Two Men in My Life

My son Frank is a man of many talents. He is articulate, humorous, successful in business and a talented singer and musician. His many friendships have lasted a lifetime. He is a kind and caring human being. He didn't learn to be like that. I didn't have to teach him. It is in his nature.

My grandson Adam is equally impressive. When he was born, we realised how little we knew about Down's Syndrome. We had to learn. Adam taught us.

First they told us he wouldn't be able to nurse. It wasn't true. Social workers came to the house and talked about infant stimulation and limited expectations. What they said he couldn't do, he did.

Because of Adam and what he taught them, his mother and father became a positive resource for other young parents.

He learned but at his own pace. He had an abundance of caution. He never fell off a bed or a chair or down stairs. He scooted everywhere on his bum. He had more control that way. His mother and I each took a hand to encourage him to walk. He lifted his feet off the ground.

He loved the pool and watched his younger cousins in succession .as each got the nerve to jump into the deep end. He ventured in and all around, toes clinging to the small ledge and arms hugging the deck. When finally he did go off the diving board , he wore a life jacket. He 'd go with a shout ,down into the water. The jacket stayed afloat until he bobbed back up into it. We would shout at him to take it off. He would shout back in outrage “Do you want me to die”

He played all the usual sports and when he grew older, he bowled and played golf as well. Then another boy's Dad had a vision. A special league was formed and Adam went on the ice. After years of being number one fan at his younger brothers' games, Adam became a player too.

He 's the goalie in a league of different ages and skill levels. When he skates onto the ice, his team follows like a line of ducklings. They know all the chants and moves in the pre-game skate around. His brothers' help on the ice. His dad coaches. A young man of twenty-seven, who in his whole life had never been involved in anything or with anyone but his parents joined the league His Dad laces his skates for him and he takes to the ice with his team.

A small boy of eight, who almost never speaks, sits beside Adam and softly repeats his name
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There is one skill Adam has not mastered completely He understands speech. He has a vocabulary of choice expressions and knows when to use them. He pronounces emphatically on his loves and hates. If he likes what I'm wearing he tells me “That's cute” But his conversation is mostly understood by cadence.

He has friends , a job and a special girl . At a party, he's a dancing fiend and now he has an ipod that keeps him movin' to the music. He is an inexhaustible break-dancer par excellence.

Adam grew up in Newmarket. He attended Canadian Martyrs and Sacred Heart High School until he was twenty-one . Last week he had his twenty-fourth birthday He is currently a participant in Special Olympics .He is a powerful swimmer.
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We live in an age and a community of opportunity for everyone who wants to take it.

Youth Bocci is an annual magazine which provides sponsorships, encouragement and recognition for young people like Adam. So that they can strive like all the rest, to be the best that they can be.

And we are all the better for it.

I was asked to write this little piece for the magazine. My son Frank is a sponsor,my grandson Adam a recipient of one of their bursaries. I thought I would share.

The Twins and Other Thoughts

The Baby Shower was a delight. The twins were the stars of the show. Everyone got to hold them They slept through it all in perfect peace and tranquility.

Vanessa went to Montreal with her mother Mary on Monday. She had to attend at the American Consulate . There are only two in Canada . One in Montreal and one in Vancouver.

Heather went to Kitchener to help her brother Stephen, the grandfather, take care of the twins
until Tuesday. The babies have to be fed every two hours on the hour. It's a very busy schedule.

Heather and her brother are good friends. He is the eldest of my children. Heather is number five. Thinking of them together with babies conjured up many memories.

Stephen was always first out the door when I brought a new baby home. He would be twelve years old when he took Heather from my arms.

When she was no taller than his legs were long, she would put her hands on her hips and leaning her head as far back as it took to look up into his face she regularly gave him a piece of her mind about how things were to be.

Their families would get together every summer, camping at Sandbanks Provincial Park. Now that his kids are grown,Stephen still goes down and joins Heather's family for a week. We discovered Sandbanks when my family were young and it's been a favourite place ever since. The games on the dunes were pretty much the same as those I played myself on the sandy hills of the shore in Scotland, where I grew up.

And this week she was happily engaged helping him take care of his new-born twin grandchildren.

Stephen is quite convinced, there are two tiny angels in his house.

They will leave soon when all the formalities are completed. To live and grow up all the way across the continent in Seattle, Washington.

