EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY

 

My family, about 1953

 

 

 

I can't remember the occasion on which this picture was taken, but we are posing in the back yard of our house on Kitchener Street and the whole family is there, including our foster brother and sister and her brother who was visiting. In the front row from the left, I see the youngest cousin, Lynette Humphreys and next to her with the braids is her sister Merilyn. In the second row, from the left is cousin Adele, my sister Jean, my Mom Winnie Filer, my Auntie Grace Humphreys and me. Right behind me on the right is our foster brother Jimmy Dobie. And in the very back, between Mom and Auntie is Uncle Rev. Frank Humphreys, my dad Rev. Fred Filer and on the back left, my foster sister Louella' brother whose name I have forgotten. Luella, age 14, was the photographer.

 

 

By looking at us you would never guess that in a few short years there would tragedy. It began with Louella. She was 12 years old when she met my parents at the Keats Island Baptist Camp where Dad was pastor and camp director and Mom was the camp nurse. She had been sent to camp by the Social Services. Every year they sent children who lived in their children's home to the camp. In those days they didn't have so many group homes or foster care and kids from disadvantaged and messed up families were taken into care and placed in this home (somewhere around Marine Drive I think) that was like an orphanage. Luella's father was an alcoholic and her mother had left the kids, as far as I know. Both Luella and her mother were in the Home until my parents met Luella at camp and decided to bring her to our home to live. Her brother, I think, was eventually in foster care too.

 

 

Luella was a difficult girl but my parents did all they could for her and she was treated the same as my sister and I. She had only been at our house for about two years when she requested that the Children's Aid take her back. She found my parents too strict and didn't like to obey all the house rules, attend church and behave in an appropriate way. She might have even been stealing money out of the jar where mom kept coins for small purchases at the grocery store. It was with great regret that my parents let her return to the Home. And it was even with more regret when later they learned she had run away from there and was pregnant. Nobody knows what happened to her child but it's assumed it was taken away for adoption. Not long after that Luella ended up in the Girls Home (prison for young offenders) on Cassiar St. 

 

When she got out of the Young Offenders prison she went into the care of the Salvation Army. One day my mom got a phone call from them to say where Luella was.  She went out and bought some roses and was headed to the Salvation Army home to visit but by the time she got there, Luella was gone.  And soon after, she was incarcerated in Oakalla Women's Prison. She was  17 years old and a drug addict. 

 

A friend of mine worked at Oakalla as a matron. She was there the day the tragedy happened. Luella was found dead in her cell.They claimed that she died of a brain tumour, but my friend speculated it was likely a drug overdose because at that time heroin was readily available to inmates. I went to Luella' funeral at the funeral home on Powell St. by Gore Ave.  The casket was open. They had dressed her in an older woman's blue dress. She didn't look like the innocent kid who used to live with us. She looked like a worn out old lady.  That vision of her has never left my mind.

 

Not to many years after this photo was taken, my foster brother Jimmy, who had also met my parents at the Keats Island camp when he was 12 yrs old, found his birth mother and her new husband.  Jimmy had cerebral palsy and was living in the Children's Aid Home when my parents first met him. My parents invited him to come home for the weekend and he misunderstood and thought they meant 'forever'. They didn't have the heart to send him back.  He was the most delightful boy, charming in every way and loved by everyone he met.  Mom took him to speech therapy and he tried his best to be like other kids. He was determined some day to drive a car.  

 

I'll never forget the day dad enrolled him in Templeton School and Jimmy came home crying. They had put him in the 'special' class with children who were below average and low achievers. He was mortified. It also upset him in later years when people thought he was 'drunk' because of the way he stumbled when he walked. Dad had the school put him in a regular class and he did his best to keep up though it was hard for him to write with a pen. (Nowadays they have computers for kids with disabilities). He managed to get get through junior high and then he got a job as a janitor for Fleck Brothers. 

 

When he found his birth mother, she was living on a shrimp boat over in Deep Cove with the man she had married. Jimmy was invited to visit them. He was delighted about going, but unfortunately while there he fell on the ladder leading down into the hold and injured his ribs.  It wasn't long after, when the ribs failed to mend, that the doctors discovered that Jimmy had cancer. And it was terminal.

 

When he died, my parents got messages from all over the neighbourhood from people whose lives Jimmy had touched. Just watching him bravely struggle down the street day after day was an inspiration to everyone. And his bright spirit, beaming smile and good nature endeared him to everyone.

