Читать книгу The Innocent - Lynne Golding - Страница 2
ОглавлениеAdvance Praise for The Innocent
“Lynne Golding has opened a magical door to the past and ushered us into Edwardian Brampton to marvel at a simpler time... [The Innocent] will make you laugh and weep and wonder, and be fondly remembered long after the final pages are read.”
—Cheryl Cooper, author of the Seasons of War series
“Lynne Golding knows how to tell a story. With yarns she gathered at her great-aunt’s knee, she has woven a compelling story that harkens back to a time of pre-war innocence in a town I’ve always been proud to call my own.”
—Former Premier the Honorable William G. Davis
“It’s easy to forget that everything about the roads we drive, the hydro and water to our homes, the schools and health care we need, comes from the cradle of community. This book is a journey back in time to what was needed for building a future that cares for many thousands for decades to come. Through a fascinating family, Lynne Golding’s novel leads us into the past in a whimsical way that can’t help but connect to our own ambitions.”
—Lorna Dueck, CEO, Crossroads
The Innocent
Copyright 2018 by Lynne Golding
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-988279-68-8
All rights reserved
Editor: Allister Thompson
Published in Stratford, Canada, by Blue Moon Publishers.
The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read this work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends or blog readers about The Innocent to help spread the word. Thank you for your support.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Innocent. Copyright © 2018 by Lynne Golding. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Blue Moon Publishers. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Dedicated to Jessie Roberts Current, a dear friend to so many
CONTENTs
Chapter 1 – The Carnegie Library
Chapter 2 – Jesse Brady Arrives in Brampton
Chapter 6 – The Governor’s Story
Chapter 7 – Off to School
Chapter 8 – Jim and Eddie’s Folly
Chapter 9 – Jim’s Diversions
Chapter 10 – The Photograph
Chapter 11 – The Flower Town of Canada
Chapter 12 – The Verandah
Chapter 13 – The Mighty Etobicoke
Chapter 14 – Haggertlea
Chapter 15 – Christmas with Jane
Chapter 16 – The Johnstons
Chapter 17 – Mother and Her Shoes
Chapter 18 – Ina’s Journey
Chapter 19 – The Drought
Chapter 20 – The Mann Cup
Chapter 21 – The Homecoming
A Preview of Book Two, The Beleaguered
Author’s Note
About Lynne Golding
Book Club Guide
Acknowledgements
With thanks to my proofreaders, my mother-in-law Carol Clement and my late father-in-law John Clement, for their diligence and enthusiasm for every chapter dispensed; my good friend Candace Thompson for her marginal happy and sad faces, letting me know that the parts intended to be humorous or sad hit their mark; and my father, Douglas Golding, and his oldest friend, John McDermid, for their many helpful reflections about Brampton in years past.
With gratitude to the second-floor librarians at the Brampton Four Corners Library who helped me manage reels and reels of microfiche; to the thorough investigative work of Samantha Thompson of the Peel Archives; and to the fabulous team at Blue Moon Publishers: Allister Thompson, Talia Crockett, and Heidi Sander.
With heartfelt thanks to my husband, Tony Clement, who encouraged me year after year to continue the project, and to my children Alex, Maxine, and Elexa, who endured countless retellings of “interesting” tidbits I came across in my research.
Finally, with appreciation to my mother Barbara Golding, whose promise to read the book once it was complete spurred me to make it so.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
—T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Chapter 1
The Carnegie Library
As far as first memories go, mine is extremely apt. For there, in one scene, are nearly all of the elements essential to my early years: politics, religion, morality, higher learning, municipal development, family, and friends. It is a panoramic view, this first memory, with many moving parts. There I am, four years old, perched on a white, straight-backed chair, a pink and white pinafore over my white short-sleeved dress, my white-socked, black-shoed feet dangling beneath me. My head, adorned with a high-set big bow, tilts back as I look up at Ina, my older sister, standing beside me. She commands me to stay put, to reserve the three chairs that are our joint responsibility to hold.
Sitting midway back near the centre aisle of the dozens of chairs, I am surrounded by neighbours, friends, and family. There are the butcher who sells our meat and the green grocer from whom we buy our vegetables. Ahead is the man who delivers our milk and cheese. Behind is Mr. Thauburn, who owns the general store. Just to my left are the people who sit behind us at church. Rows ahead, in his best Sunday suit, is my friend Archie McKechnie, sitting with his sisters and their mother and father. Over to another side is my friend Frances Hudson wedged between her parents. My family is too busy to sit with me.
Behind me, my brother Jim and his friends are delivering single Dale roses to the women assembled. To the side, my male cousins, John, Roy, and Bill and their friends are throwing pinecones over the red, white, and blue bunting that cordons off the area in which we are gathered. Up at the front, beside the concert band, are my mother, my father, and others from our church choir leading those interested in singing. At the podium organizing his notes is James Darling, my uncle, a former town mayor and the owner of the local bakery. To his right, separated by a long ribbon, scissors in hand, standing with other town dignitaries, is my Uncle William, the current town mayor, and next to him, my grandfather, Jesse Brady, the famous builder.
At last, the formalities begin. Ina and Jim scurry back to the seats I have successfully maintained. Father leads us in the singing of “God Save the King.” At the end of the final stanza, he, the chairman of the high school board, joins his brother-in-law and others near the ribbon. My Uncle James, still at the podium, directs our attention to the large drawing behind him—the Beaux Arts style, red-bricked library to be built. Like twenty-five hundred other libraries in small communities around the world, it will be funded with a grant from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation.
The decision to build the Carnegie Library was not without controversy. Perhaps in a poor display of gloating, from the podium my uncle recounts some of the obstacles that had to be overcome. He refers to the arguments of those opposed to taking money from the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, possibly the richest man in the world. Some predicted that money acquired as were the Carnegie fortunes would rot the books to be housed within the new library. Other obstacles included those created by the Carnegie Foundation itself, which refused to provide the funds until the plans for the building were altered to prevent its use as both a library and a concert hall.
Uncle James then calls upon a man in a brown suit, a representative of the Carnegie Foundation. With a strange, slow way of speaking, he thanks the crowd for its warm welcome. He points out the signature features of a Carnegie Library, including the lamppost in front, a beacon to enlightenment. The prominent wide doorway accessed from four steps outside the building and the five steps inside together symbolize how every man (or at least able-bodied man, for there were no elevators in the library in those days) is elevated by learning. He describes how this library will differ from the town’s current library, known as the Mechanic’s Institute; how it will be open to all; how it will no longer be necessary to execute a contract to borrow a book; and how patrons will be able to browse the shelves themselves, without requiring books to be retrieved by the librarian from behind a counter.
Returning repeatedly to the podium, Uncle James invites other dignitaries to come forward. They speak on and on, generally repeating what has already been said. Finally, a cheque is presented to my Uncle William, the mayor, by the man in the brown suit, and a spade is plunged into the ground. The crowd erupts in applause.
Ending the ceremony, my Uncle James, invites everyone to walk to the Presbyterian Church for a short religious ceremony to consecrate the soon-to-be-built library. I watch as the masses stand and walk down Queen Street. Everyone goes: my friends, their parents, our doctor, our neighbours, my aunts and uncles, my cousins—everyone, except for me and my immediate family. As the throng departs down Queen Street, my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, my grandfather, and I walk along Chapel Street to our home two blocks away.
* * *
The year was 1907. The location was Brampton, a town in the County of Peel in the Province of Ontario, in the Dominion of Canada. Located on and around a part of the old Indian trail known as the Hurontario, the town was at that time home to nearly four thousand souls, predominantly Protestants of Anglo-Saxon heritage. It stood on rich farmland, making it an agricultural centre and home to local, national, and international industries. Inching into modernity, it was a town with a road system but no hard roads, with telephones but no telephone system. It had a department of public health but no hospital, a sewer system, some electricity, and sidewalks, although the latter were just being converted from wood to cement.
The town in 1907 suffered no shortage in the methods of transportation for its citizenry. The stagecoach ran down Hurontario Road, which connected Lake Ontario at the south to Lake Huron at the north. Cars were not unseen, but they were vastly outnumbered by horse-drawn carriages. The two rail lines that cut through the town’s centre provided its inhabitants with a swift mode of travel. People and cargo could be transported all over North America from Brampton’s centre. Significantly, one method of travel was not available to Bramptonians. Although the town possessed two minor water courses, allowing for swimming, skating, fishing, and in the case of one, annual flooding, neither had the width, depth, or regular volume of water to foster shipping of man or freight.
Once known as Buffy’s Corners, the town was originally named after William Buffy, a shoemaker who in the 1820s sold both shoes and alcohol from his store on the main and likely only thoroughfare. Though Buffy kept only a few bottles of liquor on his premises to serve his good customers, he was held responsible for the early debauchery of that area. Historical records do not indicate whether his customers’ need for such imbibement was due to the distance and conditions they had to endure to reach his premises or their shock at the prices or selection of his wares. Whatever the reason, years later, when leading Primitive Methodists settled in the area, the dens of licenced hotels and taverns were closed, and the name and reputation changed. Buffy’s Corners became Brampton.
* * *
The party with whom I walked home that day was quiet and small. At the front of our pack was my father, Jethro Stephens, known to most as “Doc.” My father was a local dentist and community activist. For twenty-five years he served as chairman of the high school board and chairman of the water commission, organizations responsible for bringing good education and clean water, respectively, to our town. Hardly ever given to laughter, Father ruled our household with an iron fist. A thin man with light brown hair parted to the side, he wore a pair of white patent leather shoes almost year round.
Beside Father walked my mother, Mary. A handsome, round-faced woman with a full but not large figure, she was the epitome of sweetness. I never heard her raise her voice. She doted on my father, who rarely returned the kindness. Her greatest pride was her three children, yet she was far from the smothering type of mother. Her time spent maintaining our large home and supporting her church and other social commitments kept her too busy to spend an inordinate amount of time with us.
Behind my parents walked my brother Jim and my sister, Ina. Ina had bestowed upon her the moon face of our mother (a matter about which she was indifferent) and the stocky frame of our grandfather (an inheritance that pleased her not at all). Perhaps because she felt her essentials could not change, she chose not to care for the minor matters that were within her control. As a result—despite constant hectoring from Father—she was frequently seen with the buttons on her dress misaligned, her hair unbrushed, her socks more down than up. Since she was eight years older than me, Ina’s actions generally denied my existence as a sibling. Her filial allegiance rested entirely with our brother Jim, three years her senior, with whom she was quite close.
Jim was a wonderful boy blessed with the sweet nature of my mother, the athletic prowess of my father, and the artistic drawing skills of my grandfather. He was a hard worker and was well liked by his friends and their parents. His affection for each individual family member was well known and often exemplified by a unique nickname. By Jim alone, Grandpa was known as “Old Man.” Grandpa reciprocated by calling Jim “My Boy,” something Father never objected to (although Father objected to a great many things). I fared better I thought, being referred to most often by Jim as “Little One.” While the pet name was usually accompanied by a tug on one of my ringlets, the minor discomfort was more than compensated by his term of endearment.
The final member of our party, and my walking companion, was my grandfather, Jesse Brady. My grandfather came to live with my parents for a short while in 1905 and stayed for over twenty-five years. In 1907, at the age of seventy-two, he was still a fit, sturdy man with a large head fully covered in thick, short grey hair. It matched the colour of his moustache and the neat beard that was cut squarely and hung an inch below his chin. His days, which were formerly filled building the town, were by that time spent tending his gardens as an amateur grower and supporting his townsmen as a member of the International Order of Foresters and the Odd Fellows Club. In between those pursuits, he found time for curling, lawn bowling, choir singing, and talking to me, his favourite—or so I thought—granddaughter.
This was the family that resided in the Stephens house located on the corner of Chapel and Wellington Streets in Brampton. But that house was home to more than those who technically lived there. It was home as well to Father’s two sisters, Rose Darling and Charlotte Turner, and their husbands and children. Likewise, their homes were ours. All residing within easy walking distance to each other, we moved from one home to another like sheep changing pastures, depending on whose family had the largest roast to serve, whose family was celebrating a birthday, or whose turn it was to host the dinner of a special occasion. Each dining room table could accommodate all fourteen of us, and we children were equally at home at an aunt’s table as we were at our mother’s.
We came and went through each other’s doors without regard to the time of day, never considering knocking. I suppose because our aunts and uncles so often fed us, they believed that they bore other parental responsibilities as well. We cousins were, therefore, as likely to be praised by our aunts and uncles for good grades, admonished for poor ones, encouraged in future pursuits, and reprimanded for bad conduct as we were by our own parents. My cousins, however, could expect far less criticism from my parents than I could from theirs. At least in the early years of my childhood, my father reserved his wrath for his own children, and my mother was throughout her life far less judgmental than were her sisters-in-law. In short, our family of five was really a family of fourteen. We shared our resources, our hopes, and dreams, and our experiences, which made the fact that Darlings and Turners went to the consecration ceremony at the Presbyterian Church when we Stephenses did not all the more strange.
We walked those two short blocks home in silence. We were, I assumed, all wondering what we were missing at the Presbyterian Church, and, in my case at least, wondering why we were missing it. Certainly it was no surprise that we were. When Father declared at breakfast that morning that our family would not attend that portion of the ceremony, Mother, Ina, and Jim knowingly nodded in concurrence. Only my grandfather and I opened our mouths to reply, but no words—which in my case would have formed a question—escaped. Father’s edicts were always obeyed. One never asked for an explanation. That is, one never asked him for an explanation.
The home we walked to was new, having been recently built by my grandfather. To my mind it was perfectly situated, being just three blocks away from the main “four corners” intersection that formed the commercial centre of the town, two blocks away from Gage Park that formed the outdoor leisure centre of the town and only a little farther from Rosalea Park, which formed the outdoor athletic centre of the town. Clad in red brick, our house possessed a round tower topped with a graceful spherical dome and a small black spire. Tall windows below stained glass panes were surrounded by large green shutters. The attic, which formed the third floor, had two finely sculpted gabled windows below dark green roofs, which rose at various levels. Grandpa’s signature white-painted wooden verandah wrapped around its two street-facing sides. Together, we ascended the wide steps leading to the verandah. Father pulled back the wooden screen door and allowed us entry to our home.
On the other side of the front door was our foyer, a large room about two hundred feet square, from which one could enter the parlour to the left, the kitchen through a passageway straight ahead, or the second floor via a grand staircase to the right. We called that staircase the “front stairs” to distinguish it from the narrow, steep, poorly lit staircase accessed from the pantry behind the kitchen. Those stairs also led to the second floor, but as they opened onto that floor next to the maid’s room, they were referred to interchangeably as the “maid’s stairs” or the “back stairs.”
We rarely used those stairs. Our reticence to do so sprang not from any fear of interference with the maid, for although we had a maid’s staircase and we had a maid’s room, we had in fact no maid. Father’s confidence that one day we would have the means to retain such an employee meant that the maid’s room never became anyone else’s room, even though its vacant position required me to share a room and bed with Ina. That room across from the three-piece washroom was centrally located on the second floor. Grandpa’s large bedroom was to one side and Mother and Father’s to the other, with Jim’s across the hall and in between.
