Before-III

The lives and times of my parents were busy,from an historical standpoint.Both were young children when war came to Europe,but their lives must have been affected.The war memorials in both Canterbury and Springhill attest to that by the listing of those sacrificed.Nearly every town has such a memorial.

When the war ended,it ended in a world divided,in two armed political spheres staring each other down on the territory fought for in World War II.The shooting,the active killing might have stopped,but the world was hardly less uneasy.The nuclear age brought fearsome new possibilities in warfare,such that nobody would be far from any armed conflict.Such was true of my parents,because,for whatever reason and by whichever route,they ended up in the town of  Goose Bay Labrador that was a part of the war machine.

Goose Bay is located in the mainland portion of the Province of Newfoundland.During the Second World War it served as a port for trans-Atlantic convoys.By the time my parents moved there both the Americans and Canadians maintained air bases there.It's barren and undeveloped,from the pictures I've seen,really more a part of the Canadian North than it is of the Atlantic Provinces.That was "Away" for my parents,and judging by appearances,it must have seemed very far away indeed.

I've never been told how my parents came to meet.I believe it must have been in Goose Bay,but that may just be a part of our family's mythology.Neither of my parents were really storytellers.My mother had the intellect but not the inclination to be one,and while my father was inclined to relate tales,he was only skilled at doing so verbally.The picture I get from his tales though is of a young man,free from home and loving it in the sense that most men seem to.Life was a bit of an adventure.But there was a certain virtue rooted in the belief that being where he was and doing what he was doing served a great purpose.That of protecting right,Canadian values from a very real enemy.So in that sense he was defined by the historical reality of the time.

In 1955 my father went to Jamaica.By then he'd been in the north for a time and I suppose like most people who've been in the north for some time without a family to support,he had a bit of money.And he hated snow,so  he went on that once in a lifetime trip.I'm not certain who he went with.but he tells a rollicking tale of those times.Rum was cheaper than coke,according to him.When they arrived,they rented a car,something which few people did.There were very few cars there at the time,but they had one and rode in style from one end of the island to the other.My father told the story of how,when they were riding about,they came up behind a cart being pulled by some sort of a beast of burden,and it was stacked high with many different things,including chickens.He assumed that it was going to a market.But as they were trying to pass it,a chicken flew off of  the cart and into their windshield,killing the bird.This was followed by a full attack by a big black woman with a stick,angry that he'd killed one of her chickens.Not knowing what to do in this situation, my father told me,he reached into his wallet and pulled out an American twenty dollar bill and handed it to the irate woman.Her demeanor changed in an instant as she grabbed the bill and then began hugging my father.And that is one of the few tales my father told about Jamaica,but from it I knew that it was a great time in his life,that he really enjoyed the trip.

My mother traveled some too.She went to the American Northeast,as far south as Washington,and she documented her trip with hundreds of photos that she kept on slides.But again,she was not inclined to relate much of that trip by way of story.

However my parents met and whatever their lives were like they came to be married in the church at Dead Creek,near my mothers childhood home.The year was 1959.I don't ever recall seeing wedding pictures,but that could be a failing of my own memory.

My memory may be failing me,or it may be that I've not been told so much about my parents lives,as I seem to be woefully ignorant of things that others know about their parents.This poses a problem in my own telling of my story.You see I really want to know that my parents were good,decent people,and,for the most part I do.I believe most people want to know that.But for me,a lot is left to interpretation and I fear that I may interpret wrongly

Nineteen fifty nine was the year that saw Fidel Castro come to power in Cuba.Cuba immediately aligned itself with the Soviets Nakita Khrushchev was the leader of the U.S.S.R. and Eisenhower was the President of The United States.Here in Canada,the Prime Minister was John Diefenbaker.

Alaska and Hawaii became the forty ninth and fiftieth American states. 

Future Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was born in 1959,as were Magic Johnson,Nicole Brown Simpson,actors Hugh Laurie and Kevin Spacey,and 2016 Vice Presidential candidate Mike Pence.

Frank Lloyd Wright,Cecil B.Demille and Lou Costello died in 1959.

In 1959 the average house cost about twelve thousand dollars,a loaf of bread twenty cents and the average year wage was about five thousand dollars.

Boing launched the first trans continental flight from Los Angles to New York,aboard the new 707.The ticket price was $301.00.

Bonanza debuted as the first weekly television series broadcast entirely in color,and Ben Hur,North By Northwest and Some Like It Hot were popular films in 1959.

The arms race continued and both The United States and The Soviet Union were beginning to develop their space programs.The world wasn't getting any  safer.