So, Here Goes!

MARJORIE Now I come to the most difficult one for me to write about - me! I share with Bernice two differences from the rest of the siblings: we didn’t have any children, and our names aren’t family oriented. Marjorie was the “in” name that year and Enid was found by Evelyn in a book she was reading at the time. As I was growing up I thought Enid was the ugliest name I had ever heard - probably because it was hitherto unknown to me - and I was so embarrassed I refused for years to tell anyone my second name. I suppose this was part of the special difference Mother noted in me - I was more difficult for her to understand than the others were. When they had problems they dashed to her and blurted it all out. I tended to brood in a corner - the secretive one. So how can I spill it all out now? But I’ll have to try, as you’ve all been so good at giving me your histories. So here goes. I was born on January 12, 1910, the year King George V came to the throne. I arrived in the middle of a blizzard, and to the best of my knowledge there’s been a big storm on or about my birthday every year since. The doctor was late because he had difficulty making it through the storm. He’s worth a few words here. Dr. Mowbray was the archetype of the dedicated young beginning country doctor, going over his large territory with horse and buggy or cutter. I was the second baby he delivered. The first was Vernon Belyea, youngest of the Bronte family of eight boys that paralleled our four boys and four girls in age. The other parallel family was the seven girls and one boy of the Osborne family of eight. Most of the twenty - four of us were friends with our counterparts. Dr. Mowbray later made his mark as founder of the widely known and respected Mowbray Clinic in Hamilton, later the Mowbray MacGregor arid finally the MacGregor. The midwife was credited with saving my life. I was a breech birth and she reached in and cleared a passage to my face, keeping me breathing till the doctor arrived. She was the wife of “Organ Bob” Joyce - so named, appropriately, because he played the organ and taught piano. Bronte was noted for its identifying and otherwise suitable nicknames. Mrs. Joyce was a personal friend of Mother’s who had assisted at some of the other births - likely all of the ones from Bill on. We were not allowed to say anything derogatory about her or mimic her unfortunate speech impediment, as we were inclined to do, because she had been so good to Mother and us, especially me. Of my breech birth, Mother once observed in frustration that I had cone into the world backwards and had been contrary ever since! To further complicate matters, I was born with what was then called a “nervous stomach”, and I must say that isn’t the best functioning part of me to this day. All my life I have tended to “throw up” at times of stress instead of fainting or sighing prettily in the accepted and more attractive and ladylike manner. At any rate, no - one was willing to bet a nickel on my survival for at least a year. I was starving, as no food would agree with me. Finally, barley water and Mother’s and the doctor’s stubbornness did the trick. The doctor observed that any other woman would have let me die. Another first-year hurdle was my nearly succumbing to the chicken pox brought home from school by the other kids. I still have the marks to prove it. As if this was not an inauspicious enough beginning, a few years later the older ones kept me in mortal terror for a while by pointing out that I was the tenth kid, and that a tenth belonged to the Lord, he would soon be dropping by to claim me! But here I am, seventy-two years later. As a child I was apparently afraid of the dark, as my “cute saying” that has come down is, “Light the light, I can’t see to sleep.”. I suppose you could call my childhood idyllic. I roamed freely about the farm. This must have started at an early age, because the older ones recalled seeing me going up and dawn the raspberry rows crying and looking for my “gag” - that’s what we called the comforts or whatever they still shove in baby’s mouths - that I’d. lost. I remember when I was quite young going in early summer across the road to the lake bank and digging up wild cucumber seedlings to plant along the back porch, where trained on strings they grew into vines that made a lovely shady nook. I felt very proud of ivy contribution. Mother was especially good at making me - and I suppose the other kids - feel that what I was doing was useful and important. I was very young when I gathered chips from the woodpile for kindling, and helped feed the chickens. In berry-picking time each of us, according to our age and capabilities, was given a quota of boxes to fill each day. We could do it in an hour or take the whole day, but it had to be done. Thus we learned a sense of responsibility and a pride in contributing to the common weal, a quality that seems to me to be lacking in some of today’s “me” generation. Perhaps you could call it the old—fashioned Protestant Work Ethic. Now I’m sounding old. I remember the thrilling time when we got our first car in 1917. The whole family pitched in to take up the sod and make a driveway, and I think at the same time “we” put up a handsome lath fence and stained it green, to separate the house and garden from the fern yard. I think a garage was put up then too, midway between the house and barn. I was convinced I was helping a lot, though now I realize I was probably in everyone’s way.

Pigs and More

A part of my early wanderings also was in early summer, my daily visits to the darling little pinkish piglets with their mother in the enclosure under the trees. I was always very careful to stay back from the fence, as Mother had warned me that mothers get very vicious when they feel their babies threatened. I recalled this much later in life when in 1963 in Stratford-on-Avon in England, a nice gentleman. warned me not to go close to the baby swans which were being herded by their mothers. This was again demonstrated more frighteningly in Kenya in 1972, when a mother elephant made signs of charging when we got too close to its two-ton baby. Something else I learned about animals at an early age was that the plain grey kittens seemed to last longer than the cuter ones with fancy markings. Each time there was a new litter, we younger kids were allowed to pick one, and my plain grey one seemed to be the survivor. One of these became so docile that it let me dress it in my doll’s clothes. For hours it would lie on its back in my doll carriage, (my most prized possession, a gift from Grandmother Cudmore, I think) attired in bonnet and dress. I liked it better than my dolls because it was alive and warm and. purred. My late summer peregrinations were mostly to the few rows of grapes, blue, green, and red, which grew not far from the house. I. was seldom without a bunch in my hand, slurping happily, the agonizing decision being whether to choose red, blue, or green this time. Decisions have always been difficult for me. In winter, though I was something of a loner, I seemed to miss the other kids when they were in school. By putting my foot on the bottom of the stairs, draping my body at a dangerous angle and resting my elbows on the windowsill, I could just see out the kitchen window and there I seemed to stay for hours watching for them to heave into sight. It was also a good vantage point from which to watch the goings-on in the barnyard, including the annual pig-killing, during which I was not allowed out. Much of my time in winter was spent alone with Mother, who was very ingenious at keeping me occupied. I remember once when she was learning a recitation for a Red Cross benefit concert, I had it down letter perfect before she did and could prompt her. She invented a quiet way for us to play house by ourselves. On sheets of paper she drew floor plans of house, school, church and store. The families were buttons, pretty pearl for females and plainer more utility types for males, all graduated in size for the appropriate ages, and all named, of course. I played thus for hours, imagining their daily activities and propelling them into them with a finger. The game was not without its hazards. Bill caused considerable consternation one day when he suddenly shouted, “I’ve swallowed Gertrude!”. Another great game was cutting paper dolls out of Eaton’s catalogue (a more attractive use for it than the one usually referred to in rude jokes). I think I acquired an early interest in style and design by carefully studying all the dresses, cutting out the models and dresses and re-arranging them. I carried this over into the design, cutting and sewing of my doll clothes. I sewed them on Mother's machine when I still had to stand to reach the foot treadle. This was all good experience for when I began designing and making my own clothes, especially after Mother died. The first money I earned went to buy a portable electric machine when Mother’s old treadle one gave out.

