Genealogy

My Family History

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Handcart Pioneers Postcard pg. 1 - 1939_thumb[1]
Handcart Pioneers Postcard pg. 2 - 1939_thumb[2]

My family history includes, like most peoples’ history, twists and turns and coincidences that sometimes defy belief. In the 1970s, my family and I were living in Geneva, Switzerland, when we had a visit from the ‘Mormons’ doing their proselytizing door to door. Because we were in a non-English speaking environment and they were from the USA, we invited them in. Over the course of a few months, we became great friends and we decided to explore the church’s history with them.

One day, whilst talking to them, they mentioned Salt Lake City as the ‘Zion’ of the church, and how the early Pioneers had left their homes and families to trek across the US to get to Salt Lake City, Utah. That name Salt Lake City brought back a memory. When I was 11 years old, I lived with my Grandparents for a few years and my Grandfather used to ask me to go to the post office to post his letter to a Salt Lake City address. I remember it so well because in the 1950s Air Mail letters were treated differently from normal mail, and I had to have this important missive weighed and stamped before it could be posted, so it made quite an impression. I remember thinking ‘where was Salt Lake City, and why and who was my Grandfather writing to? Of course, by the time I arrived home again, the questions were forgotten.

Now, years later in the 1970’s the question arose again, so I called my Grandfather Percival Victor O’Bray (The English branch spells it with an apostrophe unlike the USA branch which spells it without) and asked him about the letters and to whom he had been writing.

He replied ‘Well, you know the Americans, they are always doing their genealogy and one day, I received this letter from a lady, telling me I was related to her, I was a distant third cousin’ I questioned him further and he said they had corresponded for a number of years, and at one point, she had sent him a ‘Family Tree’ all handwritten then, of course, and started in 1717 to my grandfather’s day. I was very excited by this and asked him, if, when we next came home could I see the ‘Family Tree and read the letters. He replied that I could have the letters and the Family Tree, he had no further use for them, and he would post them to me.

The Family Tree was sent to my Gramps by his third cousin Ellen Louise Gibby Facer in Utah in the early 1950s.

Starting Family Genealogy

I think that started my interest in genealogy and research. The next time I went ‘home’ I questioned my grandparents and family at length, recorded their voices and wrote out the names and birth dates of the family. My Grandparents – who threw nothing out – gave me some marvellous 1800s photos of family members. On the back, I wrote who these people were, most important because shortly after that, we moved to Canada, and genealogy was put on the back burner in a box, for a number of years.

32 years later a renewed interest came when we met some UK friends again, and members of the Church of Latter Day Saints or Mormons. We talked about genealogy, but with young families and busy lives, that was all we did, talked about it, but, never really did any more research.  About 8 years ago, we decided the time had come, and we met and researched together. Our friends invited us to their church’s “Centre of Family History” in LaSalle, Quebec, Canada to do some real research with them.

Finding Family Skeletons

I found the Family History Centre a wonderful place. Free to anyone at certain times it has most of the current genealogy websites online open for free. Books, microfiche and copies of records can be researched, with help from church members if needed. It was a quiet peaceful place and we got to spend some time with friends, have lunch and do some family history together. Our friends were a great help, as the Church recommends that its members do family history so they are very experienced. I recalled all the information I had amassed in the 1970s and had no idea how to put it all together. Now I had a chance to do that. I was pleased with how I had named all the photos as it was a wonderful tool to enable me to search online for family members.

I decided to start with the mysterious ‘Family Tree’ from the USA. It was so exciting to be able to put in full names, birth dates and areas to search. I was grateful to the previous Missionaries who advised us to label and date all information as we received it. A really great tip!

My Grandfather was born in Pembroke Dock, Wales and his Great-Grandfather had, as was usual, a large family. Two of those sons, my Grandfathers’ Uncles, Thomas and Samuel OBray became Mormons and left Wales for ‘Zion’ Salt Lake City in 1854.

This photo, which appears all over FamilySearch.org, was included in letters to my Gramps from his third cousin in Utah.

Samuel William OBray

(Portrait found on Familysearch.org)

That was a surprise for me, considering the friends and interest I have had in the church over the years, a case of my Great Uncles having “been there, done that’ so I was able to trace their long and arduous journey across the plains to Utah through Mormon church records.  Our friends were very excited for us, as this was a great honour in the history of the church, to have family that had made the arduous and terrible trip to reach their ‘Zion’.

Further Research

Through the Welsh Mormon History page, on FamilySearch.org I found that Thomas, was born in Wales in 1824 and he joined the Mormon church when he was 13 years old. Eight years later, he began to preach the gospel in England then Italy, France and Germany. Later, he went to Norway and Denmark. In Malta, he raised up a church branch. In 1854 Thomas emigrated to the US. The ship stopped in New Brunswick, Canada and picked up another family. Thomas joined that family and met Louisa. They continued the journey on their way to St. Louis Missouri to pick up supplies, wagons, food, and animals for the three-month journey across the plains of the United States.

In June at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Thomas and Louisa were married. During that journey, with her brother Albert and her sister Martha, Louisa died of cholera and was buried en route to Salt Lake City on the plains, in an unmarked grave, a bride of three weeks. Thomas continued on with the family and arrived in Salt Lake City in September 1854.

A Few Surprises

In October 1854, Thomas married Louisa’s sister, Martha. Five children were born to Thomas and Martha. In 1857 Thomas married Carolyn and had 9 children with her. In 1864 Thomas married Ruth and they had 14 children together. The women and children, according to Censuses of the time, lived together in separate houses and were called ‘Housekeepers” Thomas lived with Martha and their children.

Altogether Thomas had 28 children and yes, my Great Grand Uncle had ‘plural marriages’! At that time, it was a tenet of the Church. Martha died in 1887 and a year after her death Thomas was sentenced to the Utah penitentiary for 11 months for ‘Unlawful cohabitation. He was sentenced a second time a year later and served from April to August 1890.

 Following a revelation to the church Prophet, the practice of plural marriage was instituted among Church members in the early 1840s however; from the 1860s to the 1880s, the United States government passed laws to make this religious practice illegal. These laws were eventually upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. At that time, the President of the church, Wilford Woodruff issued a Manifesto, which was accepted by the Church as authoritative and binding on October 6, 1890. This led to the end of the practice of plural marriage in the Church.

Decedents Of The Family

My Great Grand Uncle was asked by the church to explore further land outside of Salt Lake City and to build other settlements, and so he moved his families to ‘Cache’ (secret) County and founded a small place called “Paradise’ just outside of Salt Lake City. Thomas homesteaded the site where the church farm is now located.

