Day 9
We’ve never been on board a ship for this long. Normally we board in New York and the crossing takes 6 days, Sunday late afternoon to the following Sunday morning, quite early in Southampton. I’m actually finding myself more relaxed, not bored at all, not tired of being on a ship. I think this is the key to being on the Queen Mary 2: not only is it a reminder of bygone days with its quiet, sometimes formal, mien but also it is a reminder of when life moved so much more slowly. Yes, you can be busy onboard if you want—not only are their lectures, and musical presentations, but there are also exercise classes, dance classes, watercolor classes, even flower arranging (you would love it Jean.) But you can also just simply sit and read, walk slowly down the decks—in these rough seas, walking slowly is de rigueur actually—watch the waves….
Last night we sat in the Carinthia Lounge on Deck 7, watching the sun set over the water and listening to music from the 1970s and 1980s, played by a jazzy quintet. It was cold out on deck but the view was beautiful.
A propos of doing more “thinking” rather than “doing,” I’ve been thinking about my family legacy of crossing the ocean in liners. First, my maternal grandfather, Harold Torrance. After he returned from the Boer War in South Africa, he signed on as an assistant steward on the Empress of Britain in Liverpool in 1907. He sailed across the Atlantic (bless Ancestry’s digitized documents!) a few times before he “deserted the ship” (according to White Star records) in Quebec City in November of the same year and obtained a job with Grand Trunk Railway.
Meanwhile my maternal grandmother, Mary Cate Reilly, had emigrated from Ireland to Quebec City around 1906. Not sure what ship she came over on, there are too many Mary/Catherine Reillys to wade through. We think she was sponsored by either a relative or by an emigrant from her mother’s native Fermanagh (which is the county five miles up the road from the county were Grandma was born, Cavan,) Frank Gunn, who had come to Canada in the late 1800s and done well as a ship’s chandler. He sponsored several Irish from Fermanagh. I first learned about him when I saw he had given my grandmother away at her wedding in 1910 in Quebec City and then I researched about him through Ancestry documents and writing to some Quebec City sources.
Grandma and Grandpa Torrance met and married in Quebec City and in the next year or so, Grandpa transferred to Grand Trunk’s office in Joliette, Quebec, where their first child, my mother Mary Josephine Victoria Hermina (yep, quite the name!) was born May 23, 1912. Sadly, within a few days after, Grandma’s father, my great grandfather John Reilly, died in Belturbet, County Cavan. I don’t know when Grandma would have received the news but, barely a month later Grandma and infant Mary Josephine were on a ship back to Ireland. Exactly what motivated her, and how she felt returning to Ireland after four years, is unknown. Grandma never kept a journal that we know of, nor did she keep any family letters. So I am guessing that she went back in part to comfort her mother, to show her how well she had done, and, ultimately to bring back one of the siblings that were at that time still living in the rather small house in Belturbet.
Grandma stayed from end June until beginning November 1912 in Ireland, visiting her family in Belturbet and sailed back to Canada, bringing her youngest sister, Eleanor, ‘Nellie’, back with her. Auntie Nellie lived with my grandparents in Joliette and my mother’s sister, Eileen Adele, was born in Joliette in 1914. A few years after Eileen was born, the family moved to Toronto and Auntie Nellie married a work colleague of Grandpa’s, Thorvald, ‘Tom’, Beck in 1921. Eventually the family, along with Auntie Nellie and Uncle Tom, moved again, to Montreal, where they remained for the rest of their lives.
