Once Upon A Time...Long, Long Ago...

I've spent the past three days immersed in the past - my past.  My sister, Wendy, is working on a project and needs pictures.  I've become the unofficial keeper of the pictorial history of our family so she naturally turned to me.  I have hundreds, even thousands, of pictures - all of Mum's photo albums were given to me when she went into long term care.  So when Wendy asked me to make her  disk of pictures and bring it to her in Winnipeg at the end of the month, I got started.  Most of the pictures are treasures only to our family but some have interesting stories attached to them.  I'll share a few of those here.  If nothing else it's fun to see the fashions that real people wore back in the early days of the 20th century.



Grandad was a hunter and trapper when he wasn't working at the Cariboo gold mine in Nova Scotia. He returned from one of his hunting trips, so we were told, with this baby moose.  Noone ever said what happened to its mother.  Grandad decided to keep it and nourish it back to health.  He notified the Dept. of Lands and Forests, or some such thing, and had permission to do so as long as he released it when the time was right.  The moose became quite a pet and attracted visitors from the neighboring village and as far away as Halifax.  This all happened in the late 1920s.  Mum was just a child at the time but when writing her life story many years later she included the story of this moose.  Aside from the moose though, just look at the clothes the young ladies are wearing - definitely 1920s garb, especially the headwear.  One of the girls from Halifax was Grandad's sister.  The woman at the moose's head is his wife, my Grandmother. Mum would have been 7 or 8 at the time.

These little girls are about one and a half and two and a half.  The little one sitting on the trike is me, with Wendy standing on the back.  This has become a family classic.  I have a similar picture of my two oldest daughters on a trike when they're 3 and 4, and one of them has a picture of her two daughters in the same pose. 

Mum and Dad's wedding portrait in the church doorway, Halifax, NS.  I still have the slip Mum hand sewed to wear under the dress - it was too small for either me or Wendy to wear.  The dress was her sister-in-laws so she have it back to her.  They had a nice wedding but Mum was always embarassed that she forgot to invite the Minister and his wife to the reception.  This was August 10, 1946.

That contraption Wendy is in was called a BabeeTenda.  It was a fold-up table with a section in the middle that could be converted to a seat where the baby was put for safe keeping and playing.  I remember seeing this around even after I had outgrown it.  This picture must have been taken around the time I was born.  Wendy and are are 8 days short of a year apart.  It always bugged her that for eight days of the year I insisted I was the same age as her.  I was Pat the Brat, remember.

This picture was taken not long after we got Ken.  He was 9 months old when we adopted him and Wendy and I took an immediate motherly interest in him. Notice the hair bows and ringlets in our hair? We have lots of pictures of the two of us back then and we always had ringlets and hair bows...and wore dresses.  Mum used to say my ringlets lasted for about 5 minutes while Wendy's stayed good all day.

This is Mum in 1944 or 45 when she was working at the Ministry of War Transport in Halifax during the Second World War.  She didn't meet Dad till the war was over and he came home from overseas with her brothers and cousins who were in the same battallion as he was.  He knew that his buddies had seven sisters and used to threaten to marry one of them when he got home.  We're all glad he did!

This picture, taken in 1950 is the earliest color picture we have.  It had become dark and yellow with age but with the magic of computer editing, I was able to give it a truer color. You'll notcethe hair bow again, although Wendy's has been replaced by two perfect curls!

Dad, just after the war, 1945 or 46.  I always thought he looked like Fred Astaire, although he hated dancing.  Whenever I watch an old Fred Astaire movie I think of Dad.

Wendy and I with Dad's mother (we called her Nanny) around 1953 or 54.  We used to travel to Nova Scotia every summer to visit her.  She loved her grandchildren and always had a bowl of scotch mints on her piano for us.  She had what we called 'sugar diabetes' and I was always so impressed that she was able to give herself needles.  She died of a heart attack when I was 10.  I was named after her, Millicent.  Mum wasn't too fond of that name so I was always called by my middle name, Pat.  I have learned to love the name though, mostly because it belonged to someone who meant a great deal to me when I was very young.  (see the bows and ringlets again).

Back before PETA when women were allowed, and encouraged, to wear fur, Mum bought herself this lovely fur coat...she said it was muskrat...I didn't like the sound of that, but the fur was lovely and soft and long.  I remember her telling us how mad she was that she didn't wait another week before buying it as it went on sale then. Nevertheless, she wore that coat for years.  I remember seeing it (and putting it on) when I was a teenager.  I don't know whatever happened to it.  I'm the baby she's holding so this would be the winter of 1948.

Moving forward, this is our family in 1965 - the year Wendy graduated from high school.  Of course, I followed the next year.  I loved those outfits we were wearing.  Although you can't see them, we had straight skirts of the same tartan that the sweaters were trimmed with.  Mine was Prince Edward Island tartan - browns, yellow, green - and Wendy's was New Brunswick tartan - red yellow blue. 

Well, I think that's enough for now.  I still have a stack of pictures to scan so will get back to it.  Hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane.

Pat