In 2014, I visited this small town. It was full of my ancestors. Even the local cafe knew the name of my Grandfather and his Uncles. The Paradise Cemetery was a beautiful place, calm and serene and I found my Uncles and their families. It may sound strange, but I ‘introduced’ myself to them, and told them of their ancestor who wrote to my Grandfather, all those years ago, and how I now ended up here, in Paradise. I hope to go back again one day.

The cemetery contained all of the family who were ‘Pioneers’ and had crossed the plains to get to ‘Zion’ It was very moving to see my two Grand Uncles with special plates affixed to their memorial stones to indicate that they were original Pioneers. Great Grand Uncle Thomas died in Paradise, Utah on 21st October 1899 and Great Grand Uncle Samuel died in Paradise, Utah on 5th June 1910.

Meanwhile, I continue my research and find surprises every day. I would love to contact any members of Ellen Louise Gibby Facer’s family. She, who wrote to my Gramps, all those years ago!  I still have her letters and Christmas cards.

How ever did we manage without the internet and more importantly, https://www.familysearch.org?

Dundee, Immigration, Montreal, Newspapers, Quebec, Scotland, Verdun

The Trip of a Lifetime

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My father, Edward McHugh, didn’t really talk about his family’s trip of a lifetime. After all, Dad wasn’t even born yet. But it must have been discussed by everyone when he was a boy. In 1911, the first member of the family, Mary Ann McHugh, moved from Dundee, Scotland to Montreal.

At the time, booking agents in the United Kingdom advertised and recruited potential immigrants to Canada. There was an acute need of domestic help and agricultural workers. Between 1890 and 1920, Canada experienced its third wave of immigration and its peak was between 1911 and 1913, just before World War I.1 The following type of advertisement was common in the newspapers.2

Booking agent advertisement

Maybe one of these advertisements gave the McHugh family the idea to emigrate to Canada. Or maybe Mary was ready for an adventure. She was just 21 when she disembarked from the SS Grampian that had left Glasgow on June 24, 1911 and arrived in Quebec City on July 9, 1911.  She would have had a medical exam when she arrived to ensure that she was in good health and did not have an infectious disease. Conditions for immigration to the colonies were well known in the United Kingdom. The February 11, 1911 edition of the Hamilton Observer, in its article, Canadian Notes, People Prohibited, details the reason some potential immigrants could expect to be refused by Canada. The article explains the booking agent’s liability for the immigrants that arrived in Canada for a period of three years following their arrival:

“The following classes of people are prohibited from landing … feeble minded, idiotic, insane, or who have been insane within five years, afflicted with any loathsome, contagious, or infectious disease; anyone who is a pauper, who is destitute, who is a professional beggar or vagrant.”3

All of the members of the McHugh family worked in the jute mills in Dundee. The 1911 census indicates Mary was a jute weaver, which probably meant that she operated a jute weaving machine.4 She lived with her mother, Sarah Jane McLaughlin, and her brothers, Edward and Francis. They lived at 1 Tait Lane, Dundee. Her other brother, Thomas, my grandfather, lived with his wife and seven children at 9 Tait Lane.

The picture below shows the jute weaving machine.5

Mary must have been satisfied with her new life in Montreal, Quebec. Within a year, her mother and her two brothers, along with my grandfather, had followed her to Canada. Six months later, my grandmother, Elsie Orrock, and her seven children joined her husband, Thomas, in Montreal.

The McHughs lived close together in Dundee and they also lived close together in Verdun, Quebec. While I will never know for sure why they decided to emigrate, I can guess that they wanted a life that was not as hard as the one working in the jute mills. There are a few clues that this was not a spur of a moment decision but a planned family decision.

Mary left first and, if it did not suit her to live in Canada, she would have been able to easily return to Dundee. Her mother and brothers were still there. By the time her mother emigrated, along with her three sons, they arrived with $150 CAD, about $4,750 in today’s dollars. Browsing through the passenger lists, I can see that they had a lot more money than many of their fellow passengers. 6 They were not a rich family, so this amount of money would have taken some time to save up.

Coincidentally my grandfather joined the Freemasons in 1910 and achieved a Master Mason diploma and a Mark Mason diploma.7 By that time, he already had six children. He worked long hours in the jute mill, including Saturdays. Why would he join the masons when he was already a very busy man providing for his family, plus taking care of his widowed mother, and his siblings who still lived at home? There is no evidence that he ever joined the masons when he arrived in Canada. I believe that it is possible that he joined the masons to in case he needed the contacts to find employment. As he quickly found work, his busy family life prevented him from pursuing his membership in the masons.

Only one of my grandfather’s siblings stayed in Scotland, Sarah Jane McHugh. She was not living with the other McHughs at the time of the 1911 census. But she remained close to the family. Surprisingly, she travelled to Montreal to be a witness at her brother’s wedding at the Notre Dame Basilica in Montreal on May 8, 1913.8 That would have been quite a trip for Sarah Jane to make.

  1. Wikipedia, Immigration to Canada, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Canada, accessed 27 September 2023.
  2. Irvine Herald and Ayrshire Advertiser (Irvine, Strathclyde, Scotland) · 13 Oct 1911, accessed Newspapers.com, downloaded 24 August 2023.
  3. The Hamilton Advertiser (Hamilton, Strathclyde, Scotland) · 11 Feb 1911, accessed Newspapers.com, downloaded 24 August 2023.
  4. Scotland’s People, National Records of Scotland, 1911 Census, Sarah Jane McHugh, downloaded 23 June 2019.
  5. V&A Dundee Design Museum, Women’s Day tweet, 6 March 2020.
  6. Passengers lists for S.S. Grampian arriving in Port of Quebec, May 21, 1912, Library and Archives Canada, https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/immigration/immigration-records/passenger-lists/passenger-lists-1865-1922/Pages/image.aspx?Image=e003578022&URLjpg=http%3a%2f%2fcentral.bac-lac.gc.ca%2f.item%2f%3fid%3de003578022%26op%3dimg%26app%3dpassengerlist&Ecopy=e003578022, accessed February 3, 2022.
  7. Thomas McHugh, registration of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, dated 25 August 1910.
  8. Registration of marriage of Francis McHugh and Helen Smith, 8 May 1913, downloaded 6 January 2022.
Genealogy, Loyalists, New Brunswick

Petticoat Pioneer

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(reposted from June 2020)

Charlotte Haines (1773-1851) was only ten years old when the breakaway 13 colonies won the War of Independence in April 1783. Those residing in the new United States of America, who had remained loyal to the British Crown, were persecuted and forced out of their homes and their belongings seized. Chaos reigned everywhere and families were torn apart.

One fateful day around this time, young Charlotte sneaked away to visit her British Loyalist cousins, against the expressed wishes of her American Patriot stepfatheri. Upon her return, standing outside the front door, he refused her entry back into the family home.

Charlotte was my three-times great-grandmother. Her daughter Margaret Ann Peters married Daniel Hanington and their son James Peters Hanington was my grandmother’s father.

