The following document was transferred to digital format for historical and genealogical purposes
Mostly From Memory
82 Farningham Cres., Etobicoke, ON,
Dear Reader: This is a covering note to
say that I am as surprised as you probably are that I have produced this document. In having copies made I did not feel at this point that they warranted the investment required to
make for a really professional production. Also, my particular word-processing machine
gave me difficulty in doing proper
paragraphing, let alone chapters. So...it tends to just run on endlessly! Please forgive. Perhaps at a later
date, and if it seems worthwhile,
I may give it another go...correct...add to it...and such.
This was intended primarily
for family. However, since it is mostly anecdotes and general
topics, those friends who have read it
seem to have found it of interest. I
hope you will ignore the irrelevant details
and, hopefully, enjoy the rest.
Mary Mathieson
VIGNETTES OF MARY'S LIFE April 1, 1996
There may be something
significant about that date up there.
After all...every other attempt
over the years to record what I thought were the interesting bits, at least of my early years, has come to naught. Perhaps this is a reverse April Fool's Day
for my project and I really will keep going
from 1919 through to 1950!
Why do it anyway?... and why
now?...and why vignettes? (Oxford Dictionary - short descriptive essays)
I have just finished being a
"reader" for the splendid memoirs of a dear friend of many years. Sister Constance SSJD
(Sisters of St. John the Divine -
Anglican). In her 93 years. Sister has
lived the equivalent of a dozen
productive lives. Two of her ideas come to mind: Sister Constance has
been trying with little success for the past few years to inspire other octo and nono-genarians among her dear
"elderlies", whom she visits, to write their life stories. That is so their families,
and others, will not be deprived of a valuable link with the past. I
think that's leaving it a bit too late. Not many in that age
bracket have the energy or the remaining
faculties (as Sister definitely has) to complete what even she has admitted is a
daunting task. Much much sooner is better. 77 is not that soon...but the best I can do
now! Another Sister Point is that our
grandparents are a very important source. In my case, my four grandparents may have been of the best quality, but they were long gone by
the time I was born and I knew them not at all. Nor were my parents
around for much of my life. That raises another problem, which
is that neither generation did anything
by way of recording their lives. If our
younger family members are going to have
even a sketchy record it's obvious that somebody (namely me) had better get at it, and stay with it, NOW, and not let this new
beginning follow the others into oblivion. Perhaps too this will inspire my brothers to follow my lead in self-defense!
The reason for the vignettes
is that I have always found keeping a diary a boring exercise...and so I haven't! I do however seem to have stored away in my memory a lot of descriptions of incidents, people and places. After so long. their accuracy is no doubt up for question, but for my
purposes that just doesn't matter. In fact I expect to receive
(should they stay with reading it) lots of differing opinions from family and friends. So be it!
To start with I want to
mention a very strange remnant of my past that has nudged me for many years as a unique opportunity in the Memoirs department. Who ever heard of using a financial document as the basis of a story? Yet, that is the very thing I have in hand...a legal-sized
brown-covered sheef of yellowing pages with only the words "The Canada Trust Company" typed on the cover. Inside, under the date
"April 1940", are the voluminous closing statements for the estates of
Edith I. Dampier (my mother), Sarah Dampier (my paternal grandmother), and L.H.Dampier (my father). The part that has always
intrigued me about it is that this particular document spans exactly ten very crucial years in my life. My father was buried on my 11th
birthday...April 10, 1930, at
which time the trusteeship of Canada Trust was instituted. It ended, as Dad's Will instructed, on my 21st birthday, April 10, 1940! My three older siblings...Marjorie Ludwell,
John Lawrence and Edward Goldesbrough, were
made to wait until I reached my majority
before they received their inheritance.
A good plot for a whodunit,
hinging on a fatal accident to me one might think...except that the stakes were very low indeed, and anyway...I'm sure my sister
and brothers were much too upright and loving to entertain such a thought!
I have carefully kept my copy of the Canada Trust document over the years, dipping into it occasionally, realizing that
the memories that some of those seemingly
dry-as-bones financial notations bring flooding back are certainly the stuff of which
memoirs are made.
Obviously there is a need
first to provide a framework for those years. That includes what little
I know about earlier generations
as well as going back to the 11 years of my own life that went before. Whenever I have reminisced with my sister or brothers I have been
struck by how their memories of those years are so different from mine, and also how unreliable mine can be. I have already suggested that
exactitude is unimportant for my
purposes. The general facts and flavour
of life in smalltown Ontario
those many years ago are definitely there.