Like the Big Kids

I guess it’s time to get me to school. I was proud and happy to enter into the great adventure and be like the big kids. This was partly because I had a pretty new blue and white plaid dress made of NEW material especially for me. Everything I was required to do seemed easy and I couldn’t understand why anyone was afraid or had problems. It was quite a long walk, especially on a cold and snowy day, but we were rarely driven or allowed to stay home. The only concession made was that sometimes on specially bad days, Dad accompanied us. And there were many adventures to be had along the way. When the old wooden bridge down in the valley of the twelve Mile Creek was replaced by the new high-level concrete arched bridge, it was obligatory to make the trip over the arch. To keep the brakes on going down was the trick, but it was a very satisfying experience. Some of the boys were brave enough to traverse the narrow, curved railing along the edge with a drop into the river a distinct possibility, but I never mastered that. The next challenge was to go through the long four foot culvert under the highway in the next little valley. It was exciting when the water was so high we had to spread our legs to the limit and inch our way along just keeping our feet out of the water and with the ever present danger of sprawling into it. On special days the ultimate thrill was to go to the haunted house west of ours on the curve where the Shell Park starts now. There we would play chicken, the challenge being to go onto the veranda and right up to the door. Mission accomplished, we then proceeded home via the old dirt road by the lakeshore. One episode of my public school days illustrates and partially explains the Oakville-Bronte animosity that existed through the years. I remember our teacher, Miss Heeks, saying, “You’re going to be the best marchers in the county if it kills you”. And it nearly did, for she drilled us by the hour. The reason was that each year all the schools in the county lined up on the huge playground at the Oakville public school and marched to the Fall Fair. The Oakville principal, R. F. Sanderson, was a bigot who taught his pupils to look down on the hicks - especially the Bronte variety - who were outside the pale of God’s chosen Oakvillites. So the whole generation that went through his hands was infected with that prejudice. Came the big day, and true to form, the august gentleman bawled for all to hear and snicker, “Come on, you little Ciscoes, Line up!”. We did, smartly, and did indeed prove to be the best marchers in the county. That the lesson of animosity had been taught well was illustrated many times over in the jeers we had to endure when walking from the Radial station to high school. On one cold snowy morning one of God’s chosen was eating an apple and spat a mouthful full in my face at close range. The boys in our group seized and pummelled him and washed his face with snow in an impressive show of chivalry and solidarity. The word spread around and we had a more peaceful walk from then on. My public school career went smoothly, with one notable exception. One winter I was quaranteend with a bad case of whooping cough. Besides missing the Christmas concert, I missed six weeks of mathematics, never my favourite subject. On the day I returned there was a test, and I got zero because they had learned all about decimals and how to convert them from fractions. I was devastated and acquired a lingering loathing for mathematics. I acquired also a mental block about decimals and percentages. It was a burden to me when I had to figure percentages for kids’ report cards, and shows up now in my income tax calculations. I’m still never sure where the darned dot should go. A much happier experience with childhood diseases came one winter when the whole family was quaranteened with German measles. None of us was sick, and every afternoon before school was out we’d go and stake a claim to the best sleighing hill. We’d smugly yell at the kids coming from school that they mustn't come near us. We rode in fiendish glee while the others stood back in helpless frustration. Mean brats! When I was in junior fourth, now called grade eight, it was apparent that I regularly had my seat work done and was watching the senior fourth lessons with avid interest, and so Miss Heeks decided to advance me at Easter and I tried my Entrance that year. Thus I entered high school in 1922, when I was twelve. I handled it well academically, but socially it was not so good. I was as much as three years younger than some of the others, and in addition to this, coming from the farm I was much less street-wise than the Bronte kids and less socially aware than the Oakville kids and was therefore a bit out of things. This immaturity showed up even more in university than in high school. .So I still tend to think that some form of enrichment is preferable to acceleration for bright children. For the first two years in high school, Marion Beggs from Oakville always came first, Evert Tyrrell from Oakville, second, and I third. Then, much against his will, Evert was hauled out of school to work on the farm and in the tannery - a waste of potential and desire, and an injustice that he never forgave. From then on; I came second to Marion and we became best friends and later room mates all through university. I beat her once on a Latin exam. I think I got 98 and she got only 96, and she was so distressed that I wished I hadn’t. I re-met Evert when I was twenty. The Oakville High School all but fell apart during my first two years there. The Principal, Mr. Wyndhan, too fine a gentleman and too ill, to cope with a large school, was absent a great deal. There was wholesale skipping of classes and a lot of rough conduct. I recall one noon hour someone got the hose going in the basement, a water fight ensued, and we were all drenched to the skin before it was over. In the spring term of the second year, during Mr. Wyndham’s illness, and after his death about Easter, there was a succession of totally useless acting principals - male students from the Ontario College of Education. The female Latin teacher was excellent and would have done the job much better, but of course a female principal was unheard of in those days! The following fall term, R. H. Archibald, a noted disciplinarian, was brought in and had the school back on the tracks in a few weeks. He was also an outstanding Math teacher, and so I did better from then on. All went well until the spring of my last year,when I was quite ill for several weeks with the bad kind of measles, which I caught from Marion. My eyes were badly affected and from then on I had to wear glasses. Added to this, the next year I moved to Toronto, where the electrical current was still twenty-five cycle. I found the flickering lights much inferior and much more of a strain for studying than the steady sixty cycle I was used to. A sad incident is associated with my illness. I recall our nice Dr. Wilkinson sitting on the side of my bed saying it was odd that of all the patients he had with measles, his own son was the one with the most serious complications. The little boy, his only son, died two days later. I guess it would have to be admitted that Marion Beggs and I were both what I think the kids still refer to as “Browners”, advanced academically but a little retarded socially. Probably because of this, when I graduated from high school in June of 1927, aged 17, Mother was determined to give me a university education because a career looked more in the cards than marriage. So I was enrolled in Victoria College in the University of Toronto in Honours English and History, with Latin and French as pass options. I went into residence at Annesley Hall on Avenue Road. It might be interesting to note comparatively that the fees for Arts courses were then $75 and the entire term’s board was $268 - but probably just as hard to come by as today’s very high rates. In my third year I met my Waterloo in History. I had mistakenly chosen Philosophy as my pass subject instead of the easy Religious Knowledge that was usually taken as Vic. I found this and History very difficult as they went beyond my faculty for memorizing facts to analysing and making value judgments, skills I had till then not had to develop. So I transferred to the Pass course at the end of that year. I recovered from that to graduate a year later “magna cum laude”. among the six top students in the university and runner-up for the Governor General’s gold medal in Victoria in the Pass course with the same subjects, English, History, Latin and French. This was in June, 1931, a week after Mike and Vera were married.