The British government came to the aid of these Loyalists and arranged for transportation for those who wished to leave the new America. Charlotte’s grandparents, Gilbert and Anna Pugsley, rescued young Charlotte and her brother David. Together they sailed from New York for ten days on the “Jason”ii, with 124 other “refugees” as part of the final large scale evacuation and landed in New Brunswick (then still part of Nova Scotia) in October 1783…just in time for the brutally cold winter.

Charlotte has been the favourite subject of a couple of books and several folktales. She warranted her own chapter in “Pioneer Profiles of New Brunswick Settlers”iii and is the main character in a children’s book titled “Charlotte”iv. One folktale claimed that she was the first Loyalist to set foot ashore (not true) and in doing so, she lost her “slipper” in the mud (possibly). The matching slipper (unlikely) was donated to the New Brunswick Museum years later, however, it looks somewhat too big and stylish for a ten-year old girl. But they make wonderful stories and fully recognize young Charlotte as one of the first “petticoat pioneers” of New Brunswick.

Children’s story about Charlotte Haines by Janet Lunn

Fourteen thousand Loyalists established a new settlement in 1783 along the St. John River and shortly afterwards they petitioned for their own colony. In 1784, Great Britain granted their request and divided Nova Scotia into two — New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The Loyalists, who made up 90 percent of the population of New Brunswick, became a separate colony with its capital, Fredericton, 90 miles upriver from Saint John.

The Loyalists and their children were entitled to free land once they provided the necessary proof. Charlotte, as the biological daughter of John Haines, a Loyalist on record, appears in 1786 documentation as one of the grantees of 84 lots on Long Island, Queen’s County, along with several other prominent Loyalists – although she was only 13 at the time. I can imagine her grandfather Pugsley nodding discreetly in her direction as he looked after her interests.

For their first three years, the British provided the Loyalists with a few simple tools, blankets, material for clothing and seeds for wheat, peas, corn and potatoes. The rations of basic food supplied by the British supplemented the abundance of game and fish available to them in the forest and streams. Most lived in tents on dirt floors until they were able to build primitive log cabins. Tree by tree, stump by stump, the fertile uplands were cleared to widen the fields making them ready for crops.

The Loyalists kept meaningful social contacts through various community events. Neighbours organized “frolics” whereby the men would work together to clear land, move rocks, build a barn or complete some other task which proved impossible for one or two people. At the same time, the women prepared meals and the children had a chance to play with friends. Women also held their own frolics to make quilts, card wool or shell corn. These Loyalist neighbours were dependent on one another in times of sickness, accidents and childbirth and supported one another at gatherings for weddings, funerals and church services.

Perhaps Charlotte met her future husband at one of these popular frolics. At 17, Charlotte married William Peters (also from a United Empire Loyalist family) in 1791 in Gagetown. Soon afterwards, the happy couple moved downriver, settled in Hampstead and built a home where the St. John River widens to a magnificent view.

At that time, there existed only ten miles of roadway in the whole province and another 20 years would pass before there would be an 82-mile long road linking Fredericton and Saint John. However, in the meantime, the river served as a “highway” enabling the transport of passengers and necessary goods between the two cities.

When the steamboats first chugged noisily up the river in 1816, William decided to compete with them and he built a 100-foot long side wheeler powered by 12 horses walking up and down the deck and propelling the boat along.

A drawing of The Experiment – an example of another horse powered side wheeler.

William actively pursued his interest in politics, and as the first representative of Queen’s County in the New Brunswick Legislature, he spent a lot of time in Fredericton (50 miles away) attending the sessions of Parliament.

Meanwhile, back home, Charlotte managed their entire land-holding on her own. Eventually they had 15 children, five sons and ten daughters. She bore her last child at 50 years old according to the baptismal certificate. They all survived except their son John who drowned at 21 attempting to save another man’s life.

Not only did she clothe, feed and care for them all (including the servants) but also provided much of their early education as well. On Saturday evenings in the summer, the fiddlers would play rollicking tunes and the tapping of dancing feet could be heard in big houses and cabins alike. When winter shut down the fields, and with food plentifully stored in the cellar, the spinning wheels would begin to hum during those coldest months.

By the time William died in 1836, they had recently relocated to Woodstock (100 miles upriver from Hampstead) with two of their younger children, James and Caroline. Their older children were married with homes of their own scattered along the St. John River Valley. Around this time, she wrote a letterv to her daughter Susan, Mrs. Thomas Tilley:

I take my pen to address a few lines to you to inquire after the health of you and all of your family.  The grate distance we are from you prevents me from hearing.  You heard of the death of your Father at Woodstock.

Charlotte described William’s death in some detail and then continued:

I hop [sic] this may find you all well.  I am not well.  My head troubles me very much.  There is not one day that it don’t ake [sic] so that I cant hardly stir.  My cough is something better.  James and Caroline is well and harty [sic] and quite contented hear.  I like the place and if your Father has lived and been hear to see to it we might have made a good living.  It is pleasant and a good place for business but we must try to due the best we can.  The place is out of repair and soon would have been a common if we had not come hear.  I should be glad if my friends was near to us.  I don’t know as ever I shall see you all again.  I thought to have gon [sic]to see you all before I came up hear but I was so sick that I could not go down to see you.  James and Caroline wishes to be remembered to you and all the family.  I desire to be remembered to Thomas and the children and tel them I should be glad to see them and you.  Give my love to all inquiring friends and except a share for yourself.
This from you afectionet [sic] Mother, Charlotte Peters

Although she had her share of aches and pains at that time, she lived another 15 years and ultimately enjoyed the blessing of 111 grandchildren.

She had a powerful influence over all her family for she believed that their heritage carried a great responsibility to others. When the grandchildren would visit, her graceful hands were always busy winding yarn or knitting a sock while patiently answering their questions and reciting passages from the bible.

One of her grandchildren, Samuel Leonard Tilley, later known as Sir Leonard, served as Premier of New Brunswick and went on to became one of the Fathers of Confederation.

Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley 1864

A common tale states that Tilley proposed the term “Dominion” in Canada’s name, at the London conference in 1866, which he gleaned from Psalm 72:8 – “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth”. Ultimately, as Minister of Finance in the federal government, he was also instrumental in seeing the transcontinental railway completed.vi

Young Charlotte Haines might have felt all alone in the world at age ten but, when she died 68 years later, the epitaph on her tombstone proclaimed her legacy: “…Lamented by a large circle of descendants and friends by whom she was universally beloved and respected.”

The gravestone of Charlotte Haines Peters and family – St.John’s Anglican Church, Gagetown, Queens County, New Brunswick

Charlotte’s daughter Margaret Ann Peters and her husband Daniel Hanington “Roaring Dan” (my great great grandparents).

