Things get off to a rough start in Lydia’s new home in Englehart, Ontario, but the hospitality and helpfulness of the northerners smoothes her transition … until little Stephen starts cracking bones again. Meanwhile, Lydia’s TV isn’t working, but waiting in the wings is a repairman who can see the picture quite clearly, and life takes flight anew.
Links to the previous chapters are the end of this episode.

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We left Hamilton on July 18, 1966, a warm summer evening, arriving in Englehart around 6am on the 19th to a cool, mist-filled morning. As the train was slowing to enter the town we got our personal belongings ready, looked out the window and saw we were several feet over a river on a trestle bridge. But we were soon pulling into the station, where the chairman of the school board met us, giving us a quick tour of the town, showing me the school where I was to teach, before checking us into a hotel.

I brought my two cats with me and they had to go into the basement in their cage while Stephen and I crawled into bed for a few hours’ sleep. When we got up we located a restaurant and had breakfast, and I wanted to see about my furniture as well as the apartment that had been rented for me. My furniture hadn’t arrived yet so I couldn’t move in, and as I didn’t want to stay in a small hotel room, we went to look for some help.

While having lunch we noticed a priest, and I approached him to see if he could do anything for us until my stuff arrived. Very quickly some calls were made, people loaned me some basics and Stephen and I moved into our own apartment. Here the cats could at last get out of their cage and we were finally on our own. A few days later, the railway officials called to say my belongings were here but they needed just over $400 to release them. I was in shock! The moving company assured me the cost would be under $200 and there was no way I could pay this price, not getting my first paycheque until the end of September. Arrangements were made for the school board to pay the bill and take it out of my pay each month.

Then I received another shock. All my packing in Hamilton had been undone and everything was repacked, but this time in wooden crates, increasing the weight and the cost. Things that had never been apart when new were now taken apart and crated. Legs on end tables were pried off until the glue-bond broke and Stephen’s bicycle was in pieces, even the pedals were off. Everything was wrapped in newsprint, even my dust mop. When I saw the delivery truck unloading all those crates I just sat and cried. One of the parishioners who came to help took me to his home two doors away and told his wife to look after me.

There were four children in this house and the youngest would be in my Grade 1 class. While I rested, Stephen made friends with Mark, and the mother, Theresa, became one of my first and dearest friends. When I finally got back to my apartment most things were set up, but the people couldn’t figure out how my table was put together so Theresa and Paddy helped me do it. I was invited for supper and told to visit anytime I wanted until I got settled in, so our first week in Northern Ontario passed quickly.

Stephen and I felt too confined in the two-room apartment and went looking for something else we could rent. About this time my friend from Duke Street in Hamilton decided to come up for a week’s visit, and we felt that now was a good time to really find a new place. We saw an empty house, two streets over, and after inquiries learned we could have it very cheaply and could move in right away, which we did. My friend helped me move and I now had a cute little house with five rooms, but no fridge or stove. Those were purchased on payments and I was all set.

My friend’s son was Stephen’s friend Michael – that’s them up a tree in the picture – and we took the boys to the local show, swimming at the pool and visiting the school where I was to teach.

Because there were so few children in each of my three grades, the board had accepted two underage children into the first class, and Stephen was allowed to become the third, and that solved my babysitting problems. Englehart was very small when I arrived in ’66 and we had soon been all over town and visited every interesting location. I was homesick since this was the first time I had ever been away from loved ones where I could at least see them on weekends. I ran up my phone bill to the extent that by Christmas I had to have the phone taken out so I could catch up paying what I owed.

In August I met some of my future pupils and was befriended by one mother who lived behind my street, and they took me into their home as if I were family. Their oldest was also to be in my Grade 1 class, and Kelly introduced me to other families and took us to their friends in the country, where a new world was opened to me. I found out that people in the north were very open and friendly and accepted me into their midst without question. The first time I visited a lady with several children, living on a farm, I was so at home in her old-fashioned farm kitchen that I was at last living my dream of “roughing” it. They cooked on a wood stove, and had home-made bread and jam set out for us. I loved it!
This lady reminded me of Ma Kettle with all those children around, from late teens down to a six-year-old. Soon Stephen was running around the buildings with them, and at one point came running into the house, calling for me to come outside quickly because the cows were going to have a “cow race”. Apparently the cows were being driven into the barn where each went into her own stall and the head was put into the stanchion until they were milked. My city-bred son, who loved all those horse races on TV, just assumed they were getting ready for a race.

