9:30 p.m., the music ended. The bandleader bid us a good evening, and the crowd began to disperse. The cake from my aunt’s bakery had long been devoured, the tables from which they were served long since removed. My friends who had sat with me for the past hour rose to depart with their family members. Mine returned to me. Aunt Lil, whose bag I had been required to watch for a few minutes an hour and a quarter earlier, expressed surprised delight that it was where she had left it.
As the throngs began to leave the park, I was reminded of a similar exodus seven years earlier. At that time, the populace had gathered at another location for the sod turning ceremony of the future Carnegie Library. At its conclusion, those assembled were invited to the local Presbyterian Church to attend a short religious ceremony to consecrate the soon-to-be-built library. Everyone went—my friends, their parents, our neighbours, my aunts and uncles, my cousins—everyone except for me and my immediate family. I learned then that our family was not allowed to enter the Presbyterian Church. By posing dozens of near futile questions and through numerous prohibited eavesdroppings, I had in seven years learned that the edict preventing our entrance was Father’s; that the genesis of the edict related to Grandpa; that Grandpa had been one of the builders of the church; that the edict had something to do with Grandpa being “self-made and others destroyed”; and that it was somehow related to a “Scottish fiasco.” The mystery attached to this prohibition had plagued my early childhood years. Indeed, just earlier that evening, realizing how happy I was—how happy everyone in my family was—I had resolved to abandon my quest to solve it. Nothing was to be gained, I concluded, from a study of the past; it was only the future that mattered. That future, I concluded, was quite bright.
Chapter 1
DECLARATION OF HOSTILITIES
On the afternoon of August 4th, 1914, our family acknowledged what most Canadians knew to be true: Canada was at war. We acknowledged Canada to be at war, although our parliament had not yet proclaimed it. We acknowledged it, although Great Britain itself had not yet announced that it was at war; although the time provided for Germany to accede to Great Britain’s ultimatum had not yet passed. We acknowledged it without knowing what the war would cost us in men or materials; without knowing where its battles would be fought or where our troops would be sent; without knowing the means by which mortal payloads would be delivered; without knowing the anxiety, uncertainty, and sacrifice that would be experienced by those at home; without knowing the innocence we would lose, the beleaguered state we would assume.
We did not know the vocabulary we would acquire; the songs we would sing; the names we would revere and the names we would revile. We did not know the foreign cities, towns, and villages that would become as familiar as our own; or the identities of those among us we would come to consider courageous or cowardly; patriotic or traitorous; leaders or followers. We did not know the alternative uses to which our buildings would be put; the way we would come to celebrate; the way we would come to mourn.
I was only eleven years of age when World War I commenced—the Great War, as we first came to know it. Just as I could remember where I was and what I was doing when I first sat in an automobile, when a room in our home was first illuminated by electricity, when I had my first telephone conversation, I remember where I was that day, August 4th, 1914, when we realized that hostilities with Germany were to commence.
It was a Tuesday, midafternoon. My mother and I were home alone, beating dust, food particles, and strands of hair from an enormous wool carpet. The rug, which ordinarily covered our dining room floor, was then off the ground, spread over the white wooden railing of our verandah and a number of wooden saw horses. A part of our semiannual ritual, we had earlier that afternoon exposed the dining room curtains to a similar vigorous walloping.
As was most often the case, my mother, then fifty-three years of age, wore a brown wool dress, a lighter-weight version of her winter attire. The colour complimented her warm brown eyes and her still-brown hair. The plain fabric covered her moderately plump form from the short neck below her sweet, round face to her delicate ankles, from her gently curved shoulders to her thin wrists. In case the garment she wore was not sufficiently modest—and Mother always dressed modestly—the brown dress itself was largely concealed by Mother’s signature white apron, a shell she wore from dawn until dusk, removing it only when entertaining non-family members and during meals. The two-toned hand-tooled leather shoes that were the only extravagant aspect of her wardrobe were not visible below the many undulating folds of her long skirt.
I was wearing one of my two everyday summertime dresses, a lightweight navy and white gingham frock. Consistent with my age and the fact that the dress was then only two years old and so remotely within the dictates of the days’ fashion, a two-inch expanse of skin could be seen between its hemline and the black socks that covered the remaining distance to my black buckled shoes. My hair, a mass of brown ringlets, was mostly pulled into a bow at the nape of my neck. I say “mostly” because its thick, unruly nature meant that it was rarely entirely captured within a ribbon, bow, or elastic. Ringlet tendrils poked out of the top and sides of the gathered mass.
As our arms and the brooms we batted released six months of accumulated grime, the lustrous violet, plum, lime, and gold threads of the rug were rerevealed. The bright colours complimented the large-patterned, similarly hued, Victorian paper that lined the walls of the room normally around it. Though the work was laborious, it was not unpleasant. Household chores were a constant part of my summer days. The day was bright, and our conversation was full and light.
The beating work was not continuous. In addition to breaks taken to rest our arms and to recover from fits of sneezes and coughs, not to mention the laughter that often followed such outbursts, we stopped occasionally to sip iced tea, and more often, to turn the carpet in order to expose our brooms to the portion of the carpet previously draped over the far side of the verandah’s railing. It was while we were engaged in that turning exercise that an image appeared on the road before us. Pedalling up the hill from Main Street below, astride his bicycle, was Michael Lynch, a local telegram delivery boy.
“Mrs. Stephens! Mrs. Stephens! Did you hear the news? We are at war! Canada is at war!” Michael hollered without stopping. “Hurray! Canada is at war!” The basket of his bicycle appeared to be full of telegrams. We watched him continue on past our house.
“Do you think it’s true?” I asked Mother with a combination of trepidation and incredulity. Proclamations of this nature were not in keeping with the manner in which telegrams were usually delivered. “I didn’t think he was allowed to announce the contents of a telegram like that.”
“He isn’t permitted to disclose the contents of confidential telegrams,” Mother replied. “He’s been in that job for a long time. If he’s making that kind of a statement, then it isn’t a confidential matter.” Mother looked at her timepiece, a small clock dangling within a pendant on a gold chain hanging from her neck. “It’s only four o’clock,” she said. We all knew that the Germans had until seven o’clock Eastern Standard Time to respond to the ultimatum of the British government, to respond or to find itself at war with Great Britain and her allies.
“Michael must know something. If we are at war—and I suspect we are—the Turners will cut short their trip to Toronto today. You’d better run down to your aunt’s. The family should be together tonight.”
“Here or there?” I asked, knowing the answer before I asked the question.
“There. It will take us a while to restore the dining room and,” she confessed, “we are low on meat. Your aunt always has enough to serve us all.” That was undoubtedly true, for although the dining room of my Aunt Rose, who lived just down the road from us, could accommodate the same number of people as our dining room, and although our pantries and kitchens were precisely the same size, my aunt’s larder was always more full.
I was back on our verandah within five minutes, my Aunt Rose agreeing with Mother’s suggestion. Over the next hour, Mother and I completed our beating of the rug. We half-dragged, half-carried the heavy carpet through our front foyer, parlour, and sitting room into the dining room, where we resettled it within the dark rectangular area of the elm floor that had escaped the sun’s