Notes:

iCharlotte’s mother, Miss Pugsley, died when she was very young. Charlotte’s father remarried Sarah Haight before he died. Then Sarah remarried Stephen Haviland who was Charlotte’s stepmother’s husband (step step father?)

iiThe Ship Passenger Lists, American Loyalists to New Brunswick, David Bell, http://www.uelac.org/Loyalist-Ships/Loyalist-Ships.php as seen 2020-03-28

iiiCharlotte Gourlay Rovinson, Pioneer Profiles of New Brunswick Settlers, (Mika Publishing Company), 1980, p.143.

ivJanet Lunn, Charlotte, (Tundra Books), 1998.

v https://queenscountyheritage.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/loyalist-of-the-day-charlotte-haines-peters/ as seen 2020-04-02

vi Conrad Black, Rise to Greatness: The History of Canada, (Random House), 2014.

Image – https://wiki2.org/en/Experiment_(horse-powered_boat) as seen 2020-06-11

Genealogy

Memories of Bygone Visits

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Have you ever wondered how names are given?

In the Jodouin family of 9 children, six girls, and three boys the names were:

Alice, Aline, Arthur, Eugene, Adele, Lucille, Emile, Estelle and Louise.

A number of them were named after relatives

Three of those names began with the same sounding A! Sometimes Mom would go through the entire list of her children before finding the one she wanted to address! Perhaps Granny had the same situation. In any case, my Aunt Adele became known as “Ted” even though she was very feminine and truly a fashion plate, always dressed ”to the nines”.

Aunt Ted, ?, Granpa, Luce, Mom, and Granny Jodouin                

For many years I wondered how she received the nickname. It seems that she looked like a little teddy bear with her big brown eyes and thus she became affectionately known as Ted. The name stayed with her all her life. She was “Aunt Ted!”

Marie Adele Jodouin was born in Sudbury, Ontario, during the Holiday season, on December 28, 1901. She was the fifth child of Louis and Louisa Jodouin.

The Royal Bank on Durham Street in downtown Sudbury

She worked as a Secretary to the Manager at the Royal Bank in Sudbury.

To this day, fond memories of bygone visits either to Sudbury or Asbestos still come to mind.

Back row: Uncle Leo and Aunt Dickie-Middle Row: Granny Jodouin, Mom, Aunt Ted – Front: Paul, Claire, and Denise – Dad took the photograph.

One of those visits occurred in the summer of 1946. Our family had moved from Sudbury to Asbestos, Quebec in the fall of 1945. We all missed our northern relatives, especially Mom. Granny, Aunt Ted, Aunt Dickie (Louise), Uncle Leo, and Cousin Denise arrived in the Packard driven by Aunt Ted. They were welcomed with open arms. Mom was in seventh heaven seeing her family. Their visit was the highlight of that summer.

When Grandpa Jodouin passed away in 1943 they sold the family home on Elm Street and built a small bungalow on John Street just around the corner from Aunt Dickie and Uncle Leo. In their new home, Granny had her Baby Grand piano as the centerpiece in their living room. The last memory of Granny etched in my mind was in 1948 when we were heading home to Asbestos. She sat down and played “Say Aurevoir But Not Goodbye”. She died in May of 1950.

Over the years there have been many visits back and forth to Sudbury. One of them happened in the summer of 1951 while spending several weeks with Aunt Ted in her home on John Street. During that time, she trotted me off to the dentist. He decided that the tooth growing off-kilter in my lower palette needed to be removed! That is something one does not forget. It is often a reminder of my caring aunt.

“Do you have a special aunt among your relatives?”

Years later, around 1955, Aunt Ted made another trip to our home in Asbestos. It would be the last time she visited us. Each one of her visits over the years has become more meaningful, and I realize just how much she was an influence in my life, and for that, I am truly grateful.

John, Claire, Aunt Ted, and Paul – Dad most likely took the photograph.

Aunt Ted passed away quietly at the age of fifty-five during the summer of 1958. I was deeply saddened and, for reasons unknown to me, did not attend her funeral. She is buried in LaSalle cemetery next to Granny, Grandpa Jodouin, and my parents.

Alas! Over time the ground around the tombstone had shifted and unfortunately, it became necessary to lower the impressive towering granite tombstone. It is no longer the marker it once was.

United States

Launching “Up for the Season”

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I was a journalist and magazine writer for many years, and I have written dozens of articles about my ancestors, but none of these projects has been as well received as the small book I recently co-edited about the small coastal community where I spend my summers.

Biddeford Pool, Maine has been welcoming summer residents for several generations. My mother came here as a child, and I have summered here since I was four.  Now, only a few long-lived members of my mother’s generation are still with us, and stories from the past are disappearing.

So in 2019, inspired by the success of my family history blog, I started a blog about the Pool’s summer community. I wrote some of the articles, but the main goal was for people to write their own stories.  My friend Dabney described the Sunday mornings of her childhood when everyone went to church wearing their Sunday best, then returned home to enjoy roast beef or fried chicken for lunch. Jesse told readers what he learned about life while racing his sailboat in the mid-1960s. Lisa recalled the 1950s when Mr. Anderson, dressed in a summer suit and straw hat, delighted the neighbourhood children by taking out his false teeth and giving them a toothless smile.

These were great stories, but the blog was a failure. Nobody noticed the publicity flyers I made up, and the posts were not frequent enough to land on people’s radar. When one friend asked, “what is a blog?” I knew the project was doomed.  

Upon our return to Maine in 2022, after a two-year absence due to Covid, I asked some friends what they thought I should do with the blog: delete it as a failed experiment, try to revive it, or turn it into a book? We decided on a book. We included all the articles from the blog and added many new stories.

The book is called, Up for the Season: Memories of Summer at Biddeford Pool, edited by myself and Christy Bergland, an artist from Baltimore whose grandfather first came to the Pool as the summer doctor in 1907. The title is a quote attributed to a local lobster fisherman who knew many of the summer residents in the 1950s. When he saw a cottager for the first time each summer, he would ask, “Up for the season?”

co-editors Janice Hamilton, left, and Christy Bergland, right. photo by Richard Levy

The theme of the book is, when and why did your family first start coming to Biddeford Pool? It turns out that many of the men who started coming to the Pool in the late 1800s and early 1900s lived and worked together in mid-western cities such as Cincinnati and St. Louis, and they recommended it to their friends as a good place to bring their families.

The book is probably a hit for several reasons. First, people love to hear these stories about the days when men wore tuxedos to the annual Labour Day dance at the golf club and children got their first taste of freedom as they explored this safe little peninsula. unsupervised by parents.

