Chapter 11

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Why did we bring so much luggage? At the time ten tea-chests and six suitcases didn’t seem unreasonable – after all we were going to the other side of the world and there were 8 of us but now we were standing on Vancouver Wharf surrounded by bags, cases, chests, the stroller and six hungry children. The purser on the ship had booked us a unit in a boarding house in Vancouver and a friend’s brother-in-law had kindly come to meet us with his car – but we would need a bus to fit all this stuff in!

`Where’s my briefcase?’ said Reg in a panic. The briefcase that contained all our papers, our passports, our bankbook – where was it? A few frantic minutes passed while we moved suitcases, lifted coats, hunted behind tea-chests and Reg and I were almost having cardiac arrests. Had anyone seen Dad’s briefcase? `Yes’ said 4 year old Nick, `I put it in a really safe place’ and he led us to it – behind a pillar a few metres away. Sighs of relief and a few new grey hairs for each of us. Reg went then to the Canadian National Railway office which is on the wharf and asked if we could leave some of our luggage there and we got our first taste of Canadian friendly helpfulness. `Sure. Leave it with us and when you find out where you’re going to live just phone us and we’ll put it on the train for you.’ Too easy, and that’s exactly what happened.

Our friend Doug took half the family and half the suitcases and we got a taxi for the rest and off we all went to the boarding house. Reg dashed out for some food while the rest of us settled in and chose rooms and beds – it was a bit of a tight squeeze but would do for a couple of days. A friendly woman from upstairs called in – she had also just arrived on the Canberra with her husband (a doctor) and their five children – and I made the acquaintance of Gill Kanachowski, still my very dear friend years later. Gill was English and Waldy (her husband Waldemar) was Polish. They had been living in Perth and had decided to return to England but thought that they would look at possibilities in Canada on the way. Their children were about the same ages as ours and I had a vague memory of having seen them in the dining room on the ship but had never made their acquaintance.

That night nobody would settle for sleep – partly excitement at the new surroundings but partly because it never seemed to get dark – still broad daylight and bright sunshine at 10 o’clock at night. We had not known about the length of the summer days in the northern hemisphere and it took a little getting used to but we all grew to love the long light summer days. The next day I took all the children to Stanley Park for the day – a beautiful 1000-acre park within easy walking distance of downtown Vancouver – while Doug drove Reg to used car yards until he found what we needed – a large brown station wagon, a Plymouth Fury II, not new, but in good condition. He also called in to the Department of Education in Vancouver to enquire about jobs in Vancouver because we liked the look of that beautiful city and could picture ourselves living there - but there were no jobs – in fact they had already done all their hiring for the coming school year and that was the first of many such disappointments.

It looked as though we were going to have to hit the road so next day Reg bought a large blue tent (right), eight sleeping bags and eight blow-up mattresses and a little camp stove. While he was buying supplies I was repacking as we still had far too much luggage and I managed to cut our six suitcases down to three and sent Reg with the surplus to the Goodwill Store. The following day we packed all our gear and ourselves into our station wagon and left Vancouver. The Kanachowski family stood outside the boarding house waving Goodbye – Waldy calling as we left `God Bless, God Bless’ as we drove away on the next leg of our adventure, never thinking that we would see that family again.

When we left Vancouver we drove first to a campground at Hope in British Columbia and on the right is our first night under canvas, trying to work out how to pitch our big blue tent which had a fairly complicated inside frame. In no time Celene and Reg became the tent experts and they always did that while Marcus and Nick blew up the 8 air mattresses, Belinda collected water and spread the sleeping bags and I made dinner. The next night we were in Kicking Horse Pass campground in the Rocky Mountains. We were all cosily tucked up in our cosy sleeping bags in our big blue tent. Whoo-whoo-whoo – what’s that noise? It was the train going through the Rockies and even now I can’t hear that sound without a rush of nostalgia remembering that sound, the smell of the spruce trees all around us and that wonderful feeling of freedom tinged with not a little fear – where are we going? When we checked in to campgrounds and had to give an address, we didn’t have one. That made me feel insecure, I suppose because I felt I should be providing a nest for all those children. Reg just laughed when I told him how I felt. `There’s nothing to worry about.’ `But what if you can’t get a teaching job?’ `Then I’ll do something else – I’ll sweep the streets.’ What neither of us realised was that for about a third of the year you can’t even see the streets – they are all covered in snow!

On to Banff where we camped at Two Jack Lake (that’s Lake Louise in Alberta on the right) and Reg put on his suit for a visit to the Department of Education in Calgary while I stayed with the children in the campground. He came back in the evening and told us that there were no jobs in Calgary, they had done all their hiring for the coming year. We decided to go north to Edmonton the next day so that he could try there. Edmonton is about 200 miles north of Calgary and half way there we passed through a town with a population of about 27,000 called Red Deer. We stopped and Reg called on the Superintendent of Schools but there again they had done all their hiring for the coming year. He tried the Separate (Catholic) School System with the same result and we thought that was a pity because Red Deer was a rather beautiful small town – clean and neat with beautiful colourful gardens everywhere we looked.

