Category Archives: PEI History

Socks and Masks

I bought a notebook not long after I moved back to PEI in 2001 and started recording the family stories and historical information my mother and others would tell me. I’ve finally had time to type up these notes and am realizing how much of it I had already forgotten.

December 17, 2014 – Mom offered to darn my socks, burgundy ones she knit for me many years ago. They were very thin. She said her grandmother would cut the feet off wool socks that were too difficult to darn and knit new ones on, ravelling back the yarn and picking up the stitches. Knitting new feet on socks was hard, but money for yarn was harder to come by.

Eva also had a manual knitting machine that, if I remember correctly, would quickly knit the leg part of a sock and she would then knit the foot onto it. That took much less time, and as she had seven sons and a husband to keep well supplied, sock manufacturing and maintenance would be an endless job. The men all worked outside, either fishing or farming, and in the winter they would spend days in the woods cutting lumber and firewood, so having warm socks were vital tools for good health and productivity.

January 6, 2015 – We were talking about someone who was just recovering from an illness. She said a family with the last name Best had once lived in Freeland. Their daughter, Lillian, got tuberculosis. They built a little house for her in the field next to the main house. Lillian lived in it, didn’t go anywhere, and when her mother went out to visit, she wore a mask. Lillian eventually recovered, married and had children. No one thought she’d ever be able to have children, but she did, and lived a long time.

Masks are nothing new, nor are pandemics. I would imagine Lillian’s story was from the 1920s when PEI was without a provincial sanatorium. When someone contracted TB, people did the best they could on their own, especially in rural areas lacking even the most basic health care. My grandmother, Thelma, died of TB in 1927, and was nursed at the end by a local woman who also was a midwife. Dr. John Stewart had an office in Tyne Valley at this time, but there really wasn’t much he could have offered beyond advice to rest – you lived or you died.

My grandmother was probably given country remedies like mustard plasters (a mixture of dry mustard, flour and water applied to the chest, still being used by some to relieve congestion when I was a child), inhaling the vapours of turpentine or kerosene, or doses of cod liver oil.

An unoccupied old house was torn down a couple of years ago not far from where we live, and my mother had been warned as a child not to go near it as it was “full of TB,” the family who lived there having lost a daughter in 1924.

Forever from the woods

This poem was printed in the Summerside Journal and Western Pioneer on December 5, 1867, top and centre on the front page. Author unknown, from the year when the Dominion of Canada was born on land stolen from the original inhabitants of Turtle Island.

For had he not dominon where now his steps intrude?

From the Summerside Journal and Western Pioneer, December 5, 1867, front page.

Living History

Vivian Phillips, Eptek Centre, Summerside, with her blue RCAF (WD) uniform and kit bag in the background, November 14, 2021

My mother had recovered enough from a recent illness to attend the third and final launch of a book, We’ll Meet Again, that features stories about PEI women who served in the Second World War. The author, Katherine Dewar, has been so lovely to my mother and the other women veterans, and she made a point of featuring my mother’s story today as she had been unable to go to the first launch with the other surviving veterans.

Although seating was very limited due to pandemic restrictions, we were still able to say hello to friends and family who attended, and my mother had the unusual experience of hearing someone reading her words out loud and seeing her uniform and other pieces of memorabilia on display. On the way home I asked her how she had found the whole thing, and she said she didn’t think she had really done much more than outlive everyone else, that her story wasn’t that special! Like most things in her life, she has just taken it all in her stride, which I’m sure is part of how you live to be 99.

Katherine has dedicated much of her historical research and writing to preserving the stories of PEI women, accomplished women who had exciting and important careers, and even had military honours, but who often lived quiet lives after the fact, who blended back into society because that was what society demanded women do. My mother’s exit interview from the RCAF, for instance, an organization that had given her opportunities for training, adventure and independence she would never had at home, suggested that she would be best suited to being a housewife. She went on to do that, and so much more. Tomorrow she plans to bake cookies to thank the hospital staff who recently cared for her, still defying expectations, looking and acting beyond herself, an inspiration to all who know and love her.

Bits and pieces

My mother was asked if her RCAF uniform could be used in a display in connection with the upcoming publication of a book by PEI historian Katherine Dewar about PEI women who served in the Second World War. Katherine and Lois Brown, who was with the Canadian Women’s Army Corps in the Second World War and is a lively 97-year-old, came up last week to take the bits and pieces my mother has.

My mother’s air force blue uniform is nearly complete, except for stockings and shoes, which she used after the war and wore completely out. Her khaki uniform has always been a bit of a mystery to me. She always called it her summer uniform, but I believe it was what she was wearing when she ended her service on January 9, 1945, as her last meal card and clearance certificate (incorrectly dated as 1944) are still in the inside jacket pocket. As she ended her military career in Halifax, in January, it would have been far from summer weather! I hope to get more information from PEI Regiment Museum curator Greg Gallant about that uniform.

I also gathered up various pins that were scattered around the house in different little boxes. She would have received or bought most of them during the war, the General Service Badge would have been worn after the war (probably by my father, but not sure), and another is one of many pins she’s been sent periodically by this or that group honouring different battles and anniversaries.

I imagine Katherine’s book will touch on the fact that women who had served weren’t regarded as real veterans immediately after the war. Women had been recruited to supporting roles to free up men to assume combat roles, so their service wasn’t considered to be the same.

While both of my parents were in the RCAF during the Second World War, neither of them served in Europe, spending their time in Canada or Newfoundland, which was considered an overseas posting as a British colony. My father was always viewed as being the “real” veteran in our family, even though his role as an RCAF mechanic put him in no greater danger than my mother. They were both involved in the background of the Battle of the Atlantic during their time in Newfoundland, he at Gander and she at Torbay, and I’m sure both of those stations were on the German hit list for a possible invasion of North America, which thankfully never happened.

