table onto the rug, setting its legs into the familiar wool divots, before reinserting six of the table’s leaves. Finally, with ten of the fourteen petite point cushioned chairs tucked under the table, our work was complete. It was done in silence. The idle banter Mother and I shared earlier that afternoon in taking these steps in reverse was gone.
My Aunt Rose and her two children, John and Hannah Darling, lived in a house that was the mirror image to ours. Both located on Wellington Street, they were built by my grandfather, Jesse Brady, shortly after I was born. Each was clad in red brick and adorned with white trim. Tall windows topped with stained glass panes and surrounded by large green shutters graced two sides of each house. The first floor of each home had a grand front entrance or foyer, a parlour for entertaining visitors, a sitting room in which family gathered, a dining room, a kitchen, and a pantry. The second floor of each contained a bathroom and five bedrooms. The two floors were connected by two staircases: a wide, polished wood, carpet-lined staircase that wrapped around two walls of the foyer and which was the principal staircase used, and a small staircase entered from the pantry behind the kitchen. That staircase at the back of the house and the small second floor bedroom next to it were referred to by my aunt as the “back stairs” and the “back bedroom.” In our house, the same set of stairs and the same bedroom were referred to as the “maid’s stairs” and the “maid’s bedroom.” This was so, even though my family never once employed a maid, in contrast to my Aunt Rose, who often did.
The attic, which formed the third floor of each house, had two finely sculpted gabled windows. They sat below the house’s dark green roofs, which rose at various levels. The most striking feature of each house was the cylinder-shaped three-story tower that stood where a corner would have otherwise, each topped with a graceful spherical dome and a small black spire. Grandpa’s signature verandah formed another striking feature, in each case bordered by a white wooden railing wrapped around two sides of the house, including the tower. Grandpa believed that a verandah on a home was essential to the development of community; that families congregating there during their leisure hours in the four months of the year that the northern climate permitted it, while children played on the lawns and streets beyond, would foster a sense of true neighbourliness. In the seasons that our verandahs were not covered in snow, they were equipped as outdoor parlours, with wicker chairs, tables, stools, and swinging chaise lounges.
When my sister Ina and I were younger, our verandah had other uses too—an outdoor laboratory for Ina’s scientifically minded endeavours and a make-believe ship for my less lofty pursuits. They took on these uses, that is until Father required the removal of the accompanying contrivances, a persistent occurrence that forestalled our recreational use of the verandah for at least a few weeks thereafter.
While these two houses had two separate owners, they were treated by all of us as though they were common property of not only our family, the Stephenses, and my aunt’s family, the Darlings, but also of our Winnipeg cousins, the Turners, and my father’s sister Lillian, who lived in Toronto. We all entered each house as though it was our own, never thinking of knocking before doing so, let alone waiting for an invitation to be extended. Meals among my extended family were frequently taken together, particularly when there was a special occasion (a holiday or a birthday) or when family was in from out of town.
Father agreed with Mother and Aunt Rose that our families should be together that night, August 4th, 1914. He had heard earlier that afternoon that the king had ordered the mobilization of the British army. It was that information, we concluded, that sent Michael, the telegraph delivery boy, on his premature town crier mission. But the announcement was, Father declared, likely only a few hours early. We would be at war at seven o’clock that night. It was a night to be spent with family.
The outbreak of the war did not come as a complete surprise. The imminent declaration had been predicted by many Canadians for months beforehand, although with each prediction not coming to pass, some were more surprised than others when the hostilities actually commenced. Over those months, at the various dining room tables of my family, I learned of the Triple Entente formed by France, Britain, and Russia the prior decade; the many acts of aggression of Germany in the interim; the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Serbia at the end of June; the creation of the German-Austrian pact at the beginning of July; the declaration of war by Serbia against Austria at the end of July; and the declaration of war by Germany against Serbia the next day. I learned that Germany had issued an ultimatum to the independent Belgium that German troops be granted access to its territories or Belgium would face German invasion. I learned that in response Britain had issued an ultimatum to Germany that Germany withdraw the demand made to Belgium or face British hostilities.
At those dining room tables, I also learned how my family members felt about that likely war, who was for it, and who was against it. Their positions, which had been evolving and eventually staked, were stated starkly that night at the Darlings’ dining room table. Twelve of us were assembled there: my immediate family of five, the Darling family of three, and the four Turners, who had, as Mother suggested, returned from Toronto earlier than they had planned.
Of my parents, my aunts, and my uncle, nearly all of them considered a British concern to be a Canadian concern; a British cause to be a Canadian cause; a British war to be Canada’s war. But their enthusiasm for the war, their confidence in the speed with which the battle could be won, and the resources required to attain that victory, varied between them.
At a time when most Canadians regardless of age, background, length of residency in Canada or language, wholeheartedly supported the British cause, my father’s support was tepid at best. Father had a contrarian personality. It was in his nature to swim against the tide; to argue red when everyone else argued black. He took positions against ardent advocates; against seasoned specialists; against acknowledged experts. He would take his positions in a public meeting, perhaps at a meeting of the High School Board of which he was chairman, or of the Water Commission, of which he was also chairman. He would take his positions in our church, at which he was the choir leader. He even waged his arguments against his dental patients, including when (possibly preferably when) their mouths were pried open with his fingers and other devices, when their responses could only be an incomprehensible gurgle or a slap of their hand against their thigh or some other gesture.
There were three explanations for Father’s contrary positions. One explanation had to do with politics. My father was an unrepentant Conservative. He took issue with almost anything said by a timid or fervent Liberal. Father’s position on the war could not be explained on this basis, however, given the proposed formation of a union government between the ruling Conservatives and the opposition Liberals. On the subject of war, there was, at least in the early days, no dissonance between the positions of the two parties.
A second explanation for Father’s contrarian nature, though it was not as obvious to me as a child, was my Father’s conscious or subconscious need to take positions that varied from the consensus view of our town’s “establishment.” It was, I came to understand, his way of showing that he was not actually inferior to its rarefied members, something he was truly afraid of being; that he had a superior intellect, something he was not actually confident he had. This too did not account for Father’s position on the war, for though he was not afraid of taking contrarian positions, this did not extend to being seen as treasonous or in any way unpatriotic.
The final reason for his often-contrary positions was his concern for our family economy. Though Father had for most of his career been a successful dentist, the method by which his patients paid for his services (sometimes with cash, often with goods or services in lieu, and sometimes not at all) meant that our family had to be careful with its funds. His significant loss of income for much of 1913 and early 1914 when his business was being boycotted meant that he had to be particularly careful. The amounts he and Mother had put aside for a rainy day were entirely depleted during that period that we ironically referred to as the “drought.”
Thus, Father was unlikely to support any public policy that would require a larger outlay of funds on taxes. For that reason, he had years earlier opposed the purchase by the taxpayers of the local electricity supplier. It was for that reason that he still opposed plans to divert the Etobicoke Creek out of the downtown area, even though that watercourse, which ran along the main street