Eleven

Eleven

Unexpected Visitors

“In 1908 the appalling death rate from cholera infantum among infants in City Hospital had led Dr. Roberts to ask city council for a grant to bottle, clean milk for bottle-fed babies. By using milk from a tuberculin-tested herd and sterilizing utensils and bottles (but not the milk itself) the death rate from cholera infantum in 1909 was reduced thirty per cent, a figure justifying continuation of the

March 1908

Mary prepared beefsteak and kidney pie for Jim’s twenty-fifth birthday. “It’s just another day,” he said, and plunked himself down in his favourite armchair to swill back a beer.

     April marked the beginning of the rainy season. Mary leafed through Saturday’s Spec. A cloudy overcast day had been predicted, yet the sun shining through her kitchen window made it difficult to read the paper. She was amazed how often the weatherman was wrong. Mr. Briggs, the elderly gentlemen next door, predicted bad weather by checking his sauerkraut barrel. His claim that there’d be a storm if the cabbage rose to the top of the brine was surprisingly accurate.

     When Mary was on the farm Mr. Jacques was pretty good at predicting a change in weather: “He watched the sky each morning at sunrise to see what colour it was. According to the almanac, if the sky was red it meant plenty of rain was ahead. He also had noticed that Tiny, one of Daniel’s dogs, had been eating grass lately, another sure sign that rain was on its Perhaps the sauerkraut barrel and the Farmer’s Almanac were as reliable as the

     She skimmed through the rest of the paper. There was another ad for one of those new “electrified” sewing machines. The Right House had lace curtains on sale for $1.37 a pair and Home Outfitting Co. was advertising flannelette blankets for 79¢ or two for $1.35. Was it a misprint or were the blankets so thin they’d feel like tissue paper? Realizing she’d be late for church if she didn’t catch the streetcar soon, she grabbed her hat and coat and hurried out the door.

     Jim was waiting for her when she got home, anxious to spend the afternoon at the track. Mary found it hard to complain when he’d already fed Mona and settled her for an early afternoon nap. Reverend Whiting’s sermon “The bread of life never gets stale” had reminded her that she was blessed. As she took off her hat in the front hall, she was startled by a loud knock on the door. It was probably Jim coming back for his pocketbook since they rarely had callers on Sunday. With a hatpin in her hand, she quickly turned to open the door. Two ladies, one quite tall, were standing on her tiny front porch. Mary’s eyes darted from one to the other, noticing a striking resemblance between them.

     “Mary?” She didn’t recognize the voice, but she knew those eyes. Those dark, deep-set eyes belonged to her sister.

     “Oh, dear God, Carrie?” she screamed, dropping the hatpin on the floor. She grabbed her and then turned to the other women, the smaller one, who had remained silent. “Emma … you must be Emma!”

     She nodded shyly and Mary embraced her younger sister, for a brief moment letting go of Carrie. This had to be a dream, an illusion that she’d played out in her mind many times when she was feeling lonely. They stumbled into the front hall, hugging each other, and making utterances that would have been incoherent to a passer-by. Mary led them into her front room where they sat or rather clung to each other on her sofa. Outbursts of tears were followed by short periods of silence and then more tears.

     “How did you find me?” Mary finally asked.

     “I went to the Red Cross and they told me to contact the Salvation Army,” Carrie said with a big sigh. “They asked me to put everything I knew in a letter. I had to prove I was searching for missing relatives, not just friends. I posted two notes even though I’d dreadfully little to go on, just what you and Willy looked like as children, the ages that you’d be now, and your married name. They put it in the missing person column in The War Cry.

5973. JANEWAY, WILLIAM: Age 25, brown hair and eyes, came to Canada in 1891 to Stratford (and Hamilton), sent to work on a farm in Ontario. May have gone to the States.

5974. CHURCH, MARY (JANEWAY): Age 23, brown hair, came to Canada in 1892 to Stratford, sent to work on a farm in Ontario, eventually moved to Woodstock.

     “The Army,” Carrie said, “that’s what they call themselves, confirmed that you’d both been sent to Ontario. If you hadn’t written to tell me that you got married, I doubt they’d ever have found you. They’d no luck tracking Willy down.”

     “I saw him twice when I was on the farm,” Mary replied, having forgotten that he’d been called Willy as a young boy, “but he isn’t there now.”

     “I use to lie awake at night wondering what happened to both of you. I heard different stories about what life was like for home children in Canada. One day I saw a picture of some children standing on a railway platform. I’ll never forget it. The caption read ‘Home Kids Waiting at the Station.’ They had nametags around their necks, like ties on potato sacks. I stared at that picture of sad little faces, hoping I wouldn’t find you or Willy. It worried me so, that we were all broke up,” Carrie’s voice quivered.