Beautiful Babies

[HEATHER'S NOTE: Claire is the fair-haired baby, and her brother Reid has very dark hair. They're beautiful! Congratulations Vanessa & James, and families!]

Update on Twins and other stuff

Vanessa came to the Easter Gathering on Sunday. She is looking very well and happy. The babies are still in hospital but she hopes they will be home for the Shower in May. If they are not. I am thinking the Shower will have to descend on the hospital. We were planning a caravan for the birth, but that didn't happen.

It was a plane that brought them to Guelph from Windsor, not a helicptor as I first indicated. Vanessa had a room at the hospital while they were there. The mother needs to be close.

Reid is over four pounds and Claire is just three ounces behind him. They will still be in Canada when the Forrester family cottage is opened at Christie Beach. Mary tells me they will have their feet dipped into Georgian Bay before they leave for America. So they will always know where they come from.

Vanessa has to go to Montreal to the American Legation for an Immigration Hearing for the three of them to enter The States. Stephen will take her and Mary will have the babies to herself. Arms filled with a soft sweet smelling bundle of baby are fulfilling nature's best purpose. Twins must be doubly satisfying.

We were a merry throng on Sunday. A number of birthdays happen around Easter. The practice is to have birthday cake, sing the Birthday Song, They Are Jolly Good Fellows and a round of three rousing Hip Hip Hoorays. No gifts are exchanged. We are each others gift.

This year Robyn again made the birthday cake. But she decided it would be a chocolate layer cake. Of course it wasn't big enough. The Masters golf tournament was on television. The songs were not sung, the cheers were not shouted and to his great disgust my son Frank did not get a piece of birthday cake.

But the ham and roast beef were done to a T and my gravy was delicious. Next time, Robyn can make the cake again but there will be a back-up just in case.

While we were together, someone else was visiting friends in Aurora and sharing memories of happy days in the Factory Theatre. Gail Kendall had acted with Frank in a play called "You Can't Take it With You" and sent her best wishes to all of us through an e-mail.

It was a very nice ending to a great day.

Bulletin.

The twins are in Guelph. That's closer to home. They were transported by helicopter one at a time.
Big brother came first on a high-wind Saturday and the pilot had trouble landing. So little sister was brought on Sunday. Apparently there's only room for one infant with all the trappings and attendants .So they had to be brought one at a time.

Vanessa is able to sleep at home now. James had to go home to Takoma the Friday before the little family were transported. So it's a blessing, they didn't have to stay in Windsor any longer.
The babies are still making progress.

Vanessa is a strong person but the experience must be taking it's toll.

The New Family

The twins are still progressing. But in Windsor. If two spaces become available in Kitchener
they will be transported immediately. But if a preemie arrives in Kitchener and there is a space, the new arrival will have priority. Two spaces are even more difficult to come by than one.

Vanessa is discharged but has to stay in hospital to be with the little ones. James will be going back to Seattle any time. She has her lap-top but can only use it at the library. Stephen and Mary go down at the week-ends. She is a very strong young woman and the circumstances require it. The main thing is the babies are making good progress. The care is excellent.

The clan is gathering on Easter Sunday but we don't expect to see them here. These babies will be going to live in America when the documentation is completed and transport is sensible. That will be a heart-ache. Especially for Stephen and Mary. I hhave never had to contend with anything like that.

The Newest Satellite is still in Windsor

They are doing well. Babies born eight weeks early, every hour of survival is positive. They are eight days old.

Brother is off the feeding tubes and being nursed. Little sister is sleepier, not so active but coming along. Every day there is hope they will be brought closer to home but they are all together and care is the best.The shower has been put off until May.

I'm still knitting but I've done all the lacy I mean to do. I had to unravel many hours of intricate stitching in the skirt of a little coat because of an early error. So no more of that. It's almost inevitable if you knit for hours and into the wee small hours. I'm glad I didn't start with shawls. From now on whatever ornamentation goes on will be hand stitched.

Stay tuned.

Safe Arrival

The twins are here. They arrived at 3 p.m. on Friday afternoon. in a hospital in Windsor,Ontario.
The Kitchener hospital wasn't set up for them yet. They came eight weeks early.They are fine and feisty and breathing on their own. Two more added to the clan.

Claire got things going but was second to arrive. Reid is the longest,weighs 3pounds, eight ounces and has dark hair. Claire weighs seven ounces less and is blonde. Mom and Dad survived the experience nicely. Dad took the Red Eye from Seattle to Detroit and crossed the river to Windsor in plenty of time to share the excitement.

