Thursday, April 23, 1925.. My mother.

My mother was born in St. Lambert, Quebec.

Last edition:

Wednesday, April 22, 1925. Thought police.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 2020s, 2025, Disaster, Great Salt Lake, Japan, law, Republican Party, Utah

Tuesday, April 25, 1944. The Blood for Goods deal extended, Air disaster at Montreal, the death of George Herriman.

Joel Brand in 1961, age 55.

The Nazis offered Hungarian rescue worker Joel Brand an offer which has been termed the "Blood for Goods" deal.  It was an offer to free 1,000,000 Hungarian Jews, releasing them to an Allied country, save for Palestine (oddly) for goods.  The offer was extended through Adolf Eichmann to Brand, who was a pre-war Hungarian Zionist.

Brand carried the message to the Allies, making his way through Turkey to Egypt, where he was arrested by the British.  The British did not take the offer seriously and believed it was a trick. The US was cautious about the offer but less hostile to it.  British opposition to exploring it ended the matter, and the British press leaked it and termed it blackmail by the fall.

At this point in the war, members of the SS were not completely loyal to Hitler and there is some reason to believe that this was a camouflaged effort to open up communications with the Western Allies in order to advance a separate peace, a delusional prospect of that is what they were thinking.

Brand moved to Israel after the war and was haunted the rest of his life by the failure of the proposal.  He died visiting Germany in 1964, at age 58.

A Royal Air Force variant of the B-24, a Liberator B Mark VI crashed into the Griffintown neighborhood of Montreal after taking off from Dorval Airport. The crew and ten civilians were killed.

My mother lived in the St. Lambert district of Montreal at the time.  St. Lambert is directly across the river from Griffentown.  I'd never heard of this incident, but then, there are many such thing that my parents never mentioned to me on matters like this, and I suppose that's to be expected.  Casper suffered numerous air disasters during World War Two.

My mother, then 19 years of age, would have been working in the city at this time, so was likely on the Griffentown side of the river when the accident occured.

The first combat helicopter evacuation completed in the CBI:

21–25 April 1944

The Luftwaffe raided shipping at Portsmouth and Plymouth-Devonport in a nighttime raid.  The same night, the HMS Black Prince and three Canadian destroyers engaged German warships in the English Channel, sinking the T-29 and damaging the T-24 and T-27.

The T-39 series of German ships were torpedo "boats", but due to their size they were more in the nature of corvettes.

Allied forces landed at Humboldt Bay, New Guinea.

The British government announced that it had a £2.76 billion deficit, £89 million smaller than anticipated.

Service Club mural, Ft. Bliss, Texas.  April 25, 1944.

The United Negro College Fund was established.

George Herriman, the creator of Krazy Kat, died at age 63.

Herriman was creole and born in New Orleans, although he speant much of his adult life in Los Angeles.  The Creole are their own distinct ethnicity, with some noting that means by default that they are of "mixed race", something that a lot of non Louisianians don't realize as they confuse creole with Cajun, the two not being the same.  Under the bizarre rules of American culture, Herriman would have been regarded as "black" in some regions of the United States, although legally, and equally bizarrely, he could at the time choose to self identify as white or black, neither of which really describes his ethnic heritage.  He self identified as white, which makes sense, as to do otherwise would have hindered his career.

Herriman was a shy and gentlemanly man.  A Catholic, he married his childhood sweetheart and had two children, as well as a lot of pets, of which he wsa very fond.

Last prior edition:

Monday, April 24, 1944. Violating Swiss Airspace.

1940s, 1944, 1944 at the Movies, Brazil, Commandos, Munich Germany, New Guinea, Personalities, Prisoners of War, Royal Air Force, Special Boat Service, Switzerland, United States Air Force, World War Two

Industrial History: 1929 Jacques Cartier Bridge over St. Lawrence Rive...

Industrial History: 1929 Jacques Cartier Bridge over St. Lawrence Rive...: ( Historic Bridges ; 3D Satellite , 3,445 photos) Pont Jacques-Cartier, Pont du Havre (Harbor Bridge) Street View , Aug 2022 Street View , J...

Crossing over this bridge frightened me as a child. 

Blog Mirror: A Hundred Years Ago. 1921 Thanksgiving Menus

From the always excellent A Hundred Years Ago:

1921 Thanksgiving Menus

Note, the small servantless  house.  

