I have never seen my grandfather dance.
If Ralph’s father was the darkness in his life, his mother was the light. Susan MacLean was his saving grace. Grace comes in many forms, and God works in mysterious ways. Ralph knew this through his mother. He never called her Mother. It was always “Dearest Mother,” because that’s what she was. When he speaks of her at length, which he often does, his Maritime accent washes ashore and mother becomes “mutter.”
Susan had eight children to feed, clothe, and make right with her Lord: Irene, Ada, Arthur, Lillian, Mabel, Greta, Ralph, and Ford. Little Irene met her Lord after only two years of life. The remaining seven would read about Him every night as soon as the dinner dishes were done.
Ralph MacLean’s very first memory was of red Mandarin writing on a storefront window. He was in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The red letters were followed by his second memory: being chased by an angry Chinese launderer armed with a hot iron.
Ralph and his rascal of a little brother, Ford, had been sent to Charlottetown under the care of their eldest sister. It was their first time away from home. Their sister Ada had moved to Prince Edward Island during the winter of 1926. Ada was older and busy with her own budding family, so the boys at seven and five were largely on their own, which was just how they liked it.
On that particular day, Ada had given them each two bits and they’d bought candy bars on their way down to the shoreline. Ralph and Ford ate their chocolate by the water, which was calm that day, and skipped rocks off the wharf. On their way back to Ada’s, they passed a Chinese laundry. The lettering on the window was exotic. They’d never seen anything like it. Different meant from away. Different was feared and desired. Different had a name: “chink.”
“That’s a chink’s shop,” Ford said.
Ralph wondered what chink meant. He’d never heard the word before. How had his kid brother got the jump on him?
“Chink!” Ford repeated for effect.
The two boys looked at each other, then turned and stared past the lettering into the shop.
A man was pressing shirts just behind the small counter while a woman swept the foyer. Neither boy had ever seen Chinese people before. They looked different than the people they were accustomed to. It was their eyes that captured Ralph’s attention and prompted his imagination. He tried to figure out how these folks had got here. What did they like? Could they skate on the pond in the winter? They may as well have been aliens. Ralph was in awe. Ford was not.
An ocean breeze picked up and blew road dust into their faces. Ford squinted and spit on the wooden platform in front of the shop.
“Hey, Chinaman,” he called through the open door.
The man slowly raised his head. He knew what was coming. Ford put his little chubby fingers to his eyes and pulled them across his face. The grime behind his nails betrayed his poverty. The four people stood still, just staring at one another. Now that Ford had the man’s attention, he wasn’t sure what to do with it. The shop owner surely hoped that the two boys before him would simply decide they had had their fun and move on. But Ford could not help himself. At five, he’d been beaten enough to understand that the strong can force themselves on the weak. He had never been the strong. He liked turning the tables.
“You and your wife are chinks!”
Taking abuse from a five- and seven-year-old proved too much for the shop owner. He charged at them with the hot iron still firmly in his hand. The boys fled. Ralph hoped that the shop owner would let up, but he did not. As they ran, they glanced back to see him pass the threshold of his shop and run down the wooden platform and across the dirt road. He was yelling at them in Mandarin something terrible.
Ralph grabbed Ford’s hand as they dashed past six more storefronts, making their way to a park, where they hoped they could lose their pursuer in the trees. But as they got to the park’s open space, the man gained on them with his longer legs. Ralph was hurrying Ford along when the launderer swung the hot iron, just missing his left temple. It could have been a fatal blow. Ralph had taken two more steps when his brother’s hand broke away and a kick to his rear sent Ford three feet in the air. He landed on the grass and slid on his side for a few more feet. Ralph stopped running. He was the older brother. He couldn’t leave Ford, however scared he was. Ford lay on his side, weeping. The launderer stood on guard, breathing heavily. Ralph made sure to stand between the two of them. He looked into the launderer’s eyes, saying nothing. Then the man turned and left.
