The Debate

Caleb, Willie, Pete and Teo were well into their fourth, maybe fifth, beer.

“King has to resign.”

“Why should he? You think MacDonald wasn’t crooked?”

“He has to, it’s the honourable thing to do.”

“Ha! Honour in politics! You’re taking the mickey, Pete.”

“All I shay is, ish not my shircus, ish not my monkeys,” Teo slurred.

The argument came to a dead stop. “What?” the others said.

“Ish old Polish shaying, means . . .” Teo scratched his head, shrugged, “. . . means not my problem.”

“Of course it’s your problem.”

“Only if you’re a damned Liberal.”

The debate went downhill from there.

#99WordStory #CarrotRanchFlashFictionChallenge #FlashFiction #HighamFamilyHistory #CanadianHistory #Politics #KingByngAffair #MargaretGHanna

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The back story:

Caleb Higham, my maternal grandfather, liked to drink. My uncles have stories of him coming home after a night of drinking with his buddies, three sheets to the wind, drunker than a skunk, pissed to the gills (pick your metaphor). Plus, he often sported bruised knuckles, a black eye, and a swollen lip because once “liquored up” he often got into fisticuffs. How he managed to drive the six miles from Assiniboia back to the farm without killing himself remains a mystery. Grandma Higham, a confirmed teetotaler to her dying day, was not amused, as they say. She invariably tore a strip off him, but it did no good.

Caleb was also a staunch Liberal. His brother-in-law was a staunch Conservative. This led to many good-natured political debates around the kitchen table. What those same debates might have been like with Caleb’s drinking buddies is anyone’s guess.

The “debate” referenced in this story is the rather messy 1926 King-Byng affair. In the federal election that year, the incumbent Liberals under William Lyon McKenzie King won fewer seats that the Conservatives under Arthur Meighan. Governor-General Lord Byng suggested that King resign but King refused, claiming he could continue in power with the support of the Progressive Party that held the balance of power in the House of Commons.

Then word leaked that one of King’s appointees had taken bribes, whereupon the Conservatives claimed that corruption was rife in the government. The government took its usual approach and appointed a commission to investigate. Thereupon followed a lot of too-ing and fro–ing but eventually King asked the Governor-General to dissolve Parliament to let Meighan form government. Lord Byng refused, citing King’s prior claim.

King promptly resigned and asked Meighan to form the government, which he did. The Liberals and Progressives moved a Motion of Non-Confidence which the Meighan government lost. Parliament was dissolved and another federal election was held.

This time, the Liberal party won a plurality of seats and King was once again Prime Minister.

Who says politics is boring?

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.

The Bones Know

She could feel it in her bones. Something was wrong. She chose to ignore it, avoidance was more palatable than acknowledging.

“Always trust the bones,” Grandma Ferris used to say, but then she believed in fairies and the power of the rowan tree. Old wives tales from the old days.

She pushed the niggling fear to the back of her mind and got on with life.

“What’s that?” her husband said one night; they were in bed.

“Nothing,” she replied. But she knew it wasn’t “nothing.” It was something.

She knew it was cancer before the doctor told her.

#99WordStories #HighamFamilyHistory #BreastCancer #Bones #RadiationTreatment #MargaretGHanna #PrairieHistory #CreativeNonFiction

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Backstory:

Mary Higham, my maternal grandmother, was diagnosed with breast cancer about 1949 and underwent radiation treatment. I don’t know if she had a mastectomy, and those who might have known are no longer alive to tell. The cancer must have gone into remission because she lived another six years, but in either late 1954 or early 1955 it roared back. More radiation treatment followed. Two of my uncles remember seeing nasty radiation burns on her neck which suggests it had mestastasized. She died September 29, 1955.

Whatever fears or regrets Grandma Higham might have had did not stop her from getting on with life that last summer. I’m told she made sure the larder was well stocked for Grandpa Higham when she was no longer around. What my uncles remember most is the 80 pints of strawberries she put up.

I wonder how I would spend my last summer.

A Love Story

It was love at first sight.

She was standing in the middle of the flower patch, hair in disarray, dirt on her nose, waving a pair of nasty shears and scolding me for cussing out the horse. I saw a fire in her eyes — determination, stubbornness — and I knew immediately she was the one. We married three months later. She stood by my side through thick and thin, through good times and bad.

Forty years later, I sit here, you lying in the hospital bed, I holding your hand, watching that light fade from your eyes. My heart breaks.

#99WordStory #HighamHistory #LoveAtFirstSight #FireInYourEyes #TrueLove #TheLightInYou #MargaretGHanna #FamilyHistory

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The backstory:

None of my mother, aunts or uncles knew how my maternal grandparents, Caleb and Mary, met. Both had emigrated to Canada, Mary in 1912 from Cornwall, Caleb in 1913 from Oxfordshire. Caleb was a farm labourer with dreams of owning his own farm. Mary was a domestic servant with dreams of a better life than she had in England. They married in June, 1915.