The quality of the writing is another reason. While most of the contributors are not professional writers, they are nevertheless gifted storytellers. Eagles Nest, a turreted house overlooking the rocky shore, came to life when LeeLee mentioned the seagull who arrives for cocktails on the porch. This was a perfect example of “show, don’t tell.”

For me, putting this project together was a lot of fun because it was a group effort. Christy and several other friends helped with all the important decisions, such as the title choice.

A fun book launch. photo by Harold Rosenberg.

We hired a copy editor to catch the typos and a book designer to do the layout. The printing was done by Rapido Books, a Montreal printing company that I had previously used for a family history book. They shipped two boxes of 50 books seamlessly across the border, and they have an online bookstore for print-on-demand copies. Over the course of this summer, Christy and Mary handled the book sales and accounting with Jo’s assistance. As of the end of August, we have sold more than 100 copies and accumulated a profit of several hundred dollars that we donated to the Biddeford Pool Community Center.

Marketing in a small community where everyone knows everyone is not complicated. We put up posters in key locations advertising an early July book launch, and an announcement appeared in the Community Center newsletter. The launch, held at Lisa’s old shingled family cottage by the bay, was an overwhelming success. We also held a smaller event at the end of the summer where several of the authors read their stories aloud.

Today, many family historians are taking the next step beyond researching their ancestors’ BMDs , and they are writing about their families. Writing about the individuals, families and businesses in a community is not very different from writing about ancestors, and the sources of information — interviews, newspaper articles, city directories, census data and so on – are also the same.

Now that Up for the Season has been so well received, we are hoping that people will be inspired to start writing volume two. Many stories are waiting to be told.

Genealogy, Montreal

Peacocks and Cherubim: My Mysterious Aunt Cecile

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My Aunts Flo and Cecile, circa 1930, in what I assume are bathing suits maybe at Old Orchard Beach Maine where the family vacationed.

It was 1962 or so and my mom, twin brother and I had taken a bus from Old Orchard Beach to Ogunquit, Maine to visit my Aunt Cecile, who was on vacation at the same time as us.

As my brother and I crawled over the jagged and slippery shoreline in front of her hotel we openly wondered why anyone in their right mind would want to vacation in this spot. It was all rocks!

Well, much time has passed and my husband and I love to spend time at picturesque Perkin’s Cove on our short trips to Maine in the spring or fall.

On one such weekend visit, I recall the owners of our b-n-b telling us about pre-WWII Ogunquit: it had once been a bohemian artist’s colony with open air classes and nude models posing on the Marginal Way.

An artist’s colony! Now that explains it. My Aunt Cecile was an artist and a good one at that – but a bohemian, never! I remember her only as sober and serious – and seriously pious. Children were a foreign country to her and her main ambition with regards to me was to convert me to Roman Catholicism.

Marie-Catherine Cecile Crepeau was born in Montreal 1909 to Jules Crepeau and Maria Roy, my grandparents. She had an older brother and sister, Louis and Alice and in 1914 or so another girl her age, Florida, was plucked off the scruffy streets of south central Montreal and brought into the family fold. My mother would appear much later in 1921.

Cecile contracted scarlet fever as a child and suffered severe heart damage. According to her sisters, she was ‘babied’ for most of her childhood, not asked to do very much.

So, it seems she learned to paint.

This battered canvas of young Flo is the only one of Cecile’s that I own. It was painted in 1927 when both Cecile and Flo were 18. It is pretty accomplished for so young an artist, I think.

Indeed, in a few years later Cecile would be accepted into the Beaux-Arts in Montreal (perhaps using this portrait in a portfolio) and she would win the first prize for oil painting (considered very much a male domain) in 1937.

I have the medal somewhere and I found this tidbit from a tabloid called “L’illustre” describing the 1937 Beaux-Art exhibition: “Although the Hall of Paintings has little that is very striking, Therese Boucher’s “Reclining Man’ is vigorously treated. Among the angels, Cecile Crepeau’s is most alluring, in large part because of the curious golden tonality of the ensemble. Her study of a face, placed to the right of the entrance, has life and sincerity, despite some weaknesses. Her blue vase beside a pewter bowl also merits a mention. The female nudes are unimpressive.”

The angel picture I remember well. It loomed over Cecile’s living room and, yes, it was very golden. Another tall tall wall hanging I remember was an oil painting of a statue of St John the Baptist holding his own very hairy head.

I don’t recall the still life mentioned in the newspaper article, but I wish she had put some pretty vases behind Aunt Flo in my painting. It seems unfinished somehow.

The gorgeous and heavy ‘gold’ medal. I wish

My aunt was ‘a perfectionist’ (who suffered migraines for it) said my mother, which might account for why she created so few completed canvases..

Again, according to my mother, a teacher at the Beaux-Arts told her she had the technique but to be a superior artist but she had to ‘live a little.” (I wonder if the teacher was hitting on her.)

In the 1940’s, Cecile is listed in Lovell’s Directory as “housekeeper’ at my widowed grandmother’s Oxford Avenue flat. My mother is working as a stenographer at RKO Motion Pictures just down the street and my Aunt Flo as a greeter at Henry Morgan’s department store downtown. They are providing the financial support. My grandfather, former Director of City Services, had died under mysterious circumstances in 1938.

My brother and aunts in Cecile’s garden on Beaconsfield Avenue. It was lined with statuesque poplars and showcased an ornate wrought iron and marble birdbath! 1956 or so.

In 1951 my grandmother passed away. My mother had already married and moved a short distance way. Flo, too, would soon marry, leaving Cecile to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.

The story goes Cecile tried to became a nun but was turned down ‘due to her bad heart.’ Instead, she married a friend’s father, Amedee Buteau, a retired professor almost 30 years her senior. 1They would take a lower duplex apartment in NDG, filling it with my grandparents’ elegant furnishings. It was a marriage of convenience, no doubt, but it worked.

In the 1960’s, I just loved visiting Cecile’s home. Unlike our dingy and unadorned upper duplex apartment not far away, Cecile’s home was spic-n-span, every surface polished to a high sheen. There was no TV blaring Bonanza or Star Trek, just a giant grandfather clock solemnly marking each quarter hour with a click and a ping. The place felt like a museum with all the curio cabinets filled with so many intriguing things.

1955, My mom with her sisters.

And mixed in with the fin-de-siecle family treasures were her many multi-media artworks: sculptures, ceramics, watercolours. There were quite a few confusing (to me) religious subjects like bleeding hearts but also some adorable cherubim and many nature studies especially of flowers, birds and butterflies. Indeed, Cecile painted an immense peacock in full display on a wooden blind on the wall behind her bed. The tension between Eros and Thanatos in her beautiful Beaconsfield Avenue abode was quite evident to me, even as a child.

My mother had a very choppy relationship with her sister Cecile so even though we lived but a short bus ride away we didn’t visit her that often. – and I don’t recall her ever visiting us. Cecile’s hair went from red to grey between 1960’s visits I recall.