Ralph made sure the man had moved on before turning his attention back to Ford. He knew a beating isn’t over until it’s over. When he was sure the man wasn’t coming back, Ralph kneeled and put his hand on Ford’s shoulder.
“You’ll be fine, Ford, he just clipped your seat. Cm’on—get up.”
Ford did, and they stood staring at each other. Their minds raced. They’d spent the past four minutes being the aggressors, the victims, the bullies, and the vanquished. They both had adrenaline coursing through their veins. Ralph’s knees were still shaking. He suggested they head back to Ada’s. Ford suggested they head back to the beach, and flashed Ralph the same devilish smile that he would come to rely on for the rest of his days. Ford had already moved on from the experience. But Ralph had not. He felt bad about the way they had treated the man. They had insulted him, insulted his wife. At seven, he knew right and wrong. They’d done wrong that afternoon.
The only other thing Ralph remembered about that trip to Charlottetown so many years ago was the last supper that sister Ada made especially for them, a feast of mackerel and cheese. Mackerel was Ralph’s favourite fish. It would be their last dinner with her for some time. The boys were leaving for home. The nine-hour ferry ride from the rich red beaches of Souris, Prince Edward Island, would take them through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, past Entry Island, to the Magdalen Islands.
A few months after their trip to Prince Edward Island, Ford came down with scarlet fever. Dr. Solomon, the island’s English-speaking doctor, had to paint the dreaded red quarantine emblem on the MacLean’s front door. Stanley MacLean kept walking when he was done work. To go in the house would court financial ruin for the family. Their mother was left alone to tend to Ford day and night. After three weeks, Ralph came down with it too. Their mother did not sleep for more than a few fleeting moments during the three months her two boys burned with fever. She put them on a gruel diet to keep their temperature down. Ralph emerged unscathed, but Ford’s heart tissue was irreparably damaged.
The MacLeans lived in a two-storey, four-bedroom country house that Stanley had built with his own two hands. It was painted white, but the salt, the wind, the rain, and the fog had all conspired to leave it in a state of constant disrepair. Since all the houses on the island were the same, the family never felt bad about it.
Ford (left) and Ralph MacLean outside the family home in the Magdalen Islands
They had a large garden in the back where they would grow carrots, beets, tomatoes, squash, onions, and parsnips. Behind the garden lay a small barn for the family horse, Old Jack. One day Old Jack almost killed the oldest brother, Arthur. He was taking some forty-five-gallon oil drums down to the shop of Mr. Grey, the island’s Marconi operator. As Arthur hopped off Old Jack to drop off the barrels, the horse got spooked and bolted. Arthur’s foot caught in his saddle and he was dragged for a half-mile. Two barrels fell on him, and he was struck once by Old Jack’s hoof. Four hours later, Mr. Grey brought him home through the back patio door. Ralph did not recognize his own brother. His skin was as white as paper.
Old Jack’s barn was adjacent to the family’s milk-cow corral. In honour of the epic journey this cow had travelled to get there, it was named Lovat, after the boat that was the only way on or off the island. In the winter of 1930, Susan MacLean had secretly sent a telegram to her brother, who lived on Prince Edward Island, asking that he find it in his heart to offer Stanley a milk cow. The family needed milk and it was just getting too expensive to buy. Stanley
was too proud to ask for help. Plus, the rumrunners’ boats had been docked off the coast for the better part of the last month, which always had a dramatic impact on the family finances.
Money had been drawn from the family’s bank account. Ralph remembers his mother crying in the kitchen one day. “The money—where has it gone?” They could see the white sails of the rum boat from the living room bay window. Seven hungry children sat at the kitchen table, not a leg among them long enough to touch the wooden floor, and they all knew exactly where the money had gone.
Thank God for the potatoes. Behind the corral and the barn lay an acre of potato patch. All nine souls in the house depended on that acre. The sea provided folks on the island with money, but potatoes kept them alive.