     Mary had her own stories about home children. Back on the farm she’d heard that “two Home boys ran away on the eleventh line. They found them two days later, frozen solid. They carried them off like pieces of stove wood. And the year before that, a Home Boy ran away along the train lines in Peterborough, and the train squashed him flat. Nothing left but blood and ground-up

     Carrie quickly changed the subject. In her soft-spoken voice and distinctive British accent she talked about the passage over. Mary learned that Emma, Carrie, her husband Frank, their two young children, along with Frank’s brother and his family, had arrived in Saint John, New Brunswick, on March 20, eleven days after leaving Liverpool aboard the CPR steamship Lake They’d travelled across the country by train, arriving in Hamilton two days later.

Carrie (Janeway) Lunn had a photo taken Christmas 1907 with her two young sons before their arrival in Canada.

Courtesy of Gail Horner, Emma Janeway’s granddaughter.

     “Frank and I were sick for the entire passage. Thankfully, Emma didn’t get ill and was able to take care of the boys.” She dove into her purse and proudly handed her a photo. “Frank’s three-and-a-half and Harvey’s six months old. I don’t know what I’d have done without her.”

     At that moment Emma decided to speak, surprising both of them. “If I had heard one more (making a baby voice) ‘Auntie Emmy, Auntie Emmy,’ I’d go stark raving mad.” She laughed for the first time and Mary saw the face of a strikingly beautiful young woman.

     “How long will you be staying?” Mary asked, turning from one to the other, dreading the answer.

     “For good, Mary. We’re here for good,” Carrie replied. With that, the girls jumped up, grabbed each other’s hands, and danced around the room in an uncontrollable frenzy of giggles. Anyone observing these antics might assume the trio had found the sherry bottle in the sideboard and imbibed in a few too many to help pass an otherwise quiet Sunday afternoon.

     Suddenly Mary stopped. “I hear Mona stirring. That’s my little girl. I can’t wait for you to meet her,” she said excitedly and quickly left the room. Carrie sat down again. Emma wandered around the room, looking at little trinkets. A pot-bellied milk glass bowl caught her eye. Little did she know that Jim had given that to his bride on their first anniversary. She picked up a china bud vase with a yellow silk rose in it. She noticed a framed picture on the wall that looked like a wedding photograph.

     “That must be her husband. Handsome, isn’t he?” Carrie nodded in agreement.

     As soon as Mary returned, carrying a sleepy, dark-haired toddler wrapped in a pink blanket, Emma sat down again. Mona acted shy but soon was content to play while they chattered. Mary didn’t say anything about the polio. They’d find out soon enough, once they saw her limp.

     Emma got down on the floor to play with her. Mary had no idea that she’d worked as a nanny but it was obvious she liked young children. She was petite, about five feet tall, and probably weighed no more than a hundred pounds. Her dark hair, the colour of ebony, was swept up on top of her head in a bun.

     “How old are you Emma?” Mary asked. Emma turned toward her but looked confused so Mary repeated the question.

This photo of Emma Janeway was taken in Lambeth, England, in 1888.

Courtesy of Gail Horner.

     “I’m almost twenty.”

     “Do you remember Papa?”

     “The only thing I remember was sitting on the step every afternoon waiting for him to come home. He’d always pick me up and give me a big hug. He took my picture with him wherever he went. I think he was afraid I’d grow up.” She reached into her little crocheted handbag and produced a dog-eared picture of an angelic-looking child not more than six or eight months old. “I’ve kept it all these years.”

     “I remember you were a pretty baby, Emma,” Mary replied.

     “When I was older, he use to send me to the corner store for a pint,” she hesitated as though she’d said too much. “Papa loved his beer. I quite liked going to the store because they’d give me a bag of candies, usually humbugs or toffees.” Carrie frowned. “Carrie wasn’t happy about me going but I quite liked it.”

     “You were too young and Papa shouldn’t have asked you. It wasn’t right,” Carrie said. Emma’s eyes dropped. To this day she couldn’t bear to hear anything negative about her father. Carrie decided not to tell Mary that Emma use to sit on the steps outside the pub and wait for him because she was lonely.

     Mary tried hard to picture Papa. She had little memory of what had happened after her mother died. Martha Janeway had suffered a fatal heart attack leaving six children motherless. Carrie was old enough to stay home and look after two-year old Emma while John, William and Mary were sent to orphanages. John ran away from the orphanage and left England to work in the coalmines in British Columbia. He was only twelve. William and Mary were sent to Canada as home children and placed on farms in rural Ontario.

     Mary broke the silence. “What happened to the baby after Mama died?”

