by Jean Little
The war took its toll at home too. Imported foods such as sugar were scarce, prices rose steeply, and the government urged people to cut back on using meat. You can witness most of this struggle through Eliza’s eyes as she recorded it in her journal.
What changed was the feeling that war was a high adventure. What also altered, for all time, was the picture of women, secure and protected in their homes, untouched by the cruelty of far-off battles. During the war the struggle for women’s suffrage, which had gone on for years, moved forward rapidly when women were needed to take the place of the men away at the Front. Women had been told they belonged in the home, rocking the cradle and getting the meals ready. Now they were running the family business, working in the fields, taking over the switchboards, running the office and so on. When the men returned, it was too late to order their wives back to their previous lives. Women knew how the world worked and they were ready to make decisions and mark their ballots. Women like Aunt Martha also started to drive cars — even to fly planes. The exploits of flyers like Amelia Earhart and Anne Morrow Lindbergh fascinated the public.
In 1918 my mother was sixteen when she applied to medical school at the University of Toronto. Men who would earlier have mocked women seeking to qualify as doctors now had a different point of view. These men had left home, served in the trenches and watched nurses working to save soldiers’ lives. They had learned that their former ideas were no longer suitable, and many treated women with new respect. Male medical students gave up chanting “She doesn’t know that her degree should be M.R.S. and not M.D.” Men began to treat the young women more as equals. The changes for women rippled through all levels of society. Servant girls could now make better choices for themselves. The ongoing lack of a sufficient pool of servants ultimately led to the development of labour-saving household equipment.
L.M. Montgomery was a young woman during World War I. Later, using her own diaries for background, she wrote Rilla of Ingleside. If you want to know more about how it felt to be young and living in Canada during that agonizing war, read her novel. Maud Montgomery was a Presbyterian minister’s wife and she lived, at that time, just a few miles from Uxbridge. Her diaries were an enormous help in my research for Eliza’s journal.
All wars are brutal and filled with anguish. Eliza’s war is still remembered as one of the worst. And summaries of war, such as this one, can be haunting. We are almost numbed as we read of battles won, lives lost. Let us also remember the valour as well as the squalor of the first world conflict, and never forget all those young people lost to our country.
Images and Documents
Images 1 and 2: The character of Hugo was inspired by the author’s uncle, Lieutenant Gordon Smith Mellis Gauld. Gordon was a university student who enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He was killed when his plane went down in March of 1918, just eight months before the War ended.
Image 3: The 116th Battalion from Uxbridge marches through town before embarking for England. Those in the foreground are the signal section, bearing their semaphore flags rolled.
Image 4: A battalion leaving for overseas service, 1915. Railroad platforms would be filled with loved ones saying goodbye.
Image 5: The First Canadian Army at Quebec’s Valcartier camp, returning from drill. Though this scene looks very orderly, the camp was formed so rapidly that the arrival of new recruits often caused massive confusion.
Image 6: Canadian troops on England’s Salisbury Plain parade before King George V.
Image 7: A Canadian soldier peers over the top of a front-line trench in France, 1916.
Image 8: Exhausted-looking Canadian soldiers returning from the trenches during the Battle of the Somme, 1916.
Image 9: Canada Food Board posters such as this one urged people at home to grow their own food, to eat less meat, and to refrain from hoarding foods such as wheat and sugar.
Image 10: Rain-soaked fields, such as this one near Passchendaele, left men, horses, weapons and machinery stuck in the mud.
Image 11: Billy Bishop, seated here in a Nieuport, was Canada’s top ace, with a total of 72 enemy planes downed.
Image 12: Nurses outside Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, 1916.
Image 13: Canadian troops returning from Europe to Halifax aboard H.M.T. Olympic, 1919.
Image 14: Uxbridge street celebrations when the Armistice was declared on November 11, 1918.
Images 15 and 16: Notes from King George V of England and University of Toronto President Robert A. Falconer, to the family of Lieutenant Gordon Smith Mellis Gauld, following his death in World War I.
Image 17: Canada in 1914; Newfoundland and Labrador were not Canadian provinces at that time.
Image 18: Sites of some of the major battles in France and Belgium fought by Canadian troops.
Acknowledgments
Every effort has been made to trace ownership of visual and written material used in this book. Errors and omissions will be corrected in subsequent updates or editions.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:
Cover portrait: Detail (colourized) from black and white photo, “Miss McLean, 1904,” Waldren Studios Collection, Box 54, File 103, Dalhousie University Archives.