In May 1939, when Ralph was seventeen, his sister Mabel gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. She was named Alayne. It was the first baby for the MacLean siblings, a real reason to celebrate. Ralph’s mother opened three jars of peaches that had been shipped in from Nova Scotia. The pop of the peach jar was like a champagne cork going off. The family had never seen three jars open at the same time. Everyone around the kitchen table tried their best to concentrate on the sweet nectar of the peaches, but an elephant in the room was suffocating the celebration. They were worried for this baby’s father. Doug Stevens was in the thick of the war by then.
When the Germans launched the Blitzkrieg attack in 1939, Mabel’s husband could not wait for his government to join the fight. He was one of the first Canadians to join Britain’s Royal Air Force. Since Canada was a member of the British Commonwealth, the Brits were happy to take as many of her men as they could. Churchill knew how admirably Canadians had served during the First World War and hoped they’d do so again.
Doug Stevens saw Germany’s Blitzkrieg into Poland as the first move by a harsh regime waging a brutal war inside and outside its country’s borders. Doug rallied to the call. He joined the Royal Air Force in the winter of 1939 and was off to England soon thereafter. Mabel was four months pregnant. Doug hid the fact that he was married because the Brits would only take single men. They knew the odds that airmen faced. Doug trained in England and became a pilot of a mighty Lancaster bomber. He sent back a picture of himself in uniform standing at the side of his plane. Mabel set that picture up against the lamp on her nightstand. How she worried about her husband flying the skies above occupied France!
Mabel was left on her own. Her long-time friend Kay Vincent came back to the island to stay with her for most of that spring and summer. Kay had moved to Halifax a few years earlier to work in a grocery store owned by an uncle. Kay was a great help to Mabel, and to repay the favour, Mabel decided to accompany her back to Halifax in November of 1939.
At that point, Ralph didn’t have much on his plate. And nobody wanted Mabel to travel on her own with a baby in tow. So he offered to accompany Kay, Mabel, and baby Alayne to Halifax. Ralph’s chivalry—which had always been second nature to him—was no doubt influenced by a desire to get off the island, far from the close confines of the house, and away from lousy job offerings. Mostly, away from his father.
They boarded the SS Lovat and steamed off to Pictou, Prince Edward Island. The steamship had a few staterooms, though none were particularly stately. The three adults and the baby had a small bunk bed and a couch by the window, neither of which were terribly comfortable. But the room did offer some privacy and was a noise barrier between them and the other passengers. Six-month-old Alayne was colicky and inconsolable.
The Gulf of St. Lawrence is typically a rough waterway. The winds off the north Atlantic sweep through and bear down on the boats with no mercy. The trip across the straight was plagued by these fierce winds. At night, Mabel was able to get Alayne down to sleep on the bottom bunk, so Ralph slipped up to the top bunk to try to get a few hours of rest before the baby woke again. In the middle of his slumber, Ralph was thrown out of his bunk with great force. He awoke in a standing position in the middle of the stateroom, staring into the dark. There was an eerie silence on the ship. The engine had stopped completely. He could hear only the wind and the water lashing up against the metal hull. Alayne somehow slept on. Ralph feared that the ship had hit something or a U-boat had hit them. A flash of panic came over him as he stood there in silence, at attention, waiting for something to react to.
Mabel sat up on the lower bunk and Kay awoke on the couch. They all waited in silence.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, they heard. Water was swirling around the vessel.
Kay whispered, “Are we sinking?”
Mabel scrambled to her feet, instinctively snatching Alayne from the bed and clutching her. Kay joined them and they huddled together around their main protector—a skinny seventeen-year-old boy. Finally, the engines roared back to life. A wave had pushed the bow so high that the rudders had come clear out of the water and tripped off. As her fear subsided, Mabel mentioned that she had not heard Ralph get out of bed. This would not be the last time my grandfather landed—miraculously—on his feet.
When they arrived in Pictou, Ralph said he hoped he would not see the SS Lovat again for some time.
They boarded a train to Truro to visit the McArthurs, who had left the Magdalen Islands a few years back to set up a cattle farm. The McArthurs had done well and had enough room to comfortably put up the four visitors. Ralph sent word back home that they had arrived in Pictou almost without incident and were en route to Truro, where they would be staying for the next week or so. Alayne was especially colicky and Mabel was happy to rest for a little while.
