by Anne Degrace
I suppose I should tell you why I decided to send my advertisement to a Nova Scotia newspaper, because I’m sure you are wondering. Of course it was because of the shipment of potatoes, turnips, carrots, and salted fish that came by rail, a monumental kindness from your province to mine, and that left not one dry eye in the community hall where the bounty was distributed. Oh, and apples! An apple never tasted so good, I can assure you.
Can you tell me, how does one cook salt cod? Mrs. Wolyniak tried soaking it in water and even a bit of milk, but we can’t be cooking it right because it remains dry and salty and not very palatable, even to the very hungry.
How happy I am that you’re interested in current affairs. I’m anxious to find out what you think of Mr. Bennett’s chances for re-election. With this man Hitler becoming altogether too powerful (although some say he’s all bluster, no bite), it seems to me that a strong leader is very important, but more than that, it seems to me he has only a year to get us out of this mess or suffer the consequences.
I wonder what it’s like where you live. I’ve never been east of Regina (where my sister lives). Actually, that’s not quite true: I crossed the Atlantic when I was just six, in a boatful of orphans destined for new lives with Canadian families. They say we block out the memories we don’t wish to remember, and I suppose that must be the case; I’m sure I was terrified! But I don’t mean to cry a sad tale. My parents were kind people who raised me like their own. I’m afraid I was never much of a farmer, though.
And now here I am, my parents gone, the farms all gone to dust, and few prospects, if any. I suppose I could join the navy, and then I’d have no excuse, would I? And then I could dock at Yarmouth and take you for dinner, and, if you’d permit, perhaps even dancing! Just as a friend, of course. I know there is a large harbour at Yarmouth (I looked it up in the encyclopaedia set in the schoolroom; I still have the key, for the moment) but I don’t know if there is a place for dancing. Is there? Do you like Swing music? I love Tommy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman, and when Mrs. Wolyniak goes to bed I will sometimes stay up late and catch the radio stations as they drift in and out from the States.
Cordially yours,
Martin Charles Penner
October 24, 1934
Dear Mr. Penner,
Today Sally brought in a copy of Life Magazine with a feature on the Quints, and then there we were, all of us (well, the girls, anyway) cooing over the images of those five little girls, now toddling in their matching dresses and bows, until our boss came out and blew right up at us, threatening to fire the lot of us if we didn’t get right back to work. But I think we need the good news stories to counter the news of relief camps and children starving in their own homes on the prairie and frightening things going on in Europe that we read every day as part of life in a newsroom. But my Uncle Allan, who served in the Great War, says there won’t ever be another, and I suppose I want to believe him.
Don’t you?
I can see that you’ve known hard times before now, even if you don’t remember. I think these experiences make a person stronger, don’t you? Or more empathetic, at least. You seem like a person with empathy, the way you talk about the Moresland children, and about teaching your landlady to read. I think empathy is a very important quality to have.
My boss is not an empathetic person, so for now, no more Quint-watching on work time for me. I’ll be clack-clack-clacking away with my eyes on the keys from now on, because I can’t afford to lose this job.
You asked my age. I am 22 years old. I live in a rooming house with my own room, and all the tenants are girls working in offices: one keeps the books for the plant, another takes dictation from our local member of the legislature when he is here and not in Halifax, and Sally, who I mentioned works with me, lives on the main floor at the back. Last year I lived in an old house on Main Street, and there everyone but me worked in the fish plant, the smell absolutely everywhere, right in the plaster on the walls, and some rank, let me tell you. Speaking of which, you asked about the salt fish, and so I will write two recipes on the back of this letter. Fish’n Brewis is a Newfoundland recipe that’s been in my family just about forever, since my grandfather came from there. As for the Finnan Haddie, it’s better with smoked fish, but you can use salted, too. The important thing to remember is that you will need to soak it more than once to get the salt out.
Sometimes when I get up and go to work I think: maybe today something new will happen. All day we can hear the blast of ships’ horns and they are all going somewhere. But I am sick of the smell of salt water and the fog that curls my hair every which way and I long to go somewhere where the January wind doesn’t blow right through you and out the other side. I am some tired of Yarmouth, and that’s the truth. I wonder, do you long for the bite of the sea air, out there in all that dust? Can you even imagine what it’s like? It seems as if we are never content where we are, but always wanting to be somewhere else.
If I could be anyone I would be Amelia Earhart. What courage, to fly across the Atlantic, from Newfoundland all the way to Ireland! And then she doesn’t stop there, but conquers the Pacific as well. My word. Next she’s planning to fly around the whole world and where will I be? In Yarmouth Nova Scotia, reading the news in reverse.
You didn’t tell me about your hopes for life, and I did ask you. Is it too soon to ask such questions?
Yours very sincerely,
Peggy McGrath
FINNAN HADDIE
½ lb salt fish (smoked is better)
2 cups milk
¼ cup butter
¼ cup flour
2 eggs, slightly beaten
2 cups cubed cooked potatoes
In a shallow baking dish cover salt fish with milk. Let Stand 1 hour.
