two hands, a chest, and a head, and they knew that those appendages would need to be kept warm and dry. Before the end of August, the Women’s Institute, in conjunction with other charities, began the efforts that would eventually see the women of Brampton sew or knit over forty-seven thousand items for the men at the front. In achieving this, the Institute accepted the kind offers of time from some women, extended “invitations” to ladies who had not yet offered their time, and pressed into action women and girls who had not otherwise made offers or accepted their kind invitations.
Mother’s involvement in the effort came primarily from her membership in the local branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. A supportive, although not a strident member of the WCTU, Mother had always been a willing foot soldier, occasionally hosting meetings at our home, participating in letter-writing campaigns, and contributing goods to support fundraising efforts. By 1914, the work of the WCTU in Peel County was largely complete, since the county, like hundreds of others in Ontario, was by then dry. Aside from suppressing any efforts to repeal the designation previously achieved by a vote of the electors and exposing to the authorities occasional illegal sales that came to their attention, the members of the WCTU were without a cause. With determination, they took on the challenge of keeping our men at the front warm. It would be some time before the WCTU members learned that the fighting men they sought to keep warm in their barracks and trenches with wares they worked so hard to make were being further warmed with shots of the liquid they had worked so hard to banish.
The prospect of joining her fellow WCTU members in sewing for the men overseas suited Mother well. She was, after all, an excellent seamstress, sewing nearly all of the clothes she wore and those worn by Ina and me. She knew that she was a far better seamstress than she was a letter-writing advocate for temperance. Sewing for the enlisted men suited Mother for another reason as well: she could participate in the activity without making any declaration as to her support or lack thereof for the war effort. No matter which camp one fell into (and to be clear, there were very few in the opposition camp), one wanted our enlisted men to be kept warm and dry. In sewing for the men, Mother did not have to be more supportive of the war than was her husband.
Mother assumed that I would share her enthusiasm to support our men and so invited me to join her at a party the Institute was hosting one afternoon in the third week of August. It would be the first of many such parties, all to occur on Thursdays. My summer days were usually occupied in part attending at-home teas or other social outings with my mother. Looking on this suggestion in the same way, I was initially indifferent.
“What kind of a party is it, Mother?” I asked. It was not a question of evaluating the invitation. Generally, I took the suggestions of my parents as instructions. It did not occur to me to reject my mother’s invitation. I wondered if the party might involve making bandages or packing up cigarettes. I recalled hearing that the Women’s Institute organized parties of this nature during the Boer War.
“It’s called a cutting-out party. We’re going to assist in the sewing of warm shirts for the men to wear under their uniforms.”
I looked at her, dumbfounded.
“It’s quite easy, really,” she added.
“Mother,” I said slowly, “you know that I can’t sew.”
“Yes, you’ve told me that for years, although goodness knows I began sewing when I was much younger than you, reapplying buttons, simple mending, even sewing straight lines with the machine.” I could feel my temperature beginning to rise. She changed tacks. “But in this case, you will not need to sew. Others will do the sewing.” The panic within me began to recede.
“All you need to do is fold the fabric in the right way, lay the pattern on the folded fabric, and then pin the three layers together and—”
“Pin the pattern on the fabric?” I interjected. My temperature began to rise again.
“Yes. Pin it. Using straight pins.” Sweat began to form on my brow. “First you will pin the pattern in place, likely applying ten or twelve pins per shirt shape, firmly pushing the sharp pins through both layers of fabric and the pattern, and then bringing them up the other side.”
I rested my chin on my fist. There was no other way to keep my neck erect.
“Then you use the large sewing shears, cutting the two layers of fabric as close as you can but not over the pattern.” I moved my hand from my chin to my mouth. I was not sure I could keep my dinner down.
“Then you pull out all of the pins and put them into the pin cushion so that—Jessie, where are you going?”
I ran to the kitchen, through the pantry, and up the maid’s stairs to the bathroom on the second floor.
“I’m sorry your dinner didn’t agree with you,” Mother said fifteen minutes later as I lay on my bed across from the bathroom. With Ina away in Winnipeg, I felt that I could truly call this bed that we ordinarily shared “my” bed. She was wiping my forehead with a damp cloth.
“Mother, I won’t be able to go with you to the cutting-out party tomorrow,” I said. “I won’t be well enough.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I’m sure it’s just something you ate. By tomorrow you’ll be as good as new. You’ll see.”
But it was not just something I ate. The fear I had of sewing shears, needles, straight pins, and pincushions was nearly pathological. It was also a secret—one of the few secrets in our family that was mine to keep. It arose on a summer day when I was six years old, also on a late August day, just before I began school. Bob Parker, the superintendent of the Peel County Jail, or the “Governor” as he liked to be called, took it upon himself once a summer to disgorge to the local teenagers the circumstances that led to the incarceration of one of the jail’s inhabitants. The clarity of his oration and his penchant for details made his macabre accounts a highlight of the teenagers’ summers. In addition to filling a good two hours of time on a summer afternoon, they provided the boys with an opportunity to demonstrate their bravery to a girl of their liking (the accounts never scared them) and the girls with an opportunity to sit closer to a boy of their liking (perhaps even taking his hand or arm). The Governor looked forward to the narrations as well, since they gave him an opportunity to describe to these near adults who were the offspring of the local ratepayers and hence his employers the depraved men he kept from their midst.
The recountings were not intended to be heard by young children. My father forbade me to listen to them. But on that sunny August afternoon, I succumbed to the entreaties of my friend Archie to hide behind the jail’s concrete steps, located just down the road from our home, and listen to the Governor’s account of the first occupants of Alderlea, the Italianate villa-style mansion, constructed in 1867 at the top of a hill that once included the lands later known as Gage Park. It was from that account that I learned of Mr. Gilchrist’s contributions to Brampton’s many churches, including the donation of the stone for the Presbyterian Church—a credit to which Mother took such great exception.
In addition to learning about its original owner, Kenneth Gilchrist, Esq., a businessman, politician, and philanthropist, we learned about one of his employees and that employee’s two children. The employee, an Irish immigrant, came to Brampton in 1873. He was immediately hired to serve as the Gilchrists’ gardener and mechanical man. Within a few months, he had married the Gilchrists’ seamstress. They were married less than a year when he lost her in childbirth. The father and the two boys continued to reside in the mansion, working as groundskeepers and mechanics, until the owners decided to redecorate and replace all of the drapery made by the boys’ deceased mother. The father bought a two-storey building not far from Alderlea. From its street level, they would operate a mechanical business
