George James Marshall   (01 May 1885 – 18 Apr 1961)

and

Catherine Mary Walsh   (10 May 1896 – 8 Nov 1960)

 

 

Narrative by George James Marshall, Jr.  (son)

Research by George James Marshall, Jr. and Patricia Balkcom (granddaughter)

 

     You will understand that this being about my father, that it will be better told and more personal if written in the 1st person. Some of this recitation is factually based, especially father's World War 1 service, but most will be a recall of what he and my mother said to me and what my sisters and brother said father said to them.

     There is some inconsequential uncertainty about the place of my father's birth, it being either Burin or St. John’s on May 15th, 1885. The uncertainty arises because of the locale of his baptism on June 24th, of the same year. Now this was 37 days after his birth, a most unusual event in that the practice, at least in the Roman Catholic Church, was to have children baptized as soon after birth as possible. I presume this religious practice recognized infant mortality. When father enlisted in 1917, he stated that St. John’s was his place of birth and we shall have to accept this. By way of some explanation, I can recall my mother saying that Richard George (his father) had been a lighthouse keeper at Cape Race, the most south-easterly point on the coast of Newfoundland, but Richard died tending the lighthouse at Dodding Head, Burin which was not built until the late 1880's. Could it be that he had spent some time “in training” so to speak at Cape Race in 1884/85?   Was it at the end of this period that my father was born in consequence of which his parents decided to take him to Burin to be baptized while Richard awaited the taking up of his duties at Dodding Head?

     During his youth in Burin, the Christian Brothers apparently operated school there that father attended.  He told me that he had received an elementary eduation to senior fourth, a grade eight equivalent which I should think was advanced education for the time. Remember that as a young man father had the advantage of Richard (his father) and John’s (his grandfather) earlier prosperity as the immediate pre-turn of the century years were a time of some prosperity in Newfoundland, which continued until the commencement of World War 1.

     Of his first 20 years in Burin father told me just a little. One of his tales was about his experiences on a schooner belonging to a Mr. Vigus in which he sailed to Oporto in Portugal, apparently a favourite destination for Newfoundland fisherman. Upon arrival it was the custom to hire local stevedores to help with the unloading who were paid in local currency at the end of each day's work. They received their money on deck but were met at the end of the gangplank by a wife on one side to whom they gave one-third of the day's earnings and the local priest on the other side to whom they also gave one-third. The poor working man then proceeded to the local cantina where he likely spent the one-third that he had left. I think that this may have turned my father against the clergy, but not against the church, as I think he recognized the separation. I believe he maintained this anti-clerical feeling almost to his death, despite his Catholic upbringing and Christian Brother education.

     He must have taken one other voyage to the same area, this time also going to Spain, to a port on the Mediterranean as they had to register their departure with the British authorities at the Port of Gibraltar. I guess both the captain and the mate had spent some time with the stevedores upon completing the unloading and were unable to properly handle the vessel, its departure to the Atlantic being refused by the naval authorities.  On what credentials I don’t know, but father had to take it upon himself to lock up the officers before they could sail on. Presumably later on he released them for I do not think he could have taken charge of the vessel on the high seas. In any event it was as well that he did, because he told of a heavy gale coming up which, as I recall his saying, "blew them well south of the Azores". They were six weeks late arriving in Burin pretty well tattered and given up for lost by wives and families as other vessels were known to have been lost in the same storm. The Dodding Head lighthouse must have been a welcome sight.

    About 1905/6, father apparently decided that life in Burin was too tame for him and decided to set out to see the world. It was on the occasion of my first trip home from Winnipeg in 1960 (Sheila and I lived in Winnipeg from 1958/61) that he told me that he had gone there in 1905 to work the grain harvest in the Selkirk, Manitoba area. The federal government had offered free train fare for those who wished to take advantage of the work and for a 20 year old from the eastern sea coast, it must have been quite a change. En route to Winnipeg at Kenora, the train was taken over by a gang of robbers who decided to stay on to Winnipeg thinking to escape in the larger city. In some manner the authorities were advised and upon entering the Transcona yards just east of the city, the R.C.M.P assisted by the militia threw a cordon around the train with a snow fence and the culprits were apprehended. When we spoke about North Main Street in Winnipeg, father told me that on more than one occasion he had frequented what today would amount to a “drive-in” bar. But in those days it was really a "ride-in" bar, wherein one rode in the front door, threw a nickel on the bar, guzzled down the shot and rode out the back without ever getting off your horse.  The wild West!!

