Sitting in a backstreet in Florence ......... thinking of WLS radio station, Chicago

Florence, 2012

Now if you belong to that generation which was born just after the last world war, who grew up with the sound of Buddy Holly, and the Beatles, and trembled during the Missile Crisis of 1962 I expect Radio Luxemburg will stir memories.

In the absence of a dedicated British pop music radio station this was all there was till the “Pirates” arrived.

Of course it wasn’t perfect, it faded and returned and you had to put up with Horace Bachelor but it was still magic.*

And I was reminded of all that when my friend Susan from Canada told me of how “on clear nights throughout the 1960's, from my upstairs bedroom, close to the Manitoba/Ontario border, I could actually get WLS radio station in Chicago, almost a thousand miles away. They played songs I never heard anywhere else.”

Now my little transistor set bought for twenty-one shillings in Whitechapel hardly compared with Susan’s “purple and gold bakelite radio” but what they offered was something new, exciting and worlds away from our kitchen in Well Hall Road.

On the Highway Canada, 2011

All of which stirred the pot and made me begin to think of many things, but uppermost it was that idea of listening across the open lands of Canada to a radio station in Chicago and not for the first time I pondered on the vastness of Canada.

My cousins who live in Ontario will think nothing of a journey by car which will take them from their home to the small log cabin they built one summer.

It is a distance which if I replicated it here would pretty much take me from Manchester down across Europe to Vienna and would present me with a shed full of different European languages, histories and until recently even currencies.

The gas station, 2011

But for my cousin the journey would all be under a Canadian sun, with English spoken along the way and the sure knowledge that the petrol bought in Ingersol would come out of the same money as the payment for  the burger at the stop over half way and the groceries at the tiny supermarket close to their destination.

And if I push the idea, had my great uncle who was migrated to Canada by the Middlemore Homes acting for the Derby Union taken the Trans Canada Highway from St John’s in Newfoundland to Victoria in British Columbia he would have travelled 4,859 miles.

By comparison if I had continued on from Vienna to Istanbul I would only have clocked 2,108 miles from the suburbs of south Manchester to the Bosporus and the end of Europe.

That for me brings home the sheer size of Canada and of course also its southern neighbour but it also reinforces my fascination for my own Continent which offers tremendous diversity but also a sense of unity.

Rome, 2009

We may speak different languages, and some at least of us still carry our own national currency in our pockets instead of the Euro but there is much we have in common.

Sitting in a backstreet restaurant in Florence or in down town Naples with heaps of history and culture everywhere I am reminded that 2000 years ago my journey would have been one made across one empire with a single currency, and just two official languages and bits of the small town of Manchester would have been replicated in the grand cities of Rome and Byzantium.

Added to which much that followed the fall of the Roman Empire from the Middle Ages through to the Renaissance and the Age Enlightenment owed much to the Romans.

That said while sitting at that tiny restaurant in Florence the background music on the small portable CD player veered from a selection by the Three Tenors to that Harry Chapin song with the refrain “I am the morning D.J at W.O.L.D. .......... playing all the hits for you where ever you maybe...”

On the farm, 2011

And that is pretty much  where we came in, leaving me only to share the contrasting images from three of my favourite Italian cities with the stunning photographs of rural Canada by my friend Lori Oschefski and perhaps giving a plug to that endearing radio series on Lake Wobegon by Garrison Keillor "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

Now Lake Wobegon may have been an imaginary town set in the USA but it pretty much sums up what I think a small Canadian town out somewhere in the west of Alberta might be like and as such is miles away from those small Italian cities I know.

Alghero, 2013

The huge open landscape which just seems to go on forever runs counter to the close confines of those towns and cities where at the end of every street there is a piazza and  around every corner an ancient ruin.

That said there are plenty of ugly places where poor planning, low investment and shoddy development have created sink suburbs, dispiriting to live in and unremarkable to the eye.

Not so bits of Alghero which has it all, and may even have its own radio station dedicated to the music of the 60s.

Pictures; Florence 2012, Rome, 2009, and Alghero, Sardinia, 2013 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the Canadian heartlands, 2011, Lori Oschefski

* Horace Cyril Bachelor was as an advertiser on Radio Luxembourg. He advertised a way to win money by predicting the results of football matches, sponsoring programmes on Radio Luxembourg.

