Читать книгу War Brides - Melynda Jarratt - Страница 12
Оглавление| INTRODUCTION BY MELYNDA JARRATT | |
| SHE DID THE RIGHT THING | JOAN (SMEDLEY) LANDRY |
| SHE FINISHED WHAT SHE STARTED | HENRIETTA (STEVENS) PRONOVOST |
| SHE MADE HER OWN BED | JOYCE (HILMAN) BEZEAU |
| POSTMAN DO YOUR BEST | MORFYDD (MORGAN) GIBSON |
I’ll certainly be glad when this is all over
(A.L. Jolliffe, Director of Immigration Branch, as quoted in a 1945 letter he
wrote about English War Brides going to Quebec)
British women who married servicemen from Quebec during the Second World War faced a unique set of circumstances that set them apart from other War Brides who married into English families in Canada.
It was difficult enough adjusting to married life with a husband you barely knew, coping with the loneliness of rural life miles from the nearest city, and learning an entirely different way of running a household with wood stoves, no electricity or running water. But to be faced with the additional burden of learning a new language – and in many cases, a new religion – would have been a test of any woman’s resolve, not to mention her coping skills.
One War Bride came to an isolated island of less than a thousand people where she was the only person who wasn’t French.‘If I wanted to speak English, I had to talk to myself,’ she says of those first few years in Quebec.
Another complained that ‘Even the dog spoke French’1 – which may seem funny when we think about it now but it probably wasn’t then – especially for a young woman from a relatively sophisticated background who was faced with some extraordinary challenges in Quebec.
Map showing location of Quebec.
It’s hard to say whether War Brides who married into French-speaking families in Quebec knew what they were getting into. If a couple made their way through the bureaucratic process of filling out forms, getting permission to marry, meeting the padre and passing the necessary medical examinations, one would assume that the issue of language must have come up at least once. On the other hand, young lovers aren’t likely to listen to anyone’s opinion – especially when the opinion is that they shouldn’t marry because of language.
There is no doubt that Roman Catholic chaplains actively discouraged marriages between their Catholic soldiers and non-Catholic women; even commanding officers in the French regiments did the same. In January 1943 there had yet to be a marriage of a member of Le Régiment de la Chaudière in Britain – and the regiment had been there for two years.2
War Brides who came to a traditional, French Catholic family in Quebec did their best to fit in but what they soon found was that being accepted wasn’t simply a matter of learning the language or taking Holy Communion every Sunday. The famous Canadian novelist Hugh MacLennan described the tensions between prewar French and English Canada in his landmark of nationalist fiction The Two Solitudes. While many War Brides probably never even heard of Hugh MacLennan or his prize-winning novel before coming to Canada, if they had read his book it may have prepared them for what to expect when an English woman and a French Canadian man fall in love.
The Magdalen Islands are a tiny cluster of islands located in the Gulf of St Lawrence off the coasts of Quebec, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. Although the Islands are part of the province of Quebec, many of its inhabitants are of Acadian descent.
The more MacLennan’s two characters love each other, the more the prejudice against them increases. This leads them to the discovery that ‘love consists in this, that two solitudes protect, and touch and greet each other.’3
The Canadian government was not unaware of the problems which these marriages presented for British War Brides. Language, culture and identity are still a hotly contested issue in Canada and always have been. So when the inevitable began to happen and French-speaking Canadians started marrying British women, the alarm bells went off. It was especially worrisome for those headed to rural Quebec. How are these English women going to manage?
It was the responsibility of the Immigration Branch to investigate the settlement arrangements of all War Brides coming to Canada. As the correspondence shows, in 1944 and 1945 some concerns were being expressed at the highest levels about how to deal with the sensitive issues raised by a number of British wives – three in particular – who were preceding their husbands to Quebec. The problem seems to be that nobody spoke English in the homes where the wives were supposed to settle. The Directorate of Repatriation (Repat) wanted direction, knowing full well there would be a lot more cases just like this to follow.
