telegram like that.”
“He isn’t permitted to disclose the contents of confidential telegrams,” Mother replied. “He’s been in that job for a long time. If he’s making that kind of a statement, then it isn’t a confidential matter.” Mother looked at her timepiece, a small clock dangling within a pendant on a gold chain hanging from her neck. “It’s only four o’clock,” she said. We all knew that the Germans had until seven o’clock Eastern Standard Time to respond to the ultimatum of the British government, to respond or to find itself at war with Great Britain and her allies.
“Michael must know something. If we are at war—and I suspect we are—the Turners will cut short their trip to Toronto today. You’d better run down to your aunt’s. The family should be together tonight.”
“Here or there?” I asked, knowing the answer before I asked the question.
“There. It will take us a while to restore the dining room and,” she confessed, “we are low on meat. Your aunt always has enough to serve us all.” That was undoubtedly true, for although the dining room of my Aunt Rose, who lived just down the road from us, could accommodate the same number of people as our dining room, and although our pantries and kitchens were precisely the same size, my aunt’s larder was always more full.
I was back on our verandah within five minutes, my Aunt Rose agreeing with Mother’s suggestion. Over the next hour, Mother and I completed our beating of the rug. We half-dragged, half-carried the heavy carpet through our front foyer, parlour, and sitting room into the dining room, where we resettled it within the dark rectangular area of the elm floor that had escaped the sun’s bleaching rays. We lifted the skeletal form of our dark walnut table onto the rug, setting its legs into the familiar wool divots, before reinserting six of the table’s leaves. Finally, with ten of the fourteen petite point cushioned chairs tucked under the table, our work was complete. It was done in silence. The idle banter Mother and I shared earlier that afternoon in taking these steps in reverse was gone.
My Aunt Rose and her two children, John and Hannah Darling, lived in a house that was the mirror image to ours. Both located on Wellington Street, they were built by my grandfather, Jesse Brady, shortly after I was born. Each was clad in red brick and adorned with white trim. Tall windows topped with stained glass panes and surrounded by large green shutters graced two sides of each house. The first floor of each home had a grand front entrance or foyer, a parlour for entertaining visitors, a sitting room in which family gathered, a dining room, a kitchen, and a pantry. The second floor of each contained a bathroom and five bedrooms. The two floors were connected by two staircases: a wide, polished wood, carpet-lined staircase that wrapped around two walls of the foyer and which was the principal staircase used, and a small staircase entered from the pantry behind the kitchen. That staircase at the back of the house and the small second floor bedroom next to it were referred to by my aunt as the “back stairs” and the “back bedroom.” In our house, the same set of stairs and the same bedroom were referred to as the “maid’s stairs” and the “maid’s bedroom.” This was so, even though my family never once employed a maid, in contrast to my Aunt Rose, who often did.
The attic, which formed the third floor of each house, had two finely sculpted gabled windows. They sat below the house’s dark green roofs, which rose at various levels. The most striking feature of each house was the cylinder-shaped three-story tower that stood where a corner would have otherwise, each topped with a graceful spherical dome and a small black spire. Grandpa’s signature verandah formed another striking feature, in each case bordered by a white wooden railing wrapped around two sides of the house, including the tower. Grandpa believed that a verandah on a home was essential to the development of community; that families congregating there during their leisure hours in the four months of the year that the northern climate permitted it, while children played on the lawns and streets beyond, would foster a sense of true neighbourliness. In the seasons that our verandahs were not covered in snow, they were equipped as outdoor parlours, with wicker chairs, tables, stools, and swinging chaise lounges.
When my sister Ina and I were younger, our verandah had other uses too—an outdoor laboratory for Ina’s scientifically minded endeavours and a make-believe ship for my less lofty pursuits. They took on these uses, that is until Father required the removal of the accompanying contrivances, a persistent occurrence that forestalled our recreational use of the verandah for at least a few weeks thereafter.
While these two houses had two separate owners, they were treated by all of us as though they were common property of not only our family, the Stephenses, and my aunt’s family, the Darlings, but also of our Winnipeg cousins, the Turners, and my father’s sister Lillian, who lived in Toronto. We all entered each house as though it was our own, never thinking of knocking before doing so, let alone waiting for an invitation to be extended. Meals among my extended family were frequently taken together, particularly when there was a special occasion (a holiday or a birthday) or when family was in from out of town.
Father agreed with Mother and Aunt Rose that our families should be together that night, August 4th, 1914. He had heard earlier that afternoon that the king had ordered the mobilization of the British army. It was that information, we concluded, that sent Michael, the telegraph delivery boy, on his premature town crier mission. But the announcement was, Father declared, likely only a few hours early. We would be at war at seven o’clock that night. It was a night to be spent with family.
The outbreak of the war did not come as a complete surprise. The imminent declaration had been predicted by many Canadians for months beforehand, although with each prediction not coming to pass, some were more surprised than others when the hostilities actually commenced. Over those months, at the various dining room tables of my family, I learned of the Triple Entente formed by France, Britain, and Russia the prior decade; the many acts of aggression of Germany in the interim; the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Serbia at the end of June; the creation of the German-Austrian pact at the beginning of July; the declaration of war by Serbia against Austria at the end of July; and the declaration of war by Germany against Serbia the next day. I learned that Germany had issued an ultimatum to the independent Belgium that German troops be granted access to its territories or Belgium would face German invasion. I learned that in response Britain had issued an ultimatum to Germany that Germany withdraw the demand made to Belgium or face British hostilities.
At those dining room tables, I also learned how my family members felt about that likely war, who was for it, and who was against it. Their positions, which had been evolving and eventually staked, were stated starkly that night at the Darlings’ dining room table. Twelve of us were assembled there: my immediate family of five, the Darling family of three, and the four Turners, who had, as Mother suggested, returned from Toronto earlier than they had planned.
Of my parents, my aunts, and my uncle, nearly all of them considered a British concern to be a Canadian concern; a British cause to be a Canadian cause; a British war to be Canada’s war. But their enthusiasm for the war, their confidence in the speed with which the battle could be won, and the resources required to attain that victory, varied between them.
At a time when most Canadians regardless of age, background, length of residency in Canada or language, wholeheartedly supported the British cause, my father’s support was tepid at best. Father had a contrarian personality. It was in his nature to swim against the tide; to argue red when everyone else argued black. He took positions against ardent advocates; against seasoned specialists; against acknowledged experts. He would take his positions in a public meeting, perhaps at a meeting of the High School Board of which he was chairman, or of the Water Commission, of which he was also chairman. He would take his positions in our church, at which he was the choir leader. He even waged his arguments against his dental patients, including when (possibly preferably when) their mouths were pried open with his fingers and other devices, when their responses could only be an incomprehensible gurgle or a slap of their hand against their thigh or some other gesture.
There