Grandma Kay didn’t sail across the Atlantic again until 1957 when she sailed to England to visit her other surviving sister, Anne, who had moved from Ireland to England. I remember going to the port to see Grandma off; there’s a photo of us all on deck, Grandma looking happy and excited. Grandpa had died by then, in 1955. I don’t think he ever sailed again—at least not across the Atlantic—although based on a photo I have of him standing on boarding steps, I believe he flew to New York City once. I don’t know what ship she sailed out from Montreal on but I know she came back on Cunard’s Carinthia. (And we were sitting in the Carinthian Lounge last night looking out at the Atlantic.) I don’t think Grandma’s journey was that glamorous, from the way that the ship’s accommodations were described. She sailed Tourist Class, which she meant she shared bathroom facilities and the room had as many as four ladies in it; two in upper bunks. I can’t see Grandma being in an upper bunk, especially as she would have been 72 years old! Anyway, here’s a description of the Carinthia and her accommodations: http://www.liverpoolships.org/carinthia_cunard_line.html
A footnote here: I had no knowledge of Anne or Anne’s family until I began to do family research some twenty years ago. At first records were few and it took me months to even discover where Grandma had come from. Writing to the parish priest in Belturbet drew a blank; any descendants had moved and their whereabouts were unknown. However, with the advent of Ancestry DNA, I connected with one of Anne’s descendants, a great granddaughter, and that led to my finding out all about Anne and her descendants. I was especially thrilled to know that the youngest of Anne’s daughters was still alive and last September I was finally able to meet her in London. For the second time, actually: I had met Hilda when I was a little girl and she had briefly visited “Aunt Kate” in Montreal. But again, Grandma hadn’t kept any correspondence so although there were photographs of Hilda’s visit, we (my cousin and I) had forgotten just who Hilda was in relation to us. Sadly, little is known of Grandma’s uncles, the families didn’t keep in touch or, if they did, their correspondence has been lost. Still, I will be visiting Hilda again, as well as one of Anne’s granddaughters on this trip; how surprised would Grandma and Auntie Nellie be although relieved that none of us know those secrets they wanted to keep hidden by destroying all of their correspondence. We only know the facts, which is what they would have wanted.
My father’s parents, Donald and Annie Campbell, emigrated from Dundee, Scotland. Donald came to Montreal in 1903 and found a job as a ship’s carpenter. He wrote to his sweetheart in Dundee, my grandmother, Annie Young Wighton, proposing marriage. She sailed over and they were married in Montreal in 1907. Ironically Annie’s father had come over to Montreal almost at the same time although her mother never did.
Annie’s father, my great grandfather David Wighton, died in Montreal in April of 1919. And a few months later, despite being pregnant, my grandmother decided to sail back to Scotland, taking my father with her but leaving my grandfather behind. Why? According to my father, Grandma was homesick and wanted to see her mother and she intended on moving back to Scotland permanently. That homesickness must have been pretty strong to endure a ship’s crossing, pregnant and seasick, a year after WW1 ended. Dad remembered Grandma being terribly seasick and, to his delight, that enabled him to explore all over the ship, being looked after by the sailors. They landed in Liverpool. Dad remembered the port being full of soldiers whoj were finally being demobbed. He told me about one kind soldier who, seeing Grandma struggling in her long skirts with my rambunctious father and her cases, led her to a table in a coffeehouse, sat her down and helped her arrange herself for the train trip to Dundee. What a journey that must have been?
My aunt Phyllis was born in October 1919 in Dundee. In June 1920, Dad and Grandma and the baby returned to Montreal. Here is where my Dad’s memory and actual documents diverge. My Dad always said that his father left his job, left their little house in Montreal and came to Scotland only to be told by my grandmother, “I’m fed up with Scotland, I want to go back to Montreal.” And they all sailed back together. I think Dad always held a bit of a grudge against Grandma about that. To be sure, for as long as I knew him, Dad never did anything in a hurry and and the only “emotional” decision I ever knew him to make was to move from Montreal to Ottawa because he was fed up with the Quebec language laws. (“If you bury me in Quebec,” he warned me, “I will haunt you all your days.”)
But the reality of that trip to Scotland and back is that, according to the ship’s passenger list, Grandma returned from Scotland alone and I have yet to find any clues that my grandfather ever came back to Scotland. Nor did Grandma. Once back in Montreal, the farthest she ever traveled was to New Jersey to visit Grandpa’s brother.
My parents didn’t travel very far together either. They motored to New York on their honeymoon. As a family, we took several car trips to Ontario, to New Hampshire, as far as Washington DC. Mom flew in an airplane once and declared that it was too frightening. I think we took a boat trip on the Saguenay River out of Quebec City once. Mom was not a good traveler. After she died, and my sister had moved to the US, Dad started traveling a bit more. He and I flew to New York to visit my sister, then to Denver after she moved there. With my stepmother Margaret, Dad took a Caribbean cruise. Visited Margaret’s son who had moved out to Kamloops, BC.
I became the traveler in the family. And now as I sit at a table on the Queen Mary 2, staring out at the whitecaps, I feel in a way that I have come full circle from where my grandmothers had started out. The difference is that I want to leave a chronicle for my family, for anyone who might want to read this so that they can see how threads continue to weave stories, family stories, universal stories. And perhaps to explain why things touch us emotionally—the DNA is, after all, still within us.
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