Marjorie Her War Years

by Patricia Skidmore

  In September 1942 Marjorie was first placed temporarily in a home in Victoria where another Fairbridge girl worked until a full-time placement could be found for her. On November 1 she was placed to work in a lovely home looking after an elderly woman who was confined to a wheelchair. The shock at finding herself so alone and untrained in this field of care was overwhelming for Marjorie, and she reached out to her after-care worker, Mrs. Williams, to find her another placement. Mrs. Williams was one of the few good people who treated Marjorie well during her years at Fairbridge, and so she was able to find the courage to ask for a change rather than make both her life and her employer’s miserable.

  It took until March 1, 1943, for another placement to be found for Marjorie with the Wheaton family in Victoria. The young family had a son, and a daughter soon arrived. Marjorie quickly settled in and made herself at home. She worked for the family for the next two years and then continued to live with them for two more years while she worked at Spencer’s Department Store in downtown Victoria. When I asked my mother what it was like being placed with the Wheaton family, she replied, “They were a lifesaver.” For the first time since leaving Whitley Bay, she was with a real family. Although they weren’t related, she felt that she was an important member of this family. And as she found at Fintry Farm in the summer of 1940, life was so much easier when she felt appreciated and accepted as she was. She no longer had to worry about horrid cottage mothers with their sharp tongues and quick slaps or about unwanted advances from the wretched men hired at the Fairbridge Farm School. She did constantly worry about her sister Bunny, though, and Kenny, too, but there was little she could do for them. She told me she worked hard for the Wheaton family, but her work was valued and she was safe. They were very kind to her. We have remained in touch with this family.

  In the spring of 1947 Marjorie moved to Vancouver with a group of Fairbridge girls. She would turn twenty-one in a few months, and it was time to seek her independence.

  Marjorie and Clifford, circa 1948.

  Marjorie married Clifford Scott Skidmore from Truro, Nova Scotia, on May 22, 1948. She met him while she was working and living with the Wheaton family in Victoria. Like many girls in Victoria at the time, Marjorie had set her sights on one of the handsome navy boys who came into town from the local naval base in Esquimalt.

  Their marriage lasted only a few years. It was a troubled one, as my father was suffering from a mental illness that was not fully diagnosed until his files were reviewed in 2000, when it was determined that he’d had post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his experiences during the war. But this disorder was not named until the 1980s, and so he was sent to Riverview/Essondale, a mental institution in Coquitlam, just outside of Vancouver, British Columbia. He was in and out of care throughout the early 1950s and received shock therapy and other treatments that did not give him any relief.

  The next procedure the doctors suggested was a lobotomy, which was popular if controversial at that time and has since fallen into disrepute and is no longer performed. My mother’s signature was required for the operation; she was reluctant, but the doctors and my father pressured her until she relented.

  Cliff was never the same afterward, and he immediately began to suffer from debilitating headaches. In the fall of 1957 he ran away from Riverview, crossed the nearby Lougheed Highway, and hopped on a train. He got off in Calgary, Alberta, and started to look for a job but was unsuccessful. He was soon picked up and put in an institution there. He escaped and found his way to the nearby Bow River. His suicide note simply stated: “I cannot take the headaches any longer. Kiss the baby’s head for me.”

  That was on November 5, 1957. The “baby” was just three weeks old. Marjorie and Cliff had five children under the age of eight. Cliff’s parents lived near Montreal, too far away to help out, so Marjorie was faced with raising five young children on her own. Being raised in an institution did not leave Marjorie with any positive parenting skills. Her four years as a teenager working and living with the Wheaton family in Victoria likely saved her, as it gave her some experience and insight into how to raise children, how to be a parent, and how to be a family. The Wheaton family were always there for support if our family needed them. It was not easy for Marjorie, of that I am certain, but she kept our family together, telling us often, “We may not have much, but we have each other.”

  Cliff was buried in Calgary in the veterans’ section of the Burnsland Cemetery. We don’t know who identified him or if anyone attended his burial. How alone he must have been. Eight years later, in 1965, when my older brother turned sixteen and had a licence and a car, he took our mother to Calgary to see where her beloved Cliff was buried. It was 1986 before I stood by his grave for the first time.

