Clifton Stories

Anna Cameron Murray had her Second Class  teaching certificate issued in Ontario in January of 1901. When she moved to Moose Jaw in 1912, she brought her Second Class Certifcate and was able to begin teaching at King Edward School. Shortly after she began, she had a visit from the school inspector.  I am sure he must have been impressed because Anna Murray was obviously committed to becoming the best teacher she could be.  She had plans to upgrade her certification, to broaden her skill levels in different subjects, and to be a life-long learner.  Over the next  few years, Miss Cameron moved from an interim certificate to a permanent one, then to a first class certificate and also to a high school certificate.  Anna also moved frequently from one living arrangement to another.  At first I couldn’t figure out why she moved so often.  But now I think it was related to her constant studying to improve her qualifications as a teacher.  She would not have income probably in the summers and had to give up her spot in several light-house-keeping rooms when she took courses.  A second factor in Anna being on the move in Moose Jaw may have been related to the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic that happened in the last part of the Great War and immediately after. 

I believe Anna started out living with the Waugh family (Christopher and Libby, her older sister) for the first few years.  She lived with them at 1005 Second Ave. NE. (Old numbering is 21 Elm Ave.)  This is a large house right on the corner of Oxford and Second Ave. E.   You must imagine the trees and bushes and hedges in the sapling stage of growth. The distance to King Edward school is between 2 and 2.5 kilometers estimated a 25 to 30 minute walk.  Here’s a question:  Would Miss Anna Murray be able to ride from here to King Edward School on the Moose Jaw Electric Railway?    

Anna Murray is listed on Dec. 29th, 1916 as the next of kin for her brother, Walter Eddington Murray’s application for Wartime service.  Her address is given as 1044 Alder.   That house is on the corner of Alder and Marlborough.  Here she is about a 5 minute walk from  her sister. Anna is busy taking a Physical Training Certificate and a Reading Course.  

In the HD (Henderson Directory ) for 1918,  Anna Murray is listed at 28 Oxford St. W. She appears to be boarding or more likely, light-housekeeping in the home of Donald Coons who was CPR Supt. of Telephones. 

On Christmas Day in 1918, Anna might have been able to view the accident scene below from her room at 28 Oxford W.  The accident took place at 5:30 pm., so perhaps Anna was over at her sister’s house for supper at the time too.  The survival of James Birkenshaw would have been good news to the people on the block who had been through a rough year in 1918 with many neighbours dying from the “Spanish Flu”.  

Winter driving on Oxford Street in Moose Jaw in 1918. (Archives Moose Jaw Public Library)

The young man who was driving the vehicle above had spent considerable time hospitalized here in Moose Jaw with war wounds. 

James Elvin Birkenshaw had lived in Rocanville with his family of origin before he enlisted and went to France in the Great War.  Despite his war wounds and then this car accident, Mr. Birkenshaw survived and lived until 1976. In 1930, he  and his wife moved to Calgary and then later in life to Vancouver. He was employed as an auto mechanic.  The accident in front of  Anna Cameron’s  rooming house did not seem to put Miss Cameron against light housekeeping in the avenues. She would live in several more places before she moved into 1037 Clifton. I have wondered as she walked over the Oxford/Clifton intersection in years after if she thought of that Christmas night accident. I think she probably didn’t know Mr. Birkenshaw but likely wondered about him as I do about them both.

In 1919, Miss Cameron began teaching at  Victoria School and continued there for several years. First she lived at 1086 Alder Ave. and then for 4 years she lived on First Avenue NW: 1119,  1046,  1167, and finally, 1011 . The 1926 Census shows her at 1063 Chestnut. In 1927 on May 12, Anna was awarded a Permanent First Class Teaching certificate. Although Anna may have taken some courses by “correspondence”, in the summer of 1927 The Times-Herald reported that she would be travelling to attend Queen’s University summer school.

Then on May 8th of 1929 Anna Murray received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Queens University in Ontario.  1924-25 Victoria register  In the register of pupils that she taught in 1924-25, Miss Cameron’s salary is listed as 1700 dollars per year.  If she was entitled for a salary increase after her degree in 1929, the timing was probably not good.  Just as the decade rolled into the 30s,  Anna relocated into the YWCA and stayed there longer than she stayed anywhere in Moose Jaw with the exception of her final abode at 1037 Clifton Ave.

 

 

 

 

 

Anna Murray seems as proud of her residency at the YWCA as she is of her new First Class B.A. There were eight other teachers living in the YWCA in Moose Jaw when the 1931 census was taken. They ranged in age from 23 to 54. Their salaries ranged from 1100  to 1800 per year.  Anna Murray, the second oldest at 51, was the highest paid teacher living there in 1931. There were young women who were stenographers, civil servants, domestic workers, dressmakers, salesladies, and one nurse. The 1931 census document makes clear that many private homes also had “Lodgers” who paid to have one of the rooms for rent. Many extra bedrooms were rented out to single persons who were not members of the family in order to add to the family finances during the 1930s.  The rooms rented in the YWCA were probably quite lovely and provided more privacy and shared facilities than living in a home with a family.  Anna Murray continued at the YMCA until 1935 when we find her at 1146 1st Ave NW.

In the 1936 HD, Anna is listed as the Moose Jaw president of a service club for women and children.  The club was called “Quota”. Along with the business of teaching, she had responsibilities in the community.  Her name appears in a report is the Winnipeg Tribune Of June 21, 1937. Three women from Moose Jaw had joined others from across the country to hold the first Canadian Quota Club District Conference. 

The three women who represented Moose Jaw at the conference were: Dr. Anna E. Northup, Miss Anna C. Murray, and Miss Vivian Busby. “During the weekend,  teas, luncheons and drives around the city were arranged for the visitors.”

In the next few years, Anna was back to her short term housing situations. She lived at 1132 First NW,  then 1076 Alder, and then Anna retired from teaching in January of 1939 while she was living at 54 Hall St. E.  I have imagined that Anna did some substitute teaching after she retired. World War 2 was on and she probably helped out in whatever ways she could. 

However Anna moved again before 1944. She took advantage of her retirement to make a September trip out west.  Anna listed 1206 3rd Ave NE as her “last permanent address” when she crossed the border into Idaho on her way to Vancouver to visit one of her nephews. Malcolm Ainslie Foote Waugh had married Mary-Alice Watson on April 13, 1937. Now perhaps he will have a visit from his Aunt Annie. The border crossing document makes clear that Anne was travelling by car. 

Annie was described by the border guard as 5 ft 4, fair-complexioned, grey-haired, and brown-eyed. I have been hoping one of her nephews or her brother drove with her.  That would be a long trip to drive alone. One guess would be Leonard Waugh who had made a previous trip to Vancouver in 1937 to be best man for his brother Malcolm.

When Anna returned from BC she must have moved again soon.  She took a  suite in a large home on Grafton Avenue.  1142.

This was probably a difficult time for Anna just two days after Christmas in 1945, her only brother Walter Murray passed away. He was 63 at his death, 2 years younger than Anna. He had been living at the Legion for the last years before he died and is buried with a military gravestone.

Walter was the first of Anna’s generation of Murrays to die. Next came Alexander White, the miller from Ontario, who died there in 1950 leaving Anns’s second oldest sister, Isobel,  a widow.  I think Anna liked Clifton Avenue.

First she moved in to 1205 Clifton in 1953. Then in 1955 she moved into her last Moose Jaw home. There was more grief to follow Anna to her next home at 1037 Clifton.  Readers, you know her new landlords well. You read about their sojourn at 1037 Clifton in an earlier post on Clifton-stories.com.

Ernest and Louisa Cook have been living in the house since 1935 when they were renters. They took ownership in 1945 when their young son, Bill, enlisted in the Air Force. Louisa Cook was born in Oshawa, Ontario in 1881.  She moved to Moose Jaw in 1906 and at first lived with her married sister, Ella Brodie until her marriage in 1912 to Ernest Cook.  This house on Clifton where Louise Cook was the landlady was only the third home that Louise had lived in since she left Oshawa to come west. Anna Murray, born in Ontario in 1880 was just one year older than Louise, but her life in Moose Jaw from 1912 until 1955 was very much “on the move”.  For the years  that Louise had experienced as a wife, a mother, a homemaker, and a landlady, Anna Cameron Murray had experienced as a sister, an aunt, a student. a teacher, and  a lodger.  Both Anna Cameron and Louise Cook had been involved in church groups, community service clubs, and some travelling. I like to think they became friends when Anna moved in to 1037 Clifton, but their time together was limited. 

Louise Cook died on November 13th of 1955. Mr. Cook still had some lodgers here, but in 1957 he sold the house , and then after an illness that may have required care outside this home, in 1959 he travelled to England on the “Empress of France” to visit his five sisters living there. Ernest planned to stay for 5 months, but he died in England in February of 1961, and his body was returned to Moose Jaw for burial with Louise.  Their story has been told in an earlier blog post. Mr.  and Mrs. Cook lived in the house longer than anyone except us.

With new landlords in place, and other lodgers living here, Anna Cameron Murray settled down and lived in this house at 1037 for the rest of her life.  She had years of grieving as her relatives and friends died at younger ages than she did. Christopher Waugh, the carpenter brother-in-law died on Christmas Eve in 1957. On January 7th of 1958 Mary Beatrice Murray Martin, the youngest sister of Anna died at the age of 69.  She had moved with her husband to Portland, Oregon after being married in Moose Jaw on Christmas day in 1912. Then on August 5th of that same year, Isabel Murray the eldest sister (the only one who had stayed in Ontario) died leaving grown children in Michigan, Quebec, and Ontario.  In 1964, Elizabeth Sarah Waugh, the sister who had moved first to Moose Jaw in 1902 died at age 88. She left a family of eight sons and one daughter plus 19 grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

Anna Cameron Murray lived a long productive life in Moose Jaw.  I am glad to have told her story here in this house history blog. I’ve been told she was a sweet and kind woman.