As I changed from my good dress, I considered who could enlighten me about the strange episode relating to the Presbyterian Church. Ina, the person to whom I had the greatest access, was the last person I would ask. I reached back to remove my white hair bow from the knot on the top of my head. Finding it stuck, I clasped another elastic and a simpler blue bow and walked down the hall to my parents’ room. I took the stuck bow to be a good omen. Mother’s delight in brushing my long, curly brown ringlets usually allowed me to obtain information she might not otherwise wish to impart.
“Mother, why were we not allowed to go to the church for the last part of the ceremony?” I asked, trying not to wince as she removed the elastic that held my earlier hair arrangement. I was perched on the little chair in front of her dressing table situated in the tower that formed a part of my parents’ room. Mother, who was extremely deferential to Father, would never countermand his orders. But when we were alone, she would often elaborate on them or at least repeat them nicely. On this occasion, however, she would do neither. My hair brushing ended almost before it began. The elastic to be wrapped around my newly arranged hair was quickly snapped into place. The blue bow I had carried to her was jabbed into the new knot.
“You heard your father,” she said curtly. “We do not go to THAT church.” Clearly dismissed, I slowly walked out of her room.
At four years of age, I was not well versed in the differences between Brampton’s many places of worship. I knew that there were two Methodist churches: our church, Grace, which was originally Wesleyan Methodist, and St. Paul’s, which was originally Primitive Methodist. Presbyterianism was obviously a different type of religion. Were Methodists not allowed to go to Presbyterian churches? Certainly many other people from our Methodist church were among those walking to the Presbyterian Church. Father was a stickler for rules. Maybe this was a rule that he observed but others did not. I was certain that Grandpa would know and went in search of him.
My quest was brief, as I heard his voice immediately upon descending the front stairs. The big oak front door with its etched-glass top was open. Only the screen door separated the foyer from the verandah on which Father and Grandpa were speaking. Hoping that theirs would not be a long conversation, I silently joined them. My heart leapt each time it appeared that their discourse was complete, and then fell when after a few moments of silence either Father or Grandpa made a new observation, speculation, or pontification. It eventually became clear to me that neither had any intention of ending their exchange. While Grandpa was with Father, there was no chance my curiosity would be satisfied. I went inside in search of my brother.
I found Jim alone in the sitting room, a room between our parlour at the front of the house and the dining room at the back. Sitting next to him on the couch under the big window, I rushed to put to him the same question previously posed to Mother. Jim usually tried to ease compliance with Father’s often inane dictates.
“Jim, do you know anything about the Presbyterian Church?” I asked plaintively.
“I know it was built by Grandpa,” he replied.
“Built by Grandpa?” I had not expected that.
“Yes, that is, he did the masonry work and the plastering work.” This made the mystery all the greater.
“If Grandpa built it, why can we not go in it?”
“That I cannot tell you, Little One,” he said while tugging at one of the brown curls that had escaped the elastic on the top of my head. “You are far too young to understand the answer to that question. Just know this: our family is never to enter that church. I never have, and you will not either.”
Having exhausted all other sources of elucidation, I had no choice but to ask the question of Ina. My sister was generally disinclined to do anything that would bring me relief or pleasure, unless of course, doing so would provide her with an even greater measure of it. Nonetheless, few things brought Ina more pleasure in her dealings with me than displaying (though not necessarily imparting) her superior knowledge.
Returning upstairs to our room, I found her sprawled on her large stomach on our bed, her head facing its foot, her knees on her pillow, her feet crossed at the ankles in the air, a book in her hands, still wearing her fancy dress. “Ina,” I ventured, “do you know why we can’t go into that church?”
“Of course I know,” she replied confidently. “I am not a child.”
Father’s bellowing voice interrupted our exchange. “Ina, have you changed yet? Why aren’t you attending to your piano practice? Jessie, get down here! Why are you not helping your mother?”
Jumping off the bed, Ina shouted that she was just about ready and quickly began to change. I asked her another question. “How old were you when you found out?”
“I was three … or … four … or five,” she spewed, quite unconvincingly. I noticed as she said this that the colour in her face rose. Then, attempting to regain the upper hand, she added defiantly, “But I was much more mature than you are.”
“Which?” I asked. “Three, four, or five?”
“I don’t remember!” she shouted as she pulled on her day dress.
“I don’t think you know, either,” I said quietly. “Maybe you are too young to know too.”
“They might think I am too young,” she sneered. “But I do know! I do know. It has to do with Grandpa. It has to do with his work. ‘Self-made. Others-destroyed.’ I’ve heard them talk about it. It’s all about him.” With that she ran out of the room, the buttons on the back of her day dress mostly unfastened.
All about Grandpa. In that case, I was sure to find out. I just had to be patient.
Chapter 2
Jesse Brady Arrives in Brampton
Mother always said that Ina was a scientist at heart, a meteorologist from her earliest days. As a mere babe in arms, she was fascinated with the sun as it caused green and red beams to shine through stained glass windows. Mirror in hand, Ina as a young infant eschewed her rag doll and bright building blocks in favour of further refracting the sun’s beams. As a toddler, she ran through the room attempting to grasp hold of each intangible colourful prism.
As a young schoolgirl, she devoted any opportunity to paint to the portrayal of clouds—a practice Ina’s teachers believed displayed an extreme lack of imagination. Lost to them were the intricate details Ina brought to the pictures, painstakingly evoking the light grey fog-like stratus or the big cauliflower-shaped cumulus.
As a teenager, Ina regularly transformed our verandah into a laboratory. Oversized thermometers and barometers accompanied hand-made contrivances designed to measure wind direction and speed and snow and rain accumulation. Once the instruments had amassed to a certain point, Father would banish them from our outdoor living area, but over time, one by one, they would return.
Like many children in those days, Ina kept a journal. But hers recorded none of life’s pleasures or disappointments. From the age at which she could read and write, Ina recorded the day’s weather. By the time she was ten years of age, she was analyzing past records and identifying weekly, monthly, and annual trends. As a teenager, she was forecasting the weather, although she did not do so every day. Ina was judicious in her predictions, preferring to make them less often but with greater accuracy.
As it happened, it was Ina’s fascination with the weather that allowed me to begin to unravel the secret as to why we Stephenses were not permitted to enter the Presbyterian Church. Certainly my own carefully considered and determined efforts had met with no real success.
Thinking that the best time to engage my grandfather on the subject was while he was in his gardens, I once offered to help him weed his beloved rose and blackberry bushes. Grandpa loved best those plants with thorns. An hour after extending the offer, Grandpa’s gardens were banished of stubborn weeds both at the front of the beds, where he could easily clear them himself, and under and behind the bushes, where he gratefully acknowledged the contribution of my smaller hands, legs, and torso. For my part, I received two bruised kneecaps, one red and swollen palm, thoroughly scratched fingers, arms, and cheeks, and the meagre insight that he did indeed know why we were forbidden to go into that church.
Focusing next on Grandpa’s healthy appetite, on another occasion, I convinced Mother that we should bake an array of his favourite cookies. Her concurrence was obtained only when I agreed to help her complete the household tasks she had already scheduled for that day, walk to the store to purchase the necessary currants, and participate in the baking and cleanup. Taking advantage of the thirty minutes that afternoon when Grandpa and I were alone in the house, I plied him with a plate of the baked delicacies, only to hear from him too that I was not yet old enough to know the reason we could not enter that church.
Turning my attention instead to the first part of the clue Ina had provided, “self-made, others-destroyed,” on a walk home from our family bakery some days later, a loaf of warm bread in one hand and one of Grandpa’s big hands in the other, I learned only the meaning of “self-made” but received no confirmation that he was of that ilk.
Just as I was beginning to lose hope that I would gain any further insight into the mystery until I was much older, a storm settled upon us. It arrived one hot and humid summer night. I lay on my side of the bed I shared with Ina, the length of which ran four feet away from our room’s only window, a tall but narrow break in the thick walls. The shutters, which had been closed over it earlier in the day, had been open since dusk. The window’s blind and sash were fully lifted and its curtains tied well back as we sought to permit whatever hot air could be ejected from the room to depart and to welcome in whatever cool air could be enticed. With a breeze just beginning to form, the room was only slightly cooler than it had been in the hottest moments of the afternoon.
I lay on my back in my lightest cotton nightgown, my hair piled loosely on the pillow above my head, the top sheet and usual covers pushed down to my feet. Seeking only sleep to relieve my discomfort, I was irritated by Ina’s constant movement. She was in a miserable mood, but not because of the weather conditions, at least not because of the discomfort they produced. Her annoyance arose from a forecast she made earlier that day—one of her first—to which no one in the family attached much credence. It was impossible to know what caused her greater irritation: the skepticism of Mother and Grandpa toward her newly forming abilities or the fact that her forecasted storm had not materialized.
Just as I was about to implore her to be still and quiet, a large gust of wind burst through the screen of our window, billowing the drawn-back curtains. As though in answer to its call, Ina leapt from her side of the bed and ran to mine. Squatting down, her elbows on the low window sill, she looked due north and uttered, “It’s coming.” Springing back to her side of the bed, she hastily donned the dress she had worn earlier in the day and which she had since strewn on the floor. After pulling it over her cotton nightgown, she opened the door to our room and hurried out without another word.
It would have been better if I had followed her or called out to her or otherwise alerted the others in the house to her strange conduct. I confess that in my confusion as to her behaviour, I took none of those actions. Only when I heard the back door close minutes later and realized who had likely crossed its threshold did I react. Shortly, Mother, Father, and Grandpa were roused, the house searched, and those still within its walls assembled in the kitchen. It was 11:00 p.m. Of little concern to any of the adults was the fact that my fifteen-year-old brother Jim, who had been out with his friend Eddie earlier that night, had not yet returned. Of singular concern to all was the fact that twelve-year-old Ina appeared to have left the house, half-dressed at a late hour, with no one knowing her actual or intended whereabouts. Both on the original questioning and on the numerous examinations that followed, I imparted all that I could: she looked out the window, she said, “It’s coming,” she hurriedly dressed, and she left.
“What’s coming?” Father asked as we heard rain begin to fall. Mother and Grandpa looked meaningfully at each other as they rushed to close the kitchen windows.
“The storm,” Mother and Grandpa said in unison.
“She’s gone to see the storm,” Mother declared.
“See the storm?” Father cried. “Why the deuce would she do that? What does she need to see? And why can’t she see it here?”
“She’s been talking about wanting to see one at a high vantage point for some time,” Mother said. “You yourself offered her the attic view.”
“I did,” Father conceded. “But we’ve checked the attic, and she’s not there.”
Mother and Father rushed to dress. As they returned to the kitchen to pull on their old shoes and jackets, I heard them listing the tallest buildings in the town: the Dominion Building, the fire hall, the bell towers of nearly every church, the top floor of the Queen’s Hotel, the upper floors of some of the larger Brampton residences. My anxiety rose. I was worried for Ina being out alone in the dark rainy night, but I was petrified at the thought of Mother going into it as well. My lone pleas for her to stay behind, my declared confidence that Father alone could find Ina, my efforts to physically hold her back, were all in vain. Mother and Father told Grandpa where they would start and where they would end if every site in between required investigation and stepped out of the house, Father muttering all the while that Ina was too much like his mad sister.
From the parlour, I watched them run down the street toward their first destination: the bell tower of the fire hall on Chapel Street, next to the site of the new library. The two human images, barely perceptible in the gas-lit streets through the tears in my eyes and the rain around them, soon faded from view. I cried out of fear for the safety of my mother, my sister, and my father, and when I remembered that my brother Jim was also out there, I cried even harder. Grandpa’s big, warm arms and his repeated mutterings of “it’s just rain” had begun to stem the tide of tears when we heard the first groans of thunder off in the distance. My wailings reached a new crescendo.
Seeing the futility of theory on the subject (“thunder never hurt anyone”), Grandpa chose physical proof. He wrapped me in a quilt and carried me onto the big swing chair on the verandah. Under the verandah’s large roof, we were sheltered from the rain and the mounting wind. We sat there a long time, gliding gently as branches blew and rain pelted everything around us. Just when my tears stopped, when my breathing returned to an almost even rhythm, the thunder that had rumbled closer and closer was joined by a bright display of lightning.
As I began to quake again, the storm raging around us, Grandpa decided to pursue a different tack to calm my fears: diversion. “Jessie,” he said, his big arms and the soft quilt wrapped around me, “is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
Despite my extreme anxiety for the safety of my family and notwithstanding the concern I felt for my well-being, I was able to recall the one thing I wanted to discuss with Grandpa. My throat sore from sobbing, my words barely comprehensible for the little gasps that followed each syllable uttered, I managed to ask, “Grandpa, are you self-made?”
“Yes, Jessie, I guess I am.” He began to tell me how that came about.
* * *
My grandfather, like so many immigrants to the New World, came to this land with only the clothes on his back, the skills of his trade, and a driving ambition to succeed. He was born on Christmas Day, 1835, in Wiltshire, England, the third of three children born to Joseph and May Brady, a working class couple. He had no formal education, but with the assistance of an older sister and the family Bible, he learned to read and write. All the arithmetic he needed to know he garnered in the course of his training to join his father in the masonry and building trades. As a child, he learned to count the nails and the pieces of brick, slate, and stone that had to be obtained at the beginning of a day and that which was left at the end. Later, as his father’s assistant, calculating the number of six-foot scaffolds required to build a one-hundred-foot-high belfry, he learned multiplication and division. Later still as his father’s partner, he learned the most important mathematical lessons of all, calculating the amount to charge a customer for a project, considering the cost of materials and labour and including a generous amount for profit. Jesse learned these lessons, and he learned them well, for unlike other students whose mistakes might cost them a mark on a test or even a grade at the end of term, Jesse Brady knew that his mistakes might cost his family members their meals for a time or his father his reputation more indefinitely.
As Jesse grew older, the late-night hours that he formerly spent learning to read were spent sketching designs for large projects he and his father would one day undertake. He dreamed of futuristic building styles and revolutionary methods they would bring to their craft. He imagined the zeal with which he and his father would convince customers of the advantage of their designs and the effort they would take preparing drawings, assembling different tradesmen, ordering supplies, and executing their plans.
The dreams rarely involved Jesse’s older brother Jack, who, though also trained as a mason and builder, shared none of Jesse’s enthusiasm for the trade, Jack preferred to spend his daylight hours being specifically directed in the next stone to chisel, brick to point, or lath to plaster, never taking the initiative in any such matter.
Jack’s evenings, on the other hand, were devoid of any direction save that which polite society demanded, as he spent nearly all of them in the parlours of Wiltshire families with eligible daughters. Eventually, when Jack was twenty-four years of age and Jesse twenty-two, the many parlours Jack formerly frequented were reduced to a single one, and after three months of near-nightly visits to that specific parlour, an invitation was proffered to its owners and their family to take dinner with the Bradys after church the following Sunday.
