Tag Archives: canada

happiness

Christmas in Ottawa in 1930 (Letter from Edna to her dad Frank)

My, it seems Grandma had a few suitors. Good on the man who sent her chocolates, but thankfully Grandpa sent her stationary so she could keep writing him. Practical.

512 Cooper St. Ottawa

January 13, 1930

Dear Papa:

I received your letter a few days ago but never seem to have a chance to do much writing. I enjoyed Xmas after all. Dalton phoned up early Xmas morning asking if I would like to go in so they came out for me in Roy Kennedy’s car (That is Gertie’s husband). Jim was there too, there was 14 of us for dinner. The girls were awfully nice with me then and they all couldn’t treat me nicer. I guess they were just shy at first. They want me to go straight back there when I leave Ottawa and stay a few weeks with them. I sure like Ottawa though and am having a grand time here. If I can get a job here I think I will stay in Ottawa. It’s a beautiful city and the people are sure full of fun. We went all through the Parliament Buildings. They sure are wonderful, I saw where Bennet sits etc. the Strutts are all conservatives. We also went through the museum and saw a lot of skeletons from Red Deer. Harrison drove us over to Hull and Alymer in Quebec one day. We drove across a mile long bridge to get there. We saw Snake River on the way down to Ottawa and the house where Ruth was born. While we were at Hull we saw the Eddie Match factories, they seemed about a mile long.

The weather was pretty cold the first couple of weeks, but since then it has been thawing and raining ever since with one or two cold nights once in a while. They are expecting it to turn cold now anytime s they haven’t had the real winter weather yet. The snow isn’t as deep as I expected it would be, they seem to use a lot of horses here, they use so many sleighs in the winter time. There’s two big dairies near here and they have a lot of big grey Percheron teams just like those from Acme. I often see them. How are all the horses? Strutts have a car, Harrison drives it all the time and takes us out often. Momma went back to Aunt Betsey’s a week ago last Saturday and I guess I’ll head back out the end of this week.

They have about 17 canaries here and some of them will soon be hatching young ones. They sure are lovely singers. Did you go to Beadle’s for the Turkey dinner? How is old Tom and Beadles? O. Fenton sent me a box of chocolates for Xmas, and Percy sent a writing case, and _______ a box of hankies, and Harry Johnson sent me a big box of writing paper and Bill M sent me a silver powder case with a satin cushion top.

If you see Ore Fenton will you thank him for me for the chocolates?

You were asking what I think about taking that farm at Olds. I think that 560 acres is too big a place for a man your age to take on. You need a tractor to do the work on a farm like that and why do they want to sell when the ground is all ready for another crop? Of course Olds is a good country and if they didn’t want too much for it, it might be a good idea to take it on shares with someone.

Well I want to go downtown this afternoon so I had better close now. I find it hard to find time to sit down and write a long letter wand they never go to bed before 1 o’clock at night. I’m sure having lots of fun here and hope you don’t find it too lonely. I wish you could sell out and come East now.

Well good-bye for now

With love

From Edna.

Standard
happiness

Letters from “Jack the Soldier” during WWII – descriptive Army Vocabulary

This letter sounds a bit more ominous even though for the most part Jack sounds pretty upbeat. It’s hard not to be affected thinking of these men heading off to fight battles where so many people died and were injured. I’m assuming the next letter I read will be when he’s overseas in the war zone.

20th August. Tues (1940)

Dear Percy and Edna

Here is the nuisance again, I have not much to do right now, so thought I would drop you a line. I have just had another inoculation, so am entitled to a twenty four hour without dusty. This is the fourth inoculation and one vaccination I have had so far, so I should be pretty much immune against any disease that may come floating around.

At last I found Bill Harris, and I guess I must have passed by his tent a thousand times and didn’t know he was around, but by having his number which you gave me, I was able to hunt him up in a few minutes. He is just the same old Bill, but he is getting plump, he sure looks fine.

Bill had I had quite a time, talking about everything I certainly enjoyed myself. You know how he talks and since he joined up, he has an added Army vocabulary which sure sounds descriptive. On the whole it was big treat listening to him.