Those who have been reading this blog from the beginning know that the property at 1037 Clifton Avenue in Moose Jaw changed hands many times in the years after the land was surveyed.  We think that the lot just to the north of this lot (1043)has changed hands perhaps 4-5 times, but the current residents (my family) are the 17th owners of this lot at 1037. Of course, we want to acknowledge again that the land on which the city of Moose Jaw was established is in Treaty 4 Territory, the original lands of the Cree, Ojibwe, Saulteaux, Dakota, Nakota, Lakota, and is on the homeland of the Métis Nation.  

On Sept. 4, 1957, the title of the lot and house at 1037 Clifton passed to Mr. Walter Simington and his two sons, Graham and Glen.  The Simingtons were from Kincaid, SK. Walter had been a pioneer in Saskatchewan since 1911 and now with his two grown sons purchased the house on Clifton from Ernest Cook in 1957.  As Mr. Cook had done for many years, the Simingtons continued to have the house rented out. None of the three Simington men’s families lived in the house which was likely purchased as a business investment to provide rental accommodations to a number of Moose Jaw residents for the next several years until a new family purchased it in 1974.  The house doubled in value between 1957 and 1974.

Mr. Simington sold the Clifton house on August 6 of 1974.  His wife died about a year and a half later when she was 85 years old. As a landlord, he seems to have hired some of the tenants over the years to have managerial responsibilities for the renting and maintenance of the house.  There were, of course, tenants who stayed for a short time, and others who lived in the house for years. I would be glad to hear from tenants who lived in the house even for a short time.  Often people were here and gone with no record of their time if there were no voters’ lists or census records for their short stay on Clifton Avenue. 

One long-term tenant from the second floor was a teacher in Moose Jaw.  Her time in Moose Jaw began in early 1900s, but she lived in a variety of homes before she settled into 1037 Clifton after her retirement. In fact, in all of her years in Moose Jaw, this house was the only one where she was a long term tenant.  Watch as the addresses where she lived are presented. Maybe she lived in your house in the years before she came to mine.  Annie Cameron Murray‘s Moose Jaw sojourn and career as a single woman teacher has been making me curious for years.  A later post will track her through the many moves she made in Moose  Jaw.  This post will look at her back story and her family, some of whom came to Moose Jaw and others who did not. 

Annie Cameron Murray’s story can be traced back to the separate arrivals of her grandparents who came when young and single to Canada: her grandfather, Ewan Cameron (b. 1791), from Scotland, and her grandmother, Bridget Higgins (b. 1812), from Cork County, Ireland.  It seems, according to stories that have been passed down in Bridget’s  family, that after being in Canada for a while, Ewan became estranged from his parents over a relationship he had developed with a young Irish girl who was in service to his family. One version of the story claims Ewen and Bridget had actually met on a boat that had both Scottish and Irish immigrants on their way to Canada. Ewen’s people were Highland Scots who then settled in the Ottawa Valley.  Perhaps not knowing that the two had developed a fondness for each other, the Cameron family had hired Bridget Higgins as a maid in the Cameron household. Ewen, who was more than 20 years older than Bridget, fell in love, which upset the Cameron family very much. The couple ran away to be married and settled in Sombra Township, where they raised a large family. 

One great granddaughter of Bridget and Ewen told Bridget’s story this way: “Good looking old woman when I knew her and was probably a real beauty. Also smart. She took service in the Cameron family, the son came home, fell in love with her, couldn’t get her any other way so married her and was disowned by his family. She was the oldest of a family of 13 and never saw any of her people again except two brothers who later came to Canada. I could write a volume about her and almost have. This picture was taken in her last summer when she was 85 and I’m in my 12th year.”

Bridget and Ewen’s family grew to include Alexander in 1831, Ellen in 1833, James in 1837, Ewen Jr. in 1840, Mary Eliza in 1843, Malcolm in 1846, Sarah Jane in 1849, Johanna Annie in 1853, and Isabella in 1856.  When Little Johanna was 7 years old in 1861, the census taken shows her mother Bridget as a widow. Bridget’s eldest daughter, Ellen, is married and will raise her family in Michigan, but the 4th daughter, Johanna is the one whose family members will move to Moose Jaw early in the 1900s.

When Johanna Annie Cameron was born on December 19, 1853, in Chatham, Ontario, her father, Ewen, was 62, and her mother, Bridget, was 41.  Johanna married a farmer, James Scott Murray, on August 19, 1873, in Sombra, Ontario.  The bride was 19 years old and the groom was 33.  

By the census of 1881, Johanna and James had 3 daughters: , Sarah, Isobel  and Anna, aged 5, 3, and 1.  After the census, 3 more children were added to the family: 2 sons, Walter and Ewen, and another daughter, Mary Beatrice, in 1888.  All told, they had six children in 12 years. Their son Ewen who was born in 1885 died at age 5 in 1890 before the next census was taken in 1891.  The grieving family is shown below with their ages for the 1891 census. 

Zoom forward ten years: Johanna and James Murray’s family in the 1901 census below has only one school-age child now. The older children are grown and likely ready to try their wings.

And wouldn’t you know it, some of them went winging off to Moose Jaw!  The first Murray to come from Petrolia to Moose Jaw was the second oldest girl. In 1901, Elizabeth Sarah from the 1891 census is listed as Sarah E., and this back and forth with the order of her given names continues in documents until her grave has its version written in stone.  The 1901  family of Murrays listed above no longer includes Isabel (Bella, Belle) who married in Port Huron, Michigan but returned to live in Petrolia in 1897.  Her husband, Alexander White was a miller by trade. Of course, they are in the Census in their own household along with their two young sons: Alex and Dundonald.  

Meanwhile, in Moose Jaw,  Christopher Waugh, a young carpenter, is written up in the 1901 census as a “lodger” along with two other single men in the home of a family of six.  Christopher had been born and raised in Lobo township 45 miles from the Murray family and in 1902 returned to Ontario to take Elizabeth (Libby)(sometimes Sarah)  Murray as his bride. Their wedding took place in Petrolia on March 25th and Libby and Chris returned to Moose Jaw to make a home together.  

Libby, although the oldest sister, was not the first Murray sister to marry, but she was the first to move to Moose Jaw!  She had been working as a dressmaker in Petrolia, and before long will be taking in “Lodgers” as well as having children of her own. It seems that Annie Murray may have come to Moose Jaw to visit, perhaps to help when the first baby was born at Christmas time in 1903.  In the 1906 census of the prairie provinces,  Christopher and Elizabeth (Libby) Waugh are heading up a household for two little sons, Libby’s brother, Walter, and 3 other working men. They are living on High St. W.  Elizabeth is probably very busy cooking and cleaning. She may be sewing her own dresses and clothes for her children, for her husband and brother, both carpenters. I hope Libby brought a sewing machine with her from Ontario.  The dress-making and tailoring industry had been changed by the introduction of the sewing machine and had been at the centre of some controversy since the early 1800s there.  

Although Libby (nee Cameron) Murray was working hard in Moose Jaw there must have been times when she was very lonely for the siblings and parents she had left behind in Ontario. Her father and mother, James and Joanna Cameron continued living in their family home on Pearl Street in Petrolia even though their daughters married and single moved on.  Pearl Street is still there in Petrolia, and using Google Maps Street Level, I virtually wandered up and down the short street wondering which buildings might have been there before 1910.  Annie Cameron Murray remained in Ontario, teaching in public schools and caring for her ailing parents, JoAnna and James S. Murray.

Anna C. Murray had been granted an Ontario Professional Second class Certificate (#16287) on January 26th, 1901.  According to the book The Good Old Days: The History of Education in Enniskillen Township, Lambton County, Annie Murray taught at three schools: School Section #6   1899-1900 (Murray School located on Lot 7 Concession 5 Enniskillen Township), School Section #18 1901-1902 (Clark School located on Lot 20 Concession 10 Enniskillen Township), and School Section #16 1907-1909 (located on Lot 5 Concession 10 Enniskillen Township)  These appear to be country schools and possibly Annie was later employed in a town school and was able to live at home on Pearl Street.

In the 1911 Census, Anna and her youngest sister Mary are both enumerated in the Pearl Street home where their parents had been until their deaths. JoAnna Murray had died first at age 56 on October 12, 1910 with breast cancer, and her husband James Scott Murray died just 5 months later at age 72. He had been ill for 2 years. Anna is listed as the head of the household at the time of the census.  She is teaching in a public school.  Mary Beatrice is listed as a dressmaker. Both of these sisters seem to have cared for their parents as they suffered through their final days.

But now that both parents have died, these two Murray sisters decide to come from Petrolia to Moose Jaw. Annie and Mary Beatrice arrive in the west with different goals.  Annie is looking for a teaching position in Moose Jaw, and Mary Beatrice is wanting to get married. Meanwhile in Moose Jaw the June 1911 census taker found the older Murray sister (Sarah Elizabeth)  living in a somewhat  crowded home.  At 148 (old numbering system) Ominica Christopher Waugh at age 40 and Elizabeth (nee Murray) Waugh(35) have six children: 5 boys (including twins 4 months old) and one daughter aged 2. Leonard and Gordon, the twin boys had been born in February right between the deaths of their maternal grandparents in Ontario.

