr. Luscombe. During one of his tirades he roared at her, “How many more like you are there at home?” and uncowed she roared back “There are two!”. At high school Charlie Rivaz from Palermo was first in the class and Amy was second. She then attended Hamilton Normal School, commuting on the old electric railway, the “Radial”. I think she got her teaching certificate in 1922, the year I graduated from public school. Apparently completely recovered from her serious illness, Amy was a good athlete and full of bubbly good spirits. She was on the basketball team at high school and captain of the team in Normal School. She was an excellent tennis player and played a reasonably good first base on the girls’ softball team, though Bill in despair accused her of pushing the ball rather than throwing it. He was also disdainful of her prowess in the water, saying she swam like a canal horse. Amy was also quite an accomplished horseback rider, taking a prize one year at the fall fair. She and Bill frequently rode their bicycles together to high school in Oakville, a good five miles. Amy was very popular with her peer group, and the house was always full of young people. She was given to violent crushes during her high school days and wrote reams of passionate poetry, some of which I was privileged to read. I remember the day Dad, Mother and I drove Amy to her first job, a one-roomed school in the country near Caledon, of which the name escapes me. It had been pouring rain, the clay roads were very slippery, and we slithered most of the way. Fortunately she was to board with a big family similar to ours with a cheery mother and lots of young people and kids, some of whom she taught. I think she soon fitted in and wasn’t too homesick. There were lots of admiring youths in the area, too. I was the lonely one, sorely missing my roommate during the next long winter, for it wasn’t the style then for each child to have its own room, and I had never slept alone before. After one or two years in the country, Amy came home to teach in the Bronte Public School, in the junior room, and remained in that position till her marriage in 1936. During much of this time her closest companion was Daisy Crosby from Guelph, whom she had met at Normal School and who came to teach in the intermediate room and to board at our house. They were rarely apart till Daisy married the local general store owner, Harry Guest and he and Daisy occupied the apartment over the store till some years later they moved to Victoria, B.C. Their wedding in Guelph in the till of 1934 was the last important social gathering Mother was able to attend. Amy visited them in Victoria a few tines, one of the last the motor trip she and I took to the west coast. We stayed with them in Victoria and at their summer home at Sook Inlet, where we left my car while we took the cruise and bus trip to the Yukon and Alaska. Daisy died of a heart attack shortly after our visit.

There Was Only One

Amy had many boyfriends, and many times I was awakened from a sound sleep to be fed chocolates and regaled with an account of the evening’s proceedings. One of the main suitors was a Westerner, Clarence Henry, a very tall handsome blonde nicknamed “High” for obvious reasons, who was a clerk in the local bank for a few years. I remember one episode when High gave Amy a Bank of Montreal sweater so that they could be dress-a-likes. Mother had a fit because in her book “Candy, books and flowers” was still the rule. But Amy won that round and kept the sweater. They were engaged for a while and Amy visited his family when she and Daisy took a trip west one summer. But when High was moved on, absence didn’t make the heart grow fonder and that romance fizzled out. One specially nice and eligible suitor that I liked was Stanley Alton of a prominent farming family near Palermo. They were engaged until Charlie Rivaz, her old high school rival, reentered her life and the big decision was made. Charlie was the only son of Charles Francis Agnew (Frank) Rivaz, who was the son of Sir Charles Rivaz, governor of the Punjab province of India. Frank decided on another colony, Canada, and settled down on a farm on the Dundas highway just west of Palermo. He married Gertrude Wood, of the large and prominent Wood family in Palermo. They had four children, Charles, Alice, Mary and Betty. The three girls were in High School when I was and Mary was in my class. After high school Charlie attended the Ontario Agricultural College (O.A.C.) at Guelph, majoring in soil chemistry. He graduated top student in his class and was made a lecturer while he took his master’s degree. It was said that his master’s thesis was good enough for a Ph.D. dissertation. He was about to be made full professor, and would have soon had his Ph.D. if the war had not interrupted his career. In the spring and summer of 1936 he had an interesting job with the Government of Ontario, testing soil in the Chatham area with a view to assessing its potential for growing tobacco. How ironic that at that time, before its deadly effects were known, governments were actually encouraging the growth of that accursed weed! Amy and Charlie were married in our house on July 11, 1936. What a flurry of preparation! We spent the whole winter painting, varnishing, tapering, making new curtains and drapes, and at Amy’s insistence Dad ploughed up the weedy, sick old lawn and planted a new one. The time finally arrived, and with it the all-time record heat wave of 1936. For the whole week before the wedding the temperature was well over one hundred degrees and we thought ourselves very lucky that on the appointed day it dropped to a hundred. I was smart enough to get myself the job of arranging the masses of flowers for decoration and stretch it out to spend the morning in the basement, which was still relatively cool.

