Given that kind of boorish behaviour, it’s not surprising that more than one Canadian wasn’t embraced by his British girlfriend’s parents. This War Bride describes how her husband had to ‘sell himself’ to her parents:
They, in common with a lot of other parents over there, looked suspiciously at Canadians. Definitely, they agreed, we should be hospitable to Canadians, for they had volunteered – not been called up – to come and stand shoulder to shoulder with the motherland. They were grand fighters in the last war and probably would be just as good in this one. But to have a Canadian as a son-in-law?
Too many people had heard the story of the ‘pub’ down in Brighton which Canadians had wrecked, and the story had lost nothing in the retelling. There were those drunken Canadians my father himself had seen in Piccadilly Circus.
With all this, it was to a definitely hostile atmosphere that I brought my husband-to-be home for the first time. Through him, my people met other Canadians and I think I can say that in all England there is not a more loyal pro-Canadian family than the one my husband and I left behind.18
Over the course of the war, relations between Canadians and their British hosts became considerably more relaxed and cordial. United by the shared experience of German bombing during the Blitz, incidents like the one at Reigate were rare in the last half of the war. With training and discipline, the Canadians put their best foot forward and, although they weren’t perfect, over time they began to understand the British and accept their different ways.19 As Canadian sacrifice on the battlefield became increasingly evident at Dieppe, then Sicily, Italy and Northwest Europe, Canadians and Britons got to know each other very well and one of the best ways to seal that relationship was through marriage.
I Do
Getting married in wartime wasn’t as easy as saying ‘I do’. In those days, it was expected that a young man would ask the parents for permission to marry their daughter. Assuming the answer was yes, only then could the fusillade of paperwork begin.
Forms had to be filled out, appointments made, medical exams taken, and although the rules changed over time, a Canadian serviceman had to obtain permission to marry from his commanding officer before a wedding date could be set. If he was under twenty-one, he even had to get permission from his parents back in Canada. If she was under twenty-one she had to do the same with her parents. The bride-to-be also had to get a letter of recommendation from her employer attesting to her character, a meeting with the chaplain was set, and a licence had to be purchased before any vows could be exchanged.
Reverend Father Raymond Hickey was the Roman Catholic Padre of the North Shore (New Brunswick) Regiment. The North Shores were of English, Scottish, Irish and Acadian20 descent and many of the young French soldiers whom he ministered spoke not a word of English.
One of Father Hickey’s tasks was to counsel young couples who were contemplating marriage. In his book The Scarlet Dawn, which chronicles his experiences with the North Shores during the Second World War, Father Hickey explains how he learned a lesson about love in a chapter called ‘Love knows no language’.
Joe came back from a seven day leave to Edinburgh, came in and ‘Father,’ said he, ‘I come to get married.’ ‘Fine Joe,’ said I, ‘marriage is a fine sacrament; a good girl Joe?’
‘Oh yes, Father, Irish.’ ‘Irish,’ was the answer that Joe knew would score a bull’s eye with me. ‘Yes I know Joe, but know her well?’ I asked. ‘Oh yes, real well, Father,’ was the reply. Joe had already told me that he had met her for the first time on that leave. Now it took Joe a day to go and another to return; his Irish Mary was working all day in a factory, so with rapid calculation I figured out just how well Joe knew her. This was a chaplain’s duty, so I set out to side-track Joe’s marriage. ‘Now look Joe,’ said I, ‘have you thought this all out? Have you told her everything? Does she realize what she’s doing? For example, have you told her of the cold winters we have back home, with our ice and snow? And another thing Joe, how is your little Mary O’Brien, with her Irish brogue, going to get along in your village where you speak mostly French? Have you told her all this Joe?’ Joe’s only answer was a shrug of his shoulders. With a promise to Joe to shove his case through, we said goodnight and I sat down to write Miss Mary O’Brien the things her Joe wouldn’t speak. Here was my letter:
‘Dear Miss O’Brien:
I’m the Catholic chaplain of the regiment your friend Joe is in. He tells me you intend to marry. Now Joe is a fine good boy, but has he told you of the conditions you will be going to in Canada? For example, we have terrible winters where Joe and I come from; we have nine and ten feet of snow; it’s awfully cold, and there’s ice from October to June.
And, secondly, Miss O’Brien, have you considered the language question? How are you going to get along with your Irish brogue – which I admit is sweet in your County Down, but out of place in Joe’s French-speaking village?’ And with a bit of fatherly advice I closed my letter.
Back by return mail, came the answer. It was written post haste in lead pencil on, I think, paper she tore off the wall in her wrath. Here was the answer:
‘Dear Father Hickey:
Thank you for your letter. As to your first difficulty – I like snow, and secondly, love knows no language.
Yours truly
Mary O’Brien.’21
All this bureaucracy was designed to slow down hasty marriages and it seemed to work: only the most determined couples could be expected to go through that entire process and still come out the other end with stars in their eyes. The ‘permission to marry’ form would give a date upon which the couple could legally marry and with that piece of paper in hand, they could purchase a marriage licence. The licence was good for a certain period of time and if the marriage didn’t take place within the prescribed dates, a new licence had to be bought.
There are so many examples of weddings gone awry that it seems they were the norm, rather than the exception. It was impossible to say when a fiancé would be called away to duty, so marriages that had been planned months in advance could often be called off at the last minute or, vice-versa, hurried preparations had to be made at a moment’s notice when it was known a soldier was due for transfer or repatriation back to Canada. How they managed to pull it off is nothing short of miraculous in some cases.
Still other women’s hopes of marriage would be dashed when her fiancé was repatriated before the paperwork was complete. This appears to have happened quite frequently if the number of fiancées who came to Canada to get married after the war is any indication.
For the husband, there was little preparation: he wore a uniform. But all the nice things that a young bride dreams of such as a white dress, flowers, cakes and fine food for guests at the reception had to be purchased using ration cards. More often than not, she ended up getting married in a two-piece suit, the cake was made without sugar, and the menu was whatever could be cobbled together from rations, including the serviceman’s friend, Spam®.
Transportation of War Brides
Between January 1942 and August 1944, the transportation of servicemen’s wives and children was administered by the London Office of the Immigration Branch of the Canadian Department of Mines and Resources. At first the numbers were barely noticeable, and the reasons why so few came during the war years are fairly obvious: the exigencies of the fighting services, the very real danger of travel on the seas and the ban on the westward movement of wives and civilians ensured that only a very small number of dependents could make the dangerous journey to Canada.
But with victory in sight, everything changed when the Department of National Defence took over the transportation and travel arrangements of servicemen’s dependents in August 1944. The Army was put in charge of moving wives and children of all three services, Army, Navy and Air Force, and one of the first things it