Autobiography of Harper John Pettypiece (1921-2002)

Note: These divisions/parts are somewhat arbitrary and were not part of the original manuscript. Also there may be many spelling errors especially with place names I’m not familiar with. The autobiography was written in 1998-99 approximately 3-4 years prior to his passing. His health continued to deteriorate and he was effectively bed-ridden for the last year of his life.

Part One – The Childhood Years

I was born, so I have been told, early in the morning on November 15^th, 1921 in a house on the corner of Broadway and McNab Streets in Forest, in the County of Lambton, Ontario. My parents were Victor and Leila Pettypiece who were married in Corunna in June of the previous year. My father was born in 1898, a son of Henry and Madeline Pettypiece of Forest; he was one of seven children, only three of whom survived adolescence, my aunt Eleanor who was a spinster, and uncle Lister, a Catholic priest. My mother was the daughter of Samuel and Sarah Harper, also of Forest. She had a brother Fred, and a sister Agnes. Fred remained a bachelor but Agnes was married to Edgar Chafe of St. John’s, Newfoundland and was the mother of two boys, Gerald and Gordon, my only first cousins.

Before I was a year old, my parents moved to the Comfort Terrace, a quadraplex on Jefferson Street across from the tennis courts. I remember very little of that period, only vague images but I can remember my sister Reinette, who was born there in 1924. I don’t remember her as a baby, only as a toddler. While there, I’m told I had the usual childhood diseases, chicken pox, measles and whooping cough.

In 1925 or 26 we bought a house on Prince Street opposite the public school. It was in this house that I grew up and lived in until World War Two. It cost $2,000 and I remember being told we had to borrow the down payment and it took fifteen years to pay off the mortgage. During the 1930’s it was all we could do to pay the interest, never mind any of the principal. The house did not have any indoor plumbing, and I remember as a youngster, I would take my little wagon down to the corner where there was a public pump and collect water. I also used to have to go to the creamery around the corner every couple of days for a block of ice for the icebox. I can remember Saturday night was bath night and a tub of water was heated on the coal stove, which would do for both me and my sister.

We had a stove in the kitchen, which served for cooking and also one in the living room, whose pipe went up through a hole in the ceiling to the hall and then curved through my bedroom to the chimney. Dad would get up in the winter and stoke up the fire so that we could huddle around the stove pipe while we got dressed. These pipes had to be taken down every spring and be cleaned out and re-assembled every autumn.

I have unpleasant memories also of having to use the outside privy in the winter after dad had shoveled a path through the snow. I can also remember, vaguely, of being circumcised on the kitchen table.

In September of 1927 my other sister Ruth was born, but for this birth my mother went to St. Joseph’s Hospital in London. In those days a confinement lasted about ten days, so we did not see our new sister until she arrived home. By the time I had started to school, living across the street made it very handy.

I am now going to give a few general impressions of the rest of the 1920’s. I can’t recall any chronological order, keeping in mind that by the summer of 1930 I was still only eight years old.

One of the first improvements made to the house was the installation of water, which made a big difference. A central heating system had to wait until the late thirties. The inside toilet and bath made a great difference to our comfort.

I can remember my mother (who taught school before she was married) reading poetry to me before I started to school. There were the Longfellow poems of Hiawatha and Evangeline and others by Tennyson, Wordsworth, and Lowell; also some Shakespeare. She also taught me simple sums and reading at this time, and I started in Grade One (Junior Primer it was called in those days). I know I was able to skip some grades and this is why I was able to start into high school in 1933 (11 years old).

Other memories of the twenties include winter; the streets were filled with horse drawn sleighs since all automobiles had to be put up on blocks in the winter with tires removed and radiators drained; antifreeze had not been invented. There were half a dozen blacksmith shops in Forest at that time. In the spring the streets were quite muddy.

The skating rink was on Prince St. across the road from our house and they used to hold skating carnivals every year at which I went dressed once as Henry VIII. There was always live music for skating on Saturday night.

Summers included swimming in Hickory Creek – it was not polluted then although we had to pick off the bloodsuckers when we came out. It was where I learned to swim.

I can remember my parents taking us to London once a year to buy shoes. We went on the train leaving Forest at 6:30 in the morning. We would change trains at Lucan Crossing to catch the one coming down from Goderich.

My parents also took us to the Toronto Exhibition a couple of times. I can’t remember much about these trips except for the extravagant pageant at the grandstand followed by fireworks. One such pageant was about Montezuma and another about the British Empire. It was on one of these trips to Toronto I saw my first talking picture. I don’t know the name of the film, I guess I was too impressed by the sound. I had seen a couple of silent movies at the local Kineto Theatre, “Noah’s Ark” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.

Not many people had automobiles; we did not even have a radio or a phonograph, but at some point we did get a wind up victrola, and an upright piano for me to take some lessons from Mabel Dunlop a local teacher who had her ATCM. I would be about 8 I believe.

I can remember downtown in Forest. My grandfather was owner of the Forest Free Press and my father worked there and one other person, Morley Shepherd. I can remember a hotel with hitching posts and a horse water trough outside. I can remember the grocery stores where you went up a couple of steps and the grocer waited on you across the counter. I can remember a harness shop. I can remember an ice cream parlour with wire-backed chairs and a soda fountain. I can remember the Town Hall where the Chatauqua travelling shows used to come every year.

There were several blacksmiths, a couple of whom did car repairs as well. A couple of gas stations where the proprietor would pump the gas for you, you could buy a gallon for a quarter.

It was during these years I formed my impressions of music. There was no distinction between such terms as so-called classical and popular. My folks used to sing these songs popular when he was growing up: By the Light of the Silvery Moon, Yip-I-Addy-I-Ay, Come Josephine in My Flying Machine, Trail of the Lonesome Pine and others. I particularly remember The Irish Jubilee. He would also recite Robert Service poems.

When the victrola arrived there was a varied selection of records, from Oh By Jingo and the Little Red Schoolhouse, to Rhapsody in Blue and Poet and Peanut. There was also a Mozart and part of a Tchaikovsky Symphony. I had most of them memorized. When I started piano lessons I learned more about Chopin and Bach, etc.

We used to visit occasionally friends of our parents. At Reg Roche’s place on Broadway next to Angela Hannum’s I became acquainted with comics such as Buster Brown and The Katzenjammer Kids. At O’Donnell’s out in the country we went once and they had some new records such as Piccolo Pete and The Two Black Crows.

It seems that in those times we knew everyone in our town of about 1700 people. We didn’t know them all personally but we knew who they were and where they lived. We lived between two widows, Mrs. Ida Brand on the north and Mrs. Wichman on the south. Both seemed really ancient to me and I particularly remember the latter because she had a pet parrot, the only one in town. We had a dog, a collie called Pal. I think he died of old age at some point. I think everybody had a porch on their house.

Mother did some gardening in our back yard. We had a grape vine on one side with hollyhocks. On the other, the shady side, there were violets, lily of the valley, jack-in-the-pulpit and a pear tree. The Pettypiece house on Albert St. had trumpet vines shading the porch.

My public school teachers were Frances Hubbard, Jessie O’Brien, Ruth Neelands and Alex Salisbury. Beside the kids I knew from school, I knew some from the country. This was through church. I was raised a Roman Catholic, and us kids attended mass every Sunday from the time we were old enough to understand and went through 1^st communion and confirmation. Forest was not a parish but a mission, and the priest, Fr. Houlkes came every Sunday from Corunna. Aunt Nora played the organ and at some point I started singing in the choir.

Through church I got to know the Hubbard family and the Forbes. Their kids went to country schools. The Hubbards had 2 boys (Bob and Tom) and 3 girls (Winifred, Geneveire, & Cuthaine). The Forbes had a boy and a girl. The boy, Wilfred, eventually became the father of Barbara who married our son Geoffrey.

On the Pettypiece side, my aunt Nora lived with my grandparents. She never married – apparently her boy friend was killed when he was quite young. I also vaguely remember my dad’s aunt Sara who lived there at that time. I must have been only 3 or 4 years old because she died in 1925. It was there I used to collect comic strips from the London Free Press, particularly one called Minute Movies. I also met two of my grandfather’s brothers. At one time there was a picture of Reinette and myself at a tea party there. She was 2 and I was 5.

At the Harpers’ I can recall they had a cellar with an outside door. They kept their wood supply there. They also kept chickens & I can remember my grandfather killing one after chasing it around the yard. He was janitor at the high school and he stayed there until the mid-thirties (in his 70’s). My grandmother baked her own bread and we looked forward to that which she gave us covered with butter and brown sugar. We also were given dishes of maple syrup, which they made themselves. One time we went next door to Charles Taylor’s to listen to his radio. It was quite large with 2 wet cell batteries and we heard the Dempsey-Tunney fight. He only had one set of earphones and we had to take turns. The loudspeaker had not yet been invented.

It was at the Harpers’ that I met some of my maternal relatives, mother’s sister Agnes and her husband, the Snowdons and great great uncle Cesar McLeod. They had a parlour where nobody went without permission. It had old fashioned plush furniture and was kept dark most of the time. This is where they kept uncle Fred’s photos; he travelled all over the world as a marine radio operator.

Aunt Nora played golf at that time and occasionally took me to the town’s 9-hole golf course with her. Also, although she didn’t have a car, one of her friends did and she invited me on a couple of car rides, one to Kettle Point, and the other to Grand Bend. This latter trip took all day and I went along with these three women. We stopped half way for tea. The road through the Pinery at that time made quite an impression; it was not paved of course (few roads were) and the trees hugged the road on both sides – it was like driving through the woods.

Part Two – The Love of Music

My earliest introduction to music was a piano at my grandfather’s. Aunt Nora had a player piano at first with a few rolls. I couldn’t have been more than four or five. I would try to pick out tunes with one finger, and the player piano was replaced early on with an ordinary upright. I started piano lessons with Mabel Dunlop when I was about 8 or 9 and continued until I passed my Grade VIII of the T.C.M. I also took and passed two years of elementary theory.

I can remember my father singing songs of the early part of the century and from this probably grew my interest in popular music. Songs like “The Irish Jubilee”, “Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon”, & “The Little Red Schoolhouse” were among dozens I got to know. From my mother’s mother, who belonged to the Gospel Hall, I learned all the Gospel hymns and some of the U.S. Civil War songs, and sometimes on Sundays we would go to Mass in the morning and the Gospel Hall in the evening. My parents were a mixed marriage and this is probably why we grew up in a religiously tolerant environment.

When I was about 9, a boys’ junior band was started in town under the direction of Frank Freele who had a grocery cum barber shop on King St. I begged my father to let me join and he eventually relented and bought me a cornet and I began lessons. The boys’ band used to play concerts at Grand Bend on Sundays in the summer and at many of the fall fairs in the area. One year we competed at the Toronto Exhibition and that summer the committee of which my father was a member rented a cottage at Hillsboro for a week during which we rehearsed the test piece every day. I can’t remember whether we came first or last.

Meanwhile, I had joined the local library and among the books I borrowed was one of stories from the operas. I didn’t know the music but I was fascinated with the stories.

The boys’ band disbanded when I was about 12 and the senior band, the Forest Excelsior Band, acquired a new bandmaster, Steve Vowden who had been trained at Kneller Hall in England. The second year he was here he persuaded me to learn the oboe. Within a year I was playing in the Excelsior Band, along with two or three other kids my age. We competed at the Toronto Ex 2 or 3 times, staying at the Gladstone Hotel near the Exhibition grounds. The last year (the year the war broke out during the Ex) the dance bands of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Guy Lombardo were all there.

The Band used to raise money, before I joined, was by renting the steamer Tachmoo, which sailed from Sarnia to Belle Isle & Detroit on a Sunday. They would sell tickets all the way from Ailsa Craig to Sarnia and a train would take everyone to Sarnia and the band would play during the trip. However the steamer sank the year I joined the Band, and for the rest of decade they produced Minstrel Shows each fall in which I participated.

Around 1930 my parents rented a cottage at Hillsboro for two weeks up the hill on the north side of Hickory Creek. The following 2 or 3 years they took a cottage there but next to the dance hall. It had a store that opened every day and sold pop and candy, etc. and twice-a-week dances were held with a live dance orchestra. I learned all the latest popular songs this way. We would stay a month in the cottage that had no electricals and no running water. My father would go into town to work every day and return at night with Malcolm Gray who had a tent near the cottage and a Model T Ford which had to be left at the top of the hill at night because it couldn’t make it up the hill.

Every day we would have to walk to Isaac’s farm up on the Lakeshore Road for milk and sometimes fresh eggs. Often us kids would walk from Hillsboro all the way to Cedar Point or Blue Point. There was nothing between except Gallie’s Fisheries where we stop and rest. We took our lunch and were quite unsupervised by adults. In fact as young kids we would wander all over by ourselves, never feeling threatened at all.

Through the band, and also through our phonograph’s few records, I became acquainted with some classical and semi-classical pieces.

When I was about 14 or 15 two things occurred which increased my desire to learn more about music. We acquired a radio and I would listen to the N.Y. Philharmonic concerts every Sunday afternoon, and the Ford Sunday Evening Hour, which played shorter classics such as overtures and tone poems. At the same time I got to know Eunice McDonald who was in a class ahead of me at high school and who, with two other girls from Thedford, Peggy Powell & Marion Carmichael, boarded in town during the week. Eunice was interested in opera and had a aunt who was a professional singer. About the time I started collecting miniature scores and operatic vocal scores.

I also got to know Anita Carson-Dowding of Arkona whose daughter Betty Carson attended Forest High School. She played the violin and knew the composer of the Bells of St. Mary’s when she was a girl in England.

Just before the war I had my first stage experiences. I was in a high school play “The Marriage Proposal” by Chekov with Howard Brown & Inez Powell. Howard and I were piano pupils of Mabel Dunlop and played together at the Kiwanis Music Festival in Sarnia. The other was in the chorus of “HMS Pinafore”, put on by Ruth Walters. When the production went over well and taken out of town, one of the principles, Arnold Keast, broke his leg, and I took over the part of Dick Deadege because I was the only one who knew the part.

During the thirties, the Forest Excelsior Band put on minstrel shows (now not politically correct) to raise money as mentioned earlier. Several things stand out in my memory. For example, Don Livingston was always the interlocutor; Charlie May was always an endman, and usually was too drunk to remember the words of his songs; George Harvey, a local Cornishman, would get his annual bath and shave and sing one of Gilbert & Sullivan’s patter songs, all of which he knew by heart; Arnold Keast sang comic songs of the Al Jolson type; and I gave recitations.

The Excelsior Band played at the Toronto Ex several years, the last time being in 1939. At one of these, I played the glockenspiel as well as the oboe but I don’t remember either the test pieces or whether we won any prizes. This was the fair that I first appeared in an interview on demonstration television, which had not yet become commercial in Canada. This didn’t happen til after the war.

One time when I was 10 or 11, I played a cornet solo at a band festival in Waterloo. I did not place in a class of about 15 players. One thing I remember there was Gordon Chafe falling out of a boat on the river when he had a cast on his leg. I also took part in piano competitions at the Sarnia Kiwanis Music Festival and did come first on a few occasions there.

It was in 1936-37 I began listening to the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoons faithfully till I joined the navy, and intermittently up to present day.

In 1938-39 I attended the University of Toronto at St. Michael’s College. I took courses at the Conservatory in harmony, counterpoint, history and ear training, and among my teachers were Dr. Healy Willam, and Dr. Leo Smith. On one occasion we were invited to Sir Ernest McMillan’s home. As well, I played in the U of T band, playing at football games in London, Kingston & Montreal, as well as at home. I also sang in the St. Mike’s choir and learned to read Gregorian Chant.

I attended Toronto Symphony Orchestra rehearsals and got to know a few of the members, including Harold Gomberg, first oboist, who gave me free lessons for part of the winter. He went on to play with the N.Y. Phil and went with Pierre Aquley to France to pursue his studies of baroque embellishment.

Also in Toronto, I saw my first operas, a travelling group of the San Carlo Company who did Carmen, Faust and the Barber of Seville. I also saw the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in Gaite Parisienne and Coppelia. In addition, a recital by Bidu Sayno and an all-Strauss concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy. I also saw a performance of Plangiatte’s operetta “The Chimes of Normandy”. George Emerson was a guest conductor.

The TSO was not the first time I had heard a live symphony orchestra. They had come to the Grand Theatre in London somewhat earlier and they played the Cesar Franche Symphony in D minor. It was quite thrilling experience.

I joined the Royal Canadian Navy in May 1940, and had very little to do with music while there. I applied to transfer to the Navy Band while at Esquimalt when they formed one but was turned down, but I got to know some of the players, including Gordon Poole with whom I kept in touch till the 1960’s when he joined the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

I occasionally heard dance bands who played for the forces, such as Cab Calloway and Hal McIntyre, as well as the Navy Show. What little music I heard was on the radio in the Sally Ann at Halifax where I had meals from time to time.

When I got leave the first time in Ireland, I went to London, where I saw “La Boheme”, also Arthur Asky in “The Lone Rachet”, and Lupino Lane in “For Me and My Gal”.

In February 1945, the ship I was on, the Orkney, was in collision with a freighter in the Irish Sea during the blackout. We had to put in to Liverpool for a Court of Inquiry. It was during this period I met Joan Taylor, who I married in June. We met at a roller rink and on our first date we went to hear the Liverpool Philharmonic, where we could get seats for only a shilling as a member of the armed forces. We attended several of these concerts while in Liverpool (for 6 weeks) under either Sir Adrian Bonet or Sir John Barbirolli. We also saw “La Traviata” at the Empire Theatre.

After we were married we lived in Greenich, Scotland until I returned to Canada early in 1946. We often went into Glasgow where we heard concerts by the Scottish Orchestra as well as several of the G & S operettas on the stage. We also saw Will Fyfe in a pantomine, and two musicals, “Rose Marie” and “No No Nanette”.

I returned to Canada in May of 1946 and Joan followed on the Queen Mary in August. While waiting to return to Canada, we stayed a few days in London, and I saw Barber of Seville. We lived in Dartmouth and I got hold of a record player and borrowed records through Keilor Bentley who worked in a music store in Halifax and who came to visit in Marion Heights a few times.

Returning to Forest in 1947, I began playing baritone in the band since I didn’t have an oboe. When Steve Vowden left Forest to join the RCAF band when the war broke out, various members held the band together until a permanent bandmaster could be found. I took it over myself for a year or so. Bob Shannon, a bassoonist from Sarnia, and a former member of the boys’ band, became bandmaster but he died suddenly a couple of years later. He told a newly formed community orchestra in Sarnia that I played oboe so I had to buy one through George VanValkenburg who had connections with Boosy & Hawkes. I still have it.

Following Bob Shannon, Bert Bocock of Parkhill was hired. He also played in the London Symphony and he asked me to come and play French Horn with them; they needed a 4^th horn player but not oboe. I played for two years with them under Bruce Sharp, including concerts in Chatham. A highlight of this period was a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” under Sir Ernest McMillan in the London area with a huge chorus.

A few years later, an International Symphony was formed from the Sarnia & Port Huron community orchestras, with which I stayed for about 13 years under a variety of 1^st oboists and conductors. I got to play a large number of works which was an incredible experience, including “Afterim LaFaire”, selections from “Le Coq d’Or”, “Songs of the Aivergne”, “Appalachian Spring”, and “Rodeo”, some Brahms, Wagner, Bartok and many others.

Meanwhile in the late 40’s, I met Harry Keane of Keane’s Ontario Furniture. We made a trip to Cleveland, there and back same day, to see the Metropolitan Opera do “Don Giavanni” with Ezro Pinza. The following year, we went for four days and saw five operas – “Rigoletto” with Jussi Bjoertz & Lily Pons & Leonard Warren; “L’Elisir d’Amore” with Patrice Munsel; “Madame Butterfly” with Dorothy Kigsten & John Brownlee; “Othello” with Licia Albanese and Roman Vinsy.

Joan and I went to Detroit in the early 50’s to see some opera with the Carl Rosa Company with Tito Gobbi and Ferreras Tagliaria. We saw “Rigoletto”, “Tosca”, “Andrea Chenier” and “Turandot”, both the latter the first time we had heard them. We saw one more opera together about 1959 when we went with the Thiers to Maple Leaf Gardens to see “Aida” with Zinha Milanov, Robert Merrill, Maria del Monaco, Blanche Theban, and Jerome Hines.

In 1952, I put on a show at the Town Hall called “Broadway Revue”, using members of the Agenda Club, a group of girls who had done shows during the war to raise money for the troops, and the Excelsior Band. The show contained numbers from musicals from “The Mikado” to “The King and I”. Artistically it was a success, financially not. While doing this I went to Detroit with a group to see “Guys and Dolls” with Allan Jones and Vivian Blaine. The only other musical I had seen was on our way home from Halifax in 1947 when Joan & I saw “Oklahoma” on Broadway. In 1953 while visiting Aldie Robarts in St. Catharines, he took us to see “Annie Get Your Gun” in Niagara Falls. We waited until 1970 when we went to see “Fiddler on the Roof” in Port Huron, to see another stage musical.

During the 50’s, we came into London several times to see shows at the Grand Theatre, among them “La Boheme”, the Canadian National Ballet in “Swan Lake”, “Nutcracker” and “Giselle” & “Pineapple Poll”, some of these with the Wiens from Thedford. He had been a German POW during the war having served with Rommel in North Africa and came to Canada after the war. His kids went to Forest High School. In 1952, we visited Aldie Robart’s parents in Forest Hill and they took us to the ballet which included “Fancy Free”, among others.

We also saw plays during this time, “Rain”, “Tobacco Road”, “Bell, Book & Candle” with Joan Bennett and Zachary Scott. Also Purple Patches did “Li’l Abner”. They performed at the Grand in those days.

In the late 50’s, Joan and I and Don Thiers attended a performance in Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, of the Metropolitan Opera performance of “Aida” with Linda Milarov, Robert Merrill, Mario del Monaco and Blanche Theboge.

Later in the 60’s, myself and one of the violinists from the International Symphony were selected to attend a week-long community orchestra workshop in Stratford where we played every day under such conductors as Walter Susskind and Victor Feldbull. We played Brahms, Hindsmith, Skostakovich and Schumann in a concert at the end of the week. During the week, a conference of contemporary composers took place and we were privileged to attend a concert with composers such as Ray Hairie, Ernest Kreach, and Eilyard Varese took part. It was the first time I had heard Varise’s “Deserto” performed live, as well as Villa Asbos “Bacebians Brasibiers No. 5” as a tribute to the South American who had died recently.

We also went to Stratford once to see Lorne Greene & Lloyd Bodener in “Julius Caesar” in the tent before the theatre was built.

In 1971 we attended the Baha’i Oceanic Conference in Iceland & while there among the entertainers were Seals & Crofts and Norman Bailey. We talked to Seals & Crofts at the airport on the way home and we visited the Baileys in England when we went there.

In the spring of 1972, I had to return material to the National Baha’i Headquarters in Toronto since we planned to pioneer to Iceland. While in Toronto, I called Ruth Morowitz whom we had met a few years earlier at Darsts in Colborne Township. She invited me to dinner & had a chance to talk to the husband Oscar Morowitz, a famous Canadian composer. They arranged for me to attend a performance of “Die Walpver” with Norman Bailey as Wotar and Maureen Forrester as Fricka. After the performance, I went backstage & talked to the performers as I was a guest of Emma Homburger, the wife of the manager of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.

In August 1972 we went to Iceland. During our time there I joined the Reykjavik City Band through Sverrir Sveinsson, a foreman at my place of work & a cornet player. The second year Gardar Cortes formed the Reykjavik Symphony Orchestra as a community type orchestra as a compliment to the National Symphony. We played generally easier pieces but in our last year there we played “Trial by Jury” and Mendelssohn’s “Elijah”, the former in Icelandic, the latter in English. We took the overtures to various communities, e.g. Selfoss, and then in the spring went on a tour, playing in Varmahlid, Dalvik and Myvatn. The G & S we recorded for a professor on Icelandic television.

Among highlights of our four years in Iceland were attending concerts at the Haskalabio of the National Symphony and getting to know many of the players; attending a concert & recital backstage with Vladimir Ashkenazy and Reasta Tebaldi who sang about 9 encores with Ashkenazy at the piano; talking to Leon Goossens, outstanding British oboist; attending live performances of “Coppelia” at the National Theatre and “Jesus Christ Superstar” at the Austurbaejarbio; the Victor Borge concert.

In 1976, we moved to England. I didn’t get much chance to play there until we moved to Somerset where they already had an orchestra. I sometimes played at their annual meetings and once I played for a performance of Haydn’s “Nelson” in Glastonbury; I also got a chance to play in a wind ensemble.

While in Somerset we got to see a lot of stage musicals: Fiddler on the Roof, South Pacific, My Fair Lady, Show Boat, Merry Widow, A Night in Venice, Orpheus in the Underworld, The Desert Song, Die Fledermaus, The Sorcerer. I also saw Macbeth and Fra Deavolo at the Strode in Shepton Mallet. Over in London I went to see The Grand Duchess at Sadlers Wells. I also took Tim once to see the Tremoloes in concert. Carl took part in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” in Wells Cathedral with Vicki and Asgeir were in England.

