The University of the Self #22
Beginning to Decipher & Articulate My Interpretations of Place: Placewriting Lyric Fragment xv
xv
This following creatively dramatised account has been based on family stories paired with research I unearthed about my grandmother’s and her immediate family’s brief emigrations to Canada.
Ivy May R—, my paternal grandmother, was almost seventeen years old when she rode a great ship across the ocean. She had stood, weak with relief on the Duchess of Bedford’s deck as Canada’s coast emerged from an infinity of slate-grey waves. Seven days of gruelling peaks and troughs had her limbs aching for soil again. Her father Herbert shoved through the crowd to reach her side. He cheered and waved with the other passengers cramming along the rails, and seemed so full of life she almost didn’t recognise his face. We’re here, our Ivy. This is where we start ourselves again.
Herbert (my great-grandfather) had tried to settle in Canada years before this attempt. In 1912, he had travelled there on his own, carrying nothing more than the weight of a dream. His wife and children would crowd the hearth while he told his tall-seeming tales — how he had waved goodbye to the bustle of Liverpool’s dock and threw his only hat into the air; how his skin went blue with cold on the Virginian’s frosty deck; how the sea and sky in April blended grey, so huge they ran off the edge of the Earth; how he had seen whales fluke and breach; how a body unlocked from land is so much closer to the stars.
He told them how his ship had docked in Nova Scotia. How he’d travelled from Halifax, through Quebec, and ended up in Binscarth, Manitoba. His family loved to hear him talk up a picture of the place. He painted them a land of plenty. There were grain. Alfalfa. They rolled that word around their Yorkshire tongues. I worked grinding flour. It fell upon ground like snow. One year was all he lasted. It was a letter written by Ivy’s mother Amelia (my great-grandmother) that brought him back. It was her shame. Ivy was the bloat in Amelia’s belly an apron couldn’t hide. There was no ring. Amelia sent letters that followed my father like folded birds.
I know you said you’d find us a better life but Herbert (Amelia wrote), I had our child. You promised you’d come back. I called her Ivy May, after the plant that clings and the month I love. Please come, Herbert. I don’t know what else to do.
When he did return, Ivy was five months old. It took four more years before he made an honest woman of his wife. Four years of folding the future into a bottom drawer, putting aside for a place of their own. When Ivy was seven, Herbert Jr. came along.
Two years later, Elsie. Two more years, then Albert, Doris and Hilda. They squirmed inside a two-up, two-down house. Clothes hung from the drying rack like damp and crowded ghosts. Amelia was ragged with fatigue.
Ivy was fifteen when she got her first job, as a daily for some Missus in the good bit of town. For a pittance she knelt on tiles, scoured sinks, beat dust from rugs, polished the mantel and its hoard of beautiful things. On pay-day, Ivy would tip-up her earnings into her mother’s palm and follow the smell of turnip down the hall to where her siblings swarmed the kitchen, ready to cling to her legs.
Herbert went from job to job, could never settle to anything long. He went out picking for scrap, a piebald cob dragging the flatbed cart door to door. He became groom at a nearby farm. He worked for a while down the mine and after his shifts, he was the colour of coal. Sometimes he didn’t work at all and the landlord, or some grocer would bang upon the door. They would hide upstairs, pretending not to be in. The street’s curtains twitched like irritable wings. Their whole lives were on tick. Ivy carried on in her job. Amelia scrubbed on, martyr to the household’s avalanche of work.
One day, Herbert came back from town with a poster he’d pulled from a wall. He flattened it on the scratched table with shaking hands. Inside the drab house, it was as bright as a butterfly. Special Farms on Virgin Soil! it read. They cooed at the illustration of an ideal homestead; the girl in a blue skirt, smiling, chickens around her feet; the blissful sky and golden fields. It was 1928 and the house bloomed with stories again. Herbert would catch hold of Amelia, dance her round the room. Come on, our lass! Why not? Ivy wondered what it might be like to be that girl on the poster, far away from dull smoky streets. By time bairns are grown up, Herbert said, we’ll own acres of our own. The little ones would grow fat on milk, tanned in the sun. Amelia would be able to rest. He made it sound like paradise. Soon they could talk of nothing else.
Herbert laid down plans. The government’s Assisted Scheme paid for their tickets. It was farm labourers the country lacked, and hadn’t he done just that? When we get there, I’ll walk straight into a job. You’ll see. Their possessions fitted into four small cases. To raise a little money, they sold what they could — cleared the shelves, got pennies for the little mantle clock. Little sister Elsie was the only one who didn’t want to go and cried bitterly, pleading to stay. You’ll do what you’re told, her father yelled.
