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.
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.
Comments