CHAPTER THREE – THE GOLDEN AGE

 

Lionel Gibbs and his young family arrived back in Edmonton in late 1919 having survived the war to end all wars and eager to resume their life in what was becoming Alberta’s premier city.

 

My grandfather had begun to take an interest in local politics before the war, unsuccessfully running for alderman in 1910 and chairing the city's Parks Commission in 1912.

 

He returned fired with a burning sense of justice for all, no doubt coloured by his first-hand experience of the sacrifices made by his comrades amid the butchery of World War One and the callous indifference with which they were treated once victory was won.

 

He was especially scathing of the Hudson Bay Company, who he called “gentlemen adventurers.”

 

For Gabrielle it meant a growing role as a captivating hostess beside her husband at social gatherings in their home, which attracted the cream of Edmonton’s intelligentsia.

 

And for my mother and Eric it was the beginning of their steady path to outstanding academic success.

 

Lionel quickly rose to political prominence in the Alberta Labour Party, becoming its revered hero and champion and a member of the Alberta Leglislature (parliament).

 

My mother wrote: “He generally topped the polls as there was proportional representation and he was everybody’s second choice.”

 

He was also a co-founder of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), formed in Calgary in 1932 as a political coalition of progressive, socialist and labour groups that wanted economic reform to help Canadians affected by the Great Depression.

 

He was apparently a mesmerising and inspirational speaker, holding an audience in thrall with his oratory and the power of his message, delivered one presumes with a tinge of the Welsh accent of his native Newport, Monmouthshire.

 

Just what an effect he had on all who heard him I discovered some 70 years later, when by another of our Gibbs coincidences, the then Lady Elton of Clevedon Court, herself a Canadian, invited my mother, my daughter, Katie, and myself to have tea with her and meet a friend visiting England.

 

This man – I regret I cannot recall his name – had been a friend of my Uncle Eric in the Twenties and later was a member of a group of young World War Two newspaper correspondents, which included fellow Alberta University student, Matt Halton, who is regarded as Canada’s most important wartime broadcaster, enthralling a nation with his Dispatches From The Front.

 

I still have his name in my battered autograph book together with the flowing, fancy signature of another of their colleagues, Welshman Wynford-Vaughan Thomas, later to become one of the instantly-recognisable voices of British broadcasting.

 

Lady Elton’s visitor had heard via Matt Halton’s widow that my mother was now living in Clevedon and hence the invitation to tea.

 

We were all fascinated to hear first-hand evidence of Lionel’s spell-binding speech-making and the man said the force of the words and the power of the message he conveyed had lived with him to that day.

 

Our tea was taken in one of the draughty, echoing rooms of Clevedon Court, a manor house dating in parts to the early14th century and now a Grade One listed building owned by the National Trust.

 

Three generations of the Gibbs family were glad when we returned to my mother’s cosy semi-detached house in Macleod Close, Clevedon.

 

As we sat around the comforting gas fire, my mother declared that she did not envy Lady Elton for a minute and would not swap homes “for all the tea in China.”

 

Sadly Lady Elton died a few years later on a visit to her daughter’s London home when a cement-mixer lorry mounted the pavement and crushed her, causing injuries which proved fatal despite a helicopter airlift to hospital.

 

Lionel’s political fame linked with a warm personality brought many visitors to his home in Willard Avenue, Edmonton, and Gabrielle was there to complement him and make all welcome.

 

No doubt her classic beauty and French accent were an exotic mix and I wish now I could have heard her for myself, although I had more than a hint of her voice with my mother.

 

Those who met “Grandmere” noted the Gallic tinge to her speech, but I was not aware of this until my early teens – to me it was just how my mother sounded.

 

Like my mother, Gabrielle had a strong sense of humour and my mother recalled how once, after being badgered to buy more and more doughnuts in the hope of winning a wonderful prize in a bakery promotion, Gabrielle exclaimed: “One more doughnut and the car is mine!”  

 

The Gibbs home in Edmonton must have been a fascinating place, thanks in part to the family rule that they spoke French when together in the house and English when out in public.

 

Those hearing about this in later years would sometimes have the temerity to say to my mother: “Oh, so you are French Canadian” to which she would reply forcefully: “I am certainly not – I’m English, born in Canada to a French mother.”

 

She and Eric arrived back in Edmonton from England, having never been to school – their mother had taught them herself during the war years – but it was decided that they would need to be enrolled into the city’s educational system.

 

My mother, a month short of her 11th birthday, was obviously a bright child and so was recommended to be placed in a class a year above her age, but her younger brother, who was even brighter, was recommended to move to a class above her.

 

Gabrielle anticipated how this would affect my mother, so said that both children would be moved up equally or not at all – and the school gave in.

 

My mother loved her brother dearly, but must have sometimes been less than happy when he demonstrated his natural brilliance.

 

She recalled on one occasion how he was facing an English literature examination the following day on the classic Exmoor tale, Lorna Doone, and could not be bothered to read the book.