Just now Bill is working in the quartermasters stores so doesn’t have to drill very often which suits William fine. It would be hard to find another job, more agreeable to him, which suggests a lot if you know Bill.

I haven’t as yet been able to hunt up C, Robinson, but Bill tells me he is doing fine and has gained weight enormously, so therefore the army life must suit him fine.

Have you heard that Robert Moody is going to be married? Bill showed me a letter he received from him, and by what he writes, she is one in a million. Perhaps you may see him, and he still is in Currie Barracks.

We have been having gas drill lately, and it sure gives a guy a choking sensation to put on the gas mask, especially the first few minutes. I have been trying to get leave to go to Calgary, but can’t manage to get any more than three days, which should hardly give me time to get up there for any length of time.

Probably you will have thought that I have been a little neglectful in not writing you sooner, but we have heard for the last two weeks that we were moving, and I waited to see if these rumours would materialize, but I think this will be the last letter I will be writing in Shilo, so I’ll write my new address on the last page.

Sorry I haven’t any more snaps to send you, I have some films waiting to be developed, and as soon as we get settled I’ll fix them up and send them to you.

We had a rare treat yesterday, Gracie Fields, the famous English singer, sang for an hour before the thousands of troops, she sure is wonderful, and I’m glad I heard of her before I left camp.

Well Percy and Edna I’ll say so long now as it will likely be a long time before I see you again, but I’ll still keep on dropping a line o matter where I go, so as Gracie sang on Sunday, I’ll say, Wish me Luck as you Say Goodbye.

As Ever, Jack

Standard
happiness

Cochrane in Grandma’s Childhood (early 1900’s)

I was done. I was certain I was done. As I’ve mentioned I don’t go looking for this stuff, it seems to find me. Today I was unpacking a couple of trunks that had moved back with us from Virginia. I honestly don’t remember even opening them in the almost 8 years since we’ve moved back – but today I decided to dump everything so I could use the storage space. Ohhhh the treasures I found. Included was a book “Grandmother Remembers” that apparently I gave Grandma, and is very similar to another book I gave her called “Grandma Remembers”. It seems I really, really wanted Grandma to write down history. This book is brand spanking new – although it certainly is over 30 years old, maybe older. But inside she left some handwritten stories. I’m sharing the first one today – it seems she was presenting this to a group of school kids. Unfortunately it’s not dated, but it was before her memory and eyesight began to go so I’m guessing it’s about 30ish years old – making her 70 year recollections more like 100 year old recollections of Cochrane back in her childhood.

Gosh, I can hear Grandma’s voice as she’s telling these stories – her tone – how it would rise and fall as she emphasized something or got excited. When I was a teen I worked for a summer at Mackay’s. Grandma’s memory and eyesight was still sound and often she’d walk into town to get a scoop of ice cream and have a visit. On other days, I’d grab my lunch and head to the lodge on my break to visit with her. She told me story after story – and unfortunately in my teenage arrogance I thought I’d remember it all forever. I didn’t. But I feel like some of these stories are being brought back to life as I’m discovering these treasures.

I had to break this one into two parts, I’ll post the second half tomorrow. Enjoy!!

Girls and Boys- your teacher Mrs. Davis has invited me to tell you what Cochrane was like 75 years ago. Thank you very much of asking me to do that. There is nothing older people like better than to talk about their childhood. And believe me Cochrane was a very exciting place to live in 70 years ago.

There were no cars then, but some would famous horses came from Cochrane. Also just about every home in town had a barn with a milk cow in it and a few chickens.

These lovely high hills were just made for exciting hikes in summer and sleigh rides in winter. Every home had it’s own pump for drinking water, and a woodpile where you chopped firewood to heart the homes. For the winter time we had our favourite hill to sleigh ride down. I suppose everyone thought they had the fastest sleigh. I thought mine was the best. I would start at the top of Cochrane Heights and it was such a well packed trail down, it was almost ice, sometimes, I would be on main street before the sleight stopped. Just too bad if there was a team of horses coming down the road at the time. The horses would be terrified and run out of my way.