Knowing how important the first meeting of the two families would be to Jack, the Bradys spared no expense in preparing for the occasion. Jack and Jesse’s mother selected the best loin of pork, catch of trout, head of cauliflower, and round of cheese the local market could provide. The finest linen cloth was retrieved from the old trunk, what silver the family had was polished, the best china, though old and chipped, was pulled from its felt wrappings and set on the table. The Davises arrived. Warm greetings were exchanged. Convivial conversation ensued. Dinner was enjoyed. Impressions were made. By the late afternoon, when the party dispersed, Mr. and Mrs. Davis were entirely admiring of Mr. and Mrs. Brady; Mr. and Mrs. Brady were entirely admiring of Mr. and Mrs. Davis; Jack and Jesse Brady were each in love with Louisa Davis, and Louisa Davis, after three months of knowing Jack and only just having met Jesse, was smitten with them both.
Two months later, when formal declarations of love to Louisa had been made confidently by Jack and regretfully by Jesse, when it was clear that Louisa could not decide which Mrs. J. Brady she preferred to be, and when it was equally obvious that Jesse and Jack could no longer work under the same merely framed roof, let alone live under another fully constructed one, Jesse left for the ports of Liverpool and thence for America. For six long weeks he lay in the bowels of the steerage compartment as his vessel was blown off course down to the Bay of Biscay before righting its course and crossing the Atlantic to its intended destination in Nova Scotia. Jesse Brady, just twenty-two years of age, contemplated all he left behind: a loving mother and sister, each of whom begged him to stay; an aging father and business partner, clearly resentful of his decision to leave; an aggrieved brother who considered Jesse’s feelings for Louisa to be a conscious attempt to usurp him; a woman whose eyes he could not stop his own from seeing, whose laughter he could not banish from his ears, whose scent he could not rid from his memory. What lay ahead of him? He did not know.
Jesse spent a night in Nova Scotia before devoting nearly all of his remaining funds to the purchase of a ticket on a schooner that would take him east to the City of Toronto. The trip was providential, as on the first day of the short passage, Jesse befriended a successful builder named Nelson, returning to Brampton, a small 1,500-person village northwest of Toronto. On the second day, Nelson hired Jesse as one of his builders and convinced a middle-aged couple to follow them to Brampton. As the foursome completed their journey, the middle-aged couple hired Nelson to build their new homestead.
It was a testament to Nelson’s marketing skills that he was able to convince not just one person but three people to follow him back to Brampton. But Nelson understood the promise of the small village that had recently been connected to Toronto and markets all over the world by the Grand Trunk Railway. The railway was revolutionizing the village that only ten years earlier had a population of just over five hundred, roads that were nothing more than mud tracks, no post office to its name, no local government, and few industries.
For the next two years, Jesse worked tirelessly with Nelson as they built custom houses for the new settlers or for farmers just outside of the village who were ready to replace the log cabin homes, built when their land was first cleared. Nelson’s instincts about young Jesse’s talents were confirmed within a day of seeing him work. Nelson was impressed by the boy’s knowledge not just of masonry and carpentry but all trades involved in the construction of a house. His work ethic was obvious from the start, but Nelson could quickly see that Jesse was also conscientious about the quality of his work. Over the course of those two years, Jesse rose from being one of Nelson’s crew of regular or occasional labourers to his second-in-command.
Nelson’s credo was to build to his customer’s specifications. As most of his customers were English immigrants, most wanted Georgian English country-style homes, albeit on a smaller scale. Though his customers were well off enough to pay for a home a British squire may have occupied, they were generally not affluent enough to have a home such as that of a British lord. Accordingly, Jesse and Nelson built one or one-and-a-half-storey mini-Georgian-style homes, each covered in a plaster-like mixture called “roughcast,” with a front door centred below a peaked roof and two large first-floor windows, one on each side and each equidistant from the door.
Though he worked hard by day, Jesse spent most of his evenings in his small room above the local tannery. He had only two pastimes aside from attending and singing in the choir of the Wesleyan Methodist Church: writing and drawing.
On Jesse’s arrival in Brampton in 1857, he sent two letters to England. The first was to his mother, letting her know where he was settled. That letter was easy to write. The second letter was to Louisa, apologizing for the way in which he left (he hadn’t even said goodbye) and wishing her well in her life with Jack. That letter was hard to write, and though he knew he should not do so, he added in a hastily written postscript: if she ever wanted to see him again, she need only write, and he would come for her.
Within two months he had a reply from his mother, advising him that a wedding date had been set for Jack and Louisa and that the two had decided to immigrate to Australia following their marriage. His mother begged Jesse to return to England to resume business with his father, the cause of his dissociation soon to be removed. Jesse’s reply was immediate and firm: he would not return to England, and he begged his mother never again to mention to him either Jack or Louisa. With that behind them, mother and son engaged in a monthly exchange of letters that would carry on until her dying days.
When not writing to his mother once a month, Jesse spent most of his evenings drawing pictures of the homes he dreamed of building. He had a strong hand and could make a piece of lead flow like ink. A blank page could be brought to life with his swift strokes, hard lines, and soft shading. Within minutes the intricate ideas in his mind became a picture, with every detail clear for those who might look on. Unfortunately, at least initially, few did. His drawings stacked up one on top of the other in various piles in the room he rented above the tannery.
The homes Jesse drew were not mansion homes, like that of George Wright, the successful flour miller and retailer whose palatial home known as the Castle was near the village’s centre. No, Jesse dreamed of building homes for families of more modest means. Each had three bedrooms, a kitchen at the back, numerous large windows to let in the sun’s warming rays, and various roof lines, abandoning the confining design limitations of the symmetrical houses he and Nelson built. Each had a front door a full four feet off the ground, far above the snow in all but the worst winters. Most importantly, each front door was accessed from a wide verandah, which ran all the way across the front of the house. Jesse envisaged a Brampton where families would have leisure time they could spend in these outdoor parlours, watching their children play and socializing with their neighbours. He envisaged houses of brick with distinguishing characteristics, turrets, and small towers.
Jesse knew that his dream could only become a reality if these houses were affordable. To accomplish that, he proposed to build his houses fairly close together and to build them in unison so that efficiencies could be realized in the purchase of supplies and in the construction process. He also proposed that each house have similar, though not identical elements.
Nelson suggested that Jesse’s time would be better spent looking for a woman with whom to share a house of his own than dreaming of houses for others. But since he could not convince Jesse to abandon his dreams, Nelson listened cheerfully as Jesse shared his development ideas. Nelson promised that one day, when they had met the demand of all of those who had money to purchase custom-built houses, they would look at building in the less conventional way that Jesse suggested. But Nelson chuckled as he said this. The way the little village was growing, he didn’t think that Jesse would be building the houses of his designs anytime soon. Only the death of Nelson in 1859 by a massive heart attack meant that he did.
Nearly immobilized with grief over the loss of his closest friend and mentor, Jesse took stock of his situation. In the two years he had been in Brampton, he had developed a name for himself as an excellent builder. He was known and liked by the local tradesmen and suppliers. He had a vision of what he sought to build. Though he was just twenty-four years of age, he resolved to turn down all offers to work for other builders and to forge his own path. With the small amount of funds he had accumulated, he could afford to spend a few months seeking the land and the capital to build the homes of which he dreamed.
His first task was to buy a piece of property. The property had to be within easy walking distance of the centre of the village. It had to be on an existing road with at least two hundred feet of frontage. In short order, he found a perfect lot just beyond the developed area of the village, the southernmost end of a larger farm property. The one-acre fallow lot was being promoted as an ideal mansion property. Jesse walked back and forth along the road fronting the property, picturing the eight homes he could build on it when he collided with another man similarly absorbed. Their collision, mild physically, was cataclysmic from a business and community perspective.
The Duke—as the other distracted walker was known—was a native of Wales, about twenty years Jesse’s senior. He had come to Brampton in the hope of assisting in the development of a sustainable, productive, prosperous community that would be home to his children (of which he then had seven), grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Though entirely unpretentious in his bearing, his genteel background quickly garnered him his nickname, and he eventually stopped objecting to the regal mantle he would wear for the rest of his life.
Soon the Duke knew of Jesse’s plans and vision. It was a vision for a developed community that the Duke shared. The men quickly formed a partnership. There were only two matters on which the men disagreed. The Duke thought no man—even a man of modest means—having travelled to North America would ever agree to live on a piece of land with less than fifty feet of frontage. Further, he dismissed the notion that a working man would ever have the leisure time to sit on a verandah. Thus, on the condition that Jesse reduce the number of houses to be built from eight to four and on the further condition that he eliminate the verandahs and for a fee equal to thirty percent of Jesse’s profits, the Duke agreed to act as Jesse’s financier.
As part of the arrangement, it was determined that the Duke would buy the land from the selling farmer. After it had been acquired, it would be subdivided into five lots. Four of the lots would be equally sized and front onto the road on which the Duke and Jesse had collided. The fifth lot would be the remainder of the land acquired behind the first four lots, backing onto a less travelled road. That fifth lot would either be developed later or sold. The Duke approached the farmer and offered him an amount twenty-five percent less than he was willing to pay. The farmer feigned great shock over the offer.
Over a month that Jesse could only describe as agonizing, the Duke and the farmer negotiated a price that in the end was ten percent more than what the Duke had originally offered. They resolved to complete the transaction in a further month’s time. The Duke was delighted at the low price he had negotiated, since it would make Jesse’s homes even more affordable to the intended purchasers. The farmer too was overjoyed at the price, boasting to all who would listen how much more he had realized selling his land for use as a mansion than in using it himself for farming.
Having arranged the financing and the acquisition of the land, Jesse’s next task was to organize the labour. To develop the first four lots, he required a workforce that could build four houses at once. It was as Jesse began to enlist that workforce that he and the Duke encountered their first real obstacle. For in recruiting the work force, word spread about the project.
It was at that time, in 1859, that Jesse and the Duke learned what many Brampton developers would later discover, namely, a farmer is willing to sell a man a piece of land for one price if he thinks the man is going to use it for his own pleasure, but he will only sell it for a much higher price if he knows the man is going to develop it for use by others. Upon learning that the land he had committed to sell was to be further severed and resold, the indolent farmer became incensed. He railed at the Duke and Jesse about the history of the land: how it had been provisionally acquired by his parents from the Crown; how they had cleared the primeval forests from it within the mandatory period, thereby earning full title to it; how it had been plowed, seeded, and harvested every year since then, with back-breaking effort; how he could not part with it for less than its full worth; how embarrassing it would be to do so.
He threatened to walk away from his agreement to sell the land. Jesse and the Duke tried to reason with him. The farmer’s parents had not paid anything for the land, and neither had he. Over most of the past three decades, the land, when combined with the other lots acquired by his parents, had been highly productive and had garnered a good income for his family. He and the Duke had previously agreed on the price; surely that represented its worth. The Duke would sell it for more than the cost of the land and its improvement, but that was to compensate him and Jesse for the risk in undertaking those improvements.
No amount of reasoning on the part of Jesse and the Duke could convince the obstinate farmer. In the end, Jesse and the Duke agreed to pay him five percent of the profits from the resold houses rather than sue him to enforce the original bargain. Jesse revised his budget. Another five percent would have to be added to the ultimate sale price for the finished lots—for this “anti-embarrassment” tax, like many other taxes that would apply in the future, was certainly not going to be borne by the developer.
With the land acquired, the labourers assembled, and the supplies being delivered, the next challenge for Jesse was to actually sell the houses, which he was building entirely on speculation. He wanted the houses to be purchased long before the construction was complete; early enough in the process to reduce the financial risk but late enough to prevent demands for customization of the houses. He knew from his work with Nelson and his father before him that customization drove up the costs and slowed down completion. He had no competition for the sale of houses of this nature, and so he did not need to meet that kind of customer demand.
Jesse need not have been concerned that the houses would be purchased too early in the process. Though many people expressed interest in the houses while they were being built, people were not willing to complete a purchase at that early stage, despite Jesse’s detailed drawings. It was only as the houses were nearly framed on the outside that Jesse received his first offer. He thought the offer marked the turning point in the project. That was not the case, however, as the buyer’s wife took one look at the closely situated homes and decided then and there to return to England. Reluctantly, the man reneged on the contract, and leaving Jesse with the deposit, he returned to England with his wife and family. The experience behind him, Jesse put the lot back on the market with the others and mentally jacked up the price of each by a further five percent. More than ever, Jesse realized the risk for which he needed to be compensated.
A third setback occurred just as the lath on the inside walls was about to be applied. This was a setback of a different sort. It was a personal circumstance that necessitated a two-month leave of absence. Each day the Duke walked to the building site to view Jesse’s progress. One day, while the Duke was conducting his daily inspection, Jesse’s landlady, the tanner’s wife, came to the site bearing an envelope. Jesse did not demand or expect any such personal delivery, but his landlady was a curious woman who took any opportunity she could to see if the project of her favourite tenant really was as outlandish as her husband’s customers said it was.
Even if she had not been in the habit of regularly visiting the site on the pretence of delivering correspondence, she would have done so on this occasion, for though the letter she was carrying had been mailed from England and was written in a feminine script, it was not written by the hand that wrote monthly to Jesse. She feared that this letter, which was light in weight, was written by Jesse’s sister, because their mother had been rendered unable to write it herself. Indeed, Jesse’s thoughts were likewise when he took the flimsy correspondence from her. Turning away from the Duke and the tanner’s wife, Jesse opened the letter and silently read the ten words written on it.
He took a deep breath before turning back to the Duke and the landlady. With tears in his eyes, he slowly explained the situation. Although Jesse thought he should defer the trip until the project was complete, the Duke and the tanner’s wife—both staunch family people—felt he needed to leave immediately. In a short time, their view prevailed. Jesse searched the four houses, found Cowan, his best man on the site, deputized him to oversee the completion of the houses, apologized to the Duke, and left.
When Jesse returned to Brampton two months later, he was delighted to see all four houses complete. Covered in roughcast, they were a long way from the brick Gothic Revival homes he dreamed of building, but architecturally they were an improvement over what was previously available to all but the wealthiest in Brampton. While none of the houses had a verandah, each had a covered porch. Each had a second storey, adding to the front of the house two windows immediately above those below. Small, peaked roofs had been added to each house, as had windows and gables. The upper roof line of each house was trimmed with gingerbread.
As Jesse stood on the street, admiring the houses, the Duke approached him with news he was sure would dampen Jesse’s spirits. The first related to Cowan, the man appointed by Jesse to oversee the construction in Jesse’s absence. He had so enjoyed the responsibility that once the project was complete, he formed a partnership with another businessman. Cowan was about to build six houses on a lot, all in the same method and style as those built by Jesse. The Duke was infuriated that Cowan would so unabashedly steal Jesse’s concepts. Jesse, however, took the opposite view, and soon the Duke, who was equally confident in the future of their little village, agreed that there could not be too many houses being built.
In any event, Jesse was about to embark on a number of new projects. His innovative work on the four houses had captured the attention of a number of people wishing to build new homes. They were custom homes—but they were homes that Jesse designed. Though few customers were yet willing to incorporate the towers, turrets, and verandahs he longed to include, they were willing to incorporate new architectural detail. He could build for them houses with less symmetrical features and with multi-roofed lines, with bay windows and jutting doorways. He could move away from roughcast plaster and wood siding. Finally, he would be working again with brick. He hoped that these projects would grant him the prestige and reputation needed to build the churches and other institutions required to support the growing village. With sufficient capital in hand, he could then construct the larger developments of which he dreamed.
