Remembering my grandfather

My grandfather, John R. Parker, with his dog Dean in his backyard on Hampton Avenue 

Considering how seldom I saw my grandfather I seem to have more memories of him than of other family members. One day he told me that when he was growing up in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, he had killed a chicken and roasted it on a fire in a lane; I took this to refer to his growing up in poverty. One day he told me that if you wrap a box and use string, tie it on one of the edges of the box and it will hold better. He was trying to teach me something and now, so many years later, I appreciate his effort. Who tries to teach anyone anything anymore? My mother had many memories of her father, one recurring theme was him fighting, who does this anymore? There were only two incidents of this fighting that I know of; for instance, when he arrived in New York City around 1912 and lived with his Uncle William Parker, he drove a streetcar and one day someone tried to rob his streetcar, he chased the man down the street and beat him up; my grandfather was also a boxer in New York City but I know nothing about this. One day I was driving my mother to Central Train Station in Montreal, I remember exactly where this happened, she said "that corner is where a man was harassing a woman" and my grandfather had seen this and chased after the man, again fighting with him. In the 1920s my grandfather worked at the Central Fire Station in Old Montreal, that was after being fired from another job on the railway, something about having a gun. As a child or young person my mother would walk down the street to the fire station, from Mountain Street where they lived in an apartment and where my grandfather was also the janitor, and she would bring him his lunch or supper. One of the few stories I remember my grandfather telling me is that when he began working at the Central Fire Station they still had horses and the captain told him to polish the metal buttons on the harness; later he was told that he hadn't done a good job, there were buttons to polish even though they couldn't be seen on the underbelly of the horse. He remembered this and told me this story; was there a moral to the story or was it just a story from when he came to Canada.

In 1913 my grandparents' first born child, Willie, died of some illness; it was always said that the doctor never showed up, that the doctor had been drunk. We still have photographs of Willie, he was a beautiful child with longish blonde hair and he was much loved. Was this when my grandmother's depression became more evident? There are very few photographs of her and, at some point, she cut herself out of most of the photographs. Then, in 1916, my mother was born and her parents were very protective of her. When still a child a man followed my mother home, she had gone on an errand to the local dairy, and he followed her to where she lived on Richmond Street, hearing of this my grandmother ran out into the street with a milk bottom and chased the man ready to hit him with the bottle. 

It is only now that I am old that I truly appreciate my grandfather. He had married my grandmother in Blackburn, Lancashire, England. She was two years his senior, she was a Chew and there was a whole family of people behind her, none of them wealthy, but they were people who had accomplished something in life. They were builders, landlords, plasterers, plumbers, or they worked in the mills, that's how they made their living. My grandfather was a Parker, he had three brothers and the brothers, and their mother, moved to Montreal to join my grandfather and grandmother; one brother was also a fireman in Montreal. There was another brother about whom I know very little; he had a girlfriend but his mother broke up their relationship, and the woman he married was worse in some way than the original girlfriend. My grandfather was the only son who had children. My grandfather also had a younger brother, Victor, who had some kind of mental illness and was not able to hold a job. One day in 1969 my mother said to me that her Uncle Victor had died, this was the first I had heard of Victor; he had been living at the Douglas Mental Hospital in Verdun, adjacent to Montreal, and he'd been there since his mother died in 1949. Victor's mother wanted her other three sons to look after Victor after she died but that didn't happen and he ended up in an institution. My mother and I went to William Wray, undertakers, on University Street and spoke to someone there; the casket was kept closed, they said he was in no shape to be seen. My Uncle John, my mother's younger brother, had avoided the whole situation of Victor's death because he was afraid someone would try to make him pay Victor's expenses. That's how things worked.

After my grandparents married my grandfather moved, by himself, to New York City, my grandmother would follow. In New York City my grandfather lived with his paternal uncle, William Parker, who worked a few blocks from where he lived, at the Bronx Zoo. When I was a child I would drive somewhere with my mother and if someone tried to cut her off she would say "I'd like to punch him in the nose", and then recount that this is what her father would say. I guess road rage has existed since people first started to drive. My mother would always recount how her father jacked up and levelled the floors in their flat, or how he built the front porch on their property; she, too, was handy, she could reupholster furniture, paint walls, pay bills, do her own banking and invest in the stock market; she had only contempt for women who were helpless and had always let their husbands do everything, women who can't even look after money so they were helpless when they were widowed. I am not sure my mother even liked other women. She rarely spoke of her mother but she had many memories of her father. One day she said to me, "Did you ever get the better of someone, get a good deal, break them down?" She was gleeful when she said this and it was the only time I heard her say something like this. She was excited and happy at getting a good deal. It was rough being a woman in the old days, a woman couldn't even have a bank account without her husband's approval and my mother was contemptuous of any rules or laws that held women back. 