When we first went to England, we took the kids to see “Arsenic and Old Lace”. I had already seen “The Mousetrap” and “Happy as a Handbag”, a musical about World War II.

We returned to Canada in 1983 and rented a house on McLary Street. A year later we bought a condo on Southdale and I started taking a course in Music History at the University of Western Ontario. I only took it for interest since I wasn’t playing any more and couldn’t take a music degree without a performance capability. The second year I took Astronomy and an opera course but had to drop out of the latter when I went into hospital for my emphysema for a week and missed my class presentation. The next year I took a course in Bibliography & Research Technique and got to be familiar with the library. From then on, I started taking opera courses and theory courses and the university introduced an arts degree in music and I pursued that from then on. I also took courses in composition, history and orchestration. From time to time I would have some of the kids over to watch some of my operatic videos. In all there have been 9 or 10 come over.

One year I went with some of my classmates to see Berg’s “Wozzech” at the O’Keefe Centre in Toronto with Alan Monk.

I began collecting operatic videos during this time and have accumulated over 100 operas on tape. Most have been taken off television, but I have copied some and bought some. I also have a good collection of miscellaneous music videos including ballet, concerts and profiles of musicians.

I graduated in 1996, a year after our 50^th wedding anniversary, and since I had only just got out of hospital at convocation time, the dean and associate dean came to the house for the presentation. Four of our kids and their families were present and it received good press in the paper. As a result I received cards and letters from many people, some of whom I had not seen for 50 years.

While at the university, I had the privilege of meeting some world famous musicians including Philip Gosset, the musicologist; Stanley Sadie, the editor of Grove’s Encyclopedia of Music; Theodore Burg and his wife of COC; and the granddaughter of Geacoveo Puccini.

During this period in London we have been able to see many musicals, most put on by the university. Among them have been Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Gondoliers”, “Princess Ida”, “Patience”, and “Ruddigose”. Others were “The King and I”, “Brigadoon”, “Guys and Dolls”, “Cabaret”, “How to Succeed in Business Without Trying”, “Fiddler on the Roof”, “The Music Man”, “Evita” and “The Pyjama Game”.

They also produced Vaughn Williams’ “Rides to the Sea”, Mozart’s “Impressio”, and Bernstein’s “Candide”, as well as excerpts from various operas. There were many other concerts as well, both by the UWO Symphony, UWO Chorus, and various faculty members’ concerts.

One year we had season’s tickets for Orchestra London. They were good but we didn’t care much for Centennial Hall, although we also went to see “Forty-second Street” there in which one member of my class took part.

Part Three – Growing Up in Forest

As near as I can recall, the first time I was ever outside Forest was when my Aunt Nora took me to Kettle Point when I was about 4 years old. I also went with her to Grand Bend. She did not have a car but one of her friends did and on the trip to Grand Bend (it seemed to me at the time it was all day), we stopped about half way through the Pinery at a tea room called Rimbedost. My recollection was of a dirt road through the woods but I don’t remember Grand Bend at all. During the twenties we used to go into London once a year on the train to buy shoes. The train left Forest at 6:30 am and we changed trains at Lucan Crossing. On one of these trips we went out to Springbank Park on a street car. They had a merry-go-round, a miniature train and a roller coaster there then.

I also remember going to Windsor but I don’t remember how we got there. We took a street car or trolley to Amherstburg to visit some of my grandfather’s family. We also went to the Toronto Exhibition by train a couple of times during the twenties as mentioned earlier and on one of these trips, I saw my first talking picture. I had seen a couple of silent movies earlier at the Kineto Theatre in Forest: “Noah’s Ark” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.

It was around 1930 when we rented a cottage at Hillsboro for a couple of weeks. It was on top of the hill on the east side of Hickory Creek, quite a walk down to the store or to swim.

When I was 6 or 7, I went to the dentist to have one of my baby teeth taken out by Dr. Walters. His office was above Laurie’s Hardware Store on the corner of King & Main Streets. When I was 10, I broke my collar bone fooling around at recess at school. The bone was set by Dr. Smith downtown, and I was off school for a month. I’m told I hollered loud enough to be heard down the street because I wouldn’t take any anaesthetic.

Birthday parties were a rarity. I had one during my growing up years and only attended about three. One of the earliest was when I was in First Book. Frank Alpaugh’s father drove the Sarnia Bus and at his party we went for a bus ride, I think to Ipperwash.

There was, and still is, a fall fair held in Forest every year, and we felt it to be one of the highlights of the year. While in public school each class would dress up to illustrate one theme and we would march from the school to the fair grounds. When I got older these marches which drew from rural schools all over the area, were discontinued but I still marched, first as a member of the Boys Band and later with the Excelsior Band. We would also play from time to time during the fair. As members of the band we would often be invited to other fairs, such as Exeter, Parkhill, Seaforth and many others. The Boys Band also used to play concerts at Grand Bend on Sundays in the summer. The Senior Band also played Sunday evening concerts on the band stand. On one occasion during the fair when I was 8 or 9 I talked my father into letting me go up in an airplane. In those days, barn-stormers used to travel from fair to fair, put on shows including parachute jumps and take people for rides. I went up in an open air biplane for about ten minutes at a cost of $2.00

I was taken to London a couple of times during the early 30’s, by Bob Horne, father of one of my schoolmates. I can remember seeing the movies “Trader Horn” and “Wonder Bar”.

In exchange my father took me & young Bob to Detroit to see baseball games a couple of years in a row. We stayed with one of his friends and during our time there we saw all the teams in the American League and some of the legendary baseball stars including: Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. There were 8 teams in the league then including the Washington Senators and St. Louis Browns. We also saw movies, e.g. “San Francisco” and “Poppy” with W.C. Fields. In those days the big movie theatres had stage shows as well and we saw Fred Waring and Shep Fields dance orchestra. I had only been to Detroit once before; it was on the steamer Tashmoo on the band excursion to Belle Isle.

The first time dad took me to Detroit to a ball game we stayed at Jack Barke’s place. He was from Forest but worked at one of the auto plants. On Sunday morning he took me up to station WJR in the Fisher Bldg. and saw Uncle Walt read the funnies over the radio. Uncle Walt read the comics every Sunday. We also stayed and watched a dramatic program and enjoyed watching them do the sound effects while the actors read their lines. We also went to the Fox Theatre and saw Fred Waring and the Pennyloanias.

In the 1930’s the road from Forest to the end of the 9 miles at Highway 22 was paved. It was during summer, cars were routed around Forest and we would sit at my grandmother Harper’s and keep track of all the different license plates we spotted. In those days an airplane was a novelty and we rushed out to see whenever one went over. They didn’t fly very high then. A highlight was seeing the dirigible R-100 go over on its way to Chicago.

While in high school I started going with Eunice McDonald and one summer she took me to visit her cousin in Toledo, Ohio. I can remember seeing a movie “Gold Diggers of 1935” but not much else of the trip.

Every year the 5 schools in the area held track and field meets. In the local meets I won medals four years. High School teachers were Jessie Saunders, Irene Reton, Angela Hammer, Albert Williams & J. Stevens principal.

During the summers in high school I would get a job. One year I worked for Bob Horne, who kept bees, in various localities and collected the honey from the hives and extracted it in a building on one of the farms. One year I worked two weeks at the basket factory at 15c an hour. I made enough for spending money at the Toronto Fair where I went with the band. Another year I worked at the Canning Factory (Aylmer) which was very busy in the summer. I got 25c an hour and some days we would work as much as 15 hours in a day. The next day we wouldn’t be called in at all. I worked through the spinach and pea season.

Living so close to Lake Huron, we used to go to the beach often, other than our holidays at the cottage. My earliest recollection was riding to Hillsboro on the handle bars of a bicycle with Gerry Chafe. Later we would sometimes walk there and back. Once I walked to Cedar Point. Later we would get rides to Ipperwash where they had a dance casino and we’d listen to records on the juke box.

Pastimes among others were: gathering hickory nuts out in the country in the fall; once we went for walnuts at Geo. Lougheed’s farm. He was a cousin of my mother & was the local milkman. I also went with the mailmen on all the rural routes around Forest, and too on Gerry Chafe’s bread route all over the local countryside.

While in high school for two or three years in the fall I would go out into the country to gather hickory nuts, once with a kid from school, John Marburg. Once I collected coalnuts but they weren’t very good. When I was smaller you could get beechnuts near the Forest cemetery. You can’t do this anymore – the hickory, coalnut and beech trees are all gone.

At one point I sent for information on taxidermy, and also a flying school at Lincoln, Nebraska. I was interested in model planes and built several flying models; I got to know Bruce Lister who lived on a farm in Bosanquet Twp. and was bit of an expert on model airplanes. Once I had a chemistry set and made some chlorine gas and nearly choked myself.

The last year at high school I went to Toronto for 2 weeks in summer to look for a job and was unsuccessful. One place I went was the deHaviland aircraft factory, which was out in the country then. It was a long walk from the end of the street car line. That fall I went to the U. of T. One weekend there I hitch hiked to Buffalo for the weekend, just to say I’d been there, no other reason, but it was the first time I had seen Niagara Falls. It was also the first time I had ever been in a bar. In Ontario we had been in parlors but no bars. Forest did not have a beer parlor; Thedford had the closest and Sarnia was the closest liquor store.

On Sundays in Toronto there was nothing open there except a few restaurants and some museums. I often rode the different street car lines to familiarize myself with the city and I also visited the Royal Ontario Museum and Casa Loma. One Sunday I walked from the university to the waterfront and back. I lived in residence at St. Michael’s College.

One evening I went to see “Romeo & Juliet” at the Hart House Theatre put on by students. I also went to a dance at the roof garden of the Royal York Hotel to which I had been invited by a girl I knew in a sorority. I had to rent a set of tails and a car (Eunice had taught me how to drive on the roads around Thedford), as well as a corsage.

In 1939 the King and Queen came to Canada. The closest they came was London and arrangements were made to take all the school kids by bus to see them. The Forest Band was invited to play at the Rectory St. Station, the site allotted to Forest. However the tour ran late and the train did not stop at Rectory St. The kids were disappointed so the buses took them all the way to Niagara Falls, their next stop. My sister got to see them but I did not as the band returned to Forest.

The war broke out while they were here at the Toronto Fair so they cut short their visit and returned to England. I applied to join the Navy and stayed home and waited until I was called. I can remember listening on the radio to the progress of the Battle of the River Plate when the Graf Spee was sunk. During the 30’s we were able to hear speeches by both Hitler and Mussolini on radio.

Uncle Fred had heard Hitler speak in Hamburg during the early thirties when he sailed with the Hamburg-American Line. He travelled a great deal and prior to that had sailed to Alaska and the Middle East and to India. He stopped going to Germany in the middle thirties, and made two more trips before the war, one to Indonesia and Thailand, and one to Angola. He sent me stamps from both trips. I collected stamps and also baseball cards, which came in bubble gum. Cigarettes also included collectors cards, I can remember golf cards and poker hands. My dad collected the poker hands and was able to get several premiums including a card table and chairs and a bridge lamp.

In the early thirties, the advertisers were much more imaginative and generous than today when they spend all their money on television. One of the earliest were the cigarette manufacturers who placed cards in their cigarette packages. One I remember used cards with poker hands, which my father collected. There were two in a pack of 25 for a quarter and one in a 10 cent pack of ten. If you collected the full set they could be redeemed for prizes and I know my dad got a card table, a floor lamp and an umbrella for a specified number of sets in their catalogue. Even earlier one of the companies put golf cards in their packages; a full set was of the 18 holes. Also Moirs chocolate bars each contained a card with a letter on it and if you could spell, for example “Moirs XXX Hard Centers”, you would get a 2 lb. box of chocolates free. Needless to say, the X’s were the hardest to find.

Every box of cereal had a prize in it and every box of soap had a tea towel or a face cloth. Some contained dishes. All of the kids radio programs had clubs you could join for free by sending in a wrapper from their product. I joined the Little Orphan Annie secret society and received a code book and a ring and every night on the program there would be a secret message which we had to decode.

Then came the bubble gum cards. Each penny package of bubble gum contained a card of a sports star, movie star, pirates and plane cards, or other topics of interest which could be collected into sets, and traded with others. It was always fun to trade a Lou Gehrig for a Hank Greenburg, or a Greta Garbo for a Clara Bow. You could buy a lot for a quarter in those days.

One time I was persuaded to sell needles or garden seeds and after selling so many we would get prizes. It wasn’t hard to sell when you are 8 or 9 because everyone tends to humour you.

Part Four – Service in the Navy

In the spring of 1940 I received my call-up from the Navy and was told to report to the Naval Barracks in London for a physical. My dad came with me, and that afternoon I was on a train for Vancouver with orders to report to HMCS Nadia in Esquimalt, BC on May 6. This was the first time I would so far from home. The furthest I had been was between Montreal and Toledo. I had a berth on the train and woke up the next morning in Northern Ontario. In 1940 the trains ran on steam and we stopped every couple of hours for 10 minutes while they took on water.

We had stops for an hour or more in Winnipeg and Edmonton, and I sent home postcards. In Vancouver we took the ferry to Victoria, about an 8 hour trip and on arrival in Victoria were met by a truck which took us to the naval base.

After being fitted out with all our gear and assigned a home in the Frobisher Block we went on basic training for 6 weeks. This consisted of a 2 or 3 mile run before breakfast after tying up our hammocks. Then we had marching drill, gunnery lessons, seamanship, naval history, and so on. We were allowed to go ashore (into town) on Wednesday afternoons and Saturday or Sunday and one weekend in three. We were in what they called red, white & blue watches.

On the completion of basic training we had to choose a branch and I chose to train in visual signalling. It was a nine month course and we had to learn signalling with flags, semaphore and lights, which involved both naval and international signalling codes with flags and also Morse code for lights.

At Christmas we had our first leave and I got home to Forest for the holiday. We had another leave on completion of the course and back home this time there was nothing to do since everyone I knew had joined the services. I took off and hitch hiked into the States. I went first to Chicago, then to St. Louis, then went south through Arkansas & Memphis, and back home through Louisville and Cincinatti. It was surprisingly easy and cost me very little because I was in uniform.

Half way through the course, the navy was expanding so rapidly that some of us went on what they called ‘lodging & compensation’, and we had to find accommodation off the base and were allotted extra pay to cover it. I was lucky and found lodging along with two others in the class with an aunt of one of them. The house was in Victoria and not far from where our instructor, Leading Signalman Crevey, an old veteran of the Royal Navy who was called up as an instructor when the war broke out. Every third weekend, I with others, would go to Vancouver and it was there that I met Barb Roweman, whom I thought of as a girl friend. I would stay with her family and she would show me around Vancouver & Stanley Park, once up to Capilano Canyon. She came over to Victoria once on a visit to picnic on Bowen Island.

One Sunday I took a train trip up the island to Courtney on a Catholic youth outing. Other days off we would go to Beacon Hill Park or Gorge Park, which was quite pleasant.

On my return from leave I, among others, were assigned to HMCS Prince Robert and joined it at Vancouver. Within a day or two we saw a large number of soldiers coming on board and we set sail not knowing where we were going. We were accompanied by a New Zealand troopship, the Awatea, and the first land we sighted was Hawaii. We docked in Honolulu but were not allowed ashore, although some hula girls came down to the dock to entertain us. We left the next morning, still not knowing our destination.

Two weeks later after crossing the International Date Line we entered the San Bernardino Straits and after passing Corregidor Island entered Manila Bay in the Philippines. We were still not allowed ashore as we didn’t know our final destination but there were plenty of rumours. There was a Japanese merchant ship in the harbour. Three days later I celebrated my 20^th birthday and we arrived in Hong Kong. Here we were finally allowed ashore. We had one day from 11 in the morning until 8 the next morning. We slept in the China Fleet Club and the rest of the time we wandered about, took a rickshaw ride, took the ferry over to Kowloon and took the mountain railway up to the top.

We stayed four days and disembarked the soldiers. The days we were not ashore we talked with the sanpan people who thronged the harbour, and I bought a white dress uniform made to measure which cost me $10.00.

On our way home we stopped again in Manila but no shore leave. Two weeks later we arrived in Honolulu and were allowed ashore till midnight. We spent the time wandering around, shopping for souvenirs, and I went out to Waikiki Beach and the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. This was Friday, December 5^th, 1941. We sailed next morning for Vancouver and on Sunday morning we started getting signals about the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbour and that we were at war with Japan. We arrived back in Canada five days later. After a few days we were ordered to patrol in the area of the Aleutian Islands and we had the worst weather I have experienced in the Navy. Ocean swells were rising thirty feet and it was impossible to do anything. We couldn’t keep utensils on the table in spite of the fact that mess tables had built up edges. Anything not tied down rolled all over the deck and it rained most of the time. After about three weeks we came back to Esquimalt.

After a few weeks I was assigned to HMCS Kelowna, a newly commissioned minesweeper, at Prince Rupert. I was given my trained operators badge and was in charge of two signalmen on the ship. I travelled to Vancouver and then boarded a passenger steamer for the trip to Prince Rupert. The trip took three days and we sailed the inside passage. We stopped and were able to go ashore twice, once at Bella Bella and once at Ocean Falls. These communities’ only contact with the outside at that time was by sea although they have roads now. I particularly was struck by the wooden streets.

On arrival in Prince Albert I went on board the Kelowna and spent the next six months sweeping for imaginary mines around the entrance to the harbour, two weeks out and five days in port. On one occasion in port I met with Bob Rawlings from Forest who was stationed at an RCAF base at Terrace, about 25 miles inland. On another occasion the ship put into Port Simpson, an Indian village and we went ashore and sampled some home made beer. It was a friendly ship and the captain threw a party on one of our terms in harbour.

At the end of the summer I was taken off and drafted to St. Hyacinth, Quebec, where the Navy had their signal school for a V-S3 course. On the way I was given 30 days leave and went back home for awhile. This time I decided to go hitch hiking again through the States. This time it was even better as the US was in the war now. I got a ride as far as Wapabearton, Ohio at a large truck stop. I found it was easier getting rides with truckers at stops than on the road. I picked up a ride which took me through Cincinatti, Nashville to Huntsville, Alabama. I hitched from there to Birmingham, through to Montgomery and Mobile. There I headed west through Biloxi & Gulfport, Miss. to New Orleans.

I spent a few days in New Orleans sight seeing, including Canal St., Barec St., The French Quarter (le vieux carre), the levees, and above ground cemeteries. I entered over the long bridge over Lake Pontchartrain. From there I headed north and got a ride through Natchez to Port Gibrar. I was stuck there and had to spend the night in a rooming house. The next day I headed north to Memphis and Beale Street. On this trip I had seen my first pecan trees and cotton fields.

I crossed the Mississippi there and went to St. Louis. I had been having such good luck that I then headed west to Kansas City, then north by Leavenworth to Omaha. Then back to Chicago through Des Moines and Davenport. Luckily I got a ride there direct to Port Huron and then home. I took no luggage, only a razor and toothbrush, and about 25 dollars. I would stay at YMCA dormitories for a quarter and would wash out socks and underwear overnight. Many of the people I rode with insisted on buying my meals and I arrived home still with money in my pocket.

The course at St. Hyacinthe lasted six weeks and it was intensive. The base was outside the town and when we took leave we walked in. One weekend some of us went into Montreal, about 25 miles away. One night I went into town and saw a movie in French with Ray Milland and John Wayne, no subtitles of course, but I got so I understood a lot of it. It was in St. Hyacinthe that I met Jeaime Gervais; she worked at Woolworth’s and we went out a few times.

We finished the course and received our V/S 3 rating and almost immediately were drafted to HMCS Stadacona at Halifax. It was winter and the weather was wet and miserable. I got my promotion to Acting Leading Signalman and was drafted to HMCS Annapolis, an old four-funnel ex-American destroyer from World War I that was part of a ships-for-bases deal made with England, 50 destroyers for bases on British soil. Canada got a number of them, six of which were considered not safe to cross the Atlantic. We were on the Halifax to mid-Atlantic run and it was my first winter on the North Atlantic and it was miserable. The mess decks always had water on the floor, the decks were covered with ice and it was foggy most of the time. We would put into St. John’s, Newfoundland, on the way back.

St. John’s was not part of Canada then and they had their own money, although they would take any currency, Canadian, American, British or French. The first time in we went ashore at night of course; it was dark and the city was blacked out, so it was difficult getting around and I didn’t see what the town looked like.

After a couple of trips on the Annapolis it came in for a refit (the North Atlantic played havoc with the rivets) and I was drafted back ashore. I was shortly drafted to a corvette, the Quesnel, and we were put on the triangle run, escorting convoys from Boston, Halifax & St. Johns to mid-ocean. I was ashore once in Boston but did little except sight-seeing. I was in St. Johns a couple of times and was able to look up one family of Chafes, relatives of my aunt Agnes, who had me up for dinner. I also met Charlie Ross, who later owned the Dresden paper, and we played cards together on one occasion.

After a few trips the ship went into Pictou, N.S. for refit. We were in there for 3 months and I stayed with the ship for that time. I had 30 days leave during that time and went home. For the remainder there was no need to stay on board in the evening, but one night in three I had to don belt and garters and armband and go on shore patrol. It was a pretty soft job because there was never any trouble – a third of the ship’s company would be on long leave at all times. One weekend I spent in Truro, about an hour away by train.

At the end of the refit I was sent back to Halifax where I spent some time. It was here I met Kidor Bentley, a young fellow who worked in a music store and we spent some time together. Earlier in the year I had spent a weekend at Frank Burus’ home in Kentville – he was publisher of the Kentville Advertiser and my father had met him at a newspaper convention and arranged it.

Eventually I received notice to go back to St. Hyacinthe for a V/S 2 course. The Canadian Navy was expanding very rapidly and there was a shortage of non-commissioned officers. At the conclusion of the course we were confirmed in our Leading Signalman rating and given the acting rank of Yeoman of Signals. On this tour, I learned that the girl I had met before, became engaged to Bob Wales, one of my friends with whom I had been with since joining the Navy, and who had invited me to stop off at his home in Winnipeg on my way back to Esquimalt after one of my leaves.

On returning to Halifax we were all sent to newly built ships in various parts of the country. My assignment was HMCS Orkney, which was being built at Esquimalt shipyards. I was there in January and was one of the first compliments to arrive. My job at this point was to draw all the necessary supplies for the commemorative branch and get all the code books up to date, ready for commissioning. It was strictly a day job as workmen were still working on the ship. A couple of weekends I went to Vancouver. I had learned that Barb had got married and I visited her and her husband. By the time of commissioning the full complement was on board and I found I was in charge of all signalmen, coders, and wireless telegraphers. I had a Leading Telegrapher and a Leading Coder under me. At the time of commissioning I had to climb to the top of the mast to fix the commissioning pennant which would be unfurled at the proper moment.

A few days after this we received our orders to report to Halifax. We set sail and headed south. One of our Leading Torpedomen contracted appendicitis on the trip and we had to put into Corinto, Nicaragua so he could get attention at the American hospital. There was no dock there; we had to anchor and some of us were allowed to go ashore by boat. We only had about six hours but it proved quite interesting. Nothing was open but bars and the post office as they take siesta in the afternoons. The streets were not paved but were of sand and met hardly anyone, none of whom could speak English.

Our next port of call was the Panama Canal. It took all day to go through the canal and when we reached Cristobal we went in for a boiler cleaning which meant a 5 day layover. One day a friend and I took a bus ride to Panama City, a distance of about 50 miles, to say I was able to travel from coast to coast and back the same day and enjoy the scenery along the route. One thing I remember of Cristobal and its sister city Bulboa was that the bars never closed; they did not even have proper doors, just the swinging kind.

On leaving Panama we sailed up through the strait between Cuba and Haiti and put into the U.S. Navy base at Norfolk, Virginia where we were fitted for the latest radar. We were there three days and although I went ashore I don’t remember much except for the enormous size of the navy yard there.

On reaching Halifax we, the Orkney, were assigned as the Senior Officers’ ship of Escort Group 16, at the head of a few new frigates, including Thetford Mines, Ste. Therese, LaHulloise and Magog. While working in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Magog was damaged by a torpedo and was effectively out of the war. The remaining ships went to New York where we received more radar gear at the Staten Island Navy Yard. I went ashore once into the city and went to the Stage One Canteen which was pretty empty. Nobody famous there, also went to Jack Dempsey’s Bar. Then a few of us went to Coney Island where we rode the roller coaster and dodgem cars late into the night until it was time to go back to the ship.

From there we went to Bermuda where we spent six weeks on working up exercises, based mostly at the British Naval Base at Hamilton and also a couple of days at St. Georges. We were ashore quite often and the weather was beautiful as it was May.

Back in Canada, our escort group went on patrol in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It was comparatively uneventful, but we went into Gaspe for five days for a boiler cleaning and one evening I went to a social club and played bridge. I had to quickly recall my French in order to play. Later we put into Sydney, and while on day leave one of the stewards whose home was in Glace Bay, took me by bus to the ruins of the fortress of Louisburg. There was nothing there then except a blockhouse, which was used as a museum. On returning to Sydney we found our ships had been recalled to Halifax and we had to catch up with it by motor launch. My most vivid memory of Sydney at night was the fires of the blast furnaces at the steel mills, which were going 24 hours a day.

On returning to Halifax, we were changed to Sea Opps Escort Group 25 based at Londonderry, Northern Ireland escorting a convoy on the way.

