Marigold and David Pearce

 

Marigold and David (Dave) Pearce immigrated to Canada from Great Britain at the end of World War 2. David's older brother had come to Canada during the war to train fighter pilots, and ended up marrying a French Canadian woman and stayed in Canada, so Marigold and David decided to make the journal as well.  They settled in West Lorne, Ontario where they raised 5 children. Dave operated a garage and was an important resource for local farmers, since he could fix just about anything that had wheels. Marigold managed the books for the garage (Dave was much more interested in fixing cars than in chasing customers for payment.) 

In their 80s, they decided to write their memoirs, which their children arranged to be printed for distribution to friends and family. 

Marigold’s Memoirs

Childhood

 I was born in the village of Ringmore in South Devon, UK. My father was Hubert Hannaford, a Devonshire man, my mother, Ivina Maud Edwards, was born in Wales. I'm not sure just where, but my Welsh grandparents lived in Mouth Ash, Wales.

My mother told me I was born during a rare event, a blizzard. Snow was very unusual for our part of the British Isles. I was born on December 23, 1927. My mother named me Marigold Doreen. She also told me I was born with a caul over my face, an omen of good luck.

We lived at the bottom of a fairly long, narrow lane, with high hedges each side. According to Mum, the district nurse, who also was the midwife, had to be carried by two of the village men through the snow so that she was able to assist at my birth,

My parents in effect had two families, as my eldest brother Harold was 22 years older than me and Cyril, the next in the family, was 18 years older than me. Then came my brother Ronald who was eighteen months older than me. I'm sure it must have been a bit of a surprise to them at their ages.

My father served in the Royal Navy during World War 1 but he never talked about it. I don't even know what ship he was on, all I know is that he was a "stoker". I now realize this must have been a tough job with very little chance of survival if the ship was hit, especially as he, like so many men who live by the sea, could not swim.

My brother Harold and my father helped man the buoys when some fishing boat was in trouble. Harold could not swim either, but they didn't seem to worry.

My father was a market gardener. We had a very small vegetable garden and a field where we kept chickens and pigs. He also was a trapper. In those days there were hundreds of rabbits around and Dad would pay for the trapping privilege on a farm. He would set the traps near rabbit holes in the hedges in the evening and next morning went out and cleared the traps. It was very cruel but the accepted way of doing things. The rabbits would then be gutted and sent to our nearest city, Plymouth, on the bus.

When I was older and in school in Kingston, I would see the bus going by with the wooden boxes of rabbits on the top: they, along with our produce, were sent to the market in Plymouth.

Mr. Martin owned the market stall that sold our produce and rabbits. Each Saturday my Mum, Ron and I would go by bus to Plymouth to collect our money from him. Ron didn't always go with us but I loved the market, the different stalls and varieties of produce and flowers and clothes: to me the market was a magic place.. It was a large old building with a high vaulted roof. It was demolished by bombs during the blitz of Plymouth during World War 2.

We used to get up at dawn in the summer to pick wild mushrooms, which only frew in certain fields, especially the ones where sheep grazed. You had to get up early to be the first in the fields before other pickers came. Mushrooms were sent by the basketful to Plymouth. Dad used to take the produce to St. Anne's Chapel (a few miles from Ringmore) to put it on the bus,

We had a Pony and Trap for transportation, no cars or buses from Ringmore in those days. The only bus that came was the school bus to take us to Kingston for the Junior grades and Modbury to finish our schooling as we got older.

School started at age five in Britain but my mother didn't want me to be away all day so I went to a small private school run by a Mrs. Truscott in her home. There were only a few girls, no boys. I sent there until I was about seven.

I used to get cream at Luckeral's farm when I went to school at Miss Truscott's.  Her house was on the left of the road before you come down the rocky road, I think it was the only one there.

In the summer we spent many hours on the beach at Challoborough or Bigbury-on-sea. We moved to a bigger home with a few more fields. Dad decided to let the fields to someone who had riding horses, even though he was a  bit afraid of large horses. I thought it was great and much to my parents' horror would ride the horses barback.