Grandparents, Stephen and Mary were in Mexico for the March break and missed the excitement...well not exactly...they just weren't on the spot.

It's not clear how long the new family will be in Windsor, We should know to-morrow. The shower is next week-end in Kitchener. It would be nice if they could be at the party.

The little lacy dress is knitted but not stitched together yet. The shawls will never be knitted now.A shawl can not be knitted in a hurry. By the time they'd be finished, their small persons would already be too grown-up. Only new-borns can be wrappped in shawls so the moment has passed. Those moments in an infant's life are like sunbeams. If you don't catch them when they happen, the same chance never comes again.

A Delightful Dilemna

I'm knitting again. A tiny lacy dress of many pastel shades. The twins will be here soon.
A boy and a girl; Claire and Reid. Vanessa has asked her father Stephen, my first- born, to ask me to knit for the babies. I had been thinking about it but I wasn't sure if this Queen's University graduate, world-traveller, sometime inhabitant of Korea and Australia and Seattle, Washington and currently Kitchener, Ontario would be particularly interested in my old fashioned enterprise..

"Ah yes." said Stephen. "She is really is. She already has a keepsake box"

My daughter Heather, has things I knitted for Vanessa. Mary, Vanessa's mother, passed them on to Heather when Robyn was born. Robyn is almost sixteen. Heather was keeping them for Robyn but Vanessa says she would like them. So now they will be on the move again.

A lacy pattern takes longer than plain knitting. If it's going to be a keepsake it needs to be special. Who knows how many babies will wear it. Modern yarn never fades or shrinks, moths don't eat it and little ones grow so fast they don't wear it long enough to wear out.

I have to find something special for the boy baby.

My baby knitting books are almost as old as myself. I found them in the Goodwill years ago. My own were left behind. Someone else had kept these ones for forty years. Infant boys and girls were not dressed differently long ago. Clothing for tiny bodies had the same purpose. I had a thoroughly modern French Phildar book when I was knitting for my grandchildren. It is currently missing. Damn.

The needles for a lacy pattern are not much above a wire gauge. They are long. One fits under my right arm and the yarn winds around the fingers of my right hand. It provides for even tension and economy of movement. The index finger on my hand has sprouted a lump on either side of the first joint but it doesn't interfere with the knitting. The needle in my left hand is the only one that moves. The needles are bent. I really need to replace them.

I wanted yarn with a silky fleck. I need to look at modern patterns and new needles. But knitting shops are sparse on the ground. I like a shop that only has yarn and needles and patterns and beautiful finished garments hanging above one's head everywhere. I like walls covered with boxes of yarns of different thickness and multiple blends and colours than cant even be imagined. I like a table and a chair for leisurely turning pages of all the familiar pattern books and new ones besides. Such a shop is quiet because soft yarn everywhere absorbs sound and there's a feeling of reverence. Such a shopkeeper is a knitter. I like she who isn't averse to sharing experience without acting like a High Priestess. I learned to knit at the same time as I learned to write. It's not that big a deal for goodness’ sake.

The tiny little lacy dress is nicely taking shape. I bought enough yarn in Wal-Mart to make outfits for both infants. But the multiple shade is knitting up more girly than white so I have to find a wool shop for the right pattern book and yarn for Reid. And I must have straight needles.

Twelve rows form the pattern - each having 143 stitches. I can't stop in the middle. I need to finish the twelfth row. I don't mind except that I'm always drawn to start a new pattern. I don't watch the clock so sometimes I am going to bed closer to four in the morning than three. I don't mind that either. But I must have straight needles.

Should I go out now and seek out a shop or will I finish the back of the dress? The front is done. The back is half done. If I go and find a knitting shop I may not get home for hours.

What to do? What to do? The Baby Shower is in a couple of weeks. The work must be completed. If I had started a month ago, I could have knitted two feather and shell pattern shawls with two-ply yarn. I don't even know if there is such a thing as two-ply yarn any more.

An Addendum

I read the post about my grandparents again and it brought back a few more memories. So, I went back in and added a thing or two. (Keeping The Record Straight)

My family like the personal Blog better than the political. The more I write the more they want me to write. So every time I remember something else it seems sensible just to go back and slip it in. That's the beauty of Blog.

I work on some stuff for hours. I go over it again and again , tidying and tweaking, hopefully to make it flow and read better. Then there comes a point when I have to end it and post it or scrap it. Then I read it again days later and realise there was more to tell.