     The next recollection I have of my father is his telling me that about 1907-08 as did many other Newfoundlanders, he decided to move to New England to seek his way in life. By what means I am not sure but he found himself working on a large farm for the "Battle" family as a hired hand and eventually he told me, as senior hired man. The Battles lived just outside of Tewkesbury Centre which is not far from Boston, but perhaps closer to Lowell, Massachusetts. The Battles had apparently farmed this large estate for many years and were quite wealthy people, the children of Mr. Battle not having been only successful farmers, but also owned a footwear manufacturing enterprise which had had Military contracts since Civil War times. This was told to me by Anna Battle whom I visited with my mother and father in 1952. She was an elderly lady, it having been her husband, Phillip, for whom my father had worked, for some years, perhaps 7 or 8, as father enlisted in the Canadian Army at Halifax in 1914. My sisters will remember that as Christmas approached in early December, our parents always looked for that first greeting card which came from the Battles, always the largest and most beautiful. The house they lived in was very large and seemed to me then to be very New Englandish. Sheila and I went back to see it in the early 1980's and it had fallen on hard times, Anna by then having died, her husband having pre-deceased her in the 1940's. I always took it as a sign of the affection the Battles had for father that they had kept up the correspondence over the intervening 25 years, not to mention the affectionate welcome we all received from the very lovely Anna Battle in 1952.

    Father must also have spent some time in Worcester with his brother John. One of the landmarks in Worcester is Holy Cross College the chapel of which cannot be missed in the distance because of the large spire which father told me he and his brother John had gilded some time in the pre-World War 1 years. I asked John about this in 1955 and he confirmed what father had told me. They were apparently working as “steeplejacks" for a local contractor and were probably the only ones with enough nerve to work on this very high steeple. If you are ever in Worcester, be sure to stop and admire their work and give John and George a thought.

    When we stayed in Lowell, in an old hotel that Anna Battle soon had us vacate, Father went to see an old friend from his days in Tewkesbury Centre when he was in his 20's and single. His friend was named “Cy" and he ran a tack shop somewhere in Lowell. I'm afraid father was quite upset at the visit as Cy had forgotten him.  Both would have been in their late 60's at the time. I do believe father thought that all would still be as he had left it almost 40 years before, as he thought the hotel we were in was the best in town. It wasn’t. This incident reminds me of the story of Morris West's book, “You Can Never Go Home Again”.

    From documents received from the Public Archives of Canada, we have a fair record of father’s wartime experiences. Evidently he was in the Royal Canadian Reserves from about the start of war in 1914, as when he enlisted to go overseas in 1917, he gave his sister Isabelle as his next of kin and her Halifax address as his. I presume he had been stationed in Halifax for that 3 year period. In his April 1917 attestation, father makes a couple of unusual comments. Assigned to No. 10, Halifax Heavy Siege Battery, and given Regimental # 1258144, he said he was a farmer by trade, born in St. John's and a member of the Church of England.  The attestation was to the effect that he was willing to serve overseas, and was then taken on the strength of the Canadian Expeditionary Force on April 20th, 1917. Now while father told me that upon leaving Halifax for Europe, he had a rank of Warrant Officer, a non-commissioned rank, his record indicates he "reverted" to "gunner" on arrival in Glasgow aboard the “Missanabia" on April 8th, 1918.  (Took a whole year to get him there!'). Eight days later they embarked for France. We have a "Casualty Form" which indicates he was wounded on October 18th, 1918 just 23 days before the cessation of hostilities. He told me that his wounds, incurred Patschendale in France, were shrapnel in his left thigh and a whiff of mustard gas and were sufficient to have him hospitalized in England. By way of explanation, the Heavy Siege Artillery were track mounted guns of very large calibre, somewhat like the "Big Berthas" we may have read about. His Statement of Service confirms that he was honourably discharged at Halifax on February 19th, 1919 with the rank of "Gunner", having been awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. At the time of his demobilization, he indicated his intended place of residence was to be the North Side of Burin, Newfoundland, and presumably he returned there in the summer of 1919.