Life Happens While You Make Other Plans

I had had dreams of being a lawyer, because I was dazzled by the aura of my flamboyant Uncle John Clary. But in those days female lawyers were still something of a novelty, the chances of getting a job were too shaky, and the extra expense of another three years of schooling too formidable; so the good old standby teaching was decided on. I took the year at Ontario College of Education at Bloor and Spadina and hated every minute of it. The only bright spot was that Marion and I were boarding with Russell and Mary and had a pleasant home life there. We must have been in the top half of the class, because we passed, when it was said that the class was slashed right through the middle and the bottom half failed regardless of marks. But it didn’t make any difference anyway. Because of the depression and no jobs to be had, more than the usual number of young men had gone to O.O.E. and of course they and a few of the females with special abilities or pull got what few jobs there were. Hundreds of applications later, I still had no job when the fall school term opened. I knew the humiliation, of being fresh from an expensive education and no way to make good. I helped on the farm, with the tourist business, and with Mother’s news gathering, but still didn’t feel I was justifying my existence. I can sympathize with young people trying to get a start now in our current recession. It was also at the end of that fateful third year of University that I met Romance. Until then I had shown very little interest in Boys, and they, I must admit, in me. There was one exception during high school - the very handsome Tom Juniper who lived near us and followed the usual “carry your books” syndrome. The other girls and Amy, and even I looking back now, were aghast at my indifference, even hostility. I definitely was retarded! But of the 24th of May, 1930, after I had been slaving all day housecleaning in the third floor, preparing for the tourist season and was dog-tired, I went to the traditional 24th dance with Bill, Amy and Mike. I was crazy about dancing and had attended lots of house parties and Palermo dances, but up to then had looked on boys as just necessary partners for this activity. But Evert Tyrrell, whom I dimly remembered from high school, was at this dance and came on strong. I found out later that he was trying to get rid of and find a replacement for his current girlfriend, my good friend Ada Fryers, a pretty red-head from Merton. (Her brother Herbert - Toady” - had unsuccessfully courted Amy and I had gobbled many of his chocolates which Amy had spurned.) Evert asked if he could take me home and you won’t believe my reply: “I came with my brother and I think I should go home with him”! definitely retarded. I found out later that Bill was dying to get rid of me as he was chasing a new girl - Blondie Collins, I think - and wanted to take her home. Anyway, Evert asked me to go dancing the following night as Sunnyside and I accepted. He was a superb dancer and we were to spend hundreds of happy hours in that activity. It was great that I had found an escort just in time for the final year dances at Vic and especially, the highlight of anyone’s career, the Graduate dance on a beautiful moonlit June night in the gorgeous Hart House. We worked a good scheme that year. The residence rules were quite strict in those days - in at 10:30 except for four 1:30 dates a year for special dances. So I would get permission to go home for the week-end. Evert would pick me up at the residence on Friday evening and we’d go dancing at the Old Mill, the Embassy or the Silver Slipper and then on to Bronte. Neither the residence nor Mother realized that we were pulling a fast one. Evert, born on March 29, 1908, was the son of Percy Tyrrell, whose family originated from the same area in England as ours, and Edith Brown, daughter of Teddy Brown, a well - known and colourful handyman and well-digger in the Bronte area. He is reputed to have dug a well at the age of 91. He sired a large family of eccentric-genius types. A daughter, Emma, was the highly respected principal of the Brantwood Public School in Oakville till she was fired when it was discovered that she had been secretly married to a high school teacher and they were spending their weekends at their lovely lakeside cottage at Grimsby. He was a talented musician and artist. Every inch of the wails was covered with his paintings and the living room almost filled with his grand piano. We loved visiting there. Bernice had a high regard for Aunt Emma, with whom she took some courses, including manual training. Among the boys in the family, Evert’s uncles, were twins, Charles and Henry - so identical that only Evert laid claim to being able to distinguish them. They had the local threshing outfit. Another brother, Arthur, was given to inventing crazy things, such as a way to run his car on the railway tracks. So I guess Evert inherited his ability to design and build his own machines to manufacture the products he deigned. I think the mother died quite young and an older daughter Bertha, whom Bernice remembered with affection kept house and did dress-making. Edith. Evert’s mother, was a big, strong and strong-willed woman, and very proud of her father. She was fiercely Conservative and Anglican. Evert quipped that she worshipped her father, Sir John A. MacDonald and God, in that order. Mr. Tyrrell was a worker in the tannery, then one of Oakville’s major employers. (That’s why when kids from Bronte were labelled Ciscoes, they hurled back the epithet “Tannery Scrapings” ). He held the old fashioned English belief that you raise kids to get out and work as son as possible to contribute to the family upkeep, So Evert and his brother Allan didn’t get much schooling. It should be said in their father’s defence, though, that he was in very poor health and unable to work much of the time. The doctor said he had to get out of the factory and into the fresh air; so when Evert was about fourteen, the Tyrrells bought a small farm near the Fourth Line and the Radial Road, now Rebecca. The house they built there, mostly themselves, was a masterpiece of utilitarian ugliness. Mr. Tyrrell died at 57, in ‘1940 after a few years as a semi-invalid. Meanwhile, Allan had left the tannery and bought a farm on the Trafalgar-Nelson Town Line, now Burloak Drive. Evert was running the home farm. These were depression times, and like Mike, Evert realized that t o survive he had to sell direct to get, that extra cent out of every box of berries. So they got a truck and most nights Evert loaded up the day’s produce and sold it to the stores in Toronto. He used to take me with him on the evenings I could break away from the tourist business and if he had sold the produce early enough, we’d go to a double feature movie for twenty-five cents a ticket. But Evert was much too ambitious to scrape along farming in summer and sitting around in winter. And so his cabinet-making career began. He started in the basement with an old washing machine motor and a few tools. Soon he expanded to an abandoned twenty by twenty foot chicken pen, which he lined and made quite livable with a pot-bellied stove. He soon had built power-driven circular saw, bandsaw, planer, drill-press, sander and lathe and bought a compressor and spray gun. He built a sample bedroom suite and set it up in the spare bedroom to show to prospective customers. This idea worked very well and soon word got around. Amy ordered the first bedroom in 1936 and later the Beasleys bought one and Vera’s cousin Ethel Clover bought a walnut one so beautiful that we were very sad to have to part with it. This was often our problem; we loved everything we made and hated to have to hand it over to the customer. (By this time the tourist house business had wound down with the advent of motels and I was working with Evert, and got to be quite a good helper.) Many little old ladies in town commissioned such things as footstools, fire screens and the like to display their needlepoint and in addition quite a business was building in restoring and refinishing old furniture, some valued antiques. For example, we made a beautiful desk out of an antique organ. And so the business thrived. Meanwhile, we swam and picnicked a lot evenings and Sundays. Then Evert decided we needed a canoe. So he built one - just canvas stretched over ribs and painted turquoise. It was a tiny ten feet long and so light that Evert could pick it up in one hand and put it on the truck. People especially the veteran fisherman used to line the pier at Bronte in horror and/or amusement at our venturing out in such a cockleshell. Then one evening Evert saw a beautiful little motor boat and said, “I'm going to have one of those”. So - what else - he designed and built one, and it was a beauty. It was a sixteen foot sport runabout with racy lines, cedar planking stained mahogany. We often spent a whole evening steaming and twisting one two-inch wide strip and nailing it into place on the plywood frame. That summer I was working at the Department of Education in Toronto checking exam results (a political patronage job) and it was often my noon hour job to buy copper nails and various bits of hardware and lug them home. The boat was powered with a Star four car engine which Evert bought at a wrecker’s yard and converted to marine use. One of my jobs was to grind the valves with a little hand grinder. It was an exciting evening when we had the motor re-assembled and with an improvised block and tackle lowered it into the boat, praying it wouldn’t go crating on through the bottom. We