If James Joyce can ramble on in his endless stream of consciousness prose, I can round out memories in my own Blog. Check it out.

Heather Sisman says I'm wasting my time because people won't read it again. Well, now I'm telling you. If you liked it the frst time you might like it better the second time. What can it hurt? It's all between friends, isn't it?

A Moment in the Lives of.....

Sometimes, when I waken from a night's sleep, the clarity of the image in my mind is startling. This was one of those moments.

A flashback from my childhood: My mother standing in our doorway in a one-sided conversation with a neighbour also standing in her doorway less than two feet away. In his chair, behind the door, my father, mimicking my mother and silently mouthing her occasional responses.

“Uh-huh... Uh-huh.... Hm-Hmm...… Hm-hmm.” In my memory it seems the exchange went on for a very long time.

We were a family of six: Mother,(Annie) Father(John), Annie, Patrick, Kathleen and me I was the youngest. My little brother Terry was not on the scene yet.

Mrs. McNab, our neighbour had three sons and a daughter. Donald was her husband. She was a plain thin woman with dark eyes and dark hair done up in a bun at the back of her head. She wore flat shoes , put her feet down hard with toes pointed outwards. She always carried a basket over her arm for messages when she went out. They were fairly well off. They had Sunday clothes and books. Wee Donald was a tradesman at the shipyard. He worked all the time. In Scotland and Northern Ireland only a Protestant could get into an apprenticeship.

Her name was Maggie. but people addressed each other by the title of their status. . For all the years they knew everything about each other, my mother was Mrs. Finnigan and Maggie was Mrs. McNab. It's how things were. Less familiarity seemed to mean more respect.

Mrs. McNab was a good kind soul who had lots to say about everything. When she stopped for breath my mother would fill in with an Mm-hmm or an Uh-huh.. All the while, behind the door, my father sat with arms crossed, one hand raised with a finger touching his chin. mouthing my mother's small sounds. . .

Television was unknown. Only well-off people had "the wireless". In the evening, families clustered around the fire in the light of a gas mantle. We sang boy scout songs or played guessing games like "My Mother had a Sweetie Shop" to amuse ourselves. The only warmth was in that small space around the fire.

We had a room and a kitchen. Both had fireplaces but only the one in the kitchen was ever lit. The door to the room would be kept tight shut to keep the heat in.The space never seemed small but the rooms were likely not more than eight by ten feet. There was an armchair but the weans sat on stools around the fire. They were small stools. It was a small fire
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We had no such thing as popcorn, chips or any other treats. Occasionally there might be apples but never a whole one each. They would always be sliced in half. The apple would be meticulously scraped down to the skin with a teaspoon.

At the week-end, we might have a jug of ice-cream with wafers. The ice-cream man wasn't the only street vendor but he was the only one with a car. The ice cream churn sat beside him in place of the front passenger seat.

Before the war, Pepini's son had an ice-ream coloured convertible. It was magnificent. It played a jingle to announce his arrival..

Ice cream parlours were the brightest, cheeriest places in town. They had big shiny, gurgling urns for coffee. Shelves on the back wall were lined with tall beautiful glass jars filled with chocolates and toffees pastilles and satin cushions and big butterscotch-covered brazil nuts .Ice cream churns topped with heavy, shiny screwtop lids were embedded in the counter behind glass-fronted shelves filled with a wide variety of chocolate bars in colourful wrappers and fancy lettering.

Ice cream could be sandwiched between plain biscuit-coloured wafers, shell-shaped wafers, cones of various sizes or coloured double wafers with marshmallow layers between and sealed with chocolate edges. They were called nougats. The ultimate luxury and delight was a double nougat sandwiched high with ice cream .

Only Italians made ice-cream. They made it fresh every day. Serving styles were only limited by the number of ice cream parlours. It was always vanilla. In a dish, with raspberry syrup spooned over. That was a penny McAlum in Big Bob's shop. . His son was an albino. For a little more money, you could have a sprinkling of shaved chocolate or some other delicious topping. Big Bob kept his head shaved. . Like Mussolini.

Big Bob's shop was in the Halfway. It was a street halfway between the main intersection of the town, (The Cross) and the sea.

Every town in Scotland had numerous ice cream parlors and fish and chip shops. I think the craving for sweets had something to do with limited sunshine, dreary grey skies and rain.