By the time we reached the U.K., it was September, D-Day had already taken place so we missed that event, but we immediately went on escort duty around the British Isles, and very rarely put into port before we returned to Londonderry. We circum-navigated the island several times in the lanes that were swept clear of mines. On one occasion we were sent out to the mid-Atlantic near the Canary Islands to deal with a submarine attack on a convoy. We arrived in time, but the sub was sunk by torpedo aircraft. One night we put into Portsmouth and another time in January, we went into Scapa Flow in the Orkneys for a couple of days. I went ashore once to the petty officers mess at the naval base and it was miserably cold and damp. We had to huddle around a stove in the centre while we drank our beer.

One time some of us went to Buncrana on the Free State Border. We also carried out night A/S exercises at a tactical centre in Limavady outside Devry. I walked around the old walls and several times we went drinking in the Catholic area where they had connections in the Free State and were able to get eggs and steak which were unavailable in N.I.

At Christmas we were given a weeks leave and I went to London. I took the train to Larne where I took the ferry to Stranracs. The train to London was very crowded and had to stand much of the time. I got a room in Earls Court and took the underground to the centre every day, visited the sights (Tower of London, Mme. Trusauds, Kew Garden and British Museum), and went to shows. One night the underground went on strike and I had to walk back to Earls Court.

On one occasion we were escorting a convoy through the Minch, between Scotland and the Outer Hebrides when the captain thought we had a submarine contact. We were about to carry out a depth charge attack when the Navigator rushed up to the bridge to inform us we were over a minefield.

In February we were escorting a convoy from Loch Erve to Milford Haven when we ran into one of the ships in the convoy off Angleseg. We were badly damaged but the freighter was worse. We signalled for tugs from Liverpool to assist the freighter but we were able to come in under our own steam. We tied up at the Gladstone docks in Seaforth and there learned we would have to remain there to participate in a court of inquiry. Liverpool was the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief Western Approaches. I had to attend but was never called to testify.

Part Five – Meeting Joan Taylor and the End of the War

As a petty officer, I did not have to stand watch, so I was able to go ashore every night. We came into the city on an elevated train to the Pier Head, the centre of the city on the Mersey.

Whether it was the first or second night ashore, a couple of friends and myself had a few drinks and decided to go roller skating, something I had never done before or since. It was there that I met a girl called Joan Taylor and she and a friend accompanied us back to the Pier Head to catch our train. I managed to get her phone number where she worked. This was February 14^th, 1945.

The next day I called her and asked for a date. She agreed and when I suggested several things to do, she opted for a concert of the Liverpool Philharmonic. For the next three weeks or so we saw each other nearly every night, attending concerts, movies and an occasional stage shows and trips. After she got to know me a little better, she invited me to her home where I met her parents, and on one occasion I missed the last street car downtown and had to walk miles back to the ship.

At the end of the inquiry I asked Joan to marry me and she agreed although no date was set. The result of the inquiry was that our commanding officer received a reprimand and lost his command. We got a new captain, who joined us after the refit, and were ordered to Dunstaffsax, just outside Oban, Scotland, for this. It took six weeks and there was not much to do in Oban. Every second weekend I took a train to Liverpool, which was an interesting trip. It took so long (I had to change at Glasgow) that I only had a few hours with Joan before I had to return.

On completion of the refit, we did working up exercises at Kyle of Lochelah and anti-submarine exercises at Campbelltown. Previously we had done similar exercises at Tobermory on the Isle of Mell but we never got ashore at any of them. We then returned to Londonderry for more exercises at the tactical room. While we were undergoing refit some of our people joined one of the other ships of the group who took over senior officer and while there, there was a Lodgebog accident and several were killed including my leading telegrapher, Jimmy Friend. While we were in ‘Derry I took a weekend in Belfast and visited their graves in the cemetery there. I also visited Gloria Hollowell, a Wren I met in Londonderry and who was restationed. She was from Manchester and was an officers’ cook and engaged to a Canadian airman. The only reason I mention this was because a few years after the war, she turned up in Forest as Gloria Anderson, with her husband as new owners of the Forest Golf Course.

We eventually set sail again and while refuelling at Moville on Lough Foyle, we were rammed by another Canadian frigate and had to return to Londonderry. While there, V-E Day was announced and I spent the afternoon on a long walk. A few days later we were told we were being transferred to Canada for service in the Pacific but had the choice of volunteering. I decided to request a transfer and called Joan in Liverpool and told her I would be going ashore for the purpose of getting married. I guess she was surprised but agreed.

Over the next few days, several German submarines began turning up in ‘Derry having surrendered on orders from Germany.

Eventually I was posted to HMCS Niobe in Greenoch, Scotland, catching a boat from Belfast. I was immediately sent to an R & R camp where I stayed for several weeks. While there I learned how to make felt flowers and leather tooling. Our only duties were to keep the camp clean. We were provided from time to time with tours. Once we went to Ayr, Bobby Burns country, another time to Hamilton and David Livingston’s home. We also took a trip to the Trossacks and Loch Katrine but it was so foggy we saw very little.

In June I got 30 days marriage leave and went to Liverpool where arrangements were made for the wedding. We made day trips to Southport and Blackpool. We also visited some of her relatives in the Liverpool area. We were married in Hayton Parish Church with a fellow I met in Greenoch, Robert Ferguson, standing up for me and her sister Florence, as bridesmaid. We went on our honeymoon to Lythan St. Annes, near Blackpool.

Shortly after returning to Liverpool, we went to Greenach and the first day or two we stayed in a rooming house downtown until I found a room closer to Niobe. We were only there for a couple of weeks when I found they were going to start closing down the base and I was slated to return to Canada on the Princher, a Canadian aircraft carrier. I avoided that by believing Joan was pregnant which proved to be false. I was moved to the signal office where I was in charge, and Joan and I moved into the Boag’s where we had a large living room with a hole in the wall for a bed, a fireplace and a piano.

When V-J day arrived in August, the entire ship’s company was treated to a boat cruise on the Kyles of Bute. We also continued to receive bus trips to various places including Stirling Castle and Bamodbeen, Loch Lamond and Dumbarton Castle where we climbed the steps to the top. One weekend Joan and I spent in Edinburgh where we ran into Bob Fuller from Ravenswood in Edinburgh Castle. We also walked the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace and St. Gile’s Church where John Knox preached.

Every three months I would get a week’s leave and on these occasions we went back to Liverpool. We didn’t stay there however and went to York on one occasion and walked the walls there, and to Nottingham where we ran into a Canadian from Exeter, Ont. in the Trip to Jerusalem Inn. We also went to Chester and walked the walls there as well.

The personnel at Niobe became gradually depleted as they returned to Canada, eventually closing the signals office, when I was placed on duty on the telephone switchboard for the last six weeks or so I was there. Niobe was eventually closed and Joan and I packed up and went to Liverpool where I awaited my sailing orders for Canada.

While we were still in Greenoch, we often went into Glasgow for the evening as there was either a bus or a train about every half hour. On one of these trips, we stood up for the wedding of one of our navy friends at the Registrar’s Office there.

Part Six – The Return to Canada After the End of the War

We were at Joan’s home for about three weeks when I got my orders to report to London for repatriation to Canada. We were on a brief holiday in Coernasoon when it arrived so I had not much time or money either.

When I arrived I found that we had four or five days to kill.

I got a bed at the Canadian Legion hostel which cost a shilling a night and spent a lot of the time wandering around London. I managed to see a performance of “The Barber of Seville” in the fourth balcony at Sadlers Wells for a shilling and also visited several famous pubs including Dirty Dicks, the Bull and Bash and one that used to be frequented by Charles Dickens.

Eventually we were notified of our sailing orders. We got a train from Victoria station for Southampton where we boarded the Ile de France for Halifax. There were 90 naval ratings being repatriated among several thousand soldiers, and it took about a week to cross the Atlantic. On arrival we reported to HMCS Stadacona and immediately went on a 30-day leave, my first in Canada for 2 years.

When I got back to Halifax I was sent to the Naval Air Station in Dartsmouth and several of us communication ratings (I was now a confirmed Leading Signalman) were stationed at a radar base for naval aircraft out in the bush. Our duties were to track and communicate with the planes when they were on exercises. Many days it was foggy or raining and there were no flights so it was a pretty easy job. We ate and slept out there preparing our own meals so there was not a lot of variety. I wrote to Joan nearly every day and she wrote as well.

While I was waiting for her I arranged to meet Reinette who was stationed with the Wrens in Halifax and that evening made a long distance phone call back to Forest to talk to Ruth who was home after spending a couple of summers during the war as a farmerette.

It was not long before I received word that Joan had received her sailing orders, substituting for a war bride who had to cancel. She was to sail on the Queen Mary to arrive in Halifax the first week in August. The naval public relations office made arrangements for me to meet the ship and get her off before general debarkation. They supplied us with a hotel room for the night and train tickets for another 30-day leave to take her back to Forest.

On our way we stopped in Toronto to attend the wedding of Frank and Gertrude Edwards who was stationed with me at the RCN Air Station. We went on to Forest where we spent the time getting acquainted. On my return to Halifax Joan remained with my parents until I was able to find a place to live in Dartmouth.

I found a room on the main street about halfway between downtown Dartmouth and the naval air station. It had a bed in it and we managed to find some orange crates, which we used for furniture. There was only one kitchen which we had to share with the lady of the house. After a few weeks Gert and Frank came and took a room upstairs. We shared our meals and they would sometimes come down and play cards while we all sat on the bed. One day I was exercising on the bed and I stepped and put my foot through the window. We were terrified to tell the landlady, but even worse it was cold outside and a broken window didn’t help.

As soon as we could we found another place. This one had two rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen. The bedroom was only slightly larger than the bed and this made it awkward when it rained as there was a small leak in the roof. The toilet was outside and one windy night the roof blew off open to the weather. It was on Marion Heights, and it was half of a flimsily built shack on top of a hill, and it enabled us to hear everything that went on in the other half and I presume vice versa. We got our water from a well. The only advantages were we had our own kitchen and I could walk to work through a hole in the fence of the air base. By this time I was put in charge of the signal office at the base. My duties were to compile and distribute all the messages each morning and take them personally to the commanding officer who would make replies or not as he saw fit. He generally went home before noon and therefore there was no need for me to remain. It was pretty easy. Even the signalling was done by teletype which sent and received encoded messages which were decoded by placing the appropriate insert in it each day.

In early spring we decided to buy a car, used one of which were starting to become available the first time since the war started. They were generally gone by ten o’clock of the morning the paper came out. Eventually we bought a 1932 Chrysler for about $500 which I had in the bank in Forest and which my parents sent to me. It wasn’t much but at last we were mobile. We visited the Gunns whom we had known in Scotland, and the Laytons; he was a yeoman of signals and I had gone to school with him back in Forest and had joined the navy a few years before the war broke out.

We also took a trip one Sunday to Peggy’s Cove which was well known from calendars, etc. At that time the roads were not paved and on our way home we got stuck in the mud along with several others. We were eventually rescued. Occasionally we took the ferry over to Halifax but would often drive around Bedford Basin. One time I visited the Orkney which was anchored in Bedford Basin waiting to be sold or scrapped.

The car was no great shakes; it couldn’t even make it up the hill at Marion Heights. I had to leave it at the bottom, but it was nice to drive my own first car and the first time I had driven since the first year of the war, when one time I rented a car in Vancouver and I took Barb up to Capilano Canyon. In those days it was not a tourist trap like it is now and we were the only ones on the swing bridge.

My time in the navy expired on May 6^th after seven years, and we decided to drive back to Forest carrying all our worldly possessions in the back seat. It was a very interesting and eventful trip. The first hitch came at the American border at Calais, Maine. The customs man determined to make us remove every thing in the back until he was satisfied, and then made us put it all back ourselves.

One night we spent in a cabin in the Maine woods with no inside facilities. They didn’t have motels in those days. In Boston we got lost and had to make a right turn where we didn’t want to since we were in the wrong lane. Out of Boston we joined the Merritt Parkway, one of the first controlled access highways built by Roosevelt during the depression. We eventually arrived in New York on the Hudson Parkway and found a bed and breakfast in the Bronx not far from Fordham University.

In New York we did all the tourist things. We went to the Automat; we had a dinner at the Waldorf Astoria. We went to the top of the Empire State Building and we saw a show at Radio City Music Hall. We also went to see a hit musical “Oklahoma” at the St. James Theatre on 42^nd Street. It was in its fifth year and another new musical was playing across the street, “Annie Get Your Gun” which was sold out for the next four months. We didn’t drive in New York; we took the subway.

Driving was an education in itself since we had to add oil every time we stopped for gas, and one window was broken. When we left New York we headed for Niagara Falls where we stayed with the Snowdons who were cousins of my mother, and whom I had met before. We stayed a couple of days and one night there was a disturbance. Fred Snowdon got up and discovered someone had stolen our car. However it didn’t get far as it ran out of gas before it got far and the thieves were apprehended.

We eventually arrived home but the car was on its last legs. Later that month we went to Ingersoll for the baptism of Reinette & Pete’s first child, Ruth Ann. Unfortunately, the car threw a piston rod and we had to dispose of it there for $100 which wasn’t bad since we only paid $500 for it in the first place and it got us and our things home and gave us an interesting trip in the bargain.

Part Seven – Settling Down in Forest

I went to work in the Free Press for $25 a week and we rented our first house, a bungalow on King Street belonging to a Mrs. Kemp. We spent the first winter there. In the meantime we had started a family since Paul had been born in July. It was while we were living there that we had our first Hallowe’en in Canada. Ron and Laura Taylor came over and Ron and I dressed up and went out about ten or eleven o’clock while the girls looked after the two babies. Joan had met Laura in England before coming over and they both came on the Queen Mary. They occasionally came over and we’d play poker for pennies.

By spring we were finding the cottage too small for a grocery bag and we rented the downstairs apartment at Aunt Nora’s on Albert Street. We stayed there nearly two years and for part of the time the upstairs was occupied by Ken Simpson and his wife; he had gone to school with Ruth and they also had a young baby. The Boones were there when we first moved in but they weren’t there long.

For the next ten or twelve years a lot of things happened but I have no recollection of either sequence or duration. One of my first memories was Dad hiring Nifty Shepherd to drive us to Amherstburg where Joan met Aunt Mina and her son, Charlie Smith. I can’t remember if we met anyone else that trip.

I met Harry Keene on one of my trips to London while we were living at Aunt Nora’s place; I remember because he lent me some operatic recordings and I played them there. It must have been during this period that I went to Cleveland twice to see the Metropolitan Opera. Shortly after this I started playing in the London Symphony. I played fourth horn and had to buy one; I did this for two years and we practiced at Beale Collegiate.

We had a chance to buy a cottage on McHenry Street and dad loaned us the down payment, the house costing about $3,000. The property had a small market garden on it containing a couple of rows, full length of the lot, of raspberry canes and two or three rows of strawberries. We grew enough that we were able to supply Boyd’s grocery store during the season. We also grew tomatoes, green beans and carrots and there were three cherry trees. One year we grew potatoes, successfully, but we could have bought them cheaper. Another time we grew corn and cantelope. Geoff was born while we were there and it began to get too small. We considered building an addition but it never happened.

While on McHenry Street, Joan’s girlfriend, Joan Robinson, visited us and we met her in Montreal. Bernie Hopper took a shine to her and after her visit, he drove her back to Montreal, accompanied by Joan. Bernie met her because he and I used to play golf nearly every Sunday. In fact one year we became members of Oakwood at Grand Bend. We also played other courses in the area including Sarnia, Bright’s Grove, Petrolia and Strathroy as well as Forest and Indian Hills when it opened.

Every couple of years we tried to take a holiday for a week or so and we would borrow Mom’s car. The first trip was to Quebec City and the eastern townships. We visited Windsor and Thetford Mines and also Mr. & Mrs. Bob Wales in St. Jean. She was the former Jeanne Gervais from St. Hyacinth. Another time we took the ferry from Tobermory to Manitoulin Island and by the time we got to Little Current, the generator was shot. We were stuck there for the weekend since the part could not be replaced until the garage could get a new one from Sudbury. We also went one weekend to Montreal with Ruth when we went to St. Joseph’s Abatory.

Another time we rented a cottage near Huntsville, which we discovered later was the same Colonial Bay Resort that we have visited twice since. We got there because my parents had holidayed in that area previously. While there I played golf at a couple of courses including Windemere. The cottage had electricity but no inside facilities and one night I went out to the toilet and surprised a skunk. We both retreated in a hurry. The cottage also had a rowboat and we went rowing on the lake a couple of times.

We also had the opportunity to go on a couple of conventions with the Ont. Weekly Newspapers Association. One was to Wigwassen over on an island in Lake Rosseau. I played golf at Windune once on that trip while Joan went with the ladies to Port Carling.

Another one was on the Ontario Northern Railway. We boarded at Toronto and travelled north. The newspaper people had the whole train and we slept on it. We made several stops including one at New Liskeard we toured a match factory, at Temogami where we had a boat ride and Timmins for a gold mine.

We also belonged to the South Western Ontario Association and we met every year. I can remember meetings at Wallaceburg, Ridgetown, Tillsonburg, and others and one year I was elected Chairman. It wasn’t too hard a job as the secretary did all the work. We also attended a few exhibitions in the Automotive Building at the Toronto Exhibition Grounds and at one of them we purchased a Fairchild engraver and were able to run pictures in the paper for the first time (this must have been in the 1960’s).

While at McHenry Street we had a flood one time and had a couple of feet of water in the basement. The most damage done was losing our wedding pictures and many of our souvenirs from Britain.

Once dad took the car and had me drive him and Joan to Detroit to see a ball game. It was the New York Yankees when Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra were playing. During this time I was official scorer for the Forest Baseball Team and I was secretary of the hockey team which meant I attended most of their games. I was also Treasurer of the Forest branch of the Canadian Legion, while Joan belonged to the Women’s Auxiliary.

Part Eight – Introduction to the Baha’i Faith and Development of the Community

In 1951 we met Aldie Robarts who worked in the local Bank of Commerce. He was single and interested in similar things to us, history to music and playing golf, and used to spend a lot of time at our place. It was through him we first heard of the Baha’i Faith. We did not think a lot about it at the time, but both of us had been estranged from our respective churches for some time. In 1952 he left Forest and went back to Toronto. That fall his parents invited us to spend Thanksgiving weekend with them in Toronto. They had arranged for us to attend a performance of the New York City Ballet who were doing Fancy Free by Leonard Bernstein.

The next day, while Aldie’s brother took Joan on a tour of Casa Loma, Aldie’s father John, who I learned later was Chairman of the NSA of Canada and a top man with London Life, talked to me about the Faith, and loaned us some books to take home with us. That night Aldie took us to a jazz night club.

While there we met two of the Toronto youth, Elizabeth Manser who became Mrs. Mike Rochester and Doug Martin.

Earlier that year we left the little house on McHenry and bought a house on McNabb at auction. We paid $4,500 for it and used the proceeds of the sale of the other for a down payment. It needed a lot of work and over the next couple of years we remodelled the interior including a new kitchen and small bathroom under the stairs, and put in a new furnace.

Over the winter of 1952-3, we went into London several times to hear a series of talks by Ruth Moffatt on the Book of Revelation, and it was here we met some of the London Baha’is, such as Bob Smith and Ross Woodman, who at that time was Secretary of the NSA. We also met the Hoyles at this time as they were studying the Faith as well.

In April we went down to London to attend the formation of the first Local Assembly in that city, John Robarts presiding. We had all become Baha’is by this time, including Miller McPherson. Dorothy Boyers (she had not married Bob at this point) was a member of the Jubilee Committee arranging the 100^th anniversary of the declaration of Baha’u’llah and she told us of the dedication of the Wilmette Temple. We decided to attend in May and the three of us went along with Miller and Ross Woodman and stayed at the YMCA downtown Chicago.

There were seven Hands of the Cause there including Ruhiyyih Khanum who delivered the dedication address from Shoghi Effendi. Also there were Zikrullah Khadem, Mr. Furutan, and Horace Holley. We also spent an evening with Nellie French, one of those present who knew Abdul-Baha.

That summer we were remodelling our kitchen when we had a visit from Ruth Moffatt. She slept in the den while Wilfred Shawhenee, an Indian from Kettle Point was installing a pass-through in place of a door in that room. While Ruth was in the washroom in the morning, Wilfred dashed in and removed the door – surprise! Also that summer we went to London to hear a talk by Mr. Furutan. One of the amazing things I remember is that he remembered who I was when I ran into him at the Guardian’s grave in London twenty-five years later.

By this time Aldie was working in St. Catharines and he had us down for a weekend where we met the St. Catharines Baha’is and went with him to Niagara Falls to see “Annie Get Your Gun” at the summer theatre.

Joan decided she would like to visit her parents the next year; it had been eight years. She would take Paul who was seven with her. Geoff would be four and Larry two and we would need someone to look after them.

As it happens, that spring our linotype operator was killed in a car accident. The job was offered to Jack Hoyle who was anxious to leave his London job. He didn’t know anything about it but learned quickly. He and Kathy moved into our house when Joan and Paul left for England, with me driving them to Montreal, where she sailed on the Empress of Scotland.

Joan was pregnant at the time and found out when she got there that she would not be allowed to sail until the baby was born. Our daughter Victoria was born in a hospital in Southport on Sept. 21 and they returned to Canada in November. I drove to Montreal to meet the ship and bring them home. Joan came back as a Canadian but Vicki was admitted as a landed immigrant and thus has dual citizenship.

During the fifties, Forest became a Baha’i Assembly. In addition to ourselves, Miller, and the Hoyles, we enrolled Charlie and Norma Willey, Duyck and Tredi Lewis and Don Thiers. Then Tony and Rita Marsolais moved here from the Ottawa area. We had many visitors during this period including Mr. & Mrs. Khadem (Hand of the Cause), John Robarts, Mrs. Meheringi Munsiff & daughter Jhodi, who were East Indian origin, as well as Baha’is from around Ontario like Charlie and Florence Grindley, Mike & Liz Rochester, Doug & Betty Martin, Fred Graham and others.

I gave my first public talk at the Brock Hotel in Niagara Falls. There were about twenty present, all Baha’is from Toronto and Hamilton. Prior to this I was asked to cover the summer school which was held at Geneva Park on Lake Couchiching for the Canadian Baha’i News. There I met Marjorie McCormich and Stanwood Cobb and was on a committee to send a cable to the Guardian with Ola Rawlowska who later pioneered to Zaire. It was also my first contact with Jim Willoughby and Alan Raynor.

A couple of winter I led discussion groups at our home. We did Northrup’s “Meeting of East & West”, Toynbee’s “Study of History” and a history of Asia that I compiled. Among those attending were a couple of high school teachers.

We had always been fortunate living so close to the resorts on Lake Huron. Shortly after Joan arrived in Forest we won a week at one of Jamieson’s cottages at Ipperwash. It was September so there were not a lot of people around. In the 50’s my parents bought a cottage at Cedar Point and they allowed their kids to use it for short holidays during the summer. At the same time, Pat & Jack Boyd had a cottage at Ipperwash and they allowed us to use it from time to time right up to the 1970’s. On a couple of occasions we camped at Camp Ipperwash, once in a tent and again in a trailer. I would drive in to work every day and came out at night.

One year around 1960, the Baha’is were unable to acquire a site for a summer school and decided to hold three mini schools that year. One was at Forest and Boyds allowed us the cottage for the venue.

The teachers came from the Summer School Committee and included Nancy Campbell from Hamilton and Marion Hughes from Detroit. About 40 turned up and while some stayed at the lake, others stayed in Forest. The Forest Baha’is supplied the catering and it was a busy time. Another time we held our own summer school; it was on a smaller scale and we had Charles Grindley as one of the teachers.

In those days I did some travel teaching around the area. I spoke in Kitchener several times and also London and Colbourne Twp. Once we went to Royal Oak, Michigan for a fireside. We also held firesides on a regular basis in Sarnia. Joan gave the fireside at Jim Oliver’s house and we also had public meetings in the Public Library. We also established the first International Picnic at Canatara Park, at first for ourselves and the Baha’is of Port Huron, but in succeeding years it grew until it was attended by over a hundred.

While teaching in Sarnia we gained a contact, actually through Charles Willey, in the person of Mary Allen. Much to our surprise a week or so later she landed on our doorstep and moved in with us. She became a Baha’i and eventually got a place of her own. It was when she moved to Detroit that we spoke at Royal Oak. We would sometimes drive to the summer school at Louhelen near Davison, Mich. We got to know the Egglestons quite well; they had donated the property to the Faith for a summer school and it has become quite well known now.

Sometimes we attended concerts by the Detroit Symphony at the State Fair Grounds in Detroit. I knew a couple of the players whom I had played with in the International Symphony.

During the fifties I took a course by correspondence in electronics from DeVry Institute. I didn’t do much with it, but I built a radio, and a voltmeter as well as a circuit tester. I also started collecting stamps while Jack Hoyle stayed with us – I collected China, Greece, Turkey and Iran and corresponded with collectors in Iran, Turkey, Brazil, and Indonesia. The girl in Indonesia sent me a beautiful carved statuette of Kilki, the 10^th avatar of Vishnu, in exchange for a couple of stamp albums, which we still have.