A short time later, one of the older girls got her pony out and was riding it around the buildings when Stephen stepped in front of her, getting run over. Luckily no damage was done, but to my inexperienced son, farm living was a big adventure, if not a dangerous one. That August Kelly took us back to the farm several times and I became good friends with everyone there. She also took me to the bigger town of Kirkland Lake, where gold was once discovered and several mines were still operating. Her husband worked just outside of the town in an iron ore mine that would play a big role in the news years later, after it closed.
I was a bit nervous about teaching three grades, remembering my problems in the Grade 5 class in Georgetown, but I got the books I needed, looked over the curriculum and saw I would manage. And so I began my fourth teaching year, away from my family and old friends but with several new ones, who remain with me to this day.

The first week of school was mostly getting acquainted and reviewing the work from the precious year. Also, Englehart held a fall fair the weekend after Labour Day and the children were all excited about it. My house was opposite the high school, which was across from my school and the fairgrounds. We saw the Ferris wheel being set up as well as the other rides.

On the Saturday there was to be a parade and prizes awarded for best costumes for the children. Stephen and I decorated his bicycle as a motorcycle, and he wore his black “leather” jacket and his Super-Helmet-Seven and went as a biker, winning first prize.

Stephen had no trouble fitting into Grade 1 (that’s him, fourth in the first row in the dark shirt), nor the other two underage boys. With these three, there were 10 in Grade 1, 10 in Grade 2 and 10 in Grade 3. I soon had a system in place where I could teach one grade while the other two did seat work, and even had groups in each grade, with nine different levels of children in my class. All that knowledge gained from my teacher’s college courses was finally being put to use.

With all those children known to me now, I got to meet their parents, and because the town was small it was easy to run into someone from the school when I went to get my mail or to the store. The more people I met, the more I liked living in this town. Ancaster had been small, but Englehart was smaller and the people seemed friendlier. I became friends with a widow whose husband had died in a mine in Alberta. Her youngest son was in my class. I soon had friends all over town as well as in the surrounding countryside, and felt less lonely and homesick.

With fall fast approaching, I missed all the bright reds, crimsons and oranges of the trees in southern Ontario. All I saw around Englehart were green evergreens and yellow birch or poplars. I missed the bright colours of maples but soon got used to the trees around here. Then the snows came and with the snow, the temperature dropped much lower than I was used to in Hamilton. Going visiting one evening, I was struck by the clearness of the night sky, the many stars overhead and the smoke rising upwards from each house. I had never witnessed such a sight, and it’s etched on my mind forever. How still it was here. Once in a while the train would bump into something as the engineer was moving cars around the yard, but then stillness again. Most nights we would be awakened by a loud bang as the frost cracked in the walls. That took some getting used to.

Christmas was approaching and we were going to spend it with my Mother, who had bought a house, where she lived with Sister and her husband. Sister was to have another baby that spring and Mother didn’t want any more accidents with this pregnancy. The school was to put on a concert in the church basement, so my class was preparing a short program. We could only do two numbers per class, so I had the Grade 1 children dress as angels and sing a Ukrainian carol, while the older grades would be elves and sing a song about Santa and the elves. The children looked adorable as angels, even if some of them acted more like little devils, and my elves stole the show.

Winter was very cold that year, especially to me, and my house, which had a gas furnace in the floor and no basement or insulation, was pretty cold. One of my friend’s sons came to bank the bottom of the house with snow and that cut down on the drafty floor and we survived.

Mother had sent Stephen a set of small skis, and the church next door had a sloping driveway where Stephen could practise, which he did often but without much success.

At the other end of town, by the river, there was a long slope to the bottom where the children made their sled run. We went there a few times, but it was so hard climbing back up we soon abandoned that idea.

During that fall Stephen again developed the croupy cough that had sent him into the hospital so many times before, and I called the doctor, who made a house call. After his throat was checked I was informed Stephen had a post-nasal drip, and he gave me a prescription for an anti-histamine, which cleared up the problem within hours. All these years of croup were brought on by this drip, and from that day on, each time Stephen had the slightest cough, he was given a pill that cleared it up. I was so relieved, and couldn’t understand why this wasn’t found out in Hamilton.