     “Mama’s sisters took him back to Glasgow. Ma had a feeling it would be a boy and couldn’t decide whether to call him Thomas or Phillip. Papa decided on Thomas. The doctor warned him that he wasn’t quite right, being born so early. We heard later that he only lived a year,” Carrie replied sadly. “Things were never the same after Ma was gone.”

     “I loved getting your presents when I was on the farm,” Mary said. “It was the only reason I looked forward to Christmas. Your letters made me homesick. I should have written back but I had no way to get to town to mail them.” She also had no money for postage.

     “I understand. It was my way of trying to keep us together after Mama died. I didn’t know how to tell you about losing Papa, but I felt you should know. That was a hard letter to write. There was a small funeral and I kept the notice in my diary if you ever want to see it. He didn’t want to go on without Mama.” Mary nodded. “He blamed himself for her death because she wasn’t strong and the doctors had told him they should go back to Scotland. Papa had refused.”

     “It must have been hard being the oldest.”

     “I’m not the oldest. Before Papa passed away, he told me we had an older sister named Martha, after Mama. I was too young to remember her. For some reason he wanted me to know this before he died. She’s buried in Glasgow with Thomas.”

     “What happened to her?”

     “Papa told me she died in the storm. That’s all he said.” Carrie decided it was time to change the subject. “He always favoured Emma. I think he felt most sorry for her, being just a baby and never knowing Mama. At least we have memories.”

In 1877, William and Martha Janeway posed for a rare photo with their first-born child, Martha, named after her mother.

Courtesy of Gail Horner.

     “I have trouble remembering what Mama looked like,” Mary said, jumping up and going over to a small table. “But I’ve got a picture,” she said, flipping right to the page. “There she is,” she pointed, “with a little baby in her arms that I always thought was you.”

     “That was Martha, not me.” Mary closed the photo album, setting it back on the table. Carrie explained how she put Emma in an orphanage after Papa died while she went into service as a maid for a well-to-do family.

     “How long were you in the orphanage?” Mary asked.

     “What?” Emma replied, turning to Mary. Carrie put a finger to her lips and shook her head just as Mary was about to repeat her question.

     “Let’s have tea and a biscuit,” Mary said, and headed for the kitchen with Mona close at her heels.

     Over a cup of tea, Carrie told Mary how her domestic job had paid for Emma’s keep and it was where she met Frank Lunn, the gardener who became her husband. Carrie took a big breath. “Now it’s your turn.”

     Mary admitted that she’d never told her husband about being a home child and they promised to keep her secret. She shared some of her experiences on the farm, omitting sad things like missing the Christmas sleigh ride as punishment for breaking a plate, and being called an orphan at school. She told them about Mustard, the cat she’d found in the barn, her best friend Josie Chesney, and how much she loved to go to school even though it was a two-mile walk in the country.

     She told them about Reverend Ward, the minister who’d taken her to Holbrook to see Will. “Will, that’s what he called himself, lived with the Lounsburys who were old but very nice. They didn’t tell him I was coming because they wanted it to be a surprise. It was a surprise all right. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he saw me.”

     “How old was Willy?” Carrie asked.

     “Fifteen. He liked the farm work but didn’t want to go to school. I could never understand that.”

     “He was shy, Mary. He might have been afraid he couldn’t do the work and others would make fun.” Carrie had heard rumours back in London that home children “would be sent to sit at the back of the classroom in the row saved for idiots and

     “School was the best thing that happened to me. It’s where I learned how to read,” she paused. “I’m not sure if Will ever did.” Mary felt she’d said enough about herself. “What made you come to Canada?”

     “It was because of John,” Carrie answered, wiping a crumb from her mouth with the corner of a napkin. “He was twenty-six when he came home for a visit and told us how wonderful life was in Canada. He’d done well for himself otherwise he couldn’t have afforded the passage home.”

     “Having enough money seemed to dispel any skepticism of the advertisements in the newspapers concerning that land of ‘milk and

     “And then he went back?”

     “It wasn’t long before he headed to San Diego to work in the coal mines. He thought he’d get rich,” she stopped, “working in those dark, dirty, god-forsaken coal mines. He wrote and told us how happy he was to be a trapper. I’ve still got his letter in my trunk.”

     “A trapper?”

     “Pa told me the trapper opens and closes doors in the tunnels so the men and the coal can move through. And then he was promoted to a raker. He got to drive the rake of empty coal cars pulled by a horse, down into the mine. I remember him telling us his horse’s name was Brandy.”

     “Did something happen to him?”

     “John always wanted to be a driller, the man who bores a hole in the wall and puts the explosive in it. Pa warned him how dangerous it was but he wouldn’t listen. Finally he got his wish.”

