When my mother died in November 1961, my father hired various nannies to run the household and look after his four children. The revolving nanny door made it difficult and stressful for everyone and finding a new wife and mother quickly became Dad’s priority.

A friend suggested he compile a checklist of his seven most important criteria, which were “all essential and the absence of any one eliminates the prospect”. Several names were scrawled on his list but there was nobody named Elizabeth. Our future stepmother must have been completely off the grid!

Elizabeth Fulcher arrived in Montreal from England in 1961 to teach at a girls’ private school. Once she had settled into her new life in Montreal, she joined a social club in the spring of 1962, and she met my Dad, Tom Anglin, there. After a few games of tennis, they began to date regularly. Thinking back to that time, she recalls: “I thought he was a nice, honest person”.

This wasn’t going to be your typical whirlwind romance.

Elizabeth took the opportunity to get to know the four of us children, as well as Dad, while they were dating. It seemed to be a mutually advantageous relationship for us all as Elizabeth had always wanted a family and now a family wanted her. However, the decision required rational thought as well as emotional feeling. Years later, she admitted her love for us equalled her love for our father.

Tom proposed nine months later, in February 1963, choosing the woman who would love his children just like Captain Von Trapp chose Maria in “The Sound of Music” — our favourite family movie. Elizabeth recalled, “He proposed after we went to a dinner dance at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. I had an idea that he was going to, it was in February and could have been a Valentine’s Day Dance. He could charm and was a good dancer so I always felt good about dancing with him.”

My father arrived in England, only two days before the wedding in July 1963, after organizing summer camps for the children and a leave of absence from his company. Fortunately, he had already passed muster when Elizabeth’s twin, Diana, spent the previous Christmas with us all.

They married in the local church in Iken, steps away from where Elizabeth grew up. Her stepmother, Eileen, decorated the church with masses of flowers, Diana was her bridesmaid and the children of the local farm hands made up the choir. Family and friends watched eagerly as Elizabeth walked down the aisle to the organist’s rendition of…what else but “Oh Canada”!

The newlyweds briefly honeymooned around Western Europe skipping the last stop as Elizabeth just wanted to go “home” and start her new life as wife and stepmother. “We had four days in England to pack up and leave,” she says. “Then we picked up the kids from camp the next day. We all drove out to the summer cottage in Knowlton (Eastern Townships, Quebec) and Tom went back into Montreal to work during the weeks”.

I had just turned six years old when I stepped off the camp bus. I remember looking down at the clogs on my stepmother’s feet and thinking “those are funny shoes” and at the same time realizing “this is my new mother”.

The whole family moved back to Montreal at the end of the summer. The children (aged six to 14) started back to their schools and Tom returned to work. Elizabeth launched into her new life with an impressive and loving energy. Fully committed to her new role, she oversaw the needs of the children, carefully managed a monthly budget, and prepared dinner for six every night… never failing to greet Tom at the door with a kiss and asking about his day.

There wasn’t a hint of wickedness in our new stepmother.

Five more summers in Knowlton flew by with just the four of us children before the family grew to include my three half-sisters born between 1966 and 1971.

Ultimately, her physical education training continued to prove useful as she juggled a houseful of babies and teenagers!

The not-at-all wicked stepmother – Part 1 (The Unsung Hero)

For many children, cousins are their first playmates. Others never get to meet their cousins even as adults. I have experienced both scenarios.

When my father, Ian Angus, and his brother Oswald were discharged from military service following WW II, they returned to their home in Quebec City and the jobs they left when they enlisted. Ian settled in the suburb of Sillery and Oswald in Ste. Foy. Both eventually had three children each.  Although the children did not attend the same schools, they visited frequently and celebrated holidays and birthdays with their parents and grandparents.