Herbert turned the key and locked their chipped front door for the last time. They made quite the procession; eight of them bundled in surplus clothes, lugging battered cases, grasping bread and dripping wrapped in yesterday’s news. The street’s curtains twitched at the R— family for the very last time. Let ‘em gossip! We’ll soon be too far away to hear.
They got the train to Liverpool Station and spent two nights at a grubby lodging house while the necessary forms were filled in. Did they have tuberculosis? Were they known to be insane? Occupation? How much money did they have? Maybe enough
until they found their feet if they tightened their belts. They boarded the ship on 19th July, 1929.
Ivy would never forget her seasickness. The rest of the family would stick to the on-board mealtimes like glue. They weren’t the only ones. It was a chance for hungry third-class travellers to make fast work of vats of porridge, shoals of herring, oily and gold, eggs, bread and butter, meat and gravy, potatoes and cheese. A feast at their fingertips and Ivy couldn’t leave her bunk. Her family would tell her how much they had eaten, and her belly would turn in woozy loops. What a terrible waste, Amelia muttered, offering the cabin biscuits brought back in a napkin for her. Ivy nibbled at corners of flour and salt and tried her best to keep them down. Are there whales? Ivy kept repeating to the wall, her voice weak and unheard. How much brighter are the stars?
Herbert Jr., Albert, Doris and Hilda ate like machines and plumped out their hollow cheeks almost overnight. Only Elsie sat like a statue and sulked. Their father sucked his pipe in the Smoking Room, talked the hind legs off a donkey day and night. The rough skin on Amelia’s palms eased. Ivy drooped, felt as if she had been turned inside out. There was no escape from the movement of the waves. She was terrified by the booming of the ocean as it broke against the hull. Just when she thought she could bear no more, the journey came to an end.
It was the 25th of July, 1929. As they cruised into Port of Quebec, they pointed and chattered at the sight of the Michipicoten lighthouse, its spire like a new tooth against the blue sky. They gasped at Chateau Frontenac, a fairytale castle glowing from above. Herbert pointed out the giant silos. See? Full to brim wi’ grain!
They disembarked and waited their turn to pass through the immigration sheds. From there, they boarded the train to Montreal’s Windsor Station, where they rode the Pacific Railway for another two days to Binscarth, where Herbert had once lived. It took him a week to find a job — a week they spent surviving in one rented room, eking out bread before he began his shifts at Purity Flour, grinding wheat. He would bring home a blizzard and Amelia would flap at the dust. She thought she had left a life of scrubbing behind. Money remained tight, so Ivy was sent out to ‘do’ again – some other fancy home, some other face squinting at spots on the silver, ordering her to shine it over again.
Binscarth was a flat place. Wind cut across the land and the skies were overwhelmingly wide. The limitless wheat swayed to each gust’s dictate. Little Herbert Jr. and Albert were souls set free in the open space. After school, they would scatter with the local kids. Hilda was such a quiet, shy thing. Doris was good as gold. Elsie hated the place and endlessly cried for home. She threw herself onto the floor in fits, refused to do her chores. I hate you for bringing me here, Elsie would scream.
Binscarth was not a success. There was never enough money and most nights, Herbert would come home full of drink, hankering for a place with streets paved with more than husks. They lasted half a year before packing up and took the train again, this time all the way to Toronto’s Union Station — the biggest building they’d ever seen. Columns braced a ceiling so high they had to crane their necks to take it in.
Echoes winged the great space. This is more like it, Herbert swanked, thumbs in the loops of his belt. Amelia didn’t speak. Hilda and Doris peeped around their mother’s shabby skirt and Elsie turned down her mouth and gripped Ivy’s hand. They stepped out onto the street. Buildings soared a dozen stories high. Cars whizzed by. There were gas stations, rows of shops with striped awnings. Trams clanged. They went to Walsh’sfor tea.
After a few false starts, they did their best to settle down. Herbert worked for a while fixing roads, then in a factory down the docks. Through one of his many friend-of-a-friends, he found a place in the new Royal York Hotel as a porter. I’ll work me way up, he said. When he was promoted to waiter, they ate Aylmer Peaches from a tin, sweet and slick, with cream.
Ivy found another Missus, another home to spit and polish again. This time, the woman she charred for was kind. Sometimes she would pass on her done-with clothes. For the first time, Ivy had a wardrobe of wonderful things. A cream belted coat. Some heeled shoes. A paste brooch. You could barely notice the gap in the sparkle left by a missing stone. A cloche hat. Ivy would peep at the mirror and blush at the version of herself who gazed right back. This is how it feels, the mirror-Ivy said, to be somebody grand.