The city of Moose Jaw grew as the Waugh family did. The population at the time of the 1901 census was 1,558. The flow of people to the prairies was happening so fast that an extra census was held in 1906 just to try and keep track of people. The 1906 number was 6,249. This was enough people to give Moose Jaw status as a city and to keep a carpenter like Christopher Waugh very busy. By 1911 the population was 13,823. Imagine the demand for carpenters and other building contractors at the time.

I have often wondered which buildings in Moose Jaw were worked on by Christopher Waugh. Two times Chris Waugh made a trip to England in the company it seems of some other construction workers and a civil engineer. This makes me think he might have worked on some larger buildings.  At the time of this trip, for example, William Grayson was building his 22 room house at 30  Stadacona St. W. (old numbering).  The home had some interior design elements that had been brought from England. Maybe Mr. Waugh was doing some contract work for Mr. Grayson.  Christopher is arriving home on the SS Campania sailing from Liverpool on June 15, 1912.  It must have been an important reason for Christopher Waugh to leave Moose Jaw and travel to England, leaving his wife and children.  Just two months prior to Christopher’s trip in 1912 the world had been in shock over the sinking of the Titanic.  One of the lost passengers had been a Moose Jaw business man well known in the community as Frank, one of the Maybery brothers.  I like to think that the prospect of having two sisters move to Moose Jaw was a great comfort to Libby Waugh.  Although she was grieving the recent loss of both parents, she would be very glad for Anna and Mary Beatrice to be moving to Saskatchewan, especially when Christopher was travelling to England and back so soon after the tragedy of the Titanic. 

It seems that Anna began teaching in Moose Jaw in the fall of 1912.  However another important event was also taking place and the family had preparations to make for a wedding of Mary Beatrice that will take place at Christmas of 1912. Anna’s teaching career in Moose Jaw will be the subject of another post.  Mary Beatrice has met her husband and Zion Methodist church will host her wedding. 

 

As the Moose Jaw paper write-up makes clear, a great deal of dress making and hat trimming led up to the wedding.   

Lily and Daisy Martin, sisters of the groom are employed as “trimmers” for a local milliner named Ida Butler. (Henderson Directory

When the hat trimmer bridesmaid, Lily, became a bride herself in July of 1913, she chose to wear a veil instead of a hat.  She married  Mr. Harold Woollings, the best man from the Christmas wedding.  They  moved to Ontario. 

The youngest Murray sister, Mary Beatrice,  who found her husband in Moose Jaw is making her home in Saskatchewan.  She lives part of that time in Beverley, SK but is living again in Moose Jaw with her husband and three children on Chestnut Ave. in the 1921 census.  The family moves in 1923 to Oregon.  There is no wedding in the works for Anna Cameron Murray.  She has already embarked on a teaching career in Moose Jaw.  Her 60 years in Moose Jaw and her dedication to her vocation as a teacher will be the subject of the next blog post.  

Ernest and Louisa Cook continued on Clifton Avenue together for 10 more years after the loss of their younger son in 1945. Their elder son, Ronald George, finished his service commitment in PEI and joined his wife and young daughter. Cheryl June had been born on November 19,  1946 in Hamilton where Peggy was staying with friends. Carson William was born in 1949 in Toronto.  Ronald became a radio announcer and the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio on March 30th 1950 where Ron became the “Voice of the Cleveland Barons.”  

The driving time between Cleveland and Moose Jaw is listed nowadays as 23 hours.  So perhaps the little Cooks in Cleveland did not get to have their pictures taken on the front steps of Grandma and Grandpa Cook’s house on Clifton. With their son’s family so far away in the USA, I am sure that grieving support provided by Louise’s older sister, Ella Frances Brodie, was important to Louise and Ernest. 

Ella had been widowed since 1938 and had lived on in the Brodie house on Main St. (where KFC is today).  Ella and Louise had been brides and young mothers together in Moose Jaw. They had both been involved in community and church groups.  Then in 1947, Ella passed away, and the Cooks had only each other and the people who rented the upper rooms in their house on Clifton Ave.  I know about a few of the renters who lived here in the 1940s and 50s, but I would like to know more. Here are some of the voters’ lists for those years. It would be great to hear from some of you readers who might be remembering some of the names.  

 

 

Five years after Ronald and Peggy’s move to Cleveland, Ohio, their children, Cheryl and Conner, would have been 9 and 6 years old.   1955 was the year that their Grandma Louise died in the house on Clifton Ave, where their parents, Ron and Peggy, had been married on Christmas Eve 13 years before. Louise’s death notice in the paper anticipates the arrival of Ronald from Ohio, but it is not clear whether the rest of the family came back to Canada for the funeral.

Ernest and Louise had been renters in the Clifton house from 1938 until April 26, 1944 when they became owners and had a title registered.  This was just a month after their son Bill had gone overseas. When Louise passed away, Ernest continued in the house for a while with a few tenants, but he began to have some health issues.  He is not listed in the house after 1957, but after some time for recovery, perhaps in a hospital or care home, he embarked on a trip to England. His intention according to the ship’s manifest was to stay for 5 months. His nephew Stuart Brodie was the relative in Moose Jaw who heard from Ernest. Notification of his Uncle Ernest’s recurring illness in England and the lengthened stay would have come by mail to Stuart who then heard that Ernest was planning to return to Moose Jaw in the spring.  Then Stuart received the news that Ernest Cook had died in England on February 22, 1961.

It’s a 3-minute walk from 1037 Clifton Ave. to Central Collegiate, 290 meters. When Bill Cook showed up at Central Collegiate in the Fall of 1941, he was in Grade 10.  On the first day of class, his homeroom had a guest speaker.  Here is how the event was described in the yearbook.

Some students who were in Grade 10 with Bill Cook in 1941-42 are pictured below.  Bill was elected Class President for the first term and song leader for the second term.

No doubt, his Uncle Ronald’s service in the Great War and more recently his brother Ronald’s RCAF service as a radio operator were already at work in young Bill Cook’s imagination.  Now near the end of the 41-42 school year, there are 30 boys joining the Squadron # 40 Air Cadets.  Bill was one of them.

Bill continued with the Air Cadets and went to Grade 11 at Central Collegiate for 42-43.  He worked part-time doing deliveries for the CPR. He served as best man for his brother Ron’s wedding on Christmas Eve. He probably listened to White Christmas, Bing Crosby’s #1 hit of 1942. His father, Ernest, went to work for the War-time Prices and Trade Board.

Bill was also acquainted with some young women who may have influenced him in his interests in flying.  His sister-in-law, Hazel Elizabeth Whitehead Cook (Peggy) worked for a time at Prairie Airways. One of the tenants in the Cook home was Miss Dorothy Renton.  “Dorothy was the first woman to obtain a pilot’s license in Saskatchewan, which showed her adventurous spirit.” (from her obituary in 2003).

His mother ran the household and wrote letters, as I imagine, to her oldest son Ron on Active Duty on the east side of the country.  Louise was involved in community groups also:   she was the regent of Moose Jaw chapter, Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire for two years and was treasurer of the chapter for a number of years.  She was an active member of several other women’s organizations, including the Women’s Canadian Club.

Bill continued high school through the 42-43 term.  But when summer holidays came in 1943, Bill had other plans that didn’t involve doing his grade 12 at Central Collegiate.  He would be saying goodbye to his classmates in the picture below.

William Henry Cook turned 19 on September 18th, 1943.  By this time he had made the decision to enlist in the Air Force rather than return to Central Collegiate for Grade 12.  He had filled in his Attestation papers on July 30th, listing his employment experience working for Mr. Zimmer at his Boy’s Clothing Store and at a Boy Scout Camp and being a porter for the CPR. His particular activities that might be “useful in the RCAF” were photography and model airplane building. He listed two neighbours on Clifton Avenue as references: Mr. J. Thomson, a druggist from 1043 and Mr. G.H. Broach, a lawyer from 1046. Mr. Zimmer who employed Bill at his Boys Clothing Shop is included along with a lawyer from 2nd Ave. NW, Mr. H.Pope.

The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (“The Plan”)  

Bill began Aircrew training likely at the Manning Depot at Brandon (which is now a historical site).  

“During the Second World War, this building was where new recruits from all over Western Canada, some 1,000 to 1,500 at a time, came for their introduction to military life. The No. 2 Manning Depot, an integral component of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan, hosted classes in precision drills, physical fitness, swimming, sunbathing, as well as general outfitting. At the end of their two- to four-week stint here, the prospective airmen were sorted into three training classes: Pilots, Air Observers, and Air Gunners.” (Manitoba Historical Society)

When I see Louise Cook at her desk writing to her sons, I wonder how she could keep up with all the moving around they did to the locations in Canada where the training was going on. There were 231 sites across Canada where men and women were being trained for different roles in the crews of the air force. At the peak of The Plan in 1943, 3000 aircrew members were being turned out every month.  Enlisted in Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, they were studying and drilling and practising in Canada’s open spaces and skies where they were out of reach of the warring invaders in Europe.

The Manning Depot included physical training and matching of recruits to suitable positions for more specialized instruction. Some recruits finished up high school courses that were needed in preparation for their RCAF courses.  Eventually, Bill Cook moved into  Special Gunner Training. 

It is possible that his smaller stature made him a good fit for this position because the space available in the planes for the gunners was pretty tight.  Some men had to get into the space and then put their boots on.  Some of the planes that were used for training in the early stages can be seen at the Western Development Museum in Moose Jaw. Other museums in Canada tell the stories of boys like Bill Cook.  The Bomber Command Museum has a song video and an Air Gunner Poem that explains the challenges facing the experience of being a Gunner. 

