Chapter 69.
(Somerville) When I returned to Toronto from the Bruce Peninsula towards the end of September, 1908, to enter the University of Toronto, I found that the family had moved to 30 Walker Avenue, then almost at the City Limits. Dad had just bought it from Captain Trigge.
The house was a very nice one, though more spacious than convenient. Much of it was taken up by a large square hall and a wide staircase which went up from it to a landing and another large upper hall. It had a large drawing room, a smaller dining room separated by a long and narrow hall from the kitchen and a verandah “stolen” from the ground floor, as the upper floors extended over it.
On the second floor was the real “jewel” of the home; a large living room with a fireplace and a southern exposure, where we almost entirely “lived”. Besides this there were three bedrooms, one of which was made over into Dad’s private dressing room/library.
On the third floor were four bedrooms where Dorothy, Helen and I each had a room to ourselves. The maid, Sadie, occupied the fourth room. There was also a small room, which became David’s. When home, which was seldom, Christopher occupied the spare room on the second floor.
(Helen) I think Mother was happy at Walker Avenue. It was a nice house and she did a good deal of entertaining of the poor but also of her own friends. She had a good servant and Daddy a good salary. Dorothy was at home and David at school in Toronto. I was at McGill.
Each year on her birthday, January 19th Mother had a lunch party for friends of forty years standing: Mim Cayley, Juey Robinson, Kate Duncan, Agatha Reid and Birdie Ardagh, and Aunt Dora. After lunch they had a “bed-party”— three to a bed, and then Dorothy served them a delicious tea.
(Somerville) On Sunday evenings often fifteen or twenty people would be there for tea, which consisted of bread and jam, crumpets and cocoa. Perhaps our choicest guest was an old gentleman by the name of Captain Woods, who had been a Mississippi steamer captain before the American Civil War. Dad, who had never known his own father, formed a warm attachment to him and he came to us regularly till he almost became a member of the family and one whom all of us loved. Amongst many other visitors were our cousins the Cronin children, and the Flecks, Mary being a special favorite of my mother’s, the Tremaine’s, Miss Sharpe, Miss Milian (niece of the McNairn’s), May Breend and Mother’s old friends and relatives the Cayleys. We all enjoyed visits by friends brought from McGill by Dorothy and Christopher: Florence Estabrooks, Claire Miller (afterward Mrs. Wasteneys), the Dodds and Pengelly.
I enrolled at University College in my chosen Classics Course and to me the house at Walker Avenue is intimately bound up with my university course. I found it fascinating and heartily agreed with verses which Dorothy often quoted: “Three score and ten,” the wise man said, “The years of man shall be.”
Three score and six I give him back;
Four are enough for me;
Four in these halls of ours;
Four in these corridors,
These grant me, heavenly powers,
These shall be life for me.
To get a glimpse of how centuries ago men met almost exactly the same problems as we face today; how they fought to establish individual liberty under the law; how they opposed tyranny in all forms; how they speculated upon the purposes of life and gradually developed science in place of myth; how through greed and selfishness they fell a prey to barbarians and lost the heritage of their forefathers; all this became a daily wonder and stirred my desire to seek for truth for myself.
In the spring of 1909 Dorothy graduated from McGill University and returned to live with the family in Toronto. She worked in the library and did some teaching. During the summer of that year Christopher began by fire-ranging at Duncan Lake but changed to Mr. Rorke’s survey at Gowganda Lake. Then Mr. Rorke was made Chief Land Surveyor for Ontario and this ended their association. The following summer he worked for the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway out of North Bay, Ontario, but had to return home because of an attack of rheumatic fever. That was the year King Edward VII died and also the year of Halley’s Comet.
Helen went to Royal Victoria College, McGill University, in the autumn of 1910, overlapping Christopher by a year. When Christopher graduated in the spring of 1911 he went with his father to New Brunswick for about a month and “had a very happy time”, then returned to start work with the Steel Company of Canada in Hamilton.
(Helen) 1911 was the year Daddy bought a block of land in Oakville, Ontario, and built a very nice cottage on it, where we spent the summer. Then it was sold and he bought the property at the north end of Lake Joseph, in Muskoka, on which Swallows’ Nest was built in 1913. Daddy bought another lot in Oakville and had plans made for a larger house on it. But this never materialized. This lot was sold when we went to China in 1919.
(Somerville) In December, 1911, I developed a bad attack of ‘flu, which the doctor believed affected the lungs. A period of open air employment was recommended, preferably in the drier air of Western Canada. Through an old friend of the family, Mr. Herbert W. Racey, a job was secured for me as timber scaler with the Big River Lumber Company, of which Mr. Racey was General Manager.
