Back to Canada, 1957

We spent the early part of 1957 traveling around England, visiting family and friends. That's after we sold the house and put our furniture, books, and almost everything else in storage. By the time we had seen everyone we ever knew, the ship was ready to leave from Liverpool.

(Yes, I've been to Liverpool. No, I didn't see the Beatles.)

We left on June 15, 1957, and arrived in Quebec city on the 21st. We had to stay there for two weeks, waiting for our trailer to come on another ship. Why my parents decided to bring a trailer from England, I'll never know. We had two little weekend trailers (called caravans, there) that we kept in North Wales and visited whenever we could, and rented out to friends when we couldn't. These were sold, and a larger one purchased with the proceeds. Our main job in Quebec City was to get a car that would tow the thing across Canada to Victoria, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island.

So Dad bought a 1952 Nash. Why? Ignorance, I think. My dad was really never very good at buying cars. The darn thing could barely drag itself over the mountains, let alone the trailer, but I'm getting ahead of the story. With trailer attached, the intrepid travelers set out for British Columbia. We stopped off in Cornwall, Ontario, to visit with the folks I'd met two summers before, and then we were off to the wild blue sunset. But, when sunset came around, we had to stop. English trailers did not have the lights that Canadian and American laws required, so we could only be on the road in daylight.

What a trip it was! We soon discovered that the roads were better in the US, so we hit every state that touches the Canadian border...at least those west of Lake Superior. There were many times, in the mountains, when we had to stop and wait for the Nash to cool down. Mom kept a couple of stout rocks in the car, and would jump out and put them behind the wheels of the trailer so that we wouldn't roll back down. We got to Montana in August, flat broke. So, back north into Canada, and to work at Waterton Lakes, which is the Canadian extension of Glacier Lakes National Park. That's where the bear/meat locker/wellies story happened. We were still there when school started, so I went off to third grade in a little two-room school. I was somewhat bored with the third grade work, as we had already covered all that in England, so the teacher moved my desk over to the fourth grade row, and Bob's yer uncle! I was 8 years old, and in Grade 4.

When all the post-season work at the hotel was done, it was time to move on over the Rockies and across British Columbia, over the Coast Range to Vancouver. We visited there for a while with some people we had met on the ship from England, and then it was onto the ferry, and off in Nanaimo; down the Island Highway toward Victoria.

By the time we got to Duncan, it was almost dark, so we pulled into a rather unprepossessing trailer park. Once we got the trailer situated, Mom stepped out the door of it into a hole in the ground and broke every blood vessel in her foot. Sprained her ankle as well, but her whole foot turned this truly awesome purple. We had to stay for a while, as she couldn't walk. Money ran out again. Dad got a job picking holly at minimum wage, just to tide us over.

Yeah, right.

We lived in the environs of Duncan for three years.