While living at McNabb Street we bought our first television set. It was at an auction sale and cost $25. The antenna I think cost more than the set but Norma Willey would come over when I was out and watch the movies with Joan. They eventually became Baha’is. It was through the Willeys that we met George and Erica Lazi who were Hungarian refugees from the 1956 revolution and who came to work for Charlie. Erica and Joan got along quite well and spent time at each others place. They lived above one of the stores on King Street.

Also while we were at McNabb Street, a friend of Joan’s mother, Amy Reynolds, whom she met in England, arrived and stayed with us for a while. She was the first lady auctioneer in England and also taught elocution lessons for awhile. While with us she confused the Anglican minister by attending both his church and the Catholic church on the same day. Before returning to England she went to London and got a job as housekeeper for a Jewish shopkeeper.

Part Nine – Vacations of the Early 60’s to Western Canada and U.S.

In the early 60’s we decided to take one of the kids on a holiday with us. The first trip was in 1961 and we took Paul with us to Winnipeg. We went by way of Chicago and visited the Baha’i House of Worship in Wilmette. We had been to the Temple on a couple of previous occasions, once with Pat Boyd, who drove and got a speeding ticket somewhere in Michigan and the other time we took Evelyn McPherson with us. These were weekend trips.

We often camped on these trips. Our first stop was in Wisconsin and then in Bemidji, Minn. There we visited the Paul Bunyan museum together with his blue ox Babe. We camped in a nearby park. In Winnipeg we stayed in a motel on the outskirts of the city. This was the first time I had been in Winnipeg since I stopped over a few days early in the war with Bob Wales and we rode the roller coaster in Assiniboine Park. Later I was to go there as a delegate to the National Convention.

While in Winnipeg we took Paul to see the railway yards which are the largest in Canada and which fascinated him. We also had a tour of the Manitoba Parliament Bldgs. with Hart Bowsfield, a Baha’i we had met at an earlier National Convention in Toronto. We attended many Conventions when they were in Toronto; one time we took Don Thiers and another time we took George and Erica Lazi who of course were not Baha’is but we spent some time with them.

On our way back from Winnipeg we came on the Canadian side. Some of our memories were the night we spent in a hotel in Jackfish, about 4 miles off the Trans Canada down a one lane winding road. The hotel was an old style one where all the guests ate around the main table. In the evening we saw some moose swimming in the lake out to an island. Jackfish is a point on the Canadian Pacific Railway where the train makes a big U-turn around the bay and if you were in the middle of the train you could see both ends of the train out the window.

Also we had to stop in Wawa to visit a doctor when Joan received several bad black fly bites. Her face became quite swollen. The next night we camped in Fairbank Prov. Park, about 14 miles off the main highway. We didn’t think we’d ever get there. From there we went to Woodview near Lakefield, Ont. where I was to give a course at the Summer School. We were there for a week and one of the highlights was a series of evening talks on the Letters to the Kings by Firuz Khazemzadeh, Chairman of the U.S. National Assembly.

Our next trip, 1962, we took a shorter trip, just the two of us. We crossed on the ferry to Manitoulin and went to Wawa. From there we went across Northern Ontario through Chaplesu & Foleget to Timmins. I remember stopping at Ivanhoe Lake for lunch. From Timmins we went north to Cochrane and camped overnight in Greenwater Provincial Park. On the way back we turned east and went to Kirkland Lake and Lunder Lake and into Quebec through Rougn-Noranda to Val d’Or. We came south through LaVerendrye Park and through the Gatineau Hills to Ottawa.

Another year, 1963, we went out west. We crossed the Mackinack Bridge and stopped in Escanaba. We turned north at Duluth and crossed into Canada at International Falls and travelled up through Lake of the Woods to Kenora. We bypassed Winnipeg and stopped in Brandon. The next day we reached Regina where we spent a few days with Angus and Bobbie Cowan. Angus was an NSA member and he took us out to the Poorman Reserve in Saskatchewan. It was a poor reserve and I met and spoke to a group of the Indian Baha’is. They were very hospitable with what they had. When we left we stopped at a small prairie town near Swift Current and the following night at Fort McLead near Lethbridge. We spent the next day at the Peigan Reserve at Brocket. These are Blackfoot Indians and we had met Chief Samson Knowlton earlier when he came to Kettle Point. About 20 of the Baha’is came to Samson’s house where we had a fireside. He also took us out to see an isolated Baha’i but we were unable to cross the Oldman River after a lengthy walk.

The next day we set off for the American border through Pincher Creek. We passed Chief Mountain, our first glimpse of the Rockies. We stayed overnight in Babb, Montana and the next day drove through Glacier National Park over the Highway to the Sun. Although it was August there was still some snow along the road. We drove down the other side and through the Flathead Indian Reserve to Butte where we spent the night. That night we attended a Feast with the local Baha’i community.

The next day we drove south to Virginia City, and the Hebgen Lake earthquake area where a campground was destroyed, and into Yellowstone Park. In the park, we visited the hot spring area and the Old Faithful geyser, and saw some bears alongside the road. We stayed that night in Cody, Wyoming, after stopping at the Buffalo Bill dam. From there we travelled through the switchback road in the Shell Canyon in the Bighorn Mountains to the site of Gen. George Custer’s defeat at the Little Bighorn River.

Our next stop was at Deadwood, South Dakota where we went to the bar where Wild Bill Hickok was shot and the cemetery where he and Calamity Jane are supposed to be buried in Boot Hill. Then we went up to Mount Rushmore to see the big figures carved in the rock. From there we went through the Badlands National Monument where the temperature was steaming, but the scenery spectacular.

We crossed the Missouri at Mitchell, S.D., the corn capital of the United States. They have a corn palace built of many different kinds of corn. We stopped at Sioux City, Iowa for the night and called the local Baha’is but they didn’t seem to want to see us. We continued east through Illinois to Lafayette, Indiana. We visited the site of the Battle of Tippecanoe and visited the lone Baha’i on the campus of Purdue University. From there we returned home.

Part Ten – Vacations of the Mid 60’s to northeastern U.S.

The following year, 1964, was the year that Paul’s Key Club held an international convention in New York so we drove him and a friend there. We stopped to visit Baha’is in Hamburg, N.Y. but didn’t stay. We went through the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania on route and arrived in New York over the George Washington Bridge. We dropped Paul and his friend off and we stayed with a young couple in Westbury, Long Island whom we had met at Durst’s early that year. While there Joan & I visited the United Nations Building and also the World’s Fair at Flushing Meadows were LaGuardia airport in now. After the convention we picked the boys up at Grand Central Station and returned home via the Holland Tunnel. Driving in Manhattan was a traffic nightmare and we were glad to get away.

The next year, 1965, we went on a trip with Geoff. We stopped off on the way and visited Larry in Cobourg (we had visited Larry more than once while he was in the juvenile detention center and took him out on trips into town or out to Shelter Valley near Brighton). We camped overnight in Presqu’isle Provincial Park and the next day crossed the Ivy Lea Bridge, stopping at the visitor center in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. We crossed New York State through Lake Placid to Fort Ticonderoga, which we toured. We crossed Lake Champlain into Vermont and went south to the American Revolution battle site at Bennington. From there we crossed New Hampshire and up the coast to Kittery in Maine. We went to Greenacre Baha’i School; it was before the summer season began and we stayed there and in return Joan and I painted one of the bathrooms and Geoff painted the library. We visited the room where Abdu’l-Baha stayed back in 1912 when he was in America.

Leaving there we went south into Massachusetts, but we didn’t go into Boston, but headed west through Lexington and Concord. I remember driving down the road between the two towns, with Geoff’s head out the window shouting “the British are coming!” In Concord we saw the bridge where the Colonists defeated the British army and the Minuteman statue. Concord is also the home of Emerson, the American essayist.

We came into New York state through some beautiful country and visited the battlefield at Saratoga where Benedict Arnold lost his leg and the British army coming down from Montreal was defeated. Then we went to Fort George at the foot of Lake Champlain which has been restored. Then we visited Cooperstown and toured the Baseball Hall of Fame and where James Fennimore Cooper, after whose father the town was named, lived and wrote his famous novels. On our way home we passed the Howe Caverns and decided to stop and make a tour of the caves. From there we drove north to Geneva on Seneca Lake. From there we crossed into Canada at Niagara Falls and returned home.

Next year we took Larry on a trip south. We first stopped at Perryville in Ohio, the most northerly point that the Confederates invaded the north. It was here that Gen. Bragg was defeated by Gen. Buell. We crossed the Ohio River at Cincinatti and spent a couple of days in Kentucky. We toured some of the horse farms around Lexington and saw the grave and statue of Man of War, who won the Kentucky Derby several times. We visited Frankfurt and saw the graves of Daniel Boone and his wife.

Then we visited Boonesboro, a restored pioneer village and then the Cumberland Map where Boone crossed the Adirondacks into Kentucky. We could see four states from the lookout at the top of the pass. We then entered Tennessee and stopped at the Norris Dam, one of the first big projects of the Tennessee Valley Authority. From there to Oak Ridge of the Atomic Energy Commission, where the atomic bomb was first developed and Larry received a radioactive dime, and had his hair stand up on end.

We stopped just outside Chattanooga and the next day we visited a model display of the Chattanooga battle sites, which was quite realistic. We went up to the top of Lookout Mountain, site of the “Battle in the Clouds” and while up there toured the peak including Lovers Leap, which overlooks the city and the state of Georgia. We then made a quick tour of the battle site at Chickamauga, before finding a motel.

The next day we followed the railway down through Dalton and Rexica where the great railway chase took place. We went to the site of the battle of Kemesou Mountain just outside Atlanta which we bypassed and went to Stone Mountain where a statue of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson was being carved. They had a miniature railway which traveled around the mountain, a distance of about a mile, and it reenacted the locomotive chase with rebel soldiers attempting to board the train and some cars on side lines on fire.

We headed from there back to the Smokey Mountains and followed the Blue Ridge Parkway until we got into Virginia. We first went to Monticello at Charlottesville, the home of Thomas Jefferson, the picture of which is on the American nickel.. Then we went to Appomattox Court House where the final surrender of the Civil War took place between Lee and Grant. Then on to Richmond.

We got a motel just south of Richmond where we stayed a couple of days. We toured the sites of the seven battles around Richmond from Mechanicsville to Frasers Farm. All of this area is set aside as a National Battlefield Site. We toured the next day the battlefields around Petersburg, a siege that lasted for months.

While in the Richmond area we visited the James Peninsula where we went to Yorkstown where the American Revolution ended and Williamsburg, a restored colonial town, as well as Jamestown, a recreation of the original English settlement.

We then went north following the Virginia battles in reverse chronological order through Spottsylvania Court House and the Wilderness to Chancellorsville where Stonewall Jackson was killed. Then we went to Fredericksburg, a city largely dominated by civil war sites and where the Chamber of Commerce gave us a complimentary parking pass for the day.

From Fredericksburg we went north to Manassas where the two battles of Bull Run were fought. We stayed at Centreville for two nights and one day we went into Washington where we visited the Lincoln Memorial, the White House and the Capital. We also crossed the river to Arlington Cemetery where we saw President Kennedy’s grave and the Iwo Jima Memorial.

From there we went to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia where John Brown staged his famous raid on the arsenal there, one of the events leading up to the Civil War.. Then on to Antietam, the bloodiest battlefield of the war. Then up into Pennsylvania to Gettysburg where we followed the course of the three-day battle, and where Lincoln delivered his famous address.

On our way home we visited the grave of General Braddock, the English general who was ambushed by the French and Indians on his way to Fort Pitt. Then Fort Necessity, a British fort in the area of Fort Pitt which was where Washington was stationed when he was still a lieutenant. Our last stop was at Sandusky, Ohio, where we were going to go to Put-in-Bay, after which the naval battle of Lake Erie was named after the War of 1812, but we didn’t go when we learned what it would cost.

Part Eleven – Canada’s Centennial Year to the End of the Decade

1967 was a busy year. In the early part of the year there was a reunion of naval communications people who had attended the school at Ste. Hyacinthe during the war. I went along with Joan and stayed at a bed and breakfast in the town. During the ceremony I carried one of the flags but I didn’t run into anybody I knew. They took us on a tour of where the old barracks was or what was left. It is now part of a new development in the town whereas during the war it was outside the town and we had to walk in when we had leave.

Ste. Hyacinthe was only 25 miles from Montreal so we took advantage of the holiday to visit Expo, which had not been open very long. We parked in a large lot on the outskirts and took the new subway into the grounds.

In late August there was a Canadian Weekly Newspaper Convention being held in Ottawa so we packed up the wagon with Paul, Tim and Linda and went off to the nation’s capital and stayed at the Chateau Laurier Hotel. While there we had a tour of the Parliament Buildings where the two youngest had their picture taken with a Mountie, a luncheon at the Ontario Experimental Farm on the edge of the city, a sound and light show based on the Parliament buildings and a tour of the Royal Canadian Mint.

One evening we were hosted at a dinner by the Government of Canada, attended by Prime Minister Lester Pearson. Tim had a chance to shake hands with him. One afternoon we had tea at the Japanese Embassy. Another evening we were all entertained in a different way. I had dinner at the Embassy of the United Arab Republic where I learned a lot about the new Aswan Dam. Paul went to the South African Embassy where he got into an argument, Joan was entertained at Government House by Mme. Vanier, wife of the Governor General and the two youngest were given a private performance of the musical ride of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Following the Ottawa portion of the Convention, we all went to Montreal. We did not stay at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, part of which had been set aside for the press, but went back to St. Hyacinthe to the same B & B we were in earlier in the year. We visited Expo several times including a champagne reception given by the City of Montreal and Mayor Drapeau. We had press passes so we did not have to line up at the various pavilions but were able to go directly to the head of the queue, so we were able to see a lot more of the fair than we would have otherwise.

When we returned home, Paul did not come with us. He decided to strike out on his own. He headed west and the first we heard from him was from Carman, Manitoba.

Around 1961 we had bought a home on Argyle Street in Forest which included a barn and about 3 acres of land. Most of the land was rented as pasturage but the first couple of years we decided to grow cucumbers commercially. They were pretty easy to grow but involved a lot of work gathering them for the pickle factory, and after a couple of years we abandoned it.

Between 1967 and 1970 we hosted several weekend Baha’i seminars in our back yard which was quite large. Elizabeth Rochester came and hosted one, and Fred Graham another one. When there were a large number of Baha’i youth enrolled at Paris we hosted a youth weekend and large numbers came. We slept 18 of them in our house and others stayed at Marsolais’ who lived on the street behind us.

We also went to Paris for events and one time we dropped the kids off and went to the African Lion Safari near there.

When traveling groups came through, we often went with them. One group called themselves Five Young Baha’is and we went with them once to Glencoe. Some fifteen years later, we ran into one of them in Conway in North Wales.

The next group to come around was Jalal, a rock group which included Jack Lenz. They played several places in the area including Parkhill and Exeter as well as Forest. They would play a concert and dance and afterwards would hold an informal fireside for anyone who wished to stay.

We made a number of contacts through these concerts and a few declarations. Young people in Exeter and Bayfield and in St. Marys, where we went every week through one summer, we had ten declarations. I have no idea what happened to these kids but there is an Assembly in St. Marys now. Some of these young people came to Forest a few times and some attended a big Naw Ruz party we held in St. John Fisher Separate School one year.

Part Twelve – Our Introduction to Iceland, Deciding to Pioneer There and Two Weddings

In 1971 we received an unexpected gift of $1000 from Uncle Lister and we used it to book the Oceanic Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland. In the meantime we went to the National Convention in Halifax in April. We drove to the Maritimes through Maine where we picked up Mary Allen who was living in Old Town just outside Bangor. At the Convention there was a small group of young people from Iceland who entertained and talked to us. The reason they were there was because it was the responsibility of Canada to form an NSA in Iceland in April 1972. On our way home we stopped off in Fredericton at the Eldridges and left Mary there where she found her own way home. We had acquired a hitchhiker at the Convention who was with us to Oshawa where he lived. He was a strict vegetarian and would eat hardly anything on the way home. From Fredericton we traveled down the Miramichi to Bathurst and to the St. Lawrence at Mont Joli.

That summer we volunteered to spend two weeks as house parents for a group of Baha’i youth teachers in Rimouski, Quebec. Joan looked after the cottage while I drove the kids around to where they wanted to go, including the newspaper and the polytechnic where one night they put on a pageant performance in French on the unity of the prophets. We made a lot of contacts but no immediate declarations. We took our three youngest with us, but Tim decided not to stay and hitchhiked home, which we didn’t know until we arrived there.

In August we set out for Iceland. Mary Allen came to Forest and also Peter and Janet Khan and we all went to Toronto together. We had a long wait there waiting for the charter plane which was very late. Eventually we were all taken by bus to Niagara Falls, NY and finally the plane took off and we were on our way. When we arrived at Kiflavik Airport, some of the Icelandic Baha’is were there waiting and had been there for hours. One of the first people we met was Jim Willoughby who had stayed with us for about a month back in the early ‘60’s.

We were assigned to various hotels in Reykjavik and we were billeted in the Hotel Esja although many of the informal meetings were held at the Hotel Loftleidir where we walked a couple of times. Most of the formal sessions were held in the Austurbaejarbio. In the days leading up to the beginning of the Convention proper we had a couple of tours. The first one was a tour of the city which was about three hours. The second was an all day trip where we went by way of Hveragerdi, and then to Hekla. We were treated to lunch at a community center at Selfoss. After lunch we went to Gullfoss and Geysir and came home via Laugarvatn and Thingvellir.

We met some of the adult Baha’is including Liesel Becker and Monika Benediktsdottir and Esla Gudmundsdottir. We had a talk with one of the members of the NSA who had heard that we had liked what we had seen and suggested we consider pioneering to Iceland. We said we would think about it as we had to discuss it with our family. While we were there we presented each of the four assemblies with a copy of “Abdul-Baha in Canada” which we had printed at the Free Press a few years earlier.

When we got home we talked about pioneering to Iceland. They all agreed but the three oldest decided not to go. I had earlier sold the newspaper and was only doing job printing so I had to set about selling the business and the house. I also talked to our local assembly and made some arrangements for our employees, all of whom were on the Assembly.

A lot of work had to be done before we could leave. There was a lot of furniture to dispose of and some that we wished to keep. There were a couple of trunks to be packed and about 18 suitcases. I had to dispose of the archives of the Baha’i News so I drove with it to the National Office in Toronto. Then I visited the Morowety’s and went to see Norman Bailey in “Die Walhure” that night as related earlier.

We sold the house and the business, both of which took about six months. In the meantime we had two weddings to look after. In June I officiated, as chairman of our local assembly, at the wedding of Geoff to Barb Forbes. The marriage took place in our backyard on Argyle Street with several Baha’is and others present. A month later we flew to Winnipeg where we were met by Paul who drove us to Minnedosa where he was married to Debbie Bridge. The wedding took place on the bandstand in the park at Minnedosa.

Part Thirteen – Pioneering to Iceland

We set out for Iceland in August. Larry drove the six of us to London where we had to catch the 7:30 plane to Toronto. The previous day we had to go looking for Tim who had disappeared again. At Toronto we had a couple of hours before our flight to New York. At the last minute the American Customs wanted us to open our luggage, all eighteen suitcases. There wasn’t time so they agreed to send it direct to Icelandair. We arrived in New York’s Kennedy Airport around one o’clock and we found we had to wait to 8 o’clock for our flight. It was a horrible seven hours. The airport was dirty and the food expensive; there were very few places to sit and we had four kids to look after, two of them quite young. At eight we found the Icelandair flight was overbooked and they had to lay on another aircraft, and as a result we had a lot of room on the plane. On the flight we ran into a fellow who was going to Iceland to attend the Fisher-Spassky chess championship match.

We arrived at Keflavik Airport in the morning. There was no one to meet us there nor was there anyone at the Loftleidir Hotel after the bus ride from the airport. Fortunately we did have a place to live as we had made arrangements before we left to take over an apartment from a couple of pioneers who were returning to Canada. The house was in Kopavogur and we had to hire two taxis to bring us and our luggage to the address at 123 Alfholsvegur, one of the main roads in Kopavogur, about a mile or so from the town center. Kopavogur was more or less a bedroom community for Reykjavik and only about 20 minutes by bus from the capital. It stopped just outside our door.

Over the next few days, we walked down to the centre of town and contacted some of the Baha’is that we had met the year before, as well as two or three of the local community who were all young Icelanders, but who all spoke some English.

During those first six weeks or so many things happened. One night we were taken to a ski lodge outside Reykjavik where there was a youth summer school and where Dr. Ugo Giachery, Hand of the Cause, and his wife were speaking. We met Dr. Giachery a few days later at the National Office in Odinsgata, Reykjavik. During the first couple of weeks, Tim took off and we didn’t hear from him for some time, when one night we got a phone call from Husavik where he had a job in construction.

We also found there was a weekend summer school in Isafjordur in the northwest and I decided to go. When I arrived I discovered that I was going to give a course on Islam. It seemed to be well received, although there were only about twenty people in attendance. Who should turn up at this school but Tim who had hitchhiked from Husavik.

Another event was the purchase of a car. We bought a ten year old Volvo at what was a quite reasonable price. I think I had a flat tire the first time I drove into Reykjavik. I also wrote to the NSA with some suggestions for the Baha’i News. I got a letter back in about a week appointing me to the Baha’i News Committee. It was called Tidindi. I had good help from a girl in Kopavogur called Kristin who did all the translating and typing, while I arranged for the printing.

We contacted Monika who put me in touch with some of the city printers. I went to several printing shops looking for a job and eventually got a job with the government printing office called Prentsmidja Gutenberg. My job was printing on the small Heidelberg press that I was familiar with, printing giros, business cards, envelopes, letterheads, and so on, in short everything smaller than letter size. After a time I was assigned in addition to the larger rotary press, where we often printed ten giros at a time, which involved twenty numbering machines. I also got a chance to do some colour printing which was mainly the paper dust jackets for books which we printed quite a number of each year, Icelandic translations of popular English books such as Agatha Christie. My rotary machine also did all the perforating and die cutting that was required.

While at Gutenberg they installed the first continuous form printing press in the country. That winter, in February, during Thorrablot, the festival in honour of the god Thor, the plant held a dance at the Hotel Saga, the smartest hotel in the city. We were the only foreigners at the dance, and only a few of the printers knew any English at all. Joan got her evening gown from the neighbours in the flat above ours, who made all her own clothes. These were the same neighbours who gave us a vacuum cleaner when we asked to borrow one.

One of the foremen at work, Sveinir, was instrumental in getting me into the Reykjavik City Band where I played for a year.

In the meantime Carl and Linda started into school. Linda’s class had courses in English and many of the kids wanted to practice their English with her and she did not pick up the Icelandic quickly. On the other hand, Carl’s classes were in Icelandic so he learned the language much more quickly. On her part, Vicki did not want to go to high school here so she found a job in a metal furniture factory not far from where we were living. She took a lot of kidding as she was the only non-Icelander in the plant.

Joan meanwhile was picking up the skills of shopping in places where no one spoke any English. She got some assistance from Monika who took her to the Hagkaup, a sort of general department store on the edge of Reykjavik. They sold furniture and clothing as well as groceries and some of their prices were better than the local store.

We got to know the pioneers not only in Reykjavik but also in Hafnarfjordur and Keflavik as well. One worked on the fishing boats and brought fresh fish to us when he was in port. He even worked during the cod war with Britain. One couple, who lived in Hafnarfjordur, were Roger and Patty Lutley, Americans. Patty and Joan became good friends and it was Patty who taught Joan how to collect the children’s allowance which had to be collected in person and which varied from month to month.

We also became quite friendly with many of the youth who came to our place quite often and brought their friends. One was Oli Haraldsson who was in his early twenties and was an active teacher as well as being bilingual. During the late summer, a group of young people had gone on a teaching trip to western Iceland and had quite a number of declarations of young people in the towns of Borgarnes, Stykkisholmur and Hvammstangi. They formed a folk music group called Geysir. On their return from the tour they set off on the steamer Gullfoss, chaperoned by Don Van Brunt, another American pioneer, to teach in Denmark and Germany. Most were Canadian youth and they did not return to Iceland. Only Don and Gisli came back.

Oli was anxious to do follow up on the new Baha’is and I had the car. So the two of us made a number of trips to meet with these kids, most of whom knew no English. We went to Akranes first which is just across the bay from Reykjavik but takes about two hours to drive around. We went to Akranes several times. On one occasion we stayed in a hotel there in a room with no lights or lock on the door but were okay. Another time we returned to Reykjavik on the ferry which carried about six cars as well as passengers. You didn’t drive onto the ferry but were hoisted on board by a crane – a little nerve-racking the first time.

Another trip was to Borgarnes. We went to meet the kids there a couple of times and on one occasion took Vicki and Erna Steffansdottir, a Baha’i about Vicki’s age who lived in Kopavogur. Another time in Borgarnes Oli and I had to sleep on the cement floor in a school where there was a rock band playing up in the auditorium.

The other place we went was to Stykkisholmur on the Snaefellsnes peninsula. We stayed in the hotel there and met with some of the new Baha’is. We were not able to follow up this community.