When mannequins choose to hide …..

I like Bronwen’s picture.

She told me “It was taken in a well-known shopping street in Montreal!! This store window fascinated me, but we were hurrying along Rue Ste Catherine, a very popular shopping street, as we were searching out the mural to Leonard Cohen in Crescent Street Montreal”.

Well I hope they found Mr. Cohen, and I am rather pleased they passed the mannequins.

Location; Rue Ste Catherine, Montreal, 2022, from the collection of Bronwen Woods

Every place should have a History Laureate ……..

Now, we are all familiar with the idea of a Poet Laureate, so why not one for history?

And here I take my line from the City of Edmonton,  which was “Canada’s first municipality to appoint a Historian Laureate…… who ….. is the City’s official ambassador on historical matters and promotes the history of the city and its citizens by documenting, researching, interpreting and speaking about the people, places and events that have created Edmonton's distinctive heritage and character.”*

The post lasts for two years, is a paid position, and the “post holder undertakes to, maintain a continued dialogue with community through social media platforms, and the Edmonton Historical Board and the Edmonton Heritage Council”.

Along with producing  at least one written document, or other documentation, which can be audio or video and two public presentations for specific events or occasions as agreed upon in each year of the two-year term.

And “develop a work plan, writing activities and public presentations in consultation with an advisory committee established by the Edmonton Historical Board and the Edmonton Heritage Council”.

I came across it by pure chance yesterday with the announcement on Monday of the 7th Historian Laureate, who is Amber Violet Paquette.  

She is the city’s first historian laureate of Indigenous decent which according to one press account promises a new direction for the projects, because after  “kicking off with a couple of relatively traditional historians, subsequent appointees have employed a wider variety of approaches — from Marlena Wyman’s sketches of Edmonton architecture to Chris Chang-Yen Philips’s podcasts on bits of local history, to Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail’s work on the jagged past of the Charles Camsell Hospital.

Two of the last three appointees have been in their 20s, while a lot of the recent work has gone beyond civic boosterism into history that is complex and uncomfortable”.**

And if you want to learn more I suggest you follow the links to the City Council’s page and the newspaper article devoted to Amber Violet Paquette.

Of course here in Manchester there are a plethora of organizations which in their different ways do much the same work, of which the charity Manchester Histories is one I have been involved in. 

It “delivers projects, events and activities with communities that reveal, share and celebrate Greater Manchester's diverse histories and heritage. 

We also host Manchester Histories Festival.

Manchester Histories is a growing and dynamic charity that works collaboratively with people, organisations, and partners to reveal, share and celebrate Greater Manchester's diverse Histories and Heritage.

Manchester Histories works throughout the year delivering projects, training, exhibitions, events, networks and more with communities to recognise, explore and value histories”***

And that pretty much is that, leaving me just to say I look forward to reading about how Ms. Paquette, develops the story of the indigenous people of Alberta, and the links with modern day Edmonton.

But I couldn’t close without mentioning The Neon Sign Museum, which is the first of its kind in Canada, and features a collection of functional historic signs that tell a story about Edmonton’s neon past. 

The City of Edmonton has collected 20 neon signs, all of which have been restored and installed on the east wall of the TELUS building and the south wall of the Mercer Warehouse building on 104 Street and 104 Avenue, Edmonton.****

And before anyone points out that there are no pictures of Ms. Paquette, or the indigenous peoples of Alberta, that is simply because I have yet to acquire permission to include them.

But I have made requests, so as they say watch this space.

Pictures, the Canadian heartlands, 2011, Lori Oschefski, statue of Emmeline Pankhurst, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simcock, Neon Museum, courtesy of Edmonton City Council, Manchester Histories, courtesy of Manchester Histories, the Albert Memorial, 2019 and Manchester History Festival, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Role of the Historian Laureate, Edmonton City Council,6 https://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/edmonton_archives/historian-laureate.aspx

** Edmonton's historian laureate program a success story too few know about, Keith Gerein, Edmonton Journal, May 23, 2020, https://edmontonjournal.com/news/local-news/keith-gerein-edmontons-historian-laureate-program-a-success-story-too-few-know-about/

***Manchester Histories, https://manchesterhistories.co.uk/aboutus/default.aspx

**** The Neon Museum, https://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/edmonton_archives/neon-sign-museum.aspx

Pizza, pesto and a trip up country ........... getting closer to my Canadian history

Until recently I had no idea just how deeply my family’s past was linked to Canada.

