Fire in the Sky

“Mommy, mommy, come quick. The sky’s on fire!”

No! Cale said he would burn the stubble tonight. Had the fire got away on him? I dropped my knitting and ran outside.

“Oh, my!”

Marjorie was right. The sky was on fire. The setting sun was painting the clouds red, yellow and orange, all edged with gold.

I remembered my first prairie sunset, 10 years previous. I had never seen the like in England. A chinook arch, a continually roiling mass of reds and yellows, golds and purples. It left me breathless.

“Oh, my!” We stood still, hand in hand, awestruck.

#99WordStories #CarrotRanchFlashFictionChallenge #FlashFiction #CreativeNonFiction #HighamFamilyHistory #PrairieSunset #MargaretGHanna

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The back story:

We prairie people say there is nothing to match a prairie sunset. The setting sun ushers out the day in a blaze of glory, a spectacle of yellows, oranges, reds and golds, an ever-changing palette that slowly fades into blues and purples and indigos before winking out.

It is never twice the same. It inevitably brings gasps of “Wow!” and “Look at that!” and “Isn’t that amazing!”

It’s guaranteed to cause us adults to drop our adulthood and regain that child-like wonder at the mystery and majesty of the world around us.

What did my maternal grandmother think the first time she saw a prairie sunset? I like to think she did as we all do, that she stood in awe of the spectacle unfolding before her. A glorious welcome to Canada.

The Letter

“Dear Father,”

The start of the lie. Part of the conspiracy. Would he fall for it?

“Emigrating to Canada was a grievous error.”

It was not. Another part of the lie.

“I want to return home, to England.”

No! Her sister Bessie wanted to come to Canada.

“Alas, I can not afford the fare.”

Father could. He had promised to send it. If he did, she’d send it back to Bessie.

“Please send the money. I will be forever in your debt. Your loving daughter, Mary.”

He bought the lie. He sent the money.

Bessie arrived four months later.

#99WordStories #CarrotRanchFlashFictionChallenge #FlashFiction #HighamFamilyHistory #FamilyHistory #LiesAndDeceit #ImmigrantStory #NonFiction #MargaretGHanna

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The back story

This is the true story of how my maternal grandmother, Mary, and her sister Bessie conspired to get Bessie to Canada. I heard it 30 years ago from Aunt Marjorie, the oldest of my mother’s siblings. I’ve heard the same story from my second cousins, the grandchildren of Great-Aunt Bessie, so it must be true.

When my maternal grandmother, Mary Appleton, told her parents she was emigrating to Canada, they all but disowned her. However, her father made the (in retrospect, foolish) promise that if she ever came to her senses, realized what a terrible error she had made, and wanted to return to England, he would send her the fare. That was in June, 1912.

No one knows what prompted Mary to leave England or if what she found here is what she expected. Nor does anyone know why Bessie, one of her younger sisters, also decided to emigrate to Canada. Perhaps the “colonies” held more promise and potential than Mother England.

As the family account goes, Bessie wanted to emigrate but had no money. However, Mary remembered her father’s promise. She wrote him what I assume was a letter of regret and remorse for having left England’s fair shores, and asked him to send her the fare so she could return. When she received the money, she sent it back to Bessie who arrived in June, 1914.

One can only imagine her father’s reaction when he learned the truth. I doubt that neither Mary nor Bessie cared. They were together and in Canada, and that was all that mattered.

My reaction when I heard this story was, “Now I understand why the women in my family are the way they are!” Strong, independent, stubborn, contrary and proud – those characteristics are firmly entrenched in all of us.

That is not quite the end of the conspiracy. On the passenger manifest of the Ascania that brought Bessie to Canada is the notation under “Destination” – “going to married sister.”

Except, Mary was not married! Why the deception?

I suspect it was because Bessie was only 19 and was traveling unaccompanied by either father, husband or older brother. There is some information suggesting it was frowned upon for young (i.e., younger than 21) unmarried women to emigrate on their own – they had to be accompanied by an older male family member. After all, what sort of young woman (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) would emigrate on her own in 1914? Bessie might have run into that roadblock when booking her passage and again upon arrival in Canada. Going to live with a married sister would legitimize her travel because there would be(supposedly) a brother-in-law, i.e., a man, to look after her.

Not that either Bessie or Mary needed looking-after!

In Remembrance

The bedsprings squeaked as John tossed and turned. Tomorrow he was flying his first sortie. Tomorrow he was flying into danger.

He had always wanted to fly, that was why he had chosen the Air Force rather than the Army like his brother. He had trained for this day, and now it was here. Was he ready for the responsibility? Of bringing his Wellington back? Of bringing his crew back? Of the carnage he would leave behind?

