Ola Muriel Brumwell (neé Mulligan): 1894-1974

My mother Ola was born in Omemee, Ontario near Peterborough to George Mulligan and Effie Maude (nee Turner). George was said to have been a pattern maker who worked for the Quaker Oats Company in Peterborough. He was also a lay minister with a Methodist church He also played the church organ on Sunday. Somewhere in the family archive, there is a group picture of him conducting the combined Peterborough choirs for the visiting Duke and Duchess of York in Toronto in 1901. They had five children - I think- three girls, Helen ,Gladys and Ola, and two boys- Wallace and Vincent. Ola told me that she hated her given name, from the Old Testament I think and wished she had a “ nice” name like sister Helen.

Effie Maude and George Mulligan

Effie Maude Mulligan, my grandmother

My mother, Ola is at the upper left

The family were very close and the kids grew up in a fairly strict household: studies, church, choir. Old pictures of picnics, canoeing, dress up parties are preserved. None went to post secondary education as far as I know. However young Vincent attended a bible college in Chicago and returned aligned with the Plymouth Brethren. He later joined the army as a non-combatant and was killed as a stretcher bearer at Passchendaele at age 21 in 1917. It was said that his mother finished her life in mourning and never smiled again.

Uncle Vincent and friend

Uncle Vincent's grave in Nine Elms Cemetery, Popperinge, Belgium

When the kids finished school they were expected to go out to work to help with finances. At some point she trained for and became proficient in signing language for the deaf. I don’t know what she expected to do with this skill. Ola at age 17 or 18 went to work in the office of an old Peterborough department store which suddenly collapsed when under renovation. There were injuries. There is an old newspaper account where they reported Miss Ola Mulligan crawling out of the wreckage disheveled, covered in dust but unhurt. I’m not sure how or when Alex and Ola connected. It has been said somewhere that although she had boy friends she was afraid of being a spinster what with her sisters and girl friends were all getting married. I don’t know where this came from or whether it’s true and this pushed her relationship with dad. Anyhow they married in Peterborough in the family home in December, 1917, just a month after her brother, Vincent, was killed in the war.

Newlyweds Alex and Ola, my mother and father arrive in Loverna

Shortly after, Alex and her went homesteading in Saskatchewan. My dad was an energetic outdoor jack of all trades. He needed all of them to meet the challenges that were to come. The First World War was was raging but the farmers were the last to be involved because they were required for food production.

Cancer

My dad was a chain smoker. He rolled his own. One large green can of Ogden’s fine cut per week. He rarely had a cigarette out of his mouth and the house was rarely free of a smog of smoke. I think the pressures of long hours of exhausting farm work with a reduced number of hired farm hands contributed as it did with his increased drinking as he war went on. The volume of visiting hunters dwindled especially since shotgun and rifle ammunition was unobtainable except for the farmers who were allowed cases of shot gun shells for protection agains the masses of ducks and geese who could clean an oat or barley quarter section almost over night. A few of these shells would be rationed out to some of his closed friends so they could have a hunt. I recall one incident where a field was over run with these birds and dad flushed them up and emptied his full load of five shots from his shot gun into the flock blackening the sky. We picked up almost sixty mallards which were distributed to folks in town and non shooting families in the neighbourhood. 

In happier times at the farm. Left to right: me, Mother, Dad, Jean and Uncle Wally

Dad always had a morning cough and spit. In 1942 he noticed an enlarging lump under the right side of his jaw. One of his close friends was the manager of International Harvester the company that provided farm equipment. He insisted that dad go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester USA where he had connections. This was considered to be the top hospital anywhere so dad went, I think, by himself. I don’t recall how he got there- likely the train but maybe by car. The lump was removed and found to be a spread (metastasis) from what turned out from a lung cancer. He was only in his early fifties. Apparently there was no treatment initiated, prescribed or suggested or maybe he declined There was probably none to offer in those days. When he came home he was tight lipped as far as the family was concerned. I could see a change in him. Drinking more. Morose. Declining interest in the farm.  In the following year he put the farm up for sale and it sold quickly. The plan was slowly revealed. He, my mother and I would move to Victoria. He wanted her to be off the farm and locate in an urban area where she could sing in a choir and develop an independent secure life. 

They had visited Victoria and she loved it. So in October of 1944 away we went. He had arranged to buy a nearly completed small house on Lovat Avenue in Saanich, a Victoria suburb. It was near schools and really an ideal set up with its big lot. We were able to move right in on arrival. I was in grade eight and registered at Mount View high school about a twenty minute walk from the house. But that’s another story. 

Tragedy 1942

Early in the war the government in consultation with our Allies established the Commonwealth Air Training Program designed to train aspiring air crews for service in the European war. Scores of young “ groovy” guys descended on southern Alberta and the training establishments near Calgary and Medicine Hat. We got used to the sound of airplanes overhead. The locals in the small towns put on dances and parties to welcome and entertain the visitors.

Harvard Trainer over Medicine Hat (The Memory Project)

The local girls were in heaven and had their feet danced off by all the whoop de dos and encounters with these young guys far from home. Rumours of some results of these get togethers circulated when suddenly a farmers daughter went to “visit” auntie in Ontario etc for awhile.

Dance Party for Airmen, Medicine Hat

We had a steady stream of these visitors to the farm as a diversion where they were given a meal and a tour. The fresh eggs and butter were a big hit. One interesting guy was a Brit, a squadron leader in the Royal Airforce recently in the Battle of Britain sent to teach air combat tactics. He was a cultured gentleman with a chest full of combat medals. He was keenly interested in the crop growing and admitted that he dreamed of having a farm after the war. I don’t know if he survived when he returned to active duty in Britain.

Dance Party Close-Up, Medicine Hat

A close neighbour had two pretty daughters who attracted a lot of attention. Often their farm was “buzzed” by a training plane in transit from training maneuvers and their return to base. In the fall of 1942 an Oxford bomber with a crew of three young Brits flying low over the farm crashed into the field right in front of their farm house. Brother Don was working in our adjacent field and was first on the scene. The plane had ploughed a deep trench in the soft turf and pretty well disintegrated. Remarkably there was no fire. Don could see the two pilots strapped in their seats obviously dead. He got on the farm phone and reported the situation. There was a flurry of military activity and the area blocked off. The third crew member was eventually found under a detached engine.

We youngsters were kept well away. Later, after the wreckage was removed we would go and dig at the crash site to find interesting bits. I found a bent instrument gage marked “boost pres” which I was told it was an indicator of the lifting capability of the plane in flight, something to do with air pressure.

We were all very sad. It brought the real meaning of the war closer. Apparently there were a large number of trainees killed in accidents.