  Kenny turned sixteen in the fall of 1944 and was placed out to work on a farm outside of Victoria. Disillusioned with farming life, and enamoured by the stories of adventure on the high seas during the Second World War, he ran away within two weeks of being placed on the farm, lied about his age, and joined the merchant navy. His older “English” brother, Norman, also enamoured with life at sea, had joined the DEMS, or Defensibly Equipped Merchant Ship. DEMS was a division of the Royal Navy. Norman was trained to man the machine guns on the merchant ships.

  Kenny located his sister Marjorie, told her that he had run away from the farm and joined the merchant navy, and swore her to secrecy. He didn’t want her worrying about him if anyone from Fairbridge came looking for him. He gave the name of the ship he was on and when he was leaving port. Marjorie sent a letter to their mother in England and told her what Kenny had done, so she, too, would know that he was okay. Winifred must have been able to get word to her son Norman that his younger brother Kenny was on a merchant navy ship, along with the name of the vessel and the few details she had. It seems to me that it was an amazing feat of communication for the times, considering letters or even telegrams were not that easy to send during the war.

  At some point in 1945, a few months before the war ended, Norman’s ship pulled into an Australian harbour. It was crowded, and their ship had to tie alongside another ship. Once the ship was secure and permission was granted, Norman began to ready himself to go ashore. As he asked permission to cross the ship they were tied to, the name of the vessel, which was flying a Canadian flag, caught his attention. Well, it couldn’t be, but it was! This was the ship that his younger, “Canadian” brother Kenny was supposed to be on. Norman, now twenty-two, hadn’t seen his sixteen-year-old brother for almost ten years. What were the chances that he might actually be on the ship they had just tied up to? Would he still be on board? What if he was transferred? Or gone home on leave? Excitedly, Norman asked for permission to go aboard, and he quickly made enquiries as to whether there was a Kenny Arnison with the crew.

  Marjorie and Patricia Skidmore at Clifford Skidmore’s grave in Calgary, 2014.

  The last letter, besides the suicide note, that Marjorie received from Cliff.

  There was! Both brothers were granted shore leave, and they spent the next several hours catching up on each other’s lives. They ended up sobering up in a jail cell for the night, but they were no worse for wear! Norman told me that he always wondered about the odds of that happening and was thankful for the chance to have spent a memorable evening in an Aussie pub with his younger brother.

  Kenny’s love of boats stayed with him throughout his life. He worked toward and finally obtained his sea captain’s licence and spent his working life on the tugboats on the B.C. coast. Kenny married and had five children, one of whom was adopted. In 1975, Captain Kenneth Arnison, S.C., and three others were awarded the Star of Courage, a decoration for bravery in recognition for a heroic act, for towing a burning barge to a place of safety away from the other ships where it could be beached and the hulk abandoned to burn itself out.

  Arnison brothers Kenny, left, and Norman, right, met
by chance in Australia, circa 1945.

  During the 1970s Kenny fought a federal regulation that the maximum age that one could begin training to become a Fraser River pilot was fifty, “although once on the job, he could stay until the age of sixty-five, or even sixty-eight.” He enlisted in the Canadian Human Rights Commission and fought against the Pacific Pilotage Authority’s ruling. A decision was rendered in his favour on July 28, 1980. However, as one newspaper reported at the time, “after a seven-year struggle, Arnison has been told there is no vacancy at the Pacific Pilotage Authority.”[6]

  Kenny never realized his dream of becoming a Fraser River pilot. He was on his tugboat at the bottom end of the Sechelt Inlet when he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was just fifty-four. It was April 9, 1983, his big brother Norman’s sixtieth birthday.

  Audrey (a.k.a. Bunny) left the farm school in early 1946. She had to endure four years there without her sister Marjorie. Audrey’s available Fairbridge Farm School records show that she had at least eight different cottage mothers between 1938 and 1946 and was placed in four different cottages during her eight years at this institution. These records are incomplete, so there may have been other cottages and cottage mothers.