I also had to take Stephen to the dentist and was told his teeth were very soft and he needed fluoride to strengthen his second set, and until all his second teeth came in he was on a daily dose of fluoride. I liked being here in the “deprived” North without many of the privileges the South took for granted, but the care Stephen received here was better than he had in the South. Here, the doctors did everything without sending anyone to different specialists, unless it was beyond their expertise. Above all, everything was located within walking distance of home.

As soon as school let out for the Christmas holidays we took the train to Hamilton, where Mother made us comfortable in her new home. I called a few friends and was invited over to one of the men’s homes for a Christmas party. I shouldn’t have gone. Everyone drank a lot and became boisterous, and his mother created a scene, accusing me of breaking up the relationship between her younger son and his girlfriend. I just wanted to go home, but by then no taxi was running and I had to stay the night, and my friend tried to get fresh with me. I wanted no part of him or his family, and as soon as I could in the morning I went home, but the mother kept calling me, still drunk and still accusing me.

After living in the North where people didn’t seem to act like this, I decided then and there to forget most of these old friends and made a clean break. From then on I wasn’t as homesick as I had been, and except for family, Carolyn and the friend who visited me in Englehart, I never had contact with any of the others.

January 1967 began the huge celebration of Canada’s centennial, and the children at school were all singing Bobby Gimby’s song: “Ca-na-da, one little two little three Canadians, we love you …” The work went on and the snows came, the wind blew, and one morning I couldn’t get out of my house to get to school. Since I didn’t have my telephone connected, I couldn’t call anyone, so I waited for help. The principal sent a boy to see why I didn’t appear at school, and soon a group of boys were shovelling out a path to my door. This was a new experience for me, one which was repeated many times that winter.
In February Stephen was playing in his room and climbed on some bookshelves, grabbed the doorframe and tried to swing into the living room to the couch. He didn’t make it, falling on his left elbow, which shattered. I made sure he was all right and ran two doors down to call the police to take him to hospital, since there was no ambulance at the time.

As we waited for the car to arrive Stephen stated that it was a good thing he broke his left arm because he was right-handed and could still write.When we got to the hospital, the arm was examined and X-rays were taken, and I was told the upper bone had shattered the lower bone in the elbow and they didn’t know if they could set it. Stephen was put under and the arm was manipulated, but the pieces in the elbow wouldn’t stay put, so they tried again two days later, with the same results. After each attempt, a new cast was put on the arm to immobilise it.

The old hospital had no children’s ward, so Stephen was in with some men, who looked after him throughout the stay while I was back teaching. Now I was told I had to take Stephen to an orthopedic doctor in the south, so we flew on an Air Canada plane from the Earlton airport, just south of Englehart, and went back to St Joseph’s hospital. Because the plane landed in Toronto we had to find our own way to Hamilton, and a kind man, who had hired a limousine, offered us a ride, which we accepted. Mother again met me at the entrance, and the next day Stephen had his third attempt at setting the elbow, which again failed. Finally, on the fourth try, they managed to get most of the elbow in place and his arm was put in a permanent cast.

As soon as we could we returned to Englehart, by train, and went back to school. The doctors here wanted to see how the arm was set and wanted me to bring Stephen for an X-ray the next morning. I told the principal, left work for each grade and next morning when no one came to relieve me, went to see the principal again. He had forgotten about my leaving that morning and wanted so send some older boys to take Stephen to the hospital, which I refused and just left with him, letting the principal find someone to mind my class.

Stephen made out all right with his arm in the cast, and on March 18, his sixth birthday, we had a house full of children to celebrate. Someone gave him a doctor’s kit that he used whenever he played with the kids next door. I guess being so familiar with doctors and hospitals, he knew what all the pieces were used for.
We didn’t have to go to Hamilton to have the cast removed, getting it done here, but when it was off, Stephen’s arm wouldn’t open straight, and it would be several years before he could have an operation to fix it.

Easter was approaching and we again made plans to visit Mother. Sister was having a difficult pregnancy, but with hospital care she was still carrying he child when we arrived at the end of March. We took Stephen to the Hamilton doctor so he could examine the arm, and we returned to the first signs of spring in Englehart. We still had lots of snow around, but the banks were now smaller and the air was warmer. I was teaching the day of my own birthday when I received a phone call from Mother, telling me Sister had a baby boy on April 18, a special present for me. Jeff was very small, but at least he was full term and expected to make it. When I told my class, one of the Grade 3 students was also celebrating his birthday that day, so Jeff became a present for both of us.