Click on the underlined words above to connect and listen: “Will I ever see my home again? Will I return to my love and my friends?”

The image I carry in my mind is Louise Cook sitting at her writing desk in my dining room. Her letter writing will continue with letters now needing to cross the ocean. After the Canadian phase of his training, Bill moved on to further training in England.  He embarked in Halifax on June 2nd, 1944 and disembarked in the UK on the 10th.  Eventually, he was added to the 550 Squadron who were learning to fly as a 7 man crew in the Lancaster.  The specialized roles were what the seven airmen had trained for:  a pilot, a flight engineer, a navigator, a bomb aimer, a wireless operator/air gunner, a mid-upper gunner and a rear gunner. The two gunners in this group were both RCAF members.  Here is the list of all seven members of Bill Cook’s crew:

• F/O R G Nye (P)
• Sgt C Stuart (F/Eng)
• Sgt J Holding (Nav)
• Sgt J F Moyle (B/A
• W/O W J Howson W/Op
• F/Sgt W H Cook RCAF A/G
• F/Sgt L C Taerum RCAF A/G

Of course, there were many other members of the force that had responsibilities in preparing the flight crew and the Lancaster bomber for their operations.  There is a museum in Nanton, Alberta that displays and presents a 13-minute video about the Lancaster and the kind of training and experience Bill Cook might have had.

The details of the first and last bombing mission for Bill Cook and his fellow crew members are charted by archivists and researchers with great interest and skills in Military history. I assume that there was a telegram delivered to the front door a few days after Bill’s Lancaster did not return.  Then another telegram a few days later.

The complicated dealings with the Military after Bill’s death were no doubt a hardship for the grieving parents.  There were issues concerning his will, his personal possessions, the identification of which airmen was buried in which grave and so on.  Eventually, the efforts to support the family were supplemented by memorial attempts.   There is an island in Pinehouse Lake in northern Saskatchewan that is named after Bill Cook:  Cook Island.  There is a sculpture at the burial site of the P221 Crew’s airmen at the Westerbeek Catholic Church.  Location: Westerbeek, a small village in the commune of Oploo, is situated west of the Overloon to Oploo road. It is 3 kilometres south of Oploo and about 4 kilometres north-west of Overloon.   A poem in Dutch from site translated: (Thanks to Paul Nyhof for help with translation)

Feel no pain

Feel no hate

Don’t drown in sorrow

Think of me like I was.

Young and proud

Proud of the life

That I left behind

After losing his business and his house on 1st NE n the 1930s, Ernest Cook now shares the house at 1037 Clifton with other tenants in addition to his wife Louise and his two sons. Ernest and the first son are working outside the home.   Ernest works as a supervisor with the Provincial Tax Commission and then as a salesman at AA Frost in 1939.  He becomes a sales manager for Arthur A. Frost at 219 High W.  in 1940, working with plumbers and plumbing supplies.  His elder son, Ronald George, (24) is working in 1940 at Beatty Brothers at 29 High St. W., probably selling electric wringer washing machines.

In 1941, Ronald George signs up for the war effort and is listed as “on Active Service”.  He begins dating a young woman named Hazel Elizabeth Whitehead who grew up on a farm near Moose Jaw.  She had been born on Christmas Eve in 1923, so she was 7 years younger than Ron Cook.  When she was turning 19 on Christmas Eve of 1942, there was a wedding in the Cook residence that was well described in the Times-Herald.

LAC. stands for Leading Aircraftman. The groom wears his uniform for the wedding. The groom’s granddaughter generously provided pictures to supplement the description of the wedding from the paper.

I find it hard to imagine 25 guests having tea on the main floor of this house, but that’s what the paper said…along with Christmas decorations and a cake decorated by a 92-year-old grandfather of the bride. The last wedding in the house (faithful readers may recall) was also at Christmas time.  In 1926, the guests were brave enough to have their pictures taken on the front steps.

After arriving in Canada in 1910, Ernest Cook’s younger brother, Ronald Philip Cook, had been gaining experience with military groups in Regina and Moose Jaw. Then the Great War was declared in Europe.   Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier believed that when Britain is at war, Canada is at war. Like many formerly British Canadians who had been in Canada only a short time,  Ronald Cook was volunteering to return to Europe with the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force.  He filled in his Attestation form on September 11th, 1915, the day before he turned 22. He was 5 feet six inches tall, brown-eyed, dark-haired, and fair-faced. Probably Ronald did some training at Camp Hughes in Manitoba right after his enlistment.  Postcard pictures of Camp Hughes and other sites from World War 1 are shown in the collection of the Toronto Postcard Club. 

On October 23rd, 1915, Ronald Cook departed with the 46th Battalion from Halifax on the S.S. Lapland, disembarking at Devonport, England on October 30th. Training continued in England at Bramshott Camp in Hampshire. There are many stories told about the difficulties of that training time with too much rain and missing supplies and poor equipment. 

While Ronald Phillip Cook was preparing for the realities of war in Europe, Ernest and Louise Cook were preparing for the arrival of their first child back in Moose Jaw.  What could be more appropriate than naming their little son who was born on April 30th, 1916 “Ronald”?  When little Ronald was three and half months old, Uncle Ronald finished his training in England. 

On 11 August 1916,  Ronald (the uncle) and his battalion disembarked in France,  ready to work with the 10th Infantry Brigade, 4th Canadian Division in France and Flanders until the end of the war.  It is likely that Private Cook was assigned duties relating to his skills as a clerk, or some other supportive role because it was discovered in a Medical Examination at Bramshott Camp that he had a vision deficit that had gone undetected in Canada.  

Next of Kin in England : Review 

When Ronald Cook signed up for the Canadian Expeditionary Force, he listed his mother in England as his next of kin.  His father, George Frederick Bristow Cook had died in September of  1899 at the age of 46 leaving Harriett Cook a widow at age 40 with a houseful of children.  By the 1901 census, Harriett had relocated her family to Hastings, once again by the seaside as she had grown up on the east shore of England.  The family had moved into limited space, and Ernest George had left for Canada. Because young Ronald is not listed with the family for the 1901 census, I think he was at school. Readers, you may remember that Mrs. Cook probably needed some furniture and that I surmised that she also needed more space.  By 1904, she had married Stewart Spencer, a house furnisher, a widower with three nearly grown daughters, and by 1911 she was living with five children (three adults and two teenagers) from her first marriage plus a 6-year-old daughter from her second marriage.  Cecil had been her only son to marry by 1911, and the census documents show that his marriage had met a tragic end, having lasted less than a year with both his wife and newborn child dying.

It was Harriett Spencer’s house at 19 Edmund Road, Hastings, UK that Ronald Cook lists as the address for his next of kin while he is on active duty during the Great War.  It is here where he might spend some leave, and here where he took his discharge at the end of April in 1919 after serving with the CEF for several months after the armistice in 1918.

After battling with Regina over the privilege, Moose Jaw has celebrated the end of the war and the return of the 46th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.  Ronald Philip Cook had missed the big parade in Moose Jaw because he had taken his discharge in England and had assumed responsibility for his own travel back to Canada. He would be spending time with family in Hastings before returning to family in Moose Jaw.

Apparently, the Cook family in Moose Jaw didn’t want to wait for Uncle Ronald to return home and decided to take a voyage to England.  Now that the war is over, there are lots of soldiers needing travel bookings back to North America.  Many waited weeks and weeks for passage to be available.  I am wondering if the ships that brought returning Canadians and American soldiers then put the return to Britain tickets on sale.  Here’s why.  On October 9th, 1919,  Ernest, Louise and Little Ronald arrived in England.  The war had been over for eleven months.  The three Cooks are listed on the Canadian Steam Ship “Melita” as having come from Montreal

Their destination is given as 19 Edmund Road, Hastings, Sussex, so it appears to be time for a family reunion.  Ernest and his family remained abroad for 5 months.   

If you click on the line about the “Melita” above, you find a video viewing of the interior details of the ship that the Cooks sailed on to England after the war.  The music that is playing however is not from 1919 but from 1925 when it was the number 1 song. On Mar 2, 1920, Ernest and Mary Louise returned home from England with their son Ronald who was 3 years, 8 months now.  They were accompanied by Hettie Cook, Ernest’s sister who would stay with them for a while in Canada.  They are described on the ship’s manifest as follows:

Ernest is 5 feet 10 1/2 inches tall with a dark complexion, black hair and brown eyes. He has a scar on his forehead.  The same colouring describes Mary Louise who is only 5 feet 1/2 inch tall.  Hettie is 5 foot 4, dark complexion, brown hair and grey eyes. She is 30 years old and would have been 12 years old when Ernest left for Canada.  They are all heading to 1161 1st Ave. NE Moose Jaw. 

April 20^th, 1920:   A few weeks later, another sister, Norah Cook, arrives on the Metagama.  Ernest, her brother has paid for her passage, and she plans to be living with him on 1^st Ave. E. in Moose Jaw. Norah is 25 years old and would have been only 7 when Ernest came to Canada.  She says her intention is to remain permanently in Canada.  

The Henderson Directory of 1921  shows Ernest Cook to be the president of his own general Insurance Company with offices at 103 Main St. N.  This is now (in 2021)  the NE corner of Main and River where the Major and Maxwell Art gallery is located.  The home at 1161 1st NE  has both Hettie and Norah living with the family.  Hettie is working as a Steno at the company with Ernest.  Norah is not showing employment outside the home. Ronald Philip works as a bookkeeper at his brother’s company but has resumed his residence at the YMCA. In 1923, both Hettie and Norah are working as stenographers:  Hettie still with Ernest’s company, and Norah with the law firm of Schull and Marquis.  