One of the mining dangers is that fire damp gas can be present in a hollow chamber in a coal bed and can burst out when the miner’s drill reaches this cavity. After fire-damp burns, it leaves behind poisonous gasses such as after-damp and black-damp, both heavier than air, and the most dangerous of all, white damp: a gas without colour, taste, or odour, a gas lighter than air. A breath of it spells

     “Shortly before we set out for Canada, I got a telegram saying John had been killed in a mining accident.” Mary was at a loss for words. “A letter came from the mining company saying they were sorry for what had happened. We never knew whether John died because of the falling rocks or the explosion but he was the only one killed. Pa always said you never hear about an accident when it’s only one miner. The collieries had to do something if an accident took a lot of lives; otherwise it’d be forgotten. He said that cemeteries were full of the graves of miners, some of them mere boys as young as ten.” Mary felt badly for Carrie, she’d been through so much.

     “They sent us a photo of John. It broke my heart when I looked at him, knowing that he died alone. We were lucky they paid for the burial costs. I’m glad that Pa was gone by the time it happened,” Carrie said quietly. “It would have been more than he could bear. He never got over losing Mama even though he tried to do his best. I don’t doubt for a moment that he loved us,” Carrie paused. “But that’s when he started drinking.”

This portrait of John Janeway was taken in the Bennette Studio on 5th Avenue, San Diego, California, 1907.

Courtesy of Gail Horner.

     Mary was overwhelmed with the news of an older sister, deaths of three of her siblings, and Pa’s drinking. She was thankful that Carrie and Emma had found her after so many years of separation, yet the passage of time had taken its toll on the Janeway family. The afternoon had a bittersweet taste. The girls rambled on in an attempt to make up for lost time. Eighteen years of living apart needed to be accounted for, an impossible task for one Sunday afternoon. They jumped from past to present and back to the past again. It was as though they were painting a mural, without the patience to wait for one colour to dry before dipping the brush in a new more vibrant one. The result was joyous turmoil.

     Since it was a lovely sunny day, Mary suggested going outside. She scooped up Mona and they sat on the front stoop. Within minutes, the little girl squiggled out of her arms and ran under a tree in the yard. Carrie noticed her limp.

     “She had polio,” Mary said without waiting for her to ask. “The doctor said it was a mild case and she’d be all right.” Mona started to wander, and just as Mary was about to get up, Emma ran down the street after her. Mary had been waiting for such an opportunity. “Why did you shush me earlier when I asked Emma about the orphanage? Did she have a bad experience?”

     “She still has nightmares. I try not to bring it up in front of her. I felt terrible having to send her there but I’d no choice. Somehow Emma got the idea that Pa owned the pottery factory where he worked but it was his brother, Uncle Bill, who owned it. He was the one with all the money, not Papa. When he died, Emma couldn’t understand where it had all gone. I didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise.”

     “I’m sure you meant well.”

     “I remember Emma wanting to change her name to Emaline because it sounded more distinguished. Little did she know that we had no money and I’d no means to take care of her. It was my nanny job that helped pay for her board at the orphanage, which is why I feel so badly about what happened.”

     “Did something happen at the orphanage?”

     “Emma was given orders one day to clean the stairs. They were very strict and had ways of keeping close tabs on the children. When the matron came to check later, she found the two coins that she’d hidden under the edge of the carpet on one of the stairs. So she knew Emma had not done a thorough cleaning.” Mary looked so sad that Carrie regretted telling her.

     “What happened?” Mary asked in a whisper.

     “She had her ears boxed. The women in charge use to box their ears on a regular basis. It was their method of punishment, no matter what the child might have done wrong. As a result of one of these bouts, Emma’s eardrum was burst, leaving her deaf in that ear.” Now Mary understood why she’d asked to have things repeated.

     “We don’t talk about it, there’s no point. Emma’s always been delicate and seems to catch things easily. A few years ago she was quite sick with catarrh and to this day she thinks that it caused her deafness. I’d like to believe that myself but I know what I was told by one of the older girls at the orphanage.”

     “You shouldn’t blame yourself. You had no choice but to put her in a home. Just look at her now. See how happy she is.”

     Carrie looked protectively down the street in the direction of her younger sister. “It never should have happened Mary, it just never should have happened.”

     Emma’s punishment in the orphanage reminded Mary of a time when she’d been hurt. “We all have things we’d like to forget,” she said, glancing down at the scar on her right arm.

     “Mommy, mommy,” Mona squealed, running toward her with outstretched arms.

     “And things we want to remember forever,” Mary said, turning to Carrie as the little girl fell into her arms.