 

“Just tell me the story,” he said as they lay in their bedroom and my mother obliged, recounting all the details with customary passion.

 

She passed the examination, of course, but was horrified when she discovered that he had achieved an even higher mark with his own interpretation of the story, which owed little to the original narrative.

 

My mother and her brother had an idyllic life after World War One, although they hated the cold, Eric saying he could not understand how their father could have stuck them in a city on the same latitude as Siberia.

 

However they enjoyed it one year when Lionel flooded their lawn so they could skate on their own ice rink throughout the winter.

 

Unfortunately the thaw proved that the lawn had been ruined forever and the wrath of Gabrielle ensured the experiment was never repeated.

 

During the summers there were family trips to their cottage on the lake at Seba Beach, where Lionel would paint, Gabrielle would relax, Eric would swim and my mother would be bitten by mosquitoes.

 

She once recalled joining friends at another resort in the area to be told: “That’s funny, the mosquitoes are not biting today.” They were, but their target had switched to my mother.

 

There were also chatter-filled picnics in the parks with influential friends - Lionel once remarked that it was quite entertaining for him as an alderman and member of the Alberta parliament to be drinking wine in public with a senior judge and a bishop in the middle of Prohibition.

 

Mim, who had been so welcoming to the family in Malvern, came to visit and as my mother wrote “We got such an indigestion of church that we stopped going.

 

“My aunt did not understand Canada, though my mother - “dear Gab” - did everything to make things as they were in England, which meant endless cooking.”

 

It was inevitable that both sister and brother should become students at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and my mother, well used to card games at home, joined the bridge club, where she met her best friend, Libby Cogswell (later to become Mrs Frost).

 

My mother wrote: “Her father was a judge and I used to look at his books of Marshall Hall when I was dummy”  (Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC was an English barrister, who had a formidable reputation as an orator and successfully defended many people accused of notorious murders, becoming known as "The Great Defender”.)

 

Eric of course excelled as a student, but I am sure it was the extra-mural activities which would have attracted much of his attention.

 

He would no doubt have been highly amused if a little shell-shocked after surviving the “hazing”, which was visited on male freshmen when they joined the university, involving some extremely hazardous rituals, which were later banned.

 

First they had to endure blindfolded a mock operation in which they felt they were being cut by sharp blades – in reality pieces of ice – administered by older medical students.

 

Then they were taken, still blindfolded, to the roof of one of the residences, picked up by their arms and legs and heaved over the edge.

 

Eric’s great friend, Hugh Morrison, recalled later: “Down below there was a big blanket, not a regular blanket, but one of those life-saving rescue blankets that firemen use. It was a four-storey drop. And amazingly no one was hurt.”

 

The initiation ended with the unfortunate freshmen being taken to the top of another building, drenched with buckets of ice-cold water and sent spiralling down fire escapes to the ground.

 

After all that the survivors were relieved of their blindfolds, given dry clothes and driven in trucks to Edmonton’s city centre, where they joined the Snake Dance – a single-file conga line in which they held hands and walked down Jasper Avenue “shouting cheer songs, yelling and raving” as they went.  

 

Eric must have loved the wildness and exuberance of it all, but often the hell-raiser, he later lost his student privileges and the chance of a coveted Rhodes Scholarship, when he drank most of a bottle of whisky and was found unconscious in the snow – an escapade which could have proved fatal.

 

And he must have seethed when his place at the head of the university debating team was withdrawn and his notes for the next competition were handed to another student – especially galling for one who shared his father’s gift of oratory.

 

Hugh Morrison was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship instead and went to Merton College, Oxford, where he studied under J.R.R. Tolkien, creator of Lord of the Rings and C.S.Lewis, creator of the Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, before becoming a journalist.

 

In 2001, Hugh, then in his nineties was invited back to Oxford to join celebrations for the anniversary of the Varsity ice hockey team of which he had been a star member and he stayed in the Warden’s accommodation at Rhodes House, where my Sally was the Accountant - another bizarre Gibbs coincidence,.

 

Sally would often meet him in the Porter’s Lodge as she went home after another long day and he waited for a taxi to take him to yet another reception or party.

 

When Sally originally told me about the arrival of this nonagenarian Canadian, whose name meant nothing to me, I asked her whether he might have known my mother.

 

She replied witheringly and accurately: “Don’t be silly – Canada is a big place!”

 

On Hugh’s last night in Oxford, he again stopped for a chat with Sally and disclosed that he had once met the Queen and Prince Philip, who had said to him: “I see you are wearing an Alberta lapel badge – the Queen and I will be visiting there shortly.”

 

At this, Sally said: “I thought you came from Ontario” to which Hugh replied: “Oh no, I just live there, but I was brought up in Edmonton.”

 

She replied: “Well, it must be something about the water in Edmonton. The mother of my friend (she insisted on calling me that to strangers, despite years of living together) comes from Edmonton, is also in her nineties and is as bright as a button. Her name is Christiane Gibbs”

 

Hugh then asked: “Not the daughter of the architect? Did she have a brother called Eric?.”