THE EARLIER
GENERATIONS...DAD'S SIDE: Dad,
(Lawrence Henry, but affectionately
known as "L.H.") was one of the three children of John Ludwell Dampier and Sarah
Edmunds. He was born in 1854 in London, Ontario (13
years before Confederation!). Here, I am privy to the Family Tree
so ably researched by brother Larry. John Dampier was born in Bruton, England, in 1820, educated at King's School there,
emigrated to Canada in 1838 and continued his education at Upper Canada College, Toronto. He married Sarah in London in 1850 and worked as
a bank manager there. One story I picked up I don't know where
is that it was a strong Anglican family and that the Sunday school for the new Cronyn Memorial Church was started by them in
the basement of their home. I do know that grandmother was
House Mother at a boy's private school, Hellmuth College, in London, and Dad received his early education there. There was an older sister Mary Bowyer who
died at age 4 years, and a younger brother
Edward Adams who only lived to be 20. A lovely engraved silver tray given to grandmother on her retirement from the school
remained in the family and was just recently presented to Huron College by brother Larry. Bishop Hellmuth, a Christian Jew from England who was a real "mover and shaker", not only
started Hellmuth College (it and a similar girls' college did not last more than 15 years) but was also
given credit for the beginnings of Huron
College and Western University (now the University of Western Ontario), as well as some time in Cuba, helping to establish an
Anglican Church there.
My father was first married
to Louise Burwell, the eldest daughter of Hannabel Burwell (her husband's name unknown) of Port Burwell, Ontario. I know very little about this fringe branch
of the family. The marriage did produce two daughters, one
of whom (name Mary Bowyer?) died at a young
age. The other, Helen, my half- sister the same age as my
mother, grew up to marry Harold Bucke of Niagara Falls, an engineer with Ontario Hydro who knew and worked with Sir Adam Beck. She and my mother had their families of four children at about the same
time. Of course my father kept in touch with Sister Helen (as we
called her to avoid the embarrassment of first names with her
children, our peers) and I remember him packing up his huge expandable leather valise and going off to Niagara Falls by train once a
year to visit his other family. There
are a few letters still remaining in his beautiful script, written to us, admonishing us
to be good in his absence, and describing
the bridge parties and teas arranged in his honor! Of
the Bucke
children, Maurice was the eldest. While
a student at R.M.C.(Royal Military College
in Kingston) he was tragically drowned
in a sailing accident. Sister Helen
never got over it.
Louise and Cybil
were both nurses, and the youngest Bill (closest in age to me) was a pilot during the war and still
lives with his wife Anne in Oakville. I never knew any of them well although I am in touch with Bill and Anne
now.
Another tenuous connection on
Dad's side came from the sister of his first wife... another Burwell daughter who married David Williams, Anglican Archbishop
of Huron (an early item in the "document"
notes flowers sent to his funeral in October '31). He
had a family of
handsome sons and daughters who, as tradition dictated, caused their father a bundle of
trouble. My connection with this family came about
at the time of my father's funeral. One of the daughters, Margaret Smith, came with her engineer husband Jim. In a compassionate move to help these young
orphans, they invited me to spend a
month in the summer with them on their (gentleman) farm on Base Line Road in London. This I did for the next two or three years. It was
a pleasant holiday...berry picking;
gathering fresh corn and other veggies fresh to pop in the pot; learning to swim in the
pond that Uncle Jim had drained and lined with gravel to make a beautiful pool; turning the butter churn; learning to drink the
fresh warm milk that the obliging cow had given that very morning; trying to pick the red cherries from the tree before the robins
did, so that Aunt Marg could make one of her gorgeous cherry cakes. The
one slight difficulty with those two or three long ago summers was that the Smith's daughter, known as Sis, was about my age but
seriously mentally handicapped. I spent most of my time with
her and it was probably good for me to learn to accommodate to her difficulties but I was too young not to find it often quite
stressful. I also remember going with
them to "Bishop Stowe", the
beautiful Victorian mansion assigned to the Huron Diocesan Bishop and his family.
It was later sold and used as Miss Matthew's School...a private institution that educated the children of well-to-do London
families at the elementary level. My sister's children were among
them.