After we got the car we made a lot of trips in the area. One of the first was to Thingvellir where we had been with the Conference tour. We were able to spend a little more time and we could enjoy the trip more now that we knew where we were. We also drove to Reykjanes where there is a lighthouse. What impressed us was the black lava with the steam coming out of the ground everywhere – it looked like a scene from Danti’s Inferno. We returned to Reykjavik via Grindavik on the south coast, then on to Krysavik and the hot springs. Along the coast road we ran into several hundred yards of mud where the water had crossed the road but the Volvo handled it okay. Then past Kleifarvatn, supposedly a very deep lake and back home through Hafnarfjordur. On some of these trips one or other of the kids would come with us depending on what their plans were.

The first Christmas we were there, Larry Clark, who worked at the NATO base, invited several of the pioneers to dinner at their home in Keflavik. When inquiring where he got the turkey, he just said “Don’t ask”. Turkeys were very scarce in Iceland. There was one in a shop in Hafnarfjordur which I don’t think they ever sold – they were so expensive. In fact, this is one thing very noticeable in Iceland – most things are very expensive. One of the reasons we were able to save money there was the fact we hardly ever spent money on clothes, eating out, or most imported food. There was, for example, what they called a pioneer box, a box of clothing that went the rounds among the pioneers. We would take from it what we could use and put some things in we had no longer use for and pass it on. We also bought the odd thing at the Salvation Army which the natives rarely patronized.

Early in January, Ragnar, our upstairs neighbor, came down to tell us that there was a big volcanic eruption on Vestmannaeyar, an island just off the south coast where Vicki now lives. He invited us upstairs to watch it on television, and we found they were evacuating the island. The two or three thousand inhabitants were airlifted to Reykjavik with the aid of the U.S. Navy helicopters at the NATO base. With the influx of so many, the prices of everything shot up overnight.

Later that spring we drove down the south coast to Vik and we could see the volcano still erupting across the water. When the lava eventually stopped flowing, a number of men went over to clear the ash from those houses that could be saved.

We found out early in the summer that we would have to move. We didn’t know what to do till one of the fellows at work steered us on to a relative of his who had half a house to rent in Hafnarfjordir. We took the place in Asbudatrod and stayed there a little over a year. It was there that later in the year we experienced our first earthquake. Joan was in the kitchen and I had gone to bed. She noticed the dishes rattling in the cupboards and I looked up and saw the chandelier waving back and forth and heard a loud rumbling like the sound of a subway if you are right over it. We found out later that it was centered near Grindavik and registered about 6.5 on the Richter scale. There was no structural damage as the Icelanders are accustomed to frequent earthquakes and their buildings are built accordingly.

In April there was a National Convention. Both Joan and I were elected delegates from Kopavogur. There were nineteen delegates elected from the four local assemblies which assured just about every active adult became a delegate. At the election I was elected to the NSA and shortly afterwards was elected Vice Chairman. During the following summer, the Chairman, Svana Einarsdottir, was appointed an Auxiliary Board member and I assumed the chairmanship for the remainder of the year, a post I retained until we left Iceland.

The first summer we took our first major trip. We had been invited to stay with Forbes Campbell who was pioneering in Akureyri so we set out in the Volvo – Joan, Carl, Linda, Tim and myself. The trip took us to places we had not seen before. Vicki had decided to spend her holiday with Gully so she was not with us. We made our headquarters at Forbes’ place and made several side trips. One was up the west side of Eyjafjordur to Dalvik, Olafsvik and Siglufjordur, a town that was entered through a tunnel. The road around the fjords was a dirt road with no barrier and in many places ran along the edge of a cliff – pretty scary. On the way back we stopped at one of the shelters that were built for stranded people. Three cabins contained some canned food, blankets and wood for a fire. The kids had a snowball fight – in July!

Another side trip was to Myvatn, a lake in the north and then over the desert to Dettifos, the largest waterfall in Europe. We returned home around the peninsula through Husavik where Tim showed us where he stayed when he worked there. Myothir has many strange rock formations and is a volcanic area. Just outside this area is a large sulphur mining operation.

During our four years in Iceland we had several distinguished Baha’i visitors. Among them, aside from Dr. Giachery mentioned above, we had a visit from Hand of the Cause Adelbert Muhlschlegel and his wife who came to our place for a dinner and whom I drove around the area. He loved touring and followed everywhere we went with a map. I also accompanied them to Akureyri for a visit. There was Hand of the Cause Dr. Muhajir who had pioneered in South-East Asia. And William Sears came by private plane, belonging to one of the Canadian Baha’is. I had to take him to the largest newspaper, Morgunbladid, for an interview. He was the first to visit our temple site just outside Kopavogur which was acquired the year we arrived in Iceland.

Also visiting were Betty Reed, a Counsellor from Great Britain, who came regularly, and Counsellor Amelisse Bopp from Germany who was helpful in organizing our secretariat over a period of several days. Among those from Canada who came was Evelyn Raynor whose husband Allan was on the Canadian NSA.

Part Fourteen – Conferences and Lots of Travel

As Chairman I had to visit the Faroe Islands a couple of times to try to arrange the establishment of a Hegira. There was one Local Assembly there consisting entirely of pioneers from Great Britain, Iceland, Norway and Eskil Lgundberg from Sweden who was the Knight of Baha’u’llah in the Islands. One trip was in the winter and the trip from the airport to Torshavn, which was on a different island, was pretty scary over the mountains with slippery roads and no barriers. Another trip I went with a couple of Baha’i young people and we went to Vestmana, a town on the way to the airport, where I gave a talk to a hall full of people and which was translated by Svanur Thorklsson. The youth arranged entertainment for the children of the community during the afternoon and I gained the impression they were very appreciative.

The third time was to a North Atlantic Conference which was arranged by us and was attended by Baha’is from Iceland, Britain, Norway and Denmark. We all slept in the building where the conference was held which was a school. Other times I visited I stayed with one of the British pioneer couples. At this conference Joan came with me as well as Asgeir. This was before he and Vicki were married. It was from this conference that I went on my month long teaching trip.

Each time we went to the Faroes we had to stay a week because there was only one plane a week to Iceland. On the winter trip the flight was held up one day because of weather and they put us up in a Faroese farmhouse overnight. I was the only person who understood English and did not understand either Icelandic or Faroese but it was interesting.

While living at Asbudatrod our house was just below that of Max and Mona Bossi, Baha’is who had returned from Akureyri. Max worked at Straumsvik, an aluminum plant just west of Hafnarfjordir. During the winter he would have to take the car battery into the house to keep it warm, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. Each morning we would see him pushing the car to the edge of a small hill in the road and jump into it as it got going.

Vicki continued to work at the furniture factory while the two youngest started in new schools. Linda attended the big black high school on top of the hill while Carl continued in a new elementary school.

The first Naw Ruz we were there, the celebration was held in a hall in Hafnarfjordir. Among the entertainers were Tim and Gisli who had teamed up after Gisli returned from Denmark. Gisli lived in Gardarkreppur, now Gardabaer, the township between Hafnarfjordir and Kopavogur and where the President’s home was. We drove out there one time after the road was paved on the occasion of Nixon’s visit.

Geoff and Barbara came over from Canada at this time and stayed with us. We tried to take them out to Thingvellir but couldn’t make it as the road was blocked with snow. The interior of Iceland has spring later than the coastal areas; in fact they don’t have spring, summer starts April 21^st and winter October 21^st. These are the dates that you have to change your tires on the car from winter to summer and vice versa.

One Mothers Day, second Sunday in May, we decided to drive up to Gullfoss. We went to Thingvellir and tried to take the road via Laugarvatn but it was snow-blocked. We had to backtrack and take the other route via Geysir. There was still much snow around but the roads were passable. When we arrived at Gullfoss we were the only ones there.

That autumn of 1973 there was an NSA Conference to be held in Langenhein, Germany and we were asked to send two representatives. Erla Gudmundsdottir and myself were chosen. Meanwhile Mona Bossi wrote to her sister in Hamburg and made arrangements for me to stay with her family for a few days. I flew to Hamburg via London and was met at the Lufthansa office. They were a Persian family and one was an Afnan, a descendent of one of the Bab’s uncles.

During the days I was on my own and I explored the city. It was quite easy as they have a very good subway system so I visited all the sites including the waterfront of the River Elbe, one of the busiest ports in Europe, and the Alster, the lake in the center, also the City Hall, the Rathaus, one of the few historic buildings that was spared during World War Two.

On leaving Hamburg, I flew to Stuttgart where I was met by the Slikers, American pioneers who had visited Iceland during the summer. They lived in Esslingen, an historic town not far from Stuttgart. They were caretakers at the Baha’i House there, one of the places Abdul-Baha visited in Germany. We took one trip to Ulm, the city on the border of Wuttenburg and Bavaria with the country’s tallest church spire and the birthplace of Martin Luther. We met one of the Auxiliary Board Members there who agreed to drive me to Langenhein the following day. On our way we stopped in Heidelberg where we toured the castle and drove by the printing press plant.

I was billeted in a bed and breakfast in one of the neighboring villages along with Charles McDonald and John Long from England, and we were bussed to Langenhein each day and back again. The meetings were held in the National Office of Germany which is adjacent to the House of Worship. There were representatives of all the National Assemblies in Europe together with the Counsellors and many of the Auxiliary Board Members. Erla flew into Frankfurt from Iceland via Luxemburg so we didn’t travel together.

While there we ran into Kristin and her husband Gisbret who lived in Baden but came to the center for one of the public meetings. We also had a worship service in the Temple. I remember meeting one Board member Maija Pihlainen from Finland who later moved to England with her husband for a few years although I never had a chance to see her again. The meetings were divided into three groups, one each in English, German and French. The French group was led by Counsellor Annelisse Bopp who was the only multi-linguist. Our group was led by Betty Reed.

Following the conference I took the train into Frankfurt and from there I took a plane to Copenhagen where I would transfer to Icelandair. Unfortunately my plane was held up by bad weather (this was first week of November) and I missed my connection. As a result they had to put me up until the next day, including hotel room and meals and a phone call back to Joan in Iceland. During the day I did some sight-seeing around Copenhagen, including the Tivoli Gardens which however was closed owing to the lateness of the season. In the evening I visited the Baha’i House in Hallerup, the caretakers of which I had previously met in Iceland. The next day I returned to Iceland.

The teaching trip which I undertook following the Faroes Conference was a wonderful experience. I had to pay my own traveling expenses but my accommodation was supplied by the Baha’is wherever I went. My first stop was Bergen, Norway where I stayed with the ABM for three days. I gave talks every evening but my days were free. While in Bergen I had a trip in the cable car up to the top of the mountain where one can see for miles with a good view of the city. I also was taken on a trip to Troldheugen, the home of Evard Grieg. We were in his house and saw the piano he worked on and also a workshop down a hill where he liked to meditate and there were the tombs of he and his wife in the side of the hill. Bergen has a really old section dating from the time of the Hauseatic League.

I traveled from Bergen to Oslo over the mountains by train, an eight hour journey and was met at the station. I also spent three days there and while there visited the Maritime Museum which had Thor Heyardahl’s Kon-Tiki as well as an authentic Viking ship. I also saw the City Hall and its murals of the Nazi occupation and a tribute to Sonja Henie. In the main square was the National Theatre where Ibsen’s plays were first presented. I also visited a neighboring town of As where a Baha’i couple lived.

From Oslo I flew to Stockholm where I was immediately put on a train for Karlstad where I stayed with friends. The next day I went to ……. where the Volvo main plant is situated. I returned to Stockholm where my hostess took me to one of the newspapers where I had an interview. Stockholm has a huge mall built below ground under the main squares. The city is built on islands and I had a chance to visit the old city where the Royal Palace is situated. One evening I gave a talk at Uppsala University where one of the Persian Baha’is teaches. I stayed in the suburb of Solna which is noted for their printing presses.

I took a plane from Stockholm to Helsinki. I was supposed to take a bus from there but the plane was late and the man that met me drove at great speed to catch up to the bus which had already left the capital. We eventually reached it at Lahti and away I went. We had a lunch break at Mikkeli which is largely a Gypsy town. I met no one who spoke English and Finnish is totally is unfamiliar. I eventually arrived at Savonlinna. At my first destination, a town quite close to the Russian border, I was met by my host, Helmut Grossman (who is now a Counsillor at Haifa). During the day we had an interview at the newspaper and visited the castle there. Savonlinna is well known for its music festival in the summer.

From there I got a car ride to Kuopio. The topography here is a lot like Northern Ontario with lumber and paper mills the main industry. The friends there booked a berth on the night train to Helsinki where I arrived early the next morning. The berths in the bedrooms on the train are three-tiered and I was in the top. The other two occupants did not speak English so I slept most of the night.

When I got back to Helsinki I found I was billeted with a Gypsy Baha’i who treated me to a real Finnish sauna while I was there. It was a fairly large family and I was well taken care of.

I flew from Helsinki to London on Finnair. When I arrived at Heathrow it was the first time I had to show my passport since leaving Iceland as the Scandanavian countries had a common market with free access between countries. I spoke at four centers in the U.K. The first stop was at Henley where I stayed with the Hardys. At that time Mary Hardy was on the NSA. My next stop was Kidderminster, a carpet manufacturing city in the Midlands. From there I went to Carlisle on the Scottish border where I stayed with a family outside the city on the Solway Firth. On the way I stopped off in Manchester where I spoke at the Baha’i Centre and was introduced by Will Vanden Hoonard whom I had previously met in Iceland. I stayed overnight with Joan’s mom in Stockport. My last stop was Glasgow which was the only disappointing place on the itinerary. They had mixed up the dates and there was no meeting. The next day I flew back to Iceland from Glasgow airport.

Some other trips we took while we lived in Iceland included two that Joan took to visit her parents in England. Each time she took one of the girls with her.

One trip we took was up to the head of Hvalfjordur and then over the hills to Borgarfjodur. We went up the road as far as Reykholt, a residential school which, like other residential schools, is used as a hotel in the summer. It was at Reykholt where Snorri Strulusson lived while writing down the sagas and prose Edda which are Iceland’s oldest literature. We returned via Borgarnes and Akranes.

Another time we went up to Stykkisholmur, the area where Eric the Red lived and we could see where his homestead was before he was banished and where Lief Ericsson was born. We toured the whole of the Snaefellsnes peninsula, including driving around Snaefell, the extinct volcano, which can be seen from Reykjavik on a clear day and which Jules Verne chose to begin his “Journey to the Center of the Earth”. Some of the more spectacular sights were the large bauxite columns and the weird rock formations caused when hot lava hits the ocean.

One time when Richard Hainsworth was visiting from England, we took a drive up Borgarfjirdur and the Kaldidalur road between the glaciers. This road is not open all the time so we were lucky to be able to drive it. The north end of the road is marked as a fordable river bed; it turned out to have had a small bridge built over it since the map was made. We came out at Husafell, a place where Icelanders sometimes come for camping and where there are quite a number of trees, albeit small ones.

Toward the end of our time in Iceland, we decided to take a trip to Skaftafell. This trip was impossible for cars until 1974 when a series of bridges were built over the glacial runoff rivers covering a distance of about 25 miles. We reached Vik without incident and as we approached Myrdalssandur we saw great clouds ahead of us. A car approaching us told us it was a sandstorm which could take the paint off the car if we decided to proceed. We turned around and got a hotel room in Vik for the night. The next day we set out again and after crossing the sands reached Kirkjubaejarklaustur. Then we crossed the bridges. They were single lane with passing places every kilometer or so and were built of wood. We reached Skaftafell but nothing was open there so after a time we turned around and returned to Hafnarfjordur.

One spring we took Blain and Doreen McCutcheon and Carl up to Borgarfjordur and up the valley until we came to a sign saying road closed. We didn’t know what to do since we had purchased half a salmon when we crossed Borgarfjordur on the way. We were sitting there when we saw a farmer coming down his lane whom we stopped and asked why the road through was closed. He said he didn’t know but a small Volkswagen had gone through earlier and had not come back so we decided to chance it. A little way on we found out why. Runoff streams had cut the road in several places. What we did was to stop, gather rocks and made a possible bridge over the breaks and drove very slowly and eventually got through. When we reached the Kaldidalur turn we headed south and finally arrived at Thingvellir. It was really beautiful in behind the hills.

One winter there was a Baha’i school held at one of the union holiday cottages in Borgarfjordur during the Christmas break. I was to give a course so both Joan and I went and Joan worked in the kitchen with Monika. These camps are separate cottages which are fully furnished even to having books and magazines and sleep four to six per unit. They are centrally heated and quite comfortable. Classes and most meals were held in a large central building and we had to draw our linen from a central place. This was at the time of year when there is no daylight and there was snow on the ground and was quite windy.

After the school ended I had to leave early to get back to work so one of the Baha’is who was returning by car gave me a ride. Instead of driving all the way around Hvalfjordur we took the ferry from Akranes. Pretty scary in the winter, with the snow blowing in a high wind and in the dark. The main bus took the long way around and when they stopped at Botnsskali the people could hardly get back on the bus, the wind was so strong and the road so slippery.

The last summer in Iceland, 1975, some of us decided to climb Mount Esja, across the bay from Reykjavik. We set out about 3 in the afternoon and arrived at the foot around four o’clock. We took the long way up from the back of the mountain and finally reached the summit about 9 pm. We took the short way down which only took a couple of hours while John Spencer went on ahead to go around to the other side for the car. We arrived home about one o’clock in the morning. Beside John and myself, there was Blain and Doreen, Doreen’s mother and Renata.

Part Fifteen – Adventures Exploring Iceland

After working for a year at Gutenberg I was offered a better paying job at Leturprent, down the road. It was a smaller shop and was both letterpress and offset. The typesetting was sent out. We did most of the Post Office printing, other than stamps, and a lot of chocolate bar wrappers in full colour. We could work Saturdays if we wished if there was work to be done, but it was not mandatory. It was while working there that the printers had one of their periodic strikes and we were out for three weeks.

While there Joan and I and the two youngest were invited on a weekend camping outing by the management of Gutenberg where I no longer worked. We took a safari bus to Thorsmork behind Myrdalsjokull and one of the lushest places in Iceland. Ordinary cars can’t get there because of having to cross several glacial rivers which are not bridged, if fact cannot be because they are constantly changing course, so it was a real treat.

We pitched our tents and settled down. We then went for a walk over the hills to another campsite, and it was on this walk we thought we lost Carl. He went on ahead and thought he would take a short cut which didn’t work. It was also on this trip that he got his finger caught in the bus door when it shut, and after some first aid, had to wait till we got back to Reykjavik to have it seen to properly. On our way back we stopped to examine some caves which were quite a long walk from where the bus had to park. We did a lot of walking that weekend.

On another occasion we drove down to Vik and explored all around that area going into some back roads and also down to Dyrholaey for the strange rock formations. Also went once in behind Hafnarfjordur and took a track off the main road to a lake called Djupavatn where there were a couple of cottages.

A couple of times we went into the interior behind Hafnarfjordur five or six kilometers to Helgafell, a rocky volcanic hill about 500 metres high. We tried to climb it but couldn’t find the way. The last time we made it while Carl, Vicki and Asgeir went up a different way and beat us to the top.

It was while we were living at Hjallabraut that several Americans from the base became Baha’is and often came to our place where occasionally we held a party. They were all members of a helicopter crew. There were a couple of Americans living downstairs and we had them for dinner once. Also the daughter of the Commanding Officer became a Baha’i and she eventually married Svanur Thorkelsson although they are now divorced. We also had our second earthquake while there as Joan was shopping with the lady downstairs and the lights went out in the market and startled her friend.

On one occasion, in late September 1973 while driving along the south coast, we saw a sign pointing to Solheimajokull, five kilometers away down a track to the north. We thought it a good opportunity to see a glacier close up so down we went. The road was terrible and in some places the road was under water and Carl, who had his Wellingtons, walked ahead of the car testing its depth. We finally reached the end of the road where there was a muddy turnaround. The glacier was covered with volcanic dust from Vestmannaeyjar and was not beautiful. We couldn’t help thinking that if we were stuck or the car broke down we could be there till spring – we were the only ones on the road. However, all’s well that ends well, and we got home safely.

We went to Vik several times as we were fascinated with the black sand and the rugged coastline.

After we left Iceland, we returned for a month in 1980. We stayed most of the time in Hveragerdi with Vicki and Asgeir. One day they took us for a drive up the Hvita Valley past Gullfoss to a new moving glacier from Langjokull. While there we went into Reykjavik and visited with Geoff.

He had arranged a travel teaching trip to three places. The first was to Isafjordur where I stayed with Inga Daw and met with the Assembly there which included Erna and Dagny whom I knew before. From there I went to Akureyri. This was an interesting trip, since the plane was a ten seater, five on each side of the center aisle and the pilot collected the tickets like on a bus. The plane followed the road pretty well and the pilot had a road map. The plane window by my seat was broken.

At Akureyri I stayed at the hospital where a couple of the Baha’is were nurses. I met with some of the members of the Assembly because many were unable to attend. The next day they put me on a local plane to Egilsstadir and we flew over the new eruption at Katla which I could see plainly and which I had visited by road four years earlier with the Reykjavik Symphony.

At Egilsstadir we had to take a bus the rest of the trip to Neskaupstadur which took over two hours traveling around the fjords and over the mountains and which took us through Seydisfjordur and Eskifjordur.

At Neskaupstadur I stayed two days. One night there was a disco dance with Geoff who was the disc jockey. He had gone directly there from Reykjavik. Neskaupstadur was the place on the east coast which had recently had an avalanche which wiped out several buildings including the fish processing plant.

While in Reykjavik one night we had dinner with Roger and Patty Lutley who lived in Hafnarfjordir and who had been there when we lived there.

Part Sixteen – New Beginnings and Adventures

Towards the end of 1975 I lost my job at Leturprent – there was a recession and the foreigners were out first. For the next few months we were supported by the Pioneer Committee and Vicki, who was still working, helped out. In the spring I learned about an opening at the British Publishing Trust as assistant manager. Therefore in May I was invited to the U.K. to an interview with the NSA and a chance to look over the operation of the Trust.

This went well. I had a medical and was able to stay at the National Centre in Rutland Gate and I traveled to Oakham in Leicestershire to see the office as well as the old warehouse in Ryhall and the new one in Kelton.

While in Oakham, John Long, manager of the Publishing Trust, took me on a tour of the area, including the area around Eppingham and Edith Weston, which when we finally moved was under water as the Empingham Reservoir.

Unfortunately when it was time to return to Iceland, I learned Icelandair was on strike and there were no flights available. For the next two weeks I was allowed to stay at the centre but then the NSA had to meet and they needed the space so they arranged for me to stay with Baha’i friends in Beckhaysteed just outside London.

During this time I was very short of money so I went to all the places I could see for free. I was within walking distance of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Geological Museum. I also went to the National Art Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Wallace Collection and I visited the British Museum.

Finally I was able to return to Iceland and we began to make preparations to move to England. We arranged to send our books and other valuables via air freight through Loftleidir. This did not cost anything as John Spencer worked there and was able to send it through on his allowance. The furniture that we wanted we sent by sea to Oakham via Felixstowe. In the meantime I undertook the tour of the Reykjavik Symphony to the north of Iceland.

We went to Britain in early summer to arrive in one of the hottest summers they had had for years. Linda and Carl came with us; Vicki decided to stay in Iceland as she was contemplating marriage and Tim also decided to remain and would follow us later.

In the meantime Geoff and Barb had moved to Iceland with their infant son and lived with us for a while. Barb didn’t like the winter and decided to return to Canada leaving Geoff behind who shortly found a new girlfriend. Barb and Geoff were divorced shortly after. So Geoff was also left in Iceland.

When we arrived in London we decided to spend a few days there and show the kids the city. We took a room in Earls Court and did some sightseeing including a tour on one of the double decker buses. We also took them to a play “Arsenic and Old Lace” at the Westminster Theatre.

On the last day I went to the National Office and arranged to move to Oakham. We went on the train and were met by John Long who had arranged accommodation for us on Mount Pleasant, next door to the office of the Publishing Trust which had two employees and where I was to work. We made arrangements to rent a television and we had to buy a car. I made arrangements to get an Escort station wagon.

Prior to leaving Iceland we had made arrangements through the U.K. National Assembly to attend the Baha’i International Conference in Paris in August. Therefore Vicki and Asgeir came from Iceland to Oakham and we all drove together to London. I had made arrangements to park the car with Moqbels in Harrow and took the underground down to the National Office where we were to travel in a group to Paris by bus.

We went first to Dover where we boarded the ferry to Calais. We arrived in Paris in early evening and were taken to the Hotel Spot which was our home for a week. The conference was held in the Hotel Meriden on the other side of Paris which we had to travel to by Metro. We were met in Paris by Blain and Doreen McCutcheon who had driven from Iran. He had taken a job there the previous year with the United Nations. Their motor trip from Teheran was quite an experience.

We arrived in Paris on Sunday and the Conference did not begin till Wednesday so we had two days to ourselves. We went to the Eiffel Tower naturally and went partway up, and the Troosdeu across the street. We went to the Place de la Concorde where the Bastille once stood and spent several hours in the Louvre where we saw the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Sanothrere among others. Then we walked the full length of the Tuilerie Gardens to the Arc de Triumphe.

