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QHN Autumn 2016:Layout 1.Qxd GRAND DRAPE: RAISING THE CURTAIN ON A LONG-HIDDEN WORK OF ART $10 Quebec VOL 10, NO. 4 FALL 2016 HeritageNews The Mystery behind the Great War’s Fallen MP Revisiting George Harold Baker Fenians’ Rainbow The 150th Anniversary of the Irish Invasion of Canada Remarkable Ancestors QAHN’s Heritage Photo and Heritage Essay Contests QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS Quebec CONTENTS HeritageNews Editor’s Desk 3 EDITOR Anti-housewife, anti-heroine Rod MacLeod RODERICK MACLEOD PRODUCTION DAN PINESE; MATTHEW FARFAN QAHN News 6 PUBLISHER QUEBEC ANGLOPHONE Unsung and Obliterated Hero 8 HERITAGE NETWORK George Harold Baker, 1877-1916 Serge Wagner 400-257 QUEEN STREET SHERBROOKE, QUEBEC J1M 1K7 Memphremagog Masterpiece 11 PHONE Long-lost grand drape finds a new home Matthew Farfan 1-877-964-0409 (819) 564-9595 FAX 2016 QAHN Heritage Photo Contest Winners 14 (819) 564-6872 CORRESPONDENCE [email protected] 2016 QAHN Heritage Essay Contest Winners 18 WEBSITES QAHN.ORG QUEBECHERITAGEWEB.COM 100OBJECTS.QAHN.ORG The Ukrainians of Val David 20 Part II Joseph Graham PRESIDENT SIMON JACOBS Housoldiers 24 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & The mobilization of Quebec housewives for WWII Lorraine O’Donnell WEBMAGAZINES EDITOR MATTHEW FARFAN OFFICE MANAGER Clear and Present Danger? 26 KATHY TEASDALE The 150th anniversary of the 1866 Fenian Raid Tim Belford Quebec Heritage News is published quarterly by QAHN with the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage Review: The Gaol, the School, and the Moose 30 and Quebec’s Ministère de la Culture et Iron Bars and Bookshelves: A History of the Morrin Centre Sandra Stock des Communications. QAHN is a non-profit by Louisa Blair, Patrick Donovan, and Donald Fyson and non-partisan organization whose mis- sion is to help advance knowledge of the history and culture of the English- speaking communities of Quebec. Annual Subscription Rates: Individual: $30.00; Institutional: $40.00; Family: $40.00; Student: $20.00. Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement Number 405610004. Cover photo: The grand drape of Lake Memphremagog, by William Gill, at its ISSN 17707-2670 unveiling on the lawn of the Haskell Free Library and Opera House. PRINTED IN CANADA Photo: Matthew Farfan. 2 FALL 2016 EDITOR’S DESK Anti-housewife, anti-heroine by Rod MacLeod don’t want to give the impression treal, something I heard about often Smoking was a particularly sure sign of that my mother was somehow mer- without fully realizing what it was. this fallen state – which was odd, given cenary. But she did not come by Nothing heroic: a clerical job, a daily how many people smoked in those days. housewifery naturally and, during commute to 1135 Beaver Hall Hill to One day my mother came home from Ithe war years anyway, she wasn’t much help coordinate the armed forces’ need school to find her mother in tears be- of a heroine; that would come later. The for paints and chemicals – substantially cause Betsy Malone had told her that her war wasn’t a challenge for my mother: it less creative than sewing shirts. The cru- daughter had seen my mother smoking. was liberating. cial thing about CIL for my mother was My mother was never sure what both- My mother did her share of war not that it did stuff to help win the war ered her most about this incident: that work. Her parents were heavily into the but rather that it was in Montreal. One she had been unjustly accused of some- Red Cross, so I assume she helped out evening my mother was pushing her thing she would never (out of personal when she was at home, although sewing way along St. Catherine Street (that distaste, not a sense of propriety) do, or wasn’t her forte: she was far better at thoroughfare was perpetually thronged that her own mother would so readily as- reciting the adventures of Sister Susie with thousands even before VE Day) sume her guilt based solely on Betsy than she was sewing shirts for soldiers and as she stared about at that endless Malone’s own testimony. herself. (As a toddler, I liked The Lavers family were nothing better than my mother’s comfortably on the safe side of rendition of “Sister Susie Sewing that invisible line. My grandfa- Shirts for Soldiers” to calm my ther owned the general store in nerves, unless it was a few partnership with his brother, who rounds of “There is a Tavern in had married my grandmother’s the Town” – an anthem that still sister – meaning that my mother gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.) was related to everybody in the As a matter of fact, practical- family in at least two different ly everything my grandmother ways. The closest thing she had was