I met up with the family in Banff. I was waiting as arranged on Banff Ave, just over the bridge when Dad pulled up with George, Agnes and Sandy, and I jumped into the car with them. We were off on our trip across the country. Destination: Ripley, Ontario.
Dad had told us that if we went with him to visit Aunt Peggy (Grandad’s second wife) in Ontario, Grandad was going to give us some of our inheritance early (see “The Liberal Candidate” for a further discussion of this topic). I believed him; otherwise, I might not have gone. In the summer of 1969, there were more interesting things to do than visit elderly relatives in Ontario. Maybe Dad believed the early inheritance story too although it’s hard looking back to see the logic of it. At any rate, he projected enthusiasm about the idea. Probably, Grandad and Aunt Peggy, who was also his hometown first cousin, wanted to cheer Dad up and felt they were doing something nice for us enabling us to have a holiday and learn more about our McDonald heritage.
Mom and Dad’s divorce was in process. Earlier in the spring, Mom had stayed in Haney, making a new life with Bob and Priscilla and the rest of us had been living with Dad (George and I temporarily) in Kerrisdale in Vancouver. I had been doing the household management -grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning and and being an audience for Dad’s protracted fantasies and rants rants, so I didn’t have a summer job or any money. Inspired by George, we adopted a macrobiotic diet, which saved Dad quite a bit of grocery money. Everyday I walked down 41st Ave and bought fresh vegetables and a piece of fish to cook with the brown rice. At that point, getting some inheritance money, so I could move on sounded like an excellent idea.
A week earlier I had taken the Greyhound out to Lethbridge to visit my friend Verena, who I had worked with in Banff a few summers earlier. She had a job as a youth worker on the federal youth employment project. Her job was to hang out with teenagers, like me she was 21, and influence them away from drugs. After her work hours, though, marijuana didn’t count. After that visit, I took the bus to Banff and stayed the first night in the youth hostel. I revisited some of my favourite places in Banff and wandered through the Banff cemetery, but I didn’t find Uncle Gillis’ grave. The next night, I found my way to the itinerant youth camp, either to save money – I couldn’t have had much – or just out of a sense of adventure. I watched the stars come out around a campfire with the other travelling youth, heard stories – someone said Jesus had returned and they’d met him travelling on the road and I slept crammed into a tent with about six other travellers. The next morning, I walked over to Banff Avenue and hopped in the car when Dad pulled up.
We went right through Alberta without even a stop in Drumheller, which was surprising for Dad. We were taking the Trans Canada, so went south east through to Medicine Hat. George, Agnes and I were walking down the main drag in Medicine Hat when some tough guys started to follow us making threatening comments because George had long hair, but we made it back to the car safely.
I don’t remember stopping for tourist destinations and George and I probably did some of the driving. I remember going through Winnipeg, where we might have stopped to visit someone Dad knew, then on to Northern Ontario through some grim industrial towns. We stopped for lunch beside Lake Superior and I dipped my hand into the water and discovered how cold the lake was. Then on and on until through forests that seemed stunted compared to BC’s. We turned off the Trans Canada and headed down to Huron County and finally arriving in the small town of Ripley, our destination, at Peggy’s family cottage on the shore of Lake Huron.
Our grandfather, (MM McDonald or Mac) had grown up in Ripley, one of the four sons of the lighthouse keeper, who was also a grain dealer. Grandad’s most famous story was of the Great Lakes storm storm of 1913, when eight ships had sunk in Lake Huron and bodies washed up on the shore for days. The other story that fascinated us as children was his story about the ghost carriage – a horse and carriage that could sometimes be seen rounding a corner of a wooded area in the distance, but then would simply disappear. Grandad said he hadn’t believed it until one day, he saw it himself.
Aunt Peggy (Martyn) was Grandad’s first cousin, thirteen years his junior, whose father had been the undertaker among other things. She told us as a girl, she was terrified when she would be told to go get something from the food barrels stored in the dark cellar because the corpses were also stored there. Maybe that did something to her. She had been educated as a high school teacher and had had Lester Pearson as a university history tutor. The way she talked we thought she had had a long career as a high school teacher, but she only taught for a few years because women lost their jobs when they got married. During World War II, she worked for the Censorship Board in Ottawa. Her first husband died in the fifties. Then a few years after our grandmother died, Grandad came home from visiting family in Ripley with a new wife, his cousin Peggy, who we’d never met before. Our private reactions ranged from surprise to shock.
Peggy spent the summers back in Ontario visiting the family. Grandad was flying down later in the summer and would drive back with her in the car. There wasn’t a lot to do for teens and young adults in Ripley. We were taken to visit relatives we had heard about, but I had trouble keeping them and their nicknames all straight. One I remember was the Canadian opera singer Jon Vickers, who’d married one of Peggy’s nieces.