Our connections with Germany and Italy were pretty straightforward but the Canadian side rested on a few stories of my great aunt Dolly who crossed the Atlantic in 1925.

Of course if I had thought hard enough it would have been obvious that a fair few of the family would have chanced their arm and started a new life on the other side of the world.

After all with an empire upon which the sun never set there were plenty of open spaces.*

I knew about Uncle Charles who had gone out to East Africa and later India in the 1930s and pretty much never came back but was totally unprepared for the rest.

These included the brother of our great grandfather who had slipped off to New Zealand before settling in Australia the relative who had plied the high seas as a ships engineer and great grandfather Montague who in the course of serving in the old Queen’s army had seen the sun rise in the West Indies, idled his spare time in Gibraltar and spent three years in South Arica.

All of which could be the story of many British families but what I never expected was the great uncle migrated to Canada in the spring of 1914 by the Derby Poor Law Guardians because my great grandmother “was incapable of caring” for him and his siblings which included my granddad and great aunt Dolly.

Once established he persuaded Dolly to join him which she did but in her own words not “fancying the open wilderness of the far west” she settled in Ontario got married and that is how we now have an extensive Canadian family who in turn can draw on French and British settlers from the late 18th century along with a Mr and Mrs Pember who set out from Salford in the 1840s and never looked back.

And in the winter of 2015our Saul wass there in Ontario,.

He did the tourist bit of visiting New York, Memphis and Texas before making the 36 hour bus journey north from New Orleans to Ontario crossing the border at 6 am on a cold Saturday morning and has spent the last week with our cousins.

During that week he met more of the family, saw some stunning countryside and in return dished up homemade pizza and pesto and in the process brought all of us a lot closer.

All of which could be a prelude to a shed load of family stories but instead it will just be a thank you to Chris and Andrea and their two sons for making him so welcome and to our  Jac who sent me the first picture of them all together.

Andrea has more photographs ready to send but for now that’s it.



Pictures; a meal and the landscape of Ontario from the collection of Saul Simpson

*Possibly according to one American journalist because God didn’t trust the British and so wanted to always be able to see what we were doing.

Reflecting on the legacy of BHC a month and a bit after Thanksgiving

No one should ever underestimate the impact of the policy of migrating young people to Canada, Australia and other parts of the old empire.

There were success stories as well as harrowing tales of poor treatment and blighted lives.

Signing off form Middlemore, 1914

And as BHC moves to becoming a major area of serious historical study the legitimacy of the policy will become a matter of increasing interpretation and debate.

In the case of my great uncle who had a troubled time after arriving in Canada I doubt that his migration contributed to his wild challenging behaviour.

Canada, 2015

Sadly that was already settled upon him after years in care along with his siblings and the knowledge that his mother had been deemed “unfit to have control.”*

Added to which the vague stories of his father who separated from our great grandmother just five years after he was born will have added to his sense of displacement.

Now all of this I have visited already but as the Thanksgiving festival has all but been forgotten and the run up to Christmas takes over the legacy of my great uncle is exercising my thoughts again and in particular our own family links to Canada.

Great aunt Dolly and family circa 1950s

It is a complicated story because while we lose him sometime after 1925 his insistence that his sister should follow him over in 1925 led to an extended family which we have discovered.

Great Aunt Dolly went over on an Empire Scheme, found the love of her life, settled down and brought up a large family and even returned to Derby where she was born in 1968.

But until recently she was just a name until I found the letters she sent home to my sisters who in the 1970s were “doing” our family history and there was that reference to great uncle Roger and Canada, and the rest as they say became the story of yet one more BHC descendant engaged on a journey of discovery.

Renewing the links, Saul in Ontario, 2015

In the process I become an exponent of BHC history, made some fine friends across Canada and of course discovered my family.

And by one of those wonderful twists has meant that our Saul who is currently in southern Ontario renewed those family links a full century after great uncle Roger left Derby for Canada.  He spent a wonderful week with them and will look back on his three months in North America as a highlight of his stay.

All of which I wrote about recently so instead I shall reflect on my growing number of Canadian friends.