 

We buried Jimmy's ashes under a tree at the Campfire Rock on Keats Island because that's where he had met my parents.  When he died he left a sum of money which my parents used to purchase the cottage we used to have on Keats.  And at the camp there was a camp cabin named for him with his picture on the wall. 

 

Of the people in the picture, only my sister and my cousins and I remain. Everyone else is gone now. First Uncle Frank who died far too young after a gall-bladder operation; then my dear Mom who passed away at age 53 from cancer; My Auntie Grace, mom's younger sister, who was my favorite and a most inspiring woman; and then my dear dad who lived to be 90. 

 

Yes, every picture has a story, and this one had some sad parts to it. But it's nice to look at it and remember, and think about how happy we all were that moment the photo was taken. 

 

Post note:  When I wrote my play "The Street: A Modern Day Tragedy", set in Strathcona and based on true events, I based the character of "Sally" on my foster sister Luella.  And the play is dedicated to Luella and my former boyfriend Jimmy Bain, who inspired the story. The play was produced successful by Theatre in the Raw and ran for 3 weeks at the Web Cafe on West Hastings St.

 

 







WHEN DADDY CAME HOME FROM THE WAR

a Remembrance Day story.

This photo was taken of us before Dad left for the war. Mom, Dad, my little sister Jean and me.

I remember the day my Dad came home from The War. We were living at grandpa's house on Cobourg Street in Stratford Ontario where my mother, sister and I had stayed all the time dad was overseas. My grandma had died not long before the war ended. The War was a big part of our lives. Every kid in school had at least one family member: father, uncle, grandpa or brother, fighting overseas. Almost on a daily basis someone in the school would learn their loved one had been wounded or killed. I was lucky. My dad was coming home from The War.

During the four years he was overseas, every night we'd sit at the table in grandma's kitchen and listen to the BBC news on the radio. I still remember that static, far-away sound of the news-caster's voice. On the wall by the table was a big map, and we'd stick pins in it to show us where The Action was. There was a special pin marking the place were Dad was serving as a chaplain in the #10 army field hospital in Holland.

I thought of my dad often during those years when he was away. I remember going to Kingston with my mom and sister just before he was shipped overseas, and his last visit to Stratford when we went as a family for a portrait, dad looking so handsome in his arm uniform wearing his captain's hat and clerical collar. I was about 9 then and my dad was very special to me. I remember, going back to my early childhood living on the prairies, walking with my dad down country roads or visiting farm houses where he knew people from his congregation. I have a picture of myself, age 3, with dad holding me up to sit on a fence so I could pet the sheep. I remember my dad working in his garden, and preaching on Sundays, and telling me stories about his life when he was a boy in Wales, and later working in the coal mines in Caerphilly from when he was 14 to when he immigrated to Canada and met my mom. I had missed my dad so much, and when he was going to arrive home at last, I was more excited than at any other time.

And then, he came home. But it wasn't the same dad I remembered. He was a different dad, still handsome in his officer's uniform, a bit thinner and perhaps more careworn. But he was a stranger. I remember running to my room, sobbing uncontrollably, partly from happiness and relief at having him back again, but also for reasons unknown to me then. I didn't realize til years later just why I had cried. Now I understand it was that he was 'different' because of all he had seen and lived through. I remember later reading through piles of letters he had saved sent to him by parents and loved ones of young men he had buried or who had been wounded. My dad's job as chaplain had been to comfort the dead and dying and their families. He had lived through terrifying and devastating experiences. Once, he told us, a buzz bomb had stopped buzzing right over the hospital. He had thrown himself to the floor and prayed. And thankfully, the bomb exploded somewhere farther away. All these experiences had 'changed' my dad. But really, deep down he was still the same dad I had known before The War, full of compassion and love and gentleness. He won the MBE for his honorable service at the army hospital. And he won the respect and love of everyone he met.

So on this Remembrance Day I still think of that day so many years ago when he returned from the war, that 'stranger', but still he was my Dad. And I think of all the children in the world who are waiting for their Dads to come home from The War, and pray they get back home safely.