The poor Indians would camp off where the houses now stand on Cochrane Heights, and in those days they were really poor, and their kids were afraid of us and we were a bit afraid of them too. They were quite wild in those days and poorly clothed and hungry. Sometimes we would take gifts of food up to them and they would snatch it from us and run into their tent without saying thank you. You could hear the poor little babies crying in the tents, likely cold and hungry.

Everyone went to Calgary or Banff on the train when they needed to buy things you couldn’t get in Cochrane. Cochrane had a nice train station then, with a big platform on it and lots of people went over to the station just to see who got on or off the train because the train always stopped here. before you got on the train, the conductor, the man who took your tickets, would ring a little bell and shout or sing out “all aboard, all aboard”. That meant we would scramble on and get a good seat by a window before the train started, because it started with a terrible sharp chug and clatter and whistle. On the 12th of July nearly all of the people of Cochrane would go to Banff for the day. That was really fun. A big band would meet us at the Banff station and we would march down into the town of Banff. The zoo wasn’t in Calgary in those days, it was in Banff and I remember hearing the coyotes howl and the lions roar in their cages and the sound would echo up the mountains with an eerie sound. Going up to Banff, us kids could play up and down the aisle of the train and usually saw lots of deer and moose near the train tracks.

In the summer time, just about every kid had a horse to ride and had horses to drive in buggies or carriages. There was two big livery barns in Cochrane where they kept lovely horses you could rent to drive or ride. The Cochrane Lakes 6 miles north of here were full of water in those days and in the spring and autumn day or night there would be huge big flocks of wild geese fly over Cochrane town quite low, honking all the way because they were tired and they would land on Cochrane Lakes for a rest. The wild geese fly south in the autumn and spend winter in a warmer country, then fly north in the spring – far, far up north where there is often wild country full of lakes to swim on and where they make their nests and raise their young geese. They made such a noise when flying over Cochrane and the sky would be almost black with them there were so many. And everyone who could shoot a gun would drive out to Cochrane Lakes and bring back dozens of big fat geese to eat.

I had an older sister and she had a horse of her own a few years before my parents thought I should have one. This pony was what they called an Indian Cayuse and when we bought it it was terribly thin and quiet but my Dad soon fed it well and it got fat and mean. I guess while my sister was at school I would get it by the fence and jump on it’s back and ride it around the yard. We had a big yard with a big long clothesline in the yard because there were not electric dryers in those days. After this horse got fat it got meaner and I think it just hated me. As soon as I got on it, it would run to the clothesline and the wire sometimes caught me around the neck – it hurt – it always pulled me off and made me cry but in a few days time I’d try it again. I think it was the only horse I ever really, really hated. We called him Spider.

There were so many bachelors (men who had no wives) living in Cochrane and around the country years ago so there was always a Chinese Laundry in Cochrane. The Chinese gentleman who washed the clothes wore a long black braid of hair hanging down his back. Some of the wild cowboys would ride into Cochrane on Saturday night and thought it was smart to cut off the laundry man’s braid which they called a pig tail. But the policeman fined them plenty of money for doing that and even locked them in jail for a day or two. In the early spring there was a very nice Chinese gentleman who drove out to Cochrane from Calgary. He had a small thin team of old horses pulling a sort of van or house on a wagon. And he would stop and unhitch his horses and feed them in the centre of town. Then he would get two huge straw baskets out of the back of the van and they were full to the top with fresh green onions, lettuce, radish, and other things he had town in his glass house in Calgary. He had a long pole shaped so that it fitted his shoulders with a heavy basket on each end and he would trot around the streets singing – I never knew what – but us kids ran home to tell our mothers and to get some money to buy fresh green vegetables. OH MY, did they ever taste good! You never saw things like that in the stores when I was a kid, no refrigerators in those days.

Standard
happiness

A History in Photos 32 (FGK 189)

Today we are taking a walk through nature. Cameras have sure come a long ways – but some of these photos date back at least to the 1940s. You know the Arrogant Worms song Rocks and Trees? In case you don’t here is the chorus:

‘Cause we’ve got
Rocks and trees
And trees and rocks
And rocks and trees
And trees and rocks
And rocks and trees
And trees and rocks
And rocks and trees
And trees and rocks
And water

The shape of this lake makes me think Waterton, but I’m not sure.
I’m guessing this is the same beach where Grandpa was standing on the rock – this would have been 1940.
Rocks
Trees
Trees and rocks
Rocks and Trees and Water
A bear heading off to do whatever it is that bears do.