Angus cousins with fathers and grandparents

My mother’s Willett family came from New Richmond on the Gaspe Coast. Two of her brothers, together the fathers of four children, remained there. Keith and my grandfather worked the family farm. Ralph, an electrician, built a home across the road from the farm. Every year my father bundled the family into an old Pontiac he named Rebecca and drove eight hours to spend the summer holidays with my Willett uncles, aunts and cousins. The kids picked strawberries, fished in the brook, and swam in the frigid waters of the Baie de Chaleur, a story much like Cynthia Rylant’s in The Relatives Came. “Then it was hugging time. Talk about hugging!” 1

Willett cousins with Aunt Kay on Baie de Chaleur beach

My seven Angus and Willett cousins were playmates as children and we remain close to this day.

But my mother had other siblings, two sisters who never married and a brother who married but died young and childless.

A third sister, Madge, also died young leaving two young sons, David and Paige, aged four and six. Their father owned an apple orchard in Abbotsford south of Montreal. Albert remarried and fathered two more children. He kept in touch with Madge’s family by sending a barrel of apples to each household every Christmas although the families never actually got together.

Paige and David with mother Madge

David grew up to become a notary in Montreal where I finally met him as an adult. He never married. When his father died, his step-mother and half-sister Louise moved into his home in Westmount where they remained until his mother’s death. Louise moved to Whitby, Ontario and later David joined her when he retired.

Paige forever remained a romantic mystery. My mother and aunts spoke about his early career in the Royal Canadian Airforce and a stint with the Canadian Snowbirds, a RCAF demonstration squadron, with adventures in the sky that further romanticised him for me. He later moved to the United States to fly with American Airlines and in 1971 he applied for American citizenship.² He, too, never married. In 1972 a news article listed him as First Officer and one of the crew of Flight 96 flying from Los Angeles to New York who safely landed a plane load of 56 passengers and 11 in crew in Detroit when the cargo hold burst open in flight.³

A few years ago, David phoned to tell me that Paige had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the disease that has haunted the Willett family. My mother and five of her six siblings died with Alzheimer’s and now Paige was the first of our generation to succumb. David and Louise helped him to move back to Canada and enter a care residence in Ottawa near the home of his half- brother Stephen. In 2014, two years later, David called to tell me Paige had died at age 75. We had never met; we were never playmates; we were not even adult friends.

And what happened to David? I have not heard from him since he called about Paige’s death.  My emails do not bounce back but they are never answered. The message on his telephone says that his phone cannot accept incoming calls. My calls to all the Whitney names listed in Ottawa and Whitby prove fruitless. None of them are the Whitney family for whom I am looking. Ancestry gives me David’s his birth date but not that of his death. Perhaps David, who would now be 86, is still alive but struggling with Alzheimer’s, the curse of the Willett family.

1. Rylant, Cynthia. The Relatives Came. Scholastic Inc. New York, 1985.
2. Ancestry.ca, Nevada Naturalization Petitions, 1956-1991
3. Wikipedia.org. American Airlines Flight 96

The Battle of Châteauguay

The Battle of Châteauguay on October 26, 1813, was one of many skirmishes during the War of 1812. .Approximately 1,500 Canadian and Aboriginal soldiers commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Charles-Michel de Salaberry confronted and halted Hampton’s force of more than 4,000 men near Ormstown They thwarted an attack by the U.S. in their attempt to capture Montreal, in order to cut off a major supply route for the Canadian and aboriginal soldiers.

Salaberry and his men used several clever tactics and tricked their opponents by blowing bugles and shouting, giving the impression that they were a much larger group.. This trickery was successful.

The skirmish itself lasted several hours and involved intense and repeated thrusts and volleys on each side.

Salaberry’s force of militiamen, Voltigeurs Canadiens, fencibles and Aboriginal allies were able to fight back the Americans, who soon retreated.

The Battle of Châteauguay, a national historic site is 50 km southwest of Montréal on the north bank of the Rivière Châteauguay between the towns of Très-Saint-Sacrement de Howick and Ormstown.

This database contains several free online books of interest to both historians and genealogists.

Contents: Map of conflict area. Authors, Archives and History

Click Download to view the attached file.