Woodstock, Ontario, December 1956

We often visited my mother's cousins who lived in Woodstock, Ontario. They had emigrated here from England in the late teens or early 1920s. This is a photograph of their family home. When most of the daughters, and one son, had married and moved away, and the elderly parents (Alice and Bill Holden) had died, there was only the one daughter left at home, that was Annie Holden, and she never married, so it became her home. Annie died the year she retired, I believe in her lawyer's office, of a stroke. My mother was with her at the time. Annie was always very nice to us, a truly kind person who attended a Baptist church, sang in the choir, and worked much of her life at Harvey Woods in Woodstock.



This is December 1956, just after our father died. Two boys, age ten and six, who have lost their father.

Here is my brother, my mother, and I, at Annie's.

Woodstock, December 1956.

The two photos above and the photo below, probably taken at Bud Karn's farm. Bud's wife was Bertha Karn, one of Annie's sisters, their daughters Katherine and Patty. That's my brother, Bertha's daughter Kathryn Karn (KK), myself in the hood, and Michael or Billy Davis (the sons of Jennie and Arnold Davis, another sister of Annie's).

Here is Annie's house, in Woodstock, perhaps spring 1957.

A few years pass and we're still visiting Woodstock, now it's 1962-1963.

Woodstock, Ontario

Here is my brother with our mother's uncle, Bill Holden; Uncle Bill is the father of Annie Holden, Gertie Brown, Bertha Karn, Hartley Holden, and Jennie Davis (all are now deceased). Bill Holden married Alice Chew who was Bertha Chew's (my maternal grandmother's) sister. In the late teens or early 1920s Uncle Bill came to Canada, accompanied (I believe) by his daughter Gertie to find a new home for the family; they were moving from Blackburn, Lancashire, England to Canada. I think all Alice and Bill Holden's children were born by then and Gertie was possibly already married to Fred Brown, who had served in World War One and then, in Canada, he worked for the post office. They decided to settle in Woodstock, Ontario, perhaps because it had factories, like Harvey Woods, which cobined both a small town setting and factory work they were used to doing. When I was young, to my early twenties, we visited them in Woodstock quite often during the different holidays. When the Holdens all arrived in Montreal, en route to Woodstock, they stayed at my mother's parents' home on, I believe, Irene Avenue in Montreal's St. Henry neighbourhood. However, later, when they arrived in Woodstock, I believe they learned that the factory where they had planed to work had closed. I don't think Uncle Bill worked again, but he gardened, he was a property owner (they must have had eight acres of land) and he did things like grafting different types of apples onto the same tree. I also remember a big pear tree near their house that he probably planted. My mother was very close to her cousins who were like sisters and a brother to her. This photo was taken around 1947. It is one of the earliest photographs of my brother.

St. Eustache summer cottage, mid-1950s

Above: One of the only photographs of the children we knew in St. Eustache. In fact, I can't really identify any of them but Nicky Coppens, front row, first on the far left and myself standing to our right beside him. If, in fact, this is a photograph of what I think it is, and I think it is... taken maybe around 1958 or 1959? Curiously, I met Nicky again around 1981 at the founding convention of Alliance Quebec, held at the Loyola Campus of Concordia University. I was the Chateauguay Valley English-Speaking Persons Association (CVESPA) representative; I suppose they asked me to go because they couldn't find anyone; I am the last person anyone should ask to do committee work and I am not, for the most part, a team player. And there, by chance, was my old friend from the summers in St. Eustache, Nicky Coppens. At the time he was living part-time (?) in Holland and making movies and his older sister was teaching at the University of Sherbrooke. This is what I remember him saying, but I don't really know how accurate any of it is.

Below: One of the few photographs of St. Eustache taken in the winter. Here is my brother and Buddy, around 1957. My father bought Buddy for my brother; I remember driving to Howick where he was bought . I hope someone corrects me if I'm wrong about any of this:


Here I am at the cottage my mother rented across the street from my grandmother's on 11th Avenue. I remember getting those new glasses I'm wearing. I wanted horned-rim glasses just like my Uncle Alex's...

My mother and I.

Buddy and me.

My mother and Buddy.

We rented a cottage from the Goodyear's, which was located directly behind their home, and which was across the street from my grandmother's cottage on 11th Avenue. I think this is where we got our Siamese cat, Simey, who I believe jumped out of someone's car, and somehow we knew they were from Baltimore. Anyhow, we kept the cat and loved him, he was a part of the family. I was with him in the late seventies when he died, he was around eighteen.Back in the country in the late 50s and early 60s, when my mother was at work, my brother and I were looked after by our grandmother and Auntie Ivy.

Here I am in someone's rowboat, left anchored at the bottom of 11th Avenue where we went for the summers to around 1962.