The whole Smith family has
been gone for a long time. Aunt Marg died first and Sis had to go
to an institution. For what it's worth. Uncle Jim turned up in
my life about the time I was going out with Ron and wanted me to marry him! I think he was just desperately lonely. It was no
contest, although he was a fine person
and I had always been very fond of him.
Something else I remember
being told was that Dad did return to England once to visit his Aunt Mary in Bruton, presumably hoping that he would be her
heir. I believe nothing came of this
venture. Poor Dad must have had the
problem of finances for the education of his brood often in mind. I also
believe he was "conned" in the late twenties (as so many were) by a persuasive salesman called Mr. Chisholm (I think) who came
to call and brought me my first box of chocolates. I would have invested all my pennies with
him too if I'd had any and he'd asked
me! Dad lost whatever financial cushion he had managed to put aside
in the Big Crash of '29.
THE EARLIER GENERATIONS...
MOTHER'S SIDE: As with our father's side information is sketchy. We do
know that mother came from a strongly
Irish background (I use that as an excuse when I lose my cool and behave
illogically...attributes that may be maligning the Irish!). Her father. Colonel (of what?) John English
was born in Clones, Fermanah, Ireland, in
1838. At some point he emigrated to Canada since he married
Isabella Ulrica Donnell in the Chapter House of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, Ontario, on May 8, 1878. Isabella was born on one of
the three family plantations in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her mother was
Belle Knox of the same family as Martha Knox who married George Washington. The story goes that Isabella's family was forced to flee with whatever they could manage to take at the time of
the Civil War. The silver and valuables were divided,
packed in three barrels...one was buried...one was entrusted to a reliable slave...and the third they brought with them to
Canada. A myth maybe? I do know that each member of the present
generation has a few treasures, presumably from that one barrel...The story goes that the others were never retrieved. Another tale that has come down in the family
is that Isabella's mother. Belle, had
been engaged to the wealthier of two Donnell brothers in New York (could they have started as O'Donnells in Ireland and climbed up the
social ladder?). The night before the wedding she eloped with
the impecunious one named William Shepherd Donnell. The jilted
brother with the money forthwith never married and eventually left the bulk of his estate to the New York Public Library. I have visited the Donnell Branch which was thus funded across from the
Museum of Modern Art and verified the story by the plaque in the lobby.
A small legacy did trickle down to our family and I was able on one of my visits to New York to arrange for us to get the few
hundred dollars that was earmarked for each of us. At any rate, back
then, John and Ulrica settled down
and lived in Strathroy until they died, Isabella in 1887 and Colonel John in 1889 (see
what I mean about long-gone grandparents?). Their three children were Arthur, Edith (my mother) and Victoria (Auntie
Vic). Arthur married Olive Jakes (Aunt Olive) of British
Columbia and Victoria married Arthur Knutson (late in life) in Chicago.
Mother attended Bishop
Strachan College in Toronto and also took a course at the Macdonald Institute in Guelph. She then trained as a nurse. At one point in the 60's
I decided to research mother's career
at the Evanston (Chicago) Hospital School of Nursing where she had graduated in
1910. The then Director kindly provided
me with photocopies of mother's
documents. One delightful letter of recommendation when she
applied came from the manager of the Strathroy Bank of Commerce, one L.H.Dampier, who stated that he had known Edith "from
childhood up" and that "I can only say that she is one of the brightest and
best of girls, and that I am satisfied she will be found to be clever and undoubtedly reliable in every respect. Her family and connections stand amongst the
highest in this community." Evidence that he believed wholeheartedly in everything that he had
written is shown in the fact that he married this exemplary girl on February 1, 1913!
Tragedy came to the family of
Uncle Arthur English. He and Aunt Olive had three
children...Olive, Frederick and Jack, all a few years older than we were. When the children were small, Arthur developed a mental illness
which made it necessary for him to be institutionalized for the remainder of his life. Medical science was not as advanced in those
days and such might not have been the case today. Aunt Olive was left
penniless and was forced to move in, with her children, and act as housekeeper for her English relatives in Strathroy...no
pensions or social safety nets in those days. The boys elected to leave
home and head west at an early age. Daughter Olive (always known as
Dickie...olives are what are in the
bottom of a martini glass she always said!) trained as an elementary school teacher at
"Normal School" but did not really like teaching and moved to the United States about 1930. After several years in Chicago and having worked for an army officer out west during the war, Dickie
ended up in San Francisco with her own stenographic business in one of the downtown towers. She cared for her mother who lived with her, but lack of any
financial security
prevented her
from reaching what she felt was her potential, probably as a writer (she had articles published in
the prestigious
Atlantic Monthly
magazine). Dickie was a delightful conversationalist on many
subjects. She had a wide range of friends in the artistic world
of San Francisco and was a fixture in her particular seat, and a well-known figure for many years, at the San Francisco Opera. Dickie was more a friend of my sister and several years older even than
she. Still, I had many most enjoyable visits with Dickie
in her downtown apartment over the years, where I joined her mixed "salon" of interesting friends
and went with her to see many of
the fascinating sights and eat in some of the intimate small restaurants in that cosmopolitan city. I remember that we spent many happy hours touring about, sharing a sense of humour about life's
vagaries and the people and sights we encountered.