By this time, Harold had married a Bigbury girl, Annie Martin, and was living near St. Anne's Chapel. Cyril was in the Royal Marines, married to Kathleen Doble. I had been a bridesmaid at each wedding. Harold and Annie were married in Bigbury Church, but Cyril and Kathleen were married in St. Andrew's church in Plymouth, later badly damaged by bombs but rebuilt after the war.

When I visited an old school friend in Ringmore in 1986 she remarked that my mother ws always singing, even when she was just talking by: I guess it was her Welshness.

I sang in the choir at All Hallows and was confirmed in the Anglican church. At least, our vicar was Anglican, he was very strict: we females could not enter the church if our head was uncovered. I took my turn at carrying the cross (which was a rather heavy one, very ornate, brass and wood) in the procession of the church from the vestry to the alter, where it was placed during the service.

We were a small choir, three sopranoes, one alto, a bass and a tenor. The organ was a pump one, which meant that someone had to sit out of sight of the congregation and work the bellows pump. Mom often did this. 

There was no electricity in the village while I lived there, no stores either, just the post office where you could get a few groceries. Twice a week a butcher came from Modbury with meat. You just chose a cut of meat or a pound or two of sausages. The beef quarters hung on hooks on the side of the van and the butcher cut you what you ordered.

Groceries were also bought out of the back of a grocery van. There was a bakery in St. Anne's Chapel, we often walked the two or three miles to get bread or saffron buns or a saffron cake.

One summer my parents decided to run a small ice cream and sweet shop on the beach at Challaborough. We made the ice cream ourselves. I enjoyed going to buy the candy at the wholesale store in Plymouth: jars and jars of all kinds of candy or sweets were on shelves, and we picked out the ones we wanted to sell. I'm not sure how long we ran the shop, maybe two summers, just before the war.

We used to go to Challaborough beach and Bigbury Bay. My brother Cyril was a strong swimmer and could swim from there to Borgh Island when the tide was in.

War Years

We were in Ringmore when World War 2 started. My father died of a heart attack soon after the start of the war and life changed in more ways than one.

We were in the flight path of the German bombers during the blitz of Plymouth and Devonport Dockyard. We could see the barrage balloons over Plymouth from Bigbury on Sea. We saw dogfights over the sea. Burgh Island Hotel was bombed one morning. 

 How to Register for Multiple Discovery Connect Programs

1. Open the “FFS Program Links [month] document and save a local copy in a Word file. Take note of how many programs you are going to register for.
2. Right-click on the event you want to register for and click “copy hyperlink”.
3. Paste the link into MyCommunity Hub and register for the program.
4. Go back to the Word file (if desired, you can add something beside the link you just used, e.g. “registered” or some such: this can be handy if you get interrupted part way through the process, particularly is doing multiple registrations).
5. Repeat as necessary, being sure to paste the link in the same instance of MyCommunity Hub that you are logged on to.
6. When you go to the payment stage, you’ll see how many programs you have registered for: make sure that this is the same number as you identified in step 1.

6.      When the process is complete, make a copy of the receipt for Passport purposes: click Print Full Receipt (in the top right corner) and save the receipt as a PDF. Give the PDF a distinctive name (e.g. “Discovery Connect May 2024”) and save it locally. (As mentioned in another article, I add the dollar amount and the month/year to the PDF file name, which makes it easier when it comes to submitting the expense to PassportOne. and then add "done" to the file name when I submit the PDF.  (I also set up a folder for each fiscal year,  in order to keep my receipt organized.)

From the perspective of a truly great teacher

I won't lie, much of my son's education experience seemed to be a battle of one kind or another. It was exhausting and depressing and although it's been more than a decade since he was last in school, occasionally (very occasionally) I beat myself up for not doing enough to fight that battle. I was cleaning up my laptop at the end of a tiring day and stumbled across this comment that I had captured from one of his teachers. It certainly lifted my spirits: so few people bother to take the time to understand my son, even fewer are willing to see his value. Here's what she wrote. It might not seem much to you, but it meant the world to me.

Although Devon joined the class during Term 2, it is hard to remember what the class was like without him. It seems as if he inadvertently became the voice of reason and the unofficial timekeeper among the students. His idiosyncrasies have become an important part of the fabric of our blended culture and each of us lose a bit of our being when we are forced to accept the fact that Devon will not be in our class in September. Hearing him say phrases such as "It's 1:45, Ms <name>, we have to go to the Computer Lab" or "Today is Tuesday, Ms. <name>, you forgot to put on the Wii" or "That's not right, you shouldn't put that there!" or "Oh oh, you shouldn't have done that, you are in trouble" will resonate with me for a long time. 

Observing how his resilience motivated others to take risks has had a profound impact on me.

There were times when Devon was scared and confused; there were times when he completely lost his spatial sense, but he trusted the familiar face that he saw and the familiar voice that he heard, and he regrouped. Whenever Devon had to leave an activity that he loves to participate in something that did not include his classmates, he was hesitant, but he trusted our promise that we would be there when he returned, and that he would get a chance to participate next time. His classmates watched and learned from Devon's reactions that change can be seen as an added spice to life.

Rolfing your kids’ life

 

Rolfing is a massage technique that involves putting lots of pressure on a tight nerve/muscle in order to release it. It’s a good metaphor for a strategy I’d like to recommend, particularly to those parents (and I know you’re out there, ‘cause I married one) who spend a fair bit of time trying to make sure that things remain the same in your kid’s life. I totally understand the temptation to do this, but I have to confess that when I hear stories from parents of young kids about how their child had a meltdown because the school bus was late, or they drove a different route to the mall, or those media stories about a kid who will only eat [insert name of some product that has been discontinued], I sigh a little. To be fair, I sigh a little at the way I often did this when Devon was small: I still remember when we discovered that Loblaws was no longer producing their frozen jumbalaya, which Devon adored, and my husband actually got them to give him the recipe for cooking it himself so we could keep him stocked up (all these years later he can take or leave jumbalaya, but we still make it occasionally for old times’ sake). And just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that you disrupt routines half an hour before everyone’s heading out the door for the day, or at a time where everyone’s stress if a little higher because of travel or holidays or whatever. Here’s what I’m advocating for:  (1) regularly change up routines and (2) give your kid choices and let them deal with the consequences of those choices.

For number 1, I like to use the “same but different” approach, like going to a different grocery store or library, some place that is almost but not quite the same as the favoured destination. Or getting pizza from a place that’s not the usual one. Buying groceries at a different store (within the usual chain, or at a different one). Eating at a different location with the same fast food menu. Travelling a regular route with slight variations each time.  Seeing a movie at a different cinema. The changes can be tiny, but in my experience they’re cumulative. Like any new thing, don’t try this at a time when you (or they) are particularly stressed. In my experience, doing this enough leads to a tipping point where you can do such wondrous things as eating at a restaurant that is not a chain.

For number 2, the possibilities are endless. Red shirt or blue shirt? Orange juice or apple juice? Jam or peanut butter? Bath at 8 pm or 8:30 pm? Watch two shows and then the TV’s off, or watch one show then have a break and watch another show? See the movie at 2:00 or 3:30? At this cinema or that other one? Start with easy win-win choices with limited possibilities (e.g. “no juice” is not an option)- the idea is to encourage a choice at all.  When you’re both comfortable with that, you can work on choices with actual consequences. My personal favourite is pointing out that when all of [insert name of most favoured food] is gone, there won’t be another one until whenever you say so. For example, my guy loves those BBQ chickens from the grocery store, and would I suspect eat the whole thing in 2 days if we let him. I used to try to rein him in but then I stopped once I made it clear that another chicken would not be forthcoming until the next week. This led to numerous occasions where I observed him take the chicken out of the fridge, pause, think, and put it back again: a sight that brought genuine joy because it showed me that he was thinking of the consequences and making a conscious choice. Does he still complain? You bet he does, but nothing ensures that the juice will be kept in the fridge like a morning with no cold juice to drink. It’s the same strategy I describe in the [article about fast food choices]. Obviously there are limits around safety: I wouldn’t let him go out on a winter’s day with just a tshirt, for example, or leave the house without his wallet and cell phone because those consequences are a bit too high, but if he wants to blow all his money on a completely unnecessary item and be broke for a week, or run his cell phone battery dry at home because he can’t be bothered to plug it in, or pay a fine because he wasn’t paying enough attention to when his library books were due back, I’m good with that. Yes, I may hear complaining about whatever the instance was, for much much longer than I really care to hear about it, but that’s a small price to pay.

I really believe this works: there are times when I turn to  my husband in utter astonishment as our guy sails through an event that would once have resulted in a week’s worth of argument and unhappiness (I’m talking about something like the ice cream machine not working at a Mcdonalds here, not a major life crisis). He still complains about it (sometimes so much that I have to draw an arbitrary “you can complain about that X more times” and then count down the times) but not nearly as much as he would if I was still investing extra time in making sure everything in his life went smoothly. (I still find it funny that he will complain about the non-occurrence of something he didn’t particularly want to happen in the first place!)

I used to be wildly stressed at unexpected changes (stressed on his behalf and in anticipation of his reaction, but frankly I’m not keen on them either) but I’m  much more confident in his ability to handle them now. I try not to be unfair: if there’s a known change, I write it out and let him read it (harder to argue with a piece of paper, and easier for me to redirect the endless pressure for clarification to the written word), but none of this happened by accident: invented changes are much easier to control than unexpected ones.

I drew the inspiration for some of this from a speaker at a long-ago Geneva Centre conference, an articulate young British woman on the spectrum,  who said something like “we have to hear ‘no’, we have to hear ‘it’s not your turn’, so that we know we can live through those experiences and come out the other side unscathed. At 25 my guy still continues to astonish me with new interests and ability to cope with change and new experiences, and I hope I don’t sound too immodest when I take just a wee bit of credit for that.

Small Joys

 Although my guy's foot repetoire has increased over the years, he's still quite a selective eater. Many years ago when one of the programs he attends would go to a mall food court once a week, he picked up the habit of taking a picture of his food (I suspect he was mimicing the behaviour of some other participants, I seem to recall that was a thing once upon a time, and he doesn't do that at home). The other day one of his programs was doing a cooking class and made pizza bagels. I wasn't sure how successful that would be (he likes pizza, but not bagels) but was thrilled when not only did he report that he had in fact eaten that lunch, but showed me a picture of the pizza bagel he had made. A small, small thing, but a joy nevertheless. 

What Donald Trump Can Teach Us About Behaviour

Like a lot of Canadians, I suspect, my family have spent more time thinking and talking about U.S. politics in the last few years than ever before. Among other symptoms of this peculiar and unbecoming habit was the inclusion of a fair bit of U.S.-focused podcasts in our listening habits. One of the podcasts my husband has been listening to is called "What Trump Can Teach Us about Con Law". In the days following the U.S. election, I found myself reflecting on what Trump can teach us about behaviour, hence the title for this post. 

Everyone except those closest to him can see they are dealing with someone who has been insulated, by family and handlers and privilege, from the consequences of his actions for, presumably, his whole life. He has, reportedly, taken unfair advantage of others in matters financial and personal, routinely lied without being called on it (or, if called on it, doubled down on those lies), been verbally, physically and sexually abusive, and on it goes. What makes him think he can get away with it, we ask? Of course the answer is simple: because the people in his life prevented him from ever experiencing the consequences of his actions. 

So what does this remind us of? Nothing more or less than the long-term consequences of insulating our loved ones from the consequences of their own actions and choices. We do this for love, out of fear,  to prevent potential harm (of all types), to save time, and for many other very good reasons. Maybe I'm a meanie, but I take a small, secret amount of pleasure whenever my son suffers (mildly) as the result of his failure to make his own choices, whether that be getting wet because he didn't check the forecast (or the sky), or not being able to purchase something he desires because he didn't monitor his bank balance, or anything else that is perhaps unpleasant or unhappy-making, but not actually dangerous. 

Sibling Resources

 https://canadiancaregiving.org/siblingscanada/