  Audrey was placed out to work as a domestic servant in Victoria in the summer of 1946. Previously her half-yearly progress reports at the farm school had noted that she was too dependent on her sister Marjorie; however, when she was placed out as a domestic servant, her March 1946 half-yearly progress report stated, “Her older sister should have a good influence on her.” When Audrey was sent to Victoria, Marjorie had been working there for almost four years. In the spring of 1947, Marjorie moved to Vancouver with two other Fairbridge girls, so she was not in Victoria to have a good influence on her younger sister.

  Audrey married a Fairbridge boy, Robert Duncan, in the fall of 1947. She was not yet eighteen. Once Fairbridge girls married, they appeared to be no longer under the guardianship of the Fairbridge Society; thus Audrey attained her “freedom” before the age of twenty-one through marriage. The couple did, however, need the Fairbridge Society’s permission to marry as they were both under the age of twenty-one.

  Audrey and Robert had five children, and Robert passed away in 1976. Audrey remarried in 1992 to a second Fairbridge boy, Eric Lewis, who passed away in 2012. When her big sister Marjorie was nearing the end of her life in January 2017, Audrey’s childhood stresses began to surface. The sisters had remained close during their adult lives, even though they lived miles apart. Their bond became stronger after losing their brother, Kenny, in the 1980s, and even though they came from a large family, they saw each other as their only real source of “family” support. She told me that she was left alone at the Middlemore Emigration Home as well as the Fairbridge Farm School when Marjorie was sent away to work, and now she was left alone again. Her children and grandchildren and Marjorie’s family rallied around her, but she found it difficult to face the memories and anxiety of a childhood racked with loss and separation.

  Joyce was left behind at the Middlemore Emigration Home in Birmingham due to an incorrect birthdate. The birthdates noted on Joyce, Marjorie, and Kenny’s Fairbridge Farm School immigration forms listed them as a year older than they were, causing all sorts of grief throughout the years because the children did not come to Canada with birth certificates. It was very difficult for Joyce to be left behind yet again when Audrey was sent to Canada in August 1938. Joyce ran away a few times, and each time when she reached the train station near Selly Oaks in Birmingham with no money and not a clue where to go, she just sat on the bench and cried until someone from the home was contacted to come and get her. Joyce remained in the care of the home until she turned sixteen, and in the winter of 1940, she was sent back to her mother. Unfortunately, there was no room for Joyce, so she found a job working for a family, looking after their children.

  Joyce married her husband, Dennis, in 1952. Den passed away in 1976, and Joyce’s only son, Raymond, passed away in 2001. Joyce has made a number of trips to Canada, beginning in 1977. And during our many visits to London since 2001, we have had some memorable times with Joyce, including a 2001 trip back to Birmingham to see the Middlemore Emigration Home (demolished circa 2005), a trip back to Whitley Bay in 2007, many visits around London, and two trips to Scotland. It was rewarding for Marjorie to develop strong family relationships with some of her siblings in her senior years, and most especially with her sister Joyce, whom she missed so terribly when she was sent to Canada.

  Marjorie’s mother, Winifred Arnison, moved to the London area shortly after the four children were taken from her care. During the war she was evacuated out of the city to a home in the country east of London. She had her twelfth and final child in May 1943 at the age of forty-three. After the war the family regrouped, and because the two older sons, Frederick and Norman, had been in service, they were eligible for a council house. The parents, Winifred and Thomas, lived in that house until they passed away, Winifred in 1972 and Thomas in 1977. Winifred made a trip to Canada in 1969 on her own. It was Marjorie’s first time seeing her mother since waving goodbye at the Whitley Bay train station in early February 1937, but it was not a very satisfactory visit as Marjorie wanted answers and her mother could not give any.

  Today the Child Migrants Trust recognizes this as a barrier when reuniting families affected by child migration, and they help to bridge the gap for former child migrants and their families before they meet. Unfortunately, this was not available to our family in 1969. The removal of children from their families for British child migration had a tremendous effect throughout the generations, as is so evident in our family. So many, like my grandparents, went to their graves without any resolution or real understanding of why their family had been torn apart.