Bake 30 minutes. Drain, save milk, and separate fish into flakes. In a saucepan melt butter. Blend in flour until smooth. Gradually stir in leftover milk. Cook, stirring constantly, until thick. Blend in eggs. Add fish and potatoes.
FISH’N BREWIS
5 pieces hard tack
1 lb. salt fish
8 strips of bacon
2 large onions
1 tbsp butter
Soak bread in cold water for 24 hours. Fry bacon and drain fat, remove from pan and cut bacon in small pieces. Chop 2 large onions and put in bacon pan. Cover pan and steam on slow heat until tender. Put the soaked dry bread with the water in a saucepan and boil for 1 minute. Drain well. Cook fish until tender. Remove bones and add to the drained hard bread. Add cooked onions and bacon. Add butter and stir.
November 7
Dear Miss McGrath,
I wonder if you would call me Martin? It would be a lot easier to tell you about such personal things as hopes and dreams if we were on a first name basis.
Thank you very much for the recipes, which I have shared with Mrs. Wolyniak, the two of us spelling them out together in the evening. I believe she is not too sure about the Brewis dish, but thinks the Finnan Haddie looks like it might be good. I’m looking forward to it, especially since they are recipes you suggested.
Miss Earhart is certainly an inspiration, but I’m not sure I would want to go up in the air. The truth is, if the school hadn’t closed I’d have been content there for a very long time, boring as that may sound. On the prairie I will walk for miles, happy under all that sky with no desire to be up in it. When the wind blows through the fields I imagine it’s like the sea, the waves coming into the shore, and it’s the sunset that turns them gold. They really do look as if you could swim in them. Of course, it is dusty, and little grows, and there are so many abandoned farmsteads that it feels as if some catastrophe, like war or plague, has driven people away, and I suppose that in a way both are true. Even homes with people in them have an empty look.
We have lost the war with drought and our poverty is a plague. There are hobo c
amps along the sidings, men heading west, hoping for work. I hear the work camps are full; there is nothing for them. And I think: there but for the grace of God . . .
I have been writing to various school boards, inquiring about positions. I am not by nature a farmer nor a labourer, much as my parents might have wished, and if you saw me you would see this immediately. I am told I’m a nice-looking man, with a full head of dark hair and blue eyes, but slight in stature, and I do wear glasses. Bookish, I guess. I hope that doesn’t put you off. I guess I’ve given myself away: I’ve been hoping maybe someday we could meet. You write such a nice letter. Is that silly?
Could you tell me what you look like? I’d like to be able to picture you when I read your letters.
Yours,
Martin
November 17
Dear Martin,
It seems fine to me that if we’re going to keep up this correspondence we should be on a first name basis. As you can see by the typewriting I’m writing this at work, although I’m prepared to whip the paper out if Mr. Swain comes out of his office, but he’s been in there all day talking with some man about I don’t know what, and as there are no near-illegible letters-to-the-editor and no letters to type to delinquent advertisers, there is not much to do. And I’ve read both today’s paper, and tomorrow’s in letterpress, so there: I’ve read the news backwards and forwards!
You wanted to know what I look like, so I’ll tell you. I am five feet, five inches, and I have blonde hair and a very nice smile, I am told. I have freckles from my mother’s side and my father’s nose, which thankfully is a fairly nice one. I didn’t tell you about my parents before. They live in Shelburne, where I grew up. Dad makes dories. Those are boats, in case you don’t know. That’s about it. It was my Granny who paid for the secretarial course at Yarmouth, and here I am ever since. I have five little sisters who are still at home. My favourite, Binnie, is the smallest.
I don’t really go to the dances much at all. But if we meet, I would like to go out dancing with you. Swing music is swell, but I don’t get to hear as much popular music as I’d like. I can’t listen to the radio at the rooming house because of the thin walls and the thick landlady.
I have been thinking about you a lot and wondering what will happen at the end of the month. Will you stay on with Mrs. Wolyniak? (And I wonder, did she ever make the Finnan Haddie?) Have you had any responses to your job applications?
Write soon,
Peggy
December 3
Dear Peggy,
As you can see by my return address, I’m still here. Mrs. W. couldn’t find another lodger for December, and so she’s offered to keep me on so long as I pay for my own food and keep her in firewood, which, although I’m not terribly swift with the axe, I can certainly do — and happily. If I was any good with a gun, I suppose I’d be out hunting rabbits, but I’m not very handy that way. I’m still teaching Mrs. W. to read, which isn’t much good at filling the belly but which has been a very rewarding experience for both of us in its own way. I haven’t ever taught an adult before, and she is so keen! She can already read the grade one primer, and is delighted when she comes to the end of a sentence like: Bobby saw the cat cross the road.
I have a few savings left, enough to keep me from starving, but there are no jobs. I have looked for work in town, right down to grocery delivery boy, but there is nothing, and everybody is looking. Maybe I should head West, as everybody else seems to be doing, and see what I can find in British Columbia, leaving Mrs. Wolyniak to her culinary experimentations (she is a genius at cooking something from nothing) and her reading. We did eat up the salt cod, and while I’m not sure if a Ukrainian interpretation of a Nova Scotian recipe left us with exactly the same dish, whatever was lost in translation didn’t matter in the end as we ate every scrap.