When it came time for Italian boys and girls to marry, an envoy would go off to Italy to find a spouse. That has changed. It hasn't been altogether like that for a very long time.

Did I ever tell you about the night Italy joined Germany in the war. Apparently the announcement was expected on the news. Thugs with clubs were waiting in closes and entries and other dark places for nine o'clock. . They smashed plate glass windows and tore out equipment and supplies. What they couldn't move, they battered. I don't think there was a hint that was going to happen. It was the same all over Scotland.. Come to think of it think of it, it seems to have been spontaneous . That's weird isn't it. After the war we saw films of Germans doing that to Jewish establishments. Much like the KuKluxKlan burning crosses in the American South.

They pushed Pepini's beautiful ice-cream coloured car into the harbour. On our way to school, next morning , we found boxes of wafers and cones at the side of the river. They must have been too light in weight to fall straight into the river where they were probably thrown from the bridge.Until now I never understood how they came to be at the side of the river. .

Italian families had to hide in neighbours' homes until the rampage was over. Even their homes and personal possessions were vandalized.

At school, we were asked to contribute whatever our families could spare to help the Italian families.That was ironic.The Italians were always much better off than we were. They had their own businesses and they tended to keep to themselves.

Husbands and sons over a certain age were gathered up and transported to internment camps.We thought the camps were in Cahada. Apparently a ship taking Germans and Italians to Canada was torpedoed by the Germans and thousands lost their lives. After that they took them to the Isle of Wight instead. A lot of silly things as well as terrible stuff happened during the war.

The shops re-opened but with none of their former glory. Women and children carried on. That's what you do in the face of the terrible and the unthinkable. There isn't much else you can do.

During the war, an Italian prisoner-of-war camp was established in the sandy hills on the edge of town. In the evening, the young prisoners would sit at the side of the road playing accordions and singing or playing cards. Like young people the world over, lthe girls would promenade past to check out the talent.

Nobody I knew ever thought about Italians being enemies.

Another Epic Birthday

My first Canadian born child, Martin, became fifty this month. Marnie, the love of his life, held an open house to celebrate. They have lived in Barrie over twenty years. I expected most guests would be from there.

Save one, all of his brothers and sisters came. Mark injured his back and knee and because he wasn't there, neither was his family. They were missed but others were there to mark the epic. New partners and friends join the ever-growing circle.

Friends from his school days were there.Gary Simpson with his wife Linda and Linda's parents.Gary and Martin started kindergarten together, One year they had to be put into different classrooms. Their comedic antics distracted the entire class, including the teacher.

In Grade six , Bob Gibson came to St Joseph's from Our Lady of Grace. He was at the party with his wife Leslie. Brian Horton and Karen, Phil Alcorn and Diane.and their children, friends from Williams High School days were there. Brian and Phil grew up in Vandorf. Brian has two brothers and Phil has six. Martin has four brothers and two sisters.

Martin and Marnie were in high school together. Marnie's parents, May and the late Thompson, were heavily involved in Aurora Soccer, when it was a minority sport. Thompson was responsible for starting soccer for kids in Aurora. He taught Martin how to coach. Thompson was an intense Scot, dedicated to the sport of soccer.

Martin's son Cameron, in his twenties, has left Junior hockey and soccer behind. But his Dad is coaching a Barrie hockey team again this year.

For the party,two rooms in their house were a gallery for photographs of Martin from his Christening, in the Victorian robe I brought from England, to his wedding and breakfast reception at Seneca College. The wedding photos were taken at the Lakeside Pavilion. Seneca was a new public resource in those days.

Martin was born in 1959, two years after our arrival in Canada. We came here after the Suez Crisis in 1957. The Second World War had been and gone. But not really.

Crisis continued to follow crisis.

Germany's restoration benefited from the Marshall Plan but Britain had massive debts to pay to the United States for the lend-lease program. They had supplied us on credit . After several years of heavy corporate profits, they became our allies, when they were attacked at Pearl Harbour.

Austerity was still a national policy in 1957. Many products were manufactured strictly for export to help make the "balance of payments" of debt to the U.S. Because we needed to limit imports, we still had ration books for some items. The war had been over for twelve years. Purchase Tax was 66.66 per cent on certain items considered to be luxuries, like washing machines and vacuum cleaners. Tax on petrol was 100%.