good at and felt was impor- to a sister was her double cousin tant wasn’t my mother’s forte. Shirley, who was just three This was the source of much ten- months older, lived around the sion. Teaching was a notorious corner, and was in her class at case in point: Miss McLaughlin school. The two of them would had been a warm, nurturing den hang out at the store after school mother brimming with stories watching Uncle Dave and Uncle who loved every minute spent Harry (each of them also Dad) among the kiddies of Parrsboro, N..S., at sea of faces she had one gloriously gid- unpack exotic fruits from faraway least before she gave up teaching to mar- dy thought. places. I always loved the story of the ry Mr. Lavers upon his return from the “Nobody knows me!” barrel that also contained a spider the WWI trenches. Their daughter was natu- In Parrsboro, N.S., everybody knew size of a big man’s hand that began rally channelled into a teaching career everybody. And what they were doing. crawling up the store wall until my even though she loathed the prospect. And it mattered, because you were al- grandfather, a quiet gentle soul, calmly Miss Lavers was especially petrified at ways but a step away from stumbling took out his pen knife and stabbed it having to teach the offspring of the kid- over that invisible line into that mysteri- through the thorax. Life in Parrsboro dies her mother had taught; some of ous other category of people. My grand- was not without its charms. them were only a couple of years mother had cheerfully taught the I know my mother tried. I have dif- younger than she was and until recently Carmichael children, but when they be- ficulty interpreting her willing baptism had been her playmates. She wasn’t a came adult Carmichaels they were shirk- at the age of 17 as the product of reli- bad teacher, mind you – her cousin (and ers with large families who rarely gious conviction, and assume she was pupil) Vic often praised her skills in my washed and always smoked – just as you trying to please. That she hadn’t been hearing, even half a century after the would expect from the Carmichaels. My baptized at birth suggests that my grand- fact. But at the time she hated it. grandmother’s evidence for this was first father (nominally Presbyterian) had con- Sewing aside, my mother’s main hand: they lived next door. (There was ceded to my grandmother (Baptist) on war work was at CIL in downtown Mon- no spatial segregation in Parrsboro.) the understanding that the ceremony 3 VE Day, Montreal. Photo: Library and Archives Canada: a152318. QUEBEC HERITAGE NEWS would take place sooner or later. But to were moving. My mother realized that world. The Montreal equivalent of the formally join the Baptist church meant there was one thing a teaching diploma Parrsboro Carmichaels were wretched that my mother had to submit to total was good for apart from teaching, and indeed, particularly the children. At immersion – my mother who at no point that was shaving a year off a B.A. And some point late in the war, my mother in her life, despite having been raised of all the subjects she’d taught, the one who hated teaching decided to devote near the sea, liked putting her head un- she came close to enjoying was History. herself to child welfare. She may have der water. It meant having to plunge Halifax (Dalhousie) was a revelation: started as a volunteer, while still work- completely to the bottom of a big deep there was nightlife, there were men – ing at CIL, but she had her eye on it as a bath, which was the preferred receptacle even some whose families she didn’t career. This decision caused her parents for Parrsboro Baptists, again despite be- know – on their way overseas. She much confusion: social work, they pro- ing so near the sea. (It may be that the joined a sorority so she could have claimed, was what everybody did, not a Bay of Fundy’s huge serious job like teaching tides made scheduling a or housewifery. But as natural immersion im- Parrsboro’s Jimmy and practical; Gathering at cousin Vic would testi- the River loses much of fy, my mother was sur- its charm when the prisingly good with cleansing water lies half children even if she hat- a mile away, as it does ed the classroom. every 12 hours, across an This skill would be expanse of brown, clam- put to severe test when infested mud.) the Montreal Council of Teaching was anoth- Social Agencies, noting er thing that my mother my mother’s teaching tried in order to keep the diploma and academic peace. With Grade 11 B.A., found her a posi- under her belt, she tion at the Girls’ Cottage trooped over to the Industrial School in Teachers’ College in Sweetsburg, near Cow- Truro, 60 miles away, as ansville.
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