The Town That War Brides Built
Marion (Elliot) Hoddinott
Marion (Elliot) Hoddinott was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1923. She married Walter Hoddinott and came to Newfoundland where she helped build a new town consisting almost entirely of War Brides.
Marion Elliot was seventeen years old and working in a munitions factory when she met Walter Hoddinott of Corner Brook, Newfoundland. Walter joined the Royal Navy at the outbreak of war in 1939. At the time, Newfoundland was British and when the call went out for commonwealth volunteers Walter joined up.
Marion and Walter were married in Glasgow on Valentine’s Day 1942. Soon after, Walter shipped off and Marion settled in to a small apartment in Clydebank. Walter Jr was born nine months later.
Walter was demobilized in July 1945 and it was nearly eight months before they were reunited in Corner Brook. Against doctor’s orders, she left England on 17 March 1946, eight months pregnant with her second child, but she was young and healthy and weathered the crossing like a trooper. Soon after, a second son, Robert, was born.
In 1945 the Government of Newfoundland announced the Post War Resettlement Program and the farming community of Cormack was born. Cormack was about fifty miles from Corner Brook on the west coast of Newfoundland. The area was cleared of timber, the soil was conducive to farming and there was a railway and road connection at Deer Lake, twelve miles away. Construction began in 1946 and Walter and Marion were approved for the program becoming one of more than fifty War Bride families in the new town of Cormack.
Each family was supposed to receive training in farming methods, fifty acres of land (ten acres cleared) a six-room house, a barn for livestock, a cow, a horse, pigs and cash for machinery and seed. This was a generous scheme but, like so many other government initiatives, it was ruined by politics, greed, mismanagement and even fraud. Conditions faced by the families participating in this experiment led to extreme hardship, heartbreak and in many cases, divorce.
Walter and Marion went off to St John’s with the two boys in the spring of 1947 to take training in farming techniques. In September they travelled by train to Deer Lake and were met by a government agent who put them on a ‘Cat train’ headed for Cormack. A Cat train is made up of a bulldozer pulling a series of large sleds linked together like rail cars and designed to be pulled over mud, dirt or snow-covered logging roads. The road to Cormack was a muddy, rocky track through the woods, passable only by the Cat trains and Bombardier-tracked snow machines. An all-weather road, which was part of the Trans Canada Highway across Newfoundland, would not be built to Cormack for another ten years.
After a six-hour trip, the family reached their new home just before dark. They entered the house to find it was only a shell with a large wood burning stove in the kitchen and no furniture. The government agent in Deer Lake had given them a few supplies to get them settled including a kerosene lantern, kerosene, a few days food supplies, a metal pot and kettle.
Walter took the pot down to a brook nearby and brought in water for tea. He then gathered enough wood scraps to feed the fire and set about making a meal for the family. While Walter seemed happy and excited with this new adventure, Marion was feeling lost and miserable. After they ate, the two boys were put to sleep. Since there were no beds, heavy quilts and blankets were arranged on the floor and would serve the family for many weeks until beds arrived from the agent in Deer Lake.
The final insult came when Marion had to go to the bathroom. Walter took her by the hand, led her to the woods and told her to squat behind a nearby tree and do her business. Then he handed her some thin bark from a birch tree to use as toilet paper.
Marion had grown up in Glasgow where there were electric lights, hot and cold water, indoor bathroom facilities, gas for cooking and heat and public transportation right outside the door. Nothing in her wildest dreams prepared her for going into the dark woods and squatting on the ground like a wild animal. Marion spent the first night in her new home crying herself to sleep.
The days and weeks to come were unbearable. The temperature dropped and the first snow came. Daily chores of hauling water from the brook for cooking, washing clothes on a wash board and chopping wood to feed the big stove’s insatiable appetite were back breaking. Neither she nor her boys had proper clothing for the weather outside.
Walter had gone into Deer Lake several times in the first two weeks to see the agent and get more supplies. It took him a whole day to walk the twelve miles to town and hitch a ride back. Left alone with the boys, Marion was afraid of the wood stove and was terrified that savage beasts were waiting to pounce on her outside.
On the third week at the farm Walter made a trip to town and didn’t return until the early hours of the next morning. At 2 a.m. she heard someone on the steps outside and opened the door to find two strangers holding up a very drunk Walter.
Now her fear and loneliness turned to rage. She didn’t speak to him for a week. It didn’t occur to Marion until much later that he was feeling the same frustration and handled it in the only way he knew how.
As the fall progressed Walter dug a well near the house, and cut and split enough fire wood for the winter. He finished two rooms in the house with material on hand and built a table, two four-foot benches and a kitchen cabinet. Marion now had a furnished kitchen and one bedroom.
The winter brought mountains of snow and freezing temperatures, Marion had never experienced anything like it in her life. During the frequent storms, snow would actually blow in through cracks in the outside walls.
Wildlife was plentiful so Walter put out a trap line and brought home beaver, otter, muskrat, fox, martin and occasionally a lynx. He taught Marion how to prepare a fur pelt and dry it in the kitchen on drying boards which would stand behind the wood stove. He also shot moose, snared rabbits and bagged partridge to eat. This food was new to Marion and it took her quite a bit of time to adjust but it was a break from their supplies of salt beef, pork, fish, canned meats and bologna which made up most of their diet.
As their first Christmas in Cormack approached, Walter had accumulated quite a collection of furs from his trap line. His plan was to take the furs to Deer Lake and sell them to an agent for the Hudson’s Bay Company. While Marion had dreams of curtains, gifts for the boys and maybe some treats, Walter had other ideas: he sold the furs and returned with a Belgian mare named Queenie. Marion was furious, wondering what they were going to do with a horse.
Then Walter dropped a bomb on the family. He was taking Queenie to a logging camp to haul wood and he’d be back in mid-March.
In early January Walter set out with Queenie for the camp. Marion struggled alone with the two boys. The deep snow, constant cold, hard back-breaking work, and long lonely nights without her husband all conspired to make her long for Scotland.
In September, shortly after arriving, Marion had made friends with a neighbour who was also a Scottish War Bride. Helen Reid had arrived in Cormack in 1946 and endured all the same hardships as Marion. Every day they would visit each other and reminisce about home, crying on each other’s shoulders. Later Marion would say that Helen was the only thing that kept her from going insane.
Walter returned from the logging camp in March with enough money to buy seed and pay off his bills with the merchants in town. Walter’s brother Gordon had taken up the farm next door and together they planted potatoes, turnips, carrots and cabbages. The crops seemed to do well but a frost in August killed almost everything and the potatoes that survived were too small to sell.
The whole summer had been a waste so in September Walter went back to work in the lumber camp. That winter was a repeat of the previous and Marion was growing more despondent.
The spring of 1949 arrived with renewed hope. Vegetables were once again planted and were doing well. Then disaster struck; in September Newfoundland was ravaged by a hurricane. This coupled with news that some of the logging camps were closing caused many of Cormack’s original residents to throw their hands up in defeat.
Some went back to their home towns, others took their families to larger centres to find work.