As I begin to piece this together, it's April in Ottawa and the snow has finally melted, revealing grass that's beginning
to turn that special, newly-green color that's hard to remember from one spring to the next.
My birthday's in April, too - April 1st to be precise -
(a date that has
provided much hilarity for members of my family through the years. Fortunately for me, they
seem to have finally outgrown the April Fool's joke treatment).
So, it seems appropriate to start this ...whatever it's to be called..a "journal",
a collection of remembrances, true stories... whatever ... in April, the month for new beginnings.
Does anyone remember those awful "True Confession" magazines? the ones printed
on cheap shiny paper with garish pictures and dreadful tales of lust and mayhem?...
hate to disappoint you, this won't even come close!? although, later on I may
add some pictures...
For a time I wondered who the audience for my ramblings
might be. Then, in one of my infrequent and almost blinding moments of clarity, I realized that I'm
doing this for me. Doesn't matter who reads it or if no one ever finds it. If family
stumble into it, they're sure to remember some things differently..that's ok...this is
what I remember (and we all know I'm not good on dates or names).
I wonder where I should begin? Back in the early days, or in the present...?
I can almost hear you saying, who cares...get on with it, why don't you!
{Which reminds me of the story about the little boy on his first day at school. When he came home that afternoon,
his Mother asked him how his first day had gone and he replied ruefully..."Well,
it was ok, but I never did get the present". "What present?", asked his Mother in a puzzled voice. "Well, my teacher said, "sit here for the present, dear" and
I waited and waited, but I never did get it", he replied ruefully.} Communication is
such an interesting and often exasperating exercise!
So...to the present. Today I live in Ottawa, the capital of Canada [which I refer to as the mythical land of Ott... politics just aren't
the "real" world, are they?] - (there should be a footnote here for people
who think that Toronto is the capital of Canada, but I'll restrain myself).
I live alone, let me emphasize "happily" alone,
single parent of one full-grown and beautiful slim, blonde, intelligent daughter who has turned out to be my best friend. She's
a teacher and lives in Toronto (about four hours drive away, on a good day).
I was born in Nova Scotia and grew up in a small coal-mining town. I've kept journals for most of my life. I finally shredded them recently,
in a moment of sheer reckless abandon while cleaning out the infamous storage closet. Closer inspection of some
of the old entries made me sound like a dreadful whiner. Not something you'd like to leave lying around
for posterity to stumble over.
And I work in the mining industry. Have for 25 years now. Talk about irony!
I grew up in the 40s, just as the war was ending and everything was in scarce supply.
(now, please, don't ask "which war?!"I can just see the look on your face - "Migawd! the 40s!?")
You probably weren't even born then and you're right
about it being another time, another world entirely. My family, like most of the village, were coal miners. Dad
started in the pit when he was just fourteen (some things are self-explanatory). He came from a family of ten boys and two girls ... actually a "double" family, 'cause
his real Mother died when he was about two and his Father re-married.
Jean and Willie, Daddy and me
The year that I turned six was the year that the whistle from the
Drummond Mine woke us in the red haze of a cold morning heralding a massive explosion.
That night Daddy lost most of his brothers and it was only by grace of God or luck of the draw that he wasn't working that shift.
You wouldn't have heard about that particular explosion (it was just too long ago), although you've probably heard about the Springhill mining
disaster - while Springhill wasn't my home town, it was the same sort of thing.
I remember it was cold, in the wee small hours of the morning and I was in my pajamas. I remember Daddy holding me in his arms as we watched
the smoke and flames shoot up from the mine, blotting out the skyline. When we got there, you could hear shrill cries echoing through the
haze of smoke; I remember asking Daddy what was the noise? and he said "it's the pit ponies...they're trapped in there too"......and then the screaming stopped.
You've got to remember that it was the 40s and high-tech hadn't reached
us yet. Those were the days of using canaries to check for methane gas fumes..if the
canary died, it was probably too late anyway. They used pit ponies to haul the carts
of coal along the tracks to the surface. Times have changed dramatically and now
mining is a highly-automated, sophisticated business.
That was a very long time ago and the old Drummond mine is long gone, as is my Grandmother Jean's big house that
sat at the top of the hill, across the field from the pit. Perhaps some of you may have read about
the Westray disaster in Pictou County in the late 90s; ( Westray Memorial Link) That was the same seam of coal, in the same small town and it blew up too. The
Westray was just spitting distance from the house I lived in the last few years before we moved to Ontario. The
old-timers could have told the managers that the Drummond seam was a killer - but I'm sure the managers never asked.
