Renewing my Canadian Roots

This week’s piece is a mixture of serious and not-so-much. I was working on something for the local newspaper, which for some reason sees fit to print my articles – personal perspectives and something topical from the news.  My submission this week is titled, “O, Canada”.  It included bits of Canadian history – my mother was Canadian, and a lament about the rapidly deteriorating relationship between the US and Canada.  If you haven’t been keeping up, Canada has decided to go ahead with its federal election in April, despite its designation as our “51^st state” by Donald Trump, who calls the Canadian Prime Minister, “Governor.”  That designation seems to be going over well, almost as successful as the “Gulf of America”.  

When writing it, though, I went back in my mother’s family.  My grandfather, about whom I’ve written before, was born and brought up in upstate New York, but moved to central Canada – to Winnipeg, Manitoba because his doctor felt that the prairie climate would be better for his asthma.  It was there that he met my grandmother, and thus begins my Canadian connection.  

My great-grandparents, my grandmother’s parents, met in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, where my great grandfather, was a candy maker by trade. He learned his craft at Ganong Brothers, a well-known chocolatier that still operates there and is still family-owned.  At some point, he and my great-grandmother, moved to Winnipeg with their two children – son, William and daughter, Jessie.  In one of those interesting twists of fate, when my grandmother, brought up an Anglican, upon announcing that she was to marry my grandfather, an Irish Catholic, her mother disapproved, telling her “Never to darken my door again.”  In later life, after my great-grandfather died, she moved in and lived with them.  My grandparents must have been infinitely forgiving. There were a number of “Granny Finkhill” stories from my mother’s childhood, and not many of them were happy.  I saw one photo of her years ago, and she looked like she’d just had a sip of vinegar. Disapproval seems to have been her “default setting”, and the old girl was a real piece of work. One that I still find amusing is the Granny insisted her husband, with the surname “Finkhill”, wasn’t Jewish.  According to her, “Finkhill” was English, relying on the spelling as proof.  My great-grandfather as described had physical features that would strongly suggest otherwise.  A few years ago, for fun, I had my DNA tested, and it came back with a small “middle eastern” presence, so just maybe Morris Finkhill was indeed a descendent of Israel. According to my mother, my grandmother, Jessie, could not have been a bigger contrast.  She was, by all reports, a gentle and elegant soul, someone able to put up with my grandfather’s boisterous personality and penchant for pranks. Sadly, she suffered from a heart condition, and died at 61, so we never knew her. Some time ago, I wrote about my grandfather, Maurice (Moe) Doyle.  I never knew him either, because he died about six months before I was born, but stories about him are the stuff of family legend.  Should you wish to go back through these writings, you’ll find a piece about him, and, I hope, enjoy it. Modest business success allowed him to buy a small, 9-hole golf course on Lake Winnipeg, and the family summered there. Rumor has it that, before he got a tractor, he used his DeSoto to mow the fairways.  He sold the car, and the new owner got wind of it and came back to ask if it was true.  “Don’t believe a word of it.” Replied my grandfather. The golf course is still there – in fact bigger and better than ever as it was expanded by my uncle, who was for a period a renowned golfer. My Uncle Jim inherited my grandfather’s spirit and humor.  There’s a story that, one night in the clubhouse after a fair bit of liquor had been consumed, a comment was made that Jimmy Doyle, as he’d played the course so many times, could “play the first hole in the dark”.  A wager was made, and off went the inebriated crowd to see if it was true.  Uncle Jim hit his drive off into the darkness, and they proceeded down the first fairway with flashlights.  There was the ball in the middle of the fairway.  His second shot went off too, and great. Another fairway shot.  So on and so on.  Miraculously, there was his ball on the green not far from the cup.  A par, and a general celebration continued back at the clubhouse.  No doubt money changed hands, and it wasn’t until much later that Uncle Jim admitted that he and a crony or two had set it up ahead.  One of his buddies went out and strategically placed all the balls on fairway and on the green.  The biggest challenge, he relayed, was that he had to hit his actual shots well out of the way so those balls wouldn’t be found. His children, my cousins, still run the course, to the best of my knowledge.  We’ve rather lost touch with that branch of the family.  My mother was one of five siblings, so we have cousins from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, and several still in Winnipeg. Through emails and the occasional phone calls, I’m able to stay in touch with several of them, children of mother’s sisters. 

My mother and father met during World War II.  My father was an American Army officer, stationed in St. John, Newfoundland.  My mother was stationed there too, a nurse serving in the Royal Canadian Navy.  After the war, they married and settled in Boston.  My father was an electrical engineer, while my mother continued her nursing career until my older brother was born.  We were introduced to Winnipeg, and to the golf course at Sandy Hook as children, spending the summer there in 1964.  We’ve returned a couple of times in adulthood, and cherish that Canadian connection.  Both my sister and I went to university in Canada – she to Acadia University in Nova Scotia, and I to Queen’s University in Ontario, so we both have strong links to our northern neighbor.  

Looking at old photographs, I’m reminded about our family.  My grandfather’s home in Ilion, New York, where he grew up with two sisters and two brothers. My mother mentioned a trip there to visit “Granny Doyle”, who told the children stories of the “wee folk”, as she called them. It seems she believed them to be true, and in the process, scared the dickens out of the children. In later years, my great-aunt Rozella, my grandfather’s sister, who was my godmother, told the story of her younger brother, the original Jim Doyle, who lived with her in Granny Doyle’s house.  He had a business, operating jukeboxes placed in bars and pubs in and around Ilion and Herkimer in central New York.  Each evening, he’d go around to empty the cashboxes, and usually had a “nightcap” with the owners or bartenders.  One snowy evening, he came home and got his car stuck in the driveway. I should point out that the house sat up on steep bluff.  Jim kept a bag of sand in the trunk for just such an eventuality.  A little tipsy, he got out, opened the trunk, and as was told later by Rozella, he threw some sand under the left rear wheel.  Then, he got another shovelful for the right side, looked up and the car was gone.  It had rolled down and over the edge of the bluff. So, only a little puzzled, he went into the house and went to bed.  Aunt Rozella, watching from the living room window, saw the whole thing. As she reported it, the car went over the edge, its headlights pointing straight up, looking like something at an airport.  She called a tow truck and had the car hauled up and put in the driveway.  Jim never mentioned it, never wondered what had happened or questioned how the car got back to the driveway the next morning.  He went on as if nothing had happened. That was one of Rozella’s favorite stories.  When I was young, we traveled up along the Mohawk River, up through the Ilion Gorge to the four corners, where my great-grandfather and his three brothers had their farms.  Doyle’s Corner, it was called. In addition to farming, they were stone masons, working on repairs to the Erie Canal and its offshoots. On to West Winfield, where many family members lived and are buried. I’ve recently been communicating with, and catching up with another branch of the family – my mother’s cousin, Morrie Doyle.  His father was my grandfather Doyle’s youngest brother.  They lived in Indiana, so my mother didn’t have much contact.  Morrie has done extensive ancestry research, so he’s a valuable resource for Doyle lore.  Filling in more blank spaces in our collective history.  The emigration from Ireland to New York, after the potato famine, to find America in the midst of the Civil War.  Lots of personal stories and a colorful cast of characters.

Reading a recent blog, not one of mine, the writer spoke about moving to Canada, and it reminded me of our Canadian roots. Now that Mr. Trump’s statements and treatment of Canada, our long warm relations with Canada are strained and awkward.  Our northern neighbor is imposing its own retaliatory tariffs, as is Mexico, and who can blame them?  I can hear my mother now, in righteous indignation, waving a Maple Leaf and singing, full voice, “O, Canada”.