I commented on that entry with this:

I’m struck by the “servantless” house comment. I wonder what percentage of homes actually had servants? Surely a small minority, but still its an interesting comment as the author expects that some of the readers will have them.

We don't have servants, rather obviously, and I don't know anyone who does.  I do know some people who have "cleaning ladies", which are women who will clean houses, but not a daily basis.

I know that my father's family didn't have domestics of any kind.  No doubt my grandmother had the laboring oar there, and likely my father's two sisters a bit after a certain age. But my mother's family did have them up until some point in the 1930s, when the Great Depression halted that and the female members of the household took over.  I also know that they were what my mother called "French", meaning Quebecois, which is interesting in that my mother was "Irish Canadian", which in her case really meant that she was mostly Irish, but also a little French (probably 1/4, if I recall correctly).  Irish Canadians mostly lived in the cities, as she did, and their position in Quebec's economic system, which was highly agrarian at the time, was different from that of the full Quebecois.  Having said that, almost all Quebecois near the cities were also somewhat Irish, as Irish orphans had been taken in right off the docks at one time through direct adoptions by the Catholic population.

The maids didn't live there, they came in, and I don't know how frequently.  They also didn't cook, that was my grandmother's job, and like my mother, she reportedly was not particularly good at it.

She wouldn't have cooked anything like this, of course.  American Thanksgiving is an American deal.

Caring for the dying

 My mother, as a young woman.

My mother, age 90, is dying.

This isn't a sudden thing.  She was remarkably physically good health up until her mid 80s, when things began to fall apart.  It impacted her mind first, and not kindly.  She had always been a very physically active person, riding a bike and swimming daily, up until she was about 85 years old, when she suddenly quit. That's when I knew that I couldn't ignore things anymore.

Not that it wasn't obvious before that. 

It's a long story I care not to repeat, but her mind had been deteriorating for some time, but she was still able to live on her own and she loved doing so.

Now, on that, perhaps a bit of that is a rationalization on my part.  My father and I were very, very close, and I miss my father dearly to this day.  He died when he was 62 years old after becoming suddenly ill.  The anniversary of that death, in fact, is coming right up.  I'm 52 years old now.  My father's father died when he was in his late 40s, and they were very close as well.  I think that weighted heavily on his mind, particularly as he came up to and then passed that age.  I know that as I begin to see 62 on the horizon its on my mind, but then I didn't expect to make it out of here alive anyhow.

And I'm seeing that advanced old age has not been kind to my mother.  Nor has it been kind to most of her siblings.  It hasn't been the same for all of her siblings, all but one of whom have lived into advanced old age.  Some, including one of my uncles, have remained very mentally sharp.  But others have endured what my mother has.  Seeing it, I hope that I'm spared that, and frankly if Providence should provide it, while I'd like to live long enough to see my children well established as adults and enjoy their adult company, I don't know that I'd like to endure the ravages of extreme old age.  I know that its been horrible to watch.

 My mother, center, as a little girl.

And given this, I've thought a lot about how I've generally handled it and frankly sometimes considered how things like this were handled in prior times.  Frankly, I don't know that they were handled all that much differently, to some degree, in our fluid North American society.

 My mother, far left, with her sister and her oldest brother, Terry, in his Canadian Army uniform prior to his going to Europe in World War Two.  Of those depicted, Terry and Brenda (second from right), in addition to my mother, are still living.

My mother is originally from St. Lambert, Quebec.  She was born there and grew up there with her extended family of siblings.  Born in 1925, the family hit very hard times during the Great Depression.  Indeed, it's generally not realized that the Great Depression hit harder in Canada than it did in the United States, but it did. The percentage of Canadians out of work exceeded that of Americans. Having said that, that Quebec, which is now a thing of the past, had a huge rural, French speaking, agrarian population.  My mother's family was an Irish-French urban family, and therefore not part of the agrarian population, although they shared the common faith that it had.  They principally spoke English, although everyone could speak French. Anyhow, she went to work in her mid teens as the family was in such desperate straights, working at first for the Canadian Pacific Railway.  In her 20s she moved out to Calgary and worked as an oil and gas secretary, before leaving that job, as the urging of her mother, in order to be bridesmaid for her youngest sister, who married in Denver Colorado.  Returning north after that she stopped here as we were having an oil boom and she thought it likely should could find work, which she did.  All in all, she was pretty adventuresome when young.

