Volume II
Diary Of Fred Albright On His And Evelyn's Second Wedding Anniversary
[Calgary] Monday, June 12, 1916
The second anniversary of our wedding day! What a change from 2 years ago. Then Calgary with her sporadic oil boom seemed the centre of the universe. Today the very mention of oil causes a smile or a shrug. Then the world was sleeping on the edge of the volcano. Today the volcano is thundering and roaring destruction and desolation to nearly all the civilized world. Then the militant suffragettes were outraging the feelings and alienating the sympathies of moderate people everywhere. Today the greatest leader of them all, Emmeline Pankhurst, spoke at a Canadian Club luncheon in the Palisser, to the largest crowd I've seen at any of the Club's meetings, on the needs of the present war. But I could fill this book with contrasts.
The world isn't the same, nor we either. But if we are different we are also immeasurably better and nearer to each other in thought and feeling than two years ago. The change hasn't been a whit less striking because gradual. We ourselves have scarcely noticed it, except at such milestones as today. Thank God that whatever the future may hold in store we already know ours has been and will be the portion set out in the first two of that quartet of words in the marriage vow we repeated together two years ago today, For better, for worse"!
There has been little of outward seeming to mark this as an anniversary day. I was at the office all day as usual. Evelyn was home this morning. We went together to the luncheon and this evening, except for a brief call at Coutts', we have been home alone, she writing letters and I reading in The First Hundred Thousand.(1) It's one of the most readable books I've seen for a long time, full of quiet, pungent humour, realistic, chatty, and withal wonderfully descriptive. But it's late now and I must quit for the night.
1. Hay, Ian. [pseud.] The First Hundred Thousand, being the Unofficial Chronicle of a Unit of "K"(1). Toronto: W. Briggs, 1916.