During the Conference they laid on a boat trip on the Seine at night. We went up the river from the docks near the Eiffel Tower, around the Isle de la Cite with the Cathedral of Notre Dame. It took about an hour and a half.

The last day of the Conference Joan had her purse stolen while sitting in the lobby of the Meriden Hotel. We lost nearly everything including travelers cheques, cash (quite a bit because Joan didn’t want to leave it at the house in Oakham) and the passports except for my own which I had carried in my jacket pocket. I had to go to the nearest police station which was open that late at night which was in Montmartie to report the theft and I took a couple of the youth who could speak French. They had to issue us a temporary paper which allowed us to re-enter Britain.

We left Paris in the morning for the return journey home which went without incident as Philip Hainsworth, NSA secretary, loaned us $10 to tide us over. While at the Conference I was able to renew several acquaintances I had met in Scandinavia as well as those I had met at Langenhein earlier.

Part Seventeen – Oakham and Side Trips

We stayed in Oakham for two years. After a year my job was terminated, which resulted in my writing a letter of complaint to the Universal House. The result was that the NSA was required to move us wherever we wanted to go. Before my job ended we had moved from Mt. Pleasant to a house on Noel Ave. mainly because of Linda’s health which had suffered because of the dampness in the old house.

After returning from Paris, John Long went on a three week teaching trip to Sweden and Finland and I was left in charge. On one weekend we received an order from Lowestoph in Suffolk and we decided to deliver the books and see a bit of East Anglia and then went by way of Ely and Thetford Forest.

We did a lot of traveling around that first year. We went to Skegness, a summer resort in Lincolnshire by way of Spalding and Boston where the famous Boston Stump is the church there, and Tattersall Castle, one of the castles that is square with a single square turret at the top. We went to Grantham, where Margaret Thatcher came from and where Isaac Newton went to school and to Woolsthorpe Manor where he lived and watched the apple drop from the tree.

Among other trips was to Sherwood Forest, north of Nottingham, where the Charter Oak was where Robin Hood was supposed to have hidden and the church at Edwinstowe where he was supposedly married. And we went to Lord Byron’s home at Newstead Abbey near Mansfield. While in Nottingham we went to the castle and the old inn below that we had visited thirty years earlier when we were first married.

On some of these trips we took visitors from Iceland who turned up including Vicki and Asgeir with Gully, Baldur Bragason and his wife, and Barbara and Svana dropped in once.

Occasionally we went into Leicester to Bailey’s where we saw such artists as Acker Bilk, Dana and the Brotherhood of Man. Other places in the area were Melton Molray, famous for Porkpies, Stanford, one of the oldest towns in England dating from Danish days, and Peterborough. South of Peterborough was Stitton of cheese fame, and Fotheringham Castle where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned. We also visited battlefields at Nasely and Bosworth where the War of the Roses ended with the death of Richard III.

One of the conditions of my employment was that I would be secretary of the National Teaching Committee. As it turned out Ann Moqbel was secretary so the duties became divided and I became recording secretary and Ann remained as corresponding secretary. This meant traveling to London once a month for meetings. The first few times I drove and parked the car in Hyde Park, but then I found it was easier for me to drive to Kettering and take the train to King’s Cross where I could get an underground direct to Knightsbridge Station and then a short walk to the National Office in Rutland Gate.

One of the first jobs I had to do was to go to Bishop Stortford where George Ronald had his warehouse pick up a wagon load of new books and take them to the hall in Bromfield Road where there was to be a weekend conference. This was the first time I had driven in London with the right hand drive but I got along okay. Another time I went to Bungay in Suffolk to pick up galley proofs for a book the Publishing Trust was having printed there.

Another time I had to take a carload of books to a National Teaching Conference in Sheffield. I was beginning to get good at driving around strange cities. The first spring there I was elected a delegate to the National Convention, so the whole family went to Liverpool for this. We had a hotel room just around the corner from the Empire Theatre. We stayed on a day or two after the conference and went out to Hayton where we were married and down Greydene Lane where Joan lived. We also visited all three of Joan’s nieces and nephews who all lived in the area between Roley and St. Helens.

On one day we went to Berleigh House the home of the Marquis of Exeter. It is just outside Stanford. The Marquis conducted the tour of the house; he was a former Olympian sprinter and was for some years on the Olympic Committee. Berleigh House is famous for its horse trials and Princess Anne often competed there.

Another trip we took to Kirby Muxlow Castle just outside Leicester and then to Ashly-de-la-Zouche Castle where Carl had fun in the tunnel which ran across under the courtyard. Ashly is mentioned in Ivanhoe as the place of the big archery tournament. We went on from there to Benton-on-Trent, noted for its brewery.

Another day we took both Carl and Linda to Alton Towers in Derbyshire where there is an amusement park as well as extensive botanical gardens. We had to leave fairly early as Linda took ill, the beginnings of her lupus which seemed to have started while living at Mount Pleasant.

While in Oakham we visited Joan’s mother and sister in Stockport several times as it was only a couple of hours drive. On one occasion we had her mother down to Oakham for a visit. On one trip to Stockport when Vicki and Asgier were with us during Christmas break, we had an accident which totaled the car and obliged us to get another one, also an Escort. No one was hurt but we had to cancel the trip and spent several hours waiting for the police.

A couple of times we went to Belvoir Castle near Nottingham. It is a picturesque castle which was used in the movie “Little Lord Fauntleroy”. One of the artifacts kept in the castle is the bugle that was used in the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War. One time there we attended a medieval tournament of tilting and jousting. It was quite real and the St. John Ambulance stood by to treat injuries. The participants not only used lances but also fought on foot with broadswords and maces – exciting. Another time they had a re-enactment of a revolutionary war battle between English and American. They used to put on exhibitions regularly at Belvoir (pronounced “Beaver”).

There were other trips. We took Mandy, a friend of Linda, with us to Stratford-on-Avon where we visited Ann Hathaway’s Cottage. We also went to Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire, made famous in Sir Walter Scott’s novel. In the same area was Warwick Castle, ancestral home of the Earls of Warwick, which we went to several times, one time with Vicki and Asgeir.

There were many trips in connection with the Teaching Committee, most of which I attended on my own. One of the first was a weekend trip to visit the Baha’is in Kent, going to Canterbury, Ashford and Maidstone. I had also prepared a teaching seminar on the covenant which I gave in many places, beginning with Northampton. I presented it also at Lancaster University, Reading University, and Cardiff College.

Other visits were made to the communities in Bristol and Bath. On this trip I took a side trip to visit the white house on the hill near Uffington, and also Evesham where Simon de Montfort was defeated by the forces of Henry III. I visited the community in Wandsworth (Wimbledon) in London and Crawley near Gatwich airport. On the way home from Crawley I went to Henley to pick up Linda who was attending a youth weekend, passing by Shepperton Film Studios, Runsymede, and the school at Eton near Windsor.

The committee took me elsewhere as well. One meeting was held in Glasgow and I went by bus from Oakham. It was a night trip so I didn’t see a lot. When I returned I had to come by Stanford and wait there for a bus to Oakham.

Several times we went to visit one of the members of the committee who lived in Moulton in Cambridgeshire. It is just outside Newmarket. She was American and her husband was in the U.S. Air Force stationed at Mildenhall which we visited on one occasion. We took her and a friend to a teaching conference which we were holding at Conwy in North Wales. We had visited the castle there once before when we were first married and wanted to stay an extra day or two to look around. Our passengers who had to get to work had to find their own way home. We went to Wales by way of Leicester, Cannock, Shrewsbury, Llangollar, and Bettros-y-Coed.

After the conference we drove around Llandudno which is on a little peninsula and returned home by way of Denbigh. Denbigh is where Aldie Robarts was living but we didn’t call in. We found out he lived there when we were in Liverpool at the Convention and we went around to the office of the shoppers paper he published.

On my first visit to Brecon in Wales to visit the community, one of the community members took me on a little drive around the area. We went first to Talgarth where one community member lived and then to Builth Wells.

Part Eighteen – A Change of Direction and a Wealth of History

After ceasing to work for the Publishing Trust I had to go to the employment office each week to collect my dole money and see if there were any suitable vacancies anywhere in the U.K. They would pay my transport for interviews and during the year I investigated several positions. One of the first was to Barrow-in-Furness which is a beautiful area near the Lake District but we didn’t like the city or the printing plant. In any case I didn’t get the job. We drove through West Yorkshire, Elkley, and Skiptons etc.

Another prospect took us to Brecon where I interviewed the paper there. I was glad I didn’t take that job as it went bankrupt within a couple of years. While there we stayed at a pub in Sennybridge and watched some sheep dog trials.

One of the nicest trips was to Cuparin Fifesbief. It is north of Edinburgh and near St. Andrews. Instead of driving this time we took the train which was more comfortable. We had good views of Durban Cathedral and Edinburgh Castle. Thistoon was nice but the living conditions offered to us were not suitable for four people. The next interview was in Milton Kegnes, a new “toon” comprising several communities including Bletchley, Wolverton and Stong Stratford. Less than an hour from London with frequent train service, it would have been okay but I didn’t get the job.

There were a couple of other shorter trips we took while in Oakham. We went to Market Harbirogh so we could buy a sewing machine and we also went to Doncaster where we visited an Icelandic woman who was married to an Englishman and had become inactive. We learned later that they had moved to Iceland, settled in Westaupstadir and become active again.

On this trip and also going through Newmarket we were able to see the famous race tracks and stables.

Finally, in August of 1978, I received a letter from the Baha’is in Wells in Somerset which contained a help wanted ad from the Wells Journal. I made arrangements to drive down for an interview and stay overnight with Gordon and Giser McKenzie. I had the interview and was offered a job as proof reader beginning immediately. I said I had to return to Oakham but was prepared to start work the first of the following week. The McKenzie’s offered to put me up at their house until I was ready to move the family down. I also found out that the District of Mendip would be able to form their first Assembly as soon as Joan arrived.

I moved into a small room at McKenzie’s the following weekend and started in on Monday. There were two of us readers, a John William and myself and we each had a copy holder. The Wells Journal also published two other weekly papers, the Shepton Mallet Journal and the Midsummerset Journal for Glastonbury, Street and the Cheddar Valley. We also did a lot of job printing as well including law and medical journals and the printing for Butlin camps at Minehead and Barry.

When I interviewed for the job I had given the manager all of my qualifications, so after about a month I was transferred to linotype operator. The plant had seven linotypes and three monotype machines to set all the type, as the paper ran an average of twenty-four pages a week. I started out setting straight copy, but soon I was setting classifieds and eventually tabulated material such as bowling scores. All of this stuff was in 5-1/2 point with the first word in bold face in the classifieds. The machines had features that we had not had in Forest, such as automatic lead feeders, quadders and we often had to change magazines. The mould disc had six moulds and it had adjustable ejector blades.

I would drive home back to Oakham every other weekend, leaving Friday night and returning Sunday night. It was about a three hour drive and I went via Bath, Swindon, Oxford, Silverstone (where the Formula One races are held), Northumpton, Kettering, Corly and Oakburn.

One weekend at the beginning of November I brought the family down for the Guy Fawkes parade. This is one of the biggest carnivals in Europe and there were an average of a hundred floats decorated very professionally. There were both tableaux and active floats. The carnival was taken to several communities in Mid-Somerset including Glastonbury, Shepton Mallet and Bridgewater. Some of the floats also went to London for the Lord Mayor’s parade.

I got to know Christine and Jeremy Herbert who lived in Glastonbury. During the autumn we made a couple of trips since I had a car and they didn’t. The first was to London. For this Jeremy rented a car and we drove in to the Alexandra Palace (which subsequently burnt down) to a meeting with Hands of the Cause Ruhiyyih Khanum and Ali Furutan. It was at this meeting we ran into Jim Willoughby, whom I had met several times – the first time at summer school that first year at Geneva Park in 1953, then in the sixties he came for a weekend to our home in Forest and stayed two months; the third time was when we went to Iceland to the Oceanic Conference. Needless to say I didn’t tell him where I was living.

Following the Conference we all went to the North London Cemetery to visit the Guardian’s grave, which I had visited once before. While there we ran into both Hands, separately. I was quite surprised when he said he remembered me from his visit to London, Ontario, after the Dedication of the Temple in Chicago back in 1953.

The next trip I drove and went to the National Teaching Conference in Blackpool which was held at the Winter Gardens. It is quite okay to go to these places in the off season. We all stayed at a bed and breakfast with which we were not impressed, to put it mildly.

At the end of the year Jeremy and Christine decided to go pioneering again, this time to Brecon in Wales. They had come to Mendip district from Gloucester. This time they settled in a little hamlet called Llangynnidr near Crickhowell in Brecon district where they stayed for several years, and which we were able to visit from time to time as it was not far.

Part Nineteen – Glastonbury and Lots of History

We were able to take over the lease of the house in Glastonbury, so during the Christmas holiday period and we moved in at the end of the year. We needed a new bed, even though the house was rented furnished, so we bought a new one in Shepton Mallet on New Years Day 1979, the one we are still using. We lived in this house for about eighteen months and I drove into Wells to work every morning and took my lunch – it was only about five miles but I had to go through a couple of villages and you never knew when you were going to be held up by sheep or cattle on the road. It was no trouble and always arrived home for supper on time except on one occasion when the Somerset levels were flooded and I had to take a lengthy detour.

While living in Glastonbury we took advantage of the lore of the town, which is indicated by the sign at the entrance, calling itself the Isle of Avalon, the spot where King Arthur is supposed to have returned to die. In fact there are graves in Glastonbury Abbey reported to be of King Arthur and Queen Gwenivere, discovered in the 18^th century by King Henry II. Glastonbury Abbey is an old ruin which we visited many times. It was destroyed by Henry VIII on the dissolution of the monasteries, but it was very old, said to be on the site of a church erected by Joseph of Aramethea after the Crucifixion of Christ. He was supposed to have landed on Wearyall Hill, stuck his staff in the ground which blossomed into a hawthorn tree. A cutting from the original tree is growing within the Abbey which blooms every Christmas, the only one which does at that time of year. Blooms are sent to Buckingham Palace every year.

Another prominent piece of Glastonbury is the Tor, a hill with the ruins of an ancient church on its summit. We climbed it several times. There is said to be a tunnel running from the Abbey to the hill but no one has ever found it. Near the Tor is the Chalice Well where the Holy Grail is said to be buried. There is a stream that runs from the well down the hill which is reported to have healing qualities. In the house adjacent to the well, the second floor is set aside as the upper room, set out to represent the Last Supper.

On the main street of Glastonbury is the George and Pilgrim Inn, a hostelry dating back to the 12^th century. There are also numerous shops dealing with the lore of the area as well as books and articles dealing with the occult. Just below the Tor on the main road is a public house called the Rifleman’s Arms, where Joan worked for nearly a year and Linda babysat the owner’s two children.

The whole area of the levels is loaded with history and legend. At one time the levels were swampland and much of it under water which is why the hills were called islands. Just outside Glastonbury at Meers were discovered the ruins of a lake village which existed a couple of thousand years ago.

Between Street and Bridgewater is the Isle of Athelney, not really an island, but there is a statue of Alfred the Great. This is where Alfred hid out in the swamps from the Danes and where he is reputedly said to have burned the cakes. It was from here that he spied out the enemy on the Polden Hills and where he eventually defeated them and established the Kingdom of Wessex, and the Danes were confined to the north-east of England.

Just south of Glastonbury is South Cadbury, and many consider Cadbury Castle the site of the ancient Camelot. The “castle” is the ruins of an ancient Celtic hill fort on top of the hill which could probably house a thousand inhabitants.

Also west of Glastonbury is Westonzogland, and just outside is the field of Sedgemoor, the site of the last battle on English soil. It was when the Duke of Monnodt invaded to try to overthrow King James II. He advanced as far as Bath but was turned back and finally defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor. His followers were subsequently tried in Tauton and many were hanged. It was known as the Bloody Assize presided over by Judge Jeffries.

Not far from Glastonbury was the Air Base at Yeovilton and the site of the Fleet Air Arm Museum. We attended two air shows there and Carl went to more. It was here we saw the prototype for the Concorde and the first Harrier Jump Jets with the vertical take off and landing. At one show the Band of A.M. Royal Marines, from Plymouth was there and I was able to talk to some of the players and requested a number which they played.

About 25 miles from Wells are both Bristol and Bath, both teeming with history. It was from Bath that I would take the train to London for my meetings. It was a non-stop and covered the 125 miles in a little over an hour.

Bath was known in Roman times as Aqua Sulis and was famous for its healing baths. The old Roman baths have been excavated and open to the public. Just above was the famous Pump Room where people at one time would drink the water; now it serves tea. Bath was very popular during the Georgian period and the architecture reflects that era, especially the Royal Crescent and the Royal Circus. They also have a well known Museum of Costumes in the Assembly Rooms. There is also a toy museum.

We went to Bath often as it was more interesting and easier to get around than Bristol. One time we went to Claverton Manor where we saw a re-enactment of an American Civil War Battle put on by people from the American University there.

Just behind the Baths is Bath Abbey and between the two is an open square where entertainments are put on. One time we saw a student performance of Hamlet done in 15 minutes, and when it was over they did an abridged version in about three minutes.

There were numerous trips we could take from our home here in any direction which did not require overnight accommodation. Just outside Wells to the west is Wookey Hole, one of the many series of caves in the Mendips. The Mendip Hills are of limestone which makes the formation of caves an easy matter. One of the places that is a favourite of caves is Priddy on top of which has an entrance into many unexplored caves. Nearby are the Priddy circles, stone age monuments.

Carl worked in the restaurant at Wookey Hole one summer and it was close enough for him to walk to work. We did take the tour through the caves once, an interesting experience -- not only for the caves themselves, but also for the auxiliary places of interest there. There was the fairground museum with its collection of historic fair attractions such as roundabouts and callisper. There was also Madame Tausaud’s warehouse, where were kept all of the wax heads that have been on display in the past in London. Then there was the paper making plant where paper was being made while we watched.

Further along the valley, which we have driven both above and below the hills, was the Cheddar Gorge and nearby Cheddar Caves named for the village nearby which gave its name to its famous cheese. Then there was Burrington Cormler, another small gorge which contains the famous Rock of Ages which gave its name to the well-known hymn. Other places were Rodney Stoke, the birthplace of the famous British admiral, Westbury sub-Mendip and Draycott and Axlridge. The valley is also famous for its strawberries which are plentiful and produce two crops a year.

Further along it was not far to the seaside resort of Weston-super-More with its beach and pier and the nearby nature reserve of Brean Down. Compton Bishop is the home of comedian Frankie Howard who was often seen in one of the pubs in Wells. Another resort nearby was Burnham-on-Sea, a much quieter and more sedate place than Weston which was always bustling. Between Wells and the M5 there is a hamlet called Mash which leads to the Mosk Causeway, another indication that the area was at one time under water.

The first large town encountered along the M5 was Bridgewater, which had a public library with recordings to rent and I went there often. Bridgewater is also the gateway to Exmoor. About five miles from Bridgewater is Cannington; if you turned right to the north here you came to Hinckley Point Nuclear Power Station where Gord McKenzie worked. The next place is Nether Stowey where Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived and wrote and where there is a small museum. Further along is Holford where his friend Wordsworth lived for a time. Next comes the harbour of Watchet, said to be where Colersdee composed the Ancient Mariner.

Turning left off the main road on a back road one comes to the village of Roadwater where I gave a fireside once and farther up the hills there was a cottage in the middle of nowhere where I gave another fireside. It was owned by a thatcher and there was no electricity or running water. Just outside Watchet is Blue Anchor where friends of ours, sort of contacts, lived and visited several times. The next main town is Minehead, a seaside resort with a Butlin Camp and where we held a couple of proclamations as West Somerset was one of our goals.

Going east from Wells we come to the village of Croscombe where we were at one point offered a house but it was too small. Then there is Shepton Mallet. Shepton Mallet is on the Fosse Way, one of the old Roman roads which can still be seen in places. It is also the home of Baby Chear, a kind of champagne made from pears, and also where Jill and Farhad Shahbahram, two of our Baha’is have a home and market garden. Still going east was Irlanmore with the East Somerset Railway and Nunery where there is an old castle, and then Frome, still in our Baha’I district of Mendip.

On the Mendip Hills above here are Stohe St. Michael where Jill and Farhad lived for a time and Oakhill Manor with its railway museum. Also Mells, a small village that was the home of the Horners, about whom the nursery rhyme was written. The next town is Westbury, which has another famous white horse on the hillside.

Going north from Westbury is Bradford-on-Avon where we held a proclamation and a fair exhibit at nearby Holt. Beyond that is Chippenham where there was a Baha’I who was originally a Canadian. On the way is Lacock, a National Trust village which is used in many films which need 18^th and 17^th century locales.

South of Westbury is Warminster where we also did some teaching. It is the UFO capital of England and more recently the site of many mysterious crop circles midway between Frome and Warminster at Longleat House.

Longleat is the stately home of the Marquis of Bath and we went there several times. It has the oldest safari park in the world and also the largest mazes. It covers a large acreage and on the hill above there is a picnic site called Heaven’s Gate which we used a couple of times.

The road from Warminster to Salisbury goes through Wilton, the original county seat of Wiltshire and the home of Wilton rugs. Salisbury Cathedral has one of the tallest spires in Britain and dominates the countryside. We toured the area but did not go inside because they charged admission. Just north of Salisbury on Salisbury Plain is Stonehenge, very famous pre-historic site, and to the east is Parton Down, the wartime bacteriological research centre, very top secret.

Southwest of Salisbury is a number of hill figures in the chalk, not really old, and Wardour Castle which we visited once.

On one occasion Wendy Momen came down and stayed with us for a few days. We took her for a drive through Dorset. We first went to Yeovil and then to Sherborne and from there south to Dorchester, the Casterbridge of Hardy’s novels. On the way we stopped to see the Cerne Abbas giant, carved in the chalk hill as an old fertility symbol. In the Dorchester area we visited Thomas Hardy’s cottage just outside the town. Further along the highway we passed through Puddletown on the river Piddle, whose name was changed by Queen Victoria. There was Tolpaddle, the site of the Tolpaddle Martyrs, during the fight for the farmers’ unions.

We then went north through Blandford Forum, the headquarters of the Royal Signal Corps, then on to Shaftesbury where we stopped for strawberries and cream, and took a picture at Gold Hill, often used in films and especially a famous commercial for Hovis Bread.

On another trip in that direction we visited Golsi Azizi in Lyndhurst in the New Forest; it was the year she and I were delegates to the National Convention in Harrogate. While in the New Forest we saw the wild ponies for which it is famous, and the place where William II (Rufus) was killed while hunting. We also saw the grave of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

We visited Winchester (where our ABMs lived) and toured the Cathedral there. It is beautiful inside and we saw the tombs of both William II and Jane Austin who lived there most of her life. Behind the Cathedral is the famous Winchester School.

Another trip took us more or less in the same direction where we visited Corfe Castle on the Isle of Purluch. This is where King John kept his mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, as a prisoner. We also visited Chisel Beach near Weymoleth where the Moonfleet Hotel is situated and the Abbotsbury Swanney. Further along is Lyme Regis which we visited several times. While we were in Wells, the film “The French Lieutenants Woman” was made there and the company repainted and changed the entire waterfront of the toon to make it look like the 19^th century.

Between there and Wells is Axmington, another famous rug manufacturing town, and Somerton, the ancient capital of Somerset.

As a member of the teaching committee I had occasion several times to visit other places to the south including Exeter and Newton Abbott where one of the committee members lived. I also visited isolated Baha’is in Taunton and Milverton.

Along the coast of Bristol Channel west of where we lived are a series of hills called the Quantocks, the Brendon Hills and Exsmoor. They are really a continuation of each other and we have driven all around these areas at times. Along the road between Taunton and Watchet is the West Somerset Railway which at one time carried ore down to the coast where it was taken across to Wales. This part of the country is apple cider country and every January there is a Wassail ceremony among the apple trees.

We also visited several places north of Wells besides Bath and Bristol. One time we went to Badminton where they hold well known horse trials and where the game was first played. It is not far from Princess Anne and Prince Charles have their country home. This area is known as the Cotswolds, and when I had to go to meetings of the teaching committee with the chairman and secretary we met at Leamington Spa where one member lived (Patty Vicker) and the other at nearby Kenilworth. I would drive via Cirencester and such quaintly named village such as Stow-in-the-Wold, Moreton-in-the-Marsh, and Burton-on-the-Water.

I drove back one time through Broadway where I saw the horsemen and dogs getting ready for the hunt and through Evesham and Jewhesbury, both places where battles were fought by Simon de Montfort and the Wars of the Roses.

We also visited Berkeley where the castle where Edward II was murdered is located. The home of Edward Jenner is near the castle; he is the doctor who discovered the smallpox vaccine. Berkeley Castle is the oldest castle inhabited by the same family since the 12^th century. At one time they owned land over which they could ride all the way to London. The last piece sold was the square in Mayfair named for them. They also produced a famous philosopher in Bishop Berkeley and one of the family founded a university in Oakland, California.

Another time we drove across the Severn Bridge by Chepstow Castle and up the Wye Valley as far as the ruins of Tintern Abbey made famous by the poet Wordsworth.