We lived in two rooms on the main floor, with no bathroom and shared a toilet with several other households in a ninety-two year old Victorian house in N.W. London (Abbey Road). New houses were being built outside the city. Monthly cost for commuting to work were higher than a mortgage payment. The rail system was in such poor shape, hardly a week went by that commuters didn't spend hours sitting in broken down trains. In the cold.

I worked in a law office overlooking Trafalgar Square, alongside a young woman who had lived in Calgary for a number of years. She had left her husband for someone else and come home to have the lover's child and wait for him to join her. His name was Terry. He never came. She talked incessantly about Canada and carried photos with her always.

I had read Mazo de la Roche's books about Jalna and White Oaks.I was caught up in the romance. Living in the U.K. gives no sense of the distance that is Canada. In a narrow Victorian Street in London, the sky is not nearly so high or wide. I was here a while before I realized Sibbald House was Jalna.

Anyway, there was a deep and collective sigh of exhaustion in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe when Britain and France sent their armies to secure private property from Egypt's decision to nationalize the Suez Canal. Thousands of people rose up like flocks of flamingos and emmigrated to Australia, New Zealand, Africa and Canada.

We had two sons; Stephen who was seven and Frank, not quite three. We needed to make a decision about buying a house. A couple we knew with two children also lived in rooms. But they were furnished. With each child, they had received notice to vacate. Landlords could do that if accommodation was furnished. After their second child, they bought a new house in Essex.

Never before or since have I seen such a house . There was an arch over the front door about the depth of a brick and a half. As a porch, it provided no shelter. Waiting there, a body would be half in and half out in the rain. The back door opened onto the door of the only kitchen cupboard. The kitchen was absolute utility. A deep white porcelain sink just hung there on the wall, all by itself. A bedroom opened straight off the sitting room.

They bought the house because they needed a home. A couple of years later they sold it and emigrated to Canada.

A particularly devastating tragedy happened. In Portsmouth, a bus ploughed into a company of marching cadets. I read the Daily Mirror on the bus going to work every morning. It was designed to read standing in a bus or train or waiting at a bus stop. Every day, we read another cadet had died of injuries. The sadness was overwhelming.

Thousands flocked to Toronto at the time we did. I would like to say, it was a well-planned decision. It wasn't. I used the same rationale I did for many life-changing decisions. I didn't know any reason why I shouldn't .

And so, on the occasion of my son's fiftieth birthday, surrounded by his family and friends of a lifetime, in the country of his birth, it occurred to me that a half-assed decison made when I wasn't old enough or wise enough to be afraid, turned out to be not half bad.

Keeping The Record Straight

The History Channel recently featured the Battle of Loos in the First World War. Casualties were buried in trenches where they died. Large numbers were Scots. Recently television featured recovery of the remains of one member of the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders and enough belongings to determine his identity.

He was a poor man - a coal miner. They speculated he joined the Army in hopes of making things better for his family without an idea of what it entailed. They visited the area he had lived with his family and imagined streets of "muck” with no water or electricity in the homes. They said his widow and eight children would have been turned out of their home after his death and there would be no assistance for them from anywhere.

Some of the details of the story were familiar to me from my mother's memories and my own experience.

Coal mines were outside the towns. Owners provided housing known as . Miners' Rows. A single water spigot outside served a whole row of homes. Lighting was by oil lamp. Electricity.had not been invented.

My grandfather grew up in Bartonholm. It was two rows of houses out on a moor. I remember the ruins and the mine abandoned. Grampa told me once of walking in to Mass on a Sunday in his bare feet , with his boots tied around his neck with the laces, to save the shoe leather.

Mass was said once a month in a local public house hotel by an itinerant priest.

When they were first married, my grandparents lived at Bartonholm. My mother was a toddler there. Grannie would be in her early twenties .. My mother was her fifth child. She had already lost Wee Jeannie from whooping cough . When couples married in those days, they bought a cemetery plot. at the same time. There was no immunisation from childhood diseases. They did not expect to raise all of their children.

Grannie was fastidious in her housekeeping. When she finished work each day, her broom would be scrubbed and stood outside the door to dry. . Auld Kate O'Neil. Grampa's mother didn't think much of Grannie's airs and graces. . Every morning, my mother would go to see Granny , wearing a clean white pinafore . Kate would give her bread and jam to mess it up.

Grampa was the oldest in a large family of brothers and sisters. The older members shared the raising of the younger ones. . . They went to work at fourteen, down the mines with father. Grannie and Grampa left Bartonholm and moved into town.