Other bedsprings squeaked. John wasn’t the only one fretting about tomorrow. But tonight . . .

He closed his eyes and dreamt of prairie skies.

#99WordStories #CarrotRanchFlashFictionChallenge #FlashFiction #HighamFamilyHistory #WorldWarII #MooseSquadron419 #NonFiction #RoyalCanadianAirForce #PTSD #MargaretGHanna

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The Back Story:

John Brock Higham, my maternal uncle, “signed up” for the war in the spring of 1940. He received his “call” in September, 1940, and began his training as a pilot in the Canadian Air Force. A year later, he received his wings – he was now Pilot Officer Higham. In September, 1941, he was posted to England, a member of “Moose” Squadron #419 of Bomber Command. On his first few missions, he flew as second officer. In May, 1942, he was assigned his own Wellington bomber and chose his own crew. He was not yet 22 years old.

They flew their remaining missions together and, miraculously, all survived. The Wellington was not so lucky. More than once, John brought his Wellington limping home on a wing and a prayer. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for once such event; King George VI and the Duke of Kent visited on separate occasions and congratulated the Squadron for their service.

In September, 1942, John and his crew were chosen, purely by chance, to go on a cross-Canada tour to raise money for the war effort and to raise the spirits of Canadians, especially those working in factories supplying the war effort. At the conclusion of the tour, he was posted to the west coast where he flew submarine-spotting missions – there were rumours of a Japanese invasion.

In 1944, Trans-Canada Airlines (now Air Canada) was recruiting pilots from the RCAF. John was not about to give up flying just because the war was ending. He joined TCA and trained to fly civilian airplanes. He flew for Air Canada for 41 years before retiring.

John privately published a book about his war-time experiences, a matter-of-fact description of how a prairie ploughboy came to fly over dangerous and deadly German skies. Only once did he describe the emotional toll of the war. One of his crew members had serious moral and religious problems with being the bomb-aimer. John knew if he reported this crew member, he would be court-martialed for “lack of moral fibre” as PTSD was then called. Instead, John reassigned duties among his crew.

Many years later, his younger brother George asked, “Do you ever dream about the war?” “All the time,” John replied.

Pilot Officer (Ret.) John Brock Higham, D.F.C., passed away June 18, 2020, 22 days before his 100th birthday. He now flies safer skies.

Pursuing the Dream

I could read his mind.

Every afternoon he brought home the paper. Every evening, he read it. Always the same section – Farms for Sale

He was looking for a farm. His farm. The farm he’d always dreamed of owning. The farm he’d left England to find. The farm he was saving every hard-earned penny for.

I could almost see the wheels spinning as he read. This one’s too expensive. This one’s too far away. This one’s got poor land.

He never stopped searching.

He found it, eventually. We moved there, raised our family there, lived out our lives there.

#99WordStories #HighamFamilyHistory #PrairieHistory #FarmLife #ImmigrantDreams #ImmigrantStory #NonFiction #SaskatchewanHistory #MargaretGHanna

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The Back Story:

My maternal grandfather, Caleb Higham, dreamed of owning a farm but in England that was impossible; he would have to be a tenant farmer like his father. Instead, he emigrated to Canada under the British Bonus program operated by the Canadian government which offered $10.00 to prospective farmers if they purchased their farms within six months of arriving in Canada.

He arrived in Montreal in June 1913, bound for Regina, Saskatchewan, with $25.00 in his pocket. Unable to afford the going price for farmland, Caleb worked for the Canadian Pacific Railroad as a brakeman, probably the most dangerous job of the railroad industry. He soon quit to pursue his dream, and because he still could not afford to buy a farm, he began working as a farm labourer for Will Grigg, a farmer at Belbeck just north of Moose Jaw. That is where he met Mary Appleton and they married in 1915.

Caleb and Mary moved into Moose Jaw where he worked as a driver for Farmers Dairy, but he never gave up his dream of owning a farm. Still not having enough money to buy a farm and probably unable to obtain a bank mortgage, he started renting farms, first at Keystown about half-way between Moose Jaw and Regina, then Boharm west of Moose Jaw, and finally Mazenod about 60 miles (95 km) southwest of Moose Jaw.

He finally bought his farm in 1924, a half-section (320 acres or about 160 hectares) near the village of Congress. In 1939, he rented an adjoining half-section that had been abandoned by a farmer who was unable to pay the back taxes he had accumulated during the desperate years of the Dirty Thirties. A few years later, Caleb purchased the land. In 1966, too crippled by arthritis to continue, he leased the farm to my father and moved into Assiniboia. Caleb Higham passed away in 1979.

He never did receive that promised $10.00.