On at least one occasion I was sent on a sleepover. My aunt was awkward with me and I was determined not to like her, probably picking up on my mom’s vibes. It didn’t help that Cecile brought me to a scary Latin mass at Notre Dame Cathedral, pinning a silly handkerchief to the top of my head. Unfortunately, she did no art with me. Too messy I guess. Too bad as she was a wizard with pastels.

Cecile passed away in 1974 a year or two before her aged spouse. She was 65. My mother sobbed with grief at her passing. “You were always fighting with her,” I recall saying to my mom. “So why are you crying so much?” How naive of me.

All of the family heirlooms fell into the hands of ‘strangers’ upsetting my mother, but one lost canvas pained her in particular. “It was Cecile’s best painting,” she said, “of Alice putting a flower in Florida’s hair before a dance.”

Classic! I can hardly blame my mother for coveting that particular oil painting, one that involved all of her sisters: I wonder who owns it now.

  1. Mon Oncle Amedee was so comically vague in his dotage, seated in his armchair snoozing away with an upside down Le Devoir newspaper folded onto his lap, we children assumed he was expert in some airy-fairy field like ancient philosophy. But, no, quite the opposite. A short search on the Web reveals that in the 1920’s Amadee was a civil engineer, Dean of a Technical College and expert in technical education giving lectures, meeting with policy makers, even writing a book.

Writing

Joseph Dufour’s Farm

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02

In the winter of 1749-1750, Jesuit Father Claude-Godefroi Coquart travelled through the Malbaie area of New France (now the province of Quebec) inspecting the lands owned by the King of France.

One of two farmers looking after this land was one of my ancestors, Joseph Dufour. Dufour’s farm was called “La Malbaie.”

Coquart’s written report to France describes the farm run by Dufour and his neighbours’ operation in great detail.

Author George McKinnon Wrong describes Coquart’s report on pages 17 and 18 of his 2005 book entitled “A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861”:

Father Coquart’s census is as rigorous and unsparing of detail as the Doomsday Book of William the Conqueror. He tells exactly what the Malbaie farm can produce in a year; the record for the year of grace 1750 is “4 or 6 oxen; 25 sheep, 2 or 3 cows, 1200 pounds of pork, 1400 to 1500 pounds of butter, one barrel of lard,”—certainly not much to help a paternal government. The salmon fishery should be developed, says Coquart. Now the farmers get their own supply and nothing more. Nets should be used and great quantities of salmon might be salted down in good seasons. Happily, conditions are mending. The previous farmer had let things go to rack and ruin but now one sees neither thistles nor black wheat; all the fences are in place. Joseph Dufour has a special talent for making things profitable. If he can be induced to continue his services, it will be a benefit to his employer. But he is not contented. Last year he could not make it pay and wished to leave. Nearly all his wages are used in the support of his family. He has three grown-up daughters who help in carrying on the establishment, and a boy for the stables. The best paid of these gets only 50 livres (about $10) a year; she should get at least 80 livres, M. Coquart thinks. Dufour has on the farm eight sheep of his own but even of these the King takes the wool, and actually the farmer has had to pay for what wool his family used. Surely he should be allowed to keep at least half the wool of his own sheep! If it was the policy of the Crown to grant lands along the river of Malbaie there are many people who would like those fertile areas, but there is danger that they would trade with the Indians which should be strictly forbidden.”

For a link to this work, refer to https://archive.org/details/canadianmanorits00wronuoft

Genealogy

The Life of a Church

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St. Andrews United Church Westmount, Quebec 

The night St. Andrews United Church, Westmount was razed by fire in 1965, I was thirteen. The whole sanctuary gone. Stained glass windows, memorials to many, melted, the organ burned and the small tower toppled. Charred red bricks littered Staunton Street. Only the tall tower and walls remained of the 57-year-old church.

Montreal Star Aug 4, 1965

This devastating fire occurred, even though the church sat just across the street from the Westmount fire station. The caretaker lived in the back of the building and when he smelled smoke in the afternoon, he went across the street to the fire station. The firemen looked through the whole church without finding anything amiss. They closed the fire doors to the Sunday School and left. Around midnight the church was engulfed in flames and all the firemen in the city couldn’t save the building. It was determined that the fire started in the basement under the sanctuary and hidden there, smouldered for hours. The minister, Reverend D.M. Grant holidaying in Nova Scotia was awakened with a telegram saying his church was burning.

My family was not some of the early Westmount Presbyterians who worshiped in the Mission School from 1869 until 1886. They weren’t even members when a small frame church, Melville Presbyterian, was built on the corner of Cote St Antoine and Stanton St.

Church with an addition

According to the booklets written for the Church’s golden and diamond Jubilees, St Andrew’s Church in Westmount was formally founded in 1900. “A difference of opinion caused the division of the members. One group retained the name of Melville Presbyterian Church and moved to Melville Ave where they built a new church. The other group, retained the present church site and became St Andrew’s Church.” In the newspapers of the day I found the reason for the split, alcohol consumption! When Rev. T. W. Winfield was hired, “a promise was extracted from the Reverend gentleman that he would refrain from intoxicating liquors while pastor of Melville Church.” Some members accused him of breaking that promise. The minority moved with the Minister and took the Melville name while the majority stayed in the building and chose the new name St Andrews Presbyterian. 

This congregation continued to grow, so in 1908 the red brick church was built. The large sanctuary, surrounded on three sides with balconies held 1100 worshipers. There was a rose window over the front doors and many other stained glass windows on the side walls. It was one of the Presbyterian churches that united with the Methodists and the Congregationalists in 1925 and became St. Andrews United Church.

St Andrew’s Church 1908-1965

I spent many hours in St Andrews Church growing up, as did my father. My grandparents joined the church when they moved from Chomedy Street to Grosvenor Ave in 1912. My grandfather, William Sutherland was a church elder and later so were both my parents. My grandmother Minnie Eagle Sutherland was very involved in church life being president of the Women’s Missionary Society and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. My mother taught Sunday School and was the head of the Primary department for many years.

Church Interior photo by Alfred Peter Jorbes

We went to Church and Sunday School every week and won prizes for attendance. It was a church of many staircases. The hall behind the church had three sets and before and after church children would run around, up and down the stairs and through the halls. A back staircase off the kindergarten room led down to the basement. It was dark and gloomy and we would only venture down a few stairs before running somewhere else.

I remember Christmas pageants with Roman soldiers in costumes, clanking down the aisle with swords, helmets and leather skirts. I so admired the angels in their light blue satin dresses with wings that I wished I could be one. I was promised I could be an angel the next time they had a pageant but before that happened, the church burned including all the costumes stored in the basement.