It was out of individual cases that policy was developed and from what we can see of the response that Repat got from A.L. Jolliffe, then Director of the Immigration Branch, language was certainly not going to become a political issue when it came to the War Brides.
In a perfect example of bureaucratese, Repat was going to have to figure out a way to tell English War Brides what they were headed to in Quebec without actually saying that language might be a problem:
[Y]ou raise the question as to whether English is spoken in the household … We think that it would be inadvisable to the language question with relatives at this end … [and] it would be unwise to refuse to permit women to sail on the basis of difference of language. We will make sure they are informed in general terms of the location of the husband’s home and the fact that the same is a French-speaking community. Such intimation, together with the information obtained from the husbands, should be sufficient to enable the women to decide whether or not they wish to proceed in advance of the head of the family to Canada.4
Interestingly, on the back page of this same letter is one single sentence, typed in the middle of the page, which doesn’t appear to be intended for general consumption but must have summed up the Director’s feelings about the whole War Bride transportation and the headaches it was starting to cause for him: ‘I’ll certainly be glad when this is all over.’5
Of course, some Quebeckers spoke English and a few English War Brides were bilingual; and there were English enclaves in Quebec – especially Montreal – so some British wives actually married English-speaking Quebeckers and came to live in an English environment. Their difficulties with the French language began when they realized that they were a tiny dot in a sea of French. According to the 1941 census, of the more than three million people living in Quebec eighty-five per cent of the population spoke French; sixty per cent spoke French only; twelve per cent spoke English only and twenty-seven per cent were bilingual.6 It was a rare British War Bride in Quebec for whom language didn’t become an issue, either in learning it, or learning how to cope with it!
Joan Walker was a British War Bride who ended up in Val Dor, Quebec, a northern mining community. Trained in Parisian French in an elite Swiss finishing school, Walker was a self-professed city slicker who had worked as a journalist on Fleet Street in London before marrying a Canadian. Inspired by her experiences settling in to life in Quebec, she wrote a hilarious novel for Harlequin called Pardon my Parka which won Canada’s highest award for humour, the Leacock Award, in 1953.
In a chapter called ‘Icit on parle Quebecois’ (translation ‘We Speak French Here’) she describes her rather embarrassing introduction to a Mr Boisevert, a local man they hired to build their house:
During our long introductory session with Mr. Boisevert, I also gave tongue in what I had always been led to believe was French. I spoke about the exact shade of blue I wished for the room and how the front door must match it to a nicety. I mentioned the fact that a coloured bath, john and basin in the bathroom would not come amiss and would be preferable to the usual white.
Dusty pink. I was about to expand on the desirability of a tiled floor when Mr. Boisevert looked at me numbly and turned eyes like those of an agonized fawn upon Jim saying, ‘Mumble-mumble-mumble-ICIT!’
I swallowed.
Was it for this that I spent so much time in finishing school in Switzerland, learning French and apparently a lot of useless accomplishments?
‘What,’ I demanded of my spouse, ‘is the word that sounds like ee-sit? And why can’t the dumbcluck understand me?’
‘Ici-here,’ he said. ‘They tack a “t” on the end of some words ending with a vowel … Boisevert was explaining that you don’t speak the same French as they do here … Try speaking slowly and drop that Parisienne accent. And for the love of god, don’t be idiomatic. Translate more or less literally as you go along’
I tried and it worked. Mr. Boisevert brightened visibly. The only snag was that it didn’t work in reverse. All it did was release a torrent of Quebec French on my unsuspecting head.7
Like Joan Walker, a good sense of humour and a loving spouse would have made the transition to life in Quebec a little bit easier and that is something that holds true for War Brides who married into any Canadian family – no matter what their mother tongue, race, ethnicity or religion. In the stories that follow we meet four British women whose lives turned out very differently in Quebec. How they dealt with the challenges they encountered have as much to do with their own willingness to adapt to life in Quebec as it does to the support of their husband, his family and the friends they made in the communities where they lived.