To the northeast we sometimes visited Aveberry on the A4 east of Chippenham. It is known for an ancient circle of stones about a mile in diameter. The village is in the centre of the circle and was made famous by the film “Children of the Stone”. Many are missing now but enough remain to tell where they were and also an avenue of parallel stones leading from there to Silbury Hill, the largest man-made hill known, the purpose of which remains unknown.

Not far are the East Kemeth Long Barrows, an ancient burial site. Just beyond Marlborough is Savernake Forest, in which is a church which contains the tomb of Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henry VIII. All along this part of the Wiltshire Downs are various hill figures carved in the chalk, which is very close to the surface with only a thin layer of soil and grass.

Several times we visited the Herberts, the couple who occupied the house in Glastonbury before we moved in. Christine was also a member of the National Teaching Committee, and they had moved to Brecon District as pioneers. They settled in a cottage in the village of Llangynids on the river Usk about halfway between Brecon and Abergavenny. They were usually weekend trips and about a two hour drive from Wells. We would drive through Bristol, onto the M4, the Severn Bridge and Chepstow Castle and Raglan Castle.

One time there Jeremy, who was a Board Assistant, and I went over the hill above Llangyside to Tredegar and down the valley to Blackwood and Newbridge where he contacted some of the new Baha’is who lived there. We came back by Ebbew Vale. One drive from there was into Brecon and around the Brecon Beacons to Merthyr Tedfil, then along the top of the valleys.

On one occasion they took me north past Builth Wells to the Elan Reservoirs. There are three of them and they supply most of the water for the West Midlands. The scenery throughout Wales is pretty spectacular. It was there I saw a rook for the first time, a very large type of hawk.

One time Christine took me through some back roads through the Black Mountains. We visited a church at Cewmyoy which parts have settled so it appears quite crooked on the inside. We also stopped at Llantbury Abbey. Beyond Hay Bluff where a lot of sportsmen do hang gliding, is Hay-on-Wye, which has the greatest number of book stores, new and used, in the U.K.

Part Twenty – Holidays Around Britain

While in Somerset we took a holiday each year. In 1980 we went to Iceland for a return visit and 1982 we came to Canada for three weeks – more of this later.

In 1979, the first year we were in Glastonbury, Joan and I took a one week vacation in a holiday camp in Ilfracombe on the North Devon Court. While there we took side trips every day. One day we toured Exmoor and we visited Malmamead and the church at Oare, both associated with Blackmore’s Lorna Doone. We climbed Dunkery Beacon, the highest point on Exmoor, and we visited the Tarr Steps at Dulverton, an ancient bridge of stones.

On the way to Ilfracombe we went through Porloch with its famous hill which is too steep for cars with trailers, who have to take an old toll road around the hill. We took the alternate route on another occasion when Vicki and Asgeir were visiting. There were more steep hills at Lynton and Lynmouth. These steep hills have escape routes, consisting of several dozen metres of sand which will rescue vehicles whose brakes fail at the down grades. As well as the main road we also took the coast road.

Another day we headed south through Barnstaple and Bidiford where we left the main road and took the secondary road through the Taw estuary to the toons of Appledore and Westward Ho. From there we went to Clovelly, a village on the coast with a very steep street impassable for cars. We walked part way down. This place is associated with the writer Charles Kingsley who lived here for a time while his father was vicar. He is most famous for “The Water Babies”.

From there we followed the coast down to Tintagel whose castle is associated with Merlin and King Arthur and his father Pendragon, and supposedly his birthplace. We didn’t walk all the way down to the castle which is on a cliff overlooking the sea. It was just too much of a climb and it was cold and windy.

Another time we drove down to Dartmoor and had a flat tire in Princeton, the site of the maximum security prison, and were there for a couple of hours. Then we went to the village of Widdecombe, famous for the nursery rhyme about its fair and Hound Tor, notable for Arthur Conan Doyle’s “Hound of the Baskervilles”. On the upper elevations it was quite foggy which made for quite an eerie atmosphere.

In 1981 we took a large trailer at a holiday camp in Perranforth, Cornwall for a week. This place had laundry facilities and a couple of night clubs where there was entertainment every night. The camp was on top of a hill and sometimes Joan and the kids, Linda and Carl, walked down to the beach which was quite wide and sandy.

On the way down there we went across the top of Dartmoor through Launceston, the ancient capital of Cornwall. Then across Bodmin Moor where we stopped at Jamaica Inn, made famous by Daphne du Maurier in her adventure novel. Nearby is Dagemary Pool, the legendary place where the lady rose out of the lake with the second Excalibar for King Arthur. It was supposed to be bottomless but actually is not very deep at all.

Each day we took side trips. Perranforth was fairly central so we could cover the entire county. One day we drove along the north shore to St. Ives which has become quite an artistic colony. From there we went to Lunds End, the westernmost point on mainland England. It was quite a cold and windy day so we didn’t stay outside long. On the way home we stopped in Penzance and saw St. Michael’s Mount. We came home through Helston, the home of the well known Cornish Floral Dance. We passed many abandoned tin mines, especially around Camhome and Redruth.

Another time we went to the Lizard where there is a large lighthouse. It is the most southerly point in England. On the way we passed a large radio telescope facility. We traveled back roads to Helford and visited Frenchmen’s Creek, also made famous by Daphne du Maurier who lived in Cornwall and was well acquainted with the county. Her home is not too far away.

We stopped in Falmouth and walked down to the beach there and saw Pendennis Castle. Finally we stopped in Truro, the county seat with its modern cathedral.

Another day we went to Newquay, not too far up the coast from Perranforth, and a much larger place with a big amusement area which pleased the kids. We came home to Wells via Liskeard and Tavistock and across Dartmoor.

The third holiday we had in Britain was in 1983, the same year we returned to Canada. By this time we had sold our car and had a real cheap one for the rest of our stay here. This time Linda came with us as Carl was unable to come. We booked a trailer in Portmadoc in North Wales. It was touch and go every morning to see if the car would start.

This time we went via Brecon and Builth Wells to Rhayadir and across Wales to Aberystwith via the Devil’s Bridge. We then went north via Machynlleth, past Cader Idris, the second highest peak in Britain to Dolgellan. Then via Barmouth and Harlech to Portmadoc.

One day we took Linda to Portmeirion, a fantastic village with many styles of architecture which was used extensively in the TV series “The Prisoner”. Joan and I had been there once before and never grew tired of visiting the place.

Another time we took her to Caernaroon and its famous castle. Then we drove to Bangor and crossed the Menai Straits to the island of Angleseg where we visited Beaumaris Castle, another of the castles built by Edward I when he conquered Wales. We also visited the toon of Llanfair P.G. as it’s called, the place with the longest name anywhere. The railway station is still there and you can buy tickets although the trains don’t run anymore.

Back to Caermaroon where we drove to Llanberis where we took the train up to the summit of Mount Snowdon, the highest point in the British Isles, nearly 3700 feet. It was up grade all the way and the train had to stop half way up to take on more water. At the top there is a restaurant and there were a lot of people up there. There are many paths to walk to the top but it would be quite a walk and could be dangerous if the weather changed.

From Llanberis we went up the pass to Capel Curig and Bettios-y-Coed and back to Portmadoc. On the way we stopped at Blaenan Flestiniog where there are slate mines and no trees in this area. This is the terminus of a mountain railway which runs to and from Portmedoc, a distance of over 12 miles.

Another time we went to Bettios-y-Coed via the other side of Snowden through Beddgelert, a pretty town in very mountainous country. We also drove the coast road from Caernaroon through Prollheli and Criccieth to Portmadoc.

Part Twenty-One – Homeless and Holidays Outside of Britain

In 1980 we received a letter from Geoff in Iceland enclosing air fare for Joan and myself to visit Iceland. We were uncertain about it because we had received a letter from the owner of the house in Glastonbury, wanting the home back. We consulted the council and they said there would be no problem so off we went.

When we returned we found ourselves homeless as we had been evicted. We hastily contacted the council and also our MP and we were moved into a temporary shelter in Shepton Mallet. It consisted of a kitchen, large living room and a small pantry which Carl used as a bedroom. Linda slept in the living room and we slept in the kitchen. We had one storeroom for furniture downstairs and the bathroom was down the hall.

While there we were visited quite surprisingly by Tony Marsolais who had been on holiday in Spain and was now in the George and Pilgrim Inn in Glastonbury. How he found us, he wouldn’t tell us but he stayed with us for several days. We were quite crowded.

It was also here I developed a rash all over my torso which the local doctor couldn’t identify. It didn’t cause any particular discomfort and I didn’t miss any work. I had to go and visit a dermatologist at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Bath. I visited him several times; he found out what it was and said it would disappear by itself. It did after a couple of weeks.

From Shepton Mallet we were moved into a council house on Hervey Road in Wells. We had looked at a house in Croscombe (between Shepton and Wells) but it only had two bedrooms. The house in Wells needed considerable work including carpets throughout and we had to put in some portable heaters to keep warm. We walked home from downtown through the cathedral grounds and past the Cathedral School, famous for its music program.

We had been there barely a year when the council told us they were going to remodel all the houses on Hervey Road. They were fairly old and in need of upgrading. They offered to move us to a new council estate in Duvies Court further from downtown but much better and larger. We decided to stay in the new place even though the rent was higher. We were there for two years.

We took the train from Bath to Reading where we traveled by bus from there to Heathrow. We thought we would miss the plane as our luggage came on a later bus and it was touch and go.

We landed in Keflavik and were met by Vicki and Asgeir who took us to their home in Hveragerdti. We stayed there most of the two weeks. One day they took us up the Hvita past Gullfoss and behind Langsohull, where they heard there was a new glacier flowing. The two of them walked up the hill which was some distance away while Joan and I stayed down by the river.

We stayed with Geoff in Reykjavik a couple of nights. Geoff had arranged for me to take a travel teaching trip. I went from Reykjavik airport to the first stop, Isafjoidtur. I was met and stayed over night with Inga Dan who had pioneered there. We had a meeting in the evening and renewed acquaintanship with Erna and Dagny, both of whom were married with young children by the time.

The next day I took a plane from Isafjirdur to Akureyir where I stayed overnight at the hospital where a couple of the Baha’is were nurses. It was a fairly small meeting due to other commitments. The flight was a new experience. The pilot collected the tickets on the plane which only seated ten people, five on each side. The window by my seat was broken so it was a breezy trip. We pretty much followed the road as we were not very high.

The next day I got another plane which took me to Egilstadur. We flew over Kafla, the newest volcano which was spilling out lava as we passed. At Egilstadur we took a bus which took over two hours to get to my destination, Neskaupstadur, going by way of Eshifjordur and Reydisfjostur. I was in Neskaupstadur two nights, staying with one of the friends there and who took me on a drive up the valley one day. I held a deepening one night and the other night was a dance at which Geoff, who had gone on ahead, was disc jockey. Then back to Reykjavik.

The morning we were to leave Iceland, John Spencer offered to take us to the airport but we must have got our wires crossed because even when we went to the Loftludir Hotel the last bus was leaving and no John Spencer. Eventually we started to panic and got in touch with his home and finally got a ride to Keflavik with one of the Baha’is. We barely made it as they were holding the plane for us.

Getting back to Bath was no easier. We couldn’t find our train ticket stub and they weren’t going to let us out even though we were vouched for by Jill and Farhad who had come to Bath to meet us and bring us back to Wells.

The holiday in 1982 was to Canada. Carl and Linda had very little memory of their home as they were so young when we left for Iceland. We had three weeks so we booked our flights and left London from Gatwick. We got a bus from Bristol which took us all the way to the airport which is near Crawley in Surrey.

We landed at Pearson Airport and were met by Larry who had arranged to meet us ahead of time. He took us to Sarnia via the 401 and the new 402 which had not been built when we left Canada ten years earlier. He lived in an apartment block on Devine Street where we met his two kids Tina and Bruce, the latter of whom was a real pest at that time. Larry and Gladys took us to the mall downtown which was new (it was the first indoor mall we had ever been in). While there I contacted the secretary of the International Symphony and I was able to get a ride to a rehearsal in Port Huron. There were only a few of the old players still with the orchestra.

We had decided to go to Alberta and visit Paul who lived in Red Deer at that time. We traveled out west by bus in order to give the kids a chance to see something of Canada. It took three days to get to Calgary and on the way Carl met Cathy who was also going to Calgary. We were met at the airport by Paul who took us to Red Deer. While we were there we attended a fireside and visited the high school where one of the Baha’is was a teacher.

He also took us along with Michael to Drumheller where the big dinosaur fossils were discovered. We drove around and saw some of the hoodoos in the area. Another time he took us into the mountains past Sylvan Lake to Rocky Mountain House where a Baha’i resided. We returned to Red Deer by a different route.

When it was time to return we flew to Toronto where we were met by Tony Marsolais who had arranged rooms for us at the YMCA on College Street. One evening we had dinner at the home of his new girlfriend. During the day I took Carl to the Science Museum while Joan took Linda to Casa Loma. Carl also went to the top of the CN Tower on his own.

We returned home via Gatwick and Bristol, where we discovered we had come back a day earlier than we were expected so we had to call Farhad, get him out of bed on the Sunday morning and come to Bristol to pick us up.

Part Twenty-Two – More Travels around Britain

There were many trips I had to make as a member of the teaching committee. These were usually in the south west but I also at times had responsibility for Wales and the Masches. On one trip both Joan and I took a weekend and went to Stoke-on-Trent where we visited the Baha’is there. This is the area known as the Potteries and there are several located there including Spade, Royal Doulton and Wedgewood, the latter pottery which we visited and had a tour. A lot of the decorating is still done by hand.

One time when we visited Joan’s mother and sister in Stockport we returned via Wales traveling via Welshpool, Newtown and Llandrindod Wells.

One weekend, we had a teaching conference at Llandrindod Wells, which at one time was a famous spa town. There were friends there from south Wales as well as Hereford and Worcester.

One weekend I visited the Baha’is in Truro. This was in the winter and we took a drive over to Perrenforth which at that time of year was quite deserted. In the evening we picked up some friends in St. Ives and drove to Peryance where the meeting was held. I drove down this time by way of Plymouth where I picked up a lady and took her to her sister’s place in St. Austell.

I had another meeting with the Baha’is in Sevansea which was also attended by those from Llanelli, not far away. During the day I took a drive around the Mumbles.

I attended most of the National Conventions to which I was a delegate on two occasions. It was held in Harrogate twice and Joan came once; that was the last spring we were there. At the Convention in Watford I was named to compose a cable to the Universal House along with Marian Hoffman (of George Ronald) and another Baha’i. At the one that was held in Great Malvern I was appointed chief teller for the election of the NSA.

It was at Malveen that we woke up on Sunday morning to about a foot of snow on the ground. I had great difficulty getting to the conference hall, having to be pushed a couple of times. Very few showed up that morning and right after lunch I set out for home.

By the time I got down off the hills there was no snow. This was quite surprising because it was the end of April and it was the first snow we had had that winter.

Most of the NTC meetings were held at the National Office at Rutland Gate, but when the NSA was meeting the same weekend we had to go elsewhere except when they wanted to meet with us, which happened about once a year. On one of these occasions we met at a bed and breakfast in Ealing in West London where the food was pretty grim.

Other times we met at the Baha’i Centre in Liverpool, and once at the University of Newcastle. I traveled by train to these places, because it turned out to be more convenient. The trains left from Bristol. When we met at the Manchester Baha’i Centre, Joan and I drove and we stayed with her mother.

In 1982 I had to chair a National Teaching Conference in Cheltenham along with Jodi Munsiff, who had visited our place in Forest when she was a little girl. I drove back and forth from Wells as it was only about 75 miles away and there was motorway nearly all the way.

The year before I represented the NTC at a North Sea Teaching Conference held in Saxmundham in Suffolk. There were representatives there from Holland, Belgium, Denmark and France as well as the U.K. I drove there via London taking the inner ring road (the M25 had not been built yet) and through Chelmsford, Colchent and Ipswitch. It seemed to take forever so when I came back I traveled via Burg St. Edmonds, Cambridge and Oxford. It was further but took less time. This was on the Easter weekend, so it was a three-day affair. We were all put up at homes of the Baha’is in the area.

One weekend I was invited along with a dozen or so other people to the home of Norman Bailey, the operatic baritone, for a conference on the arts. He had purchased a large house in the country near Reigate. Some of us stayed in the 8-room gatehouse but we had our meals in the main house. In it he has a fully equipped recording studio. Joan and I had visited them when they lived in Bedford, while we were in Oakham. At that time he was preparing the role of Amfortas in Parsifal for the Royal Opera, Covent Garden.

There was a castle in Farleigh Heingerford, which is at the north-east corner of Somerset where Avon and Wiltshire come together. We were there a couple of times. There were antique fairs which we attended in Mells, Frome and Neimey, where there was also a castle. These two castles together with the one at Dernster are the only castles in Somerset county.

During the summer of 1983 Linda, Joan and I took day trips to the Isle of Wight. These were bus trips direct from Wells and were quite reasonably priced. We went by ferry from Southampton to Cowes. The ferry ride was interesting as the Q.E. II was in port at the time and the Royal yacht Britannia was at anchor in the Solent. The first trip was a journey around the island via Ryde, Sandown and Ventna to Blackgang Chine which is right on the Channel. We did not walk down to the Beach which was quite steep. We next stopped at Brighstone, an old fashioned village where even the post office is thatched and rose covered. Our last stop was at Yarmouth before returning to Cowes for the trip home.

The second trip was during Cowes week and the Solent was full of sail boats preparing for the regatta. It was a shorter trip so we had more time at the bus stops, the first of which was at Osborne House, a summer home belonging to Queen Victoria. It had a Swiss type of chalet on the property which was a play home for her many children. The second stop was a Carisbrooke Castle where we had lots of time to explore. This is where King Charles I was held awaiting execution. From the ramparts we could see Parkhurst where one of England’s main maximum security prisons is located. On the way home we returned via all back roads and got held up in some village where we were stopped until one of the natives was around and moved her car which was parked on the street so we couldn’t get by.

There were several events in Wells as well as the annual Guy Fawkes Carnival which was known all over England. In fact several floats were asked to take part in London’s Lord Mayor’s Parade. One May Day the market square was cleared of cars and a May Fair was held complete with a May Pole and Morris Dancers all in costume. Then one summer the Queen Mother paid a visit. We were so close to her car we could almost reach out and touch her. Prince Charles also came to Wells from time to time as he was chairman of the Wells Cathedral Restoration Project.

I’ve already mentioned the performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which took place in the Cathedral in which Carl took part. And the two times I met with the Bishop of Bath and Wells on behalf of the Baha’i Community. It was around the time of the resumption of the persecutions in Iran.

Then there was the Siege of Wells. This was a re-enactment of a Civil War battle put on by the Sealed Knot Society. This is a volunteer organization which often takes part in period films. There were about 1800 of them who came, soldiers, horsemen and camp followers and they camped in the field behind our house.

Part Twenty-Three – Time to Return to Canada

We decided to return to Canada in September of 1983. Larry had provided me with literature from DVA which meant I was able to receive a pension which would hold me over until I reached my 65^th birthday and get the OAP. This time we hired a mover who came to the house and wrapped everything. We didn’t need to do anything except tell them where things were, and they were very efficient.

After they had gone we discovered that Carl’s passport had been packed and panic stations were in order. We called the movers and found our stuff was already in the big container at Avonmouth. Carl and I took off and managed to retrieve the missing passport. Fortunately the container was not filled and they were very helpful to us.

Before leaving the staff at the Journal presented me with the gift of a book on Somerset; and I also received a pen set from my snooker partners at the British Legion which I had joined.

When we arrived at Toronto flying from Heathrow, we were met by Larry who brought us to his home in Sarnia where we stayed for a few days. At that time Bruce was only a little over two years old and was a real pill. From there we took the train into London and we stayed a few days with Ruth while I contacted DVA and Joan and Ruth went house hunting.

We finally found one, a duplex, on McLary Street which was within our price range. We moved in in October but we had to threaten the landlord with the Dept. of Health before he would properly clean it up. Having no furniture we were helped out by several people including Gladys’ father, Keith Greenham and Bob and Dorothy Smith. The place was pretty small for the four of us, but we managed.

The biggest disappointment was when our furniture and the rest did not arrive until February, and then they wanted to charge us extra because we were a few miles beyond their limit, but we managed to talk them out of that.

In the fall I contacted a Dr. Mayor who had an office around the corner on Grand Avenue and whom we still go to although he has moved a couple of times since.

Before leaving England we had received a letter from the LSA of London and we contacted the secretary after we had settled in. I attended my first Feast at the home of Chet and Ruby Turner whom we had known before and who lived on Grand Avenue. At this Feast there was a by-election to fill two vacancies on the Assembly and Terry Drakhs and myself were elected. I remained on the Assembly for about the next seven years.

In the spring Terry went with me to buy a car. We found one at a lot on east Dundas Street for $1500, a red Chevette, so I cashed in my insurance policy and bought it. Terry also went with me for my insurance, road test and driving licence, and I am still with the same insurance broker who has also moved twice since his first office on Bradley.

During that year we lived on McClary Ave. we would walk downtown as Eatons was on Wellington (where it is now) and was the largest store in a small indoor mall. I also did quite a bit of walking along the river which was close by and had a walking path its full length. Over several weeks I walked from Highbury as far as Byron at Springbank Park.

Joan and Linda would walk to the A&P store on Base Line for groceries and only when they had a lot to carry would take the Richmond bus which stopped within a few houses of where we were.

Both kids eventually got jobs, Carl in an electronics firm on Dundas St. East and Linda in a video rental store, first on Base Line and later on Wonderland near Commissioners Rd. They both went to work by bus but occasionally when the weather was bad I would pick them up.

By fall when we had been in that house for nearly a year we decided we needed more room so we started looking. The real estate agent we contacted talked us into buying rather than renting so Joan looked at a lot of properties that were within our price range. I also went to see many of them. We eventually settled on the place we are in now, a townhouse in a condo complex, three bedrooms, one and a half baths, and a rec room and laundry and storage in the basement.

We moved in in October and have been here since. After Carl had worked long enough to earn the money he decided to go to Venezuela where Cathy Khan was living. He had been corresponding with her since they met on the bus to Calgary back in 1982.

In May of 1985 we decided to take a trip down to the Maritimes and Linda decided to come with us and share expenses. We left on a Sunday and stopped overnight in a motel just outside the town of Gananoque. The next day we drove down the St. Lawrence Parkway and took the Long Sault Parkway drive out into the St. Lawrence River the other side of Cornwall.

We got on to the wrong road through Montreal and were held up quite a bit so we didn’t get as far as we had planned. We stopped at a motel in Plessisville overnight. From there we carried on down the St. Lawrence on the Trans Canada as far as Riviere du Loup where we turned south and stopped overnight at Grand Falls, NB. Our motel was right beside the falls. From there we followed the St. John River first to Hartland where we crossed over the longest covered bridge in Canada. It’s a good thing there was no traffic on it as we found out it was a one way bridge and we were going the wrong way. Next we drove through the city of Fredericton instead of taking the by-pass. We had thought of visiting the pioneer village at Kings Landing but it was not open yet.

We carried on to Moncton where we stopped for the night. The next morning before continuing, we visited the famous magnetic hill and experienced the sensation of feeling the car coasting up the hill. From there we went to Fort Beausejour. It was cold and windy and there were very few people there but we wandered around anyway.

At Amhurst we turned off the Trans Canada and followed the lighthouse route along Northumberland Straits through Pugwash and Tatumagouche to Pictou where I spent three months during the war. I didn’t recognize anything; even the dockyard which was outside the town and where we were undergoing refit was now inside the town. From there we went through New Glasgow and the Carse Causeway to Baddeck where we got a good deal on a motel for two nights. The next day we followed the Cabot Trail through the Cape Breton Highlands. The following day we visited the Alexander Graham Bell museum which contains many of his inventions. Bell spent his last years in Baddeck where he experimented with aircraft and hydrofoils. His home is nearby and is still lived in by his descendents.

We went from there to the Fortress of Louisberg which has been much restored and is inhabited in the summer by students dressed as people who actually lived there in the 18^th century. We were there on June 1^st, the first day they were officially open. Leaving there we followed the south shore of Bras d’Or Lake back to the mainland and stayed overnight in Sherbrooke on the south shore where it was pouring rain. Sherbrooke is another community that is attempting to preserve it as it was back in the 19^th century.

The next day we followed the east shore to Dartmouth, the first time we had been there since just after the war. The city has expanded considerably and we went out to the naval air station, now called HMCS Shearwater, but we couldn’t find Marion Heights where we lived for nearly a year. We crossed the new Angus McDonald bridge to Halifax, but we didn’t stop there but went on up the valley to Grand Pre where the Evangeline Statue and church are located. We stayed the night in Kentville.

From there we left Nova Scotia and drove up through New Brunswick to Campbellton. Between Chatham and Bathurst the road was under construction and we lost a lot of time there. Not a very nice place where we spent the night.

In the morning we crossed into Matapedia, Quebec and decided to drive around the Gaspe Peninsula. We stopped for awhile in the town of Gaspe where we had put in for a boiler cleaning during the war. We had a nice day and were able to see Bonaventure Island and Perce Rock. We continued on around the peninsula which is a very scenic route and we stopped for the night in a little village called Grand Prairie (?) where no one could speak English.