The second piece of bad news related to one of the four houses in their nearly complete subdivision. Cowan, the Duke reported, had performed well as a supervisor, but one of the other workers, Billy Judge, resentful at not having been selected for the overseer’s responsibility himself, created a great deal of trouble. To keep Judge from poisoning the working environment for all of the other workers, Cowan and the Duke relegated him to a single house. They both regretted not sacking him from the project altogether, because the work inside that one house was not complete, and what was finished was not up to the standards that either Cowan or the Duke found acceptable. Jesse was similarly calm upon receiving this news. He told the Duke he would take that house and finish or refinish it himself over time. The Duke embraced his young friend. They agreed it was time for Jesse to have a family home of his own.
* * *
Over the course of Grandpa’s story, the storm ended. The wind dissipated, and the deluge of rain was reduced to a fine mist. Looking down the street, I could see four wet and bedraggled figures approaching us. Father and Ina were in front, he on the side closest to the street, his hand firmly on her arm. Mother was behind them and Jim behind her. They must have come across him somewhere in their search for Ina. Grandpa gave me a little squeeze. “You see. There they are and they are all fine—wet but fine. Let’s get you up to bed before they get in the house.”
He carried me upstairs to my by then much cooler room, laid me on my bed, still swathed in the quilt retrieved earlier, said goodnight, and slipped downstairs to greet the returning drenched family members. I lay there for a long time considering what I had learned. Grandpa had suffered many setbacks: there was Nelson’s death, the requirement to give so much of his profits to the Duke, not being able to build the houses he really dreamed of and then having to give more of his profits to the farmer, losing his first sale, having his friend Cowan go into competition with him, and having Billy Judge ruin one of his houses.
I wondered whether any of these incidents was the act that constituted “others-destroyed.” They represented setbacks created by others. But Grandpa seemed to have overcome all of them. Furthermore, at any of those points, had he yet been “made”? No, there was more to his story. The storm that I had only wanted to end two hours earlier, was, I then realized, too short. I would have to wait for another opportunity to hear more of Grandpa’s story.
My father was downstairs, hollering at Ina. One by one, others escaped the uncomfortable though clearly justified outburst. I could hear Jim come up the front stairs and slip into his room, just at the top of the staircase. Grandpa followed Jim but turned right at the top of the stairs to walk to his room, just past mine. As he did so, I called out to him. He came and sat beside me on the bed.
“Grandpa, I have just one question,” I said.
“Just one?” he replied.
“Just one, for now,” I amended. “What did the letter say? What were the eight words your sister wrote you?”
“There weren’t eight words,” he said. “There were ten words, and it turned out they weren’t written by my sister. They were written by your grandmother.” I looked confused. “Not your great-grandmother—not my mother,” he clarified, “but your grandmother—my wife. The ten words were: ‘If you still love me, come and get me. Loui.’”
“Louisa? She was your wife?” I asked.
“Well, she wasn’t my wife when I left to get her, but she was by the time I came back. She had broken her engagement to my brother two years prior to that—almost immediately after she entered into it. Since that time she had tried to forget me, as I had tried to forget her, but neither of us was able to. We married in 1860 and had forty-five lovely years together. She was a wonderful woman. You were only two years old when she died. I wish you had truly known her.”
“I do too,” I mumbled. “One day will you tell me the rest of your story?”
“One day,” he said. He kissed me on my forehead and left the room.
Chapter 3
The Sneeze
Fortunately, we as children are not limited in the number of our desires. At the age of four, I held two most fervently. The first was a new desire: to understand my grandfather’s history and hence why my family was not allowed to enter the Presbyterian Church. I knew that this desire would require patience in its satisfaction. Thus, while it was always with me, it was not always top of mind. The second desire was much longer in standing: to gain a younger sibling who would be my true and faithful companion. That desire, I knew, could be satisfied more immediately. It required only the cooperation of my mother and our family’s physician, for every child in Brampton knew that babies were delivered to married ill women by Dr. Heggie from within his big black bag.
Whenever my mother had the slightest headache or cough, sniffle, or sore muscle, I would implore her to call Dr. Heggie to our house for treatment. “Of course not, Jessie,” she would say. “If you’ll just run down to Stork’s and get me some Shiloh’s Cure, I’ll be as good as new by tomorrow morning.” Or, in response to the same appeal on other occasions, “Goodness, child. Why would I sacrifice a jar of my best mustard relish to have him tell me I have a head cold?” Mother was referring to the additional amount Dr. Heggie would charge to see his patients in their homes: three fresh eggs or a quart of milk or a bottle of Canadian whisky or, in our home, where none of the foregoing was likely to be available, a jar of whatever preserves he liked best from our cellar. Even when Mother was truly ill and needed to see Dr. Heggie, she would usually insist on walking to his office on Main Street South rather than calling him to our house.
It is a delicate matter to pray that one’s dearest family member would become ill enough to necessitate a doctor being called into one’s house but not so ill that she would succumb to the cause for the summons. The creation of such a condition of poor health for my mother and greater wisdom regarding my grandfather were the subjects of my prayers throughout the summer of 1907. That July, both prayers were answered, though in neither case did I obtain what I actually sought.
It started with a sneeze. It was a Thursday afternoon, Mother’s at-home day. Ina, Frances Hudson (my dearest friend), and I sat in my family’s sitting room while Mother entertained her last remaining guest—Frances’s mother—in the parlour beside us. Ina sat on the sofa under the window reading a book. Frances and I sat on the floor, dolls in hand. Frances’s doll beckoned my doll to look at the bird beyond the window, and so I happened to be looking at Ina when we heard a sneeze from the parlour. I saw Ina’s instant recognition of the sound and her immediate reaction as she slammed her book shut and jerked her face toward the parlour. The big pocket-sliding solid elm doors between the two rooms were nearly fully drawn, so although we could hear the sneeze, we could not instantly discern from whom it issued.
On hearing Mother utter the customary “God bless you,” Ina breathed a sigh of relief. Then she turned on Frances. In a tone a crown attorney might reserve for the examination of one accused of a capital offence, Ina demanded to know the nature of the illness from which Frances’s mother was suffering; the primary and secondary symptoms; the hour her mother had first detected them; the extent to which Frances was experiencing any of the same conditions; and why Frances and her mother had knowingly entered our home and contaminated our family. Frances denied any knowledge of ill health on her mother’s part. While she timidly confessed to sneezing herself just that morning at breakfast, she assumed it resulted from the pepper her father had liberally applied to his eggs. Her sheepish acknowledgement that she had given no thought as to whether she might on this day infect others brought both girls to tears. Frances flew to the parlour and into her mother’s arms. Ina, wrapping her baggy sweater tightly around her, ran to our bedroom, where she stayed for three days.
They were a long three days. Though they began with Father’s reprimands uttered through the door regarding Ina’s treatment of Frances, they ended with entreaties for her to vacate the room. But whether those entreaties were expressed as a hopeful wish by Jim (who promised her an outing with his friends), a demand for access to my own room and belongings (resulting in an unceremonious dumping into the hallway of many of my worldly goods), a bribe by Mother of Ina’s favourite foods, or a demand by Father, Ina would not end her confinement.
To be fair, the self-imposed internment might have ended earlier if the contagion that Ina so feared had not actually materialized. While Mother was, on the first day of Ina’s confinement, able to assure Ina that she felt perfectly fine, the next day, at the very moment that Ina took one of her three daily trips to the bathroom across the hall from our room, Mother had the misfortune to sneeze. The following day she woke with a sore throat and a congested chest. By that afternoon she had an earache as well. A fever set in that night, and the next day it was so high that Dr. Heggie had to be summoned.
Dr. Heggie prescribed cold compresses, a special elixir, and plenty of bed rest for Mother. Having been apprised of Ina’s state, Dr. Heggie also prescribed treatment for Ina: a trip to Toronto for her and me, the duration of which was to last until Mother was well. He examined my throat and ears, ran a stethoscope over my back and chest, and repeated the procedure for Father, Grandpa, and Jim. Through the door to our bedroom, Dr. Heggie proclaimed us to be in perfect health. He then left our house with a jar of strawberry preserves in one hand and the famous black bag in the other. To my great dismay, the black bag was the same size and apparent weight when it left our house as it had been when it entered it.
On the condition that we would immediately leave for Toronto, Ina agreed with the proposed arrangement. Father cabled his sister, Lillian, the only member of our family who resided outside of Brampton, and a few hours later walked Ina and me to the train station. As we walked, he reviewed the arrangements he had made. If Lulu—or Aunt Lillian, he corrected himself—was not at Union Station to meet us when our train arrived in Toronto, we were to walk to Spadina Avenue and take the horseless streetcar to her home just south of Bloor Street. He handed Ina some money just in case his sister forgot to feed us and promised to see us in a week, by which time he was confident Mother would be restored to good health.
My worry for Mother’s health was profound, and my disappointment regarding the contents of Dr. Heggie’s black bag great, but as the train neared Toronto, thoughts of those matters were replaced by the prospect of spending a week with our beloved Aunt Lillian. This was an adventure that Ina, Jim, and my cousins had each enjoyed every summer since they turned eight years of age. The annual excursion was particularly enjoyable for Ina, who, for one week a year, was able to live like an only daughter again. I am sure my presence on this sojourn would have resulted in her defection from it but for her great relief at being removed from our infected house.
Aunt Lillian was the eldest of my father’s three sisters. She was without a doubt the least conforming member of our family. As a child she chose pants instead of skirts, sports instead of dolls, the company of her father and brother over that of her mother and sisters. As an adult, she rejected religion, politics and, eventually, the epitome of the two—in our family at least—Brampton itself. At twenty-four years of age, she moved to Toronto and purchased a house in a heavily leveraged transaction funded in small part by her savings of the previous five years but completed largely on the guarantee of payment made by her brother and by the promise of the income to be generated from the use of her house by boarders. She lived a happy life as a single woman running a boarding house for male university students and teaching history at the nearby Toronto Central Technical Institute. Her high school students routinely judged her their favourite teacher for the way in which she brought historical figures to life.
Aunt Lil’s looks were, naturally, unconventional. Her lips were slightly fuller than the fashion. Her flawless cream-coloured complexion accentuated her eyes, which sparkled beneath lids slightly too heavy. In an era when a woman’s hair was always pinned back to her scalp, she wore a red, curly mane down her back. When it was covered, which was infrequent, it was rather adorned, generally by an ostentatious, oversized, brightly coloured headpiece. Her favourite colour, green, was almost the only colour she wore. Father said she looked like an upside down carrot. Tall and thin, he remarked that if someone picked her up by the toes of her green-coloured stockings and let her loose red hair fall below her head, she would be a perfect imitation of that root vegetable. Green was the colour of her eyes, the colour of the ink with which she wrote, the colour of the walls in her home. Her choice of the colour whenever an opportunity for a choice presented itself marked almost the only predictable element of Aunt Lil’s life.
Our extended family visited Aunt Lil twice a year, once in late August, when we went to Toronto to attend the Canadian National Exhibition and to buy clothes for school at the Eaton’s department store, and once in the spring at Easter, when most of her borders were with their own families for the holidays. We children took bets as we rode the train from Brampton as to whether on this occasion Aunt Lil’s house would be so cluttered as to prevent any of us from finding a place to sit or so bare as to lead us to wonder whether anyone at all lived in the home; or whether it would be so hot so as to have each of us shedding our clothes, although it was cold outside, or so cold that each of us would seek blankets from the boarders’ beds.
One Easter Sunday, fourteen of us appeared on her doorstep. The table had not been set; there was no food on the sideboards; the kitchen was cool and the cupboards bare. No one had the heart to ask where dinner was, and we all left ravenous three hours later. The next year we went laden with hams, potatoes, pies, and peas, but detecting the aromas of beef, fish, and yams wafting out her front screen door, we quickly hid our provisions under the front porch and carried them all back home at the end of the day. Our parents reprimanded us children for engaging in wagers regarding Aunt Lil’s likely conduct, a practice they deemed unchristian on multiple accounts, but I could tell that Father at least was placing his own silent bets.
Aunt Lil had no regard for conventional rules. She had her own rules. She was habitually late and incredibly disorganized. Though a single woman, she saw no impropriety in operating a male boarding house or any arrangement that involved her inviting multiple men into her home for cards or a discussion of an important matter. In the rules according to Aunt Lil, only the invitation of a lone man to her home was taboo. “Bedtime” was not in her lexicon. When at Aunt Lil’s, children went to bed when they were tired. Given how entertaining she was, children were rarely tired before midnight. She did not require children to eat the entirety of their main course before they were served dessert; some meals were comprised only of dessert.
But the thing we children loved the best about Aunt Lil was that she never lied to us. She was incapable of it. She treated children like adults—never sugar-coating or avoiding a subject that others might consider inappropriate for young ears; she never spared feelings to avoid telling exactly what she thought of our dress, actions, or temperament.
Some people would have been put out at having two nieces arrive on their doorstep with less than six hours’ notice, but those would have been ordinary people displaying an ordinary reaction. Aunt Lil, being anything but ordinary, had no such reaction. As Father feared, she did not meet us at the train station, but thanks to some directions provided by good-natured Torontonians and Ina’s vague recollections, Ina and I were, within a few hours of leaving our home, in that of Aunt Lil. Our bags were thrown to the side of the door as she quickly had us in a circle, holding hands and singing as we skipped around an imaginary maypole. The evening proceeded in a similar spirit as we sang, danced, ate cake, reviewed magazines, and gazed at late-night stars. At last we all retired, me into a little second-floor room beside Aunt Lil’s and Ina quite far away on the third floor.
Sleep did not come easily to me that night. As I lay in the little bed in the little room, listening to Aunt Lil pad about between her room and the bathroom, I reflected on the merry things we had done since arriving at Aunt Lil’s. Eventually, when I ran through our activities three or four times, and when I no longer heard Aunt Lil moving about, my thoughts cast further back. I thought of my ill mother back home and of my brother, grandfather, and father. As I did so, imperceptibly, melancholy replaced elation, trepidation superseded anticipation, and ultimately, guilt ran rampant. For as I contemplated the past days, it came to me that the whole time Ina had shut herself in our room, I had only half-heartedly begged her to come out. The most earnest of all my pleas was for my belongings, but once they were provided, I found myself somewhat indifferent to her situation.
Since I had no access to my own quarters, I was happily ensconced in Jim’s room while he was relegated to sleeping with Grandpa. I confess I delighted in having a bed to myself. I found it an absolute delight to take a meal with my parents, my grandfather, and my brother without receiving a single snide look from my sister.
But it was not my attitude toward Ina’s confinement that particularly struck me. It was my conduct towards my dear mother. Just as I heard Mrs. Hudson’s sneeze, I also heard Mother’s first sneeze. I admit it did not cause me concern. It gave me hope. “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” Father often said. As I lay in the border’s bed at Aunt Lil’s house, I became ashamed of how I had tried to help myself—at Mother’s expense. We had two apples in the house when Mother first sneezed. I confess that in order to deprive Mother of their preventative powers, I ate them both.