kept our beloved Silver Spray in the Bronte harbour, in a weird floating boat house we had built ourselves. At that time there were only two other pleasure boats there. Tony Fell’s (Eileen Flumerfelt’s husband) sleek classy sailboat, and Jerry Johnstone’s (Connie Dooley’s husband) modest little one. What a change there has been. Those three guys are all dead now, and the much improved Bronte harbour is filled with the yacht club and hundreds of vessels of all classes, sizes and shapes. Evert and I also played a lot of tennis, when it was very popular in the area. We won a couple of tournaments, because we were both pretty good players, and because we were both left-handed and our opponents had trouble figuring out where the ball was coming from. Skiing was just becoming popular then too and so - naturally - Evert made us each a pair of skis. One Christmas Evert gave me ski boots and pants - clothes again, to Mother’s horror! I recalled Amy’s battle over the Bank of Montreal sweater. That New Year’s Eve we spent skiing by moonlight. Evert was clever at thinking up entertainment that didn’t cost too much. When we decided to get married, it seemed natural to think in terms of building our own house and furniture. Many of our evenings parked in the moonlight were spent in drawing floor plans and furniture sketches. By April of 1939 we had each saved four hundred dollars and so we started. Evert bought a lot from his parents in a corner of the farm, rented a slush scraper and used the farm horse to dig the hole. Then we needed a cement mixer; so we built one. It was operated with a hand crank and we measured small batches so that I could turn it. The house was built of cement blocks, which we laid ourselves, mixing the mortar in the cement mixer. When we had laid only a few, Evert cut a finger nearly off while cutting stakes with the circular saw. He had it sewn back on and went on laying blocks with one arm, the other in a sling. He had guts. The main anxiety was whether he would be able to continue his piano playing that be passionately loved. After a few months he regained his this skill, though his finger remained a bit crooked. It took us a day to lay a round of blocks. We were thrilled beyond words when the first one appeared above the ground. By June of 1940 we had the roof on, the shell closed in, the rooms divided with gyrproc lath and the plumbing and wiring done (by ourselves) so that we could move in and live in a crude sort of way. The date Of our marriage belongs in the now-it-can-be told category. We said the date was February 10, 1940. Actually it was September 9, 1939. War had just been declared and going to war was not in Evert’s blueprint for success. He had a punctured eardrum, a rapid heart and was on a farm with a dying father, but he wanted to be sure he wouldn’t be caned on. So we joined the multitude who were married that September. On the ninth, after a day’s work, we climbed into the car and drove to Hamilton, with Vera annoyed with me because I didn’t take time to help with the dishes. We found a church open and wandered in. The minister happened to be there and happened to have two witnesses and there happened to have been a wedding that afternoon and the church was still a bower of flowers. Sc we kept our secret and each continued living at home. In January Evert got a contract to outfit a store in Uxbridge and wanted me to go with him. We decided to announce our marriage as of February 10. Bernice had come for the weekend and so we told her and Dad that we were going to get married that day. She invited us to Lynden for the weekend and dashed home to make preparations. There was a lot to do, as their cistern was dry and they got a load of water to tide them over. Dad wanted to go to see us married, but of course that was impossible; so1 we dropped him off in Burlington to see a movie instead. We went -on to Hamilton and bought me a dress and coat and then went on to Lynden. We sent out ann— ou.ncements and I wrote it up in the papers the next week. All went smoothly except that the Eronte minister and his wife were insulted. It was a breach of eticluette not to have had him perform the ceremony. I had not thought of that a The Uxbridge job went very well. We worked it by alternate weeks, one home in the workshop making counters, railings and shelving, which we then used the farm truck to transport to the store, where we spent a week installing them. We always arranged to be home on Mondays for me to do my news for the week. In Uxbridge we stayed at the typical widow’s boarding house where there were about six others and it was a very pleasant experience. Bed and shared bath and three good meals a day and an evening snack as big as a meal — all for $5 a week each! The store was one of the Stedman five to a dollar chain, and when the big job was finished we soon got the contract to supply greeting card and ribbon display racks which we shipped to their many stores throughout Canada. This was the start of our mass production. By this time Mr. Tyrrel]. had died and Mrs. Tyrrell had got used to running the farm by herself with hired help and Evert’s supervision. We moved into our house in June and started working full time at our own business. Our delayed honeymoon in August was a little out of the ordinary too: a trip through the Thousand Islands as far as the Ivy Lea Bridge in our own boat. By this time we had lengthened it to eighteen feet and put in a Durant six motor. We put a canvas top and curtains on it and arranged the seats so that they would flatten out into a. bed. We knew nothing about navigation and followed the shoreline using a road map. We had many adventures, including eight hours battling a fierce storm between Presqu’isle Point and Cohourg when we thought each giant wave would be our last. We arrived home feeling somewhat waterlogged and slightly guilty at using rationed gas for pleasure purposes and so sold the boat to a Burlington garage owner who had been pestering us for some months. We soothed the hurt by using the money for our first major piece of furniture — our beloved grand piano. It was ebony and we lacquered it white and it was gorgeous with its blue plate mirror front. I think it was the same fall we had another interesting trip, hunting at Sundridge. We had a log cabin on Lake Bernard with huge feather bed and the biggest wood stove I ever saw and a great pile of wood. Evert was an excellent shot. We got several partridges and roasted the delicious breasts on the huge stove. We got several rabbits, which we gave away as neither of us could eat them. I didn’t shoot any game but got to be quite good a.t target shooting. We had a 22 rifle and a 16 gauge shotgun. Out other holidays consisted of annual pilgrimages to New York to dance to Guy Lombardo’s orchestra. Evert had a cousin in New York. He was Cliff. Brown, a worthy member of the eccentric Brown clan, an. identioal twin son of one of the identical twin uncles. With his wife, a former Cooksville girl, he lived in a small apartment very close to the U.N. building. He also was very talented musically. His piano filled the little living room and their clothes hung in the bathroom on the shower rail while the closet was stuffed from floor to ceiling with sheet music. We had many happy musical evenings when we visited them and when they went out dancing with us. I remember especially one evening when we walked across Manhattan on fifty—first street from their apartment fo our hotel making a survey of each bar on the way. In July of 1942, I think it was, we had a serious car accident. When we were driving out from Toronto one rainy night an impaired driver slammed into us from behind. Our old 1929 Pontiac flipped end to end and then rolled over sideways, coming to rest on its wheels facing back towards Toronto, a total write—off. We came to, miraculously alive and. still in our seats. My forehead was carved up and a sizeable chunk missing. I thought I was blind because my eyes were full of blood. Evert had just a bruised hip. We lost consciousness in moving to get out and were put on the ground on seats taken from the car by a group of soldiers. I regained consciousness with one of them mopping my forehead with his kahki handkerchief. We were rushed to St. Joseph’s, siren blaring. The doctor sent across town for special cat—gut instead of the wartime nylon for my several stitches. We asked to be put in the same room, but the doctor said in all the history of the hospital that hadn’t been done and they didn’t think they should set a precedent. My face was almost unrecognizable for a few weeks, but we had a good holiday. We bought two deck chairs and sat on the lawn all day and our friends came and we danced in the evening. Just the day before the reckless driving trial my ugly scabs fell off. So Evert used his considerable artistic talent to construct impressive ones with bread crusts and glue. They had the desired effect. The driver got the maximum sentence a-nd his lawyer came to us right then with a good out—of—court settlement, including four hundred dollars for the damage to my looks. I still have ay expensive scars, but not too noticeable now. We bought a handsome grey Buick. After that it was a succession of Cadillacs, usually driven like crazy and then turned in every year. But Evert did get good use as well as pleasure from the big cars. He removed the back seat and loaded incredible amounts of steel and brick ties inside. Then he built a trailer in which he hauled up to half a ton of steel and ties. In about 1954 he bought me a little Nash Metropolitan and our friends dubbed our two cars Dignity and Impudence.