And now, these many years after my grandfather died, I, who never liked my grandfather, have come to appreciate him and what he did in life. He was not weak, he was strong, he looked after his family, they came first; his first child died and his wife was a depressive, but he got on with life. One day I was meeting my mother, maybe it was in the early 2000s just before she moved to Toronto. Seeing me standing on the street she called me, only this one time, "Dad", maybe I was beginning to look like her father or maybe her mind slipped for a second, slipped into the past.

These are some of the memories that I wanted to remember and have remembered about my grandfather, otherwise they will disappear into the ether of nothingness.

Note: maybe one day I'll edit this, rewrite parts of it, or delete it. 

Rear view of 2217 Hampton Avenue

His upstairs tenant, Mrs. Erskine

After my grandmother died in 1957, my grandfather visited
one of his wife's sisters (pictured) in Bercy, Saskatchewan

I believe this was also taken in Bercy, Sask., and my grandfather is with his niece

 

When my grandfather died

 

My grandfather, John R. Parker, outside of his Hampton Avenue home;
he lived in the lower flat (door on left) and rented out the upstairs; photo taken early 1960s

I remember when my grandfather died. He had lung cancer from his many years of smoking cigarettes, and I remember visiting him at the Montreal General Hospital with my mother, that must have been in 1964. She brought him canned oysters which he liked and, I guess, must have requested. I don't remember what was said between them and I don't know how many times my mother visited him at the hospital, maybe only this one time, but I do remember him lying in his hospital bed, I was standing at the foot of the bed, and my mother was standing beside him. There was always feuding with my mother's family, when my grandfather's mother died in the late 1940s they hadn't talked for two years and by 1964 my grandfather hadn't spoken with his two brothers for many years, what was that all about? I suspect my mother hadn't talked very often with her father since her mother died in 1957; however, my mother had helped care for her mother in her final months. In 1956 my father died and my grandfather gave my mother $5.00 a month to help with expenses; my grandmother would say "Have you given Hilda her money?" But I have no memory at all of my grandmother, not a single memory, how is that possible? In 1963, when we moved from the Oxford Avenue flat to the big house on Montclair, my grandfather helped us move, it was not a pleasant experience, and by the end of the day they were arguing. I looked down the stairs from my new bedroom and I could see there was some sort of heated argument going on; was it about me? I thought so, children are willing to take the blame. When my father was going to a hospital in Boston where he died, my mother must have said something to my grandfather, she remembered him saying about my father,”He’s not going to have his toenails cut”; later, maybe years later, my mother said she didn’t realize how sick my father was was until they were met at the Boston train station by someone with a wheelchair. When my mother remarried seven years later, in 1963, to a man who had also been very ill, my grandfather said to her, “Why marry another sick man?” Years later, in the 1990s, driving out to where I lived in the country, my mother said she had "remorse of conscience" about her father. I didn't inquire what this was all about, she had never said anything like this before or after that one time and I didn't believe her.   

After my grandfather died in 1964, my mother and I visited his Hampton Avenue flat, at 2217 Hampton Avenue.  All of the rooms were small, they were tiny rooms. On the left, as you entered, in the living room, there was an easy chair facing the television beside which there was a faux fireplace and an electric heater in the fireplace, a small motor and two small light bulbs gave an illusion of flames and a burning fire when it was turned on. On a small table beside the easy chair was a copy of the Reader's Digest with articles checked off in pencil as he had read them. Down a hallway there was a bathroom on the left and I looked inside the medicine cabinet, there was a box of Preparation H, toothpaste, toothbrushes, and hand soap. The kitchen was at the end of the hall and an unheated porch off of the kitchen; on the right as you entered the kitchen there was a refrigerator and a black Hallicrafters short wave radio on the top of the fridge; this, I was told, had belonged to my father but it been had been given to my grandfather. I inherited the radio and enjoyed being alone listening to Radio Havana, Radio Moscow, Radio Prague, Radio Kiev, the BBC, the Voice of America, and many other short wave radio stations on this radio; I was happiest sitting in my dark room listening to the radio, the only light was from the radio tubes, this was before transistor radios. I remember listening to Winston Churchill's funeral on the BBC, it was a month after my grandfather died, it was January 24, 1965. I don't remember going to my grandfather's funeral but I heard a lot about how his property, a duplex, was sold for only $17,000.00 and that my uncle, who sold the property, had sold it to the first person who made an offer; my uncle chose this real estate agent who was an old man, a veteran, and who my mother didn't like or trust. To be a fool with your money was the greatest insult. After my stepfather died, and even before when he was in hospital, my mother used to comment on how he sold the property next door to where we lived, he sold it for less than he had paid for it; what a fool! The original Hallicrafters radio eventually didn't work and I bought a new Hallicrafters radio, but it was never as good as the old black Hallicrafters radio. In the Hampton basement my grandfather had divided the space for storage, for himself and for his upstairs tenants, an old woman, Mrs. Erskine, and her daughter; they had to  move when the place was put up for sale; they had been nice company for my grandfather.