Ripley and Kincardine, the neighbouring town in Huron county, were where our ancestors had settled in the 1840’s with a group of Scottish people, who were essentially refugees from the clearances on the Isle of Lewis. Huron county must have had a strict Calvinist tradition because in 1969, it was still a dry county. There were no alcohol sales or bars. On Friday evening we got to go “downtown” to participate in the weekly entertainment, watching the men’s pipe band march down the street playing their bagpipes. It was not really my thing, but I was a polite guest. When we were ready to go, Peggy took one look at me in my standard outfit of jeans and blouse and ordered me to change my outfit. “Your grandfather has a good reputation in this town!”, she cried. “You cannot go downtown wearing jeans!” I cooperated with no doubt a side rolling of my eyes.
Another day, Peggy drove us to the Pickering Nuclear Power Plant for an outing. We didn’t have a tour or anything, if such things were even possible. We were parked in a parking lot and perhaps read an explanatory sign. She gave us a treat, a roll of multi-flavored lifesavers insisting that George – 18 and I – 21, divide the lifesavers up equally with Agnes and Sandy too, so that all of us got a fair amount. On the way back, I think we stopped to see a place that made furniture. Peggy really liked furniture.
I don’t know where Dad was during all of these exciting events. We were all going to go to Toronto to see some more relatives and Dad was going to leave/desert us. We were taking him to the plane to fly back to Vancouver. We’d only been on the road to Toronto a little while when Peggy insisted on stopping for coffee and pie at a rural crossroads. The homemade fruit pie was very good, but Dad was impatient to get going and when Peggy insisted on ordering a second piece of pie, he got up and strode off to the car, but in his agitation, he didn’t notice that he was walking through a plate glass door. He broke it and slashed an artery in his leg open. We were twenty miles from the nearest hospital. As the oldest with a driver’s license, I took the wheel and drove about 90 miles an hour while Peggy used her first aid skills to rip up some piece of clothing and apply a tourniquet to Dad’s thigh. We made it to the emergency department in time. Dad survived.
When we finally got to Toronto, we stayed at Peggy’s house in Etobicoke. There we went to visit other relatives, many of whom were teachers our parents’ age or older. One evening we went out on a subway line to visit some relatives that included two young women about my age. I asked them what they did in Toronto and where they went downtown, but they said it was dangerous on the subway, so they didn’t go out much. at night.
On July 21, 1969, we were in downtown Toronto, on an escalator going up to the Eaton’s furniture department (of course) when we saw people gathered around a TV. Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and said, “One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” Nixon came on the TV and George and I couldn’t help laughing at him. Peggy was moved to tears and was not amused by our behaviour.
The visit dragged on a little while longer. I’m not sure if us kids discussed it ahead of time, but as the oldest, I was the one who, one evening, hesitantly brought up the topic of the money we were going to be given. I asked Peggy if I could have mine because I was planning on going to Montreal soon. She exploded in shock, “your grandfather wouldn’t hear of you doing that alone! I couldn’t possibly allow that!” There was no more mention of the money. For a day or two, I was thinking that even thought I had no money, I might just take my pack say goodbye quickly and hitchhike to Montreal. As it turned out, maybe I couldn’t handle scene that would have ensued; maybe I just had some sense, but youth did things like that in 1969.
George had been planning to go to Woodstock, and fifteen-year-old Agnes was going to go with him, which shows I wasn’t the only one who believed that we were going to be given money. Now I wonder what we were planning to do with poor ten-year old Sandy? Leave him with Peggy for the summer or send him home alone? I guess we figured that was the adults’ responsibility. In retrospect, I suspect “the part of our inheritance money” might have been a misunderstanding. All Grandad had intended to do was to pay for our plane fares home, which he did.
When we finally set off for the plane – to go to Vancouver – there was a terrible Eastern thunderstorm. It was the first time I had city experience of thunder crashing so loudly nearby and the first time I was to fly on a plane. I was visibly nervous. As she was bidding us farewell at the departure gate, Peggy assured me that I shouldn’t worry because if the plane crashed and we died, it would be God’s will. I didn’t find that helpful. Once seated, the plane taxied for about half an hour before it finally took off with lightening still striking nearby. I tried to be brave for ten-year-old Sandy, who was sitting beside me, but in truth, it was the beginning of my fear of flying.
I never met any of those relatives again. I hear Toronto has changed immensely since 1969, but I’ve never set foot in it again except to change planes at Pearson airport on my way to and from Havana. Montreal, on the other hand, I’ve gotten to know. I’ve enjoyed visiting six times, but it was probably better to wait until my Quebecois friend, Diane, was there to welcome me to her home and show me the full delights of the city, complete with translation.
My God! A severed artery. I can’t imagine how you maintained enough calm to drive the car to the hospital. I guess Aunt Peggy’s first aid skills were very useful. What a trip. I can’t imagine a fifteen year old girl heading off to Woodstock with her slightly older brother as a chaperone. And after that visit, I’m not surprised you’ve never set foot in Toronto again. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have.
Agnes said that she had planned to go to Woodstock herself although she hadn’t really thought about how to get there. She wasn’t sure that George had planned on taking her.