1949/50 Grade 1 Class Picture - St. Brendan's School, Montreal

Can you pick me out? Actually my mother made it easy by marking an "X" on the notebook on my desk. My teacher was Miss McKeon and I thought she was wonderful. Strictly speaking we weren't baby boomers because that period officially began in 1945 but there certainly were many of us. There were only two grade one classrooms however, there was a morning class and a different afternoon class in each. Those who began the year in the morning, switched to afternoons mid-year. I just loved going to school. Can you believe that all the children in this class are 64 or 65 years of age today?

Early Childhood Pictures

These are pictures fom my early childhood. I remember the red and white striped dress that I am wearing in one of them. It must have been taken when I was about six because I had lost a couple of front baby teeth. The middle picture was taken at my Uncle Tom's and Aunt Bea's wedding. Both dress and hat were made of pale green organza.

A Family Christening

These pictures were taken at the christening of baby Faith, daughter of my Aunt Theresa (my mother’s sister) and Uncle Joe Mooney. They also had two sons, Pat & Mike (Irish eh?) and a daughter, Francie who died not long after she was born.

Joe Mooney worked for one of our two railroad companies at the time, CPR or CNR - can't remember which. Aunt Theresa must have had secretarial training because when I was a teenager, I remember that she worked from home typing theses for masters or doctoral candidates at McGill. Faith and her family live in California, Pat lives in the London area and Michael died after a heart attack about nine or ten years ago.

The other couples in the above pictures are Uncle Jim (my mother’s brother), his wife, Vi , Aunt Mary (my mother’s sister) and her husband, Gordon Hewlings. Neither of these couples had children but they were kind to and supportive of their nieces and nephews. Both Uncles Jim and Gordon worked in the printing business. I was told that the explosion in Halifax harbor orphaned Aunt Vi. The Halifax Explosion occurred on December 16, 1917 when the city of Halifax, was devastated by the huge detonation of a French cargo ship, fully loaded with wartime explosives that had accidentally collided with a Norwegian ship in "The Narrows" section of the Halifax Harbour.

Uncle Jim and Aunt Vi met in a boarding house somewhere in the Maritime Provinces. They moved to Montreal after their marriage. Aunt Vi was a stay-at-home wife. Uncle Jim was an avid reader and tropical fish collector. They had a budgie, which they occasionally left, out of the cage. One day when Aunt Vi and I came back from a shopping excursion, she opened the back door of their of their flat and the budgie escaped, not to return despite the many attempts Aunt Vi made to attract it with the bird caller. Uncle Jim was not amused.

I don't think that Uncle Jim and Aunt Vi chose not to have children. I recall an occasion when she thought she was pregnant but it was a false alarm. They were a great help to my Aunt Dorothy, the British war bride of my Uncle Tom (Martin). She was widowed in the early 60's with nine children and one on the way. She miscarried the 10th but had her hands full with the remaining offspring.

Aunt Vi died much too young from cancer when I was a teenager. In spite of having tuberculosis as a young man, Uncle Jim lived to a ripe old age and died on a golf course.

During the second world war, Aunt Mary enlisted in the army. She was underage but put off providing the required documentation until she reached the required age. This was not difficult to do in the pre-computer age. I remember that she worked for Firestone, a company from which she retired as the District Manager's Secretary. She was a strikingly attractive lady with dark brunette hair and brown eyes. She once told me that, as a child, she thought she was adopted because she was the only one in the family with brown eyes - a recessive gene, I presume. Why would a family with so many children (who resembled each other) adopt another? Not long after she got married, Aunt Mary had surgery for some problem and later learned that the surgeon had performed a hysterectomy. That was not an uncommon situation in the 1950's.