She Did the Right Thing
Joan (Smedley) Landry
Joan (Smedley) Landry was an eleven-and-a-half-year-old schoolgirl living in London, England when the Second World War was declared. She was evacuated to a village near Wisbeach, Lincolnshire and returned to London in September 1940 in preparation for her evacuation to Canada as a Guest Child of the Canadian government.
A day or two before I was supposed to sail to Canada, our home was bombed and we lost everything including my travelling papers. I could not board the ship to Canada without documentation so I was not allowed to join the other Guest Children on the ship. Luck was on my side: on Friday 17 September the City of Benares was torpedoed by the German U-Boat U48 and sunk with the loss of almost 100 children.
Still being underage for the workforce, I had to be evacuated once again, this time I was sent to a different location, Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, where I joined a London Jewish school. I did not know anyone there but I loved school and the teachers were excellent. I got on very well and by the time I was fourteen had a tenth grade commercial course. However, I was unhappy as I was continually being taken from one home to another. The people just did not want to have the responsibility of evacuees in their homes and did whatever they could to get rid of us.
Although I was heartbroken at leaving school and my teachers did their best to persuade me to stay, it reached the point where I could no longer stand living this way and I asked my mother’s permission to return to London. By then I was of school leaving age and I had no trouble finding secretarial work as all the older workers were in the services.
One Sunday afternoon in 1942 my two older sisters and I were resting on the grass in St James Park near Buckingham Palace. A group of young servicemen speaking another language were sitting not far from us. One of the young men got into a conversation with my eldest sister Minnie. He spoke some English and told us that he was a French Canadian from the Magdalen Islands, Quebec.
The soldiers were just passing the time away before taking the train to return to camp. We went to the station to see them off and before leaving the young soldier took Minnie’s address. A few months later he turned up on our doorstep with a friend named Conrad Landry. From then on, Conrad would come to see us whenever he was on leave in London.
Then came D-Day, 6 June 1944. Conrad was a driver mechanic and drove a machine gun carrier. He was with La Régiment de la Chaudière and was among the first Allied soldiers to land in Normandy. It was two months before the regiment was given twenty-four hours behind the lines to rest and wash up and Conrad was able to write me a few lines to let me know that he had come through hell and was still alive.
The next time we saw each other was New Year’s 1945. It was then we realized that our friendship had turned into something deeper and Conrad asked my mother if she would allow me to marry him. I was seventeen.
By this time we had known Conrad for three years and although it was not easy for my mother she gave her consent. Upon his return to the regiment Conrad began gathering all the information and necessary forms which were needed in order to obtain permission to marry.
This was not easy to obtain as the Canadian Army was advised to dissuade soldiers from marrying girls from a foreign land. However, after several months of having had forms completed, being interviewed by the padre of the regiment and receiving my medical certificates, we were informed that we had been granted permission to marry on or after 9 May 1945. Meanwhile, I had decided to become a Catholic and was receiving instruction from a priest once a week. I was finally conditionally baptized in the Catholic Church on 5 May 1945 and confirmed by the Bishop the following day.
We were married two weeks later on a beautiful sunny day. I wore my eldest sister’s wedding dress as it was difficult to find such clothing in London. The church ceremony was lovely and I somehow managed to catch my heel in my chair and sent it flying down the altar steps. Conrad went to pick it up while thinking that we were off to a good start with me throwing chairs around. My mother had been saving canned goods from our weekly rations for several months and was able to give us a small reception with about thirty guests.
Before Conrad returned to his regiment in Germany, we went to the Canadian Wives Bureau to apply for my repatriation to Canada. My name was put onto a list and we were told that it would probably be a while before I would be able to travel to Canada as the list was very long. Should I become pregnant, I would not be allowed to travel after my sixth month and once the child was born, it should be at least three months before we could travel.