The War Pays off

The biggest boost to our business came as a result of the war. Vast Quantities of powdered eggs were being shipped overseas. This required stepped-up production and therefore more feeding facilities. Feed troughs had been made of galvanized sheet metal, which was by then in short supply. A Smith Palls company was given permission to make troughs of wood and came to us. Evert designed one and we sold thousands before they were found too hard to clean and therefore unsanitary. The Wartime Prices and Trade board again released sheet metal for the purpose. Evert designed a metal one and we got metal-working equipment with which we made thousands. When that petered out at war’s end, we bought war surplus aluminum and made cookie sheets for Eaton’s. Then a building supply firm approached us to make brick ties. We built and bought more metal working machines, Evert made dies, and our major business was born. Other building supplies we made were corner bead clips, eaves trough ferrules and f lashings. By this time we had built a twenty by forty foot workshop across the back of the house and the beautiful arched flagstone patio at the south end of it. Then we needed a swimming pool. We bought more property from Mrs. Tyrrell at the side and back and set to work. I don’t remember what year that was, but it was a hectic summer, with the pool ready for use by late August. The next summer we landscaped around it and built the bath house. From then on we had open house with big crowds every Saturday night and on Sunday afternoons. We started having the annual Cudmore family picnic too. I don’t remember how many we had, but I recall that the end of the last one was rather embarrassing, as I didn’t issue the usual invitation for next year, knowing that I wouldn’t be there. Early in October of 1957 I went to Ottawa to visit the Baines, who had recently moved there and invited me for a few days. I still remember the shocked look on Anne’s face when she saw the back of my little Nash crammed with all my clothes and other belongings. I explained that I was going to make Ottawa my home and would like to stay with them until I could find a job and an apartment. That was on a Monday. By Wednesday, at Russell’s suggestion, I had applied for and got a job with Greenberg and Wright, a leading Jewish law firm. By Friday I had a Quite attractive bachelor apartment on MacLaren Ave., near the heart of the city and within walking distance of my office. Anne and Russell were wonderful to me, with just the right amount of moral support and not too much indignation or sloppy sympathy. They made my new start in life possible and I am eternally grateful to them. It was the Thanksgiving week-end when I returned to Oakville to pick up another load of belongings. I moved into my apartment on the holiday and started my job the next day. I had been practicing my typing at home for some months so that it was fairly adequate, but I had no shorthand. I devoured a six months evening course in three. The firm, especially Michael Greenberg, my boss, was involved mainly in real estate, handling the account of Robert Canpeau, even then widely known as one of the leading builders in Canada. He has recently built the Harbour Castle complex in Toronto. My first job was typing mortgages and similar documents in the middle of a big room full of typists. People asked how I could stand the noise. They didn’t know that I had just come from operating a twelve ton press! I was being trained as a conveyancer, that is one who arranges transfers of property. I found the work very interesting and, of course, challenging, as I had so much to learn. Besides, perhaps I felt I was getting a little close to my original dream of being a lawyer! My spare time was filled with shopping for furniture and making drapes. I can recommend keeping very busy as a cure for any emotional problems one might have. I spent a pleasant Christmas with the Baines, but New Year’s Eve was a bit of a hurdle, as we had thrown a big party on that night for a number of years. I got through it by studying shorthand to keep my mind occupied and was just getting to sleep at four A.M. when revelers returning home awakened me. I vowed then I would never spend another New Year’s Eve alone, and I haven’t till this year, when I found it didn’t bother me any more. There are distinct advantages to getting old! But there were some good times too. My office was next door to the popular restaurant owned by Paul Anka’s father, and we often went there for lunch as a treat. Also, I had looked up a former friend from Clarkson, a Dutch girl named Sini, who had moved to Ottawa and married Gerry Gerridzen, a Dutchman who was a textile expert in the Department of Trade and Commerce. They knew a lot of government people and very kindly included me in their parties. I spent Easter Sunday with them at a posh open house at the home of Paul Anka’s uncle. I had many pleasant visits to the Gerridzen’s elegant summer home in the Gatineau Hills and we are still good friends, In the spring I joined the Britannia Yacht Club, where I was swimming when I met Oscar Csakvary, a Hungarian “Freedom Fighter” from the 1956 revolt. He had escaped by riding his motorcycle across fields, avoiding the roads where people were being mowed down. After some time in a refugee camp in Austria, he spent a year in Paris and then arrived in Ottawa just ahead of me. He had many interesting stories to tell, one of being released from prisoner of war camp in Germany and turned loose to make his way home by sleeping in haystacks and stealing food. He was a handsome little blonde, a good athlete and a great dancer. So we spent a lot of time swimming and playing tennis, and many Saturday evenings dancing at the elegant Chateau Laurier. He was a design engineer with a Master’s degree from the University of Budapest and always seemed to have a good job. He later moved to Montreal, where we “did” the nightclubs, and then to Miami, where he was killed some years later on New Year’s Eve in a car accident. The manner of his death was ironic after all he had survived in Europe, and especially so at the hands of a drunk driver, when he himself was a tee-totler, his father having died of alcoholism. Much as I liked my job and the people I was working with, I found that as lawyers at that time were paying peanuts, I would not be able to live in the style in which I wished to become re-accustomed. Also, at this time it seeped through to me that there was such a shortage of teachers that even people without certificates were being hired. So what was I doing not using mine, when beginning teachers were getting almost twice as much as experienced people in the law office? I wrote to the Department of Education to enquire whether my interim certificate was still valid, though I had not taught the two years required to make it permanent. (I had done exactly nine days of supply teaching in the Oakville High School.) The government, and the mails have never acted so quickly, before or since. I had an immediate “yes”. I easily got the first job I applied for. It was to teach English in the Charlottenburg-Lancaster District High School, where nearly all the kids were bused in from surrounding farms and smelled like it. The school was in the. tiny village of Williamstown, about ninety miles from Ottawa, fifteen miles east of Cornwall and four miles in from Lancaster, which is on Number Two highway. One advantage was that it was only sixty miles from Montreal, making weekends there easy. The village’s main - or perhaps only - claim to fame was as the home of Ralph Connor, author of Glengarry School Days, for it is situated in Glengarry County. Moving is a traumatic experience at best, but this one was really special. At Mr. Greenberg’s request I had worked right up to the Friday of Labour Day weekend, packing at night. The movers were to come Saturday morning. It poured rain all day and the movers finally arrived at dusk, sloppily and happily drunk. After watching them toss my things into the truck, I set out in my little car in the rain. My new home was a converted second floor in a farm house at the edge of town. On the ground floor were Joan and Coleman MacDonald, a very pleasant young couple, Joan the Home Ec. teacher and Coleman the son of the owner of the big dairy farm. Joan took me in to her place, gave me tea and sat with me till the truck arrived about midnight. We opened up my day bed and I flopped into it. I spent the rest of the Labour Day weekend unpacking and began my new career on Tuesday. This was in September 1958. Half the residents of the district were of Scottish origin and the other half French, and the English usage of both sections was equally atrocious. One of the better students finally in desperation said, “Mrs. Tyrrell, if we talked the way you want us to, people would think we’re nuts!”. The school cadet movement was big at that time and our school had won the area trophy for a number of years. Every effort for the whole year was bent toward that one day, when all the boys in the school marched in various formations and all the girls danced the highland fling in a huge square, every blessed kid, French Scottish or whatever resplendent in a kilt, and all to the loud screeching of bagpipes and the frenzied banging of drums played by about a dozen of the kids. History repeated itself from my high school days, in that the principal, a fine gentle man, died of a heart attack in the spring of my second year. But the school didn’t fall apart, as a strong principal was brought in from Ottawa to hold things together.