The 1920s seemed to be good times for the  Cooks in Moose  Jaw.  In addition to the support provided by the Cook sisters, Louise Cook and Ella Brodie had their mother, a widow in Ontario since 1914, join them in Moose Jaw sometime before the census of 1921. Francis Littlejohn Davidson lived with her elder daughter, Ella, and her husband Harry Brodie. The Brodie house on  Main Street was also home to a young son, Stuart, who turned 10 in 1920. Stuart was 4 years older than his cousin, Ronald. Both boys enjoyed the years when three generations of family members could gather together in one or the other of their nearby homes.

The Moose Jaw 1920s roared on, and in 1924 a brother arrived for 8-year-old Ronald Cook. William Henry Cook was born on September 18th.  Although His Aunt Hettie still works for Ernest’s business, she now lives at 821 First Ave. NW, in a house looking west to Central Collegiate.  Aunt Norah is also living at the house with Hettie, and she is working as a steno as well in a law office. 

In 1927 his office moved to the Walter Scott building.  At one point he was on the Ground Floor, and then later he was on the top floor.  I am not sure which would have been the more prestigious location in the 1920s.

Ernest Cook had leisure time enough to become a golfer and served a term as president of the Moose Jaw Golf Club. His brother-in-law, Harry Brodie, was also a golfer and a curler; he served a term as president of the local curling club.  Yes, the 1920s were good times for the Cook family.  According to Ken Bradley in Out of Bounds: A Century of Golf in Moose Jaw, “Locally, the first recorded President’s Cup emblematic of the Men’s club championship was played between F.C Grant and Ernie Cook.  Mr. Grant won.” (p.17)

October of 1929

Little William Henry Cook would have just turned 5 years old a month before the Stock Market events in October of 1929 brought big changes for the Cook family. According to Ernest Cook’s great-granddaughter, Ernest suffered great losses in his insurance business at that time. The Roaring Twenties which had seen businesses thriving and optimism flourishing through the city and its leadership came to a crashing end. The family seems to have been able to hold on to the house on First North East for a while.  The Cook family would be left looking for less expensive housing and employment opportunities as Mr. Cook’s business was no longer able to support the family.  

Although the family was struggling, William Cook started his education at Ross School. The Cook family continue in their original home until 1932 when they moved into rental accommodations. In 1933 when Ronald G. would be 16 and William Henry would be 9, the family is shown at 368 Stadacona  W.  This house would be north of what is now The Bentley and facing at that time Alexandra School. William continued his education at Alexandra School.

The 1935 Henderson Directory shows Ernest Cook at 1062 First Ave. N.W.  His son Ronald is also there and is employed at the Savoy Theatre. The house would usually be occupied by Dr.  and Mrs. John Orr who were travelling to England to spend a few months. Dr. Orr also was involved with Queen’s University, and so the home at 1062 First  Northwest later became the home of Albert E Peacock, the principal of the new Technical High School and Superintendent of Education in Moose Jaw.  

Then in 1935 or 1936 Ernest and Louise Cook move with their boys into 1037 Clifton Avenue.  The house is bigger than the others they have lived in. However, it seems that they will not have just their own four family members living here.   In 1935,  Ronald George would have been 19 years old, and his younger brother, William Henry would have been 11 years old.  The previous owners of the Clifton house have returned to the United States, and the house, as a result of the troubled economy, had been taken over by the city.  There are several adults living in the house very soon, but it is not clear what their living arrangements were.

The Clifton house is fairly large (six bedrooms and two dens on three floors above the basement. Whereas the previous family, the Thomases, filled the house with 3 or four generations of the same extended family, the Cooks shared the house either like a boarding house or a rooming house. In a boarding house, the host family would have most of the space, but other single working people or married couples would have rooms and would eat (board) with the family in the dining room. The second arrangement, a rooming house, would have un-related folks renting rooms, but not eating with the family. There would be some sort of food storage and preparation facilities in the bedrooms where renters would prepare light meals for themselves.  Over the next few years, there are many names on the Voters lists for 1037 Clifton.  Most of the people stayed for only a short term, but some stayed for years.  

 

 

 

A Wedding (1935) and a Funeral (1939)

I think it was likely a happy time for the family when Uncle Ronald Philip Cook married Jean Colbourne. I imagine the wedding was a simple affair, perhaps in the bride’s home or maybe at St John’s Anglican Church. I have found no detailed record of it. The bride was 28 and the groom was 42.  In  1935 the #1 song on the pop charts was “Cheek to Cheek” by Fred Astaire. I hope they danced to that song at Temple Gardens or in their living room. 

On September 10, 1939, Canada entered the war against Germany. Three months later, the Times-Herald reported that  Ronald P. Cook had taken ill on Wednesday and died in a  local hospital on Thursday, Dec. 14, 1939. The obituary honoured Ronald both for his work for the city of Moose Jaw and for his service during the previous war. He was buried in the Soldiers’ section at Rosedale Cemetery.   

Before long, both Ernest and Louisa Cook’s boys will face decisions about involvement in the military for the conflict in Europe.  Bill Cook has continued for 1939-40 term as a student in grade 8 at Alexandra School. He heads off to Central Collegiate in the fall of 1940. Ronald has stopped out of school and is working to help the family.  Bill has a hobby of building model airplanes and enjoys going to summer camps run by Mr. Zimmer who also has a clothing store where Bill works part-time. In April of 1942, the family gathers on the front steps for a picture.  The rest of 1942 must wait for another post. 

Ernest and Louise:  First years in Moose Jaw

In 1902, Ernest Cook came to Moose Jaw alone, and his younger brother, Ronald, followed him to Moose Jaw several years later.  For Mary Louise Davidson it was the opposite experience.  She was the younger sibling who came to Moose Jaw after her older sister came. 

The two Davidson women were from Oshawa, Ontario. Elder sister Ella Francis Davidson came to Moose Jaw as a bride to join her businessman husband, Harry Brodie, who had established himself in Moose Jaw as one of the owner/managers of a flourishing Drug Store on the corner of Main and River Streets.

Harry Brodie had not intended to go into business in the prairies but was heading from Oshawa, Ontario to the West Coast when he was waylaid and invited to join two other men who owned the Moose Jaw Drug and Stationery Store. A detailed story of Henry (Harry) Brodie and his background was published in 1924 by John Hawkes as part of his history of Saskatchewan. Harry Brodie’s involvement in the story of 1037 Clifton is indirect but important.  The first record of a living place for Harry Brodie in Moose Jaw was with the Oswald B. Fysh family in 1901. They had seven children, ages 12 and under, and they still made room for two lodgers. Whether this experience of family life in Moose Jaw was a bit overwhelming in either a positive or a negative way for Harry, we cannot know, but he was obviously inspired to start his own family in his own house. In 1903  Harry Brodie went back to Oshawa Ontario and married Miss Ella Frances Davidson, a 30-year-old school teacher. The Fysh family welcomed several more children and still took in lodgers. Several children were involved in a family pharmacy and one became the mayor of Moose Jaw.

Ella Davidson was the eldest child in a family of six children. The 1901 census shows their ages.  Ella was 16 years older than the youngest of her four brothers, and she was 9 years older than her only sister, Mary Louise.  

The marriage of Ella Frances Davidson to Harry Brodie took place in the bride’s parents’ home in Oshawa, Ontario on August 19th, 1903 and was reported in the Moose Jaw paper on August 27th. You can listen to one of the pieces played at the wedding by Miss Phee Hezzlewood if you like: Leybach’s Fifth Nocturne. Here it is played by Phillip Sear. The groom’s gift to the bride was a piano. Music was obviously important to the Davidson family.  

 

I wondered if the groom bought a piano in Moose Jaw and had it ready for her in their home in Moose Jaw.  I am leaning toward thinking he had the piano shipped from Oshawa because a business that had opened there in the 1880s and had now reorganized its plant and revised its piano in 1902. The New Scale Williams Piano is presented in booklet form in a piano museum online. Could this be the piano the groom bought for his bride? 

Poetry was also part of the wedding with a poem by Mr. Ross Johnston of Whitby. 

About 3 years later, in 1906, Ella’s sister Mary Louise Davidson moved to Moose Jaw and lived with the Brodies.   These two sisters had left their 4 brothers and their parents in Ontario.  

The mother of the Bride

The backstory for Ella Frances and Mary Louise Davidson begins with a mystery.  Their mother, Francis Stoneman Littlejohns, seems to have come from England to Canada as a child, without her family of origin, and she grew up in Ontario.  We can see the census of 1851 for the small village of Buckland Brewer in Devon. 

When Frances Stoneman Littlejohns was born in October 1850 in Buckland Brewer, Devon, England, her father, Thomas, was 39, and her mother, Mary (nee Short), was 37.  Both parents, other children, and Frances appear in the 1851 England census: Frances as a 6-month-old baby, and Mary at age 38. By the next census in 1861,  both Mary and Frances are gone.  Mary has died in 1852, and her husband Thomas Littlejohns has re-married and fathered 3 more children. Little Frances shows up in the Durham County, Ontario Census of 1861 as a 10-year-old. How did she get to Canada and who raised her? I have made contact with folks from Buckland Brewer in Devon.  A lively historical society is at work tracking people who have lived in their village, and they are sharing information through blogs and newsletters to help researchers. We are checking out the possibility that she immigrated with the J. S. Thorn family who were members of the Bible Christian Church in Devon which was sending out missionaries and members to Canada in the mid to late 1840s. In the 1861 census in Canada West, the Thorn household included 2 girls, one (Mary Thorn) who was 3 years old, and born in Canada, and Francis “Littlejones”, who was 10 years old and born in England.

