No amount of presents could overcome the cultural gap Betty found herself in. The language and the life were utterly different from what she was used to. She came from a house with electricity and modern plumbing, but in Hawkin’s Corner she couldn’t decide what was worse: the outhouses, the wildlife or three very stubborn, argumentative men.
On one of her first walks along the railway tracks she thought she encountered a bear but it turned out to be a groundhog, which was the source of great amusement to the men. With her husband gone in the woods all day Betty was expected to help with the chores such as milking the cows. But the cows knew she was afraid of them and one day they chased her out of the barn and into a stream. One of the neighbours, Mrs Marr, rescued her from that predicament and also did the milking that day, but Mrs Marr’s husband had a pet crow which would perch on a tree in the yard waiting for a treat. When the crow was outside Betty was afraid to leave the house!
Then there was the water: all the water for cooking came from the aforementioned stream. When Betty dipped her pail into the stream she saw tiny fish swimming around and it turned her off. She quickly changed to drinking milk instead, but then she had that little problem with the cows. Her husband thought the best way for Betty to bond with the cows was to give her one as a pet so he presented her with a calf aptly named Newport!
About a year after her arrival in Hawkin’s Corner, Betty became pregnant. When she was four months along, Doug sold eight pigs to pay her fare back to England. A few months later, he made the trip himself, arriving before their first daughter was born. It was a good thing Betty did go back to England because she was very ill with toxemia and eclampsia after giving birth and she was in the hospital for a month.
Doug found a good job as a foreman with an engineering firm and they decided to give it a try in England. It was eleven years before they returned to Canada to stay.
Although she has been back several times and many of her relatives have come to visit, Betty says firmly, ‘Canada is now my home but England will always be close to my heart.’
Postscript: Betty and Doug Hillman had five children. Doug passed away in 1987 and Betty moved to Upper Kintore, New Brunswick where she lives next door to her daughter Jackie.
There Was A Colour Bar
Mary (Hardie) Gero
Coming from a regimental family in Scotland, it was no surprise when Mary Hardie married a soldier. What no one could have anticipated was that her husband would be an African-Canadian with Black Loyalist ancestors.
Mary Hardie met Albert (Al) Gero of Truro, Nova Scotia in 1943 when he was on leave in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was billeted in the same building where Mary’s sister-in-law lived and they struck up a conversation on the stairs. Al was an African Canadian serving with the Cape Breton Highlanders. In the course of their stairway conversation he suggested that Mary write to his sister in Nova Scotia. Soon after, Al asked Mary to write to him.
Al was soon shipped off to Italy and he and Mary started writing to each other. The relationship blossomed into romance and over the course of the next two years they saw each other whenever they could. They decided to get married and even had a date arranged but it had to be cancelled because Al couldn’t get leave.
There were a lot of servicemen from other countries in Scotland during the Second World War and the people were good to them knowing the sacrifices they were making in defence of Britain. And so was the case with Al Gero. Mary’s widowed mother had no problem with Al being of a different colour and if she did, all she had to do was deny them permission to marry since Mary was under twenty-one years of age. What Mary’s mother was concerned about was that her youngest child was moving so far away.
Meantime, Mary wanted to do her part for the war effort so she joined the WRNS in July 1944. All of her brothers were in the military and one had even been reported killed piping in the troops at Dunkirk. His wife began to receive a widow’s pension but in fact he was a prisoner of war at Stalag 13 in Germany. No one notified the family that he was alive; he just returned and shocked everyone after the war.
Mary first served in Liverpool and later at the Fleet Air Arm in Abbotsinch, which was close to Glasgow. One of the greatest moments in her life was meeting General Bernard Montgomery, ‘Monty’. She was going up the steps to Saint Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh as he was descending with his guards. He came over to shake her hand and they spoke for a few minutes. She will always remember that moment.
Mary and Al were married on 12 October 1945. The best man was Phillip Fontaine, a friend of Al’s from the service who was a Native Indian from Manitoba. The minister who married them was the Revd Cecil Thornton, which seemed appropriate; Mary had been the first baby he baptized and the last War Bride he married.
Unusual for the times, a large reception with a sit down meal for 200 guests was held at Tollbooth Hall, which is part of the Royal Mile. They spent one night together at her mother’s house and then both reported for duty the next day.
Two months later Al returned to Canada and Mary followed in July 1946 on the SS Georgic. Al and his brother Michael met her in Halifax and they drove the sixty miles to Truro in Michael’s new truck. Knowing what the rationing was like in Britain, Al had asked Mary if she wanted something special to eat when she arrived in Canada. Waiting for her on the front seat of the truck were what she asked for – bananas – the first she had tasted in years.
Al told Mary that he lived with his family on a farm in Truro but when she got there she found out it wasn’t a farm like in Scotland. The ‘farm’ was a house, a field and one goat. The outdoor toilet was another surprise; coming from Edinburgh she had never seen an outhouse before. There was no running water either, but she learned how to clean her laundry on a scrub board and to maintain chamber pots in the winter.
The biggest adjustment for Mary was realizing that there was a colour bar in Truro. In Scotland, the people treated everyone the same, whether they were white or black or Indian. This was especially so for servicemen who were risking their lives for Britain. Al had been wounded twice in Italy and Mary thought that meant something. But in Canada in 1946, race was an issue.
Although nothing was said to them outright, it was obvious the locals could not accept the fact that a white woman was married to a black man.
One day she and Al were walking up Young Street where they lived and a man was coming up the hill behind them. Al said, ‘Look at him, he’s staring at us, he just can’t stand it that we’re together.’
There were two large posts on the street and Al said to Mary,’ You watch; that man is staring at us so hard he’s not watching where he’s going and he’s going to walk right into one of those poles.’
Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. ‘He got a few bumps on his head after that,’ Mary said.
Mary’s mother came to Truro when their first child was born in 1947 but they didn’t stay there much longer. The next year Al went to Montreal to get a better job and Mary soon followed with their baby son. At first Al worked at Hollander’s Furs dying the skins for the coats but later he became a pipe fitter which was a better living for their growing family. From 1949 until 1954 Mary and Al had four more children. Her mother came to visit the family in 1950 and stayed for two years,‘My mother was a big help to me,’ Mary says.
In Montreal, Mary had a lot of the conveniences she didn’t have in Nova Scotia, such as indoor plumbing and a washing machine. She and Al also didn’t have the problems they faced in Truro; no one gave them a second glance. Getting an apartment was not a problem for them and their children didn’t experience any racism in the diverse cultural environment of Montreal.
Mary and Al lived in Montreal for seventeen wonderful years; then in 1963, despite being quite content in Quebec, they moved back to Nova Scotia. Al was getting lonely for his family, particularly his mother who was getting elderly. Three weeks after they arrived, Al had a heart attack and died.
When