The Travel Bug

At Christmas of my first year I launched my traveling career. I booked a group trip to Nassau on the basis of sharing a room with a compatible person they would find for me. At the airport they introduced us, and by a crazy coincidence the lady turned out to be Marjorie South, with whom I had been a close friend all through college. So we had a great time reminiscing. Yes, she’s the same one who in the fall of 1966 embarked on the world trip with Bernice and Amy and on her return died June 2, 1967. Also in the group was a courtly elderly gentleman from Toronto who took a shine to me. His name was George Washington Jones, so named because he was a distant relative of that historic figure. And indeed he bore a remarkable resemblance to portraits I have seen, especially as he wore his silky white hair long and waved in the appropriate style. He loved us to get dressed up and sip cocktails in the lounge of the elegant British Colonial Hotel. More importantly, he took me to a New Year’s Eve party at the Emerald Beach Hotel, a very pleasant first step in fulfilling my vow of the previous year. He was an economist and very proud of the fact that he had given a report before the joint session of the U.S. Congress during the war. On retirement he had set up a tax consulting business which required trips to Ottawa. Happy coincidence! He visited me there several times. I don’t know whether his English accent was assumed or natural, but it was impressive. He called me Mahjorie Dahling and took me to dinnah. He died a few years later. I had an interesting summer after my first year of teaching. I was social hostess at the lovely Limberlost Lodge at Huntsville and den mother to a flock of crazy high school kids who were waitresses and bus boys etc. The job was pleasant and easy and I had lots of time off for swimming and boating. On the way back to Williamstown on the Labour Day weekend my little car gave up and I had to spend the night at the hotel in Kilaloo (where all the weather reports used to come from then). I got up at four in the morning to catch the train to Ottawa and then Cornwall, where Joan met me. I had the little toy car towed to Cornwall and made mobile enough to get to the dealer where I traded it in on a Chevrolet. That was a great day - my first real car, that I’d bought myself, and the first of a succession of Chevs. and Oldsmobiles to my present Olds. which will last till I quit driving in the not too distant future. By the time I bad served my two years in the country and got my permanent certificate I thought I was ready for the big city again. I got a job in the Rideau High School on St. Laurent Boulevard in the east end of Ottawa, to teach English and History. I was by then “endorsed” in English and History and at level two in the hierarchy of four categories. By getting six more university credits in English I could move up to level three and with another summer course at O.O.E. I could become an English specialist. I moved into a new bachelor apartment on Springfield Road and took two English courses at the University of Ottawa. It was by then the summer of 1960. Two years later I felt secure enough to step up to a one-bedroom apartment in a very attractive new Campeau building at 200 Rideau Terrace on the edge of the prestigious Rockliffe Park area, and enjoyed fixing up a pretty bedroom. By 1963, in summer and evening courses, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I had achieved my six English credits and felt a celebration was in order. So I filled the spring months with happily planning the Grand European Tour and sewing a wardrobe for it. Determined to have an ocean voyage, I sailed from Montreal to Glasgow on the Empress of England. Anne drove me to the dock and the children explored every corner of the ship, after which we had the traditional leave-taking, complete with streamers and waving, just like Love Boat. The whole voyage was a delight. Then came a tour of Scotland and down through the gorgeous Lake District to London. There I joined a “Bachelor Party” tour of Europe for singles between the ages of forty to sixty. Of course in actuality the single translated to twenty-six females and two and a half males, including the tour guide. Nearly all New York Jewesses, they were hilarious. A typical attitude was expressed when in a hotel in France the instructions were for all aliens to fill out a certain form, one of the ladies stated with some indignation: “I'M not an Alien, I’m an American”. But it was a great trip. Along with the cathedrals, we enjoyed shows at the top theaters and night clubs in Europe and London. Paris, Rome, Amsterdam and Heidelberg were standouts. The only presentable man in the group was Charlie, an amiable soul from Florida, who appointed himself my escort, he said because I didn’t yak and shop all the time. That was a boost to my ego, as all the other dames were suitably jealous. After “doing” Europe I spent a few days on my own in London - quite an adventure. I attended services in St. Paul’s and Westminster and enjoyed a Sunday morning walk to hear the speeches at Hyde Park Corner. Next came a two-week tour with an English group to Norway, Sweden and Denmark, also a great experience. It started with a cruise from Newcastle to Bergen on a darling little Norwegian ship. One evening as I was enjoying a solitary nightcap of Drambuie in the tiny bar, in bounced a rugged big teddy-bear type with unruly shock of grey hair and big craggy face and dressed in tweeds and plus-fours. He plied me with more Drambuies and thus began the mandatory shipboard romance. The gentleman was Joseph N. Maxwell, a Scotsman and schoolmaster teaching math in a secondary school near London. He was also a soloist, very proud of having sung in recital in Albert Hall: Also an authority on Robert Burns and his poetry, he gave speeches and sang Burns songs throughout England and Europe. I didn’t see him again, as he wasn’t with our group. The trip was a huge success, the city of Oslo, with its Viking ships and Con Tiki raft especially enjoyable. After two months, I arrived home at the last minute before school opening not a bit tired, in fact refreshed and ready to attack again the drudgery of teaching, and immensely proud of having managed such a big project on my own. A few weeks later I was somewhat stunned to receive a letter from Max, as I had decided to call him, apparently sincerely proposing marriage (he was a widower) and offering to come to Canada to live! I replied that I was flattered and would consider it if he would come to Canada to visit first so that we could get to know each other . I don’t think I ever really took it seriously or expected anything to come of it, but I thought just in case, I should get busy at a divorce. So after much negotiating, the case came up in Ottawa on a morning in April of 1964. The judge happened to be also chairman of the Ottawa School Board, more interested in my career - building than in the rest of the case. So it went through in a few minutes and I was back in school by noon. Max and I continued to correspond for a few years and he was always just about to come to Canada but not quite able to make it. His letters were most entertaining and passionate, but a letter is like the dollar bill in the well-known song: it doesn’t kiss you back. Thus it gradually petered out till I finally stopped answering his letters. But it had been one of the more interesting of my collection of experiences and a fun game while it lasted. In the summer of 1964 I finally gathered up the courage to attack the final course at the hated O.C.E. I boarded with Russell and Mary as I had the first time round, and Russell was a tower of strength in making me stick with it. Finally I was an English Specialist in the coveted category four. That made me eligible to mark grade 13 departmental exams, and I made a nice bundle marking for three summers, till the exams were abolished. I had a successful six years of teaching at Rideau High, making a number of friends on staff, among them the mighty Russ Jackson, then at the height of his glory leading the Ottawa Rough Riders to the Grey Cup. He was head of the Math department at Rideau, and chairman of the social committee on which I served. Others were Helen Grierson who taught English across the hall from me, and her husband Joe, Librarian to the Supreme Court of Canada. I still count them among my valued friends. A very happy occasion during this period was one evening when nephew Jim was in town from Montreal and took me to a company dance. His friends flatteringly wouldn’t believe I was his aunt, till we won a cosmetic kit in a lucky spot dance and I said he’d better take it home to Hilda. That convinced them. In addition to friends on staff and the Gerridzens, I had a good friend, Maude Legon, with whom I was associated in a course at Carleton University. We had season’s tickets together for the Ottawa Little Theatre, where we saw many excellent performances. Ottawa had been good to me, but I was getting restless again, and feeling strong enough to tackle my home turf, I got a job in W.A.Porter Collegiate in Scarborough. It was at this time that I negotiated a “related experience” allowance f or my ten years’ experience in the newspaper writing, which along with my new specialist standing gave me, for those times the quite respectable salary of $10,000. On July 1, 1966, I moved into a two-bedroom apartment on the corner of Woodbine and O’Connor in East York, with a big balcony and a gorgeous view of my beloved lake, which I had missed. I had a great time furnishing it with a lot of new things, including the elegant combination T.V., radio and record player that I bought with my marking money, and wall-to-wall turquoise carpet. It was great having the extra room for a study and swing room. When I had it all fixed up I threw a big cocktail party, the first of a few annual ones, for former friends and new ones I had met along the way. Showing off a bit, I guess, but I was proud of the progress I had made in nine years. That was the year that again New Year’s Eve had a special significance. I met George at a party, and we’ve been good friends ever since. But there was the other side of the coin. Porter was a rough school with lax discipline and the principal a rotten little weasel who took the side of the students against the teachers. I had planned to go the preceding summer on a motor trip to the west coast with Bill and Marguerite and their friend Mary Ellen Lagault. But one evening in May Marguerite phoned to say that Bill had to have an operation for lung cancer and we couldn’t go. I was able to get a job marking instead, and as usual moved on a Saturday and started work on the Monday. By winter, it was discovered that Bill had a brain tumour, Russell was very ill, and Bernice and Amy were away on their around-the-world jaunt. I gathered up the courage to cable them at Naples and they rushed home two weeks early in time to see Russell. He died at Easter, Bill in May and Marjorie South in June. I had meanwhile resigned from that horrible school and got a job in East York Collegiate. What a difference! A supportive principal and vice principals, good discipline and good friends on staff. I stayed there till my retirement in 1975. There were several nice parties in my honour, among them an elegant cocktail party by my good friend Rae Geddes, now Mrs. Biil Toft, and a lovely dinner party by my good friend Agnes Roulston. I moved to my present apartment in Mississauga on June 25 and finished school on June 29. Furniture and packing cases were stiil in great disarray when Amy died on July 2. I left everything and. went to Guelph to spend a couple of weeks helping to get Amy’s things disposed of and Bernice moved to Bronte. Since settling in here, except for my three-winter stay with Bernice and my trips, my life has been quite uneventful. I have visited friends, watched a lot of T.V., and caught up on reading I didn’t have time for when I was marking essays. And as most retirees do, I've gone in for a bit of “do-gooding”. I have helped organize the Peel County Social Services library and catalogued the library of Sheridan Villa, a nursing home in Clarkson. I’m currently working three mornings a week in the Mississauga General Hospital, manning the two phones as dispatcher for the volunteer in-hospital patient transportation service and by so doing kid myself that I’m continuing to justify my existence.