     The next thing we know about him is his marrying my mother, Catherine (Mary Kate) Walsh, in St. John’s in February 1922, and departing at once for Wareman, Saskatchewan. Earlier I had said that he had taken my mother "Out West", perhaps prompted by his earlier 1905 experience. I don’t know. I recall clearly his saying to me that he had gone at the urging of his sister Josephine and her husband William Hunt who had gone earlier in the century, I should think as homesteaders with a grant of land from the Federal Government. You will find Wareman just a few miles north of Saskatoon on Highway #11 to Rosthern and Prince Albert.  I shall comment more on the St. John’s to Wareman journey when I recite memories of my mother, Suffice it to say for now that it must have been an arduous and lengthy journey. And what greeted them when they arrived one can only imagine. Because of a few incidents I shall recite shortly, I believe that they had a "house" of their own with an adjacent barn. Father told me that in July and August when it was wheat harvest time, contract combiners would be engaged to bring in the harvest. At the time it was a combination of horsepower and mechanical devices for shearing and threshing and given the necessity of working with the weather, when the grain was ready, it was a sun -up to sun-down operation. In that latitude in late July the days were from 5 AM  to 10 PM. Mother told me that she had to prepare and serve all the meals for the harvesters working their land  and this meant 5 large meals per day for hungry, hard working men. I do not mean to suggest by "their land" that they owned it as I do not think they did.

    My recollection about the house and barn is that one cold, snowy day in Hamilton when mother was remarking on the weather, father told me by way of reminding her that the weather then was not so bad, about how he almost gotten lost in a blizzard in Saskatchewan and how, had it not been for their horse, he well might not have lived to tell the tale. For some reason he was caught out in a storm that became so fierce he lost all sense of direction on what I guess was bald prairie. He decided to give the horse his head, hoping that by instinct he would take them back home, which he did. Father said mother had to help him off the horse as he was near frozen and could not bend his legs and she had to put him in a hot bath to thaw him out. The horse she had to put in the barn. That's how I knew there was a place for animals.

    One of the more interesting stories he told me was that he had become a Federal Indian agent responsible for a local tribe of Sioux Indians. I presume he did so for the income. I do not know when or for how long but do recall, with a shudder, that he told me he was offered the job on an impromptu basis as his predecessor had been shot dead by the Indians because of the way he had treated them. My oldest sister, Marguerite, was born the first winter they were in Saskatchewan in December, 1922.  The birth is recorded as having taken place in Saskatoon. I am not sure how long they stayed but it was not more than a year or two as Loretta was born in Hamilton, July, 1925. Mother told me on occasion that the life in Western Canada was too hard for her, that she could not get work as a female school teacher and that the very alkaline water was upsetting her system. I would imagine however that it was as much economics and loneliness as anything else. Whether or not Josephine or William Hunt stayed and how they fared I do not know.

    It would be as well to remind you at this time that there was probably a fairly large representation of “Buriners” in Hamilton at the Steel Co. of Canada at this time, not the least of whom was previously mentioned Jack Paul who had achieved a senior position. There was a fair amount of paternalism in vogue at the time and certainly I should think Newfoundlanders stuck together. Seemed a natural thing to do. No doubt my father took advantage of this as he found himself at Stelco in 1923, (dating from his 1948 receipt of his 25 year service recognition) living on Case Street in Hamilton. Can you see Marguerite and Loretta in the "roaring 20's" waltzing along Barton Street as preschoolers? Father must have been a good manager as he had some money to buy the house on Case Street having had all those travel costs in recent years. Some time in the 1929/30 era, they moved to Melrose Ave. where I came along in April, 1931.

    Now by that time the “"Depression” had set in and work at Stelco was lean at best and apparently father lost the house to the Bank. It was thought best that mother, my sisters and I should pack it up and head back to Newfoundland without father at first according to Loretta. This leads us into a phase of my father's life with which I can connect but which also prompts me to remember not to be too wordy as this is about him, not me.

 Recollections about the trip to Newfoundland will be included in those about my mother as they seem to pertain more to her more than to father. However, it would seem that he stayed behind when we all went off to Grandma Walsh's house in Placentia in 1932. We date our trip from the fact that mother was not at all well on the trip as it turned out she was carrying Anne who was born that September in Placentia. We don’t know if father was present for that auspicious event. That he spent some time in Placentia is clear, as we were told when there, that he had built a shed adjacent to Grandma's house and had helped to dig some graves at the Catholic Cemetery. Anne seems to remember that mother told her that father had left Newfoundland before we did to return to Hamilton in early 1934. (We seemed to have spent a lot of time traveling). first to Minnie Ha Ha’s house at the corner of Barnesdale and Beechwood (N-W Corner). A year or so later we moved into 81 Barnesdale which is where we really grew up and where Neil was born as well a later stillborn boy. Father returned to the Steel Co. and his work there became more and more certain as the war years approched and we reaped the modest benefits.