He then had to walk several miles to work.There were times when he worked up to his oxters (armpits) in water . Then walked home in freezing temperatures. He would have to stand in front of the fire for his clothes to thaw ,. A tin bath would be waiting for him to scrub the coal dust from his skin .

Miners worked ten to twelve hour shifts, six days a week. They were paid "piece work".,however much coal they dug out each shift. There was never enough to provide for the average family of ten children. In some ways ,it wasn't much better than slavery .It was just a step up from Feudalism.
My grandfathers ,Henry Diamond and Patrick Finnigan, coal miners both, were among the founders of the British Labour Party. They elected Keir Hardie, the first Labour Party member to the House of Commons.

The terrible privations and sacrifice endured by the soldiers of the first world war shamed the British government to introduce "universal" suffrage in 1921. Until then, only property-owners had a right to vote.

It's not hard to understand how an academic in 2008 , with no knowledge of a people's spirit might have a skewed idea of how things were in 1916. My mother was a teen-ager then. . Mining communities were part of my environment. Bartonholm still stood in ruins out on the moor when I was a child.

My memories do not square with how the archaeologist envisioned things.

Miners’ Rows were low to the ground. A glimpse in a window would reveal a fire burning with copper and brass reflecting a warm red glow. Glass lamp funnels sparkled in the firelight. . Door steps of stone were scrubbed daily. A band of white on each side freshened at the same time. .

There was bare earth and lots of rain but not "muck" . The ground was hard-packed by the foot traffic of thousands over who knows how many years. Traffic that wore down stone and wood into a hollow had the opposite effect on bare ground. It packed down hard and smooth like cement.

Grampa in his youth was a football star. He was Capped, a high honour, twice. He was offered the chance to play at a new professional level. It would have meant travelling. He turned it down. It would have meant leaving his wee wife and weans.

My grandmother's oil lamps were the envy of her friends and family. She bought them from catalogues and kept their source a secret. They were suspended by chains from the ceiling and taken down daily for wicks to be trimmed and glass funnel washed and polished . She had a collection of cranberry glass. It disappeared at the time of the General Strike. Had to be sold I guess to put food on the table.

The first chore of every day was to clear the ashes from the grate, The range would be polished to a high shine with black lead and then the fire would be lit. That was an art..

Grannie was a voracious reader. Her method of birth-control was to stay up reading until Grampa was well and truly asleep.

Family finances were the responsibility of wife and mother. All pay packets, small brown envelopes, were brought home and handed over unopened. The man of the house would have a his pocket.-money returned. Grampa was a saver. But no matter where he hid it, Grannie would find it and but nice things for the house. He never complained.

Grannie's parents, my great-grandmother, Jane Fox, married to James McCafferty, could neither read nor write. But she kept a pig and knitted and sold men's socks. Jane and James were from Ireland. . James lived until he was a hundred. He did read and write. He was a signal man with the London. Midland and Scottish railway. He was also a resource for his community. He read and wrote their letters and kept them informed of the news of the day.

My mother, born in 1902, remembered him with a long white beard and red stocking cap sitting up in bed , still receiving and helping people. She never understood why there were always people visiting . We came to the conclusion together. .Education was not universal in Ireland
.

Jane and James' children married Irish Catholics, all except Grannie. She married a Scottish coal mining Catholic. Granny always had the a feeling of being looked down on because of that.

Grannie bake fine bread and scones and was an excellent cook. She sewed, knitted and hooked rugs. Before there was such a thing as a stove she made her own with a metal tray placed evenly over two primus stoves. Her pots stayed shiny and never blackened with soot .

She was also a midwife and delivered babies for women who could not afford a doctor. She believed newborns were hurt by handling.. She placed the infant in the centre of a shawl and draw the four corners together and carried it where it needed to be without touching. . .

She had a sweet singing voice and an endless repertoire of Scottish and Irish ballads and could be heard singing any time of the day.

My mother had ten siblings. The youngest was born shortly before James the eldest was killed at the Dardanelles in 1917. He was twenty-two. In 1935, they took in my mother and her five children. In those days, women stayed in the matrimonial home no matter the circumstances

Grampa was still working six days a week. His knees were bent with rheumatism, his fingers blunted and twisted with years of howking coal. But he would still get down on one knee and fix a bicycle flat tire .

