Hilda
They met at a servicemen’s dance in wartime Britain, the handsome young Canadian soldier and the petite girl in WAAF uniform, her massive dark curls hinting of her Welsh ancestry. For him, at least, it was love at first sight, and soon enough she too began dreaming of a life together after the War.
In many ways they couldn’t have been more different, a farm boy of limited education and a middle-class city girl who had enjoyed private school and long summer vacations by the sea. But war had changed all that and now they were comrades in uniform dreaming of a life after the defeat of the enemy.
She listened in fascination to his stories of open spaces and the huge dreams of a big land. Before long they planned their future together, buying land to create a prosperous farm and raising a brood of bright and beautiful kids.
The war ended and soon enough the soldier was demobilized back to Canada. Some months later the young war bride followed him, together with thousands of other such women (many with children), who, sharing their dreams and their trepidations, crammed the decks of former liners and troop ships as they steamed toward Halifax. Not long before on a cold grey day she had watched her Daddy waving forlornly from the end of the pier, disappearing into the distance. She would never see him again.
Processed through Pier 21, part of a seemingly never-ending stream of war brides, she boarded a train full of women and children which chugged and rattled westward. And westward. And westward, for what seemed like forever. It had probably never occurred to her, or her companions, that you could ride a train for five days and still not be halfway across the country. Hour after hour through the dense forests and hour after hour clattering along lakes and rivers, from time to time stopping to drop one of the women at a lonely platform in a small town, maybe with someone waiting eagerly, maybe not. More than one soldier had picked up with an old flame and never showed up at the station.
My mother was one of the lucky ones. My Dad was waiting eagerly at the station with his old farm truck and they were soon bumping along the dusty gravel roads of Southern Ontario to a place they would call home. A bleak and dilapidated old farmhouse on a hundred acres of sketchy farmland, to the young couple the vision of a bright and promising future.
Reality first arrived when the new bride saw the home’s only source of water – a hand pump beside the farmhouse kitchen sink. And soon enough, after a long journey, she asked her farmer husband where she could find the bathroom. In response, he pointed out the window to a dreary wooden outhouse. Not quite the pre-war grandeur of her childhood, a city mansion with its own conservatory. She learned later that the “refrigerator” was a milk crate lowered into the dug well by a rope.
It was pretty clear which part of “for richer or poorer” was now in focus. Many such war brides took stock of the situation and got back on the train to go home. Not my mother. It must have been hard, desperately hard, especially with a mother-in-law who made it clear to both her war bride daughters-in-law that her sons could have done better locally.
My Mum was the original “glass half full” woman. She didn’t just sew her own clothes out of necessity, she made them fashion statements. Picking fruit in the Niagara Peninsula wasn’t just a way to pick up some necessary cash, it was an adventure where an English city girl could also eat as many peaches or berries as she wished.
When the farm finally proved too much, my Dad followed his next dream, greenhouses, and then the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, for decades from one community to another across four provinces. Yet to my mother, each move was an adventure where new friends awaited. Each was just a new chapter to be read with eagerness and hope. She must have had her dark moments and deep disappointments, but never once did she ever share them. No Pollyanna, she simply recognized that being happy and optimistic is a choice you have to make.
My mother didn’t know how to quit. Through thick and thin she followed my Dad’s serial dreams back and forth across the country, making new lifelong friends along the way, savouring each move as simply a new chapter, ensuring that her new home was always a welcoming place of joy. Along the way she proudly acquired Canadian citizenship.
Her gentleness and sweetness prevailed always and universally, with one exception. Injustice brought out a side you wouldn’t want to cross, and the cause of the underdog was always worthy of going the distance. Many a petty tyrant fled with my tiny mother in hot pursuit.
She passed to her abundant reward just a few months before her 101st birthday, leaving behind a flock of descendants who continue her optimism, her curiosity, and her sense of adventure.