    It was on Barnesdale Ave. that I think I got to know my father as well as I ever really got to know him.  Every son has some clear relationship with his father as did I. As I reflect on it from the vantage point of many years, I firmly believe my relationship with him was one of respect, a recognition of his inherent kindness, his willingness to be helpful wherever he could, all mixed with just a little fear.  Particular memories of that time are of his kindness to my boyhood friends Billy Maclsaac and Kenny Lloyd. I could not have known at the time what kind of person the sum total of his experiences to that point in his life had made him I now wish that we could have had the opportunity to talk more together about his life and mine, but I should imagine that's a wish all of us have about each of our parents. One of the closest moments my father and I had was one hot summer day, sitting on the verandah on Barnesdale Ave., talking about Marguerite's coming wedding I think it was. I would then have been about 14, just old enough to understand but not yet old enough to really understand. Father said to me that raising 5 children had not been an easy task and that seeing Marguerite, going off to be married was both a joy and a sadness. In balance, he said, he was happy about the event because he was certain that despite all the difficulties encountered that he and mother had done a good job raising us all I'm not sure that he looked for a reply from me, but as I recall, I gave him none. I wish I could have assured him he had. As his work, time and funds permitted, we went many places together. He used to take me up the Wentworth Street Incline in the summer to visit a friend who had a small farm, a Mr. Rushton and we would come home with a load of fresh vegetables, walking from Wentworth and the foot of the Mountain past the Beechnut Candy factory to Barnesdale Ave. More than once we went to Hamilton Airport, then just west off Parkdale Ave. to see the planes and I remember once a parachute jump demonstration. We lay on a blanket looking up at those daredevils and those twin-winged flying machines and I thought it was just great. We picnicked annually at DeLaSalle Park in Aldershot and at sometimes at Soper Park in Galt until my sisters thought it was too unsophisticated for them and that seemed to stop.

     Life on Barnesdale Ave. took a bit of a turn at the end of the war in 1946. Not only had Marguerite been married the previous March to Alex Sturrock while he was home on leave from the R.C.AF. but a Steel Co. strike that had been festering throughout the war, broke out with great bitterness.  Many men (and some  women) stayed inside Stelco gates to keep operations underway and they were viewed with great derision by  many of their co-workers. Father was one of those who stayed in, presumably for his own reasons which I  suggest were mainly financial. He was not a Union man, but those staying in, were not only bedded and fed by Stelco but also received a full hourly rate for each 24 hours inside. Father was there the better part of the  almost 90 day duration of the strike. I was always ambivalent about enjoying the benefits of the sacrifices of others.  In December 1948, Father received the customary gold watch for 25 years service which I still have and at some point will leave in the good care of Andrew. I believe some license was taken by Stelco in calculating this length of service. Perhaps it had to do with the war years or perhaps with the strike time.

   Pat remembers going to stay with her grandparents on occasion and "Papa" would wake up very early in the morning, making tea and shredded wheat with brown sugar and warm milk for her. He was kind man who did a lot of the cooking, shopping and cleaning in the house. He loved to take care of his wife, Catherine. In his later years, he developed mild diabetes but remained very active. He would walk several miles each day and Pat remembers his climbing the Wentworth Street steps up the side of Hamilton “mountain” to come and visit.

       Neil, Anne and I lived on Barnesdale until each of us married or found it opportune to leave.  In the late 1950's father retired from Stelco on a modest pension.  At this time a decision was made for mother and father to move to Westdale to live with Alex and Marguerite on Franklin Ave. in a basement apartment that they had established for themselves on what I should think was a mutually beneficial arrangement.  Unfortunately it did not last long as it was while living in this house that he died April 18th, 1961 at age 76 of a sudden heart attack wile sitting in the barber's chair in Westdale.  We often thought that he found it difficult to live without Catherine who had died 6 months earlier of a stroke subsequent to breaking a hip and this contributed to his untimely death.  Father is buried alongside mother in Holy Sepluchre Cemetery, Hamilton.