My hunch was that little Frances was taken in by these relatives or friends at her mother’s death because the father had his hands full.  These kinds of informal adoptions were common at that time.  My own great-grandmother in her infancy was taken in by another family after her mother’s death in 1852. 

The long history of this village is explored by the Buckland Brewer History Group who say people have lived in Buckland for over 1000 years.

Ella and Louise Davidson’s father, Robert Davidson,  had been born in Canada to immigrants from Scotland, but their mother, Frances Stoneman Littlejohns,  had come from England. She settled in Bowmanville, Canada West, with the Thorn family and from 1856 until her coming of age probably stayed with that family.  On the 13th of June in 1872 at aged 22,  Frances Stoneman Littlejohns married  Robert Davidson, son of Alexander and Elizabeth Davidson in Oshawa, Ontario.  Both bride and bridegroom list their religious denomination as “Bible Christian”.  This was a group that had branched out of Methodism in England and spread to Canada in the mid 19th century. The history of this group would have formed the backdrop for the mother of the Davidson girls. 

Thirty years after the marriage of Robert and Frances in Oshawa, their two daughters will leave Robert and Francis with their adult sons (brothers) in Ontario. First Ella marries a local Oshawa pharmacist who is also trained in business and after their honeymoon to “points west” will settle in the house he has made ready in Moose Jaw.  Ella and Harry’s house was 121 Main St. N. which is renumbered after 1914 as 843 Main St. N. It was to that house that Ella’s piano wedding gift would have been moved. From that house, she would have gone teaching school for a few years. To that house, she would have invited her younger sister Louise who had been her maid of honour to come and live with her in 1906 as Ella and Harry prepared to start their family. 

The Davidson sisters experienced losses around the major transition in 1906, the year that Louise moved to Moose Jaw.  Back in Oshawa,  Robert Llewellyn Davidson, the brother just younger than Louisa by 2 years died on June 6th after a 7-year struggle with heart disease. He was 23 years old.  Harry and Ella Brodie were probably very glad to have Louise with them when, in 1907, they lost their firstborn son, Robert Edwin, when he was only 6 days old.

Louise Davidson continued to live with Harry and Ella and was there for sisterly support in 1910 when Stuart Davidson Brodie was born. She probably lived there while Stuart was a wee boy, through the months until she married and moved into her own house with her new husband.  During the courtship years of Louise and Ernest, the friendship with Ella and Harry Brodie was deepened.  In January of 1913, the two couples were probably glad to be living just a 9-minute walk from each other.

The Brodie house is no longer there on the S.E. corner of the Main and Ross St intersection. This house is important because of its location near to both places where Ella’s sister Louise and her husband Ernie would live during their married life in Moose Jaw 1912-1955. 

Some enchanted evening between 1906 when Louise Davidson moved to Moose Jaw and 1912, she met our Ernest George Cook. Ernest started off in Moose Jaw much as Harry Brodie had, first living with a family. In the 1906 census of the Prairie Provinces, “Earnest” Cook is listed as a “Roomer” on West Fairford.  He appears to live with Mrs. Gould and her three children and 7 other roomers, all men.  20ish.

In 1907 Ernest is listed as a clerk in the accounting office of the CPR.  It is not clear when this position began or ended. However, sometime that year, he moves on to a new position at the Dominion Lands Office.  The Moose Jaw Times actually reported on the state of his health on Tuesday, September 24, 1907:

Mr. Ernest Cooke, (sic) of the Dominion Lands Office, underwent an operation at the hospital yesterday. His many friends will be pleased to know that he is doing as well as can be expected.

In 1908, still working at the Dominion Lands Office, he is living at 65 Main St. This may be a Boarding House run by Mrs. Joseph Brocklehurst. “65 Main” is the old numbering for what is now 321 Main N. (just south of Uptown Cafe.)  In 1909 Ernest is living at 32 Ominica. On May 28, 1910, Ronald Philip Cook enters Canada at the port of Montreal and begins to make his way to Moose Jaw.  When Ronald arrives, both brothers move into the new YMCA building that had just opened. 

Somehow Ernest meets and becomes engaged to Mary Louise Davidson. (I like to imagine them going for a soda to the fancy soda counter installed at the newly renovated and expanded Drug and Stationery Store. )For their wedding on December 16th, 1912, they travelled to Oshawa, Ontario. I assume the wedding was similar to the one provided for Ella and Harry 9 years earlier. By the time the Henderson Directory is published in 1913,  Ernest and Mary Louise have settled into their first house. It is at 69 Beech Avenue, but its address will change in 1914 to the new numbering system: 1161 First Avenue North East. Their house is a short walk away from the Brodies’ house on Main and  Ross where Louise had been living with her sister since she came to Moose Jaw 6 years earlier.  

The house at 843 Main North has been replaced by KFC.  The distance between the two addresses is probably not a comfortable one to carry a large bucket of hot chicken, but it was a good distance for two sisters to live apart-a good distance to push a stroller or baby carriage or walk with a child for a visit or care.  The Davidson sisters enjoyed the closeness, I am sure. And into the 1920s, Frances Stoneman Littlejohns Davidson spent months, perhaps years, living with the Brodies after her husband Robert Davidson passed away in 1914. 

The Cook family and the Cook business seems to have flourished on First Avenue East.   Ernest is vice president of an insurance company working with a businessman who had once been the mayor of Ottawa: Mr. Jacob Erratt. 

From that foundation, Ernest moved on to have his own insurance company, sometimes in collaboration with other companies, and sometimes on his own. At some points,  advertisements in the Henderson Directories call it the largest one in Saskatchewan.  Offices moved around in those days in Moose Jaw as buildings were bought and sold and replaced. 

In 1916, Ernest and Louise became the parents

of a son, Ronald George, born on April 30th.  Many thanks are due to the granddaughter of the baby in these pictures who, though living halfway around the world,  generously shared electronically from an old family album. I especially like the baby bath in the kitchen, but all the pictures are precious.  The baby’s namesake uncle, Ronald Phillip Cook was living in Room 6 in the YMCA at the beginning of the War in 1914.  He signed up early and returned to England with the 46th Battalion from MooseJaw. After the war, Ronald Phillip returns, and the Cook household will grow some more as two of Ernest’s sisters make a trip to Moose Jaw, and a baby brother arrives for Ronald George.    What string of events led to the Cooks’ relocation to Clifton Avenue and becoming one of the longest Clifton stories?  That is a story of another decade and must wait for another day.

 

I would like once again to acknowledge that the house on Clifton Avenue I write about in this blog is on the traditional lands referred to as Treaty 4 Territory and that the city of Moose Jaw is located on Treaty 4 territory, the original lands of the Cree, Ojibwe(OJIB-WĒ), Saulteaux (SO-TO), Dakota, Nakota, Lakota, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Greetings from Clifton Avenue,

I left you in 1936 when the Thomas family who had lived on Clifton Avenue since 1920 had returned to the United States.  The house may have become someone else’s responsibility, but the taxes were not paid, and the title for the house was taken over by the City of Moose Jaw. This was common in the middle of the depression. The city was applying The Arrears of Taxes Act, which came into effect in 1931. The problem of city revenues was explored in a MacLean’s article from 1935.   So the Cooks, the new tenants of 1037 Clifton, have the city as a landlord. For the next several years, the house will provide shelter to the Cook family and a number of other renters. One of the Cook descendants believes that Mrs. Cook actually ran a boarding house for some of the renters, that they ate together.  At times, there were as many as 9 adults living in the house according to the voters’ lists.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

Who was left behind when Ernest Cook came to Moose Jaw?

Mr. Ernest George Cook arrived in Canada and Moose Jaw in 1902. He had been born in 1884 in New Malden, part of the historic county of Surrey, in England, and he did not fit the “Sifton description”  of the desirable immigrant who would live in the country and work very hard as a farmer.

I have puzzled over the reasons why this young man left his large family in England. In 1902, there were several motivations for people to move to Canada. Some folks were looking for economic opportunity and a better life; some were escaping from oppression and persecution. Others were looking for wide-open spaces and fewer people, and perhaps some were seeking adventure.  And some came because other people persuaded them to come. even in the early 1900s, now that steamships cross oceans and trains cross nations, there was power in advertising!  Check out prices and menu plans.  Some people came with complete or growing family units, and some people came alone.  I wonder if Ernest had read some of the promotional material supplied by businesses and governments to convince people in England to help colonize the western areas of Canada. 

Ernest had spent his short life until 1902  in urban centres and his only work experience had been as a clerk. However, in his teen years, his family of origin had undergone a lot of change.  Deaths in the family and repeated relocation were possible factors in young Ernest’s decision to explore the opportunities available in Canada. Plus there was precedence for emigration on both sides of his family tree. On his father’s side, one of Ernest’s grand-uncles, Edward William Cook (1827-1892), had moved to Australia in the 1850s, married a girl from Ireland, and changed from a clerk to a school teacher. 

