A Baby Boy and the Move to Canada

After we had been there (Bexleyheath) three and a half years I was expecting again. I had a boy this time, Peter Edward John. Julia was two days off of being four, and Deborah six. I had Peter at home and my mother-in-law came a long way to help me every day. She was in the room when he was born. She was thrilled. Peter was the only boy in the family for years. I had a beautiful marmot pram that was navy and cream. We decided to take our new baby home to show the family. They all lived in Charlton so we went to the railway station and had to ride in the guard’s cabin with the pram. I was really scared because two men lifted the pram and baby over the railway lines. Transportation in England was very good. Harry had changed jobs and got a company car. It was so nice.

 

It was such a thrill having a little boy, the whole family was pleased. But when Peter was five and a half weeks old we had a real heartache. I was out to the shops with Peter in the pram, and when I looked, there was milk curdled all over the place. I rushed home. The doctor lived on the corner, and he came rushing round. He said he thought Peter had pyloric stenosis. That meant food couldn’t get down into his stomach. He brought a specialist to the house and they watched while he nursed, and they could see the food just went down to a certain point, and then he would throw it up. I went into London, about 30 miles away, to a famous Children’s Hospital at Great Ormond Street The matron said last year (1957) they did not have a cure. They put Peter on a salt and saline solution for 12 hours. The fright of it all almost took all my milk away. When I thought they had operated on him, they hadn’t because he was too weak, but eventually they did. They cut around a tight muscle at the bottom of his stomach. I was allowed to stay at the hospital with him. It was ten days in all.

Harry worked in London, so he visited every lunchtime and after work. My mother stayed at my house and looked after the girls. I was afraid Peter would be weak the rest of his life. But he never looked back and was a beautiful little boy. Peter was 14 months when we left our dear little house in Bexleyheath.

 

Harry was getting popular in London, and was offered many jobs. But one day he read about a job in Canada, working for a company called Westinghouse. I was very worried about leaving my mum, who was now married to Joe. Harry had an interview in a London hotel and was accepted. We were supposed to receive an offer in writing, but it didn’t come. So he phoned somebody up and the next Friday we found on the front door mat two letters – the one that went astray and the new one. It just seemed we were meant to go.

 

We sold the house for double what we had paid for it. We got rid of all our furniture. I wished for years we had not done that. Although my mum was now married to Joe, and she was not alone, it was very sad for me to leave her. We sailed from Liverpool on a great liner of the Cunard line called the Carinthia (illustrated below). There was a dock worker’s strike on at the time, so the ship was lying just outside the docks. It was winter, so it was very dark and we were taken by tender to the big ship. We were literally pulled up by sailors onto the side of the boat. What an adventure! We found our cabin on the second floor down. We sailed up to Edinburgh to pick up some more passengers.

I was sitting inside a glass partition with Peter who was three and a half. The girls were with Harry outside. I saw a woman with three men who were saying goodbye. Her shoulders were heaving, and the band was playing “Will Ye No Come Back.” They were throwing streamers to the people on shore. I just broke down and cried. The woman was standing alone. A sailor came up to me and said “Ye not to be a crying now are you?”

 

 

 

 

We hit rough waters right away. The ship was huge. It was November, 1961. The girls were nine and seven, Peter was three and a half and I was thirty-one. We had lounge chairs placed inside a glass partition that formed part of a covered promenade. We had really good food and there was entertainment at night. They would change the clock by one hour each night, because England was eight hours ahead of Canada. Through the day we would sit on the lounge chairs and relax. They had really nice shops on board too.

As we got nearer to Newfoundland we saw the tip of an iceberg. We went down the St. Lawrence River and saw the Chateau Frontenac, the parliament buildings for Quebec, and also the place where General Wolfe landed at Quebec Heights. I was familiar with Wolfe because there was a statue of him in Greenwich Park; the girls used to climb up the statue and look through a little hole at one another.

We eventually landed in Quebec. They all spoke French. We had to get a train to get to Toronto and then another to Hamilton. Trains in North America were so different from England. We then went by taxi to our hotel in downtown Hamilton. Even though it was November we felt we could hardly breathe because the heat in the hotel was over 80 degrees! Next morning we went downstairs to breakfast and met a man from Westinghouse. He was joking with the children about “Father Christmas”and not “Santa.” Deborah got sick; her legs hurt her. I’m sure it was stress. It was quite an ordeal really, even though it was exciting. We stayed in the hotel for a week.