PRAISE FOR THE INNOCENT
“Lynne Golding has opened a magical door to the past and ushered us into Edwardian Brampton to marvel at a simpler time… [The Innocent] will make you laugh and weep and wonder, and be fondly remembered long after the final pages are read.”
—Cheryl Cooper, author of the Seasons of War series
“Lynne Golding knows how to tell a story. With yarns she gathered at her great-aunt’s knee, she has woven a compelling story that harkens back to a time of pre-war innocence in a town I’ve always been proud to call my own.”
—Former Premier the Honorable William G. Davis
“It’s easy to forget that everything about the roads we drive, the hydro and water to our homes, the schools and health care we need, comes from the cradle of community. This series is a journey back in time to what was needed for building a future that cares for many thousands for decades to come. Through a fascinating family, Lynne Golding’s novels lead us into the past in a whimsical way that can’t help but connect to our own ambitions.”
—Lorna Dueck, CEO, Crossroads Global Media Group
“A lovingly crafted work, so engaging, pulsing with life, sensitive to the foibles of family relationships. I love the wry humour, gentle handling of tragedy, of constrained family competition, of church, and of politics. The Innocent is a wonderful study of social relationships in a small community. I’m much touched by the chapter on starting school, and the quiet, non critical intervention of Uncle James to still the child’s fears when passing the Iron Works Repair Shop. It would rival any of James Rainey’s small town tales.”
—Ruth Redelmeier, Ontario Historian
The Beleaguered
Copyright 2019 by Lynne Golding
ISBN: 978-1-988279-84-8
All rights reserved
Editor: Allister Thompson
Published in Stratford, Canada, by Blue Moon Publishers.
The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read this work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends or blog readers about The Beleaguered to help spread the word. Thank you for your support.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The Beleaguered. Copyright © 2019 by Lynne Golding. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Blue Moon Publishers. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Beneath the Alders
THE BELEAGUERED
Lynne Golding
To Jessie Roberts Current,a dear friend to so many
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 – Declaration of Hostilities
Chapter 2 – The First Contingent
Chapter 5 – More Usual Than Usual
Chapter 7 – The Straussenhoffers
A Preview of Book Three, The Mending
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With thanks to my first readers, my mother-in-law Carol Clement and my late father-in-law John Clement, for their diligence and enthusiasm for every chapter dispensed; my good friend Candace Thompson for her marginal happy and sad faces letting me know that the parts intended to be humorous or sad hit their mark; my father, Douglas Golding, and his oldest friend, John McDermid, for their many helpful reflections about Brampton in years past.
With gratitude to the second-floor librarians at the Brampton Four Corners Library who helped me manage reels and reels of microfiche; to the thorough investigative work of Samantha Thompson and her team at the Peel Archives; to the fabulous team at Blue Moon Publishers: Heidi Sander, Talia Crockett, Jamie Arts, and Allister Thompson; to my amazingly talented website and graphic designer, Kevin Patterson; my dear friend and diligent researcher, Colleen Mahoney; and my dear friend Meghan Robertson for her encouragement and support, the provision of facts about certain Winnipeg connections and the supply of her lovely mother-in-law, Erica Rueter, for her knowledge of many things German and Austrian.
With heartfelt thanks to my husband, Tony Clement, who encouraged me year after year to continue the project and to my children Alex, Maxine, and Elexa, who endured countless retellings of “interesting” tidbits I came