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During the summer months we moved across to the lake, and stayed in the Dasen's farm for one holiday, and on another farm the first holiday. This was quite a novelty for us. The sand flies bit horrendously, and the lake was warm to swim in but full of weed as I recall.
On one occasion {21st July 1941) our mother took a trip to Montreal to do a day's shopping, but made the mistake of getting on the train that went in a loop through to the United States. That was alright provided the train kept going and she did not have to show her passport on the American side, but coming back from Montreal, the train did stop, and everyone had to alight, whereupon she was asked for her passport, and when it was discovered that she did not have a visa for America for that day, they announced that they would have to deport her through the quickest route, which happened to be on a boat across the lake. So instead of her arriving in a taxi from the nearby railway station as we had anticipated, we suddenly looked up and saw our mother approaching us across the lake on a boat, which had been a very long trip round, the other side being in the United States, but in the event it brought her home to us only about an hour or two later than we had expected, by which time we had almost given up hope. But that was just the kind of behaviour that the Americans indulged in during wartime.
At the Stone's farm (first holiday): Mr Stone, Ursula Stone,
Barbara and Sheila Eades, Eileen Stone, Doreen Stone, Mrs Stone.
At Mrs Lamb's: Doreen Hickling, Sheila, Guli, Robin,
Mrs Lamb, Wesley Farrow, Shawnie (the dog!), Owen and Joe Franklin.
We settled down quite happily at school, but I think our mother had much more difficulty adjusting to the Canadian way of life, particularly with no money, and she found it quite tough to integrate, though with her usual charm she made many friends, and had bridge parties and so on that she used to go along to, and church suppers, and knitting for the British refugees and the troops in Europe were all part of their war effort. Eventually the time came when my mother could stand it no longer. By that time we had been joined by some other refugees from England, three boys called Franklin [Roger, Joe, and Owen] with their governess [Doreen Hickling], and they were really rather an overflow in the house. Mrs Lamb's house by then was pretty full of refugees, and she moved out for a time, I think to leave us all to our own devices.
It was about this time that my mother really decided that she wanted to move us all back to Burma to be reunited with our father, and to this end she plotted to raise the money and book our fares across on the Canadian Pacific to San Francisco. When it came to the time to move on we found we had made many friends whom we were sorry to lose, namely the Harrington children who were the children of the local vicar at Stanstead, an old lady who lived next door to the Lambs called Miss Colby, and many other school friends. These included a farmer's daughter that I went and stayed with once on their very isolated and poverty-stricken farm, and it made me realise why rural Canadians were so isolated from the world and its affairs. I can recall that the father did not know when I was talking about the Far East or the eastern borders of the United States. To him the Far East was the coast of North America, and not the Orient. Similarly it was very difficult for them to grasp that there was a war on in Europe, although as the war progressed, and their sympathies were more actively engaged with the Allies, so they began to take more notice of the actual details. Remember this was before America came into the War. Initially they had assumed that England would be defeated, and that we refugees were the last of our race to be saved before being engulfed by the German invasion. As we held out for longer and longer and Battle of Britain was won, however, the Americans and Canadians began to be more respectful of the British war effort, and even to believe that we might hang on in there and win.
Miss Colby's house, called Carrollcroft, and now a museum
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