That was Harry Diamond, coal miner and Annie.After she died in 1946 and Grampa led the family reciting the rosary by her bed, and then he said, ; " Now there's nothing left for me but to do but wait."

A Family Occasion

There were no cards, cakes or parties. I remember clootie dumplings but not for anyone in particular. There may have been a thripny piece or a sixpence wrapped in wax paper in the dumpling. Whoever found it was just lucky. Being your birthday didn't guarantee the prize. We went to live with my grandparents when I was eight. No dumplings after that. I never felt deprived. Nobody I knew celebrated birthdays either. No place for sissy English stuff like that in our Scottish childhood.

For years I understood my birthday was on New Year's Eve. For the bans to be called in the parish church a Certificate of Baptism had to be provided. Seems I was christened three weeks before I was born. It took a while to discover how that happened. Aunt Jean told me the night before we left for Canada.

Seems my birth was not registered within the legal limit. To avoid the fine and, necessity being the mother of invention, my father simply lied and moved the date forward a month.

My children were adults before my real birthday was known.. I've always felt a bit of a fraud about it. If I couldn't be sure of the date, should I be accepting gifts and good wishes? First it was New Year's Eve and lost in whatever else was happening. Then it was close to Christmas and lost in that hubbub. This year it fell on a weekday. A gathering could have been the weekend before or the one after. I wasn't giving it much thought.

I had been asked earlier if I wanted a big to-do. "Absolutely not" I said. We own up to the day but numbers are not mentioned in my presence. I spend minimal time in front of a mirror. I avoid my reflection in plate glass windows when crossing the street. Every day I wake up feeling not a day older than the day before. Why should the world know my calender years?Less said, the better for my equilibrium.

I did not find it strange to be at the Bondhead Golf Club on Sunday afternoon. Heather Sisman had said she found a deal online. Two- for- one Brunch. She always finds deals. She scored hundreds of dollars of free groceries at the Dominion Stores when they were Fresh Obsessed. In the driveway approach, I commented it would be odd if son Frank was there with Lorna. I dismissed the thought. they recently moved to Hockley Valley. Why would they drive all that way for brunch on a Sunday?

So I rounded a corner unsuspecting. There was a scurry of little people. Familiar faces. What's this, I thought, somebody having a party and didn't invite me? Then I was in the room. Son Frank, Bryan Cousineau,the best Police Chief York region ever had, Ron Wallace and his new wife Pat were at the door with beaming smiles .The big beautiful room with a fire in the hearth and festooned with Christmas greenery and sparling ornaments was crowded with people I love.

“Did I not say this birthday was to be a secret?” I intoned . And it was indeed. But only to me. As it was for the first twenty-one years of my life.

All of my children were there, Stephen and Mary, Frank and Lorna, Martin and Marnie, Theresa, Heather and Andy, Mark and Storm and Andrew and Rhonda. Lindsay and Scott came with her two beautiful little girls, Cheyanne and Abigayle – my great granddaughters.

Vanessa was there, expecting twins. James is in Seattle working to bring them there, but not for a while. Patrick, the artist took time off from work and the long bus ride from Ottawa. Cameron, who missed the bus from London for Myles' July wedding in Ottawa , was there. Rory, Theresa's boy, and Mark, son of Mark and Storm, brought young ladies to join the clan. Stephanie the actress came from school in Guelph. Partner Eric was in Sudbury and we missed him.

Quiet, graceful, tall and slim Meghan glided in the wake of cousin Robyn, she of the amazing red hair and freckles and many talents who may go to France as an exchange student in the spring. Ryan sat at the bar, drank pop and chatted to the bartender. He was joined occasionally by cousin Hayley, she of exceedingly droll humour.

Young Michael joined Adam, Patrick, Keenan, Aaron and Cameron, all recently finished school, all with lots to share in lively conversation.

Lizzie the feminist and most likely politician, at school in Peterborough, was missing and missed. Myles, son of Mary and Stephen was also absent, as was his wife Melissa.

Friends of almost fifty years, Mary and John were there as were Margaret and Doug, with whom I share four grandchildren.

Grace Marsh and husband Bren, Alison Collins-Mrakas and Tim Jones, Ron and Pat - friends and comrades at arms, shared a glimpse of my life outside politics.

They were a merry throng but none more than myself. Being together in that place made it a momentous occasion. I shed no tears then but I do now as I tell the tale. I am more fortunate than any person has a right to be. May they always know how much I love them and how proud I am of each and every one.