Elsie turned nine. She never stopped pleading to go home and grew thin and pale. It seemed as if the doctor came twice a week. Letters journeyed between Canada and the grandparents in Yorkshire. Just send our Elsie home, they wrote, and eventually, Amelia and Herbert gave in. They asked around until they found someone who was headed back to Liverpool and trusted Elsie to their care. One less mouth, said Herbert grimly, as they watched Elsie’s train point back to the docks in Montreal. It’s for best. It was July, 1931. Ivy was eighteen. Elsie’s goodbye embrace had felt like snow — her face in the carriage window was framed like a cold moon. This is how cracks in a family begin, Ivy thought. The ones that you can never truly fix.
Autumn came and with it, a knock on the door. Ivy was home from work, trying on a dress the Missus had handed down. She opened the door and flushed at the sight of the man who stood there. It was a salesman, hawking door to door. He was slick and handsome and Ivy was flustered by his quick patter, his Scottish lilt. He had come here to try his luck, just like them. His fingers brushed with hers as he showed her neat packets of needles, spools of thread. Ivy thought she would faint. Amelia chased him off – nothing today! Before he left, he pressed four blue buttons into Ivy’s hand with his card underneath. John Walker W—, Haberdashery Sales.
So their love affair began. Ivy and John would meet outside United Cigars. Go to the flicks if money allowed. Every time John touched her, Ivy’s skin was flames. He led her to his rented room. In the dark, Ivy felt him inside her, and winced through the pain. When her monthly didn’t come, it was too late. Amelia jabbed a finger into John’s chest. When are you going to make an honest woman of her?
Maybe it could have been different if The Great Depression hadn’t hit. Herbert’s job was gone — Ivy’s Missus wrung her hands. Ivy, I’m sorry. I have to let you go. People stood in lines outside the Yonge Street Mission hoping for soup. They were hungry all the time. The children cried. Herbert hung his head. That’s it. Enough. I’m done with this place. We’re going home.
Ivy loved John and couldn’t face the idea of being back in England with a baby and no ring. No matter which way, Ivy was trapped. On the 2nd of April, 1932, when Ivy was nineteen years old and six months gone, she and John wed. Shortly after, Herbert scrounged enough cash for the rest of the family’s passage back to England. Ivy waved until the boat that took them away vanished from sight. All the R—s have gone, she thought. That name is severed from myself. This is my family now.
John and Ivy moved to Kitchener. Their house on Blucher Street was heaven, for a short while. Their daughter Helen was born in July but they were not the family Ivy had hoped they would be. John’s job took him away a lot and the honeymoon soon wore off. They would argue, but Ivy was a fool for his smile. Two years later, she was pushing little Donald out from her womb.
In 1935, John packed more than usual into his case. Ivy knew in her heart he would not come back, though still, she waited — borrowed to meet the rent, trawled their bad-debt name from shop to shop. Doors closed in her face. By 1938, she couldn’t take it anymore. Lonely and desperate, Ivy decided they would have to go back to England. She wrote a letter to England. Will there be a welcome for me there? I’ll work. I’ll do anything. History repeated itself again. She sold everything she owned that was fit to sell; wrote a letter to John that he would never read and left it on a kitchen shelf; packed a meagre pair of cases and took her children by the hand.
The Montclare swung away from the dock. Ivy leaned on the ship’s railings as the harbour became a blur. This time, thankfully, she didn’t feel so sick. Perhaps, through the first crossing, she had suffered enough. Her thoughts projected home. How much would people stare when she arrived back in the same small Yorkshire village she had turned her back on? How long would whispers follow her round the park, the streets, the shops? What would Helen and Donald make of the pit spoil and soot? Would Elsie ever speak to her again? One thing at a time, Ivy, she told herself sternly. Save your strength for whatever comes next.
Perhaps, somewhere on that vanished land, John Walker Watson was smiling on some faraway doorstep, offering smiles and buttons to another girl. Perhaps somewhere in Canada, there was a ghost of herself in a blue skirt smiling, just like that girl on the poster, so many years ago. One last week on the sea, then we must begin ourselves again. Ivy looked at her children playing on the deck, then turned her face to the sun.
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This is brilliant Jane xxx
Lovely writing. Sadness and hope and perseverence, because what else can you do while breath lasts? Doors that didn't slam, because they never even opened.
Some places are home, some can become so, some never will no matter what will or intention or work.