Over the next two days, I never once suggested she consume chicken soup. I never once mixed honey and lemon for her cough. I never brought her a blanket to avoid a chill. I never suggested a mustard plaster for her chest. While I did not pray for her condition to deteriorate, I did not pray for it to improve. I had brought on Mother’s ill health, and my only contribution to her improvement was in running to get Dr. Heggie when I was finally permitted to do so. While I did that with alacrity, it was not for Mother’s sake but for my own. I was willing to jeopardize Mother’s health in order that I could obtain a younger sibling. The more I reflected on my conduct and on the ill health of my poor mother, the more my mood sank. I concluded that I was a bad person—quite possibly as bad as Ina always said I was.
That realization brought tears, quiet at first and then louder and louder. The noisy tears brought my aunt, who came to me clad in a billowy flannel nightgown, her red hair stacked high on her head in cotton ties, her face covered in white cream. Had I not already been awash in tears of pity, the sight of her would surely have brought tears of fright. Aunt Lil immediately assumed my tears sprang from worry, and, too ashamed to declare their real cause, I did not disabuse her.
“Oh Curly Top,” she cooed—a term of endearment reserved for me, her lone niece with hair the texture if not the colour of her own. “Your mother is going to be perfectly well.”
Taking a deep breath, I managed to ask why, if Mother’s health was so certain to be fully restored, it was necessary for Ina and me to leave our house?
“As I understand it,” she replied, “that prescription had less to do with your mother’s health and more to do with Ina’s. Dr. Heggie determined that the best way to treat your sister was to remove both of you on the pretense of your mother’s poor health. And you don’t mind, do you? We’ll have lots of fun together while your mother rests.”
Because the explanation was provided by Aunt Lil, I knew it to be true. But as I continued to rue my part in the events of the past three days, my tears did not abate. Finally, Aunt Lil grew tired of trying to reassure me, and, possibly because she had so little experience dealing with children in this state, she asked me how my tears could be overcome. No one had asked me that question before. I thought about it and between more shallow sobs suggested what I knew my mother or father would suggest: “Should I pray?”
“You can do that if you like,” she said, with little conviction as to its utility. “But for myself, when I get into that state, I look for a diversion.”
“A diversion?” I inquired, not understanding her meaning.
“Yes. Something to get your mind off your worries.” As she said that, I recalled my last crying jag. It wasn’t that long ago, and I realized diversion was the method ultimately employed by Grandpa on the verandah swing as we waited for my parents, Ina, and Jim to return in the storm. She was right. Diversion worked perfectly well—at least it did when I didn’t know that someone was attempting to divert me. But I was willing to try it when consciously applied. I had not heard the whole of Grandpa’s story. Aunt Lil was a history teacher. Maybe she could tell me more.
“Aunt Lil, do you know the story of Grandpa and Grandma?” I asked.
“Their story?” she replied. “Do you mean their story about how they met and how they settled in Canada?” Seeing me nod, she went on. “I know that story. It is a very romantic one. Do you know any of it?”
“Not really,” I said. “I only started to hear about it recently.”
“Then I shall tell you it all—but I warn you it is a long story, and I won’t be able to recite all of it tonight. We will make it your bedtime story this week!” She was quite enthusiastic. “But tonight we can get started.”
“Wait,” I said. “Before you do, do you have a picture of Grandma? I would like to see what she looked like. I heard she was very pretty.” Aunt Lil left the room and returned a few minutes later holding two framed photographs.
“This was taken about ten years before she died,” she said, holding out one of the two photographs. “It doesn’t do justice to the beauty she possessed in her youth—but her eyes and her mouth are little changed from their younger days.” I stared at the sepia portrait of my grandmother. She had a well-lined forehead atop a square-shaped face. Her wide cheeks and solid chin allowed ample space for her well-defined nose. Her thinning grey hair was parted in the middle and pulled severely to the back of her head. Of her neck nothing could be known, for it was covered to the top of her throat with the long bodice that extended over her upper frame. Her mouth, like all mouths portrayed in photographs of the time, was unsmiling. Her lips were full. In her large, piercing eyes, there was only steel. I was mesmerized by the photograph as I tried to determine the character of this obviously strong woman, but before I had an opportunity to do so, the picture was taken from my hands and replaced by another.
“Here,” Aunt Lil said. “Don’t you want to see what your grandfather looked like at that time?”
“I already know what he—” I began as my eyes moved disinterestedly toward the frame being extended to me. But as the picture came more fully into view, I realized it was not of a man I recognized. “This isn’t Grandpa,” I said as I took the picture. I had no idea who this thin-faced man was. He had light hair pulled straight back from his high forehead. He had mutton chop sideburns and a moustache, which dropped down on both sides of his mouth, giving his lips at rest the image of a frown. His chin was small. His skin was smooth—barely wrinkled, except for the little crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes, which, extending upward as they did, made his eyes, visible under heavy lids, appear to smile. I could see that he had once been a very handsome man.
“Of course it is your grandpa,” Aunt Lil replied. “It was taken when he was very late in life and does not show his very handsome face. But it is him.”
I was still not convinced. “That’s Grandpa?” I asked. “Grandpa Brady?”
“No. Of course it is not your Grandpa Brady!” Aunt Lil replied, clearly disgusted with my lack of intelligence. “Grandpa Brady is your mother’s father. This is a picture of Grandpa Stephens: my father; your father’s father.”
“Oh,” I said, realization dawning. “Then this Grandma,” I said, pointing to the first photograph I studied, “this is not Grandma Brady?”
“Jessie, why ever would I have a picture of your Grandma Brady? This is my mother, your father’s mother, Grandma Stephens. Are you interested in your Stephens heritage?” If I were more like Aunt Lil, I would have replied in the negative. But I was able to fib to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, and so I quickly proclaimed my heartfelt interest in that side of my family. Over the next week, Aunt Lil made an honest girl of me.
* * *
Jas and Selina Stephens’ emigration to the new world was entirely different from that of Jesse Brady. Jesse and his few worldly possessions travelled to North America in the cramped, vermin-infested, squalid quarters available to those crossing the Atlantic in a ship’s steerage section. Selina and Jas Stephens travelled on a similar ship but resided in an airy upper compartment surrounded by all of the comforts of home—at least all of those comforts that could be accommodated within the three large trunks with which they travelled. Their vast remaining possessions were packed in crates shipped ahead of them under the stewardship of her maid and his man servant.
Jesse spent his many days crossing the ocean longing for fresh air, decent food, and relief from those moaning, groaning, and retching near him. Jas spent most of his journey happily gazing at the cloud formations in the skies above the ship and befriending the captain and the ship’s other officers.
My grandfather Brady arrived in the new world with no particular destination in mind, settling in Brampton at the urge of a fellow traveller. My Stephens grandparents arrived in the new world determined to settle in Springfield, an area west of Toronto on the banks of the Credit River known for producing the Clinton grape. Jas Stephens, a man who enjoyed the finer things in life, was confident that an area that could cultivate European bound vintner-quality grapes was worthy of his domain. Upon their arrival in Upper Canada, Jas was disappointed to learn of the absence of any available land in Springfield or its surrounds. Although Selina urged Jas to take his time in considering other options, Jas quickly purchased a large farm property considerably north of Springfield in a township called Chinguacousy, just north of the village of Brampton.
While Jesse Brady came to the new world to forget the love, the desired spouse, and the family he knew he could not have, Selina Stephens came to the new world to embrace her love, her spouse, and to create a family. Though she and Jas had been married for five years, they had not been successful in producing children. Selina, a devout Protestant, attributed the deficiency to an insufficiency in their humility and worship and to the oversufficiency in their idleness and pleasure. She was determined to gain the necessary contrition in their new homeland, chiefly through personal toil and sacrifice. She resolved that they should grow their own vegetables, cook their own meals, bake their own bread, and launder their own linens. She would attend to all of these matters without the assistance of Jas, who thought the good Lord would supply them with the desired family without such sacrifices. She would have, though, the help of her maid.
Whereas Jesse Brady easily fell into his profession as a carpenter in Brampton, Jas fared not so well in the pursuit of his. Happily adopting the profession of a gentleman farmer (the first profession of his life), it soon became clear that he had too few of the qualities necessary to be a successful farmer and that farm life offered him too few of the opportunities necessary to enjoy the life of a gentleman. Within five years of being on the farm, with three children safely born and a fourth on the way, Selina Stephens, by then an able cook, baker, and laundress, agreed they could leave the farm and take up an easier life in the village of Brampton.
The circumstances that led to her capitulation on this point derived from the one thing that Jesse Brady and Jas and Selina Stephens had in common: their love of music. For a short time, all three sang in the choir of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. The Sunday services and Thursday evening rehearsals were effortlessly arrived at by Jesse Brady, who lived less than a five-minute walk from the church. The same could not be said for the Stephenses, whose ability to traverse the ten-mile journey from their farm to the village depended considerably on the weather, generally, and the state of the roads, in particular. While Jas and Selina were prompt and regular attenders of the church when the weather was extremely cold (and the roads ice or snow-packed) and when the weather was extremely hot (and the roads dried hard), their attendance was less reliable at other times.
Nonetheless, Selina cherished the Wesleyan Methodist Church and looked forward to every occasion on which she could worship within it. She esteemed the pastor as a fine and insightful orator; she admired the building in which they congregated; she cherished the many good and loyal congregants who had befriended her and Jas. It was only the chance to give it all up: to join the Primitive Methodist Church, a church that worshipped in a dark building above a butchery; whose adherents sat in square, hard-backed pews; that was led by an odious pastor with an irritating voice; that was populated by congregants who interjected shouts of “Hallelujah” and “Amen” into prayers and sermons; that allowed Selina to agree to their relocation.
The opportunity was brought to Jas and Selina in the form of a typhus outbreak that claimed the lives of a local couple. The earthly departure of the man and wife was quite personal to Mr. Lawson, the odious pastor of the Primitive Methodist Church, since the deceased were not only members of his flock but leaders within it. She played the piano and he led the choir. Rather than dwell on the loss, which he was certain was in keeping with the Lord’s divine intentions, Mr. Lawson took it as a means to save a soul—in this case that of Jas Stephens. For years Mr. Lawson had heard two things about Selina Stephens that interested him, namely, her great devotion and her strong musical abilities. His interest in Jas Stephens ran along similar but not identical lines, namely, his idleness (and hence insufficient devotion) and his deep baritone, which the pastor had come to appreciate in monthly Masonic lodge meetings.
The day after Mr. Lawson received the sad news regarding his parishioners, he drove to the Stephenses’ farm, and after a short amount of idle banter (the most that Mr. Lawson could possibly summon), he offered Selina the position of organist and Jas the position of choir leader within the Primitive Methodist Church. As Selina began to refuse the offer, Mr. Lawson interrupted. There was one detail he had neglected to mention. The offer was conditional on one thing: to accept it, the Stephenses would have to move into the village. His congregation could not be at the mercy of the ten-mile dirt road connecting the farm and the Queen Street Church. Noting the smile on her husband’s face, Selina readily accepted the joint offer. In short, she exchanged her sacrificial life of toil on the farm for a bigger sacrificial life in the village. Jas, whose face always bore a smile, was content with the arrangement as well.
At that time, three branches of Methodism worshipped in Brampton: Wesleyan Methodists, Primitive Methodists, and Episcopal Methodists. What they all had in common was their belief that life’s truths were all to be found within the bible, that all humans were born of sin, and that salvation could only come from faith. Primitive Methodists were considered the most fervent of the three branches, promoting the participation of trained laymen and decision-making by the adherents, evangelism, and a strict lifestyle.
Their image was typified by one of their earliest local leaders, William Lawson, who in the early 1820s, when he was not evangelizing in the streets of Toronto, could be found preaching in the undeveloped areas outside of it. It was while he was preaching “in the bush”—as Brampton and the area around it were then called—that he came upon his old friend from Cumberland, England, and fellow Primitive Methodist, John Elliott. Lawson saw so much potential in the area and its people that he sold his business in Toronto and moved near Elliott. In no time, Lawson and Elliott had many adherents to their bible-based view of the world. They shut down the taverns and distillery, changed the name of the area from Buffy’s Corners to Brampton, and set about making the area a more pious place. By the time Jesse Perry and Jas and Selina Stephens settled in Brampton, it had long been the heart of Primitive Methodism in what was to become Canada.
Sitting in front of the organ of the Primitive Methodists, Selina Stephens cringed every time she heard the irritating voice of her odious new pastor, the nephew of William Lawson. In addition to preaching loudly, Pastor Lawson sang loudly. Selina flinched every time someone in the congregation extemporaneously shouted “Amen” or “Hallelujah.” She became awash in grief each time she looked at the crude second-storey room above the Queen Street butcher shops in which the Primitive Methodists congregated. With each cringe, flinch, and suppressed sob, she smiled feeling the full measure of her sacrifice.
From a building Jas purchased in the four corners area, the Stephenses realized an income that supported Jas and his many gentlemanly pursuits. From their stately home on Union Street they raised their growing family, soon comprised of four children.
* * *
Ina, Aunt Lil, and I received two telegrams over the days that followed, both informing us that Mother was on the mend. Six days after our arrival, we were summoned to return to Brampton. As I sat on the train listening to the iron wheels transport us along the now well-worn tracks, I thought of all that I had learned over the past week. I didn’t know anything more about Grandpa Brady (who would always be just plain Grandpa to me) or how he became self-made or others-destroyed. I knew the identities of the four children of Jas and Selina Stephens. My father was the boy—the first-born. Aunt Lil was the second-born. My Aunt Charlotte was the third-born and Aunt Rose the fourth. I comprehended how each of our Brampton families fit together; how all of my cousins shared the same grandparents. I was completely unaware that the family whose connections I now so well understood was about to be put asunder.
Chapter 4
The Turners Leave
As a child, I never heard my mother cry; I only heard her play her music more mournfully. I never heard my mother’s voice raised in anger; I only heard her bang the piano keys with more fervour. When she was sad, she played cheerless pieces, as if in a trance, never stopping to gather new sheet music or to turn a page of notes. Agony articulated itself through her fingers on the ivory; through her feet on the brass. Her eyes closed, her chest, neck, and head heaved as she reached for distant keys. Her fingertips wrung out notes as her fine hands made their way to and from each other. I knew better than to interrupt Mother as she expressed herself in this way. Eventually, she would play herself out. At a certain point, she would stop, look at her hands, then stand and carry on with the routine tasks of her life, the matter that gave rise to the outburst either expelled or stifled until it could be dealt with later.
Mother’s delight at seeing Ina and me on our return from Aunt Lil’s house was heartfelt but short-lived. We had barely exchanged greetings and unpacked our valises before we heard her at the melodic keys. At first I did not recognize the exercise for what it was. A day did not pass during which Mother did not play the instrument—a stolen fifteen minutes here or possibly a half hour there—whenever she was not required to engage in more productive pursuits. Most of the music she played consisted of hymns and constituted her practice for the weekend’s demands at the church. My mother, like her mother-in-law before her, was a church’s pianist and organist. Depending on the hymn, one could be forgiven for confusing it with an outpouring of grief. But throughout the week following our return, my ears rang with one woeful sonata after another. I soon realized their deeper meaning.