A Dickie story: Among her coterie of friends was the Curator
of the San Francisco Zoo, Cary
Baldwin, a quite eccentric character. Among other things Cary had a pet llama that he allowed to roam his house even when guests were
having dinner. Many a bald head received a friendly if
slightly slobbery smack from the wandering mammal! Dickie also belonged to
the English Speaking Union, and during
the war the members were expected to entertain the officers from visiting British ships
in harbour. One day, Dickie was stunned to be assigned a
group of these young men as her sole responsibility for an evening.
What could she do in the absence of anything but a small apartment... no elegant suburban mansion as most of the members had. Dickie called Cary in desperation. "No problem...you bring the food for a light dinner" said Cary,
"and I'll provide the
entertainment." So, out Dickie and the officers went with their
provisions. After dinner when it was
dark, Cary disappeared, then returned,
dramatically strapping on a holster and guns and rattling the Zoo keys since it was now closed to the public. Leading the way with just his flashlight in
the pitch dark, Cary noisily inserted
his key in the locked gate, bringing forth the most blood curdling screams from the nearest cage, apparently housing the zoo's
biggest gorilla! When their hair stopped standing on end the
little safari was led into a huge building, also in darkness.
Suddenly the lights came up and there was a line of enormous elephants, trunks extended to snatch the loaves
of bread which Cary was tossing in rapid succession at the officers, the pachyderms
obviously intending to pick up any of them that didn't part with the bread fast enough! Less hair-raising was the visit to the monkey island; the koala bears in their eucalyptus trees; the bird
sanctuary. As they were ready to leave
there was an emergency call for
Cary. He invited his guests to come
along with him to the animal
operating room. They did...and ended up watching a huge lioness have
a hysterectomy!! The San Francisco Chronicle next day featured
the sensational entertainment provided by "a tweedy spinster from the English Speaking Union with the unlikely name of Olive
English!" One reason that I can
tell this story in such detail is that
my sister Marjorie and I enjoyed the exact same adventure (minus the hysterectomy) on one of our visits. We loved it!
An early Dickie and Aunt Olive
memory was unforgettable on several counts. Growing up as we did in
the depressed thirties on a severely
restricted income there were very few treats.
Nobody minded having to wear mended
stockings and resoled shoes and having only home entertainment since everybody was in the same boat. By the time I was 16 in 1936, Dickie and Aunt Olive were well established in an apartment
in Chicago. They invited me to visit them by train for ten days
over the Christmas holidays! I was ecstatic (I found the item in
my document, "Mary - expenses Chicago - $25.00)! I have a dozen
vignettes from that trip:
...all alone and eating in
the glamorous dining room on the train. (We used to go down to the station in Strathroy just to watch the through train roar past with
only a flash of the dining car windows and those elegantly dressed travellers being served by swaying waiters in pristine white
uniforms.)
...Christmas dinner at (to
me) the very posh home of friends the Kilbournes(sp). It was the first
time I had ever had a cocktail and the
Manhattan made everything a happy haze. It was also the first time I'd ever had
COOKED grapefruit in a salad!
...The evening at the Ballet
Russe de Monte Carlo turned me into a lifelong balletomane. My eyes
were glued to the stage for "Petrouchka",
"La Boutique Fantastique" and "Les Sylphides" (I have really never forgotten those
names)---the time went by like a flash. We also saw two wonderful
stage plays, one called "First Lady" as I recall with a well known leading lady, and another starring Charlotte
Greenwood.
...I was given bus tickets
and allowed to roam the city on my own during the day, (yes, that's Chicago I'm talking about!) It couldn't happen now. I remember
seeing Colleen Moore's famous doll house; the Lincoln Planetarium; the huge Merchandise Mart.