Frank Morrissey and family

This is Frank Morrissey, one of my father's older brothers. See the Morrissey Family History website for more information on Frank.

This is Eva Dubois who married Frank Morrissey; they had one daughter, Patty Morrissey.

Photo of Frank and Eva's daughter, Patty Morrissey Robb, she was like a sister to my father, Edgar Morrissey, and in this photograph, with Patty, is her second husband, Sid. Patty was born in 1920; my father was born in 1912. 

Here is a 1979 photograph of Patty Morrissey Robb's children, Frank and Eva's grandchildren; also in the photo is Patty's first husband, Peter Robb, on the far right. From left to right we see Patty's sons Don, David, Chris, and her daughter Patty (Ferrari).

Just think, we (and others) have all of these relatives we've never met, and they've never met us. People move away and stop communicating with the family and the family loses track of these people. Or the people who would keep in touch with family die or forget to keep in touch and the connection is lost. And then, one day, even the names of some family members is forgotten and new family members take over and start the whole thing over again. 

Frank and Eva, at one point, lived at the Corona Hotel near Guy Street in downtown Montreal (this was back in the 1930s); I believe they also used to live on Decarie Blvd. near the corner of Cote St. Antoine Road, and I pass their old home fairly often. Their only child, Patty, often stayed at our grandmother's flat at Girouard, and she and my father were very close; my impression is that her home life was not good. The family in Montreal lost touch with Patty when she and her family moved away. Patty's daughter, Patty Ferrari, sent me these photographs. 

Update: I have the address on Decarie where Frank and Eva (Eve) lived; they sent their daughter, Patty Morrissey, to the Villa Maria, a private girl's school about two blocks from their home. Frank and Eva lived on Decarie Blvd. not far from 2226 Girouard Avenue where Frank's mother and some of his siblings lived. 

Alburgh, Vermont, around 1957

Why do kids have to pull faces when they're getting their picture taken? Maybe they don't any longer...

Here is my brother (seated) and I, with our dog Buddy, outside of the cottage we rented in Alburgh, Vermont. I assume this was the cottage we rented...

Here I am with our dog, Buddy. I remember taking him for a walk that summer and being dragged along the dirt road holding onto his leash as he ran after something; then I let go and he escaped, but we must have found him or he returned by himself. Now I think of it, cats and dogs running away and the effort to find them, driving across the city, advertising in the newspaper, announcements on CJAD radio, phone calls from total strangers saying they'd found our cat or dog, all of that was a part of growing up. Alburgh, Vermont is located on Lake Champlain, which is one of the largest in-land lakes in North America. Alburgh is about sixty miles from Montreal. Of course, we all love Vermont, one of the most beautiful states. I think a typical Canadian experience is living within a hundred miles of the Canadian-American border and driving across the border to the States to buy cotton goods, blue jeans, cotton sheets, and back in the fifties to buy chocolate bars you couldn't buy here, and to smuggle back alcohol and cigarettes. I remember returning from Vermont with my grandmother in the back seat with packages of cigarettes in her purse for my Uncle Alex. Or the various ways Canadians used to smuggle back bottles of whiskey, in thermoses, or hidden elsewhere. Or taking the kid down to the the States in his old clothes which were discarded down there, and returning wearing three shirts, new blue jeans, running shoes, and other clothes hidden away in the car. Now, with free trade, that's pretty much a thing of the past. But it was a Canadian experience back then, whether in Montreal driving down to Burlington or Plattsburgh, or in Vancouver driving down to Bellingham, or (I guess) in Toronto...

Ottawa, late 1930s

From left: my mother's uncle, Harry Chew; sitting; behind him (far left) is Mrs. May (?) -- (she owned the house in the picture; I think Uncle Harry was a boarder at the house); my mother is in the middle, standing and looking stylish as ever; I believe that's my mother's mother, Bertha Chew Parker standing next to my mother (she died when I was around seven years old and I have no memories of her); in front of Bertha, sitting on the stairs (in suit and tie) is my grandfather John Richards Parker. Harry was the best man at my grandparents' wedding.

Uncle Harry's wife ran off with another man, possibly to Chicago, and left him with their two daughters. I have the girls' names written down somewhere. This was a story I heard quite often but despite that I have still forgotten the girls' names. One of the girls was adopted by my mother's cousin, Gertie Holden Brown (her mother was Alice Chew, the sister of Bertha Chew above) and Gertie's husband Fred Brown who lived in Woodstock, Ontario, but I guess Gertie and Fred were set in their ways, older and conservative and not really parent material, and I guess the girl was young and a bit too energetic or too wild for them and they sent her back...