Mother’s sorrowful state was noteworthy not just for its duration but also for its sharp contrast to Father’s disposition at the time. Throughout the week, I only heard him raise his voice once at Mother. Coming upon her at the piano one evening, after the completion of her nightly chores, he interrupted a morose piece. “Enough of this misery and gloom! It isn’t as if someone has died!” The rest of the time, his intercourse with her was actually … kind. On one occasion, he told her she would need a new dress. This was only partially unusual. He frequently criticized her plain wardrobe, although being without the means to replace it, he rarely suggested she do so. But at this time, the observation sounded somewhat hopeful. “This will be an occasion worthy of a new dress, don’t you think, dear Mary?”
Often dejected, Father was, throughout this period … buoyant. His walk, which was sometimes slow and crestfallen, was then … tall and proud. Often laconic, Father was at this time … animated. While we ate, he waxed on about our small town and how one day, if led by the right people, it would be a large town—possibly even a city. He was almost giddy as he explained to the five of us how this transformation could occur. On nights like those, I was grateful for our strict table rules that prevented children from speaking unless invited to do so. I had no idea how to respond to his grand vision, nor, it seems, did anyone else. It mattered not. He appeared to be rehearsing a speech more than seeking the input of Grandpa, Mother, Jim, Ina, or me.
The extended family meal on the Sunday after I returned from Toronto was held in the evening at the home of my aunt and uncle, Charlotte and William Turner. Their Church Street home was situated between the Wesleyan Grace Methodist Church, which we always attended, and the Presbyterian Church, which we never attended. Our walk to their home that afternoon was quick and purposeful. Father set the pace. Twice he told Mother to quicken her step and to “brighten up.” As for me, I could not have walked faster nor been brighter. The house to which we were going had once belonged to Aunt Charlotte’s parents, Jas and Selina Stephens. Although I had been there countless times in my short life, this was the first time I would enter it with the perspective I had gained from my time with Aunt Lil. I longed to see the house as Jas and Selina would have seen it. As if that wasn’t enough to make me smile, Father told us that we would not on this day be returning to church in the evening, as was our custom on Sunday nights.
The odd nature of the week continued through that late afternoon. As we entered the Turners’ main door, Dr. Heggie exited it. In their large sitting room, we found the home’s occupants. The boys were sitting quietly (which was queer) and motionless (queerer still) on a little sofa staring at one of Bill’s fingers, then freshly bandaged. Aunt Charlotte and her sister, Aunt Rose, were locked in an embrace on a long sofa across from them. Uncle William and Uncle James stood silently in front of the fireplace. No one rose to greet us. No one invited us to sit down. Our entrances to church were not carried off with the level of silence that pierced this room. In a true testament to the singular nature of the scene, Ina and I shared an unknowing glance. Neither of us knew what had befallen our family, and neither, it seemed as we looked at them, did any of our cousins.
Within minutes, we all found places, Father joining the men near the fireplace; Mother, the women on the long sofa. In the silence, I contemplated the despair within the room. Dr. Heggie’s bag seemed heavy as he left the house. His right arm was fully extended above the hand that gripped its handle. That recollection, and the morose countenances of the adults within the room, confirmed to me that no baby had been left behind.
Eventually, Uncle William turned his soft grey eyes from the mirror atop the mantel and looked at each of us. He was a handsome man, tall, with a near full head of brown hair parted to one side and swept across his high forehead well above his clean-shaven face. “Children,” he began, addressing his remarks primarily to his two sons on the little couch to his left and four of their cousins on the couch in front of him, “some of you were cautioned that I had sad news to impart. It is time that I disclosed to you something that the adults in our family have known for a little more than a week.” He spoke slowly. “I have made a decision that is going to change all of your lives—particularly, of course, those of you, Roy and Bill. But I am not insensible of the affect my decision will have on your young cousins,” he turned to us, “or indeed, on their parents.”
He looked around the room and then back at Roy and Bill. “I know that my decision will deprive them of something very valuable—your society and that of your mother.” He looked at Aunt Charlotte as he said so. “I have not made this decision lightly or without thought to your future,” he said, turning back to his sons. “Indeed, I pray that you will one day understand that this difficult decision I have made, I have made primarily for your future.”
He stopped, looked toward the window in front of him, and then went on. “In short, I have taken a position as Western Manager of the Maple Leaf Milling Company. We will leave for Winnipeg soon—possibly even within the next two weeks, assuming,” he said, even more quietly and yet quite seriously, “that we are not driven out before then. I am sorry that we were not able to tell you earlier. My current position, of course, made it necessary that the matter be kept in confidence until all of the arrangements could be made and the appropriate notices given. I have reason to believe,” he said, looking knowingly at Father, “that the last of the arrangements will be made this evening and that my relocation will be announced tomorrow. I will require each of you to keep the matter within our family until that time—but it is not such a long way off. Can I depend on you for that?” We all nodded in assent, no one saying a word, although I felt well qualified to vouch for the dependability of secret keepers within our family.
The stillness that had enveloped the room prior to our entrance returned, and we sat not knowing quite what to say or do, until a little squeak emanated from the couch on which Roy and Bill sat. Seeing all heads turn to him, Bill held up his bandaged finger, being more able, it seemed, to admit the current pain of a gash than the anticipated pain of longing. But that little sob was enough to break the silence. Hannah, John, and Ina rushed to the little couch, gathering around Roy and Bill. The sisters on the long couch renewed their embraces and began to sputter. Father and Uncle James, who were both in front of the fireplace, stepped even closer to Uncle William, who was between them. I stayed where I was, observing the three scenes.
Roy, it appeared, was taking the news somewhat better than his younger brother Bill, and being the more jovial of the two by nature, he sought to lighten the mood. “Bill, don’t let that little bang get to you. Just imagine—yours is the first accident we have had with the new car. It will be remembered for all time.” It was revealed that Bill had caught his finger in the heavy door of the Turners’ new car earlier that afternoon. “At least Dr. Heggie didn’t require the car to be destroyed. Remember when Ed Jones’ dog bit my leg when I was riding my bicycle home from school last year? Dr. Heggie gave me ten stitches.” He pulled up his pant leg to show us the scar above his ankle. “And then he had the dog shot. Poor King. He was only trying to have some fun.” Looking at the faces turned up to him in wonder, Roy took on a new approach. “Come to think of it, if we aren’t going to be here to guide you young cousins…” he said, turning now to look at the three of them on the floor in front of him.
“Ahem,” Ina interjected, pushing an errant strand of hair from her face. “I am the same age as Bill.”
“But you are younger than me, cousin,” Roy replied. “As I was saying, if we are not going to be here to guide you, I think there are a few lessons about Brampton that we had better go over before we leave. Let’s get started. You know the big oak down at the Flats? Come on, we’ll show you what you can do within it.” The group started for the door, Aunt Charlotte calling after them, “Mind you are wearing your Sunday clothes. And be back in an hour.”
I chose not to join them, and it seemed I was not missed—neither by the gaggle of cousins and siblings walking out nor the cluster of aunts and uncles staying in. Instead I moved to the little rocker nestled in the corner of the room. The little rocking chair had for a time belonged to each of Jas and Selina’s children and grandchildren—always by the youngest of them who was able to sit independently. Unless Dr. Heggie obliged me with the delivery of a younger sibling, I knew I would be its longest occupant of my generation. The chair was conveniently placed, being in the room in which the adults generally congregated but tucked in a corner between a big couch and the small couch perpendicular to it.
Just as the ladies’ view of me from their long couch was obscured, so was mine of them, but as I rocked, I listened to their words. “Oh, Charlotte,” Aunt Rose cried. “How will we bear it? In all these years, we’ve never been apart.”
“I agree, Rose!” Aunt Charlotte replied. “Though somehow I am sure we will manage.”
“It will not be the same,” Mother added. “It will never be the same again.”
“You are right, my dear sister-in–law,” Aunt Charlotte replied. “You are so right.”
The ladies went on, repeating in a variety of ways that Aunt Charlotte would be missed and that she would miss Mother and Aunt Rose.
“Your brother, Charlotte,” Mother added. “You will be heartily missed by him.”
“And I shall miss him in turn, but you know, Mary,” Aunt Charlotte said to Mother, “this move may not be all bad for Jethro. William’s resignation may provide Jethro with the opportunity he has long sought.”
“I know, dear Charlotte. And who is more deserving?” Mother asked with true sincerity. “But at what cost?”
While I tried to discern the opportunities that would be presented to Father, Uncle William reminded his wife of her desire to show the other two ladies the peonies in the back yard. The three ladies rose and left the room.
My attention turned to the men, still standing by the fireplace, which, since it was July, emitted no heat. Their preoccupation was principally the politics of the move. This was an appropriate topic for discussion, for at that time my Uncle William was the mayor of the Town of Brampton. The move to Winnipeg would necessitate his resignation from office five and a half months before his term would otherwise have expired.
“When do you expect to hear from Handle?” Uncle James asked as soon as the ladies left the room.
“Any moment,” Uncle William replied. “He has been consulting with the town fathers all day. I was sorry to ask him to do this on a Sunday—he’s a good church man himself, but he loves backroom politics, and he told me last week that I just had to give him the word and he’d start the process. As soon as I entered our church this morning and saw the peculiar way that Treadgold looked at me, I knew that he knew, and I knew, of course, that it would not be long before the rest of the town fathers knew. That would be a grave outcome for you, Doc,” he said, referring to Father. For over four decades Mr. Treadgold had been the proprietor of the local piano shop. Over those years, when not selling musical instruments, he had been an active member of the local town council.
“I fear your chances will be materially jeopardized if the town fathers are so angry with me that they refuse to consider my brother-in-law as my ideal successor,” Uncle William continued, “so before sitting in our pew, I feigned a headache and left the church. I practically ran up the street to retrieve Handle from your church. Fortunately, he had not yet entered.
“Damn that John Cooney,” Uncle William cursed, his profanity confirming to me that he was unaware of my proximity. Then, turning to my other uncle, he went on. “You were right, James, I should not have spoken to that real estate agent until after the announcement was made. He has likely already lined up a buyer, and while he had no notion of why I was intending to sell, the fact that I had not also asked him to secure a new location for us likely led him to a conclusion that was in fact the truth—that we are leaving town. But I felt I could not wait longer to speak with him. I truly fear we will be driven out. We need to be able to move quickly.”
The men continued their exchange. Uncle William made it clear that he hoped that Father would succeed him as the mayor of the town. Uncle James agreed, suggesting that Father’s experience as chair of the high school board and chair of the water commission would allow Father to continue Uncle William’s reform agenda. “What this town needs, we all know, is industry, and industry will only come if we have the electricity, sewers, and roads to support it and an educated workforce. Some of us, of course,” he said, looking somewhat critically at Uncle William, “are more optimistic about obtaining that industry than others.”
Uncle William confessed to feeling less optimistic about the town’s future. He considered the late 1870s and early 1880s to be Brampton’s heyday.
“Brampton has made great headway over the past ten years,” Uncle James argued. “You saw the Dominion’s report released last month. Not many towns in all of Canada have seen such growth. And yes, it took you quite a bit of effort to convince Whitewear to start their business here, but look at the other industries that have done so. The Williams Shoe Company now employs nearly a hundred. Add the Dale Estate and Copeland Chatterson,” he said, referring to two large local employers, “and you have another three hundred.”
They went on, exchanging figures and company names but with numbers so large and names so complicated and with the constant rocking of my little chair, I began to drift off to sleep.
I was awakened some time later by a voice confirming the state I had just left. “That’s my daughter, Jessie,” Father said. “We hadn’t even noticed her there. But she’s asleep, Handle. No need to worry about her presence.” I continued in my head-drooped pose. I did not know who Handle was, but I knew my father and my two uncles. I found all of them gruff and somewhat terrifying at the best of times. I did not relish the thought of being discovered eavesdropping—something I was most assuredly doing. Daring not to look up, I watched the legs and feet of the men as their discussion ensued.
This was not a conversation to be had sitting down, apparently, as the men did not move significantly from the fireplace, although there were seats in the room for thrice their number. I knew that Uncle William was closest to the fireplace, toward its centre. I could easily identify his pinstriped black pants and expensive-looking polished black shoes. Uncle James stood to his left. He was a bigger man, and his black pants, while obviously well made, displayed a greater amount of fabric. Possibly to support his additional weight, his black shoes were somewhat heavier-looking. Father wore his signature white patent leather shoes below his brown well-worn slim-cut slacks and stood to the right of Uncle William. The new man—Roger Handle was his name—stood in front of Uncle William, his back toward me. His legs were like tree stumps, wide and tall, covered in volumes of grey fabric. I could only imagine his height. Mr. Handle wore big black shoes, only the heels of which I could see. His toes pointed toward Uncle William in front of him, and they did not move once the entire time I watched them.
“What did you find, Roger? Who did you speak to?” Uncle William began.
“Well, it’s not pretty, my good fellows,” Handle answered. “Not a pretty sight. They’re mad. And they’re disappointed. But they’re mostly mad. You made a good decision, Billy-boy, in calling on me to act as your intermediary.”
“Billy-boy.” I wondered whether my young cousin had re-entered the room. Stealing a glance upward, I realized that Mr. Handle must have been referring to my Uncle William by the abbreviated name that the rest of us applied to his son.
“Yes, it is a good thing you called me. Otherwise I’m afraid they’d be just mad. But I worked on the sympathy angle for you, Billy-boy. Said you had bills to pay and big expenses coming your way. Said that you lived beyond your means and that you had to take that fancy job in Winnipeg to get out of your problems. I said, though, that you weren’t going to leave the town high and dry—that your brother-in-law had agreed at your particular request to fill the breach, and given your brother-in-law’s civic commitment and experience, that you actually thought the town was better in his hands than in yours.” An awkward silence filled the air.
“I confess, Roger,” Uncle James replied slowly, “I hadn’t thought of you taking a tack like that.”
“Well, of course you didn’t, Jimmy-boy,” Handle replied. I quickly determined he was referring to Uncle James. “That’s why Billy-boy called me. I know how these people think. Know them all like they were my own family. I know as sure as I know the sun will rise tomorrow that if those good men discover that your brother-in-law has so little hope for the future of our fair town that he sought out opportunities for himself and his family elsewhere, they’d run him out of town and possibly the rest of your family too. That would not have aided the cause. Besides, I saw that new Russell outside this house today. You can’t tell me, Billy-boy, it is easy to afford an automobile like that.”
After a time, Uncle William broke the silence. He took a step closer to Mr. Handle. “So what is the upshot of it all, Roger? With whom did you speak? What will they support?”
“Let me tell you first the town fathers I spoke with. Not that it was easy to do this on the Lord’s Day but because they all know me so well and because they trust my political instincts, I was able to pry them from their pews and family dinners long enough to impart what I had to impart and extract what I had to extract.”
“Yes,” Father said somewhat impatiently, “with whom did you speak?”
“Don’t be so impatient, young man,” he replied. I realized that Mr. Handle had not the wherewithal to further abbreviate either Jethro or Doc and add the word “boy” to the appellation. Of course, the term “young man,” which consisted of more syllables than “Doc,” was no abbreviation at all. I concluded that Mr. Handle must be a very old man if Uncle William and Uncle James were boys to him, and Father was a young man. “I know what you want out of this. And it’s likely to be a long road, so you’d better be patient.”
