There was a real stigma surrounding any child who didn’t have a dad, and I wasn’t allowed to play with the little boy who lived down the road because he didn’t have one. He was awful anyway, and was always fighting and calling my friends and me names.
One day when I was fourteen, I was standing at a table doing my homework. I looked out the window and saw that awful boy looking through our gate.
“What’s that horrible boy looking in here for?” I asked my mum.
She replied that I shouldn’t speak about him like that, as I wasn’t any different. I looked at her in amazement. She went on to say that she had something to tell me: that I wasn’t really her daughter — my eldest sister was my mum and she was my grandmother. My mind ran riot, all the lies, all the little digs from my “brothers and sisters.” Now I understood why!
All they would tell me is that he was a Canadian pilot and he was killed in action during the war, but I didn’t believe them. Somehow I was going to find my dad.
Well, their obedient, well-behaved daughter disappeared after that, and in her place was a rebellious, out-of-control teenager in the 1960s. When my “father” beat me I would scream at him that I would be happier dead and that he should kill me if that was what he really wanted.
Harry Potter, Christine’s father, in a picture taken during World War II. Her mother last saw him in December 1943, and the last thing he said was, “I will return for you.”
I was packed off to England to live with my real mum when I was sixteen. By this time she had made her own life, and I wasn’t part of it. She was good to me and bought me clothes and things, but she was terrified that someone would find out I was her daughter. She worked all hours, from early morning to late at night, so we hardly had any time to get to know each other.
Finally, one day I asked her about my dad. She told me he was a pilot and that he came from Montreal in Canada. Apparently he used to “borrow” a Leander aeroplane and dive and do loop-the-loops over her house on the weekends.
One day he crashed the plane in the field at the back of the house and was badly injured. My mum rescued him from the plane as he was unable to undo the seat belt and he had a badly injured leg and a head wound. He was court-martialled for this and sent to England for a time, but was then promoted to warrant officer and returned to Ireland.
My mum became pregnant with me and last saw him in December 1943, when she was four months pregnant. My dad was being sent home on medical grounds, but the last thing he said to her was “I will return for you.”
She waited all her life — never married, never stopped loving him.
I continued to be a rebel, met my husband and had three sons. I tried various routes to find my father, writing letters to the Canadian Embassy, making contact with the Salvation Army. I even wrote to Cilla Black, the English television host whose program involves reuniting long-lost relatives.
Christine Coe was raised by her grandparents in Ireland. She found her father’s family in Canada through the Project Roots website.
One day I went to a medium, and she told me that my father had not passed over to the other side yet and that she could see him standing on a hill overlooking the countryside. She said there was water nearby, and that he was thinking about my mum and me and wondering what had happened to us.
I went away with renewed determination to find him. Reading a magazine one day, I saw an article about Project Roots and immediately sat down and wrote to the address they gave. They sent flyers out to all the Potters in Canada, then one day advised me to write to the Canadian archives and say that I was a “buddy” looking for a friend from the war years. I did this, and back came a reply with a special number to put on my envelope. It was really hard to write the letter, how do you introduce yourself — at forty-four years of age — to your father?
I was too late. Five months later, the letter was returned with “Deceased” written across it, but there were a few scribbled notes against some questions I had asked.
After this happened, Olga put my father’s name up on their website (www.project-roots.com). I didn’t know this had been done; I had given up hope and, although I had signed to give my permission, over the years I had forgotten all about it.
Out of the blue I received a telephone call from Olga saying that yes, my father was dead, but I had a half-sister who wanted to make contact.
I cannot describe the emotions I felt. The phone rang! It was my sister, Diane. I was shaking from head to toe; the atmosphere was electric. Tears streamed down my face when I heard her soft Canadian accent. I was forty-nine years old and speaking to my sister for the very first time.
Diane flew over to England the following month and stayed with my husband and me at our house. She told me about my three other sisters, that my dad had married at seventeen and later joined the war while her mom was pregnant with their third daughter.
My letter had arrived just three weeks after he died, and his wife opened it. She said nothing to her daughters about it for nearly a year, then told Diane. Diane started to look for my mum right away: She phoned every person in the telephone book with my mum’s surname, but she was looking in Ireland — and, of course, both my mum and I lived in England.
One day she received a telephone call from her son to say he had been on the Internet: “Mom, Grandpa’s name is on the Internet. Someone is looking for him . . . an organization called Project Roots.”
It has been an amazing two years. I have now met my sister Saundra and my niece Colleen and I e-mail my sister Suzanne all the time. Emotionally it has been hard, and I have cried so much I almost have shares in Kleenex. Happy tears and sad tears.
I have a wonderful, large family. I have pictures of my dad, and it’s amazing to see the Potter family resemblance in me and my children and to know where my likes and dislikes come from.
At last I feel a whole person, not ashamed of who I am. I have the feeling of belonging, of knowing who I am.
He Was a Bigamist
by Olga Rains
Louis Burwell wrote many love letters to his English fiancée Sheila, and even though he often asked her to burn them, she never did. It’s a good thing she didn’t, because her son Robert would never have been able to trace Louis’s Canadian family and find out what kind of man his father really was.
Louis Burwell in a wartime photo. Louis was already married in Canada when he married Robert Burwell’s mother, Sheila, in England.
Sheila and Louis met in England in 1941, and what started as friendship soon turned into a love affair. But back in Canada, Louis had a wife named Florence and three young sons. That didn’t stop him. On February 21, 1942, he and Sheila married, but since Louis hadn’t bothered to obtain a divorce it was an illegal marriage and Louis was a bigamist. On October 6, 1944, a son Robert (Bob) was born in Salisbury, England. Like so many other Canadian servicemen, after the war Louis returned to Canada and was never seen or heard from again by his English wife and son.
Project Roots found out that Louis died on March 2, 1978, and was able to put Bob in touch with Tom, his half-brother. Tom was a teenager when his father went off to war, and his mother had told him all about the family Louis left behind in England. Tom was very anxious to meet Bob, and after many phone calls and letters,