...A real treat was watching
a radio play being produced live. Nothing was taped then. A
cousin, Edwin Marshall, was the director and let us in although the public wasn't admitted as a rule. My chief memory is of the strange mixture of odds and ends used for sound effects, usually
nothing to do with the real thing. The actors could read their
scripts but it took artistry to make the play come alive for an unseen and unseeing audience. I've always liked radio plays, maybe because of this
adventure.
Auntie Vic was the maverick
in that generation. She was a witty conversationalist and an
entertaining companion, but not always easy to get along with. I
remember that she came from Chicago to spend Christmas with us several times in the twenties and brought what
we considered exotic gifts...a jewel case or perhaps a real silk scarf. She and my father frequently disagreed over
their auction bridge game or the
politics of the day and I think she baited him. Auntie Vic is the
one I think who gave us a lovely ivory and wood mah-jong set. She
could play but we never had time to master the game and just built things with the tiles! I also remember her bringing us bread and jam when we had gone to bed and been told we couldn't have
it! Once we had a letter from her in Chicago saying that she had a
dear dog which she was sending us for Christmas since she couldn't come that year. Such excitement! Finally
it arrived at the train station...collect, much to my father's rage...and turned
out to be a rather mangy mongrel whom we called Holly Mistletoe. I also
remember that he did not survive long, coming to grief under the wheels of a passing motorist. Auntie Vic was somewhat
paranoid too I'm afraid and tended to disappear for long periods of time, presumably because she was hurt about something someone had
said. She was completely estranged from Dickie and Aunt Olive
and no one ever met her husband. She had always called me
"Mayley" as a child. One day
after I was married and was the nurse at
Hydro Head Office I had a call from the switchboard to say that somebody wanted to speak to the nurse, Mayley Dampier! Yes...it was Auntie Vic who had turned up working in Toronto. Ron and I saw her several times and she was still an interesting
companion. Not long afterwards she was involved in a fire in the
place where she was living and didn't recover...a sad ending after so many years away from her remaining family.
MY EARLY YEARS: As they
say...I was born in Strathroy, Ontario, on April 10, 1919, in one of those large brick houses that are on every smalltown street, by
the hundreds. And I do mean born in the house. Strathroy had a nice little hospital (my
father served his
time on their
Board) but babies were still allowed to arrive on their own premises as a rule. In actual fact. Dad was serving a term as Mayor of Strathroy at
that time. I was the fourth child of his marriage to Edith Isabel
English. When I arrived she was only 34 years old while he was 65...a
disparity in age which almost guaranteed
that the young family would be fatherless when they were still quite young. What was not evident was that they would
first be motherless. In keeping with the times, the young mother
had her family in rapid succession...Marjorie,
Lawrence and Edward just over a
year apart each...and then Mary after three years. The next one
arrived when Mary was just over two and neither mother nor baby survived. The little girl was named Edith Isabel after
her mother and was buried along with her
in the family plot on the outskirts of town. The very occasional
times when I have managed to visit the cemetery I have felt a nostalgic sadness for those two lives that had such untimely
ends. Not least of the tragedies was
the mother having to leave four
small, growing, active, very boisterous young children in the care of a man already retired from his position as manager of the
local branch of the Bank of Commerce (not yet including the "Imperial" part). Poor Dad!
I know he
spoiled me. I was forever crying to him that Larry had
punched, pinched or poked me. Then he would shout for "Lawrence"
to come and say he was sorry and
promise to stop hurting the poor little girl! No wonder my brothers
thought me a pest and tended to send me off packing when I wanted to join their play.
It is highly unlikely that I
could have any real memories of mother or that time, but there are some hazy mental pictures... real or otherwise...nonetheless. I have been told that I almost didn't survive the worldwide 1919
flu epidemic. I see myself in my highchair, having recovered
enough to be at the dining room table with the family. Another is of
being in a carriage with a smiling woman bending over me. I do have
a copy of a letter that mother wrote
to her sister Victoria, who was in Philadelphia, on November 7, 1920...my only one of
her's and so a real treasure. Written
on the Mayor's letterhead it
says:
"My dear
Victoria...Thank you very much for the dear little pullover you were good enough
to make for Mary. She is so big and fat she looks like a ball in it.
