Incidentally, Louis’s marriage in Canada nearly broke up at the time — no surprise, really — but eventually Florence and Louis made up and they stayed together for the rest of their lives.
For the full text of one of Louis Burwell’s letters to Sheila, please refer to the Appendix (page 213).
I Found Real Happiness in Canada
by Jenny Moore
My father, John, was a Canadian soldier in World War II, and he spent time in England, where he met my mother, Joan, in Bournemouth.
John and Joan planned to marry, but I was born before that happened. John was of Ukrainian origin and his parents lived in Saskatchewan. My mother’s parents were against the marriage, so they found a way to have John transferred to another part of England.
Thus began my unhappy life without a real mom or dad.
We lived with Gramma and Grampa until I was nine months old, when my mother married George, an Englishman. We moved to the house of George’s parents for a while, then we moved again. We were very poor, and George would regularly come home drunk and beat up my mother.
George was sent away, Mom went to work, and things seemed to be better when suddenly Mom took me to Oxford, where George was living, and we moved back in with him. This only ended in more trouble. George had another woman, and life there was no different. One day we escaped to the police station, and since he couldn’t hit my mother, he beat me up instead.
When I was six or seven I was sent to live with George. I never questioned the arrangement because I thought George was my real father. My main task there was to shine the brass outside the front door. I felt rejected and would wake up at night screaming from the nightmares.
One day Mom showed up with another man — Mike, an Irishman. He tried to be nice to me, but I rejected him and ran away. Life at home with George was awful and I spent much of my time on the streets. Believe me when I say I know what it is like to be hungry.
When I was nine, Mom showed up and took me to Banbury to live with a retired couple who were very nice to me. But I couldn’t settle, so I wrote to George and he took me back to Oxford. Mom didn’t like that, and eventually she took me away to live with her sister. I did not fit in and was unhappy there also.
In 1955, Mom picked me up to live with her and Mike, the Irishman, in Warwickshire. He told friends that I was his daughter. I didn’t like that, plus Mike ruled with an iron rod and Mom didn’t believe anything I told her, so there was a barrier between us.
I was not interested in school, so I dropped out. We moved to Warrington, where I worked at several different jobs and then I met a young man, we fell in love and I became pregnant. We eventually married, but this didn’t last, either. I had a nervous breakdown, we broke up and I went to stay with my Aunt Joyce. During my time there, Aunt Joyce finally told me the big secret — my real father was a Canadian soldier! George was not my father after all. I was furious!
After years of searching we found my biological father’s family. Unfortunately, he had passed away, but I have three half-brothers and a half-sister whom I have met and they all love me.
I married an older man who was good for me and my children. Harold and I went to visit my Canadian family last year and we had a wonderful time. Ironically, they never knew I existed until now. John, my father, had never mentioned having a child in England. But it doesn’t matter — I found real happiness in Canada!
Jenny Moore (centre) surrounded by her Canadian family.
The Search for My Father
by Peter Hurricks
My name is Peter and I was born in England in March 1944. My mother, Agnes Hurricks, and my father, Jack Neale, met in 1943, when Jack was stationed near Suffolk with the Royal Canadian Engineers.
Jack Neale left behind wives and girlfriends in Canada and England, finally settling in Australia.
My mother was the youngest of seven children, and as all the older brothers and sisters had left home, she was expected to stay with their widowed mother. She worked for Marks and Spencer in Ipswich, and she was twenty-nine years old and still living at home when she met Jack.
I don’t think my mother had a boyfriend before Jack, and in her own words she did “adore him.” One of my older cousins who met him when she was a teenager said he was a very charming man. He was accepted by my mother’s family and regularly went out for a drink with one of my uncles. He had parcels sent to Agnes’s home from his mother in Canada, apparently with his own particular brand of coffee and other items that were not available in Britain during the war.
Eventually he asked my grandmother for permission to marry Agnes. My grandmother approved, but said she didn’t want my mother to go off to Canada after the war. That was all right with Jack because he said he wanted to settle in England anyway. Apparently my grandmother never really trusted him, so that’s the reason why she did not want my mother taken overseas. I don’t think they actually did get engaged, because soon after this Jack was posted to Yorkshire and my mother found out she was pregnant.
I don’t believe that Jack was ever serious about getting engaged, let alone marrying my mother. It was just a ploy to have sex. Later in my mother’s pregnancy, when it began to show, my grandmother threw Agnes out of the house and she went to London to stay with a friend.
Although it may seem strange these days, an unmarried mother in 1944 was treated as a social outcast for bringing shame and disgrace on her family. There were no income-support programs as there are today. For an unmarried mother to bring up a child on her own was tough. Many such children were adopted, and it was not unknown for parents of unmarried mothers to commit their daughters to life in a mental institution, even though they were perfectly sane.
I was born in a London hospital. My mother was a very determined woman and she intended to keep me from the start. My grandmother did relent soon after I was born, so Agnes returned home and went back to her job at Marks and Spencer.
In April 1944, my mother took Jack to the Borough Magistrate’s Court in Ipswich for maintenance costs. An affiliation order was granted for Jack to pay £0.50 per week until I reached the age of sixteen, not exactly a fortune by today’s standards. Apparently he did make a few payments to my mother, but Jack’s solicitor wrote to inform her that Jack was returning to Canada. With obviously no conscience on his part, the payments ceased.
One thing that surfaced during the court case was that Jack was already married in Canada with two sons, but was apparently separated from his wife. It was presumed, however, that he was returning to his family in Canada.
After the war, I think my mother must have destroyed any documents relating to Jack, because when I got to the age when I was curious about my father, there were only a couple of old photographs left.
I started to look for Jack Neale about 1980, without making any headway. I soon came up against the Canadian Privacy Act — a brick wall that I was unable to get past. This act has denied many thousands of English and Dutch war children the right to information about their fathers, and it is still in force today. Even the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not allow access to this information.
Peter