“In summary,” Mr. Handle said, speaking principally to Uncle William, “of the twelve, two will gladly now see the back of you, three are considering discrediting you, and two are sad you are leaving. Two may support Doc as your immediate successor. The others are on the fence. They, gentlemen, hold the balance of power. I will leave you and return in an hour or two’s time with their final resolution.”
Within minutes, I was found and dispatched by my mother to retrieve my siblings and cousins. Though the mission would have required me to walk but two blocks, I got no further than the Turners’ driveway. There, I found my brother Jim sitting behind the wheel of the Turners’ new motor vehicle. Automobiles had begun to appear in Brampton in the early 1900s. The first made its entrance under the power of Lord Minto, the Governor General of Canada and his wife Lady Minto who drove to Brampton to inspect its famous greenhouses. But in 1907 there were still very few cars in Brampton. The Turner family was among the small group of automobile owners. Uncle William had promised to take us all for a ride in his newest vehicle later that day.
Like all new technologies, the public was divided in its support for the new means of conveyance. Most members of my family were cautiously optimistic about their future acceptance. They believed that once motorized vehicles were built more reliably and once they were priced more affordably, they might become the predominant mode of transportation. Those in that group were certain that such conditions would never be met in their lifetime. But that group did not include my brother Jim. He was confident that the automobile would replace the horse and buggy within ten years. That group also did not include Aunt Lil who, naturally, took a different view. Though she was rarely a defender of tradition, Aunt Lil took a strong stand against the new means of transportation. She considered automobiles to be noisy, smelly, unsociable, and dangerous. She predicted that it would only be a few years before the contraptions were banned.
The car in which Jim sat was not running, and after being assured that it would not actually go anywhere, I allowed him to pull me into it.
“Wouldn’t it be exciting to own one of these, Jessie?” my brother mused.
“I don’t know,” I replied. I didn’t like to take a position contrary to Jim, who I idolized, but I secretly fell into my Aunt Lil’s camp. Cars scared me. “I miss Daisy and Petunia.” Daisy and Petunia were the Turners’ two horses, both of whom had been moved out of the barn at the back of their house and sold to make way for the automobile.
“The car eats a lot less hay than Daisy and Petunia do,” Jim said. “And we don’t have any horses that we would have to get rid of to make way for a car. Of course, it costs a lot of money, and I expect we will have to wait for the price to come down before Father can buy one. I saw this car, this Russell F, advertised in the Conservator last week. It cost $3,750. It’s the top of the line model made by the Canada Cycle and Motor Co. It has a forty horsepower engine and can sit seven people in these two bench seats.” He rubbed his hand over the dashboard. “The frame is pressed chrome steel. Isn’t it beautiful?” He didn’t seem to notice my lack of response as he went on.
“Mark my words, Little One, in another ten years no one in Brampton will be riding in horse-drawn carriages. They’ll all be riding in automobiles. And they won’t look like this either.” I shuddered at his premonition regarding their full-scale adoption but nonetheless asked for an explanation regarding their future look.
“Look at this car, Jessie,” he explained. “It is shaped to look exactly like a buggy. Two long, curved benches in the back with a long motor in front, very much resembling a carriage pulled by a horse. This,” he said, waving at the area in which we sat, “is not a carriage and that,” he added, pointing to the engine at the front, “is not a horse. There is no reason for the automobile to look this way except to make us all feel comfortable with the familiar shape. But the vehicle may look better and run more efficiently if it were shaped differently. Who knows,” he said wistfully, “maybe someday I will discover that better form.”
“Do you know how to build an automobile?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know now but I could learn. There are hundreds of people across the world trying to build them. Some have figured it out.”
I sat there running my hand along the various parts of the interior, enjoying my brother’s animated description of every component and instrument. It was only the hollering of my cousins from the street in front of the house that reminded me of the errand I was supposed to have run. Clearly, I wasn’t needed for that purpose.
Ninety minutes later, our meal ended with a knock at the door. Uncle William, announcing that it was likely Mr. Handle, rose to retrieve him, and the children were excused. Aunt Charlotte, praising my civility, accepted my proposal to clear the table. It was an inaugural offer made for the true motive of hearing the outcome of Mr. Handle’s engagement—an offer I nearly recanted when I first took in the countenance of the man then being admitted to the dining room. It seemed impossible to me that the stranger with the young, child-like face was the man who had referred to my two uncles as boys and my father as a young man. However, upon viewing his tree-like legs and heavy shoes and hearing his greeting to those assembled, I slowly began to lift the empty plates.
Neither the men nor the women made any attempt to move to the sitting room, and so Mr. Handle was invited to address the entire group seated at the dining room table. Whether this surprised him or not, I could not tell, but as political conversations in our family so often took place around such tables and hence involved the women as well as the men, it was not surprising from my perspective. Indeed, the discussion over the prior hour had primarily centred on the very matter at hand—Mother expressing her abject disbelief that anyone would consider Father unsuitable for the vacancy about to be created. She even suggested that the views of the town fathers be ignored, if necessary, in favour of a direct appeal to the electors. This notion received short shrift by Father, who declared that if the town fathers did not want him for the position, he did not want it.
After declining Aunt Charlotte’s offer of dessert, Mr. Handle began, first apologizing for the delay in returning. “It took longer than I thought it would. The town fathers, while united on some matters,” he said, looking at that moment toward Father, “were quite divided on others.”
Mr. Handle turned to Uncle William. “The upshot is that the group requires you to leave Brampton right away—before you change your mind. I think that some within the group see great opportunities for themselves if you exit politics quickly.”
Turning toward Father, he said, “The group requires that there be a race for the mayoralty, even though there are only five months left in the term. They will not support the appointment of an acting mayor.”
“Who else do they propose be on the ballot?” Father asked.
“They are going to run Treadgold.”
“Treadgold,” Father said, relief evident in his tone. “That old coot?” I suppose Father thought he could easily beat the elderly gentleman.
“Yes, Treadgold,” Mr. Handle confirmed. “But not just him.” Father had hoped for this addendum, but not the next. “Charters is going to run too, but on the understanding that he will serve the five-month term only. He plans to run as the Conservative candidate in the next provincial election, which he believes will be called in the spring of ’08. While that will create an opening early in the New Year, I am sorry to say, young man,” his remarks continued to be directed to Father, “that they want that vacancy filled by Billy-boy’s other brother-in-law—you, Jimmy-boy,” he said, turning to Uncle James.
Uncle James said nothing, but Mr. Handle assumed, I suppose, that he would ultimately agree. Father was equally quiet and bowed his head. Mother, who had moved beside him, turned her attention fully to her husband and put one of her hands on one of his. Father yanked his away, crossed his arms over his chest, and turned his head up toward the ceiling. Everyone else remained focused on Mr. Handle, who continued.
“If this is agreeable, Billy-boy, then your resignation will be tendered at tomorrow night’s regular town council meeting. Nominations will be open for a week, and the election will be held the week after that. In that regard, it is a condition that all the usual nomination formalities and niceties occur. To that end, in true Brampton fashion, you, Jimmy-boy,” he said, looking at Uncle James, “and each of Charters and three others will nominate each other to stand for mayor. Each of you will decline the nomination except Treadgold and Charters. If asked, Billy-boy, you will say that your motivation for leaving the town springs from Mrs. Turner’s declining health and her need for the drier air of the West.”
“My wife has never been sick a day in her life,” Uncle William interjected. “Who would believe that explanation?”
“The men would. They never notice things like that, and it is chiefly their opinion we are concerned with. The notion that you were impecunious was found to be incredulous.
“Give me your word as a gentleman that you will go along with all of this, and you will get a proper send-off with ceremonies in your honour hosted by the town, and the local Liberals—of which you are a great supporter—will give you a grandfather clock.”
“You do make it difficult for me to leave,” Uncle William said sarcastically.
With that Mr. Handle left the house and I moved the last of the napkin rings to the sideboard.
We Stephenses were a sorry lot as we walked home that night—though Ina, who was particularly close to our cousins Roy and Bill, was especially forlorn. Jim was dejected as well because the promised ride in the Russell had not transpired. Mother was sad because Father was sad. Father was the saddest of all. No one suggested that he pick up his step or brighten up.
Chapter 5
New Year’s Day
The mortification experienced by my father that tumultuous day in the summer of 1907 appeared to have entirely dissipated by early January six months later. Time had whiled away the humiliation he experienced at the town fathers’ rejection of him and the betrayal he felt at his brother-in-law’s rejection of the town. For most of his adult life, Father gained his self-esteem from his profession, and in those months he sought and received particular solace in it. One of Brampton’s three or fewer dentists for much of his career, Father was a well-known and—for the most part—well respected member of the Brampton community. The nickname “Doc” by which he was referred by nearly all Bramptonians is evidence of the dominant effect his career had on his entire life.
It was a career for which he was well prepared. After graduating from high school with honours, Father worked for two years before pursuing a degree in dental science from the College of Dental Surgeons in Toronto. After taking the gold medal for the best practical work, he travelled to Philadelphia, where he obtained a second degree, this one in dental surgery. Once again he distinguished himself, graduating within the top five members of the 119-person class. Fortune then struck, as his return to Brampton coincided with the death of one of Brampton’s two dentists. Acquiring the long-established business, Father closed down the “dental parlour” of the late Dr. D. MacFarlane and moved the acquired patients and such of the equipment he desired to keep to the second floor of his father’s Queen Street building.
To mark their son’s accomplishments, Jas and Selina presented him with a black-and-white twelve-by-eight-inch sign engraved “J.G. Stephens, D.D.S., R.C.D.S.” The sign was installed next to the small street-level door of their Queen Street building. When Father’s office was open for business, a small wooden sign hung just below it so indicating. Over the years, Father added a third sign. Owing to its intended temporary nature, this sign, usually somewhat askew, read “Please push firmly to open,” and then in smaller letters below, “and close tightly behind you.” The fact that there was never an occasion to remove this temporary sign was a clear indication of my father’s inability to use a planer on the swollen door and his failure to hire someone else to do so.
Once the door was firmly pushed open and then tightly closed, Father’s patients were met by a dark, narrow staircase illuminated by two small wall sconces and whatever natural light penetrated the frosted glass in the transom above the street level door. Here the patients were also introduced to the mint-green walls that would surround them within the staircase and throughout Father’s offices. In all the years he occupied them, the colour of the walls never changed—only the extent to which they were marred by fingerprints of sticky-handed children, gashes and gouges made by the belongings moved up to and down from the second floor, and the general dirt and grime of the town caused in large part by the iron mills located behind the building.
At the top of the stairs, the door to the right led to a small apartment. Straight ahead, the door bore a sign, identical to the black-and-white sign at street level. A bell announced the admission of people walking through that door and into Father’s windowless, multi-doored waiting room. Four chairs and a small sofa were arranged against the walls, two end tables and two coffee tables among them.
No receptionist was there to greet patients. Instead, a framed rectangular sign affixed to the far wall directed patients to take a seat and wait until the dentist was available to see them. There were no prearranged appointments. Patients came to see the dentist when they had the need and the time, and the dentist saw them as he had the availability.
In addition to the waiting room, Father’s offices were comprised of a treatment room, a lab, and a business office. The four rooms were laid out in a square with doors connecting each room near their confluence. Once, while Father stood on the street talking to a departing patient, I ran eight circuits through those connecting rooms. Eventually, Father’s roar ended my frolic. By that time my stomach was nauseous and my head reeling.
After Father escorted a patient out of his treatment room, through the waiting room and to the door to the landing and stairway, he turned, greeted all assembled, inquired as to who was next, and based on that honour system, escorted that patient into the treatment room. I firmly believe that this was the part of his practice that Father enjoyed the most: standing in that room, surveying all who sat waiting to see him, all who believed that obtaining his services was worth the wait, the time required to be away from their own businesses, the time it took to travel from their farm into town, the time away from their schools or hearths or any other things that they might have liked or needed to do.
An exception to the “first come, first served” rule was made in the case of children. Children were always seen at the first available opportunity. This custom led Father’s patients to believe he had a special fondness for children, but his motivation in seeing them early sprang from an entirely different direction. Father desired to have all children treated and removed from his offices before their cries distracted him or his patients and before their fidgeting caused havoc among the newspapers and other adornments in the waiting room.
No matter the motivation, the practice made Father a favourite among the parents of young children, although, I can vouchsafe, no favourite of the children. One of the competing dentists in town was a man we affectionately referred to as “Old” Dr. French—although he was no older than Father. Old Dr. French was a jolly man carrying a few too many pounds around the middle. He had a full allocation of white hair, which he wore on the top of his head like a mop and on his face in the form of friendly mutton chops. Enjoying the company of children as he did, he had no qualms keeping them in his waiting room for as long as it took for him to see them in the ordinary course. Erupting cries from that room were usually silenced by a lollipop. At the end of the visit, all minor patients were issued a coupon redeemable for one ice cream cone at the nearby dairy.
These practices, as Father critically pointed out, by inducing further tooth decay, created many more opportunities for the children to see Old Dr. French. This mattered not to the children, who adored him. Sometimes, on becoming newly acquainted with me and learning that my father was one of the town’s dentists, a child’s face would light up. My negative response to their next question as to whether my father was Old Dr. French sometimes produced an equal amount of disappointment on both our parts.
Amounts payable for Father’s professional services were calculated prior to any procedure being performed, based on a schedule of fees also posted on a wall in the waiting room. Payment was due on provision of services, in cash or in kind. No statements of services rendered were prepared, as there were no insurers or any other third parties that required any such report. Father did maintain a ledger of patients indebted to him, given that, despite the signage, many did not pay on provision of his services.
The status Father attached to his profession compensated for what was often a deficiency in cash. Like Dr. Heggie, my father was often paid for his services in kind. In that respect, our family was very fortunate for the prodigiously soft teeth and poor oral hygiene of some of Brampton’s best merchants and farmers. Generally, their accounts were settled over time with deliveries to our back door of farm-fresh eggs and fine cuts of meat. True, Mother did not have the luxury as some wives did of being able to plan the next day’s main course meal, but we tried to make spontaneity a virtue.
We all knew when the Robertson family visited Father. It was generally a half-day affair with the parents, the elderly grandparents, and their growing brood of children. The decreasing number of teeth in the older generation was compensated for by the increasing number in the younger. Their signature form of payment was carrots. In the weeks following their visits, Mother served fresh-cut carrots for snacks, sliced, boiled carrots at dinner (as we called our midday meal), creamed carrots at tea (as we called our evening meal), and carrot soup and cake at both of those meals. Mother knew that the goods delivered to us were as good as money if they were used properly, and she never let them go to waste.
One of the many desirable aspects of the profession, according to Father, was the ability to expound upon one’s political views without a contrary argument being waged. He delighted in telling us how he waited until a man’s mouth was fully pried open, with one or more devices inside it, to “discuss” the latest issues before the town council, the elementary or high school board, the provincial legislature or the Dominion parliament. His greatest pleasure arose when the mouth so engaged was that of a Liberal or some other person who took a position opposite to Father’s.