It  began with a chance exchange of emails with Lorri who like me was making sense of the idea that a loved one would have been sent at an early age to Canada in pursuit of a policy to solve the social problems on this side of the Atlantic.

And then as the circle of contacts widened I benefited from a network of support which offered help and advice, led on to the sharing of knowledge and blossomed into real friendships.

So it’s perhaps an odd way of looking at BHC but then as I often say history is messy and it takes you to places you never expected.

Pictures; from the family collections of Andrew Simpson, Jacquie Pember- Barnum and Andrea Pember

*Admission records Derby Workhouse, 1913

Canada votes today

I have been following the Canadian General Election partly because a big chunk of our family live in Ontario and I have friends across the country but also because a long time ago I signed up to one of the political parties.

Tom Mulcair NDP

Not that any money swapped hands.

I get updates on their progress and policies and that in turn allows me to get a sense of what is going on.

And today Canadians are voting.

Not that I have a vote and given that it would be a bit presumptuous to talk about the campaign and issues from this side of the Atlantic I shall just reflect how yet again  the election conveys the size of Canada.

So according to Decision Canada, "voting hours across Canada (all times local): are 
Newfoundland Time: 8:30 a.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Atlantic Time: 8:30 a.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Eastern Time: 9:30 a.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Central Time*: 8:30 a.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Mountain Time*: 7:30 a.m. – 7:30 p.m.
Pacific Time: 7 a.m. – 7 p.m.

Justin Trudeau Liberal

Saskatchewan is a special case, as most of the province doesn’t observe daylight saving time. So even though the province is geographically in the Mountain Time Zone, most of the province observes Central Standard Time all year round. All voters need to remember is that voting hours for this election in Saskatchewan are from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.”

If your electoral district spans more than one time zone, Elections Canada decides one local time for voting throughout the district.
The electoral districts spanning more than one time zone are:
Labrador
Gaspésie–Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine
Kenora
Thunder Bay–Rainy River
Kootenay–Columbia
Nunavut*

Stephen Harper Conservative

And that I think pretty much brings home to me just how vast the place is.

*Decision Canada, Global News, http://globalnews.ca/news/2284021/prime-minister-trudeau-ipsos-poll-suggests-liberal-win-but-margin-of-victory-hinges-on-turnout/

Pictures; Canadian federal election, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_federal_election,_2015

Food parcels from the New World and thoughts on family far away

Revisiting an old story

We got a food parcel today from Canada.

"a package of maple products from here in southwestern Ontario"

Along with a recipe book my cousin had included some typical products which “are characteristically Canadian and little harder to come across in England.”

So here was the tin of maple syrup, Maple Ice Wine Sauce, a packet of Maple tea and a collection of maple sweets and chocolate covered raisins.

And of course within minutes of opening the package I tried the sweets opened the wine sauce and pondered on making a maple tea.

It was a smashing idea made all the better for being unexpected, and it got me thinking about food from abroad and how such parcels bring you closer together with family far away.

Back when families were crossing the Atlantic or taking that even longer journey to new lives in Australia and New Zealand the arrival of parcels must have been a powerful link to all that they had left behind.

One group of letters I came across from a family who left Manchester for Kansas in the 1880s constantly refer to news from home, commenting on the political fortunes of Gladstone and the Liberal Party, the merits of Home Rule and the excitement of the arrival of a piano shipped via Liverpool which was none the worse for the long sea voyage.

The Harland family in 1913 in Canada

In the same way I am fascinated by our recent food parcel particularly because they have come direct from Canada.

These are not Canadian goods repackaged in some warehouse north of Slough but just as they came off the store shelf in Ingersol Ontario.

And I get the same mix of feelings when we have been visiting family in Italy and come home with the odd item.

So I rather think there are some stories here about food, migration and how we keep close to our families.

Now people travelled more often and much further in the 19th century than we are told in those school history books.

Even in the early 19th century there is evidence that some people were regularly travelling back and forth between Britain and bits of the Empire.

That said for most who undertook the trip to Canada, or Australia it was for keeps, a variation of that old theme “you make your bed and you lie in it” so anything that reminded them of home must have been fallen on eagerly cherished and then saved.

Much as I shall savour our food parcel.

Picture; parcel from Canada, Andrew Simpson courtesy of Chris, Andrea, Josh and Justin, 2014 and the Harland Family in Canada in 1913 from the collection of Jean Gammons