Get Me to the Church on Time

There were those who thought the wedding should be postponed, but they were outvoted and Amy bravely donned her high-necked, long-sleeved wedding gown and Vera’s heirloom lace veil - and even her new very tight foundation garment! She had already had serious misgivings about this, as, in deference to the Anglican custom of the Rivaz clan the bride and groom were to kneel and the prospect of having to get down and up again encased in this plate armour was a bit daunting. However, she made it. Daisy, then married was matron of honour and I was bridesmaid. We had matching long gowns, Daisy’s in yellow and mine turquoise, and matching halos of velvet flowers in our hair. The very popular Rev. Alex MacGowan officiated. Of course, there were never any alcoholic beverages served in our house, and instead we had a huge vat of lemonade with great chunks of ice in the “washroom”, the little room at the back of the hall. I remember Daisy guzzled so much I thought she would burst. Among the guests were Aunt Florence Cudmore and her daughter, cousin Madeleine from Moose Jaw. To our horror, Uncle Jack, who was bringing them from Toronto, drove his big Buick right across the new lawn to get Aunt Flo and her wheelchair up to the front door. But by then the brave new lawn was so burned up it was beyond hurting anyway. Bill and Marguerite had problems too. They had been in the country visiting Marguerite’s fetter home and Bill’s car overheated. Marguerite came on in hers, arriving just in time to dash up the back stairs and change for the ceremony. Bill arrived later in time for the reception. Amy’s going away outfit was a white silk suit with cocoa brown sheer blouse. Very smart. After a honeymoon at the Rivaz family cottage at Muldrew Lake they spent the summer in Chatham, where Charlie was working. Their first home in Guelph was an apartment on Gordon Street. Amy had helped launch Evert into his cabinet making business by ordering a blonde maple bedroom suite, his first big order and we helped them move their other belongings in the process of delivering the suite. Alter a few months in the apartment they moved to a house on Mary Street from where their daughter Evelyn Mary was born in the Guelph General hospital on September 28, 1937, reportedly the biggest baby born in that hospital for some time. Everything was coming up roses until the war got in the way. Charlie took training with the C.O.T.C. in the Maritimes then left for England with the Twelfth Field Regiment for farther training. While there he was offered a job teaching in the Kahki College but opted for a more active role. Meanwhile, Amy was pregnant and at Christmas time following Charlie’s departure gave birth to a stillborn son and was critically ill. It was a particularly sad loss, as it was the last chance to carry on the Rivaz name, Charlie having been the only son and his two male cousins in England having been killed, one in the war and one in a flying accident. During this time Amy and Evelyn Mary had moved in with Bernice and Bill Taylor on the farm at Lynden. It was a busy time: Amy kept house, Bernice taught school, Bill worked in a munitions factory in Copetown and ran the farm with the help of Hank, the hired man and all four were the devoted slaves of little Evelyn, Bill’s beloved “Chick”.

Charles Killed in Action

But this idyllic period cane to an abrupt end when Charlie was killed in France on June 11, 1944. He was by this time a captain and his commission as major was imminent. He had taken part in the D Day landing and when riding in a forward observation tank was shot by a German sniper. He is buried in the military cemetery in Beny-Sur-Mer in France. For a change of scene, Amy and Evie spent a year with Evelyn and Frank Beasley, then living on Brentwood Road in the Kings- way. Amy worked as receptionist and assistant in Uncle Jack Cudmore’s office of Chiropractic. This did not work out too well as Uncle Jack’s new young wife, Essie, was very jealous of his association with any of his relatives. She needed his undivided attention. But Evelyn Mary was happy with the tender loving care of Uncle Frank and Aunt Evelyn and Beverley as a big sister for a whole year. She remembers affectionately her Aunt Evelyn plaiting her hair till her eyes popped out. She took grade 2 in Sunnylea School. Amy next made the decision to return to teaching and they moved back to Lynden. As Bernice and Bill had by then moved to Rockton, Amy and Evie boarded with Mr. and Mrs. Cole, an elderly couple and Evelyn was once again the darling of the household. Amy taught grades I to IV in the Lynden Public School and Evelyn completed grade IV there. Amy had Evelyn in her class for one year and the arrangement worked well. Evie remembered not to call Amy Mommy in school, but had a tendency to call her Mrs. Rivaz at home Amy’s problem was that Evelyn came first in the class and there was the embarrassment that other parents would put it down to favouritism and not to the fact that the kid was that bright. The next move was back to Guelph, to a not-so-attractive post-wartime housing crisis apartment on College Avenue for two years. Amy then bought the house at 10 Graham Avenue, where they lived till 1962, when she bought 21 Dean Avenue. During this time Aiy taught in the junior grades and Evelyn attended MacDonald Consolidated School near the College and then Amy taught in the Number Six school in the country near Guelph and Evelyn attended Guelph Collegiate and Vocational School. Amy was an. excellent teacher and loved the children, especially the little boys, whom she found more helpless and affectionate than the girls. The children returned the love, and often groups of little boys appeared on her doorstep to visit. Evie thought it was a great idea having a mother for a teacher, especially at Christmas time when the gifts poured in.

Amy's Health Worsens

During Amy’s last few years of teaching, her heart gradually deteriorated, until increasingly severe and frequent episodes forced her early retirement. We can’t seem to pinpoint the year this occurred. Meanwhile she had a quite pleasant social life, centered around the church and college. She was also an active member of the I.OD.E. and a faithful worker in its Opportunity Shop. She wrote a column for the social page of the Guelph Mercury for a few years in the 1960’s During these years she was hospitalized two or three times with heart failure and in March of 1975, when I was visiting Bernice and Amy, we took her to hospital in Clearwater. After several weeks, Evie flew down and escorted her to hospital in Guelph, where she died on July 2, 1975, just eight days short of her seventy-first birthday.