When I was about three years old I put lighted matches into my grandfather's mail box and set the curtains on fire. What kind of a child would do such a thing? Does it have significance that my grandfather was a fireman? I also remember staying with him at his home and smoke coming into his flat and he called Station/Caserne 46 in case it was a fire; this is the station my grandfather had been captain until he retired around 1940. One of the firemen who arrived that day said, laughing, that there was no fire, and did my grandfather report a fire to get his chimney cleaned for free? He knew that my grandfather had been the fire captain at his fire station. 

My mother remarried in 1963 to another sick man. They went on their honeymoon and my grandfather stayed with my brother and I. I don't remember anything of this time except going to the airport to welcome home my mother and stepfather; my grandfather drove us to the airport with me sitting beside him in the front seat, I was thirteen years old, my brother sat in the back seat. As we approached the airport my grandfather must have said something, had we missed my mother? And I said something like I was glad she was returning home because my grandfather, sitting beside me, would return to his own home and that it hadn't been nice with him living with us. He didn't like this comment, that I hadn't liked having him stay with us for two weeks, I never considered that he had put himself out and been generous, cooked our meals and been responsible for us, and he slapped me in the face. I would never hit a child, it's not in my nature, but that's what happened in the old days; I doubt it made any child a better person. 

Continued in next post.

June 2024 visit to Urgel Bourgie Cemetery, Montreal

This cemetery used to be called the Montreal Memorial Gardens, now it is owned and run by Urgel Bourgie Cimetiere Jardin & Complexe Funeraire and is located adjacent to Montreal in Ville St-Laurent. It is not hard to find but there is a lot of traffic, especially just before entering the cemetery. Planes landing at Trudeau International Airport can be seen overhead. All of the headstones lie flat on the ground; for assistance enter the main complexe building and the workers there are very hospitable and helpful. 

The grave of my great grandmother, my mother's grandmother, Bessie Richards Parker; 
born in the UK she died in Montreal in 1948

The grave of my mother's father, John Parker, born in Blackburn, England, died in Montreal; and his wife, Bessie Chew Parker, also born in Blackburn and died in Montreal

I think some people have their ashes left around or under a large rock, as this person has done;
a bit of humour, he writes "I crawled back under the rock I came from from"

Walking by Caserne 46 on Somerled Avenue

My grandfather, John R. Parker, was captain at Station/Caserne 46 on Somerled Avenue back in the 1940s; it was country back then, apple orchards and farmers' fields. My grandparents lived at 2217 Hampton Avenue, near the railway tracks, in a duplex they bought after many years of living in apartments, the last one on de la Montagne where my grandfather was also the janitor. Before Caserne 46 he was at the Central Fire Station, the building is now a museum, in Old Montreal. When my mother was a child she used to walk to the Central Fire Station to deliver my grandfather's lunch to him. One of my grandfather's brothers was at Station/Caserne 11 in downtown Montreal so we have two firemen in the family and we're proud of them. Whenever I walk by Caserne 46, or I see the big red fire engines moving through the streets, I think of my grandfather and I think of the brave fire fighters in the Montreal Fire Department (now the Service de sécurité incendie de Montréal). 

Monument to the Protestant firemen in Montreal

Both my grandfather, John Parker, and his brother, Thomas Parker, were firemen in Montreal; they were born in Blackburn, Lancashire, England in the late 1800s and moved to Montreal with two other brothers and my grandfather's wife and his mother. Here are some photographs taken in April 2018 at Mount Royal Cemetery of the Protestant firemen's monument that is surrounded by the graves of some of these firemen, including my great uncle: