Inspired by Anne’s account of her family.
First my Uncle Pete and Aunt Helen and family. My Uncle Pete was born in 1915 in Kazakhstan (According to his obituary. This is the first I heard that)He arrived in Canada with his family.His son Bob told me that once as a young boy he travelled to Moose Jaw with his grandfather (or was it his father?). They arrived at a hotel to do some business. Suddenly there was flurry of activity. People were running around hiding things. Shortly afterwards the police showed up and conducted an inspection to see if there were alcoholic beverages there. They didn’t find any.The old man asked what was going on. Someone explained to him that they paid a certain amount of money each month so they could be warned of liquor raids. The old man turned and said, “Peter, in this country it’s all about money.” (Something like that. It was probably in Plautdietsch, Low German as spoken by Mennonites.Uncle Pete grew up thinking about money and how to make it. He was perhaps the richest person among our immediate relatives, later rivalled by Uncle Jake.One of my earliest memories of him is on Sunday mornings, when we drove in to church. We’d see Uncle Pete on the doorstep of a modest duplex, collecting the rent.He did not go into farming as my father and my Uncle Jake did. He went into retail, early on in Canal Flats and later in Vancouver where he sold roasted chestnuts in Stanley Park.In 1956, in Chilliwack, he and another uncle launched P & E Building Supplies. There was a building boom about that time and they did well.Owning a building supply firm was a good fit with building apartment blocks, which Uncle Pete proceeded to do.
If the younger Uncle Pete was anything like his sons, he was a very assertive person. (His daughter is somewhat younger than me and I don’t know her as well). My dad told me of an occasion when he, his older brother Jake, and Uncle Pete were travelling on the Hope Princeton highway. Uncle Pete was driving and Dad and Uncle Jake were alarmed by his driving. They could not change his driving and they ended up out of the car and on foot. I’m not sure how they ultimately got home.
His sons took after him. At the memorial for Bob we were told that as a small child he was fearful that he might be bullied by others. His solution to that was to attack everyone around him when he went out on the street. Bob sometimes played hooky and if he was at home when Vice-Principal Bayfield called, he would pretend to be his father and tell Mr. Bayfield that he was a busy man and he didn’t want to be bothered. Bob explained to me that if you were in line at a university administrative office, you should hold up a small piece of pink or yellow paper to indicate to others that you were cutting ahead of the line for a legitimate reason, even if you didn’t have such a reason. Bob told me that the older son used to say to his father, “Just wait until I”m sixteen.” And when he did become sixteen he took up weightlifting and could no longer be physically punished by his father. In fact, I was told that his father sometimes had to lock himself in the bathroom to avoid being beaten. I think I was 11 years old when my Dad told me that Bob had punched his father and left. For a time, Bob went to Edmonton to live with his Uncle Johnny (another side of the family). I remember Dad commenting that Uncle Pete must have a constitution of iron.
Bob recalled that as a boy, his father would drop him off at the cattle auction. Sometimes calves would be on auction. The restaurant buyers, Jewish men from Vancouver, wanted to keep a good relationship with the farmers and not rip them off for short term gain. So if they were not interested in a calf they would simply signal each other and not bid. So Bob would step forward and bid 50¢. Later his dad would pick him up with the calf in the back of the car, take it home, feed it and raise it until it could be sold for a profit.
The older son liked to argue. I remember family picnics at Cultus Lake. My dad would argue against evolution and my cousin for it. Decades later I learned that on the way back to UBC he would argue with Mr Hooge, one of my junior high school teachers. Except now he would argue against evolution while Mr. Hooge defended it.
I have many positive recollections of this family. Howard told me that once, when he was about 15 he was on the road hitching a ride, when who should pull over but Uncle Pete. Howard looked pretty scruffy and had the words Fuck Censorship on the back of his jacket. This did not prevent Uncle Pete from insisting that he come home with him and calling out to Aunt Helen, “Look who’s here!”
When Uncle Pete died I was living in Edmonton. I sent a letter of condolence to Aunt Helen. As an avid read I had learned from Dear Abby or Ann Landers that such a letter should recall happy times together. So that’s what I talked about in my card. Aunt Martha told me that Aunt Helen again and again picked up that card to read it.
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Love this story. It reminded me of some interesting things from our childhood.