They all sat down to a beautiful meal of roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, caramelized carrots, and creamy whipped P.E.I. potatoes. (Ralph was a connoisseur of the humble potato.) Mr. McArthur asked Ralph if he’d like to bless the meal. Ralph already had his hands joined above his empty plate.
“Dear Jesus,” he said, “thank you for this food, bless it to our bodies. Thank you for our safe travels and for the time we can all spend together. Dear Jesus, bless our little Alayne. Keep her safe and bless her father. Please keep Douglas safe over Europe’s skies. In your name, we pray. Amen.”
“Amen,” the table responded in unison.
With that, they dug into the meal with a clanging of utensils, passing of serving dishes, offers to pass the salt, the milk, the butter, more potatoes, and praises to the cook. The night ended with a game of cards, but the prayer was needed. The next day would be the most difficult of Mabel’s life.
Ralph woke to his favourite breakfast, a soft-boiled egg with butter, salt, and pepper. Mrs. McArthur placed a cup of Scottish breakfast tea in front of him. He was still in his pyjamas, with a borrowed housecoat to cut the November morning chill. When he heard a knock at the front door, he instinctively stood up to answer, but Mrs. McArthur put her hand on his shoulder and told him she’d get it.
The opened door ushered in a wave of cool, damp air. A cold front had moved in overnight. Ralph heard a man’s voice ask for Mabel Stevens. Who would be looking for Mabel here? The only person who knew they were there was his mother. And then it hit him like an ocean surge.
Ralph didn’t need to read the telegram in the messenger’s hand. He knew what it said. He slowly got to his feet and went upstairs. He put his ear to the door of the room where Mabel slept. He heard Alayne cooing, so he knew Mabel must be awake. He knocked and cracked the door open.
“Mabel, there is a messenger here for you.”
Ralph knew this was the sentence she had been dreading since Douglas left her arms. He could see she was paralyzed with dread. He helped her sit up on the side of the bed. Alayne continued to coo as he scrambled to find a wool shawl for Mabel to throw over her shoulders in the room’s half-light. He helped her to her feet and quickly swaddled Alayne.
As they made their way down the stairs, Mabel turned to her brother. “I can’t do this, Ralph. I just … I just can’t bear it.”
“Lean on me, dear. Let’s do this together.”
Mabel really couldn’t do
it. The sight of the messenger was too much. He was Death. Her legs gave out. Ralph passed Alayne to Mrs. McArthur and picked his sister up—propped her up—to take the shock of the news.
“Mrs. Stevens, I regret to inform you that your husband, Douglas Stevens, died in a plane crash. He died in service. Please accept my condolences and this message from the Royal Air Force.”
With that, the messenger bowed his head and offered a final “I’m sorry” as Mrs. McArthur closed the door. The foyer was freezing but Mabel seemed completely unaware. Her knees buckled once again and this time Ralph eased her to the ground. He sat beside her, rubbing her back. She was motionless, silent. Finally, as if the weight of the news had just then hit her, Mabel let out a frightful moan. It was deep, low, and sorrowful, and it came up from the pit of her stomach. She was in the middle of a hell that abandons all reality, all manners, all social graces. Mabel lay on that landing for over an hour. She wailed, trembled, and sobbed herself into a state of sheer exhaustion. Ralph stayed at her side on the cold floor. Blankets were offered but Mabel eschewed them. She sought no comfort. She knew there was none to be had.
She and Alayne were alone.
That afternoon, Ralph sent word to his mother and to the Stevens family. Mr. and Mrs. Stevens had already heard the news and had gleaned additional bits of information from telegrams from Douglas’s friend, who had been serving with him in Great Britain.
Douglas’s squad had been training for night-bombing runs into France. He had gone up with a group of Wellingtons over the English Channel. His plane malfunctioned and he and his co-pilot struggled to make it home. They almost made it.
Forgiveness Page 3