Daddy, Jean & Willie, Mum & Me
I'm going to add a page or two about growing up in that little coal mining town, so if
you want to hear about it, just watch for "the early days". I had
a lovely childhood so don't look for what you think might be dramatic sequences there. Those came later.
When I was eighteen, I could hardly wait to get a job. Looking back on it now, I
must have been totally naive! I had taken some music at Mount Allison University, but
had also come to the realization that I was never going to be among the top ten in the music
industry (another moment of clarity...mark that down somewhere). So, I took a business course ...typing, shorthand, all that good stuff, and moved to Halifax
to work for a radio and t.v. station.
Time marched on and when I was twenty, I was engaged to
be married to a sweet fella from Boston, (this was my third engagement...who knows, might
be a story in there somewhere, too) who drove a spiffy little red sports car. I had just turned twenty-one in April the year
his little red car went off the road, rolled over and burst into flames. He was killed instantly and I was totally devastated.
I left Halifax and came back home to be with my Mom and my two younger brothers (ten
years between us). Dad had been drowned three years earlier in a diving accident on a July 1st weekend, just before his 42nd birthday. He'd been working at Elliot Lake. But that's
another story, too. It's just too easy to get sidetracked.
Before the shock of Bill's death had really crystallized in my mind, I discovered that I was
pregnant. Big shocker (I was naive about a lot of things). In those days, being a single Mom in a small
town wasn't the best position in which to find yourself. Perhaps it still isn't? It was a long nine months and
I did a lot of walking around in snowbanks. In February of 1963, Laurie (Mom's middle name) was born and I had a lovely, healthy baby girl...and yegods! suddenly I was a Mom!
A year passed. By this time, I was working for Maritime Telephone and Telegraph
and trying to settle back into small town life again. I finally decided
there wasn't much future in a small coal-mining town and we decided to make a move. We spread a map of Canada out on the floor, jabbed a hatpin in it to see where it would land. Voila!
Ottawa...well, why not...after all, it was the Capital. What did we know! So we moved ... lock, stock, barrel and two pussy cats.
In order to get the "lock, stock and the barrel", we sold
all our possessions. That was the end of my record collection and all my Grandmother Jean's "precious things" that she
had brought from Scotland. (There are some reminiscences in "the early years" about my grandparents). It all went on the auction block, with the exception of some dishes and bedding.
We bought a huge station wagon and some camping gear and in the summer of 1964, away we went.
It took us two weeks to make a trip that generally takes people about two days. We camped and it rained for two weeks.
To save on expenses, we bought one huge tent and four air mattresses instead of sleeping bags.
If you've ever tried to deflate four air mattresses before you can pack them up, you'll understand
why it took two weeks to make the trip!
Laurie and the tent
Adventurer that he was, we lost one cat (Mitts) enroute. Believe it or not, he was returned about a month later, crated and indignant, and shipped
by rail from the first campground we had visited.
And that was just the beginning. Life is just full of surprises.
{In 1983, in a moment of nostalgia, I convinced Laurie to take a camping trip back to Nova Scotia
to visit all my old haunts and to see where she had been born. Talk
about dejas vous! We were gone for two weeks and with the exception of two days in Cape Breton, it rained the entire time
Sleeping bags or not, it was another one of "those" trips.
Where I had envisioned balmy summer nights, toasting hot dogs over an open fire,
the reality was a soggy tent in the middle of a boggy campground, and no way
on God's green earth you could light an open fire. It was also the summer that temperatures dipped
to the minus digits at night. We slept in every stitch of clothing we'd brought with us.
The trip that was supposed to
have been really inexpensive ended up costing more than our trip to Greece by the
time we rented motels every second night in order to dry out. I haven't been able to convince her to ever do it again in spite
of the fact that I feel I might still have at least one more camping experience in me.}
This is a "work in progress".
It took a lifetime to get here, so chances are it's going to take a couple of
days to put it into words. No names have been changed to protect the innocent.
If anybody who's mentioned herein should stumble into the site and be upset
at seeing themselves, I'd probably
keel over in shock. But, if it should happen, send me an e-mail and we'll talk about it.
Meantime, stay tuned.
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