Dusty pink. I was about to expand on the desirability of a tiled floor when Mr. Boisevert looked at me numbly and turned eyes like those of an agonized fawn upon Jim saying, ‘Mumble-mumble-mumble-ICIT!’
I swallowed.
Was it for this that I spent so much time in finishing school in Switzerland, learning French and apparently a lot of useless accomplishments?
‘What,’ I demanded of my spouse, ‘is the word that sounds like ee-sit? And why can’t the dumbcluck understand me?’
‘Ici-here,’ he said. ‘They tack a “t” on the end of some words ending with a vowel … Boisevert was explaining that you don’t speak the same French as they do here … Try speaking slowly and drop that Parisienne accent. And for the love of god, don’t be idiomatic. Translate more or less literally as you go along’
I tried and it worked. Mr. Boisevert brightened visibly. The only snag was that it didn’t work in reverse. All it did was release a torrent of Quebec French on my unsuspecting head.7
Like Joan Walker, a good sense of humour and a loving spouse would have made the transition to life in Quebec a little bit easier and that is something that holds true for War Brides who married into any Canadian family – no matter what their mother tongue, race, ethnicity or religion. In the stories that follow we meet four British women whose lives turned out very differently in Quebec. How they dealt with the challenges they encountered have as much to do with their own willingness to adapt to life in Quebec as it does to the support of their husband, his family and the friends they made in the communities where they lived.
She Did the Right Thing
Joan (Smedley) Landry
Joan (Smedley) Landry was an eleven-and-a-half-year-old schoolgirl living in London, England when the Second World War was declared. She was evacuated to a village near Wisbeach, Lincolnshire and returned to London in September 1940 in preparation for her evacuation to Canada as a Guest Child of the Canadian government.
A day or two before I was supposed to sail to Canada, our home was bombed and we lost everything including my travelling papers. I could not board the ship to Canada without documentation so I was not allowed to join the other Guest Children on the ship. Luck was on my side: on Friday 17 September the City of Benares was torpedoed by the German U-Boat U48 and sunk with the loss of almost 100 children.
Still being underage for the workforce, I had to be evacuated once again, this time I was sent to a different location, Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, where I joined a London Jewish school. I did not know anyone there but I loved school and the teachers were excellent. I got on very well and by the time I was fourteen had a tenth grade commercial course. However, I was unhappy as I was continually being taken from one home to another. The people just did not want to have the responsibility of evacuees in their homes and did whatever they could to get rid of us.
Although I was heartbroken at leaving school and my teachers did their best to persuade me to stay, it reached the point where I could no longer stand living this way and I asked my mother’s permission to return to London. By then I was of school leaving age and I had no trouble finding secretarial work as all the older workers were in the services.
One Sunday afternoon in 1942 my two older sisters and I were resting on the grass in St James Park near Buckingham Palace. A group of young servicemen speaking another language were sitting not far from us. One of the young men got into a conversation with my eldest sister Minnie. He spoke some English and told us that he was a French Canadian from the Magdalen Islands, Quebec.
The soldiers were just passing the time away before taking the train to return to camp. We went to the station to see them off and before leaving the young soldier took Minnie’s address. A few months later he turned up on our doorstep with a friend named Conrad Landry. From then on, Conrad would come to see us whenever he was on leave in London.
Then came D-Day, 6 June 1944. Conrad was a driver mechanic and drove a machine gun carrier. He was with La Régiment de la Chaudière and was among the first Allied soldiers to land in Normandy. It was two months before the regiment was given twenty-four hours behind the lines to rest and wash up and Conrad was able to write me a few lines to let me know that he had come through hell and was still alive.
The next time we saw each other was New Year’s 1945. It was then we realized that our friendship had turned into something deeper and Conrad asked my mother if she would allow me to marry him. I was seventeen.
By this time we had known Conrad for three years and although it was not easy for my mother she gave her consent. Upon his return to the regiment Conrad began gathering all the information and necessary forms which were needed in order to obtain permission to marry.
This was not easy to obtain as the Canadian Army was advised to dissuade soldiers from marrying girls from a foreign land. However, after several months of having had forms completed, being interviewed by the padre of the regiment and receiving my medical certificates, we were informed that we had been granted permission to marry on or after 9 May 1945. Meanwhile, I had decided to become a Catholic and was receiving instruction from a priest once a week. I was finally conditionally baptized in the Catholic Church on 5 May 1945 and confirmed by the Bishop the following day.
We were married two weeks later on a beautiful sunny day. I wore my eldest sister’s wedding dress as it was difficult to find such clothing in London. The church ceremony was lovely and I somehow managed to catch my heel in my chair and sent it flying down the altar steps. Conrad went to pick it up while thinking that we were off to a good start with me throwing chairs around. My mother had been saving canned goods from our weekly rations for several months and was able to give us a small reception with about thirty guests.
Before Conrad returned to his regiment in Germany, we went to the Canadian Wives Bureau to apply for my repatriation to Canada. My name was put onto a list and we were told that it would probably be a while before I would be able to travel to Canada as the list was very long. Should I become pregnant, I would not be allowed to travel after my sixth month and once the child was born, it should be at least three months before we could travel.
Conrad was demobilized and sent back to Canada in August and soon after I found out I was pregnant. I tried to arrange it so I could go right away but it was eleven months before I saw Conrad again, this time with a little baby. Meanwhile, my sister Jeanne had also married a young man from the Magdalen Islands, a friend of Conrad’s, Aurelius Bourque, so she was also waiting impatiently to rejoin her husband.
We finally both received notices in early July 1946 that we should be prepared to travel at twenty-four hours notice from 12 July onward. We were later advised to go to a London hostel on 18 July where the War Brides would be gathering in readiness for the trip.
We stayed overnight in the crowded hostel. We were not allowed to leave the premises but our families were allowed to visit with us until 10 p.m. when they were asked to leave. I saw one young woman leave with her parents. My mother stayed with us until the very last minute. It was heart wrenching tearing ourselves away from her: our mother would be alone for the first time.
The next morning as we left to board the bus to the railroad station, she was waiting for us outside the door. I don’t know if she had even gone home the previous night. When the bus started off, she was running alongside with tears streaming down her face not looking where she was going. We were afraid that she would get hurt in an accident. Jeanne and I were both in a terrible state, torn between the love for our mother and of our husbands who were waiting for us in Canada.
We arrived in Southampton where we boarded the ship the Queen Mary. All the luxurious furnishings had been removed from the cabins and had been replaced by bunks around the walls, hammock-like cots were attached to the lower bunks for the babies. We were given disposable nappies (the first we had ever seen) and also