Conrad was demobilized and sent back to Canada in August and soon after I found out I was pregnant. I tried to arrange it so I could go right away but it was eleven months before I saw Conrad again, this time with a little baby. Meanwhile, my sister Jeanne had also married a young man from the Magdalen Islands, a friend of Conrad’s, Aurelius Bourque, so she was also waiting impatiently to rejoin her husband.
We finally both received notices in early July 1946 that we should be prepared to travel at twenty-four hours notice from 12 July onward. We were later advised to go to a London hostel on 18 July where the War Brides would be gathering in readiness for the trip.
We stayed overnight in the crowded hostel. We were not allowed to leave the premises but our families were allowed to visit with us until 10 p.m. when they were asked to leave. I saw one young woman leave with her parents. My mother stayed with us until the very last minute. It was heart wrenching tearing ourselves away from her: our mother would be alone for the first time.
The next morning as we left to board the bus to the railroad station, she was waiting for us outside the door. I don’t know if she had even gone home the previous night. When the bus started off, she was running alongside with tears streaming down her face not looking where she was going. We were afraid that she would get hurt in an accident. Jeanne and I were both in a terrible state, torn between the love for our mother and of our husbands who were waiting for us in Canada.
We arrived in Southampton where we boarded the ship the Queen Mary. All the luxurious furnishings had been removed from the cabins and had been replaced by bunks around the walls, hammock-like cots were attached to the lower bunks for the babies. We were given disposable nappies (the first we had ever seen) and also the rules and regulations about what was expected of us while we were on board as well as meal times and the services that were available to us.
There was a full nursing staff to take care of anyone needing their services and a nursery where we were allowed to leave our babies for no longer than one hour at a time. This permitted us to do other things, such as having our meals in peace or doing the hand washing which was hanging up all over the cabin and the bathroom. There were twelve women with their babies and young children which made for a lot of washing. It was a tight squeeze and a rush to get to the bathroom.
When we felt the ship leaving port, most of us were on deck. It was very difficult seeing the shores of England gradually disappear from sight and not knowing when we would see our loved ones again or what to expect in our new homeland.
We all gasped when we went into the dining room for the first time and saw all the food on the tables with the beautiful white bread and fresh rolls that were light as a feather. Our steward said that he had never seen anyone eat as much bread as us War Brides. No wonder. We hadn’t seen white bread in almost six years!
The captain spoke to us over the PA system on our first day out. He told us that there were some returning servicemen on board, that we were not allowed to roam all over the ship and should remain in our own quarters. He also warned that anyone found in the company of a serviceman or a member of the crew would not be allowed to set foot on Canadian soil. We later heard that about ten War Brides were not allowed to land.
The Queen Mary made a record crossing and we arrived in Halifax harbour on 23 July 1946. It was very foggy and we were unable to see a thing until the fog suddenly lifted like a curtain and we saw the crowds on the wharf. We were told to return to our cabins and it was announced over the PA system that those travelling to the Maritimes would be the first to disembark.
I had to ask our steward whether the Magdalen Islands were in the Maritimes. As he did not know, he took me along to the chart room where the officer there pointed out the Islands on a huge wall map. They were located in the Gulf of St Lawrence off Quebec, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. He was quite surprised when he learned that I was from London and going to such an isolated place. He told me that he felt very sorry for me but wished me luck, which was not very encouraging.
Jeanne and I were the first passengers to disembark; a sailor carried our hand luggage while another carried the baby down the gangway. People came out of the crowd to greet us while a band played in the background. There were also huge banners that said ‘Welcome to our War Brides’.
Suddenly through the crowds I saw my brother-in-law Aurelius making his way towards us. I asked if Conrad was with him and he laughingly pointed to someone at my side. It was Conrad. I had not recognized him in his civilian clothing.
We stayed overnight in Halifax and the next day we took a bus to Souris, Prince Edward Island where we boarded the SS Lovat to the Magdalen Islands, arriving early the following morning.
