“I’d have asked Mr. Thauburn if he had a telegram for me, but Father has forbidden me to do so. Apparently, I am becoming a nuisance,” he said.
“That you are,” said Mr. Thauburn who, with Michael, was still just behind us.
“I apologize, Mr. Thauburn,” Roy said. “Really I do. I won’t bother you again. I will patiently wait and see if a telegram comes for me before we leave on Sunday.”
“I rather doubt that you will,” Mr. Thauburn replied dryly.
Before Roy could protest again, Mr. Thauburn reached into the inside pocket of his coat, extracted a manila envelope, and passed it to Roy. “Came in at eight o’clock this morning.”
Michael looked at Mr. Thauburn in astonishment. It was now nine forty-five. Mr. Thauburn had breached his two cardinal rules. He had been in possession of the telegram for well over half an hour, and he had stored it in his pocket rather than holding it in plain view.
“Don’t look at me that way, Johnny,” Mr. Thauburn said to Michael. “I wasn’t going to let you or anyone else miss sending those boys off right. Besides, who would have been home to accept this? I knew where I’d find young Roy.”
Six days later, on August 20th, the 260 volunteers comprising the 36th Peel Regiment left their quarters at Ravina Rink in Toronto. Added to those first eighteen Brampton men were twenty-one others who had been members of the Brampton regiment in prior years, hailing from such places as Port Credit, Mono Mills, and Orangeville. Their destination: a new training ground for the first contingent of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, Canada’s largest, in a place we all then knew was called Valcartier.
Chapter 3
SNELL’S LAKE
The telegram required Roy to report to his regiment five days later. He went into immediate action. After hours of pacing, investigation of train schedules, and consideration of other commitments, he finally concluded that the first train he could take to Winnipeg was the one for which he and the other members of his family had tickets: the Sunday train leaving two days hence. It would, his father calmly told him, arrive in Winnipeg well before his required reporting time.
With his travel plans settled, Roy resumed his anticipation of the leaving party. The leaving party, which occurred the day before the Turners left for their home in Winnipeg, was a much anticipated event. The get-together was not special for its list of attendees, since, with the exception of Aunt Lil, who sometimes joined us, it was attended by the same people who attended nearly every family gathering convened in the month of the Turners’ attendance in Brampton. Unlike some other parties, it did not involve presents, or songs, or lengthy speeches, although Father could rarely resist the opportunity to publicly bestow some wishes on those gathered. It was sufficient, it seemed, for the three families to join at an event called a “leaving party” for the occasion to rise to the honorific of such a gathering; for it to transcend the ordinary picnic or dinner.
But this year—in August of 1914—there was a sense among us that the gathering truly was special. It had been a miracle, Mother said, that in the seven years since the Turners left Brampton, they had never once missed the return trip to the town from which they all hailed. We knew that the annual pilgrimage would one day come to an end; that the visits would ultimately become less regular; that they would eventually include fewer people. Even before the hostilities were declared, we recognized that Roy, a young man about to begin his career, and Bill, who would soon follow him, would not have the ability their father had to leave their places of employment for five weeks each summer. We planned this leaving party knowing that it might be the last such party for a time, not knowing when or where the remaining Darlings and Stephenses would next see the departing Turners, and not knowing, as it turned out, the full extent of those who would be departing for Winnipeg the next day.
Many locations had been proposed for the special occasion. Many had been rejected. The Forks of the Credit, a parkland in the Caledon Hills, where after enjoying a picnic lunch in the wild grasslands, the men fished, the women picked flowers, and the children ran and swam—was rejected as too commonplace. We had already been there twice that summer.
A day’s excursion to Niagara Falls was rejected by John and Bill, who desired a location at which they could swim. “Swim and not drown,” John clarified.
A drive to Mono Mills, proposed by Jim, was rejected by everyone as being too distant. Jim always suggested activities that involved cars. He was a fanatic about automobiles. He loved looking at them, touching them, and studying them. Jim also loved drawing cars. He drew them as they then were in their big carriage-like shape, and he drew them longer and sleeker as he envisaged they might be in the future. He drew their entire bodies and he drew their parts; just their tires; just their dashboards; any parts. To Mother’s chagrin, he loved to tinker with a car’s engine, to change its oil, to lift, push, prod, and replace various engine parts. He thought nothing of getting his hands and, consequently, his clothes covered in grease and oil. While Jim was at home in the summer or on weekends through the school year, a family member’s car never sat dirty in a garage or a driveway. Each was cleaned and polished as soon as Jim noticed a streak of dust or a splash of slush marring its shiny exterior.
But mostly, Jim loved being in a car. Until recently, he could only make a suggestion that the family take a trip in a car during the month that the Turners were in residence, since Uncle William was the only member of our family to own an automobile. The recent acquisition of a Ford touring car by Aunt Rose enabled Jim to refer to outings involving cars in the plural. Father thought it absurd that his sister should make such an acquisition, but his feelings toward the automobile softened when Aunt Rose welcomed Jim to drive it whenever a car was required by our immediate family.
“How about a picnic at Snell’s Lake?” I suggested. “We can drive there. It’s not too far. And it has a place to swim.” Snell’s Lake was a naturally occurring lake located in the middle of a large parkland about six miles north of Brampton. Named for the original owner of the land on which it was situate, the body of water provided Brampton with water to service its industrial and other needs. It was surrounded by both treed and cleared lands, also making it ideal for summer picnics, games of hide-and-seek, swimming, boating, and other amusements. It was the place I learned to swim and canoe. In fact, the two went hand in hand. For three years, my method of water buoyancy involved lying stomach down across two ropes strung between two cedar logs. My desire to join my friend Frances in her new red canoe, something Father would only permit if I could swim independently for fifty yards, propelled me to abandon the flotation device. So determined was I to join Frances in her canoe, I learned to swim and paddle in one day.
It was the Sunday before the leaving party. The entire extended family was sitting on our verandah. Children from down the street were playing a game of catch. The ball had just rolled in front of our house. Roy ran down the verandah steps to throw it back to them.
“Snell’s Lake. That’s a great suggestion, Little One,” Jim said. He gave one of my ringlets a pull. I never minded the nickname or the little tug, when applied by my beloved brother. I knew that they were both meant as acts of endearment. Everyone concurred, and we began to make further plans until Ina interrupted us.
“Wait a moment, did you mean this coming Saturday?” When this was confirmed, we continued our planning. Aunt Rose thought a white linen picnic was in order. She suggested a few dishes.
“I think we should pick another location,” Ina said, interrupting the menu planning. “You know Aunt Lil will not travel in an automobile.” That was true. Among Aunt Lil’s many peculiarities was her philosophical and practical opposition to cars. Claiming automobiles to be a danger to passengers, pedestrians, horses, and our way of life, Aunt Lil refused to enter one. In this she was not entirely