 Rev. Capt. R.F. Filer, MBE

CHRISTMAS AT GRANDPA’S

Grandpa's house, Cobourg Street, Stratford Ontario

(That's our dog, Dutchess in the front)

 

          Christmas in the ‘40’s was a time when all the relatives came to celebrate at Grandpa’s house.  We would troop down to the train station and stand waiting on the wooden platform, our breaths puffing like the steam from the locomotive engine, the frosty winter air nipping our cheeks into roses.  The train chugged into the station, the coach doors opened and travelers spilled out onto the platform.  Happy greetings filled the air as merry as caroler’s songs, families embraced and made their way down the snowy streets.

          When my uncle, aunt and cousins arrived, we all went back to Grandpa’s house. How my grandparents found room for everyone, I can’t imagine. All the Aunts, Uncles and Cousins crowded into the small living room around the Christmas tree to chat, the crackling of the flames in the hearth sounding like pop-corn. After a few games of monopoly and Chinese checkers, my Uncle Frank would performed a comical rendition of “Herbert Burped”, tongue-in-cheek, about a little boy who gets swallowed by  a lion. Then all of us children were tucked snugly into beds, often three in a bed, the middle one squished between the other two, warm in our flannel pajamas, while the grownups sat up late eating Christmas cake and drinking ginger ale.

My little sister Jeanie and me, wearing dresses Mom made for us.

(probably taken at Easter in front of Grandpa's house)

 

           One particular Christmas stands out in my memory.  That was the year I bought the best Christmas presents I’d ever bought before.  Certainly, the most memorable!

          I was nine years old, and I felt very grown up as I went off to town to do my own Christmas shopping. I headed straight for the Woolworths Five and Dime store where you could always get the best bargains.  I looked over all the trinkets, trying to decide what would be the finest gifts.  It was difficult to decide. I wanted something unforgettable. Something everyone would love.

          Then I saw it: a little clay Chinese dragon on a bamboo stick. The head of the dragon was made of painted clay, and it had a red felt tongue that looked like fire shooting from its gaping mouth. The body was accordion-pleated tissue paper.  When you waved the stick, the body expanded and the head shot out, tongue flickering, like a real fire-breathing dragon.  The Chinese dragons would make the perfect Christmas gifts!

          I bought one for each of my relatives and excitedly headed for home, proud of myself for making such an extraordinary purchase. But when I showed them to my Mom, she was not impressed.  In fact, she  was upset with me for ‘wasting’ my money on such foolish toys as these instead of buying something more ‘practical’.  I felt embarrassed and disappointed.  However, it was too late to return the dragons to the store, so I wrapped them up and put them under the Christmas tree with the other gifts.

          On Christmas morning I waited nervously for everyone to open their presents.  I felt embarrassed thinking that my relatives would think the present’s I’d bought were foolish and useless.

          Instead, when the gifts were unwrapped, everyone was amused and delighted. especially my Uncle Frank.  He played with his dragon all day.  Of course, Uncle Frank always was the life of the party!

A BAD HAIR DAY (1952)

After my visit to the Museum of Vancouver last week, and finding another example of one of these hideous electric hair perming machines, I decided to revive a story I'd written a couple of years ago and submitted to the BC Museum in Victoria when they had a large display of memorabalia.  The story went along with the instrument of 'torture' after I'd  remembered all those unpleasant memories of a real 'bad hair day'!

Old fashioned electric perm marchine 

 Back in 1952 when I was soon to graduate from Britannia High School in Vancouver, there was a popular hair style called the ‘poodle cut’.  It was a short hair cut, permed into a soft curly style resembling a poodle’s pom-pom.  A lot of my classmates were having their hair styled this way for our grad, and I wanted to be like them.

 It happened that my Mom and little sister both came down with scarlet fever and were quarantined as they did in those days and I had to go and stay with a family friend, a very kind old lady named Mrs. Grey.  I told Mrs. Grey how much I wanted a poodle cut.  So one day she gave me some money and told me to go up to Commercial Drive and make a hair appointment.

Up to this time, my Mom always cut and permed my hair.  So it was quite a thrill for this teenager to have an appointment at a real beauty salon.  I felt somewhat daunted when I saw the electric perm machine, something left over from the ’30’s,  a kind of weird thing like you‘d see in a mad scientist‘s lab. But I was determined to get my ‘poodle cut‘.  The woman cut my hair, then rolled it up in the perm rollers.  The perm machine worked on electricity. As I sat under it, I could feel it sear my scalp and I smelled  burning hair. When the procedure was finished and the rollers were removed, to my horror I looked as if I had been zapped by 220 volts of lightening!  My hair was frizzed like a Hottentots.  You couldn’t even get a comb through it.  What a frizzy mess!  I was in tears.  I wouldn’t go out without a kerchief on for days and even missed school because I was so embarrassed.  How could I face my class-mates looking like such a freak?  I didn’t realize I was pre-dating the Afro hair style of the late ‘60’s and ‘70’s. 