Yours fondly,
Martin
December 15
Dear Martin,
We will stop work on December 23 and I will take the bus to Shelburne and spend the holidays with my family. I’m so looking forward to it. Binnie especially (she is the sister of my heart) but all the others too, and Mum and Dad, who will pamper me. It’s so much better going home after you’ve been away. You stop being one more mouth and become the one who’s made good. Although Mum will ask me why I’m not married, and that’s always embarrassing. And then church, of course, where everyone will want to know about my life in Yarmouth and I suppose I’ll have to make up a thing or two to keep them satisfied. What do you think Amelia Earhart tells her family when she goes home to visit? You can bet she doesn’t have to make anything up.
It’s been bitterly cold and the bit of water I can see from the office window is the shade of grey that tells you it is just this side of ice and would freeze solid if it could. When I go home at night I have to dress in three sweaters in order to stay warm in my room.
As you can see, I’ve been knitting. It makes me feel warmer surrounded by wool, and makes my heart warm to think of you all wrapped up in this scarf. I hope you like the colour. I thought of the wheat fields you mentioned, and so I chose a golden colour that I hoped would suit you, and at the ends, blue for your eyes.
Yesterday’s paper reported that King George appears to be failing. I’m not at all sure about Edward. Do people in the prairies follow the Royals? We all do, probably because it’s such a different life.
Well, I hope you have a fine Christmas, Martin. I don’t suppose you are travelling all the way to Regina to visit your sister. Do you have any other siblings? Did you all come over together? Does Mrs. Wolyniak have children?
As for my Christmas, all I want is another letter from you, and so I’ll be watching my mailbox.
Very fondly yours,
Peggy
January 1, 1935
Dear Peggy,
Happy New Year!
Thank you so much for the beautiful scarf, which is keeping my neck warm as I write here in my room (which is now on the main floor behind the kitchen, as my upstairs room has become quite frigid in this cold snap we are having. Forty-two below!) Mrs. W. has moved into the parlour, and so the only place to sit is the kitchen, which is where we do our reading every evening, beside the stove. She can now read the Eaton’s catalogue, and we play a game in which we open it at random and point with our eyes closed, and that is the item we will buy when the economy turns around. Mrs. W. opened her eyes to find she’d be buying a complete Santa suit (only $3.98). We had a good time laughing over that. For my part, I have promised to buy a taffeta-trimmed crepe dress, apparently the latest style. I suspect it will look better on you than it would on me.
It’s hard to be optimistic in the cold, except for the package sent by Mrs. Wolyniak’s son in Winnipeg, which was full of lovely things to eat and made us quite cheerful. I’ve not heard from my sister, which is unusual.
You asked about my family. I’m afraid that Marjorie is all I have, as my parents are both dead. In fact, Marjorie is not really my sister; we both came over at different times. I can’t imagine growing up with all of the siblings you have! Your Christmases must have been very different from ours, which were always very quiet affairs. In my house, nobody ever raised his voice, in joy or in anger. Anyway, Marjorie married an accountant for the city offices and we don’t correspond except at Christmas. And I have settled here and seem unable or unwilling to move except that you can’t stay in one place forever, can you, especially if you have to find somewhere to make a living, if only to buy that new set of trousers in the Eaton’s catalogue so that when we finally meet, I’ll cut a more dashing figure than I do now.
Mrs. W. and I rang in the New Year last night with Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians on the radio. At midnight we toasted one another with a glass of elderberry wine (the one thing that still seems to be growing heartily around here), which was beautiful in colour but made my che
eks pucker.
I’ll leave you with that mental picture of me.
With abiding affection,
Martin
January 30, 1935
Dear Martin,
I’m so sorry for the delay in writing. I had to move to a new rooming house and somehow I misplaced your address in the process. You must have wondered what happened to me! I have been cut back to three days a week at the paper, because now the paper has a new partner, Mr. Brougham, and he is insisting on “efficiencies.” And now I wish I’d never complained about the cold or the thin walls or even fat old Mrs. Doane because I’ve had to move right downtown overtop Connaught’s Jewellery, and instead of sharing a bathroom with working girls my own age I have to share with whoever is in the room across the hall, and that seems to change weekly. And I can hear the blast on the foghorn like it’s right in the room with me, and so I am getting little sleep and I have to watch my pennies very carefully. In fact, I will have to borrow a few pennies for a stamp from Sally, who seems to have charmed Mr. Brougham, and as a result kept her hours at the Herald (and her room at Mrs. Doane’s!).
Christmas was exactly as it always is, a steady stream of family and friends and relatives, the kitchen full of people every waking minute and a great sharing of food and laughter. I thought of you many times, and wondered how you’d like all our noise and confusion. At one point there were so many pairs of boots beside the back door you could hardly get in! We had a big lobster boil, turkey being too dear, although of course we’d all have preferred that. I’d rather eat something that walks on two legs or four any day.