With the exception of one elderly man and a couple, there was no one else aboard. Mary chose a window seat and felt wistful but not sad as the train pulled out. She watched the fields roll by and allowed herself to be gently lulled by the slow lateral motion of the train rolling down the tracks.
After about thirty minutes the train stopped at Beachville to pick up some passengers and mail. A young girl in her mid-twenties boarded the train and stopped beside Mary’s seat. Mary panicked briefly. Was this someone from Innerkip who recognized her?
“Do you mind if I sit with you?” she asked.
“No, I don’t mind,” Mary replied.
“I’ve a long trip ahead and I hate travelling alone,” the girl admitted, smiling as she sat down, removing her large brimmed hat and setting a train case in the aisle beside her. Mary guessed that the girl was around Annie’s age but nothing like Annie. This young woman was friendly.
“Where are you going?” Mary asked with curiosity.
“I go as far as London, then I catch another train to Montreal,” the girl explained, still a bit out of breath from hurrying. “I’m to meet my cousin Elizabeth there. She’s coming to live with us,” she said excitedly. “What about you?”
“I’m going to London,” Mary answered truthfully. “My sister Caroline just had a baby and she needs me,” she said without hesitation. She turned and looked out the window.
And I will be free, she thought.
Cornfields, pastures, rivers, and trees flashed past, but all Mary could see was her own reflection in the glass.
Prologue
“Most home girls had had at least four years’ introduction to Canadian domestic routine by the time they had completed their indentures. Most were weary of other people’s babies and other people’s housework. They did not go to the city in order to exchange the informality of the farm household for the strict hierarchy of service in a large city establishment or the aprons of the country kitchen for the starched uniforms of the city parlour. They wanted their own room, their own wage and their own choice of what to do on Saturday night.”[1]
July 1900
The train ride from Innerkip to London was peaceful in many ways, but also frightening. Mary stared out the train window. A casual observer might have thought that the young girl was taking in the pretty countryside, rolling hills, winding riverbeds full to the brim with creek water from too many rainfalls, and the densely wooded foliage that separated cultivated fields ripening for harvest. Mary may have been looking out at her surroundings, but her mind was elsewhere.
Running away was the culmination of eight long years of loneliness and desperation. No matter how she had dealt with each uncomfortable situation inflicted on her while living on the farm, her thoughts invariably came back to the same fundamental question: “Should I stay or leave?” Today was the first day she would no longer ask herself that question. That was behind her now — forever. She couldn’t help but reflect on the events that had unfolded in her short life to bring her to this place in time.
Born in Rutherglen, Scotland, on August 2, 1884, Mary, at the age of five, and her older brother Will had been sent to an orphanage in Liverpool, England. Two-and-a-half years later, she and her brother were put on a ship bound for Canada. They docked in the Montreal harbour, where an agency inspector named Mr. Murray took her, along with a handful of other girls approximately the same age, to a “Distributing Home” in Stratford, Ontario — a temporary shelter until suitable placements could be made.
While awaiting her fate, Mary observed the visitors who arrived to scrutinize the girls in the hope of finding a suitable domestic servant to take home with them. Mostly rural folks in need of help on their farms, some left with a child, some left empty-handed, but most had opinions about home children. It was difficult to forget the comments she overheard while dusting the hall banister.
Everybody knows those Home Kids have nits.
Most of the waifs and strays shipped over by those British do-gooders are subnormal at best.
They’re subnormal. That eye colour tells its own tale.
Nathan’s father says the Home Children are all tainted from birth. If they had a Home Boy, he’d sleep in the back shed. Otherwise, he might burn the house down in the night.[2]
Mary knew they were not necessarily talking about her, but the words were still hurtful. Sometimes she’d study her face in the mirror and begin to wonder if they were right. Were home children subnormal? She’d check her hair for nits and look at her eye colour with skepticism. Despite the overheard comments, she hoped that someone would come soon and want a little girl to be part of their family.
Less than two months after her arrival in Stratford, the Jacques family contacted the home and indicated the “need for a girl.” Mr. Jacques picked her up in his horse and buggy one sunny afternoon in June 1892 and headed for Innerkip, a small town nearby. Annie, the eldest and only girl in the Jacques family, had three brothers: Thomas, Chris, and the youngest, Daniel, named after his father. Mary had lived on their farm as a domestic servant for eight years, until today when she finally decided she’d had enough.
As the train rolled along with a steady, predictable clickity-clack, she began to relax. She thought about her family, those she’d left behind in England, and her brother, whom she’d been separated from after arriving in Canada. Her roots had been in an emotional tangle from the time that she was a young child. She often wondered if it was a coincidence that she’d ended up in Innerkip, named after a river flowing through Renfrewshire, Scotland, near her birthplace. Was her Scottish heritage watching over her like a guardian angel?
After leaving Scotland, her family had gone to London — London, England. And now she was leaving Innerkip, the place she’d called home for half her life, and was heading for another London — London, Ontario.
Mary desperately wanted her freedom and independence, yet having her own room and earning a wage seemed so unattainable to the young girl just a week shy of sixteen. She had $3.61 and a small red valise with a broken strap containing all her worldly possessions, including her Bible, a gift from Reverend Ward, the rector at St. Paul’s in Innerkip. He was a very special man, since he’d found her brother Will and made it possible for them to spend a whole day together when she was ten.
She got into the habit of tucking a memento or scrap of paper that was significant in the pages of her Bible. It was where she’d hidden the small white envelope that Will had given her. She would never forget walking home from school that afternoon in late fall, when he’d appeared out of nowhere on the dusty county road with a small horse-drawn wagon.
He lowered his voice as though someone might be listening. “I have a plan. As soon as I get settled, I’ll come back for you. And we’ll find John, we will.” He added, “I promise. In the meantime I want you to take this,” he said and handed her a small white envelope.
“What’s this, Will?” she asked.
“It’s money, not a lot…. it’s part of what I earned at the Lounsburys. I want you to keep it, Mary. If for some reason you can’t wait for me to come and get you, you’ll need some money. Hide it in a safe place and don’t tell anyone!”[3]
One
London
“Work for domestics in private homes was pure drudgery: long hours, lack of social freedom and privacy, and negligible pay.”[1]
1900
The gentle swaying of the train and the sound of the metal wheels clicking on the tracks reminded Mary that she was heading to London. She’d never been there before and had nowhere to live once she arrived. When the train pulled into the CPR station on Richmond Street, she was tired and apprehensive, but determined.
Having