Living in Montreal with Theresa, Ernst

XXX

· Getting married

Living in Montreal with Theresa, Ernst

Flying lessons

Chapter 1 ADCS MAY 19, 1996

January 31, 1998

This is the beginning of a long story because I’m writing about my life and that’s been long, so far.

(Grandpa Ludgate died of diabetes mellitus in 1935 at age 79.

Grandma Ludgate died of old age at 96, in 1966

Ethel Mary Ludgate Dunlop, my mother, died in 1942 at age 43. They said she had cancer, but there is doubt about that. It sounded better because in those days there wasn’t much in the way of cancer treatments. It had to do with the uterus anyway.

Pius James Dunlop, my father, died of cancer of the esophagus caused by smoking since the First World War. He was 59 in 1958.

Margaret Mary Dunlop McLean, my sister, passed away in 1983 at age 52 of breast cancer.

Pearl Ludgate Tanney, my mother’s eldest sister died of tuberculosis in 1918. She had a two year old son, so she couldn’t have been very old. When I look at the picture of the nine siblings, I could figure it out, because she was the eldest. Her brother had an army uniform on, so that dates that picture.

Mother’s sister, Kay Evans, died at 86 of leukemia, maybe.

Aunt Hazel died of bowel cancer, about 1966. Personally I think it was brought on by too many laxatives.

Most of Mother’s family died when they were in their 80s or 90s.)

(I was born September 19, 1929 in Timmins, Ontario Canada.

When I was growing up, we lived in Timmins, Ontario, which was 500 miles north of Toronto. Now it’s only about 450 because they straightened the road. Timmins is at 48-1/2 parallel of latitude, which is below the 49th which divides Canada and the United States in the west. Dad used to say that many Americans lived farther north than we did. Ontario has lots of towns between Toronto and North Bay, which is half way to Timmins, but north of there, all you see is lots of trees and rocks, mostly trees. It’s great if you like hunting and fishing.

Dad was a mining engineer. He was born and raised near Ottawa, farming country. We asked him how he became a mining engineer and he said that he was an engineer because he was good in math and mining was the only course that didn’t require languages.

To work in a mine, you had to be able to read English. You had to be able to read that the liquid you were looking at was cyanide, which is used to dissolve gold out of crushed rock. (One man wanted to commit suicide and went to the lab to ask for poison. The scientist couldn’t talk him out of it, so he gave the man NaCl which would kill him quickly. Next day the man returned the salt and said he’d changed his mind.)

The Hollinger Consolidated Gold Mines Limited, the Porcupine area’s largest, had many company houses. The Townsite was for laborers, we were in another area for shift bosses and engineers. They also owned hoses for higher ups and if you lived on the Hollinger Mine property, then you really were a manager or up. The Townsite houses were rented by the Company for 50 cents a day. Our house, a two story clapboard house with the basement which contained a laundry tub and an octopus of a furnace, only under the kitchen, cost $1.00 a day, except Christmas which was free. The house we lived in had a large living room and kitchen. Upstairs were three bedrooms, but only the front room had built in closets. We had a three piece bathroom, no shower.

We had storm windows, which we needed because it’s very cold in the winter with short summers. The windows had beautiful patterns of frost on them. Now with windows that are better sealed, you don’t get those pictures.

We had one telephone which was at the foot of the stairs, at the wrong height. You couldn’t sit because it was too high and when you stood, you had to bend over. The phone had a receiver, which you held to your ear and a cone to speak into that was on the wall. To call someone, you had to lift the receiver and the operator asked the number you wanted. We were on a party line and our number was 2264-W. Timmins has a large French speaking population. My mother got tired of running to answer the phone, only to hear someone speaking French, so one day she said “Oui”, and the person talked and whenever there was a pause, mother repeated, “oui”. Finally the pause was too long, so she said, “You’re got the wrong number” and it was quite awhile before she got another wrong number.

We had to walk about a mile to Holy Family Separate School. Here they’re called parochial schools. Ontario provides financial support for all schools. In the spring and fall, we would roller skate to school. It was downhill most of the way. Since in those days there weren’t too many cars, we used the roads. Sometimes I’d go down the paved sidewalks which didn’t have wheelchair ramps in those days, so at the corner, I’d put a hand out to hook onto a power pole. I also had lots of scrapes on my elbows and knees. Going home wasn’t too great, because it was uphill.)

(When I was growing up, we lived in Timmins, Ontario, which was 500 miles north of Toronto. Now it’s only about 450 because they straightened the road. Timmins is at 48-1/2 parallel of latitude, which is below the 49th which divides Canada and the United States in the west. Dad used to say that many Americans lived farther north than we did. Ontario has lots of towns between Toronto and North Bay, which is half way to Timmins, but north of there, all you see is lots of trees and rocks, mostly trees. It’s great if you like hunting and fishing.