Many More Travels

I guess the rest of my story consists of the several trips I have taken. I won’t bore you-with the details-just a few standouts. Of course the first, to Europe in 1963, was special for the reasons I have already stated. Another special one was to Vienna. What a gorgeous city that is, with its famous opera house and palaces, Viennese waltzes in the park, and those world-famous stallions of which I can’t spell the name. Then by bus down the scenic Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia beside the sparkling clear Adriatic. By plane to historic and glamorous Athens and the rugged climb to the Acropolis and the Parthenon. A trip to the Temple of Neptune at Cape Sunyon and the Oracle at Delphi. Then a fabulous cruise of the Greek Isles on a darling little Greek ship, the Jason. What meals and what moonlight! Istanbul was a highlight with its exquisitely beautiful mosques, the world’s largest covered shopping mall, and the fabled Topkapi Palace with its Peacock throne and the world’s largest emerald. Riding a donkey to the precipitous top of the Island of Santorini and visiting the ruins of the ancient Minoan civilization on the Island of Crete was a standout too. A less fabulous but enjoyable trip was to Spain, Portugal and Tangier. Madrid and Lisbon are exciting cities and it was fun travelling through Don Quixote country. After a ferry trip past Gibraltar, we stayed in Tangier in the most elegant hotel I have been in, but the bazaars were smelly and scary. A much more spectacular trip was to Kenya. I took it in the summer of 1972, with Agnes Roulston, leaving the day after Evert’s funeral, which I didn’t attend. He died of cancer on Amy’s birthday, July 10, at the age of 64. I had a scary feeling at the time of the daring Israeli raid at the airport of Entebbe to realize that I had been there just a short while before. Seeing all the exotic animals close-up in their natural habitat was an unforgettable experience. I observed that so-called savage beasts have sweeter, calmer expressions on their faces than do many people and that the different species seem to get along together better than do the different races. The week’s stay in the city of Nairobi and just down the street from the beautiful university campus was pleasant and resulted in feelings of nostalgia when the Kalffs had their sabbatical year there in 1979-80. A. week at a picturesque resort near Mombassa with swimming in the warm Indian Ocean was a delight, though the overnight trip to get there was a masterpiece of discomfort. But the elegant resort hotels in the middle of the game parks, with the animals coming to drink at dusk within almost touchable distance, and the daily rides among the herds in the six-passenger Volkswagen station wagon with a knowledgeable and charming native driver-guide were of course the highlights. I’d like to go again. After a few days in London on our return, we flew to Ireland for two weeks. A visit to the university where we saw the historic Book of Kells, and a performance at the famous Abbey Theatre were the highlights of our stay in Dublin. The countryside was incredibly beautiful with its Killarney Lakes and miles of roadside hedges of rhododendron in bloom. I kissed the Blarney Stone, but find no appreciable improvement in my disposition. An equally exotic trip that I wouldn’t have missed for the world, but that I wouldn’t want to repeat, was to the U.S.S.R. in the summer of 1976, also with Agnes and a group of teachers. We were given the red carpet treatment, with a reception and briefing by the Commissar of Education, or some such important personage. The vastness and variety of the country were evident when we went from the repositories of ancient civilizations in such places at Ta shkent and Samarkand in the Asian area - a different world - and very hot - to the modern city of Moscow. What a thrill it was to walk across Red Square (paved with red brick and rough walking) and file with the vast crowds through Lenin’s tomb to gaze on the old boy lying there encased in glass. Leningrad was even more impressive with its winter and summer palaces and Hermitage museum. The restoration of what they call their “Historical Monuments” must be the finest and most faithfully accurate of any in the world. This is what is so frustrating. They can do such exquisite restoration work, but build such dreary rows of ugly box-like apartment blocks to live in; they have crystal chandeliers and magnificent mosaics in their subway stations, but can’t tile a decent bathroom; they can send the first sputnik into orbit, but can’t engineer a toilet or an elevator that can be counted on to work. The creature comforts seem of no importance to them. And the food! For a small example: a slice of ham consists of a minuscule island of lean floating in a huge white sea of greasy fat; the soup is lukewarm greasy water with unidentifiable chunks of God knows what floating in it. The service matches the food. But our young lady Intourist guide was efficient, attractive and agreeable. The trip, as I said, was a very worthwhile experience. I was really exhilarated by my trip to Australia and New Zealand in February (summer there) of 1980. I think Sydney is my candidate for the world’s most beautiful city. Built on many hills overlooking the ocean, with white houses, red tile roofs and brilliant coloured gardens, it presents a spectacular view in every direction, but mainly towards the miles of white sand beaches, sparkling blue water, and gorgeous yachts. A play in the famed opera house and dinner in its all-glass dining room overlooking the vast harbour were highlights. The Outback reminded rue very much of Kenya, with the same bright red clay soil and greyish-green foliage. Chasing kangaroos over the plains in a jeep for photography was great sport. At Alice Swings, a charming town in the interior, it was an education to see the control centre for the Flying Doctor service and the system of radio education for children in isolated areas. Closer to civilization, the koalas , miniature fairy penguins and wallabies were just as adorable and the platypus just as weird as they’re pictured. There also is a camel farm in the outback, where we had an exciting and scary ride and were surprised to learn that each year it ships about two thousand camels to Saudi Arabia. Coals to Newcastle! I enjoyed New Zealand, but not more than Australia, as most travellers claim to do. Lots of sheep! And a most interesting sheering demonstration. Fascinating visits to a Maori village and cultural centre with native entertainment. Soothing bathing in the hot thermal pools and marvelling at the geysers and boiling ponds at Rotorua. Flight in a six-seater Cessna over spectacular volcanoes. Travel through the country-side - with what is often called the world's most enchanting scenery somewhat marred by cool stormy weather. Fiji, a stopover on the way out, was much like the Caribbean except that visits to villages where the friendly natives were cannibals less that one hundred years ago added a certain spice. Tahiti and Bora Bora on the way back must surely be the ultimate in tropical paradise - Heaven can wait sort of thing. Landing at Bora Bora's postage -stamp-sized thatched-roofed airport on a narrow reef, motor launch trip to the island past Marlon Brando's home, the world's best glass-bottom boat ride to view magnificent coral reefs and multi-hued fish , bathing the bathtub-warm ocean, supper parties on the beach with native entertainment, and individual thatch roof huts to sleep in were some of the more memorable experiences. A visit to the glamorous Hawaiian Islands with Dorothy Beasley in February of 1981 was the fulfillment of a long-held dream. After a non-stop flight by Wardair, our first stay was at Honolulu on Oahu, we felt like movie-stars in our ocean-view room in the dowager Royal Hawaiian Hotel - nicknamed the Pink Palace because it looks like one all done in various shades of pink inside and out – right on Waikiki Beach. I enjoyed the pool snd ocean swimming and Dorothy the shopping in the international Market Place just across the street. Most impressive was the cruise to Pearl Harbour through Battleship Row and past the Arizona Memorial. Next came half-hour flights in fifty-seater planes to the other four main islands. First came Molokai, where we were pinned down for an extra day by a fierce and exciting tropical storm. This gave us lots of time to drive through extensive pineapple plantations, go shopping in a quaint village and view the remains of Father Damien's leper colony. Mauii, the third stop, is noted as the site of Lahaina, the historic former centre of the world's whaling and merchant fleets. It was the focal point in James Michener's Hawaii. The "Big Island", Hawaii, was next. There we had a scary ride through miles of still steaming volcanoes and saw a weird black sand beach. Our hotel there, the Kona Surf, was spectacular, perched on an outcropping of:black lava rock with pounding surf just a few feet below our window. The circle was completed with Kauai, where the biggest thrill of all was the helicopter ride over majestic canyon and through it, almost touching the sides. I had the best seat, beside the pilot, in the transparent nosecone, with an unobstructed view in all directions. Then it was back to Honolulu for a last stay at the pink Palace. Of course, for our whole stay on the islands we were up to our eyeballs in live orchid leis, luaus and hula dancers. A must for everybody.