We went on the next day through Rimouski and Riviere du Loup until we reached Quebec City where we stayed two nights. The next day we took a sight seeing bus throughout the city which was well worth while. We covered both the upper and lower town as well as the Plains of Abraham.

From there we drove to Montreal along the north shore of the St. Lawrence. We hit the city at rush hour and it seemed to take forever to get through the city. Eventually we reached Ontario where we stayed the night in Gananoque and returned home the following day.

Part Twenty-Four – Illness and University

After coming back I considered the idea of going back to university when I found it wouldn’t cost me anything for tuition as a senior. So I went and secured a syllabus and found I could take a second year history course in music providing I had permission of the head of the department. I found out the head was Jeff Stokes so I made an appointment for an interview.

As luck would have it, before I could see him I took quite ill and was admitted to hospital. I went into the emergency room and don’t remember anything after that until a week later. I learned that I had been in the intensive care unit during that time with tubes all over me. Joan was with me a good deal of the time and when I came to in the recovery room I was transferred to a ward. I found out that Joan had called Dr. Stokes and postponed the interview.

I came out of hospital after about five days and subsequently went to the school for the interview. It went well and I started in September. I went to the registries office where they were able to obtain my transcripts from high school and the University of Toronto, but they couldn’t give me any credits for those courses I took back then.

The only reason I can think of for my illness was as a result of the stress and pollution I experienced when we went through Montreal at rush hour.

I obtained a parking permit for the university and parked the two days a week in the Medway parking lot. The course itself was a lecture, one with tutorials and my tutor was Jeff Stokes. The other professor was Philip Downs. It was a large class of about 75 students, and I was the only one over 25 years of age. I only got to know a couple of kids that first year but they seemed to accept my presence with no difficulty. I had to write three essays that first year, something I hadn’t done for nearly 50 years. Before starting school, I took a two-day course at the public library through Fanshaw College to prepare me, consisting of how to take notes, prepare for exams, etc. and I think it helped. I ended the year with a B average.

Part Twenty-Five – A Trip Back to England

The next year, 1986, we decided to go back to England. I would be 65 that year and I wanted to sort out my pension, both from the paper and from the government. I already had some money in the bank in Wells and it would be a good opportunity to close the account.

We left around the 25^th of May and flew into Cardiff airport because it was close to Wells. We had arranged to rent a car for a month and we picked it up in downtown Cardiff. I had been feeling not all that great and by the time we got to the service centre just over the Severn Bridge, I was bushed. I sat in the parking lot while Joan got some coffee.

We went on to Wells where we had arranged to stay a few days with Gwen and Gordon McKenzie. Since we had returned to Canada they had moved out to Coxley, a little village between Wells and Glastonbury. While there I went to the bank in Wells and to the Wells Journal and renewed acquaintances. Another day we drove over to Shepton Mallet to visit Jill and Farhad Sharbahram who of course knew we were coming. We learned that one of the men that worked at the Journal had become a Baha’i in the meantime. When we arrived at Wells, I went on to the Prednisone and it seemed to help.

While in Wells, one day we went to Bath. I left Joan there while I took the train into London where I sold some of my stamps of Greece. I also visited the National Office at Rutland Gate and took the 4 o’clock train back to Bath. On our way out of Wells we stopped to visit Josie at the Rifleman Arms where Joan worked for awhile.

After a few days we set out. We drove south through Glastonbury and Street to the M5 and past Taunton. We left at Exeter and crossed the north boundary of Dartmor and entered Cornwall at Launcestor. We spent a short time at Jamaica Inn. From there we drove south to St. Austrel and then turned back east and visited the castle at Restormel, just outside Rostwithiel. From there we went via Liskeard and Tavistock through Dartmon and spent the night at a B & B at Boney Tracey.

The next day we went back via Exeter and drove along the south coast. We stopped for an hour or so in Lyme Regis, which we had visited several times before. From there we drove east through Dorchester and bypassed Boursemouth, Southampton and Portsmouth, through Chichuta and on to Brighton. Here we left the south coast and went to see the opera house at Glyndebourne near Lewen. There was a performance about to begin and we could see over the fence the patrons in their evening dresses strolling in the garden before the curtain went up. The theatre is located in an old manor house. We did not attend; as well as not being properly dressed, it was much too expensive.

We left there looking for somewhere to spend the night. We headed north towards London, confident that we would find a B & B somewhere along the route, but there were none. When we reached the M25 (the ring road around London), we decided to bypass the city and head out of the city to the north. We didn’t realize that we were on it going clockwise for over fifty miles before we left it. We came off at Enfield and drove north; the first place we came across was a pub in Ware. Joan went in and we managed to get the last room available. However, we were able to relax and a little after 8:30, we came down and had an excellent pub meal in the bar. The place was right on the highway and there were trucks going by all night long but we were tired enough that we slept well.

We headed the next day north east by back roads. We went through Sudbury to the pretty little town of Laverlan where we had a lunch. Then we went east where we by-passed Ipswich, took a “B” road north to Snape where, although it was a miserable drizzly day, we wandered around the place which was founded by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears and where many of their operas were first performed. As well as the Maltings which was now a theatre, there were master classes, piano workshops, and so on.

We did not go to the coast at Aldeburgh but headed northwest through Saxmundham where I had stayed one weekend, to Framlingham Castle. Then by back roads through Eye, and by-passing Norwich, spent the night at a B & B in West Rudham.

Next day we went to visit the royal residence at Sandringham. We did not go into the house but wandered in the garden and bought a souvenir booklet. From there we went on to King’s Lynn where we stopped in the centre of the town. It was pretty dead as it was Sunday afternoon and we drove out of the parking lot the wrong way on a one-way stretch but didn’t meet anybody. When we left there we crossed the Ouse River and headed straight for Granthan where we stayed for a couple of days with Tim and Lyn.

The following day we visited in the morning and in the afternoon we went to Tattersall Castle where I got a great picture of a peacock with its tail feathers spread; it seemed to do it on queue when its picture was about to be taken. The next day we decided to go to Skegnus. It was cold and windy and there were not many people at the Buttin’s there. Tim and I played a couple of games of snooker but a lot of the attractions were not open. Maybe it was too early in the season; it was the first week of June.

The third day we went over to Oakham to see if it had changed much in the past eight years. The only person we saw that we knew was Tony, the cobbler who was a member of the Baha’i community.

The next morning we set off fairly early and drove straight up the A1 as far as Wetherby where we turned off to the east. A few miles down this “B” road we came to the site of the civil war battle of Masston Moor. There was nothing there except a monument. We carried on from there by-passing the city of York to Castle Howard. This is one of the stateliest manor houses in England and was used in the TV series “Bridgehead Revisited”. It rained all the time we were there and were able to have a tour of the interior but had to forego the grounds. They had a shuttle service to the house from the parking lot.

The next place we went to was Riveaulx Abbey, one of the five large abbeys of Yorkshire which were looted during the reign of Henry VIII. It is situated in a kind of hollow and above it is a terrace with Greek styled temples at either end. There were not many people there as it was quite dull and drizzly most of the day. The walk to the terrace was quite a distance from the parking lot through the woods.

We decided to get a B & B in Ripon and it was here we had the unfortunate experience of getting some chicken in a restaurant that was unedible; Joan ended up with a hot dog we got from a street vendor.

The following day we went to visit Fountains Abbey. It is in a large park area and the abbey itself is a good mile from the parking lot. We had coffee in the visitor centre and set out. I was unable to walk the full distance to the abbey but we walked far enough that we were at least able to see it.

When we left there we headed north. We went by way of the interior avoiding the heavily traveled roads until we reached Hepham and got a B & B in Haydon Bridge, a quiet little town. We spent the night there and next day went to Hadrian’s Wall. We didn’t have time to go to the Roman town there but we drove along the wall and at one point walked a bit along the wall for a short time. We stopped at the Roman museum and saw a lot of artifacts, many things of which they keep on discovering. Joan bought a little model of a Roman soldier. From there we went on via Jedburgh to Gallashiels where we got a B & B. It was very nice so decided to stay two nights.

That evening it was quite nice out so we drove over to Melrose Abbey, made famous by Sir Walter Scott and where Robert Bruce’s heart is supposed to be buried.

The next morning we drove over to Keles and Coldstream and visited the church at Hodden Field, the battle site of the last battle on English soil between the Scots and English. From there we drove over to Holy Island, the site of a proxy and Castle of Lindiofarne. This is the place where the Vikings first raided the coast of Britain. We crossed to the island on a causeway so we had to return before high tide when the road is under water. Then we went to the town of Bamburgh which has one of the largest castles in the north west. It has been used in many films including “Mary Queen of Scots”. On the way back to Galashils we stopped at Floors Castle in Kelso. This castle is lived in and was used in the movie “Greystoke, the Legend of Tarzan”.

Next day before setting out we visited Abbotsford, just outside Galashiels, the home of Sir Walter Scott, and where his great granddaughter still lives. Much of his possessions are preserved there on the banks of the Tweed. We then drove north, by-passing Edinburgh and crossed the Forth Bridge. We drove north through Perth, past the ancient city of Scone and arrived in the early evening at Braemar, where some of the famous highland games are held. We stopped at a B & B, and went downtown for some pizza. I phoned Wendy Momen from a call box and we had a good chat. Back at the B & B we went into the common room where there were quite a few guests.

The next morning it was pouring rain. We set off east, past Braemar Castle and stopped at Balmoral Castle, another royal residence. In spite of the rain we walked the considerable distance to the house where we went through those parts of the castle open to visitors and had coffee in the coffee shop. Then we went north across the Recht, a ski area. The elevation is fairly high and we were surprised when the rain turned to snow – this is June! Coming back down it returned to rain and we stopped at Cawdor Castle. We didn’t go in as it was so wet.

When we turned back east it cleared up somewhat and we stopped at the Culloda battlefield, the last stand of Bonnie Prince Charlie. We only stopped at the visitor centre as it was so miserable and windy but we saw a film on the battles. From there we went on to Invernoss where we found a very nice B & B. The only other guests were a couple on leave from the Israeli army.

The following day we drove down the north shore of Loch Ness. The road is right on the edge of the loch but we didn’t see any monster. We left the loch at Glen Morriston and along the lonely road to Kyle of Lochalsh passing the castle of Eileen Donan, made famous in many photographs and paintings. We took the ferry on the short ride to the Isle of Skye and drove north as far as Poitree where Joan went to do some window shopping. We would have liked to drive on to Dunvegan but didn’t feel we had time. We returned to the mainland via Kylerhae over a rough track and took the ferry which does not run often and had to wait for it. The road came down a little grade over a hill and ended right on the edge of the water.

On the other side we stopped for coffee in a nice coffee shop, and then drove on to Invergarry where we stopped for the night. It was not a B & B so we had to drive up the road for food.

Next day we drove south, past Fort William to Ballachulish where instead of crossing at the bridge we drove all the way around Loch Leven to the village of Kinlochleven, and down the other side. We stopped at the Glencoe visitor centre. Glen Coe was the site of a great museum at one time but is now a ski centre. From there down Loch Linnhe to Dunstaffuage, where the Orkney underwent a refit back in 1945, and we stopped and toured the castle there.

We then drove through Oban south as far as Lochgelphead and back north to Inveraray. We didn’t arrange B & B’s there so we went on to Arrochar at the head of Loch Lamond. The next morning we went back to Inveraray and stopped at the castle. It is a kind of fairy tale type castle and it is where Rudolph Hess was kept during World War II. Down the west shore of Loch Lamond to Dumbarton where we crossed the bridge over the Clyde and on to Greenoch and Gourock but couldn’t find the place where we lived or where I was stationed that last year. We stopped for lunch at Longs, and then drove on past Ayr to Culgean Castle. This is where Gen. Eisenhower had apartments during the war, where he lived when he could find the time, then down the coast past Ballantrae. We could see the island of Ailsa Craig out in the Firth of Clyde. We stopped for the night in Newton Stewart.

In the morning we drove to Castle Douglas where we had coffee and on to Dunfries where we took a side trip through Lockerbie to Ecclefechan, the home of Thomas Carlyle whose most famous work was the History of the French Revolution. We visited the house and then west on to Gretna Green, which at one time was a favourite destination for English couples who wanted to get married in a hurry. They still capitalize on this heritage although is no longer serving that purpose. We crossed back into England and stopped at Keswich where we stayed for two nights.

The next day we went back towards Penrith and drove down the shore of Ullseater till we came to the visitor centre at Windermere. We had coffee or coke there and then to Leven House where there was an exhibition of the work of Beatrix Porter who wrote her Peter Rabbit books near here.

On our way back to Keswich we stopped at Dove Cottage, where William Wordsworth and his sister lived for a time and where he entertained other past friends.

The next day we drove down the west side of Lake Windermere and then drove around Coniston Water. We then headed for the M6 through Kendal and headed south. The weather turned quite warm. The M6 enabled us to by-pass Birmingham and apart from a short side trip to visit the battle site of Edgehill, arrived at Banberry for the night. We went downtown in Banberry for dinner. It was here we had a slight accident with the car backing out of the B & B driveway.

The next day we went into Woodstock and spent the morning at Blenheim Palace, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Marlborough. From there we went to Moreton-in-the-Marsh and Bourton-on-the-Hill where we stopped as there was a kind of fair going on. We then headed for the M40 through Broadway and stopped at Rose-on-Wye for coffee. Leaving there we came down through Monmouth to join the M4 at Newport which we left to drive into Llandli and found a B and B at Pembreg where we stayed for 2 nights.

The following day we visited Kidwelly Castle and then went to the tip of Wales through Carmarthon and Haverford west to St. Davids, the cathedral city of Wales. We visited the cathedral and Bishops Palace which was at the bottom of a hill. From there we went to Fishguard where we watched the Sealink Ferry setting out for Ireland and saw a couple of young people struggling with a sailboard. We stopped on the way back to Pembrey at Cardigan for coffee.

In the morning we visited the local park before setting out for Brecon. We went via Llandovery and spent some time finding Jeremy and Christine’s house which was off the main road between Brecon and Sunnybridge. We spent the evening there but had to sleep on the floor downstairs as their daughter had chicken pox. In the afternoon of the next day we set out for Cardiff over the Brecon Beacons to Merthyr Tydfil and Pontypridd. We spent the night at a motel there and returned the rental car and took a taxi to the airport where we left for home the next day. We caught the Robert Q airbus back to London.

Part Twenty-Six – Holidays in Ontario, Alberta and B.C.

The next year we had planned to take a long trip around Ontario going up to Hearst and across to Cochrane but it didn’t pan out. We set off okay and drove part way along the lake shore through Kincardine and Southampton. We stopped for the night in Wiarton at a motel just to the north of the town. The next day we drove along the shore of Georgian Bay, over near Cape Croker and stopped in Lions Head where Joan and Rita had stayed back in the sixties. We caught the afternoon ferry to Manitoulin at Tobermory and stayed the night in a motel on a hill in Little Current. While there we decided not to on with our original plan for some reason, and as near as I can remember we returned home going around Georgian Bay.

On our way home we stopped at St. Marie-among-the-Huron at Midland. We had been here once before when the U.W.O. was excavating the site. It has now been completely restored and is quite impressive.

The next year was 1988 and by this time, Linda and Jack were living in Vancouver. They invited us to visit them so we set out on May 12^th by Airbus to Toronto where we caught the plane to Calgary. Paul met us at the airport and we went straight to Innisfail where he was living now. The next day we took a drive around Innisfail, saw the dam and went to the mall. That evening we met Laddi’s sister.

On the Saturday we picked up Michael who was living with Debbie in Calgary and went for a drive to Banff and Lake Louise which was still frozen. It was quite cold in the mountains. We drove along the secondary road rather than the Trans Canada and saw lots of elk and mountain goats, as well as a couple of wolves. We drove on up to where the spiral tunnels of the railway are over Rogers Pass. On the way home we stopped for supper in Banff.

On Sunday we spent the day at the Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, the dinosaur capital of Canada, and also saw where the original dinosaur find was made. On Monday he brought us into Calgary where we boarded a bus for Vancouver. The first stop was Canmore and at Banff picked up some lifesavers. Lunch was at Golden. There was a coffee break at Revelstoke and supper was in Kamloops. We drove down the Coquehalla, a fairly new road and had coffee at Hope. Jack and Linda met us at the bus depot.

On Tuesday we didn’t do anything as we were quite tired. Not until Wednesday did we go out and Jack was able to borrow a car for us from the dealership where he worked.

The next day it rained but we went to the planetarium. On Thursday in the morning we went to Queen Elizabeth Park and the arboretum there. On Friday we drove across the Lions Gate Bridge and up Howe Sound as far as Squamish. We were there a few hours after lunch and on the way back we stopped at Horseshoe Bay.

Saturday we took Linda to Burnaby Mall and on Sunday went downtown to Gastown; it rained all day. The next day we went to the University of British Columbia to visit the Museum of Anthropology. The building itself was closed but we could see through the windows. Outside in the grounds were several Haida buildings and totem poles. We drove around the campus and back along English Bay. In the evening the five of us (including Lori) went to play bingo but none of us won anything. We had been here a week by this time.

On Tuesday morning we took the ferry to Vancouver Island from Tsawwassan, just south of Vancouver airport; the ferries do not go from Vancouver itself anymore. After passing through the Gulf Islands we reached Sydney where we had lunch. On the way to Victoria we stopped a few hours at Butchart Gardens which are well known all over. We got a motel in Esquimalt for two nights. We drove to the Naval Base where I was stationed at the beginning of the war but nothing was familiar.

Next day we went to downtown Victoria. We visited Miniature World in the Empress Hotel and parked for a few minutes on the harbour where there was a good view of the Parliament Buildings. We then drove around Beacon Hill Park and then out to Oak Bay and the Marine Drive to Uplands.

Thursday morning we drove north out of Victoria and made our first stop at Shawnigan Lake where the Baha’i School is. We were treated to a tour but there were no classes as it was not quite ready to be opened. Some of the buildings were not quite ready. We stopped later for coffee in Duncan. We got lost just past Ladysmith while looking for the Petraglyph Park. We arrived in Nanaimo in time for the ferry which we took back to Horseshoe Bay where we had dinner before returning to Vancouver. We were tired so the next day we stayed in and did not go anywhere.

On Saturday we went back to the planetarium to pick up some gifts. Then we took a drive around the grounds of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby.

On Sunday the 29^th Jack took Lori to Victoria for a day. I took Linda to work in the morning and at two o’clock we picked her up and went for a drive up to Capilano Canyon; it is all commercialized now. We didn’t go on the swinging bridge. We came back to Vancouver on the Narrows Bridge.

Next day we didn’t do much except take a walk. In the evening when Jack and Lori returned he took us all up Grouse Mountain in the cable car where we had dinner (very expensive) – but magnificent views over the city.

On Tuesday we went to Stanley Park and after awhile we crossed the Lions Gate Bridge to Park Royal Mall in West Vancouver. It was the first mall in Canada. We stayed home in the evening while Jack and Linda went to play bingo.

Wednesday it rained but the three of us went downtown to Chinatown. We visited some shops and tried to get coffee in a shop but they only served tea. We visited the Sun Yat Sen Gardens before returning home.

Next day we all had breakfast out and then went to Burnaby Mall again. When we came home Jack took us to the Maritime Museum. When we came home we got packed and Jack and Linda took us to the bus station. We decided to return to Calgary by the Kettle Valley route which takes longer.

The first stop was at Hope where we had coffee, then Princeton and Penticton where we had breakfast. Then Grand Forks for coffee break and lunch at Rossland. Stops then were at Trail, Creston and Cranbrook to Radium Hot Springs. Paul met us in Calgary. We had supper on Saturday and in Calgary on Sunday where we visited the museum. We left Calgary by plane on Monday.

Part Twenty-Seven – Side Trips Around Ontario and a Trip to Winnipeg

During the fall Tim visited us; since leaving Waterloo where we had visited him he had worked in White River and then gone on to North Bay. The next spring we decided to visit him where he had a job as a bartender at the Golf Club. We stopped off at Reinette’s on the way and got as far as Parry Sound that night. We went on to North Bay the next day after picking up a map at the Chamber of Commerce.

Tim gave us a tour of the hotel where he worked where we had ginger ale on the house. The next day we drove to Algonquin Park where we went into the park at Keosh on the north side, and later to Callander. In the morning I discovered I had a flat tire so I had to have it repaired. Then we took a 3-hour cruise on Lake Nipissing to Callander and back. That evening Tim treated us to a meal at the hotel and I remember I had venison for the first time.

On Saturday after 3 days, we left, stopping for toast and coffee at Mattova, and stopping for the night at Perth. The next day we went on to Gananoque where we stayed two nights. On Monday we took a cruise to the Thousand Islands which took up most of the day. We had lunch on the boat.

The next day we set out for home. After having lunch at Presqu’isle Park we arrived back in London via Guelph where we had dinner, Stratford and home.

Next year we didn’t take a long holiday but made several one-day tours in the area. One weekend we did go away and stayed at a motel in Kingsville. The first day we spent at Point Pelee National Park where we went down to the point and also walked around the marsh on the boardwalk. The next day we went on to Amherstburg where we spent some time at Fort Malden, part of which has been restored. We returned home via Highway 2 along Lake St. Clair, Chatham, Moraintown and home.

Another day we went to Dresden where we visited the Uncle Tom’s Cabin Museum. Then we went on and drove around Walpole Island. On another occasion we went to Brantford where we spent some time at the Bell Homestead. Then we went on to the Iroquois Museum and the Chapel of the Mohawks. We drove from there to the Six Nations Reserve where we visited the Pauline Johnson home. It is in a badly dilapidated condition and needs restoration. We came home through the town of Oshwehendad on the Reserve.

On another occasion we drove to Norwich and Otterville where they have an old water mill on Otter Creek and also an herb garden. Another time we drove up through Kitchener to St. Jacobs, Elora and Fergus. We visited the covered bridge at West Montrose in Mennonite country.

We also did some of the London Free Press Shunfibre tours which we had collected but not taken. Some of these included the Longwood Conservatory area and an interesting windmill near Goderich. We generally stuck to back roads where there was less traffic. We often visited places like Bayfield and Port Stanley as well as Sparta, Port Bruce and Port Burwell.

The next year, 1991, we were invited to visit Tim in Winnipeg. It was late August and very hot. We didn’t get away until ten o’clock so we only got as far as Cheboygan, Michigan. The next day, after crossing the Mackinac Bridge, we stopped at a small village for some great lemon pie. We had lunch at a picnic area on Lake Superior near Marquette. We spent the night near Ashland. The next day we went through Duluth and stopped on the other side at Starving Marvin’s, a truck stop, for coffee. Stopped at Bemidji for groceries and went on to Grand Forks, which we overshot and had to turn around and come back to get the last motel room. After breakfast we stopped at Pembina on the Manitoba border for some duty free and here we damaged the tailpipe on a speed bump and had to wait an hour for repairs. Stopped for lunch at St. Jean Baptiste and arrived in Winnipeg around four. On Saturday, Paul, Laddi and Linda arrived from Alberta. They stayed at a motel and we all had brunch on Sunday morning and Tim and I went back to the house while the others went down to the Forks.

That evening Joan and Paul had a confrontation which had a bad effect on Joan which still exists. Monday we did nothing and on Tuesday we took Tim up to Gimli, the old Icelandic settlement on Lake Winnipeg. The next day we had breakfast at Tim’s work place – still extremely hot out.

We set out for home on Thursday and stopped at the visitor centre at the Ontario-Manitoba border. We stopped early at Kenora.

The next night we stopped at Uppsala. We bypassed Thunder Bay and got as far as Marathon. The next morning we stopped at the White River Café where Tim worked for awhile; also stopped at Wawa info centre. In Lake Superior Provincial Park where we stopped so Joan could make a sketch. We stayed the night at Batchawana Bay. The next day we got as far as Little Current.

We arrived at the ferry but there was no room and had to wait for the four o’clock sailing. We left the car in line so we would not miss the next one and had to spend six hours on a cold and rainy day. Joan walked around the town several times while I stayed put; we were on this ferry at twenty to four. The crossing was quite rough and Joan spent the trip in the washroom along with several others. After arriving at Tobermory, we went straight on to Wiarton where we had a bit of supper, and on to Wingham for coffee at ten o’clock. It poured all the way home where we arrived at 11:30.

The next year, 1992, we had a fair amount of company, so we were only able to get away for a short holiday. We decided to go back to Gananoque and we set out in that direction. We took the northern route and stopped to visit Reinette on the way. That evening we stayed at a motel just outside Orangeville and the next day went into Kleinburg, a very pretty town just north of Toronto where we spent a couple of hours at the McMichael Art Gallery where they have an extensive collection of Canadian paintings, most notably the work of the Group of Seven and Emily Carr.

Coming out of there it started to rain and it poured. We stopped in King City for coffee and continued east. The rain didn’t let up and the forecast wasn’t good so we stopped for the night in Norwood where we had stayed before. The next day we turned back and decided to go to Huntsville driving up the east side of Lake Simcoe through Minden and Dorset. We stayed at the same resort we had many years before when we had rented a cabin on the lake. This time there was a motel and we took several drives around the area. After three or four days we set out for home.