On his mother’s side, some of Ernest’s ancestors had emigrated to North America about 50 years before Ernest was born.                                               

Ernest’s grandmother, Harriett Clark (b.1823), was the youngest of 9 children.  Ann, Hannah,  Elizabeth (2), and Harriett stayed on in England when five of their brothers and sisters in the 1830s were bound for North America. Lewis, William, and Esther ended up in Ontario, Canada while John and Mary stayed in New York. Harriett Clarke would have been 11 years old when her siblings began leaving for North America in 1834.  Lewis and John left first, sailing for about nine weeks and landing in New York.  Harriett Clarke stayed in Lowestoft, grew up there, and married in 1853.  She and her husband, James Cooper, had five children: Elizabeth Clarke (b.1854), HenryWilliam(b.1858), Harriett Anne(b.1859), Martha Eliza(b.1861), and Marian(b.1863)

More about  Lowestoft. 

Lowestoft, Suffolk England,  is the most easterly point of England.   Although there may have been barrel-makers (coopers) in Harriett (nee Clarke) Cooper’s family’s past, her father and his father had also been fishers, farmers, and blacksmiths.

According to one local history site, you can find the entire history of England in Lowestoft if you know where to look.  Photographs such as the one below may be a clue why Harriett and at least one of her sisters were looking for other employment options than what was prominent in Lowestoft during their youth.  At least two of James and Harriett Cooper’s children seemed determined that some of their history would be found in places other than Lowestoft.

Lowestoft, while Harriet Cooper grew up,  had two levels: the town up on a cliff and the village on the shore. The interesting trails that ran up and down between the two levels were called scores and are one of the things I don’t want to miss if I ever get to visit Lowestoft. Some of them might not be safe at night I would think.                                                                             

The 1871 census shows the family of Harriet Cooper in Lowestoft when she was 11 years old. In a few years, Harriett Anne and her older sister, Elizabeth Clarke, leave Lowestoft and find husbands for themselves before the next census in 1881. By the 1881 census,  these two women are no longer listed in the Lowestoft census pages for 54  Crown St.  Harriett is now a married woman of 21 living with her husband Frederick George Bristow Cook in Lambeth where he lists himself as an Army Agent’s Clerk. The marriage took place on Nov. 17, 1878 in Twickenham with at least one relative of the bride present.  Harriett’s sister, Elizabeth Clarke, now Bexfield had been married just a few months before to William Stephen Bexfield.  She signs the documents as a witness for her sister’s marriage.   

Now it’s time to find out more about the man who will become the father of Ernest George Cook from Clifton Avenue, Moose Jaw.  Who are the people he comes from, and where will he live to raise his family?

The paternal side of Ernest Cook’s family can be traced quite clearly back through four generations. His father, Frederick George Bristow Cook had been born in Hammersmith in 1852.  Three generations of George Cooks before him had been born in the areas near London and seem to have lived urban lives as “gentlemen” whether acknowledged as thus by others or merely by themselves. It was the custom for the groom and his father and the bride’s father to record their occupations on the marriage documents. So Ernest George Cook’s father (m.1878), grandfather (m.1852), great-grandfather (m. 1823), were all listed as gentlemen when they were married.  Of course, in those days there was no tracking of occupations for women in most documents.

Frederick George Bristow Cook was the firstborn to George Richard Cook and his wife  Elizabeth Thompson Hixon who, as you can see below, had a large family of seven sons and 5 daughters between 1852 and 1877.  The 1861 Census for England was taken on the night of 7 April 1861. Young Frederick Cook is missing from his family’s listing in the census document.  He shows up at his 81-year-old grandmother’s house at 28 Phillmore Place in Kensington. It seems that he was on a school break because Easter was on March 31 that year just one week before the census was taken. He was 8 years old in 1861. There was another grandson there at the time.  His name was James Thompson Hixon (25), and he lists himself as an artist.  There are a couple of his drawings on The British Museum website:  both pictures of an Arab. Their grandma Maria Hixon was only to live one more year.  The Cook family address in that year was 4 Brunswick Villas in Hammersmith. 

In 1871 at census time, the G R Cook family has grown to nine children including baby James who is about seventeen months old.  Frederick who is 18 is listed as a clerk.  His father, George Richard Cook, is also a clerk working at the War Office. The Cooks are living at Castelnau No. 4 Villa.  This housing development was noted for 20 pairs of “exceptional classical villas” which were built in 1842 by Major Boileau. The villa seems to have had enough room for the 9 children plus a cook, a nursemaid and a housemaid. Some of the Castelnau homes have been preserved in a conservation area, and some are on the market for over 4 or 5 million pounds.

So Frederick G B Cook at age 26  is the gentleman who marries 19-year-old Harriett Cooper from Lowestoft in 1878.

 

The 1881 census takes place before Frederick and Harriett Cook have any children. FGB Cook is 27 years old and is employed as an Army Agent’s Clerk. Harriet is now 21 years old and after being married for 2 years and 5 months is expecting their first child when the census is taken.  Lambeth is their location, close to central London.  They must have had only part of the house at 19 Hubert’s Grove; there seems to be another family also in the house. The census was taken on Sunday evening April 3,  just 11 days before Madeline Elizabeth Cook was born on April 14, 1881. The house or flat they were living in must have very soon seemed inadequate because the family had relocated before the baby was baptized on September 4th.

Lime Grove and later Acacia Grove, New Malden are where George and Harriett continue to expand their family through the 1880s.  In May of 1883, Cecil was born, and he was baptized on October 7th.  On November 12, 1884, George Ernest Cook was born. A double baptism takes place after sister Daisy Millicent was born on April 27th.  Two babies, 1 year and 5 months apart, both baptized on August 1, 1886.  The next baptism is a triple baptism:  Mary Freda born Sept. 5^th, 1888, Hettie born Dec. 29^th,1890, and Mary Phyllis born July 9^th, 1892.  They were all baptized on August 31, 1892.  It seems that Hettie was named after  Harriett’s mother, Harriett, who had just died in 1889. So now Ernest Cook has three relatives named Harriett to keep straight: his grandmother who has passed away, his mother, and his sister. I hope he was better at it than I have been.

Mary Phyllis only lived until the 16th of September that year.  She died at 2 months when Ernest Cook was just turning 8.

Ronald Philip Cook, the third son,  was born in September of 1893 and baptized in August of 1894. Sisters kept coming:  Twins, Maggie and Norah in 1895, Elsie in 1897, and Doris in 1899. Watch for Ronald, Norah, and Hettie. They will have Moose Jaw play a part in their stories.

In February of 1899, Elizabeth Thompson (Hixon) Cook, Ernest Cook’s paternal grandmother died and was buried at age 66. On September 24th of the same year, her son, George Frederick Bristow Cook,  also died,  at age 46 leaving his wife Harriett with a family of 12, ranging in age from Madeline at 18 to Doris at 3 months. Ernest Cook’s father was buried on September 28th in the same graveyard as his infant daughter, Phyllis. Ernest was 14.

When FGB Cook’s will was read, 323 pounds was left to his wife Harriet. The British system used the abbreviations £ for pound, ‘s’ for shilling and ‘d’ for pence. They are abbreviations for the Latin words libra, solidus and denarius.  According to an online CPI inflation calculator, £323 in 1899 is worth £41,778.71 today which might be about 72,003.94 CAD today.

There was a census taken on March 31, 1901, a year and a half after GFB Cook died, and we see a listing of the Cook family without their father/husband. The youngest child, Doris, is listed as 1 year old.  “Hethe”  the mother is 40 years old and her children range in age from 19 down.  Ronald (7), Daisy M (16). and Mary F.(13) are not listed. The family are living at #5 Linton Crescent in Hastings, in the county of Sussex.  Harriett has returned to a coastal town this time on the south side of England rather than the east coast like Lowestoft, where she had lived as a child.

Living this close to the sea would not be strange to Harriett, but probably it was to her children. I assume that moving with this many children and personal items would have happened by train in 1900-01.  The distance from New Malden to Hastings might not seem like much to us now, but making the trip with a large family would have been a challenge in 1900.  I think perhaps they did not move their furnishings, and that Harriett would have to buy new furnishings for their home on Linton Crescent.

There was a “General House Furnisher” in business on High Street. Mr. Stewart Spencer, a widower, at age 44 with 3 teen-aged daughters were living above the business.

1902 finds Ernest George Cook in a lineup to buy a ticket to Canada, not just to the eastern shores but to the western prairies. Likely a train ride took him from New Malden to Liverpool, and there he boarded the Tunisian.

“Launched in 1900, the Allan Line’s Tunisian was built by Alex Stephen & Son of Glasgow. She took her maiden voyage on 5 April 1900, from Liverpool to Halifax and Portland, Maine. A month later, she made her first trip to Québec and Montréal.”  (https://greatships.net/tunisian)

When Ernest George Cook buys his ticket to sail on the Tunisian to Canada, he lists himself as 19 years old. He plans to depart from Liverpool on the 29th of May,  1902, travelling by “steerage”, so he won’t have a first or second class cabin for the week-long trip to Montreal.  A long list gives names of single men leaving from Liverpool on the Tunisian.  The top name on the page has written “Winnipeg” as his ultimate destination and all the rest of the names in the long list have ditto marks under the name of that city. These men have likely purchased tickets that include railway transport to Winnipeg after arriving by ship in Montreal. Although Ernest Geo Cook lists his age as 19, he was probably was 17 years and 7 months.

Steerage passengers were advised to hire an “outfit supplied by the company” that included: Woods’ Patent Life-Preserving Pillows, Mattress, Pannikin to hold 1 1/2 pint, Plate, Knife, Nickel-plated Fork and Nickel-plated Spoon…, leaving passengers to provide bed-covering only. We have no way of knowing if Ernest had some time between his sea voyage and his train ride to Western Canada.