Back on the road again hoping for more success in Edmonton but by the time we got there the rain was pouring down and it was cold. We didn’t feel like putting the tent up in the rain so went to a campground called Elk Island (though it wasn’t an island) where there were cabins. They were shabby and poorly equipped but we settled in there and celebrated Marcus’s sixth birthday with a chocolate cake bought at the supermarket. We had bought him a football for his birthday, it had pointy ends, different from an Australian football but it was too wet to try it out.

Next day Reg went to see the Superintendent of Schools for the Edmonton area but the news was bad again, but they did suggest that he try two places in southern Alberta where there were thought to be vacancies – Pincher Creek and Picture Butte … `and if you don’t get either of those’, they said, `you may as well go all the way across to Ontario as you won’t get anything on the prairies’. How could this be? There’s supposed to be a teacher shortage in Canada. Yes, there was, but that was last year. Canada advertised worldwide and now all the positions were filled. This was definitely not good news. Reg was cheerful and optimistic as always but I was beginning to worry.

Now however there was an even greater cause for worry. Our baby Tom, not yet one year old, had caught bronchitis on the ship. I had taken him to the ship’s doctor and he had given me antibiotics but they seemed to have had no effect. As we drove south from Edmonton in the pouring rain, with Tom lying in my arms, I said to Reg `I think Tom’s unconscious – I can’t wake him.’ We had just reached the outskirts of Red Deer so Reg ran into a pharmacy and asked where we could find a doctor as we had a sick baby. `Take him straight to the hospital’ said the pharmacist and pointed us in the right direction. Ten minutes later a doctor in emergency had examined Tom, diagnosed double pneumonia and he had been given a penicillin injection and put in an oxygen tent. Reg took the other children off to a nearby motel and looked after them there – I sat by Tom thinking `If he dies, there’ll be nobody to come to his funeral’ as we knew nobody in Canada.

Tom didn’t die though, in fact the next morning – his first birthday – when I entered the ward, he was out of the oxygen tent so I picked him up, he scrambled out of my arms and went crawling across the floor. I held him up to the window to wave to Reg and the other children down below in the car park. That is Tom’s first memory, he can still remember me holding him up to wave to the family down below. He had a few more days in hospital and in the meantime, Reg went to the Red Deer County school board office which arranged the hiring for the schools in the numerous surrounding small towns in central Alberta and was offered a job at Innisfail High School. The principal apologised for not being able to offer Reg the salary to which he was entitled by the combination of his experience and qualifications – then proceeded to offer him exactly twice the amount he had been getting at Melbourne Teachers’ College as a lecturer. Needless to say, Reg grabbed the pen and signed the contract without a blink.

Innisfail was about 30 miles south of Red Deer and had a population of only 4000 people so we decided to buy a house in Red Deer and Reg would commute. The first thing to do was buy a house and we looked at only two. The first was sold by the time we made an offer and the realtor to whom we had gone suggested a second house. `As a matter of fact’ he said, `it’s right next door to my own house.’ `You might not want us there though’ said Reg, `we’ve got six children.’ `Sure we would’ said George Francis the realtor, soon to become our neighbour and our very good friend, `we love kids.’

We walked through from front to back – three bedrooms, lounge/dining room, kitchen large enough for a table to seat eight, a full basement partly finished and a backyard facing on to a church carpark. We offered the full price which was $18,000 and it was accepted. The owners would not be out until the end of the month so we collected Tom from the hospital and drove out to Crimson Lake where there was a campground, put up our tent and settled ourselves in to wait the ten days or so until we could get in to our house. There’s our first house in Canada in summer on the top and in winter below.

Do you remember the people we met in Vancouver who had also come over from Australia on the Canberra and were staying in the same boarding house as we were? We had waved goodbye to them as we left, never thinking we would see them again. Waldy was a doctor and they had decided to try Canada but had little idea where they would settle. They came to Red Deer a few days after we had left for Crimson Lake, liked the look of it, visited a realtor to ask about housing and he asked them where they had come from. When Gill said Australia, George Francis (for that was the realtor’s name) said `Well that’s strange, I just sold a house to a family from Australia, their name was Carr and they’re camping out at Crimson Lake.’

As we played on the beach one sunny afternoon a cream station wagon stopped in the carpark and the Kanachowski family jumped out. What a joyous reunion that was. Difficult to believe that we would both travel all that distance and yet end up in the same place. They bought a house in Red Deer too, Waldy set up a general practice in Red Deer, their children attended the same school as our children and became good friends and Gill and I supported each other in many ways during that strange and exciting first year. They stayed for only one year in Red Deer and then moved to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island but we stayed in Red Deer for nearly 20 years and it became our beloved home.