45. Old Letters in a Suitcase

 

 

When our mother passed, my younger brother took on the task of settling her estate and cleaning out her townhouse.  About a year later, he dropped off an old suitcase, indicating that it was some of Mom’s items.  

 

Eventually, I opened the suitcase to discover a small collection of old black and white photographs and a thick stack of old letters, neatly bound with a pink ribbon.

 

Over time, I managed to read each of those letters (over 100 letters), one by one.  What an amazing legacy!  These were primarily letters written by my mother during WWII to my father.  Watson was posted overseas in the UK with the Canadian Army and my mother remained in the small northern mining town of Flin Flon, working in a grocery store and raising my older brother and myself.

 

Somehow, Watson had managed to return to Canada at the end of the war with all this correspondence. Sadly, not one letter from my father to my mother has survived.   Yet she references each precious letter she receives.

 

These letters, sometimes two a week, were sent in a variety of forms – a piece of foolscap, a notepad page, and often, one of those special flimsy lightweight single page Airmail envelope/letters designed to minimize the weight of all the wartime mail.  And the post office often runs out of them. 

 

The content proved fascinating.  I was given a first-hand view of my early years (years I cannot recall) and many tussles with my older brother.  She writes about my first words and my temper.  Mom writes about the limited local news and commentary of friends, neighbours, and family.  My older brother faithfully buys war bond stamps with his coins.  Mom cautiously uses her ration tokens for meat, butter, sugar – all prized commodities and she buys war bonds on an instalment plan.  She replaces the linoleum in our house and puts up fresh wallpaper.  Eventually, she sells our house, and we move in to live with her sister and husband.  

 

Betty sends Watson razor blades, socks, chocolates, leather gloves and money.  She sends gifts to Watson’s relatives in Ireland, gifts to family and Watson’s soldier friends who went overseas with him. She and the boys are forever walking to visit friends and neighbours, their primary source of socialization.  

 

The years pass.  Birthdays pass.  Anniversaries pass.  A first day of school for my brother and yet, the war drags on with mere snippets of good news and a host of bad news, deaths, suicides, and illness.  

 

We boys survive measles and the whooping cough.  Doctors still make house calls and Mom must pay $3 for three visits.  She sees our old car driving by (sold long ago) and decries how poorly it is now maintained. 

 

In the end, I finally meet my father at 4 years of age when he returns from the war.  I have no idea who this man is, but these letters have provided an amazing insight into life during wartime and my early years with my mom and my brother

 

 

 

 

Ron Gilmore

Email:           rvg3@me.com

Website:       https://www.rgenealogy.ca