The first evidence of Ernest’s presence in Moose Jaw is his listing in the 1906 Census of the Prairie Provinces.  “Earnest” cook is listed as a “Roomer” on West Fairford.  He appears to live with Mrs Gould and her three children and 7 other roomers, all men, 20ish.

In the 1907 Henderson Directory, Ernest is listed as a clerk in the accounting office of the CPR.  However in the Moose Jaw Times: Tuesday, Sept. 24th of 1907 is the following announcement:  Mr. Ernest Cooke, (sic) of the Dominion Lands Office, underwent an operation at the hospital yesterday. His many friends will be pleased to know that he is doing as well as can be expected. 

In 1908, Ernest is living at 65 Main (66 Main was the Seaborn Block).  In his early years of employment in Moose Jaw, Ernest met the people who would provide accommodation for him, introduce him and mentor him as a business partner ready to strike out on his own in the future.  He will meet his future life partner. 1912 begins a new decade for Ernest. In the second decade of his life in Moose Jaw, Ernest will marry a woman whose sister is married to a prominent Moose Jaw businessman.  He will meet his brother, Ronald, at the train and welcome him to Moose Jaw.  These are stories for the next time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By 1930, the Thomas family that had arrived at the Moose Jaw train station in 1908 and hauled their belongings to a farm at Tuxford has been been in Saskatchewan for  22 years.   After 10 years on the farm, James and Winnie Thomas left their son Arthur and his wife, Annie, to work the farm and settled in Moose Jaw at 1037 Clifton Avenue. Winnie’s parents, Benjamin (Frank) and Louise Headington,  joined them from Iowa in 1920.  Through the 1920s,  the number of generations being sheltered in this house moved between two, three, and four, depending on the level of support needed in varying family passages and crises. 

  In June of 1930 Grandma Louise Headington, now a widow, was invited to a special tea put on for Moose  Jaw’s Old Ladies.  Probably she is 5th from the left at the back in the picture below. By the time the tea was over, perhaps the women had made some new friends and had shared some memories with old friends.  Although it was clear that hard times were upon them, these ladies couldn’t have foreseen the changes coming in the next 10 years. Mrs.  Louise Headington herself lived until 1935, and her death along with financial difficulties regarding taxes seem to be the impetus for James and Winnie to return to the US. 

On July 23, 1931, the last of the Thomas daughters married, but not in Moose Jaw.  Hallie Winnifred  (called Freddie in the family) married Lee Webster Evans down near South Whitley, Indiana where Mr Evans’ family lived.    For  Lee Webster Evans, it was a second marriage.  His first marriage had been in 1917 in South Whitley when he was a 20-year-old post office clerk. His bride, Olive Keenan, had been  24.  They had been married for eight and a half months when she died on April 20th 1918. 

The Fort Wayne Sentinel April 22, 1918, reported as follows: 

Mrs. Lee Evans, of South Whitley, passed away Saturday in Fort Wayne at the home of her sister, Mrs. Fred Seymour, where she had been a guest for a week and suffered a fatal attack of pneumonia. The remains were shipped to her home in South Whitley and the funeral occurred Monday, with interment in the South Whitley Cemetery. 

There is no mention in the article of Spanish Flu as a precursor to the pneumonia that killed Olive (Keenan) Evans.   We do know that the Flu outbreak became more severe in the later months of 1918 in Whitley County and that there were only two recorded cases in Allen County as early as April. 

We know that the groom within a few weeks after his wife’s death signed up for the US Navy.  In fact,  the date for beginning his service with the Navy is listed as June 4th,   1918.  He served until September 30th, 1921.  The 1920 census shows Lee Webster Evans as a postal clerk.  The work of the postal system during WW1 is the topic of Smithsonian historical displays. 

Another fascinating trip into the Great War era postal system is in the online display of the National Postal Museum.

How did Freddie Thomas on Clifton Avenue meet up with an American widower, a Navy recruit and postal worker in Whitley County, Indiana? One answer might be that she made a trip to Indiana in 1927.  Freddie filled in a card at the border giving an address and her intention to stay for 2 months.  Freddie did have a younger sister (Gertrude) who had married on Christmas day of 1926 and moved to Indiana.  After a few months, a visit was probably on the wish list for both of them. 

If the scribbly date on the border card is April 4,  Freddie would have been in the US on April 21, 1927, which was the date of her grandfather’s death in the house on Clifton.  One source says the pictures of Freddie and a young man on the Clifton stoop (below) are from Oct. 1, 1927.  Then, the Moose Jaw Henderson Directories from 1930 and 1931 list Winnifred Thomas as employed as a Bank steno at the publication time. She seems to have had her young man here for a visit in 1927 and perhaps a family celebration of their engagement.  Freddie lived on here on Clifton until she went south to be married  in July of 1931. Her “residence place”  on the Marriage records is Moose Jaw. 

 There are pictures of Lee Webster Evans and Hallie Winnifred Thomas that have been shared, but it is not clear if these are engagement pictures or just visiting the inlaws on Clifton pictures.  

Yes, all four Thomas daughters and one son have married.  Two of the daughters, Gertrude and Freddie, married American men and moved to South Whitley, Indiana.  Gertrude and Eldon had one daughter, and Freddie and Lee had two sons. 

However, the oldest daughter, Louise, who had married first in 1912, became a widow in 1924 and lost her eldest son in 1926. That story was told in this post.  Louise was remarried in 1930 to James Wallace Hannah who lived until 1944 when she became a widow for the second time. Louise Thomas Bills Hannah  lived on in Canada for many years after there were no more Thomases on Clifton Avenue.  Louise has been the storyteller of the family so far and did the family write-ups for the Community History books for Tuxford and Marquis. She also wrote her own memoir called “Gram”. 

I see two of Louise’s children looking happy about the wedding. Little Virginia must be about 7 or 8. Her Papa Jim in the back row right will be living on Clifton for 5 more years. I assume the other people are relatives of the groom or friends of the couple. 

Don Bills lived in Moose Jaw for some time and later lived in Alberta as you can see in his obituary.   His little sister, Virginia Louise Bills Stewart (who came to our veranda on her 80th birthday), married a Moose Jaw boy, and they moved to Alberta and then to Ontario. Their stories and connections are contained in obituaries as well. 

What about the only Thomas boy who had taken over the family farm with his wife Annie?  By 1928, the Art Thomas family had moved to Moose Jaw where he was working as a salesman at Sterling Motors.  In 1927  a store and garage designed by Henry Hargreaves had been built on High Street and First Ave. W.  By 1935, Art is a manager at Sterling Motors and is living on Henleaze Avenue.  In 1944-5 Arthur Thomas was President of Sterling Motors and was living at 1122 Redland Ave, a house that is now a lovely Bed and Breakfast!  Jeanne Thomas, their daughter, was living there too and was working as steno at Sterling Motors.  Mr. Thomas was listed as President of the Moose Jaw Board of Trade. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art and Annie Thomas remained in Moose Jaw through their 25th anniversary in 1942 and moved to California in 1946.   Arthur returned to Moose Jaw for business reasons until 1961 when he sold his interests in Sterling Motors to Mr. Robert Lockwood.  Mr. Lockwood’s parents, Frank and Mary Elizabeth Lockwood,  had been the owners of the Clifton house from 1917 until 1927 when they sold it to Mr. James Smith Thomas. The Thomas family had been renting the house from the Lockwoods from 1920 to 1927 before they took over the title with a purchase for $8000. So the Lockwoods sold a house to the Thomases, and now in the next generation, the Thomases sell a business to the Lockwoods. 

 

Another Thomas daughter, Mildred,  had passed away in 1928 before the age of 30, leaving two small daughters and her husband to move from their farm near Pense and live with Mildred’s parents in the Clifton house.  Jack Weiland and his daughters, Marjorie and Winnifred, lived on in other Moose Jaw locations after the Thomases left the house on Clifton in 1935.  After the Thomases left Moose Jaw, Jack Weiland married Fern Louise Fryklund, a Moose Jaw woman, and in a few years moved to Goshen, Indiana.  His two daughters married and made their homes there as well.  So by the mid-thirties, Mr and Mrs Thomas have more of their family members in Indiana: two daughters, and two grand-daughters. By 1935 there are two grandsons (born to Freddie and Lee) as well. 

I am still puzzled about 1935-1938 and the exceptional transition of the house from the Thomases to the city of Moose Jaw. That’s a story for another post. But first,  there remains one more life well-lived story to tell.   

Louise Olive Smith  Headington lived in Canada at the beginning and at the end of her life.  Many little girls were named after her in the generations to follow including her great-granddaughter Virginia Louise Bills Stewart who got me started on this quest on her 80th birthday. 

 

After leaving Moose Jaw… 

When   Mr. and Mrs  James Thomas returned to the US in 1935, they did not return to Decorah, Iowa, but settled a full days drive beyond in South Whitley,  Indiana. Winnie Thomas lived only a short while in Indiana before she died on October 11, 1937.  Her husband, James Smith Thomas, lived on until 1946.  Sometime between 1937 and 1946, a picture was taken at a family gathering that included the Thomas Indiana connection: Papa Jim is with his daughters Gertrude and Freddie and their husbands. Also in the photo are his two grown granddaughters, Winifred and Marjorie (nee Weiland) and their husbands. There are a few more grandchildren and a great-grandchild in the picture too. All seem to be thriving and glad to be together. Perhaps on this occasion some of them remembered their posing for family photos that had happened on the front steps of 1037 Clifton Avenue when the family shared the adventure of living in Canada for 25 years.