  Marjorie’s father, Thomas Arnison, made a trip to Canada in 1972. I believe that he alone carried the blame for the children being sent to Canada. Marjorie’s visit with her father was also unsuccessful. She said to me in August 2014, “I didn’t get along with either of them. I didn’t try. My mother gave me the brooch she was wearing. I don’t know why; perhaps it was to make me feel better. I gave it away to your sister right away. I didn’t want it. Why would I?”

  I told my mother, “I was there in 1986 when you met your youngest brother, David, for the first time, then again in 2011 when you met your brother Richard for the first time. To me it looked like there was an instant bond on both occasions. But this didn’t appear to be the case when you saw your parents.” I wasn’t certain why my mother didn’t feel an attachment to her parents. I met my grandmother in 1969 but did not make the effort to meet my grandfather when he came to Canada in 1972. I found it interesting that my mother basically rejected her parents but bonded immediately with brothers who were born after she was sent to Canada and whom she had never met. Perhaps her anger at her parents ran too deep.

  “It wasn’t my brothers’ fault, was it? I guess I had a chip on my shoulder, and I resented my parents. I just couldn’t feel close to either of them. I guess I still carried a grudge. I didn’t know the circumstances then, like I do now. I didn’t realize that my mother missed me as much as I missed her. How could I know?”

  “I suppose your rejection of your mother during her 1969 visit reopened her wounds. Likely for you and your mother, you both carried wounds that you both had been trying to heal since 1937. She was unable to talk about the circumstances of the loss of her children to Canada just like you were unable to talk to me about the loss of your family.”

  This loss, and the removal and dispersal of our family, is an ongoing generational issue. I gave up asking as a teenager and left home at eighteen, and I carried my anger with me. I had minimal contact with my mother for the next eight years.

  It wasn’t until my first son was born in 1976 that I once again began to seek answers because I didn’t know what to tell my children about their grandmother and why she was in Canada while h
er family was in England. I vividly recall my son’s first illness. We were living on a small sailboat at the time, and I was so overwhelmed by lack of sleep and the demands of a sick baby that I worried about being able to cope with raising this child. It was then that I thought about my mother growing up without her parents and then being left to raise her five children on her own after my father’s suicide. It hit me like a ton of bricks, as I always thought I was stronger than my mother, but here I was, undone by my baby’s first illness. Who was this woman who kept her little family together against all odds? Social welfare swooped in after my father’s death, but she fought like a mother bear to keep all five of her children. It was then that I realized that I had something that she did not, and I had so casually tossed it aside. I had my mother.

  During Marjorie’s first trip back to England in 2001, she was reunited with her older brother Fred (1919–2006), whom she hadn’t seen since 1935; her older sister Phyllis (1920–2007), whom she had last seen in February 1937, when she and their mother put the four children on the train at Whitley Bay bound for Birmingham’s Middlemore Emigration Home; her brother Norman (1923–2012), whom she had met once when he and his wife, Marion, made a trip to Canada in 1973; her sister Joyce, who had been out to Canada a number of times; and her younger brother Lawrence, whom she hadn’t seen since February 1937. Lawrence has not been to Canada, but visits to Lawrence and his wife, Pam, were high on the priority list whenever Marjorie travelled to London.

  During our 2010 visit to witness the British government’s apology, Lawrence very gently took Marjorie’s hand and said, “It didn’t just affect you, Marjorie; it affected the whole family.”

  And there is Marjorie’s youngest brother, David, who was born in 1943, six years after Marjorie was sent to Canada. David made his first trip to Canada in 1986. Joyce accompanied him, but he did not bring his family because he wanted to see if he was welcomed and accepted. For his big sister Marjorie’s eulogy, he wrote: “I will always remember having this frightening thought on the plane going over [in 1986], what if Margie doesn’t take to me? Suppose we don’t get on. I can’t turn back now. Well, when I met my sister at the airport for the very first time, she gave me the biggest smile and the biggest hug I had ever had. You could say we clicked right away. So the fear of meeting her for the first time vanished completely.” The bond was instant and strong. Two years later he brought out his wife, Marion, and three daughters, Katie, Jennifer, and Julie.