From the earliest days of his childhood, it was made clear to my brother Jim that he would enter the profession of dentistry and join Father’s practice. My cousin John was spared the early presumption in this respect, but whenever the subject of John’s future was raised in the absence of his father, my Uncle James, Father always encouraged John to join Jim in this pursuit. Father had great visions for expanding his practice to include both Jim and John, and as my Aunt Rose, John’s mother, never dissuaded her brother from making these overtures, it was understood that she shared my father’s vision.
Father relished every opportunity he had to expound that view. Thus, the arrival at our door of Uncle James’s upstairs tenant while we enjoyed our 1908 New Year’s Day dinner was not unwelcome to Father. Uncle James was barely out the door to attend to the burst pipes in his building when Father began. “It is a profession, boys. That is what sets it apart from nearly every other endeavour. No offence to your husband, Rose,” Father added for the benefit of his sister, whose demeanour at the table made it clear that none was taken, “but anyone with a little capital can be a merchant. He might even be a successful merchant—until the next man with a little capital comes along and sets up shop right next to him, and having a newer, cleaner shop with slightly newer goods takes away the business from the first shop owner. Then the second shop owner thrives and the first suffers. Again, I say this meaning no offence to your father, John.”
John, who was then eight years of age, took this insult to his father’s occupation as would any young boy hearing it from his own uncle in the presence of his seemingly complicit mother—with silence rather than rebuttal, with a slight extension of that part of his body already under the table and a contraction of that above it.
“But isn’t the same true of dentistry?” Aunt Lil chimed in. New Year’s Day was one of the two days a year she “graced us with her presence,” as Father would say. “Couldn’t you open a dental clinic and have someone else open one near you? Isn’t that just what Doc Al faced when you set up your clinic down the road from his? And did you not encounter the same experience after Doc Al retired with Doctors Peaker and French, who came to town after your practice was established?”
“But that is my point entirely,” Father replied. “In the years since Doc French and I started practicing dentistry in 1891 until this year, there have been not more than three other dentists in the entire town. Now how many merchants are there in Brampton, boys? Too many to count, obviously. And who knows how many there will be tomorrow? Because all you need to be a merchant is a little money and a modest amount of intelligence, no offence to your father of course, John. To be a dentist you need that same quantity of funds and more, because in addition to the premises you must acquire and equip as any merchant does, you must qualify yourself with years of schooling and you must be blessed with a very steady hand. This would elude most people. But as a result of the efforts of your fathers and your own intellectual and physical gifts, you boys will have the means to be so qualified.”
“You concede, brother,” Aunt Lil replied, “that should young John wish to follow you in this pursuit, it will have been his father’s efforts as a successful merchant that gave him the financial means to do so?”
Father would have had to concede the point, but at that moment Mother was clearing the table and asked him to pass her the turkey platter. He was unusually solicitous in his efforts to assist her that day, gathering for her as well the cranberries, salt, and pepper. With those matters attended to, he resumed.
“Furthermore, and this too cannot be ignored, everyone who has actual teeth or wishes to have fabricated teeth is in need of the services of a dentist. But does everyone require the wares that merchants sell? Pumpkin, please, Mary, and only a bit of cream.” Father didn’t miss dessert, no matter how engrossed he was in a conversation or diatribe. “Of course not. Many a farmer’s wife will make the bread that others will purchase from your father, John and, no offence intended, that wife would likely make it better and at less expense than that made in your father’s bakery.”
With every suggestion to which John was to take no offence, he sank a bit lower in his chair, being very careful all the while not to slouch. While Father was able to make these cutting observations of family and perfect strangers alike over the dinner table, we children were never permitted to slouch.
Aunt Lil interjected again. “That’s true, brother. Everyone should see a dentist, but I recently read that quite a small percentage of Ontarians regularly sees a dentist, and of those that do, some may see a dentist as seldom as once every three or four years. Bread, on the other hand,” Aunt Lil said, being sure to use an example that would raise her nephew up a few inches at the table, “is consumed by everyone every day, and statistics indicate that fewer and fewer Canadians actually bake it themselves. And so the person who may require a tooth to be filled once every two years will have purchased, assuming he consumes a quarter of a loaf of bread a day, over 180 loaves of bread between those two dental visits…”
“That, my dear, sister,” Father replied, beginning to get cross, “is why I charge what I do to fill a tooth. It is more than fifty times the price of a loaf of bread.
“The scientific endeavours are not to be discounted either, boys,” Father went on, swallowing his first piece of pie before doing so. He was directing his advocacy, as always, at John. It was well settled in our home that no convincing of my brother Jim was necessary. “Your father, John, might get some satisfaction in making yeast rise or in making pastry light and flaky. No offence to him, of course, but it cannot be anything to working with the dozens of chemicals and compounds I employ on a daily basis to make ever improving pastes, fillings, false teeth, pain relievers, and breath sanitizers.” I glanced at Mother, who had made the pies in front of us. The pastry was light and flaky. Was she to have been spared the offence as well? From the placid look on her face, I concluded that she either took none or that her attention was entirely diverted.
“Finally,” Father said, moving his empty plate forward on the table, “there is a question of lifestyle. Most merchants are required to work from dawn until dusk. Their stores must be open during all business hours and often, such as the case with a bakery,” he said, looking directly at his still shrinking nephew, “he must work, or supervise others working, long before that time so that his wares are ready when his shop opens. A dentist, on the other hand, sets his own hours. I never arrive at the office before nine in the morning, and I rarely stay after five in the evening, Saturdays excepted, when I work in the morning only. I come home for dinner at noon every day, and on many occasions I will close the office at other hours so that I can meet with concerned citizens and do the good works every gentleman seeks to do. In this way, I am much more my own man than any merchant, no offence to your father, of course.”
This roused Aunt Rose, who was finally about to speak, but before she could Aunt Lil took the floor again. “Really, Jethro. You can’t possibly be suggesting that a successful merchant, who has ample staff to mind his store, couldn’t contribute as much to society. James, of course, is a fine example, being at this time alone, merchant, mayor, and chief of the fire department.”
Sensing that his aunt’s rejoinder was as much for his benefit as that of his Mother, John spoke before Father could reply. “It doesn’t matter, Aunt Lil. I don’t want to be a merchant.”
The look of satisfaction on Father’s face could barely be contained. While I believe my father truly liked and admired his brother-in-law, James Darling, he most surely also bore him a certain amount of envy. It clearly gave Father a great amount of pleasure to see his nephew deciding to follow in his footsteps rather than those of his father. But his satisfaction was short-lived.
“I want to be a conductor,” John declared.
“A conductor, Johnny?” his mother replied, askance. “I know you love your piano, and one day you may be a great pianist, but I am not certain one can earn a living conducting an orchestra.”
“No!” John said, breaking the tension he had caused with a quick laugh. “Not an orchestra conductor. I want to be a train conductor. There aren’t very many of them: only one per train. Every train needs one. I won’t need any capital to be a conductor. I will see all kinds of people at each train station and bring smiles to the children as I wave my red kerchief at the boys and girls along the way. When the train breaks down, I will fix it. I’m good at fixing things. You’ve said so many times, Mother, haven’t you?” By this point John was perfectly serious. He had stopped laughing, but once he asked this question, the laughter was resumed by the five adults in the room.
As they shared what they concluded was a great joke, I looked at the children around the table. John, red with embarrassment, sank so low in his chair at this point that he would surely have been reprimanded for slouching if even one of the adults could find their way out of the fit of hilarity in which they were engaged. Ina’s face contorted with pity for her young cousin, mirroring what I expected was the look on my face. My brother Jim gazed down on his young cousin with a look I recognized. It took me a moment to place it. But then it came to me. It was a look I had mostly seen in the reverse; it was a look often applied by John to my brother, Jim. It was a look of complete and utter admiration.
When the adults finally finished their convulsing, rubbing their rib cages to massage away the pain caused by the great joke, Aunt Rose ended the conversation. “John,” she said, “I am not certain that you will be a dentist one day, but I will tell you quite certainly what you will not be. You will not be a train conductor. No son of mine is going to take up a trade involving his hands.” Then, realizing that to be a good part of what a dentist does, she elaborated, “Being immersed in wet filth.” To that there was no reply. We did not then know what a cesspool of germs was the human mouth.
* * *
That night after changing into my nightgown, I slipped downstairs for a glass of milk. As I padded down the maid’s stairs at the end of the hall, proposing to enter the kitchen from the pantry at the back, I was stopped by voices on the other side of the wall. I was certain that I heard Grandpa utter the word “destroyed.”
Self-made; others-destroyed, I thought. I had been seeking to learn how these words applied to Grandpa, and suspecting I might soon attain that knowledge, I proceeded to the closed door that connected the pantry to the kitchen.
“It’s been over four years,” Grandpa said. “He was good enough to take me in when he did, but I never dreamed that I’d stay so long. I only planned to stay long enough to bring some order to what is left of my meagre savings.”
“That’s right,” Mother replied. “But Father, I suspect you have little more the means to live independently now than you did four years ago. I am sorry to pry into your personal affairs, but you must see this. You did a good thing for our community twenty-six years ago. It nearly destroyed you. But you did what a decent person would do; now let us continue doing a decent thing for you.”
“But it isn’t your responsibility to pay for my mistakes. You are not the cause of the Scottish Fiasco. Why should you and your family have to suffer the consequences?”
“Father, we are hardly suffering. Jethro, the children, and I love having you here. And you know,” she said slowly, “I know I shouldn’t. I am a grown woman. But I need you here. You provide ballast to this sometimes tumultuous ship. We needn’t speak of it, but I know that you can see that too. Please stay; if not for yourself, then for me.”
“For a while longer then,” he eventually said. “For a while longer.”
I returned to my room by the stairs I had just descended, my thirst forgotten. I contemplated all that I had seen and heard that day. We were not in the habit of enunciating annual resolutions, but as I lay in my bed that night, I came to two. Firstly, I would learn the meaning of the phrase “Scottish Fiasco.” The way it was uttered, I could tell that it was something undesirable. Surely it related to the “others-destroyed” phrase. Secondly, when I grew up, I would become a dentist. Reasonable hours, the ability to make potions out of chemical compounds and liquids, the captive audiences formed by one’s clientele: it all seemed quite compelling to me.
Chapter 6
The Governor’s Story
As a child living in Brampton in the early twentieth century, I was afraid of many things: the smell of gas emitted by light fixtures; the tongues of fire that spewed from the furnace in our cellar; the sound of my father’s voice when raised against my mother; the sound of my father’s voice when raised against me. One thing I was not afraid of, though, was the institution designed to deprive people of their very liberty, to restrain those who had committed treacheries against their fellow man, to hold lunatics who would otherwise be a threat to themselves and others: the local jail. I was not frightened by its massive three-storey size, its foot-deep stone walls, its barred windows, its massive solid door, the small, isolated cells in which the prisoners lived or the gallows from which they were hanged. I was not afraid of the jail, even though the edifice stood on Wellington Street just two doors down from our house.
I once heard my cousin Bill ask Aunt Rose if she was afraid of the jail and its inmates. The question was particularly relevant, since her family, the Darlings, lived right across from the jail. Their house, the mirror image of ours, was also built by Grandpa. Wouldn’t it be to her home an escaped convict would first go? Bill asked. My aunt assured him that if ever an inmate fled the jail, the last place in which he would seek refuge would be a house so readily available for search by the authorities. Her house, she confidently declared, was the safest house in the town.
Her words provided me with great solace. I quickly concluded that if her house—the one directly across the road from the jail—was the last place to which a felon would escape, our house, just two doors east, was surely the third last place. In fact, I began to feel sorry for those in houses on the perimeter of the town, for surely their homes stood the greatest risk of such an intrusion.
Of course, my Aunt Rose also knew that most of the inmates of the local jail were not people of whom one needed to be particularly frightened. Few within it would actually desire to escape the relative warmth of its walls or the three square meals it provided (if you could call oatmeal for breakfast, soup and bread for lunch, and cornmeal for supper three square meals). Though the jail was regularly declared ill equipped to act as a place for the infirm or destitute, and though, as a result of the efforts of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, a house of refuge for the destitute had been built, the jail continued to house such misfortunates. Indeed, on a cold winter night many a poor God-fearing man would steal a loaf of bread or some other small trifle simply to have the privilege of being locked up in the jail until dawn restored the sun’s warm rays.
When I was a child, there were at all times at least five people in the jail that you would be pleased to have to your home for Sunday dinner. They were the jail’s superintendent, his wife, and their three children, all of whom lived in an apartment within its thick stone walls. The superintendent was actually known as a governor—a strange title, I always thought, for one with a principality of twelve thousand square feet and a population of between thirty and sixty souls. But as that was his official title, that was how he was always known.
Commensurate with the small size of his regime, the governor, it seemed, was not particularly well paid. Bob Parker, the governor I first remember, made many good-natured petitions to the more influential of the local ratepayers for an annual salary more befitting his position. His appeals were met with equally good-natured rejections. Governor Parker took the response in stride, but he never relinquished this quest. Since he could not persuade adult Bramptonians of the real perils from which his office protected them, he sought instead to convince their teenage children. Accordingly, once or twice a year, when the mood struck him and the teenagers were available, he would provide them with stirring accounts of some the jail’s most perfidious inhabitants. The teenagers were delighted to be the vessels of this aspect of his campaign and dutifully relayed the told tales to their tax-paying parents. My parents’ only criteria regarding the retelling by Ina and Jim was that it be done in my absence. Father declared my ears far too young to hear such accounts.
So it was that one day in late August 1909, less than a month before I began school, my friend Archie McKechnie and I came upon a gaggle of teenagers including my brother Jim and sister Ina, swarming the governor in front of the jail.
“You know what they’re doing, don’t you?” I asked Archie. “The governor is going to tell them a scary story about one of the jail’s inmates.”
“I know,” said Archie. “Let’s listen.”
“Oh! I can’t,” I protested. “Father says that I am too young to hear such stories.”
We were silent for a few minutes, but Archie, a year and a half older than me, the son of one of the town’s leading lawyers and destined, his parents said, to follow in his father’s footsteps, was always thinking of loopholes. He also had the advantage of knowing well the man about whom he would be directing his advantage. Before moving into our house when I was a toddler, the McKechnies were our neighbours. Our two families were well acquainted.
“Did your father ever tell you that you could not play around the jail?” Archie asked.
“No. He’s never said that.”
“Has your Father ever forbidden you from sitting on the steps of the jail and taking in the sun?”
“No,” I replied, quite confidently. “He likes it when I take in the sun.”
“Has he ever said you cannot sit in the sun and play ball while other people are having a conversation somewhere else?”
“No, he’s never done that either.”
“Wouldn’t it be fair to say, then,” he concluded, “that you are allowed to sit on the jail steps, take in the sun, and roll a ball back and forth between us while other people are having a conversation under the tree on the jail’s front lawn?”
It was not the best deductive reasoning, but it was sufficient for a curious six-year-old. We scurried onto the big, concrete steps at the front of the jail where, hidden from the view of the governor and teenagers by the high concrete risers, we silently rolled a ball back and forth as the governor, surrounded by a dozen teenagers, told his scary tale.
