Cover
Dedication
For Paul, who patiently waits for me in the wings
Epigraph
“Change, which was to become the great characteristic of the new century, began its acceleration in those early years. When the first decade dawned, kitchen and parlours were still lit mainly by candles and coal-oil lamps. Out west, families still crouched in huts of sod or poplar. The baroque, cast-iron stoves, constantly a-bubble with soups and porridges, were fired by wood. Save in the larger cities the roads were rutted nightmares. It was still the age of the livery stable, blacksmith shop and hitching post. Men shaved their beards with straight razors and women’s skirts, plumped out with petticoats, trailed in the mud, dust and slime of the streets. Prices were low enough by today’s standards: you could buy a turkey dinner for twenty cents and a muslin nightie for nineteen; you could rent a furnished room by the day for half a dollar.”[1]
— PIERRE BERTON, Remember Yesterday
A Century of Photographs
“Words which could be used so prodigally in conversation had now to be weighed and measured and set down in a more orderly fashion. Words on paper suddenly assumed a permanence hitherto denied them.”[2]
— RICHARD B. WRIGHT, The Age of Longing
Acknowledgements
Many people have contributed to the telling of Mary Janeway’s story. I am grateful for their contributions and ongoing support.
To the Janeway family: Emma Janeway’s daughter, Lois Lamble, and grandchildren, Wayne Lamble and Gail (Lamble) Horner; Emma’s sons and daughters-in-law Bob and Merle Touchings and Walter and Arlene Touchings for their enthusiasm to share their family history; Gail (Lamble) Horner, for welcoming me into her home in Edmonton and her willingness to lend me family photographs so carefully preserved; Caroline Janeway’s granddaughter, Rowena Lunn, for lending me Mary Janeway’s wedding portrait.
To the Jacques family: Joseph Jacques, for being my friend and remembering Mary at his grandfather’s funeral when he was ten; Donna Skillings, granddaughter of Daniel Jacques Jr., for saving Annie’s letter written in 1907; Barbara Luft and Bill Zinkan, Annie Jacques’s grandchildren, who helped fill in the blanks on the Jacques family tree.
To Ivan Black, for walking me through an “ice man’s delivery day” in Hamilton.
To the staff at Hamilton Public Library: Stella Clark, retired librarian assistant, for advising me on grammatical correctness and helping me in my search for “old stuff” in Canadian history books; Laura Lamb, Leslie Powers, and Mariann Horvath, Local History & Archives, for finding answers to my never-ending questions.
To Anne Gow, Ivey Family London Room, London Public Library, for providing archival images of the London streets in 1900.
To Susan Ramsay, curator of Battlefield House Museum, Stoney Creek, for contributing to descriptions of clothing worn in the early 1900s.
To the late Dr. Ruth Shykoff (Dr. Sky), polio survivor, who readily shared her polio stories of the 1920s based on her medical practice and personal experience.
To Allan Easson, retired production manager for the former Vernon Directories Limited Publishers, for providing information about the Hamilton City Directory.
To Theresa Westfall, deputy warden at Warkworth, who searched her computer database of registered convicts at the Kingston Penitentiary in 1925.
To Dave St. Onge, curator of Correctional Services of Canada Museum for providing insight into “life behind bars” at the K.P. and making available “The Convict Register and Description Book” — Kingston Penitentiary.
To Doreen Thomas, chief, Administrative Services Stony Mountain Institution, Winnipeg, Manitoba, for enlightening me about prison life in 1926.
To Kathleen Latulippe, volunteer for the British Family History Society of Ottawa, for researching the Janeway family tree.
To Ron and Diane Lindsay, now of Ingersoll, for sharing the heritage of their hometown Woodstock and providing a roof over my head when I visited.
To Catherine Steel, my dear friend, who pretended that she wasn’t when she critiqued my first draft.
To Dundurn: Barry Penhale, my publisher emeritus, who never lost faith in me and believed in the importance of telling the rest of Mary’s story; to Jane Gibson, my editor, who never tired of asking me when, where, and why; to Jennifer McKnight, my copy editor, who worked very hard to make sure all was intact.
To my family: Catharine Dochstader, my sister, for remembering some of our childhood memories that I’d forgotten; Steve Silva, my son-in-law, for his willingness and ability to scan all the illustrations; Paul Pettit, my husband, for patiently listening to me think out loud and responding to my constantly asking for his opinion.
And to Mary Janeway, who came to Hamilton as a young bride and never left.
Background on Mary Janeway
Since the publication of Mary Janeway: The Legacy of a Home Child I have continued to research the Janeway family. Much to my delight, I located some of Mary’s relatives in Alberta. Her sister Emma Janeway’s children, Gordon Touchings (deceased), Lois Lamble (deceased), Robert “Bob” Touchings in Edmonton, and Walter Touchings in Westlock; Emma’s grandchildren, Wayne Lamble in Edmonton and Gail Horner now in Lethbridge, Alberta; and her sister Caroline “Carrie” Janeway’s granddaughter, Rowena Lunn, now living in Kelowna, British Columbia.
I also learned that Mary Janeway’s parents, William and Martha, along with their children Caroline, John, William, and Mary, relocated from Scotland to London, England, before Mary’s younger sister Emma was born in Lambeth, England, in 1888. Two years later, their mother Martha died in childbirth and her sisters came and took the newborn back to Glasgow, leaving William in London to raise Caroline, John, William, Mary, and Emma.
Eleven-year old Carrie was “ready to be trained for service” and helped raise two-year-old Emma. John, age ten, was sent to an orphanage, then ran off to Vancouver, British Columbia, to work in the coal mines. William, age eight, and Mary, age six, were sent to an orphanage in Liverpool, and then to Canada as home children, and were placed on farms in rural Ontario. Their father passed away in 1902. Carrie worked as a nanny to pay for Emma’s keep in an orphanage in London, married Frank Lunn, the gardener at a well-to-do home in London where she worked as a maid, and had two sons, Francis “Frank” and Harvey, while living in London.
Carrie, along with her family, and Emma were the last Janeway children to immigrate to Canada. Prior to leaving Britain in 1908, Carrie traced Mary and Will through the Red Cross and found them to be living in Ontario.
In this sequel to Mary Janeway: The Legacy of a Home Child, which traces Mary’s life up to age sixteen, the Janeway family, the Church family, the witnesses at the weddings, the woman who helped raise Mary’s son, the Jacques family, and the Hewson family are real people. The rest are fictional characters, threads of the author’s imagination interwoven to create a backdrop to the story in an attempt to tell and understand Mary’s life. The places, cities, town, streets, and identified buildings are real. Mary lived her adult years in Hamilton, fondly referred to as the Electric City, the Lunch Pail Town, and the Steel City.
From Mary Janeway:
The Legacy of a Home Child
July 25, 1900
Mary headed for the station with the same determination that had helped her get this far. She never looked back. When she arrived at the wicket, she found she had enough