My television that I bought in Georgetown was giving me trouble, so I asked around for someone to fix it. Told that everyone only knew of one person, I called and made an appointment. That night Jack came to see what was wrong. He was very shy and quiet and I, on the other hand, was never lacking for words, so I kept up a steady stream of conversation, hardly noticing that I wasn’t getting much of a response. I was looking at the inside of the television, asking questions and being a nuisance, I guess. I wanted to know if a person could get a shock by touching certain parts. Jack said no, but told me to touch a spot on the picture tube, and before he could stop me I got a big shock that travelled right up my arm.

Jack felt very bad about it, but told me it was good for arthritis, which I didn’t have. With the ice broken between us, I made coffee and he stayed, working on the television for the rest of the evening. I wanted him to look at my old record player that was in the classroom and was running very slowly a lot of the time, so we made another appointment for that. Unknown to me, Jack’s neighbours, some of whom had children in my class, had been trying to get him to ask me out, but because of his shyness he never did. He did drive by my house that Easter when we were away, but Of course I hadn’t known that. Now he was coming another day to fix my record player, and I still wasn’t seeing him as a potential date, but he had other plans.

The day he fixed my record player, he asked me if he could take Stephen and me out for a ride in his airplane. We had only flown once before, when we went to the hospital, so I agreed. I was nervous when I saw the little two-seat Luscome 8E airplane (here we are sitting on it with another friend) he owned, but Stephen was all excited, so, placing him on my lap, we took off. My first impression was how flat everything looked from the air.

We flew over the farm where he lived and Jack pointed out the farms of some of my pupils before we glided over Englehart and saw the town from high above. I was enjoying the trip, but got airsick and wanted to get back on land. Jack asked me to go flying again the next Sunday, so this time I left Stephen with Kelly and her kids and I had my first real date with Jack. Because I knew I would get sick when up in the air, I took a Gravol pill before going up, and after a while started to get sleepy.

We landed and Jack drove to a lake, where we parked to enjoy the still water and budding trees. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, so I lay down with my head on his lap and slept. How long I stayed there I don’t know, but Jack never moved, and when I awoke he told me his leg had gone to sleep and he didn’t want to move me to shift positions. I felt guilty, but started to realise that here was a man who was kind, considerate … and what I needed in my life.

People living next door to Mother, who were hardly known to me, showed up at my door one wet, muddy spring day with two children and two big dogs. I had no idea they were coming and wasn’t prepared for them, so since they were German, I took them to Kelly’s place. Her husband was of German descent. I had made plans to go out with Jack that weekend and didn’t want to miss the date, so I left this unexpected company to shift for themselves, got Kelly to mind Stephen and went out. I had a lot of fun, but they didn’t, and they told me I wasn’t a good hostess. I didn’t care. I didn’t know them, didn’t invite them, didn’t know they were coming and didn’t like their dogs putting muddy paws on my outside windowsills and tracking dirt all over my house. When they left I called Mother and asked why her neighbours had come here. She said they just decided to take a trip north and heard I lived there, and she didn’t know they were coming to my place. Talk about nerve!

Now Jack and I were a steady item. I found out about his family and learned he was the youngest of eight children, was 31 and hadn’t gone out very often with anyone. We visited his parents and I fell in love with the house, which eventually became our home. His mother cooked on an old wood stove, made her own bread and looked the typical “grandmother”. His father was friendly and both parents were very nice to Stephen and me. I wanted my family to meet Jack, and in May he had to drive his mother to a church meeting down south, so we went along and continued on to Hamilton. I also wanted to see Jeff because I hadn’t had a chance yet. That’s Jeffrey in the photo below.

Everyone got along well, and we made a side trip to Ancaster to visit Carolyn and her family. We now began talking about the future, and I told Jack I couldn’t teach after the end of June and would have to go somewhere else for find work. With the prospect of us leaving, we decided to get married the Saturday after school closed, which was July 1, Canada’s centennial birthday.

Continue to Part 10

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Previous chapters: Part 1 @ Part 2 @ Part 3 @ Part 4 @ Part 5 @ Part 6 @ Part 7 @ Part 8