St Patrick's Day. A simple holiday that most of the world celebrates with beer, shamrocks, and all things green, but in my family the day is known as my great grandmother's birthday. She would have been 113 today. It's kind of crazy when I think about it like that because she died within my lifetime. Although I was too young to have really known or remembered her, I did meet her many times and by all accounts I was her favourite great grandchild. She pretty much knit me an entire baby wardrobe which is now packed away in my parent's basement awaiting the day that I have a little girl of my own. I wish that I was old enough to remember her. I wish that I had had the chance to ask her questions about what my family now considers 'lost history'. For the past several years the majority of my genealogical research has been focused on getting to know her posthumously. She has come to represent an entire era. She was an immigrant, felt the impacts of WW1, survived the Spanish flu pandemic, rejoiced in the new found independence of the 1920's, got married during the great depression, and raised her children during WW2. My research has caused me to develop a new found respect for everything that she went through in her life; not just these major world events but the more personal life changing ones that came with them. Now more than ever these events hit home; history doesnt always repeat but it usually rhymes. For the past two years the rhyme has been getting louder. We have experienced a world that has been marred by a pandemic and unstable economy. More recently, the war in Ukraine has began to push that instability to its limits. At times like this I wonder what she would say; what she would think; I wonder how she would feel to see history rhyming like this.
She was born in shadows of the Lancashire coal mines, on a narrow street that is best described as a slight step above a slum. By the time she was 3 her father had went to Canada and was working hard to have the rest of the family join him. During that time she, her mother, and siblings lived with her maternal grandparents in a small, very overcrowded house in Leigh. A few days after her 5th birthday, her father's hard work had paid off, and the rest of the family set sail for Canada. The timing of their sailing came with a significant amount of luck. World War One was on the horizon and England was soon to be thrust into the throws of the worst war the world had ever seen. Only months after starting their new life in Canada, the family was faced with tragedy, joy, and a difficult decision. Within the first year the family lost their baby boy to disease, and a new baby girl was born. All the while the war was waging on; even half a world away was not far enough to escape it's impacts. When my great grandmother was only 6, her father enlisted with the Canadian forces. He would never come home. He was killed on the fields surrounding Vimy Ridge. This left an enormous impact on my great grandmother. For at least three years of her life, he had been half a world away. She never would have had a chance to truly know him. His young and untimely death took with it a wealth of family history that I am still striving to make sense of.
At the conclusion of the war, the family appeared to be finding their footing and adapting to the "new normal". They moved into a home in the East York district of Toronto, where they would remain for several years. In 1922 tragedy struck again. With the youngest finally being 5, her mother was able to start working away from the home. During this time, my great grandmother's little brother was killed after being run over by a truck. She would have been 13 and no doubt would have felt an immense amount of guilt. Nobody in my family had ever heard of this little boy. Nobody knew that she even had a younger brother.
When she was 17 she began working as a telephone operator. She would have had to scrimp and save every last penny to purchase her prize possession - a camera. For the remainder of the 1920's this was how she captured her life, saving the pictures in a department store box. I think this is why I'm so drawn to learning her story. The pictures she took of her family and friends and places she went give me an insight to what my own life could have looked like 100 years ago. The pictures tell the story of how she fell in love with her first husband and the family that they built together up until his tragic death in the 1950's. They tell the story of youth and how exhilarating it must have been to embrace the new found freedoms of the 1920's. The pictures show me who she was; a strong willed woman who was willing to challenge the status quo of her time, yet also was quick to embrace the glitz and glamour of it all. They allow me to see her as more than just the family stories about a crotchety old woman, in her nineties, that professed how every Christmas would be her last. My research has given me a full view of who she was and all that she accomplished, endured, and overcame within her life.
On today I dont celebrate St Patricks with the beer, shamrocks, and all things green or even the fact that I'm half Irish. Today I celebrate the life of my great grandmother and everything that she represented. Happy 113th birthday!
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