Standard
happiness

A Brief Story of the Copithorne Family 1 (FGK 151)

I found this interview with Sam Copithorne and thought it could be fun to share. At the end of the stories, I’ll post the information to source it, but this is written by Dora Dibney – I have no idea who she was. I always wondered (but not badly enough to ever ask lol) who Grandpa was named after – and it looks like it was after one of his uncles. Enjoy!

A Brief Story of the Copithorne Family

(Dora Dibney)

“Now look,” Sam Copithorne remarked, “there’s no use writing a story about me. I’m not a pioneer becuase I didn’t come out to this country until 1904. It’s my two brothers you ought to write about, if you HAVE to write about the family.”

“Where was I born? Oh, in Clonakilty, that’s in County Cork, Ireland. My father had a dairy farm, dual purpose Short horns and we milked about 25 cows. Guess we had about 120 acres.

“Besides John and Richard, I had four older brothers: James and William and Robert and Edward. We had one sister: she was the eldest. John came out here in 1883 and Richard came out four years later in 1887.

“James went to Central Africa as a missionary and before that he was in the civil service. but he was in Africa, oh less than a couple of years when he got fever and died.

“John was the first to make a move though. He just decided to come to Canada so my father got him a lot of letters of introduction to people in Montreal, but he never used a single letter.

“He didn’t like Montreal so he bought a ticket through to Winnipeg. Well he looked for work and somehow or other he met a man who wanted someone to drive eight mules. John had never had a thing to do with mules, but he waits sure he could drive them so he got a job and $10 a month. That was doing farm work.

“It wasn’t long after that that a man came to the farm and he bought the mules. He couldn’t drive them so John got the job of taking them to Brandon.

“That was the time of the rebellion I, so John volunteered for the army and he was sent to live with the Indians and watch their movements. Well, he lived with them for a long time; he took part in their powwows and he got so he could talk Cree with the best of them.

“He lived with them so long that they nearly forgot he wasn’t an Indian. They used to call him Wapoorshwian which means Rabbit-Skin-Robe. I remember him telling us about the way they used to eat. They’d put all their meat into one big pot and they’d sit around and fish it out when it was cooked. Sometimes they’d fish out a piece of dog meat and then they’d remember and say “white man no eat dog” so they’d find a piece of rabbit meat for him.

Standard
happiness

The Garden at Braeside (Grandpa Taylor’s Garden) part 2

I meant to add to yesterday’s story, that when Grandpa mentioned that he and his mom (Claire) travelled back home to Ontario after his dad left, that the home that they travelled from was in North Battleford SK- not a short distance.

I turned over the framed photo of Braeside and found Grandpa had written a little blurb about it. I am so grateful for those people who know enough to write the significance of an item for those of us who won’t remember all the details. Reading “lawyer scrawl” is a challenge. Often as a child when my parents would send in notes to the teacher I would be called up to the front to read them the note because they “couldn’t quite make out the handwriting”. So, if anyone sees where I’ve misread something in Grandpa’s note please tell me!

“This is a coloured photograph of the George Taylor family residence, built about 1903-04 by John Clarke and probably Len Hill. I have a picture of it under construction. It was named “Braeside” after Grandpa’s beloved Scotland (“hillside”). Grandpa had his own letterhead = Braeside, New Liskeard, Ontario on the best linen paper. I was here with my mother until I was 18 and left for college and again until I married. Grandpa Taylor died on the 19 August 1919. Grandma was the life tenant and mother the housekeeper. This picture was owned by mum.”