My parents were unwilling for me to go alone and at the end of January, 1912, Mother and I left by C.P.R. for Winnipeg, and after a night with the Scotts, went on by Canadian Northern Railway to Prince Albert, where the Raceys very kindly put us up for the night. Early next morning we proceeded by mixed train to Big River, 90 miles north, and then the most northerly point of steel in Canada. Three passenger cars were hooked to the end of a long freight. The journey took nine hours, with a long stop at Shellbrook, where most of the passengers, lumber jacks returning after a vacation, could get their last drinks. At intervals of ten minutes or so the engine blew its whistle and all ran to the train, only to be told that it was a false alarm, whereupon all returned to the hotel for another round. As a result, most were “well primed” when at last the train pulled out.
Arrangements were made for us to lodge in a shack occupied by Walter Scott, then Purchasing Agent for the Company. As it had only two rooms, Walter kindly agreed to sleep at the Company store, but had all his meals with us. Walter was a capable and pleasant young man and added materially to the pleasure of the period spent there. The shack was heated by a large box stove, fuel being poplar, mostly green. Of course this would not stay in all night and as for my sake a window was left open at night, the house was bitterly cold by morning. However this was no great hardship, as it took only a few minutes to warm the small shack once the fire was roaring in the stove. Water in the kettle was of course frozen solid, but by the time Mother and I had dressed it was boiling and steaming coffee and bacon and eggs made a good breakfast.
I worked from dawn to dark (about 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) on the log dump at the southern end of a long lake where the logs were hauled on huge sleds drawn by caterpillar engines, each “train” consisting of six to ten sleds. My work was to keep count of the quantities of logs brought in, but this was difficult, as the weight of the logs on the ice caused them to sink and often before a load could be tallied it was flooded by water pushing its way up through the ice. It was cold work, as day after day morning temperatures were 30 below zero or lower. How much lower was never known, as the only reliable thermometer located at the railway station registered only to 30 below and many a morning the quicksilver was right down into its bulb. But the active outdoor life suited me and in a very short time I was feeling better than ever in my life.
Mother enjoyed her stay in the West, which reminded her of her years spent there before her marriage. She spoke often of those days and regaled me and Walter with many an anecdote. There was not a great deal to do and she appeared to thrive in the crisp atmosphere, despite lack of all “conveniences”.
Most of the lumber jacks were French Canadians and of course Roman Catholics. There was a small R.C. church built of poplar logs, as were many of the shacks, put up before the mill was erected. There was also a small Protestant church built of sawn lumber and served by a young theological student, a Presbyterian. Services were held every Sunday evening and were well attended, we three being among the worshippers.
Mother returned to Toronto early in April, just after the spring thaw, expressing no surprise when within a week after the snow began to go flowers appeared in the woods surrounding the town. I never really appreciated my mother till then and became every day more convinced of her wisdom and her affection.
(Helen) While Mother was away with Somerville, Dorothy kept house. She was away until April, and Father was dreadfully lonely. I remember she got back just after I finished my year at McGill.
(Somerville) By the spring of 1912. I had entirely recovered from whatever may have been the matter with me. In May I set out to explore the West, going in turn to Saskatoon, Edmonton, Athabasca Landing and Pekisko, where our cousin Aubrey Cartwright invited me to spend the winter on their ranch.
I remained with Aubrey Cartwright on the ranch until September, 1913, when I returned to the university to complete my course. However, in February, 1914 my health broke down again. Dad gave Dorothy and me tickets to Genoa and $1,000, telling us to stay as long as we could make the money last. The experience was unforgettable. We visited Italy, Greece, and Switzerland. Dorothy went on to take a course at Dijon, while I went back to England and sailed for Canada at the end of July, just in time to reach home when World War I broke out.
(Helen) During the summer of 1914, our cousin Kenneth Graham, who had come over from England to live with us, spent the summer with Mother, Father and David on an island in Lake Nipissing, which Father had acquired. I joined Aunt Dora and our cousin Margaret Cronin, Mary Boulton, Katie Baines and her mother for a trip to England, intending to visit Dutch friends in Holland. Aunt Dora intended to go from there up the Rhine to join Dorothy in Switzerland. While we were in Belgium the war broke out. Dorothy caught the last train home across France and we managed to get passages back to Canada, arriving just as the family was moving out of the Walker Avenue house into a flat on Spadina Road— quite a grand flat. We were there a year and disliked it very much because there was no garden. It wasn’t a real home at all. Mother was ill most of the time, so she and Miss Grace Gausby went up to Gordon Bay and spent the autumn of 1914 there until the snow came.
We used to spend our spare time visiting house agents. They used to drive us around to all kinds of houses, some very grand and some very shabby, all that winter and into the spring of 1915. We saw one very nice house; rather expensive, but then my father was still with the Bank and earning a good salary. When he saw it he said: “Yes, it’s a very nice house and we would be very comfortable there and I don’t doubt that the Lord would be there with us, but I don’t think He would approve”. So we didn’t get that house but a cheaper one on Markham Street.
I had studied at Westbourne School after the family moved to Toronto. I began teaching at this school in 1914 after graduating from McGill, and remained there until 1916, when I returned to McGill University to take my M.A. degree. Then I taught for two years in Montreal, at “The Study”.