My father mistakenly wore my mother’s medals all his life, and it was only after his death, when I was asked to help with an award nomination for my mother, that I found out she had been given an extra medal (The Defence Medal) because of the length of time she had spent in Newfoundland, and my father’s time there hadn’t qualified.

I don’t believe for a second that my father even knew what he had done. I suppose when the medals arrived in the mail (ex-service members applied to get them after the war and they were mailed in a little box, no dramatic presentation by a senior officer as portrayed in movies), he just assumed the three were for him as he served for nearly 5 years and my mother for less than 2.

So my mother had worn my father’s two medals, never knowing the difference. When I brought this error to her attention, I didn’t think she would bother to start wearing her real ones, but she did, and still proudly wears them to Remembrance Day services and other official events. And now, because she is one of the few veterans left, people sometimes thank her for her service.

2021 is the new 1946

It didn’t say what they did at the Georgetown PO to keep the mail-seeking crowds away, but a polio outbreak meant strict public heath measures were in place across PEI 75 years ago. Vaccination has nearly eradicated polio worldwide, but there are still a few cases every year in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I had a great-uncle who had polio, which left him with with he called a “crooked foot” and unable to do many things. He would have an interesting perspective on COVID-19 anti-vaccination protests.

Charlottetown Guardian September 12, 1946

Fanny Brice in Charlottetown? Hmm…

The Charlottetown Guardian from August 7, 1946 contained this little item:

To my generation, Fanny Brice was just the character played by Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, but she had been a Big Deal in American entertainment in the first half of the 1900s. According to Wikipedia, Fanny was married three times, all ending in divorce. Her third marriage was to Billy Rose, and that divorce came in 1938.

So, the gal in this news item was either Fanny Brice pretending to be “Sadie, Sadie married lady,” or some Boston lady pretending to be Fanny Brice. Hilarious either way.

Shooting Gallery Shore

With nothing else to do while waiting in my car yesterday, I hauled out a PEI road map and looked it over. At the west end of Summerside I saw something new to me: Shooting Gallery Shore.

I would have bet my tam-o’-shanter that area is called Green’s Shore, and there is a park with that name at the foot of Greenwood Drive. And when I think of a shooting gallery, I think of those games at amusement parks where you try to hit targets and win prizes. As far as I know, that area of Summerside was never used for that type of entertainment.

When I got home and was poking around the Island Newspapers offering for August 3, 1921, this little notice caught my attention:

A rifle range west of Summerside – bullseye!

“…in the literary sense.”

The Charlottetown Guardian from this date in 1921 had many mentions of off-island visitors, including a couple of some note, Rev. and Mrs. Ewen MacDonald:

Of course, Mrs. MacDonald was only famous “in the literary sense”, not in any way that really mattered! The writer could have ended with “famous” but just couldn’t help themselves from adding a true PEI cutting down to size of someone who had, even by that time, achieved worldwide fame and admiration.

That Mrs. MacDonald was able to achieve any of what she did was an absolute miracle if you have read about her personal struggles, and in the ridiculous atmosphere that women have endured for most of human history. Case in point, an editorial from the same edition, which starts promisingly and then, well, you’ll see:

It goes on, but we get it. Dear Mrs. MacDonald. Is it any wonder she created impetuous, outspoken Anne when this was what was said of the courageous and capable women who might stand for public office? Creating an outspoken, bold girl would be a relief valve to keep from screaming, I expect.

The sounds of the land

The upcoming merger of four PEI credit unions means the new entity will need a new name. I just completed a member survey where I was asked to rate and give my response to six possible new names…or, rather, five new names and the name of one of the existing credit unions.

The first two sounded like the names of cars, the next one reminded me of John A. MacDonald and colonialism (not a favourable association), the fourth was surprisingly light and fun, the fifth just didn’t sound good to me, and the last one was that existing credit union name. Choosing the existing name would make some members angry that they lost their local credit union name in the merger while other members got to keep theirs, confirming earlier concerns raised at public meetings that the whole process felt like a centralised takeover which would weaken rural voices. I found it an odd choice after all the acrimony.

Although there wasn’t a place to offer other suggestions, I wrote into one of the response boxes that I wanted them to pick a Mi’kmaw word. It is the language of the first people of this island, the real language of this land. It is a rich, living language, unlike the Latin and Latin-derived words the (probable) branding consultants chose. I don’t have a suggestion for what the new credit union could be called, because that should be up to the Mi’kmaq.

I have just started reading Isabelle Knockwood’s 1992 book Out of the Depths about the experiences of Mi’kmaw children who were sent to the Indian Residential School in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia. Just an hour before the survey landed in my inbox, I had read this sentence about Knockwood’s memories of listening to elders telling stories:

The stories were ancient, and the language in which they were told was even older. According to my mother, Deodis, the Mi’kmaw language evolved from the sounds of the land, the winds and the waterfalls. As far as we know, there is no other language like it spoken anywhere else in the world.

What an opportunity to have the Mi’kmaw language more visible across this island, on the side of many branches of a new credit union, something unique, truly from and of Epekwitk.

[I’ve read many explanations of the difference between Mi’kmaq and Mi’kmaw, and am struggling to use the words correctly, so I welcome corrections; I would rather try and fail than not try at all!]

December 1875

My great-great-grandparents were Martha (Ellis) and George Washington Sharp. They had 10 children, including one set of twins, my great-grandmother Eva and her sister, Florence.

It was only this evening that I realised Martha and George had three little girls who died within a few days of each other. They also had two boys aged 7 and 2 who survived. They went on to have five more children.

I had no idea what the girls died from, but I just found a death notice for the three little girls in the December 20, 1875 The Examiner newspaper out of Charlottetown. What unbearable pain.

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