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    Just a Larger Family: Letters of Marie Williamson from the Canadian Home Front,1940–1944
    Just a Larger Family: Letters of Marie Williamson from the Canadian Home Front,1940–1944
    Just a Larger Family: Letters of Marie Williamson from the Canadian Home Front,1940–1944
    Ebook643 pages10 hours

    Just a Larger Family: Letters of Marie Williamson from the Canadian Home Front,1940–1944

    By Wilfrid Laurier University Press

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    About this ebook

    The Second World War had been under way for a year when Marie and John Williamson welcomed two English brothers to join them and their two children in their small house in north Toronto for the duration of the conflict. Marie wrote over 150 letters to the boys’ mother, Margaret Sharp, imagining that she could make Margaret feel she was still with her children. She shepherded the boys through education decisions and illnesses, eased them into a strange new life, and rejoiced when they embraced unfamiliar winter sports. The letters brim with detail about family holidays, the financial implications of an extended family, their involvement in their church, and the games and activities that kept them occupied. Marie’s letters reflect the lives and concerns of a particular family in Toronto, but they also reveal a portrait of what was then Canada’s second-largest city during wartime.

    The introduction is by Mary F. Williamson, Marie’s daughter, and Tom Sharp, Margaret’s youngest son. The book features a foreword by Jonathan Vance that puts the letters in historical context.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilfrid Laurier University Press
    Release dateMay 15, 2011
    ISBN9781554583461
    Just a Larger Family: Letters of Marie Williamson from the Canadian Home Front,1940–1944

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      Book preview

      Just a Larger Family - Wilfrid Laurier University Press

      ]>

      1940

      It will just be a little larger family1

      [1] 118 HILLSDALE AVENUE WEST

      TORONTO, JULY 112

      Dear Margaret

      I do hope that by now you and the boys, or at least the boys, will be on the way to Canada, though it is apparently not easy to get transportation.... So you had already in mind the idea of moving out here. Of course as you know now, it is impossible to bring any money out, but we would be very glad indeed to have you come to us, and your mother too if she could be persuaded to come, though I do not expect she would want to leave Herbert and Arthur. Of course the journey is undoubtedly hazardous but several shiploads of women and children have already arrived.

      Practically everyone here who is in a position to do so is willing to take in at least one child. A very dear friend of mine who does not live very far away would be glad to take Bill.3 I think he must be 13 now, so he would be in secondary school—that is, proceeding toward matriculation. We call them High Schools or Collegiate Institutes and she lives only 5 minutes walk from the newest and best equipped one in the city—also it has on the whole much the nicest kind of children attending it as it is in a good residential district. In addition the headmaster is a very old friend of John’s. Vivien (her name is Vivien Ratcliffe) has a lovely, quite large house with a big garden (that is, big for a city house) and a large skating rink at the back of the house. She has a boy of 15 and two girls 12 and 6. I would keep the other two myself, or if you came with them I would like you to stay on with us and one of the boys could go to my sister Clare4—probably Tom. I think it is Christopher who has not been strong—I have had information about them from time to time in your mother’s letters but one does forget. Clare is some distance from the nearest school but I should think Tom (he’s 9 isn’t he) would not find it too far.... If the boys should be coming without you I would be glad if you would let me know what diseases they have had and what inoculations and vaccinations and

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