Edith Metcalfe Wallace

Edith Metcalfe Wallace, War Bride
June 29, 1922 - Nov 29, 2010

My mother was born in Rotherham, Yorkshire on June 29, 1922, the third child of Esther Barrett and John Metcalfe. Her older siblings were Edward (Ted), born 1914, and Mary, born 1918. Mother began training as a nurse in 1942 in Newcastle on Tyne. She remembers nursing German POWs - one in particular was very young and frightened, quite a sweet boy, she said.

In late November 1944 Mother travelled to Richmond (in Yorkshire) to attend a friend’s wedding. She had been sent to Richmond early in the war because it was not a bombing target - she stayed with her cousin Frankie’s family). It just so happened that my father, Earl Weston Wallace, along with several of his army buddies stationed at nearby Catterick Camp, joined the wedding party at the King’s Head Inn (now the King’s Head Hotel). My father, who grew up in Port Arthur (Thunder Bay) Ontario, had signed up in 1941 when he was 22. He then spent at least two years training in Aldershot, Surrey, UK. Finally, he was sent to Italy in November 1943. (These dates are approximate.) In February, 1944, he and his friend Millard Ross were sent back to England to enter OCTU - Officer Cadet Training Unit - at Aldershot. He was made a Lieutenant in March 1945, eventually becoming Captain in the reserves around 1952.

It was love at first sight that night in November, and Edie and Earl quickly became engaged. Mother's wedding was on Easter Monday (April 2) 1945 at 11 AM in St. Stephen’s Church in East Dene, Rotherham (Church of England).

When Mother was in training in Newcastle Infirmary, nursing friends took her to the Anglican church and she converted from Methodism. Dad’s family, who were strict Baptists, sent their ration coupons from Canada for sugar, etc so my grandmother could make the cake. Mother had to visit the vicar at St. Stephen’s to get permission to marry a Baptist - and a Canadian at that! Mother wore a lovely beaded satin wedding dress which she lent to a friend afterwards, who altered the neckline and wrecked it, according to Mother. (I still have her dress and veil.) My grandmother (Nanna) took her to Leeds to shop for a gown - they saw what they wanted in a bridal shop window.

On that Easter Monday in 1945, it was windy - in the photos, the dresses are blowing. Dad had just been made a lieutenant so it was a coup for the family - Edie was marrying an officer. Sadly, Mother’s father (my grandfather John William Metcalfe, b 1890) was so upset that his youngest child was leaving England he had to be hospitalized (nervous breakdown? suspected brain tumour?). He retired a week after the wedding at age 55 from his work as a coal miner (?). Mother’s brother Ted (30) gave her away. Mother had one bridesmaid - her older sister Mary, a nurse in Sheffield, and two flower girls - her niece Patricia (4 year old daughter of her brother Ted and his wife Hazel) and Susan, the 4 year old niece of her nursing friend. Dad’s best man was John Stewart of Chatham NB (?). The two ushers were Australian soldiers.

Present at the wedding were Hazel and Ted with their children Pat and Stuart, Mother’s sister Mary and her friend, “Aunt” Edie Palmer, Mother’s godmother her Aunt Clara (Nanna’s sister, a dear friend of Edie Palmer - she and Edie raised Mother’s sister Mary), and Alice Ross with her two sons Ian and Robert - Alice was a nursing friend of Hazel’s, Dad’s best man and the two ushers. The wedding reception was at Nanna’s house at 11 Cambridge Place, East Dene, Rotherham. Nanna stayed up all night to make the wedding lunch. (I was born in this row house on Feb 15, 1946. We now live on Doncaster Avenue in London ON - Cambridge Place is two blocks away from Doncaster Road in Rotherham.)

Mother and Dad took the train to London later that day and spent the next two days in the Officer’s Club there - for some reason, their reservation at the Grosvenor Hotel was not honoured. They then embarked on their honeymoon in Liphook, Hampshire UK, which was a base for Canadian troops stationed in Southern England.

Dad was supposed to go off to fight Japan after Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945. In June, 1945, he was sent back to Canada to train for battle in the Far East, without Mother because by then she was pregnant with me and was not allowed to travel. When Dad returned to Canada, Mother had her formal wedding portrait taken for him about three months after their wedding - that’s why she isn’t carrying flowers (her bouquet contained a silver cardboard horseshoe for good luck, which I remember playing with and destroying as a six-year-old.) She couldn't travel with a baby under 6 months, so it was a year later, around July 26/27 1946 that the three of us reunited in Dad's boyhood home on 217 River St (now McVicar St) in Port Arthur (his parents were both dead). I have my entry paper issued when we landed July 23, 1946 in Halifax at Pier 21 - I was listed as 5 months old. Then Mother faced a 3 or 4 day train trip to Port Arthur, in a train full of war brides and screaming kids. She said I caught whooping cough on the Queen Mary (that was a free trip, once you showed your marriage certificate stating your husband was a Canadian soldier). Because she was an officer's wife, she was assigned a 1st class cabin on the Queen Mary, but there were at least 4 women to a cabin and sick kids everywhere.

In March 1949, mother sailed back to England on the Queen Elizabeth with three kids in tow - my brother David, 18 months, my sister Penny, 5 months, and me, 3 years. Dad sold his parents' house on River St to partly pay for the trip. (In 1949 the Port Arthur vets were placed in newly-built rental houses called wartime houses.) In addition to his day job, Dad would have been paid for staying in the reserves - they had regular meetings. He bought Mother a fur coat which she took with her to England - it caused quite a stir in Rotherham! She also took a big ham that my Uncle Elgin contributed from his job as butcher at Joe Woods's store on Arthur St (which store Elgin later bought). The wax-coated ham, transported in a specially built box, was a huge hit with the family in Yorkshire, who were still on rations.

When she came back to Port Arthur in late July 1949 with the three of us, Dad had moved into the "war-time" house at 109 Ray Blvd. He gave Mother a very nice amethyst brooch and earrings and I got a "trike" - he told me that I asked him if I could ride my trike on the footpath! We came late at night by train from Toronto after flying from NYC to Toronto, then trekking to the Royal York Hotel, where we were NOT met by Dad's relatives (they went to the King Edward Hotel by mistake). Mother waited in vain with 3 babies in the lobby of the Royal York until the manager took pity and gave her use of a hotel room until her train came (probably we were lowering the tone of the place).

So we were in Rotherham about 4 months, in Nanna's wee prefab house built after the war. What a trip! ship, plane, train. I have a photo of me on the Queen Elizabeth at the kids' party - I'm wearing a paper party hat.

Also have photos of Nanna in the prefab and David and I playing in her tiny garden - Penny in the carriage.

That was quite a trip. By the time I was 3 and my mother was 27, we had crossed the Atlantic 3 times by ship (2 Queens). The next time I sailed was September 1977 when I travelled on the Russian ship Alexandr Pushkin. When I went through immigration at Tilbury, just east of London, UK, the little official looked at my passport (it said birthplace - Rotherham, Yorkshire) and chirped "Welcome home, dearie!”