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.
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.
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.
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.