It is quite an assistance for the mother of a family like this to get something made for her and it is much appreciated. I would have acknowledged it before but have had such a desperately busy
week I have hardly had time to breathe. The "kiddies" are all well and as lively as ever. At present they are all asleep and it is very
peaceful. We went to the Armories on Friday evening for the
Nurses' Graduating Exercises. Larry had
to present the prizes and we
also had to entertain the Rev. McNamara who came from Toronto to speak...which made Maw hustle some! Then on Thursday evening we had the first meeting of our Bridge Club which also made Maw
hustle. Owing to the fact that I have fallen out with my wash lady over
the trifling question of money. Maw also has to hustle tomorrow and do the washing...and so it goes. Did you have a pleasant visit in Toronto and what are you doing now? Let me know where to send the
children's photograph if you care to have it. With much love and
thanking you again for the jacket....
Edith Isabel. P.S. This is the Mayor's
pen and it is a
terrible
one."
The aforementioned photograph
is another cherished memento that has pride of place still in our living room, paired with one that Ron had professionally duplicated
65 years later at Marjorie's 70th birthday party...priceless! Less
than a year after the first one was
taken, mother was buried on August 16, 1921.
Ted and I did play together
before he was old enough to have other boys to hobnob with and to realize that little sisters were a NoNo with them. In the winter we dressed warmly...but unfortunately children's
clothing then was not as efficient as now. We wore heavy wool coats and I had a wool skirt (Ted wool
"breeks") and
wool stockings bunched over my long winter underwear. Feet
were encased in
clumsy "galoshes" and hands in mitts that never quite came high enough to
reach the end of a sleeve. Most
children suffered from
"chilblains" at wrists and ankles all winter since the wet cold seeped in and
made the skin red and tender. Our house was on a large corner lot and
a favorite game for Ted and me was to make a series of winding "roads" with our sleigh all over the
snow. Then Ted would pull me along
while we made "pretend" deliveries of milk, bread or mail.
We were allowed to warm up now and then, but just in the vestibule where
there was a supremely inefficient radiator. In this case the young
were not even to be seen, let alone
heard! In the summer the game involved
a wagon. I sat in it with a blindfold on and Ted
would drag me around several blocks before removing the blindfold for me to guess where I was. Then I would do the same for him. Good
cheap entertainment that never seemed to pall. We were lucky to have that big lot...there was a huge
maple tree on it and we could use the sand
underneath it to make roads and bridges
for our toy cars. Occasionally in
winter someone (Dad was too old
for such a job) would make a rink on part of that lawn...we really loved to skate in endless circles
even if it was mighty bumpy. In fact I don't remember staying inside the
house unless we absolutely had
to. Summer evenings, all the neighbourhood children of
varying ages gathered to play "Tappy on the Icebox", "Run Sheep Run", "Tag" or just
plain catch with a
ball. The girls
used two long skipping ropes to vie with one another in skipping skills..."salt and pepper" at increasing speeds; "double
dutch" and "double French" with two ropes: and often four flying legs
dashing in and out instead of two!
Trying to throw a ball right over
the house was for the big kids yelling "Annie, Annie Eye-over!", while a favorite pastime for the
young ones in the Fall was making
walls of leaves, patterning a whole house plan. Eventually those
leaves would be raked to the roadside and burned, giving the whole neighbourhood a lovely smoky aroma that is forbidden now. In his well days. Dad would spend a happy hour on a nice day throwing a
stick for the Pugsley's collie. Jack. The Pugsleys lived in the Anglican rectory next door on Head Street, separated from us by
our weed-grown empty lot. Mr. Pugsley was the Rector...a tall
austere Englishman. His wife (whom we later dubbed "The
Countess") was a strong-minded no-nonsense woman of whom I was more than
somewhat terrified. I'll never forget
her standing me on a table and
washing my mouth out with soap for saying a bad word that I didn't even know the meaning of...I had just parroted the
boys...ugh! Their daughter Margaret was
sister Marjorie's age and Connie a
few years older. In the early years there was a neighbourly
friendship among us. The girls were
back and forth and I never had to
knock if I went to their house. That friendliness did not survive
(more of that later) our having to live together when the men of the two households died within a year of one another. An early memory of Mr. Pugsley was that he
would sometimes produce a bag of
hard candies in his "study" and give us a treat. One
day I noticed where he kept the bag hidden behind some books on a shelf. He was not amused when, the next time I came, I asked for one and,
(in case he had forgotten) pointed out where he could find them!
On the subject of neighbours, the ones on the other side (on Metcaife Street) were the Bogues. Plump and pleasant Mrs. Bogue