As soon as little Ralph was old enough, about 4 or 5 years of age, his grandparents would take him with them when they worked in their garden. They showed him how they planted the vegetables and the many beautiful flowers that were throughout the garden. So Ralph spent much time in the garden and became interested in all the life he found there. Birds were always to be found in the garden. There were many English Sparrows, Robins, Chickadees, Wrens and Blue Jays in the summer. Grossbeaks came in the winter to eat the cranberries. When Ralph was about 7 years of age, he was given a little plot of land all his own and he was shown how to get it ready for planting in the spring. He learned to spade it and rake it to get the ground all even. He learned the various ways of planting seeds like carrots, beets, and pumpkin. Potatoes were cut up and planted with their eyes still on. He also planted flowers in his garden. Snapdragons, pansies, asters, daisies, lupen and dalphiniums.

Ralph worked in his garden with his own little rake and his own little hoe. His grandparents showed him how to stretch a string across the length of his little garden and attach it to two cedar sticks, one on each end. Ralph took a third stick to draw a straight line in the soil, the depth required for the seeds. Usually about an inch or so deep. The seeds would all be dropped in at the right distances apart so they would grow up without being too crowded together. Many such lines were drawn for the different kinds of seeds to be planted.

Later he was taught how to remove all the weeds from around his plants and to water them very carefully. He diligently watched the potato plants. When potato bugs were spotted eating the new green leaves, he was taught to pick the bugs off the leaves and dispose of them in a can.

Ralph’s mother, Claire was out of the hospital and completely well by now. She worked as a housekeeper at Braeside for her father and her mother. Working in the garden was one of her favioute pass times. It was also under her supervision that the many beautiful flowers were planted around Braeside. At one time there would be as many as 500 gladioli blooming on the front lawn in every shade of red, peach, choral, yellow, and white. Cars would line up in front of the house to see the sight. The work of the large garden was getting to much for Grandpa Taylor and Claire to handle all by themselves. Grandpa Taylor was getting old and was often sick, and there was so much work to do. So he hired a man named Mr. Scott who lived just across the street from him. Mr. Scott was an Englishman who was about 60 years of age, and his job was to come and act as gardener. Mr. Scott would come over regularly to do work in the big garden and Ralph was frequently with him.

Mr. Scott had difficulty walking because his joints were very stiff. His work was very hard, digging up the soil in the spring, getting it ready for planting, and then helping with the harvest in the fall. So there were times when Mr. Scott was not smiling. He was very grouchy and not very pleasant to a little boy who was full of questions. Mr. Scott was probably suffering from a lot of pain, and it was only in much later years that Ralph understood the stiffness in his knees and hands as being what older people called arthritis, or rheumatism. Arthritis could be very painful at times, particularly when the weather was cold and damp.

But Ralph got used to Mr Scott and followed him around, and particularly watched when he was digging up the garden soil. The robins would be busy coming around looking for earthworms exposed by the digging. Ralph would often laugh when the worms resisted very hard at being pulled out of the ground. The robin with one end of the worm tight between its beak would start to pull the worm out of its hole and would have to lean way back. The worm in turn pulled back the other way to try and return to the safety of the ground. The result was a tug of war with the robin and the earthworm teetering back and forth in the struggle. Sometimes the robin would fall over backwards, almost backwards, after winning it’s prized catch. And sometimes the earthworm would escape right back into its hole again. The robin would cock it’s head and look at Ralph as if to say “the rascal got away on me”.

There were many birds nests around the garden and Ralph was interested to watch the robins gather up the worms to take to their babies in the nest. He would watch the little baby robins stretch their necks and open up their beaks as they were being fed. And Mr Scott would often stop a moment or two to watch the robins too. And occasionally he would laugh at the robins as they were fooled by the earthworms.

Everywhere that Ralph went, his dog “Doc” would follow him. Doc was a water spaniel with long, floppy ears, and he was the same age as Ralph. Sometimes Doc would get in Mr. Scott’s way, and Mr. Scott would be cross at him. But both Ralph and Doc accepted Mr. Scott and were anxious to be friends with him. They would follow him about when he was hauling different things in his wheelbarrow, and they would run little errands for him when he asked them to.

Standard
happiness

Canada Day 2019

We went to Canmore to watch the Canada Day parade – a tradition we started in 2014 when we were home visiting. It used to be a quiet, small parade and now it seems the word has got out – larger but still a lot of fun.

And the weather was perfect for it.

Then the boy was called into work which ended the rest of the party plans, which was unfortunate, but that’s life with one car when you live in the country.