Cover background: Detail from photo of Canadian troops marching past Sir Robert Borden, July, 1918, National Archives of Canada PA-002735
Images 1 and 2: Courtesy of the author.
Image 3: Uxbridge-Scott Museum.
Image 4: National Archives of Canada C-014135.
Image 5: National Archives of Canada C-036116.
Image 6: National Archives of Canada PA-30282.
Image 7: National Archives of Canada PA-000568.
Image 8: National Archives of Canada PA-000832.
Image 9: War Poster Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections Division, McGill University Libraries, Montreal, Canada.
Image 10: The Art Archive / Imperial War Museum Photo Archive IWM.
Image 11: National Archives of Canada PA-122515.
Image 12: Courtesy of Archives, Hospital for Sick Children.
Image 13: National Archives of Canada PA-022995.
Image 14: Uxbridge-Scott Museum.
Images 15 and 16: Courtesy of the author.
Images 17 and 18: Maps by Paul Heersink/Paperglyphs. Map data © 2002 Government of Canada with permission from Natural Resources Canada.
The author thanks, first and foremost, her editor, Sandy Bogart Johnston, whose research and inspired editing were of enormous help in shaping Eliza’s story. Reference librarians at the Guelph Public Library were always patient and wonderful at answering questions and locating song lyrics. The author’s thanks go to Laurel Marsolais, Cathy Taylor, Mary Ramatar and Nancy Clarke. Thanks also to Claire Mackay, who helped with information and moral support.
Thanks to Barbara Hehner for her careful checking of the manuscript; to Allan McGillivray, curator of the Uxbridge-Scott Museum; and to Dr. Desmond Morton, historian and author of such books as Marching to Armageddon, for sharing his vast expertise so willingly.
In memory of my uncle Lieutenant Gordon Smith Mellis Gauld M.C., who was killed when his plane crashed in March, 1918. He was twenty-five and he called my mother “Monkeyshines.”
And
For my cousin Ailsa Margaret Little, who remembers Eliza’s war and shares her memories with me.
About the Author
Jean Little grew up hearing tales about her Uncle Gordon. His full name was Gordon Smith Mellis Gauld, the surnames of his four grandparents.
Gordon was the oldest boy in Jean’s mother’s family and was about to enter law school when a German U-boat sank the civilian passenger ship the Lusitania. When he learned of the women and children who had been killed, Gordon Gauld joined the Royal Flying Corps and became an observer (we would call him a navigator). He also helped train young pilots.
Like Jack and Rufus, Gordon and his best friend fell in love with the same girl. The two
young men tossed a coin to decide which of them should propose first. Gordon’s friend won the toss, but not the girl. Her telegram accepting Gordon’s proposal reached him too late. He died when his plane crashed over England just eight months before the war ended.
His younger brother, Harvey, returned home from the war late at night. Unwilling to rouse his family in the middle of the night, he climbed in through his uncle’s dining-room window. His cousin Agnes screamed the house down when she found him, in the morning, asleep on the floor.
After months of searching for Gordon’s letters home during World War I, the author found them during the writing of this book — in much the same way that Eliza found her diary after it had been missing for months, tucked away behind some furniture. Jean used elements from Gordon’s life, and from other family stories, in writing Brothers Far from Home.
Legally blind since birth, Jean is always accompanied by her guide dog, Honey. A voracious reader of talking books, Jean loves reading and writing as much as Eliza does. She has been writing since she was twelve — in fact, Belle’s short poem near the end of this book is one Jean wrote when she was only ten. And she manages to keep writing with the help of her talking computer.
Orphan at My Door, Jean Little’s first book in the Dear Canada series, won the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award in 2002. Exiles from the War is a Geoffrey Bilson Award finalist and Red Cedar nominee. If I Die Before I Wake was shortlisted for the Red Cedar Award and named a ResourceLinks Best of the Year. Brothers Far from Home is a CLA Honour Book and was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Bilson Award.