The Chews, Parkers, Richards (my grandfather's mother), all came from Blackburn, Lancashire, England, and some of them moved to Montreal, or Woodstock, Ontario, and one went to Bercy, Saskatchewan. Back in Blackburn they worked in property management, the trades, or in the mills. It's possible we have relatives there we don't know about, you can see more at Morrissey Family History. Later, I'll post some photographs of them.

From ERM's office at Windsor Station, Montreal

Here is my mother's note, written on October 3, 1979, regarding the following photograph (first, below). I remember that day, she gave me the photograph and I kept the note with it and dated it at the time.

Taken in the late 1930s (or early 1940s), this photograph (taken from my father's office window at Windsor Station, then the C.P.R.'s head office in Montreal), you can see St. James' Cathdedral (renamed Mary Queen of the World Cathedral around 1950, for the year of Mary) beside Dominion Square in downtown M0ntreal.



This is the parking lot behind Windsor Station, on St. Antoine Street (where the Bell Centre is now located).

St Eustache, an afternoon at the quarry, early 1960s

Here are two photographs taken at the quarry near St. Eustache. You take the Oka road, on which the monastery where the monks made Oka cheese was located (but is now closed). I remember this day very well, I remember not wanting my grandmother to come with us to the quarry... Now I wish she were still here.

Auntie Ivy and my mother.

My mother.

My Auntie Ivy.

St Eustace summer cottage, 1940s and 1950s

My father's brother, my Uncle Alex and Alex's wife, my Auntie Ivy. This is where we used to swim, at the bottom of 11th Avenue in St. Eustache, where my grandmother and Uncle Alex shared a cottage just up the street; we had a rented cottage across the street from them, behind the Goodyear's home. In the cool August evenings we'd have a fire in the Franklin stove and toast bread on it. That was always nice.

My mother and our beagle, Buddy. Around 1957 - 1958, outside our grandmother's cottage.

                                                     My brother, John Morrissey.

                        My brother and I outside of our grandmother's country cottage.

                       Auntie Mable (my father's sister) and me, maybe early summer 1951, 

                       sitting in someone's rowboat at the bottom of 11th Avenue in St. Eustache.

                      My father's sister, my Auntie Mable outside the summer cottage, in 1948.

My grandmother outside the cottage. I think this was taken in 1948, just a few years after my grandmother and Uncle Alex bought the cottage. Before this they would spend the hot summer months at Pine Beach, which is on the West Island of Montreal, just off Highway 2 & 20, near Pointe Claire.

Here I am on the left, with my mother and my brother.

My cousin Herb Morrissey and his mother Ivy (Lewis) Morrissey, around 1948.

I always loved St. Eustache. What wonderful summer holidays we had there! For a child, it was truly, shall we say, "Edenic". We had our cottage and across the street was my grandmother's cottage, which she owned with my Uncle Alex. They (Alex and Ivy and my grandmother and Mable) all shared their rather small cottage every summer. During the day, when my mother was at work, my Auntie Ivy and my grandmother kept an eye on my brother and I. We spent our days swimming, walking on the railroad tracks to a small island and making camp fires there, smoking little cigars (the things children do!), roaming around, walking on the train tracks into the country, hearing about some farmer who would shoot trespassers with pepper shot, buying candy at Jed's, going to movies at The Normandy (?) Theatre, sitting in the still hot summer afternoons with my grandmother and Auntie Ivy, the smell of Ivy's DuMaurier cigarettes, the smell of newsprint and the coloured comics on Saturday, sleeping with my Auntie Mable and grandmother when my mother wasn't there, the three of us in the same bed with my head at the bottom of the bed between them. I wouldn't exaggerate this if it weren't as I've described, but (of course) what I've described is from a child's perspective. For my grandmother there was the middle of the night phone call from my Uncle Herb telling us that Auntie Mable had died in her early 60s in P.E.I (?). Mable was Grandma's closest companion. No wonder I'm still writing about them, thinking about them, I loved them all so much.

Photos of 4614 Oxford Avenue

It's around 1954; photo taken outside of our flat at 4614 Oxford Avenue.

Here I am with my friend Ica Shainblum, on Oxford.

Graham Nichols and our dog Buddy, living room at 4614 Oxford Avenue. My mother married Graham in May 1963 at St. Matthew's Anglican Church; later in 1963 we moved to 4350 Montclair Avenue, in western Notre Dame de Grace.

St. Matthew's Anglican Church, Montreal

The side door at St. Matthews.

I am holding the Easter box for donations to the church.

A more recent photograph of St. Matthews, from where a condo was built in the early 2000s.

The front door of St. Matthews.

St. Matthew's Church was the church of my childhood. A wonderful place! Everyone was kind to me here, everyone was very pleasant and I loved going to this church.