Small Things Forgotten

And sometimes amidst the zorgleflutzes, church bulletins from 1962, styrofoam meat trays, and endless jars of preserved crabapples, you find magical things. My grandmother saved some seemingly random things, but she also saved reams of family pictures and letters. This is the story of something she saved carefully for years and the story that it, in turn, tells.

By the time I knew her, my grandmother was already an old woman. She had come from Ontario at the age of 10 to a province that wouldn’t even officially be a province for a few more months. She grew up near Wynyard among people who had come from all over the world to the promise of a new land and new beginnings. The work was hard, sometimes backbreaking, but there were opportunities for fun and socializing too. My grandmother learned to dance from her brother-in-law, who had learned as part of his officer cadet training at a German military academy. Groups of young people from the area would get together at community events to dance and socialize; my grandmother loved to dance and was part of this group of friends.

Hector Hibberd

Hector Hibberd was one of her friends. From St. Mary Bourne, Hampshire, he had come to Canada in around 1911, one of the innumerable young British men who chose to try their luck in Canada. Maybe Hector had kept in contact with Gifford Longman, another St. Mary Bourne-ite, who had gone to Wynyard with an older brother as a 15 year old. In any case, he came to the Canadian West, learned to farm, and danced with the local girls.

When what we now call World War I started, a huge number of those young British men joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force, partly out of patriotic fervour and duty, and partly for the chance of a trip back home. And the war would be over in a few months anyway. By March of 1916, Hector and Giff likely understood what they were getting themselves into when they volunteered for the 214th (Saskatchewan) Overseas Battalion of the C.E.F.

Most of the regiments and battalions produced Christmas cards for their members to send to friends and family. During his first Christmas as a C.E.F. member, Hector sent cards to at least one member of his Wynyard group of friends - my grandmother.

Hector's Christmas card - now housed at the Saskatchewan Archives

By September 1918, he was serving with the 3rd Battalion of the Canadian Machine Gun Corps in France. The circumstances of death report says that he was making some adjustments to his gun when an enemy shell made a direct hit on the shelter he was in. The war would be over less than two months later.

His friend Giff survived. Perhaps he’d made the (re)acquaintance of Hector’s sister during the war, or maybe they’d met when Giff undoubtedly paid a condolence call on Hector’s parents. The two young people married after the war’s end and made their way to Saskatchewan.

From my grandmother’s circle of friends, at least two young men (one Hector; one her fiancé) left for the other side of the world and never came back. This pattern was repeated in countless circles, families, villages, and towns all over the country and world. The people remaining were left to mourn, pick up their lives, and, if they could, dance again.