After the fire, the Church was rebuilt although with some controversy and another split. Some of the congregation left because they thought the million-dollar insurance money should be put to better use than having three underused United Churches in Westmount. They were out-voted and the new modern church opened in October 1967. It only held 500 people.

The rebuilt Church 1967

The congregation continued to age, fewer young families joined and people such as myself attended irregularly. St Andrews and Dominion Douglas United, amalgamated in 1985. The committee discussed which church to keep. Dominion Douglas, an old stone church on The Boulevard became the new home with the St Andrew’s congregation moving up the hill. Selwyn House School, across the street, bought St. Andrews. for their expansion. The chapel, including stain glass windows was deconstructed and rebuilt in the Dominion Douglas basement. In 2004 Erskine American United Church, on Sherbrooke Street joined St. Andrews-Dominion Douglas and another name was needed. The congregation became Mountainside United Church.

In less than twenty years Mountainside United Church became impossible to maintain and heat with a diminishing congregation. That building was sold to a developer and the congregation moved to the Birks Chapel on the McGill Campus. I have not attended a service there.

References:

Church Fire: The Montreal Star; Aug 4, 1965 page 3. Downloaded from newspapers.com Dec 29, 2022.

Westmount Mayor Praises Firemen: Montreal Star; August 10, 1965 page 6. Accessed from Newspapers.comDecember 29, 2022

Rising from its Ashes: Montreal Star; June 3, 1967 page 58 Accessed from Newspapers.com December 29, 2022.

Melville Church Difficulty: Montreal Gazette; 28, March 1900 page 10. Accesses from Newspaper.com January 25, 2023.

Date of Separation: Montreal Star; 12 May 1900 page 10. Accessed from Newspapers.com January 26, 2023.

Melville Presbyterian Church: https://cac.mcgill.ca/maxwells/details.php?recordCount=165&Page=4&id=155&pn=&cn=All&pr=All&ct=All&str=&mj=All&mn=All&sta=Built

St Andrew,s Church Golden Jubilee Celebration Bulletin November 5th to 12th 1950. IN the hands of the author.

Our Heritage St Andrew’s Church Diamond Jubilee 1900-1960 booklet. In the hands of the author.

Notes:

The back annex which housed the Sunday school was saved by the fire doors. Books and papers recovered from the Sunday school were stored in our basement for a time but they continued to smell of smoke and were later discarded. The manse next door was also saved but torn down for the new church. 

After the church fire may local churches and synagogues offered the congregation space to worship including Melville Presbyterian Church. I went to confirmation classes at Melville but we had Sunday services in the auditorium of Westmount High School.

Melville Presbyterian Church was built on Elgin Avenue later changed to Melville Avenue, facing Westmount Park. It is now Holy Trinity Serbian Orthodox Church. After the founding of the United Church in 1925, Melville Presbyterian Church amalgamated with Westmount Methodist to form Westmount Park-Melville United Church. The combined congregation worshipped in the Melville Church building for two years, until it was sold [back] to former members who remained with the Presbyterian Church. Victoria Hall served as a temporary site while the new Westmount Park-Melville Church, which is now known as the Westmount Park United Church was built on the western edge of Westmount Park.

Genealogy

The Liverpool Lad

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In my last story, https://genealogyensemble.com/2023/06/07/harrys-story/ I wrote about Harry Jolliffe and his trials and tribulations in a Prisoner of War Camp in Japan.

Relating this to my husband, John, he mentioned a memory of his maternal Uncle Ben and his Uncles’ time as a POW in Japan.

It was all second-hand because Benjamin Ronald Hughes died the year my husband was born, in 1948. However, John did have stories from his Mum, about her brother. According to her Uncle Ben suffered terribly during his 3 years as a prisoner.

Ben was born on the 27th of March 1910 the only boy in the family of six in the Toxteth area of Liverpool, Lancashire. His occupation was a messenger. That could have been for the Post Office delivering telegrams or perhaps riding a bicycle delivering groceries and goods.

When Uncle Ben was 15 years old, he joined the Royal Navy as a second-class boy entrant. When he reached 18 years old, in 1929 he was by then a Boy First Class and volunteered again, as an adult Able Seaman, and was posted to HMS Egmont II on 25 September 1931.

During his service, Uncle Ben served on 15 various Royal Navy ships. War was declared on the 1st of September 1939. On the 1st of March 1942, after three years of fighting, Uncle Ben was reported missing to his family. He was listed as a prisoner of war, by the Japanese. When captured and according to his Japanese POW file below, he was on HMS Encounter which had picked up allies from Malaysia and was scuttled (sunk) by her own crew, after being damaged by gunfire from heavy Japanese heavy cruisers in the Java Sea. (1)

Whilst researching I managed to find Ben’s Japanese POW information. There was not much on it, and I don’t read Japanese. I wanted to find the name of his camp and what he would have laboured at.

Eventually, I found that he was a POW in Fukuoka- Camp 26 prisoner number 51. The link (2) lists all the prisoners with information on nationality, name, age, and home address. it does make for interesting reading. There were British, Australian and two Dutch prisoners. The servicemen listed were Royal Navy and Army. ALL the men apart from eleven who had obvious illnesses, were listed as ‘Healthy’. The camp prisoners were used for labour in mines in this particular area of Japan.

The first pages of prisoners’ information.

At the war’s end, in 945, Uncle Ben was in the Royal Naval Hospital Chatham, in Kent. It states on his Service Record that he was Invalided out of the Royal Navy from RN Hospital Chatham on the 7th of August 1946. He would have spent time recovering from his terrible experiences.

He was granted a war gratuity and a medal. Later, on the 25th of January 1946. Benjamin Ronald Hughes is ‘Mentioned in Dispatches in the London Gazette. It reads as follows.

“Able Seaman. Benjamin Ronald HUGHES, C/J. 114923.
For bravery, endurance and marked devotion to duty whilst serving in H.M> ships Kuda, Isis, Scorpion and Sultan and H.M. M. MXS, 310 and 1062 during the withdrawal of troops from Sungai Punggor and in the harassing of the advancing Japanese in Malay, December 1941 – January 1942“.

My mother-in-law told her son John, that when Uncle Ben returned to his home in Liverpool he was a wreck. Emaciated, haunted, ill and looking twice his age. He was 36 years old. Uncle Ben did not live long to enjoy life and died in 1948 at the age of 38. Because of his young age, a Post Mortem was performed and he was found to have died of bacterial endocarditis. RIP Uncle Ben.

This ‘Ghost’ photo of Ben with his wife, Jessie, is the only photo we have.

(1) https://uboat.net/allies/warships/ship/4378.html

(2) http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/camplists/fukuoka/fuk_26_keisen/FUK-26_Rosters_1946-02-16.pdf

NOTES

Keisen Yoshikuma Coal Mine Branch Camp (Fukuoka 26-B) Established as Fukuoka No.26 Branch Camp at Yoshikuma Coal Mine in Keisen-cho, Kaho-gun, Fukuoka Prefecture on May 10, 1945.