I'd be hard pressed to know who is who is this photograph of my mother's siblings, and I'm not even sure if she is in it.

She met my father at St. Anthony's Church and they were married in 1958.  My mother would have been 33 years old at the time.  When I was born she was 38, fairly late, particularly in those years, to have a child.  I'm my parents only one.

 My mother, right, riding.  This photograph was likely taken in Alberta when she was in her twenties, but I'm not really certain and now there's nobody I ask.

We were a pretty active family. Indeed, I feel that I compare unfavorably as an adult to my parents.  But my mother started sliding into illness when I was in my teens and by the time I was 20 she was very ill.  And that illness expressed itself as a severe example of dementia.  It was scary, and during the process it strained our relationship severely.  My father admirably stayed very loyal to her the entire time, in spite of all the embarrassment that accompanies such an affliction before old age.  Ultimately she arrived at death's door.

During that time, I prayed that she'd recover, and she did.  There's no explanation for it other than a miracle.  No doctor has ever been able to explain it. The recovery wasn't full, but it was large, and when on death's door she began a recovery over a period of months that ultimately allowed her to return home from a brief hospitalization and a brief stay in a nursing home.  Her mind cleared up to a large extent, if not fully, and she was amazingly physically fit.  She bicycled and swam everyday, and in her 80s was so fit that I was often quite stunned that others were not equally fit.

 My mother with a bicycle while in her teens.  She rode a bicycle daily up into her mid 80s.

My father died at age 62 after a sudden illness afflicted him. He struggled for a period of months before passing away.  It was a horrific experience for both of us.  By that time, I'd gone down to the University of Wyoming twice and had graduated from law school.   When I returned to town I'd planned on only being at my parents house briefly but first my father grew ill and then he died, so I stayed on there, first to help him and then to try to help my mother.  Two years after he died I met my wife and we married, and with my mother doing well I moved out.

She did well after that for a long time.  Indeed, twenty or so years.  However, slowly, anyone could see things were changing.  About six years ago it was too much to ignore, although I tried to.  I couldn't bring myself to contemplate her moving from her house to which she was so attached, so I did nothing.  The last winter we debated what to do.  It was a nightmare as she panicked over snow, or forgot how common things worked. Finally, unbeknownst to me, she quite being careful about the food she was eating, which started making her ill.  Ultimately she fell very ill and at that point received the diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia.  But a diagnosis wasn't probably really necessary, it was pretty clear what was going on.

That lead to the nursing home, which we had no choice but to arrange for.  She couldn't return home, and with a will that was incredibly strong, we could not take care of her.  Over time her condition advanced much less slowly than anticipated and we were able to move her, when her wing of the nursing home closed, to a new facility that had a memory care unit that was newer and nicer, with more freedom, seemingly.

Now the end has arrived.  She's been in the hospital twice in less than a month and her physical condition has declined.  Her memory is now almost completely gone.  She can't remember things day to day, and I doubt from morning to afternoon.  She once, prior to her first illness, and again after recovering from it, had a very active mind.  Now, none of the old interests are there.

I don't know how well I've handled any of this.  Not very well, I think.  From time to time I've looked and thought that in prior ages this was handled better within families, at home, in times that were slower. But I don't think that's really that true.  We've always been so mobile.  I know that my father was there for his parents when they died, but then my grandfather was only in his 40s and my father a teenager when he died.  I can remember my father's mother dying when I was a small child, and all her children were there, and they all live here.  On my mother's side I can barely remember her mother, having met her I think only once when I was old enough too, and I don't know if my mother went out to see her as she was dying.  I dimly recall that it came too quickly.  And I think that was the same for her father.

When I was young, I recall prayers for a good, or happy, death being common in the Middle Ages.   Then are not unknown now, but they are less common.  While young, I was always struck by that with a bit of horror.  A good death?  How could that be?  

But I understand it now.  All too often that isn't how things happen.  Or at least its now how those who observe it perceive it.  It makes sense to me now.