Jean has written fifty books, including novels, picture books, a book of short stories and poetry, and two autobiographies — Stars Come Out Within and Little by Little. Books such as Orphan at My Door and Mama’s Going to Buy You a Mockingbird, Listen for the Singing, Mine for Keeps, From Anna, His Banner Over Me, Dancing Through the Snow and Hey World, Here I Am! have won many prestigious awards, including the Ruth Schwartz Award, the Canada Council Children’s Literature Prize, the Violet Downey Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book Award, and the Little, Brown Canadian Children’s Book Award. She received the Vicky Metcalf Award in 1974 for her Body of Work, is a member of the Order of Canada and a recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. Her newest picture book, with illustrator Geneviève Côté, is Wishes.
Jean makes regular visits to schools to meet her many readers. On one trip she mentioned one of her books, Brothers Far from Home. A student asked her if “regular people” could be heroes too. Jean told the class that she believed all heroes were regular people most of the time. She went on to surprise them by saying that they themselves had probably been heroes already. Then she surprised them again by telling them that they had probably already been villains, too.
While the events described and some of the characters in this book may be based on actual historical events and real people, Eliza Bates is a fictional character created by the author, and her diary is a work of fiction.
Copyright © 2003 by Jean Little.
Published by Scholastic Canada Ltd.
SCHOLASTIC and DEAR CANADA and logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan–American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read this e-book on-screen. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher, Scholastic Canada Ltd., 604 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5V 1E1, Canada.
ISBN: 978-1-4431-1998-6
First eBook edition: October 2012
Also Available
To read about Eliza Bates’s Christmas and meet other Dear Canada heroines check out
Books in the Dear Canada Series
Alone in an Untamed Land, The Filles du Roi Diary of Hélène St. Onge by Maxine Trottier
Banished from Our Home, The Acadian Diary of Angélique Richard by Sharon Stewart
Blood Upon Our Land, The North West Resistance Diary of Josephine Bouvier by Maxine Trottier
A Christmas to Remember, Tales of Comfort and Joy
Days of Toil and Tears, The Child Labour Diary of Flora Rutherford by Sarah Ellis
The Death of My Country, The Plains of Abraham Diary of Geneviève Aubuchon by Maxine Trottier
A Desperate Road to Freedom, The Underground Railroad Diary of Julia May Jackson by Karleen Bradford
Exiles from the War, The War Guests Diary of Charlotte Mary Twiss by Jean Little
Footsteps in the Snow, The Red River Diary of Isobel Scott by Carol Matas
Hoping for Home, Stories of Arrival
If I Die Before I Wake, The Flu Epidemic Diary of Fiona Macgregor by Jean Little
No Safe Harbour, The Halifax Explosion Diary of Charlotte Blackburn by Julie Lawson
Not a Nickel to Spare, The Great Depression Diary of Sally Cohen by Perry Nodelman
An Ocean Apart, The Gold Mountain Diary of Chin Mei-ling by Gillian Chan
Orphan at My Door, The Home Child Diary of Victoria Cope by Jean Little
A Prairie as Wide as the Sea, The Immigrant Diary of Ivy Weatherall by Sarah Ellis
Prisoners in the Promised Land, The Ukrainian Internment Diary of Anya Soloniuk by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
A Rebel’s Daughter, The 1837 Rebellion Diary of Arabella Stevenson by Janet Lunn
A Ribbon of Shining Steel, The Railway Diary of Kate Cameron by Julie Lawson
A Sea of Sorrows, The Typhus Epidemic Diary of Johanna Leary by Norah McClintock
A Season for Miracles, Twelve Tales of Christmas
That Fatal Night, The Titanic Diary of Dorothy Wilton by Sarah Ellis
To Stand On My Own, The Polio Epidemic Diary of Noreen Robertson by Barbara Haworth-Attard
Torn Apart, The Internment Diary of Mary Kobayashi by Susan Aihoshi
A Trail of Broken Dreams, The Gold Rush Diary of Harriet Palmer by Barbara Haworth-Attard
Turned Away, The World War II Diary of Devorah Bernstein by Carol Matas
Where the River Takes Me, The Hudson’s Bay Company Diary of Jenna Sinclair by Julie Lawson
Whispers of War, The War of 1812 Diary of Susanna Merritt by Kit Pearson
Winter of Peril, The Newfoundland Diary of Sophie Loveridge by Jan Andrews
With Nothing But Our Courage, The Loyalist Diary of Mary MacDonald by Karleen Bradford
Go to www.scholastic.ca/dearcanada for information on the Dear Canada Series — see inside the books, read an excerpt or a review, post a review, and more.