I said that I was raised in Timmins, where I was born September 19, 1929, but when I thought of it later, I remembered that we had lived in a small mining community in the middle of the wilderness on the side of a lake in Manitoba. The place was called Bissett Manitoba. I remember we lived in a cabin that had three rooms, maybe. My parents had a bedroom with windows on two sides. The kitchen over looked the rear of the building. I was less than 5 years old because my sister was born after we left there. I remember being told to look out the kitchen window to see rabbits in the snow.

My father smoked, a habit he started when he was in the cavalry in the First World War. All supplies had to be flown in to Bissett in small planes that had pontoons, so that they could land on the lake. In the winter they would have had skis instead of wheels. Dad smoked Turret cigarettes, which he’d buy by the case, I guess. My mother had a silver tray, which I now own, and I remember using packages of cigarettes as building blocks while I sat in my parents bed, with the silver tray on my lap, while I recuperated from some illness.

I’ve worn glasses all my life, but I only needed them when I was tired because then my vision would become blurred. When I wasn’t tired, I could see clearly. Glasses are a nuisance when you’re a little kid in the snow in the bush country. I’d hang my glasses on a tree limb and forget where they were. My father said that every supply plane that landed had a new pair of glasses for me. In the spring, men who’d walked through the trees would find the glasses and return them. I don’t remember that, but I heard about it years later.

I had a lot of Polish speaking playmates, so I learned to speak the language. Somebody asked my parents where I’d learned that, but they didn’t know. Of course I forgot it when we left there and went back to Timmins with a stopover in Pembroke, Ontario where my younger sister was born. My parents came from Pembroke, and my mother’s mother lived there at that time.

Dad said that at Christmas time, the employees at the mine in Bissett were allowed one bottle of liquor to be flown in. Dad ordered whiskey, as did most of his friends. One guy ordered gin because nobody else liked it.

In the summer time there were forest fires, naturally. Dad said that the little planes would fly in and pick up men who were finished work, and have them help fight the fires. When the men saw the plane coming, they knew what it was for, so they’d head for the hills. The fire fighters who needed help got smart. They’d radio ahead to the RCMP to round up any idle guys, d they’d have to go to the fire. Shanghai I guess is the word.

Women would have tea parties in those days. When you got married, that was the end of your days working outside the home. Mother would have tea parties and when she served pie, she’d tell the ladies that if they didn‘t want to eat the crust they didn’t have to. And they didn’t.)

( MEDICAL HISTORY

On my mother’s side of the family, people live to ripe old ages, usually.

Grandpa Anthony Ludgate lived to be 79 and died of diabetes mellitus about 1935 when the insulin hormone was discovered. He, according to my father’s relatives didn’t receive any. He became blind.

Grandma Catharine Thompson Ludgate was 96 when she died . Her hearing was failing at the end and her eyesight was always bad, but she died of old age. Her mind was good and sharp.

Catharine, or Katie as they called her, was hospitalized for the first time when she was 95. Her children decided to sell her house and put her in a retirement home which was attached to the hospital. Then the girls decided to move their mother to Toronto to live with the youngest daughter, which made the second youngest a little jealous. “Dorothy was always the favorite.” Aunt Kay said to me. When they went to the hospital to get grandma, she was sitting slumped over in a chair. Her clothes which had dust covers on them, had been put in the closet just as they had been packed. Grandma had lost the will to live.

Pearl Ludgate Tanney died young of tuberculosis.

Hazel Ludgate had bowel cancer and died about age 70. She was a great one to take laxatives. I don’t know if there’s a correlation, but it couldn’t have been healthy.

Lloyd Ludgate died at 94 of Paget’s disease. He lived in a nursing home about 20 miles from us. We were invited to his 90th birthday party. At the outskirts of Elora was an information booth for tourists. I told the woman I was going to a 90th birthday. She said, “You’d better hurry”.

Kay Ludgate Evans my mother’s sister had leukemia. She was 86

Dorothy Ludgate McElwain the youngest in the family is still living and she’s 89.

My mother, Ethel Mary Ludgate Dunlop died in 1942 after a hysterectomy.

My father, Pius James Dunlop died March 18, 1958 of cancer of the esophagus caused by smoking. He started that bad habit in the First World War.

My sisters and I never smoked. I started once, but it made me cough, so I quit.

My sister Margaret died of breast cancer in 1983. She was 51. Funny thing about that was that both she and mother never wanted to get old and neither did.

When mother died, Dad wrote to her mother and said he’d like to live another 16 years so that Shirley, his youngest would be settled in her job, whatever that was. She was 23 and engaged to Ron when dad died, 16 years and one month and 18 days after mother.