   My "poodle cut" after Mom had cut off most of the frizz!

 Fortunately, my Mom soon recovered enough for me to return home.  She immediately set to work on my ruined mop with her clippers.  She had to cut off most of my hair. Even then it was still tight and frizzy. When I returned to school, the older guy that I had a crush on started calling me Puppy Dog.  He’d pat me on the head every time I passed him in the hall.  At least he was paying attention to me.  After all, I did look like a poodle! 

MEMORIES OF NEW YEARS EVES PAST

New Years Eve at the Dockside with Steve Kozak and his West Coast Blues Allstars

Cheryl and me, New Years Eve 2011-2012

This is a memoir I wrote awhile back about New Years Eve.  This year, to celebrate the year 2012, I went with my friend Cheryl to the Granville Island Hotel where my son  Steve and his band, The West Coast Blues Revue was playing for their second New Years Eve in a row. We'd had such a grand time there last year that this year Cheryl and I decided to rent a room at the hotel for the night and really live it up. It was costly but great fun and we've already decided to do it again next year if Steve's band is asked to play there again. 

For the last few years I've attended New Years Eve parties at the places where my son's band was playing, and in the company of good friends.  So it has become a really fun event to look forward to.

This little memoir story is about other New Years Eves in the past, some of which were not so memorable or so much fun although I always tried to make the best of it, no matter what the circumstances.

ONCE UPON A NEW YEAR’S EVE

I have both fond and melancholy memories of New Years Eves.  In the old times it was one of the most anticipated holidays next to Christmas.  You always had a new outfit to wear which was planned well in advance, something fashionable and spectacular to wear to the celebration which was often held in a night club or at a gala house party.  I’ll never forget the year I’d made a gorgeous gold pois de sois two-piece dress. I looked fantastic.  But when I arrived at the big party with several other couples, which was held in a big barn-like place on Grandview Highway, I was chagrined to find that another woman in the group was wearing a dress of similar style and material.  I was crushed, but of course I had made mine myself so considered it be  more ‘original’.  I recall one new years eve when I was in my late teens, my girlfriend and I had been invited out by two American sailors to attend a show at the Cave supper club.  My girlfriend had a new dress but hadn’t time to hem it so she’d pinned the hem up and all night long the pins scraped her legs until they were bleeding.  After the show at the Cave, we tottered over to the Holy Rosary Church for midnight mass.  I was in charge of holding the bottle of wine in a brown paper bag under my coat, and I distinctly recall dropping it in the back pew!

Yes, New Years eve was always a night of wild abandon and over-drinking.  At clubs or house parties, when it turned midnight, you are supposed to kiss your partner or date, but all to often I’d find myself alone in a crowd of strangers while my boyfriend was off in a corner kissing someone else.  I soon grew weary of these episodes.  New Years eve began to lose it’s romantic appeal, and instead it became a lonely time, especially once I was single.  Eventually I decided I’d rather stay home alone, if necessary, so I’d bring in some goodies: the makings for Welsh rarebit, oysters to fry, a few bottles of McEwan’s ale and a bottle of Heiken Trokel sparkling wine.  I’d tell a few people my plan and wait to see who’d show up, and usually a couple of close friends would drop by.  One of my most memorable New Years Eves was one I spent all alone enjoying my own company, dancing to my favourite music.

I’ve had New Years Eve’s abroad, far from family and close friends, that were still fun in their uniqueness.  One time I remember my room-mate and I heading off to a big hotel for the night and on the way stopped to get a bite to eat at a pizzaria.  We walked into a party of rowdy Quantas airlines crew who immediately embraced us and invited us to party with them.  That was one of my best times, and it landed me a nice boyfriend for several months, so long as Quantas was flying in and out of town.

Now I will occasionally make plans to go out, if friends are going along and the price is right.  Being with close friends, dancing and dining, is quite satisfying.  It’s no longer to me the ‘romantic’ exciting night it used to be, but it’s worth a little celebrating especially if it’s been a good year.

New Years Eve at the Granville Island Hotel, December 31, 2011