 

Sally confirmed that both were so and telephoned me and then my mother, who was able to chat excitedly with Hugh for over half an hour.

 

I never let Sally forget this startling demonstration of the power of the Gibbs coincidence.

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What Hugh may not have had a chance to tell my mother was that he had brought with him to Oxford his partner, Celie Getchell, the lover he had been reunited with after 60 years apart, and they had kissed again on the Bridge of Sighs.

 

What Hugh may not have had a chance to tell my mother was that he had brought with him to Oxford his partner, Celie Getchell, the lover he had been reunited with after 60 years apart, and they had kissed again on the Bridge of Sighs.

 

Unfortunately as Hugh was leaving for Canada the next morning, my mother never got the chance to meet him again and I never had a chance to talk to this fascinating man.

 

He had interviewed some of the leading figures of the 20th Century and had doubled as a spy during World War Two, recruited to assist 'Intrepid', Canada's spy master Sir William Stephenson, by reporting wartime activities of German agents in Central and South America.

 

In his extensive library was a copy of A Man Called Intrepid by Stephenson, dedicated 'To Hugh, my comrade in arms'.) and Hugh’s contact at the British Embassy in Washington was a 6ft 6ins tall operative– one Roald Dahl.

 

In 1931, while still studying for a law degree, Eric met his match in Inez*4, the daughter of Finnish immigrants, who he encountered on a summer job with the Chautauqua, a travelling tent show of actors, musicians and assorted performers, one of many which flourished in Canada and the USA from 1917-35.

 

Inez, a pianist at her local cinema in Ely, Minnesota during the silent movies era of the Twenties, had trained in the theatre in Chicago, often ushering shows featuring some of the world’s greatest actors and supposedly being entertained by mobsters of that colourful era.

 

She joined the Chautauqua after her first husband was killed in a car accident and was performing in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest when Eric was cast as a stand-in to play opposite her.

 

He was obviously smitten although his parents were less than pleased by his liaison with a widowed actress and his father with uncharacteristic meanness described Finns as “the dagoes of the North.”

 

My uncle returned to university, where in 1932 he added a law degree to the Bachelor of Arts he had obtained in 1930, but unwilling to look immediately for a job as a lawyer, he headed off across the Atlantic to explore Europe, meeting the English relatives on the way, including my father.

 

Eric eventually ran out of money in 1933 after many adventures and ended up sleeping on a park bench in Liverpool, while waiting to board a ship bound for Canada with a ticket paid for with money wired to him by his doting if anxious parents.

 

Much to their displeasure, he did not return to Edmonton, stopping instead in Toronto, where he decided to join the the Toronto Star, inspired no doubt by the taste for journalism he had acquired as an editor on the university’s Gateway newspaper..

 

His father sent him a telegram urging him to return home immediately to start his hoped-for career as a lawyer. Eric replied with a characteristically succinct telegram: “Father, don’t be so dramatic”.

 

The newspaper was an ideal setting to develop Eric’s skills as a writer and also as a gifted cartoonist, a reputation he had earned at university, where he caricatured lecturers and students alike and designed T-shirts worn on campus and at varsity matches.

 

While Eric was carving his colourful and often eventful path through his university years, my mother was studying hard.

 

In 1929 she received the “Medaille de Ministeres des Affaires Etrangeres”, in 1930 she earned her BA, then in 1931she graduated from the school of education.

 

During 1932-33 she was lecturer in French at the university and in 1933 she was awarded the French government scholarship as the year’s best French student in Alberta - the prize a 12-month course at the Sorbonne University in Paris to study the teaching of French as a foreign language.

 

However Gabrielle was outraged when she discovered that the parents of the previous year’s winner wanted their daughter to stay for an extra year and the organisers said they would therefore not award the 1933 prize.

 

They failed to reckon with the anger of Gabrielle, who like her daughter defended her family “with the courage of a lion”, and my mother’s prize was duly awarded.

 

My mother wrote: “I had an eventful journey (on the way to Europe). Eric met me in Toronto, then one of his friends showed me over Niagara.

 

“In New York I was met by friends of my mother. They had a house on Long Island and took charge of me, which was just as well as I had a stormy session with the steamship company, who had cancelled my ticket as the result of a blunder by their agent in Montreal. I had bought a return ticket at a reduced fee because of my scholarship. They said I could only have a single ticket – just as well as it turned out!!

 

“After an argument I was given a berth on The Chaplain, which was full of pilgrims going to Lourdes. I found myself in a cabin with two fat women and one who did not wash.

 

“However I went to the purser and said I wanted to be with young people and he put me in another cabin with a very nice group. The sun was shining and it was a lovely trip, especially as we found our way into first class through the kitchens!”

 

My mother left Canada with tearful farewells from her proud parents and touching postcards lovingly drawn by her father.

 

They looked forward to her excelling in her course at the Sorbonne, as she had done throughout her academic life, and to her returning to Edmonton to resume her career in teaching and no doubt make a good marriage.

 

They were never to see her again.