O God, great and omnipotent judge of the living and the dead, we are to appear before you after this short life to render an account of our works. Give us the grace to prepare for our last hour by a devout and holy life, and protect us against a sudden and unprovided death. Let us remember our frailty and mortality, that we may always live in the ways of your commandments. Teach us to "watch and pray" (Lk 21:36), that when your summons comes for our departure from this world, we may go forth to meet you, experience a merciful judgment, and rejoice in everlasting happiness. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Anyway you look at it, this is one of those areas where I don't measure up to my father and his siblings.  I  simply don't. 

The war news.

One of my cousins is transcribing correspondence between our grandparents, prior to their being married.  I'm very glad she is, it's been most interesting.

These date from mid winter of 1916-1917.  It's entering to see how the Great War shows up in them, as a casual reference, as they corresponded back and forth from Quebec to Charleston, South Carolina.

January 12, 1917:

I saw by the paper last night that Humbert Mariotti’s father was dead. Also that the Irish Rangers have been broken up as a unit in England and that Major O’Brien and Trihey(?) are returning to Canada along with others, and they are sending the boys in drafts to the front. Isn’t it too bad. I think it is a shame.

 January 19, 1917:

I saw by the paper this morning that Judge Doherty had made a statement that the Irish Rangers were going to Ireland and thought they would go to the Front as a unit. Also that as far as the particular officers mentioned as returning to Canada, he knew nothing about it. So I guess Mr. McCrory will be going alright.

January 24, 1917:

I heard this noon through a girl in Marguerite’s office that Jim McCrory was engaged to May Wittels (if this is the way to spell it) and wanted to marry her before he left, but she didn’t want to until he came back. Do you think it is true? I guess May must be delighted if it is true, but it seems to me she would have married him before going, if it is true. Anyhow, she has some very pleasant memories of happy moments she passed in the office, hasn’t she? Only it was mean of Percy Minto (?) to always intrude.

 January 29, 1917:

I saw by the papers this morning that the Irish Rangers are having a great time in Ireland. Col. Trihey is still in Canada. I do not know whether he is going back or not. I believe for a while during his absence Mr. McCrory was in command. It seems Edgar Reynolds is not at all liked by the men under him. He was exercising his usual authority.

 February 8, 1917:

I saw by the Star bulletin just as I came along that there was quite an accident on the Grand Trunk Pacific. A train coming eastward conveying 300 French Canadian soldiers jumped the rails. I think 2 were killed and 40 injured.

 February 13, 1917:

I wonder if the U.S. went to war if they would have to censor the mails between there and here. They would soon get to know ours, dear, and let them go through.

 February 14, 1917

Regarding staying there indefinitely, dear, this will not be necessary, but don’t you think it would be advisable to stay there, for say, a year or so after the war, as people say that times will be worse after the war for a couple of years until things get settled. If you get an increase by the end of April we could get married and instead of renting a house and (paying for) or buying furniture, we could board and with the money you would have in the bank you could put it into stocks. Of course if things were very good there we could stay on after the war.

March 14, 1917

At noon today, there was an extra out with the news that a U.S. ship had been sunk. If true, I wonder if they will go to war.

March 17, 1917

Last night it seems there was some kind of a soirée in Outremont at which Henri Bourassa presided, and this morning all the store windows and poles throughout Outremont had little posters on them about eight inches long and five inches wide marked “Down with CONSCRIPTION. A bas la CONSCRIPTION”. I presume it must have been some of his party who did it. It seems in the East end the same thing has been done.

March 19, 1917

Greta Morris told me in speaking of Ralph Goodchild that he got married before going away to some very nice little girl from Kingston. I was quite surprised, as I had heard nothing about it, although I have seen Winnie several times lately. It seems he met her this summer while at some summer resort down the St. Lawrence where his regiment was located, and became engaged to her while there. Of course his battalion went overseas shortly afterwards, so I presume she has gone along with him.

March 20, 1917

The war news this morning seems to be very good. The English and French are driving the Germans out of France at a great rate, according to our newspapers. I hope it is true and that it will continue.

March 23, 1917

Last night the 245th battalion, Kitchener’s own, left for overseas. Two of the Rolland boys, Stuart and Charlie, who are cousins of the Terrouxs were with them. Stuart was to have brought his wife along with him but at the last moment found she could not go. Of course they were very much disappointed.