Canada: EXTERNAL AFFAIRS: Home to Mother

HEARTBREAK SHIP HERE ONCE MORE:

BRIDES AGAIN BACK FROM CANADA

In this doleful headline, the Liverpool Daily Post last week welcomed back 50 English war brides, who had tried life in Canada and found it wanting. As the liner Cavina was warped into the Liverpool dock through dank, grey mist, the homesick homecomers clutched their children and wept.

Later they marched off for joyous dockside reunions with friends and families. Keynoted one bride: “I felt the damp go right through me, and I said to myself, ‘That’s old England.’ Am I glad to see it again?”

Why had they left Canada’s width and plenty? There were almost as many reasons as there were returning brides, but atop the list were 1) too few houses, and 2) too many in-laws. Mrs. Margaret Bann, 26, tried three months in Saskatchewan, quit it and her husband because “the home he said was waiting for me turned out to be a one-room shack.” Some complained of drinking or faithless husbands, and of in-laws who did not like children.

Search for Herring. None of Britain’s returning daughters had been able to adjust herself to life in Canada. It was also apparent that a few had not tried. One bride, Minette (“Mickey”) Bowen, 20, who had persuaded her husband to join her in England, could hardly wait to get back to her shabby home with her parents in London’s slummy, dreary East End. She told reporters that she had missed the English pub (“Even a lemonade tastes better in a pub”) and cuddling up to her mother in bed at night.

She had liked Canada’s unrationed clothing and the crisp climate, had disliked her French Canadian in-laws mainly because father-in-law “would sit there and spit through his teeth at the fire. Well, maybe you’ve got to spit some time, but not through your teeth—and not all the time.”

Canadian table manners bothered her too: “I’ve never seen our slum children eating the way theirs do—stuffing food in their mouths with their fingers. Yet when I ate with my knife they criticized me.” Furthermore, her Canadian relations never had herring for Sunday breakfast. Furthermore, Canadian girls “don’t have complexions like our girls and they put too much rubbish on their faces.”

Search for Contentment. This sort of talk sat ill with Canadians. Senator William Rupert Davies (Kingston, Ont.), who was visiting in England, took the Liverpool Daily Post to task in a letter: “Try and find out something about the thousands of English girls that have come out to Canada during the past two years and have found there happiness and contentment.”

At week’s end another big batch of hopefuls arrived in Canada to seek just that. The Empire Brent pulled into Halifax with 831 brides and children aboard. All but 20 (headed for the U.S.) would settle in Canada, bring the number of the British brides and children who have arrived close to 55,000.

Most were undeterred by the tales brought back to England by returning brides. After all, they reasoned, only a handful had gone home, out of the thousands. After cramped, hungry England, where the future for their children was far from bright, Canada seemed the land of promise.

Mrs. C. W. Flannigan from Middlesex was sure she would like “the wide open spaces of Ontario—no coal dirt, or crowded cities.” Like many another, Mrs. Myrtle Stone sighed: “I dont care how deep the snow is, as long as it is Canada and I will be with my husband.”