Their marriage licence states they both lived at Belbeck, a tiny village a few miles north of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. I like to think they found themselves working for the same farmer, Will Grigg, if only because they maintained a life-long friendship with Will and his wife Emeline.

Mary passed away in September 1955 from breast cancer, a few weeks shy of her 70th birthday. My grandfather was devastated. He passed away in May, 1979, not quite 90 years old. Both are buried at Congress Baptist Cemetery, from where you can see the farm that Caleb finally bought in 1924. They both had realized their dreams.

For Want of Water

We watched the slough dry up. We watched the soil blow away. We watched clouds roll in with empty promises of rain. We watched our crops struggle, shrivel and die.

We watched families move away. We watched businesses close. We watched villages disappear.

We feared the well would go dry. We feared rain would never come again.

This prairie that once held promises of bumper crops and full granaries was now only a distant memory, if it had even existed.

And all for lack of rain. For lack of water. For lack of caring how we treated the land.

#99WordStory #ForTheRain #GreatDepression #DirtyThirties #DustStorms #PrairieHistory #HannaHistory #HighamHistory #MargaretGHanna #OurBullsLooseInTown

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The Backstory:
Both my maternal and paternal grandparents struggled to farm through the terrible years of the Dirty Thirties. The rains left in 1929, they did not return until 1938. By then, it was too late for many families and for many towns. Southwestern Saskatchewan alone lost about 50% of its population during those years. They left for truly greener pastures – northern Saskatchewan and Alberta, or back east to Ontario and Quebec.

My grandparents lived in the heart of the Palliser Triangle, a region that Capt. James Palliser in the late 1850s called a desert and that, a decade later, John Macoun called a paradise. The difference: Palliser traversed this region of southern Saskatchewan and Alberta during a drought; Macoun during a wet period.

In 1935, the Canadian government formed the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA) which immediately launched several programs to help farmers deal with the drought. These included dugouts to store water, and strip farming and large-scale tree-planting programs to reduce erosion. Marginal land was turned into community pastures.

The PFRA no longer exists, but it helped transform dry-land farming practices to be more in tune with the vagaries of prairie climate. Perhaps we once again need the PFRA as we begin to comprehend the long-term effects of climate change on this fragile prairie region.

Tea for the Monarch

Mary stood before the glass-fronted cabinet. “I see you have Mother’s silver tea pot.”

“With the dent turned to the back,” Dorothy replied.

Mary chuckled. “Good thing her throw missed Father, she might have dented his head instead of the pot.”

“Remember how she toasted every monarch’s death and coronation with that tea pot?”

“Nothing but Twinings English Breakfast, if I remember rightly.”

Dorothy took the tea pot out of the cabinet. “I think we should revive her tradition, now that we have a new queen.”

“I hear she prefers Twinings Earl Grey tea.”

“With a dash of milk.”

#99WordStory #TeaRituals #TeaPot #TwiningsEnglishBreakfast #TwiningsEarlGrey #CreativeNonFiction #1952 #FamilyHistory #HighamFamilyHistory #Monarchy #MargaretGHanna

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The backstory:

In 1952, Mary, my maternal grandmother, returned to England (Cornwall, to be exact) to visit her two sisters, Dorothy and Clive. This was only a few months after Princess Elizabeth had succeeded to the throne as Queen Elizabeth II.

My maternal grandparents were staunch monarchists. They could list off all the kings and queens and their children and relatives and whom they had married, and they made sure their children (my mother and her siblings) knew all that as well. I assume they learned this from their parents, and my grandmother’s sisters were like-minded.

My grandmother’s mother, Amelia Appleton, did indeed throw her husband out when she learned he had been unfaithful. The story goes, she used language that would make a sailor blush. Whether or not she threw a tea pot at him, if a silver tea pot even existed, is pure speculation. But why let a few facts get in the way of a good story?

The Dare

“Chicken!”

“Am not!” John stamped his foot

“Are too!” Bob poked him on the shoulder.

John looked up at the granary roof that towered over his six-year-old head. All he had to do was jump. Bob and his friends had. He didn’t want to jump but neither did he want to be called “chicken.”

Pride won out.

He stood on the granary roof and looked down at the ground. “Jump!” they cried. John closed his eyes and leapt into the void.

“My arm!” he screamed.

Bob’s face turned white. “Dad’ll kill me!” The boys scattered like chaff before the wind.

#99WordStories #BeingDared #SiblingRivalry #Mischief #MargaretGHanna #AlmostTrueStories

The backstory:

Kids find ways to get up to all sorts of mischief. Farm kids seem to have a particularly wide assortment of opportunities. My brother and I certainly did. The above story is “inspired,” as Hollywood likes to say, by true events and people.

Bob and John were my mother’s two older brothers. Bob, the older of the two, was always getting John into trouble. At least that was John’s version of events.

So far as I know, neither of them leapt off a granary roof but I did, as did several of my friends. None of us broke an arm but I think one went limping home with a sprained ankle. Of course, this was yet another antic that we did only when our father wasn’t around. We knew there’d be h*** to pay if he caught us.