Happy Canada Day. I love this country, I’m so proud to be a Canadian, and I’m grateful this is where my kids are growing up.

Standard
happiness

Canada Day 2018

For the fifth year in a row the kids and I went to Canmore to watch the parade. Things didn’t go exactly as planned and we ended up leaving early, but still it’s awesome that we have these traditions. We also ended up missing my aunt’s annual party, but I’m learning to accept that life doesn’t always go as planned.

We still ended up having a nice and quiet Canada Day. I’m so grateful we live in this country 🇨🇦.

Standard
happiness

Trust in me

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reading the last few days about trust. It’s been a big one for me over the last few years – probably over most of my adult life. I don’t think that I went into my marriage having massive trust issues, but I certainly came out of it with more than my fair share.

What I realized as I was beginning to heal was that I no longer trusted myself. That crushed me – I felt like I had proven to myself over and over I was untrustworthy. After all, I had convinced myself to stay for years in a situation that wasn’t safe by telling my soul lie after lie about how things would change, or trying to convince myself that what he said was true and the reason he was so angry, deceitful, and absent was because of me. I have been working on changing that relationship with myself. Interestingly, it’s been at least as difficult a process as it would be to learn to trust and forgive someone else who had betrayed me. The good thing is I’ve been reading the perfect book Trust by Iyanla Vanzant – it’s giving me exactly what I need right now.

My exercise this morning in A Course In Miracles was to find the light inside of a person who had betrayed me. The only part of the exercise that was easy was deciding which person to pick. But you know what? He has a light inside too  – he may have covered it up with clouds of hate, anger, fear, rage, and whatever else – but there is a light in there, I’ve seen it before.

Here’s the thing. While I would like to think that he wouldn’t purposely leave his children without a way to have their needs met, that’s not true. No amount of wishing he is a different man than the one he shows me will change that – I know, I’ve spent years hoping he will change. And while I no longer go to bed at night scared he will make good on his threats to harm us, I still seem to hold out hope that he will turn into a decent person for the sake of my kids.

You know what that does? It messes with my ability to trust myself. I know he is trying to destroy me, I know he doesn’t care about the damage he does to the kids in the process. And yet I have spent sooooooo much energy trying to convince myself otherwise.

Here’s what I know for sure:

I have been depending on a man who has proven for years he’s not dependable

I have been trusting a man who has proven for years he’s not trustworthy

I have been wishing for him to change even though he’s proven he has no interest in being kind.

I know who he is and what he’s capable of and still I expect him to behave differntly

I expect him to do what I know he will not do and be who I know he is not

It is impossible for him to become trustworthy just because I want him to be

He has shown me who he really is and I have to believe him.

You know what telling myself all those lies has done? It has messed with my ability to trust myself. It’s affected the most important human relationship I have – the one with my own soul. It makes me betray my heart and my intuition to convince myself that I can trust him.

And he has very, very clearly shown that he has no limits to the pain he is willing to inflict not only on me but on the kids. My poor kids are devastated right now and it hurts me to the core of my soul.

So, I keep working on forgiveness, now for myself. I need to forgive myself for not trusting my inner voice, for not valuing the power of my intuition. Part of me knew as soon as mom died he was going to come after me again – and I was right, but I forced myself to ignore it. And now here we are.

With that, I feel like he’s had enough airtime in my life and on my blog. I am working on forgiveness, but I’m also standing up and saying that what he’s doing isn’t right. I’m doing it here, but I’m also working with the authorities to get them moving on forcing him to deal with the consequences of his actions. Part of me trusting myself means knowing that I’m not afraid to stand up for myself and for my kids. I’m not the same woman he used to beat down.

Standard
happiness

Waterton wellness day

The girl and I drove down to Waterton for the day. This is one of my happiness places, and even if the visit is short like today it does amazing things for my soul. 

The beauty and peace of the place is really something that must be felt, but here’s a little sample of what it is like 


If I ever doubt God’s existence all I need to do is see the beauty He created in the world around us. I can feel His presence strongly in places like this. And that was good – I’ve needed to be rebalanced and regrounded. 

That is happiness. 

Standard