our boys over there, but I agree with what William said earlier.” He then repeated it for her benefit. “If our troops do go, they’ll be back quickly. With a minimal number of losses. Please, you must see this.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I don’t see that. Quick? It won’t be quick. This is not South Africa—though that was not particularly quick either. Both sides have machine guns. And aeroplanes. There is no quick solution to this. And a minimal number of losses? You are thinking we will send twenty thousand men. We will send ten times that number. Or more. And they will not all come back. So many of them will not be back. My nephews, my boarders, my students, so many of them won’t come back.” She was crying, but she inhaled deeply before asking no one in particular, “And for what? What is the point of this war?”
No one had a reply. Eventually, Aunt Rose put an arm around her.
Finally, Roy stood up. “I’m coming back!” he said with all of the confidence of the unknowing.
“And I’m coming back!” Bill said, standing too. “If the war is not over before I can enlist.”
“And I’m coming back!” said John, rising as well. “If I ever get over there.”
“And I’m not going at all,” said Jim from his seat. There being no suggestion that Ina, me, or our cousin Hannah would go to war, we too remained seated.
Aunt Lil, who had almost regained her composure, lost it again. “All right, you are all excused,” Father said. “But Hannah, John, Jessie, none of you are to go out tonight. It’s a night to be with family, those who are dear to you. It is not a night for frolicking.” As he said that, we saw through the room’s large picture window three young men walking down Wellington Street toward Gage Park, carrying a Union Jack, singing “Rule Britannia” at the top of their lungs.
* * *
“It’s all that history,” Father groused to Uncle William as I cleared the table. Mother and my three aunts were in the sitting room. “She spends too much time in the past,” he continued. “She should know by now that she is knowledgeable about the past, not the future! She’s a history teacher, not a prophesier! This is why I urge all of these young people to study sciences, not history. What can we learn from history?”
“Well, there are probably a few things we could learn from history,” Uncle William conceded in defence of a course of study enjoyed by many members of our family.
“Yes. Some things. But not everything. Really, what does Lulu know about war?”
Uncle William had no answer to that. The two men rose to move to the verandah, where they could take in some fresh air and smoke their pipes. Those permitted to leave the house followed them out the door.
Jim was the first. He wanted to be with Millie Dale. Millie had been Jim’s sweetheart for over two years. He had loved her for even longer. It was a night to be with those with whom you are close, Father said. He should go to her, of course, and he did.
Ina left for the McKechnies. They lived on Peel Avenue, just to the south of our house. Mrs. McKechnie had lost her husband four years earlier to a premature heart attack, and just two years later, her son, my friend Archie, died even more prematurely to a mishap in the Etobicoke Creek. Of the three female daughters, Katie was Ina’s particular friend. Father agreed that it would be appropriate for Ina to call on the McKechnies that night. Father always approved of a nice turn in support of a family without a senior male member. Roy and Bill followed in close succession, each determined to visit old friends.
My young cousins and I, having been forbidden to engage in anything frivolous on that solemn night, looked for distractions. John eventually retreated to his room to work on the construction of a model train. Hannah and I moved through various rooms, listening to our elders. We quickly tired of watching the ladies try to calm Aunt Lil. We noticed that in reality, Aunt Rose and Mother were doing most of the calming. Aunt Charlotte, normally the one to take control of such situations, sat on her own, staring vacantly out the window into the darkness beyond.
Eventually, we found ourselves on the verandah, watching Father and Uncle William smoke their pipes and listening to their discussion about the war. Though as children we were generally prohibited from participating in such conversations, we were always welcome to listen to them. Father viewed our presence at such times as a means of educating us.
We sat on the Wellington Street side of the “L”-shaped verandah, the two men occupying the big wooden chairs facing the Wellington Street Bridge and the park beyond it. Hannah and I took the less comfortable chairs across from them, with mine closest to the street. From there I had a good view of our house and Chapel Street that crossed in front of it. Father and Uncle William were discussing whether Colonel Sam, who had earned his military credentials fighting in the Boer War, was likely to accompany the Canadian troops abroad.
“The current thinking is that he’ll stay here in Canada,” Uncle William said, turning his pipe over in the ashtray before refilling it.
“It would be better if he went over with the troops,” Father said, his mouth full of smoke. “I can’t say that I’m in favour of our men going to war, but if they do, they would be well served under his command.”
“Apparently, not everyone thinks so,” said Uncle William. “I hear he caused the British no end of aggravation during the Boer War.”
As Father and Uncle William continued to discuss war leadership matters and whether one could be a cabinet minister being too far away to attend cabinet meetings, my mind began to wander. How was this war going to affect us? Roy said that Father was too old to enlist, but if Parliament decreed otherwise, would he have to go to war? Would Grandpa? Who would look after us if all the men left? Who would grow our food? Who would fill our furnaces with coal? Who would deliver our milk, our vegetables, or our meat? Who would teach us math and science? Who would lead our church services?
As I contemplated a manless reality, something caught my eye in the distance. It was Ina. She was walking toward our house along Chapel Street. Her visit with the McKechnies was apparently complete. I was about to announce her return when I saw her look furtively toward our verandah, then, presumably on ascertaining its vacant state, look equally furtively toward the Darlings’ verandah. Seeing the backs of Father and Uncle William and apparently not noticing me looking her way, she ran quickly along Chapel Street, past our house and toward Queen Street beyond. It was clear she did not want to be seen.
Half an hour later, Mother and Aunt Charlotte joined us on the verandah. Aunt Lil’s agitation had been quelled. She was now settled in Aunt Rose’s back bedroom—the room then absent of any maids. We said goodnight to Hannah as my parents, the elder Turners, who were staying with us in Grandpa’s vacated bedroom, and I left for our home just up the street.
Neither Ina nor Jim were there when we arrived, spent and tired. Minutes later, I lay in the double-sized bed that Ina and I shared, the drapes and sheers to the long window next to my side of the bed pulled open wide to allow as much cool night air as possible to enter the room. Though I was tired, I could not sleep. My mind was fixated on what Aunt Lil had said and how Father and Uncle William reacted to it. It was all about history. I knew some history. We had studied a number of battles in our history classes. I could think of a few: Culloden, Gettysburg, Waterloo, and Bosworth came to mind. We learned of the atrocities that men of one side inflicted on those of the other; we learned of crops and villages and government buildings burned to the ground; we learned of soldiers hacked to bits; of heads cut off and positioned on stakes; of women and children left to starve; of bridges and roads being destroyed. Was this to be our fate? Father had assured me that if Germany and Britain