Home Sweet Home

After all my travels abroad, I still count those in Canada as among my most pleasant. For my first trip west, I drove all the way. Don't fall for that old cliche that the prairies are boring. I found them gorgeously beautiful and loved every minute of them. At Vancouver, scared to death but very proud, I propelled my car onto the ferry, to the island. As Amy was my travelling companion I think it was1969 - we spent some time with Daisy and Harry Guest at their homes in Victoria and at Sook Inlet. We left the car there and took the cruise to Skagway, thence to Whitehorse, the narrow gauge railway along the “Trail of ‘98”, a day on the rough gravel Alcan Highway to Alaska, to Fairbanks and Nome and a flight to Kotzebue, site of a U.S. air force base, on the Bering Sea. An amusing sight there was a cute baby pine tree with a white picket fence around it and a sign reading The World’s Smallest National Park. Then it was to Anchorage, a flight to Seattle, dinner at the Space Needle, ferry back to Victoria and-drive home. My second western venture was in 1979 on the romantic Canadian Show Train, with a group organized by Sam Blythe (current companion of journalist Barbara Ameil), a young Toronto entrepreneur. We had our own sleeping cars and a freight car converted to a miniature nightclub with bar, piano and entertainment, and private meals prepared by our own chef. There were stopovers in Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver. A scintillating performance of The Desert Song in the park at Winnipeg, Same Time Next Year in Vancouver, lunch at the Banff Springs Hotel and cocktails at Chateau Lake Louise and a small plane flight through a mountain pass were highlights. Sam always managed to have at least one Big Name personage in each group. Ours was the popular Pauline McGibbon, then Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, on vacation with her husband Don. We had a chat about our having been students at Victoria College at the same time. It was a fun way to go. My first trip to the east coast was with Bernice and Bill Taylor one summer early, in my teaching career. It was most enjoyable, including the main cities such as Quebec and Halifax, the North Shore and the Gaspé, but missing Prince. Edward Island, Cape Breton and Newfoundland. So, to fill in these gaps, in the summer of 1981 I took the Grand Atlantic tour with Horizon Holidays, a Canadian company that compares very favourably with the best of the American ones. We flew first to St. John’s, Newfoundland a little down-at-heels, I thought, but Signal Hill well worth the visit. After a drive down the Burin Peninsula we ferried to St. Pierre ét Miquelon - definitely other - world. After touring the rest of the Big Island by bus - very rugged scenery with lots of. trees, wind and water and quaint fishing villages, a short flight took us from St. Stephens to Halifax. I found it much changed from my first visit, but Peggy’s Cove little changed. Next came Prince Edward Island, picture-postcard enchanting, its well-kept prosperous looking farms and well painted buildings impressive. A performance at the Festival Theatre in Charlottetown and a lobster dinner at a country inn, along with the mandatory visit to Anne of Green Gables. Country were highlights. Incidentally, there seem to be Cudmores in P.E.I. I saw Cudmore's furniture store in Charolottetown and a sign saying “The Cudmore’s” on a property just out of the city. Next came the scenic Cabot Trail and beautiful Cape Breton, with a two day stay at the elegant Keltic Lodge, just three weeks ahead of Pierre and his Cabinet. On the bus trip to Halifax for the flight home, visits to the restored Fort Louisbourg and the Bell Museum at Baddeck were all too short. I have just about run out of steam for trips to exotic places; besides, where is the place left in the world stable and safe enough for touring little old ladies? So my next project, still in Canada is the Polar Bear Express excursion to Moosonee and Moose Factory on James Bay on the Labour Day weekend with Bert and Dorothy Beasley. People often ask me which of my trips I have enjoyed the most. I don’t know. They’ve all been great experiences, none of which I regret. I’ve seen many fabulous sights and done many exciting things, but I still think Canada is the most majestically beautiful country in the world, and the most pleasant for the long haul. Nice clean toilets and good wholesome food, too. A much too prosaic note on which to end? Perhaps as a former teacher of English I should get in some uplifting poetry. In looking back over my life, I'm fast approaching my anecdotage), perhaps I can say with Lord Byron: “How mad and sad and bad it was, but ah! how it was sweet!” Which translated says:. I’ve had a pretty good time.