The POWs were used for mine labour by Aso Mining Company. The son and heir Taro Aso was a past President of Japan in 2008 and the controversy surrounding his family’s use of Korean and Allied POW labour clouded his term of office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aso_Mining_forced_labor_controversy

During the “White Rice Period”, lasting from January to October 1942, Allied prisoners were granted a maximum of ten ounces of rice per day, in addition to two ounces of rancid pork and four ounces of fish monthly. This official figure was often larger than that provided, with theft by Japanese soldiers, themselves suffering from starvation towards the latter days of the war, commonplace within the camps. Red Cross parcels, containing necessary essentials, were accepted by the Japanese authorities, but rather than being redistributed among the prisoners were kept by the Japanese soldiers themselves.

https://historycollection.com/20-horrific-details-about-japanese-pow-camps-during-world-war-ii/

British Columbia, Iceland, Montreal, Quebec, WWII

Ralph Dodds, Signalman, Royal Canadian Navy

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My aunt, Sarah Jane McHugh, was delighted to host the linen shower to celebrate her daughter, Dawna Day’s upcoming marriage to Ralph Dodds. The happy couple announced their engagement in October 1947. Ralph had recently been discharged after serving in the Royal Canadian Navy for over six years.  The couple’s wedding would take place in Vancouver, Ralph’s home town. Dawna was from Montreal.

Ralph was just 20 when he started his navy career in Esquimalt, British Columbia in 1939.1 With the advent of World War II, the Esquimalt Navy base became the largest naval training center in western Canada. 2 Ralph Dodds trained to become a signalman would have learned all aspects of military communications in the Canadian Navy. He would have used semaphore flags, read and transmitted morse code messages, and assured radio communications.3 During his training, Ralph would not have predicted that he would participate in the sinking of a German U-boat during the Battle of the Atlantic, that he would be on a destroyer that participated in a sea fight on D-Day, or that the destroyer he was on would be shipwrecked off the coast of Iceland.

King George VI presents the King’s Colours to the Royal Canadian Navy at Beacon Hill Park, Victoria, 1939. Photo: CFB Esquimalt Naval and Military Museum collection

While Ralph was assigned to a naval station, and to a corvette (small destroyer), for most of his naval career, he was assigned to the HMCS Skeena.

HMCS Skeena, D59, Government of Canada website, Ships’ histories

The HMCS Skeena was commissioned in 1931 in Portsmouth, U.K. and was one of the first two ships built to Canadian order. With the outbreak of the war, the Skeena initially performed domestic escort duties. In May 1940, she was sent to Plymouth, U.K. and became part of the Western Approaches Command, taking part in the evacuation of France and escorting convoys in British waters. She was later assigned to continuous convoy duty.

During one of its escort duties in the Atlantic, the Skeena destroyed U-boat U-588. This happened during ON-115 (ON means Outbound to North America).  There were twelve escort ships for a trade convoy of 43 merchant ships that left Liverpool on July 12, 1942. On July 29, seven U-boats of the Wolfpack Wolf had spotted them. This Wolfpack was quickly joined by another six U-boats of the Wolfpack Pirat. The Wolf Pack tactic, or the “Rudeltaktik,” was devised to attack the Allied convoy system by forming into position effecting a massed organized attack.4 This particular battle resulted in the loss of three of the ships in the convoy and significant damage to two of the ships in the convoy. One of the damaged ships returned to the U.K. and one was escorted to St. John’s, Newfoundland. The Skeena, on which Ralph was a signalman, and the HMCS Wetaskiwin, an escort corvette, destroyed U-boat 588 with depth charges (antisubmarine missiles) on July 31. The hostilities lasted until August 3 when the U-boats lost contact with the convoy due to misty weather. The convoy with the remaining ships reached Boston on August 8, 1942.5

The sinking of American freighters, Edward Rutledge, Tasker H. Bliss and Hugh L. Scott at Fedala Roads, November 12, 1942
Commodore Leonard Murray congratulating the ship’s companies of HMCS Skeena and HMCS Wetaskiwin for sinking the German submarine U-588 on 31 July 1942. St. John’s, Newfoundland, Aug. 4, 1942. (NAC PA-115347)

The Skeena also participated in a hot sea fight in the Channel on D-Day. The Skeena’s assignment was to prevent enemy U-boats from attacking Allied ships while the Invasion of France was being carried out.

“Torpedoes were shooting about in the Channel and missed the Skeena by only a matter of feet,” said Ralph in an interview he gave to the Vancouver Sun.

The destroyer also had to contend with German Dorniers (bombers) that were bombing the destroyers in the Channel. One of the aerial missiles fell so close to the Skeena that shrapnel was later found on the deck.6

Ships and blimps sit off the coast of France on D-Day, June 6, 1944. War Footage From the George Stevens Collection at the Library of Congress

After five years of war, the HMCS Skeena met her end as she sheltered from a violent gale with 15-metre waves off the coast of Iceland, at Videy Island on October 24, 1944. Even though the crew had thrown out a second anchor to secure the ship, the Skeena smashed into the rocks. When the crew abandoned ship, the men were unable to hold the lines. Some crew members were smashed into the rocks, while others were tossed into the sea. Fifteen sailors died.7 Ralph Dodds survived.

HMCS Skeena aground on Videy Island. (Image Source: http://www.forposterityssake.ca/Navy/HMCS_SKEENA_D59.htm#Photos)
  1. Vancouver Sun, D-Day Fight in Channel Recalled by B.C. Sailor, 13 December 1944.
  2. Vance, Emily. Capital Daily, How Canada’s Pacific Fleet Shaped Greater Victoria Over Two Centuries, 1 May 2021, https://www.capitaldaily.ca/news/canadas-pacific-fleet-greater-victoria-two-centuries, accessed 24 July 2023.
  3. Wikipedia, Signaller, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaller, accessed 24 July 2023.
  4. Uboataces, German U-Boat, U-Boat Tactics, The Wolf Pack, http://www.uboataces.com/tactics-wolfpack.shtml, accessed 31 July 2023.
  5. Wikipedia, Convoy ON115, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_ON_115, accessed 26 July 2023.
  6. Vancouver Sun, D-Day Fight in Channel Recalled by B.C. Sailor, 13 December 1944.
  7. Military History Now, HMCS Skeena – Meet One of the Toughest Warships of the Battle of the Atlantic, 12 November 2020, https://militaryhistorynow.com/2020/11/12/hmcs-skeena-meet-one-of-the-toughest-warships-of-the-battle-of-the-atlantic/, accessed 2 August 2023.

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